Embassytown - China Mieville [5]
I’d heard it of course. I was unsure of the etiquette of speaking it to him. “Bren,” I said.
“Bren. That isn’t right. You understand that? You can’t say my name. You might spell it, but you can’t say it. But then I can’t say my name either. Bren is as good as any of us can do. It …” He looked at the Host, which nodded gravely. “Now, it can say my name. But that’s no good: it and I can’t speak anymore.”
“Why did they bring him to you, sir?” His house was close to the interstice, to where Yohn had fallen, but hardly adjacent.
“They know me. They brought your friend to me because though as I say they know me to be lessened in some way they also recognise me. They speak and they must hope I’ll answer them. I’m … I must be … very confusing to them.” He smiled. “It’s all foolishness, I know. Believe me I do know that. Do you know what I am, Avice?”
I nodded. Now, of course, I know that I had no idea what he was, and I’m not sure he did either.
The constables at last arrived with a medical team, and Bren’s room became an impromptu surgery. Yohn was intubated, drugged, monitored. Bren pulled me gently out of the experts’ way. We stood to one side, I, Bren and the Host, its animal tasting my feet with a tongue like a feather. A constable bowed to the Host, which moved its face in response.
“Thanks for helping your friend, Avice. Perhaps he’ll be fine. And I’ll see you soon, I’m sure. ‘Turnaround, incline, piggy, sunshine’?” Bren smiled.
While a constable ushered me out at last, Bren stood with the Host. It had wrapped him in a companionable limb. He did not pull away. They stood in polite silence, both looking at me.
At the nursery they fussed over me. Even assured by the officer that I’d done nothing wrong, the staffparents seemed a little suspicious about what I’d got myself into. But they were decent, because they loved us. They could see I was in shock. How could I forget Yohn’s shaking figure? More, how could I forget being quite so close up to the Host, the sounds of its voice? I was haunted by what had been, without question, its precise attention on me.
“So somebody had drinks with Staff, today, did they?” my shiftfather teased as he put me to bed. It was Dad Shemmi, my favourite.
Later in the out I took mild interest in all the varieties of ways to be families. I don’t remember any particular jealousy I, or most other Embassytown children, felt at those of our shiftsiblings whose blood parents at times visited them: it wasn’t in particular our norm there. I never looked into it, but I wondered, in later life, whether our shift-and-nursery system continued social practices of Embassytown’s founders (Bremen has for a long time been relaxed about including a variety of mores in its sphere of governance), or if it had been thrown up a little later. Perhaps in vague social-evolutionary sympathy with the institutional raising of our Ambassadors.
No matter. You heard terrible stories from the nurseries from time to time, yes, but then in the out I heard bad stories, too, about people raised by those who’d birthed them. On Embassytown we all had our favourites and those we were more scared of, those whose on-duty weeks we relished and those not, those we’d go to for comfort, those for advice, those we’d steal from, and so on; but our shiftparents were good people. Shemmi I loved the most.
“Why do the people not like Mr. Bren living there?”
“Not Mr. Bren, darling, just Bren. They, some of them, don’t think it’s right for him to live like that, in town.”
“What do you think?”
He paused. “I think they’re right. I think it’s … unseemly. There are places for the cleaved.” I’d heard that word before, from Dad Berdan. “Retreats just for them, so … It’s ugly to see, Avvy. He’s a funny one. Grumpy old sod. Poor man. But it isn’t good