Embassytown - China Mieville [38]
Scile looked as if in disbelief at me. “They’re saying ‘It’s red.’ ”
MayBel bowed. The Ariekene hubbub continued while Ambassador LeRoy took their place. The Ariekes stroked its zelle, and the object attached to it changed shape and colour, altered into a great green teardrop. “Describe it,” Scile translated again.
LeRoy glanced at each other and began. “They said: ‘It’s a bird,’ ” Scile said. The Ariekei muttered. The noun was shorthand for a local winged form, as well as meaning our Embassytown birds. LeRoy spoke again and several Ariekei shouted, out of control. “LeRoy says it’s flying away,” Scile said into my helmet. I swear I saw Hosts crane their eye-corals up as if the lifeless plasm might have taken off. Le and Roy spoke together again. “They say …” Scile frowned as he followed. “They say it’s become a wheel,” he said, over the strange pandemonium of the audience.
One at a time every Ambassador lied. The Hosts grew boisterous in a fashion I’d never seen, then to my alarm seemed intoxicated, literally lie-drunk. Scile was tense. The room was whispering, echoing the furore of its inhabitants.
It was CalVin’s turn. They declaimed. “ ‘And the walls are disappearing,’ ” Scile translated. “ ‘And the ivy of Embassytown is winding about our legs …’ ” Hosts examined their limbs. “ ‘… and the room’s turning to metal and I’m growing larger and the room and I are becoming one.’ ”
That’s enough, I thought, and someone must have agreed, and whispered to CalVin. They bowed and stepped away.
The Ariekei slowly calmed. I thought it was over. But then, as we stared, a few Host braves came forward.
“It’s a sport,” said Cal, or Vin, who approached, sweating, as they saw my surprise. “An extreme sport,” said the other. “For—oh for years now, they’ve been trying to mimic us.” “A few are getting not too bad at it.” I watched.
“What colour is it?” the Ariekes holding the target object asked the competitors, as it had the Terre. One by one each Host would try to lie.
Most could not. They emitted croons and clickings that were effort.
“Red,” Scile translated. The bulb was red, and the speaker double-whined in what I presumed was disappointment. “Blue,” said another, also truthfully; the object changed each time. “Green.”
“Black.” Some made noises that were only noises, clicks and wheezes of failure, not words at all.
Every tiniest success was celebrated. When the object was a yellow, the Host trying to lie, an Ariekes with a scissor-shape on its fanwing, shuddered and retracted several of its eyes, gathered itself, and in its two voices said a word that would have translated as something like “yellow-beige.” It was hardly a dramatic untruth, but the crowd were rapturous at it.
A group of Hosts approached us. “Avice,” Cal or Vin said politely. “This is …” and they started to say names.
I never saw the point of these niceties between the like of me and Ariekei. Understanding only Language-speakers to have minds, they must have thought it odd when Ambassadors carefully introduced them to speechless amputated half-things. As if an Ariekes insisted on one politely saying hello to its battery animal.
So I thought, but it didn’t turn out that way. The Ariekei shook my hand with their giftwings when CalVin asked them to. They had cool dry skin. I shut my mouth to obscure whatever emotion was rising in me (I’m still not sure what it was). The Ariekei registered something as the Ambassadors told them my name. They spoke, and Scile quickly translated into my ear.
“They’re saying: ‘This?’ ” he told me. “ ‘This is the one?’ ”
Latterday, 3
There are ways to tell Hosts apart. There’s the fingerprint-unique patterning on each fanwing (any observation of this fact was generally followed by the tedious mention of the fact that Embassytown was the only place where Terre fingerprints were not all unique). There are subtleties of carapace shading, of spines on limbs, of eye-antler shape. These days I rarely bothered to pay attention, nor with a few exceptions did I learn the names of the Ariekei I met. So I couldn