Embassytown - China Mieville [48]
“They’re not here,” Simmon said. He massaged the odd flesh of his biorigged arm. “None of them. We’ve had generations to compromise with them on what constitutes an appointment, so we know fine bloody well that several were supposed to be here this morning, and would normally have been, and they’re not. They’re not returning any of our buzzes. They’re not communicating with us at all.”
“We must have offended them pretty badly,” I said at last.
“Looks like it,” he said.
“How, do you think?”
“Pharotekton bloody knows how. Or EzRa knows.” Neither of us said anything for a moment. “Do you know someone called Oratee?” he said. “Or Oratees?”
“No. Who’s that?” It hadn’t sounded like an Ambassador: a strange name with no ghost-stress halfway through it.
“I don’t know. I heard CalVin and HenRy talking about them, sounded as if they’d know what’s going on. I thought you might know them. You know everyone.” It was nice of him, but I didn’t have it in me to play that up. “AgNes and a couple of other Ambassadors blame Wyatt for this, you know.”
“For what?”
“For whatever. For whatever it is that happened. I heard them. ‘This is all down to him and Bremen,’ they were saying. ‘We always knew they were undermining us, well here we are …’ ” Simmon made his prosthetic hand move open-closed to show a talkative mouth.
“So they know what’s going on, then?” He shrugged.
“Don’t think so, but. You don’t have to understand something to blame someone for it,” he said. “They’re right, anyway. This has to be a … manoeuvre, no question. EzRa … some Bremen weapon.”
What if AgNes were right? If so, and I played the particular last contact-card I had, it would be, I supposed, a betrayal of Embassytown. CalVin and Scile came to my mind and I overcame any hesitation. I buzzed Wyatt. As I connected I tried to think strategically, to work out where and how he was professional, where likely to bend, trying to work out what to say that might actually gain me some insight, persuade him to divulge something. The payoff to all this skulduggery was sheer bathos.
“Avice,” Wyatt shouted when I got through. “Thank God you called. I can’t get anyone to pick up over there. For fuck’s sake, Avice, what’s going on?”
He was more cut off even than me. He and his few assistants had offices in the heart of the Embassy, of course, but some Staff blamed him, others wanted to keep him out of whatever was happening, and all agreed they should caucus without him. They managed to do so never quite breaching the law that placed him, their Bremen overseer, above them.
They had circulated, as they were obliged to, a list of all that day’s many meetings. Wyatt had sent officers to all those in main halls, and had gone himself to one titled “Emergency Organisation,” to discover that all these were sideshows, anxious extemporised discussions between midlevel Staff over issues such as stationery acquisition. The real debates, postmortems on the party, hypotheses about the Hosts’ silence, had happened already, during the Any Other Business sessions of meetings of the Public Works Committee.
“It’s a fucking outrage, Avice!” he said. “That’s exactly the kind of thing that has to stop, that is exactly the sort of thing we’ve been sent to put an end to. They have conspired to keep me out. I’m their bloody superior! Not to mention what they’re doing to EzRa—these men are their colleagues, and they’re ostracising them. It’s a disgrace.”
“Wyatt, wait. Where are EzRa?”
“Ra’s in his room, or he was when I buzzed him. Ez I don’t know. Your colleagues …”
“They’re not my …”
“Your colleagues are freezing them out. I’m sure they’d arrest them if they could. Ez’s not answering, and I can’t find him …” The notion of an Ambassador having separate rooms, doing different things, still reeled me.
“Do they know what’s going on?”
“Don’t you think