Embassytown - China Mieville [52]
I called the number Ehrsul had given me, which she had extracted from a newly and imperfectly upgraded net, which she had told me was Ez’s. He—or whomever it was I’d called—didn’t answer. I kept swearing, as quietly as I could make myself, and tried again, again without result.
Later I learnt that that day, in desperation, Ambassadors went into the city on foot. Pairs of desperate doppels accosted the Hosts they met, speaking Language at them through the transmitters of their aeoli helmets and receiving polite nonanswers, or incomprehension, or unhelpful intimations of disaster.
Someone came to my house. I opened the door and it was Ra, standing there on my threshold. I stared at him in silence for long seconds.
“You look surprised,” he said.
“Understatement,” I said. I stepped aside for him. Ra kept taking his buzzer out and making as if to switch it off, then leaving it on. “They trying to reach you?” I said.
“Only Wyatt,” he said.
“Really? No one else? No Ambassadors? You’re not being followed?”
“How are you?” he said. “I was thinking …” We sat for a long time on chairs facing each other. He looked over his shoulder, behind himself, more than once. There was nothing there but my wall.
“Where’s Ez?” I said.
He shrugged. “He’s gone out.”
“Shouldn’t you be together?” He shrugged again. “In the Embassy? Look, Ra, how did you even get out? I’d have thought they’d have you on bloody lockdown.” If it had been me in charge, I would have incarcerated EzRa, to control the situation, or contain it, whatever the situation was. Perhaps they had tried. But if Ra was telling the truth, both the new Ambassador had got away.
“Yeah, well,” he said. “You know. Needs must. I just wanted to … Had to split.” I had to laugh a second at that. There had to be quite a story there.
“So,” I said eventually. “How do you like our little town?” He laughed in turn.
“Jesus,” he said. As if he’d seen something good and unexpected. Outside, gulls sounded. They veered, headed constantly for the sea they glimpsed kilometres away, were turned back constantly by sculpted winds and aeoli breath. It was very rare that any broke out into the proper local air, and died.
“You have to help me,” he said. “I need to know what’s going on.”
“Are you joking?” I said. “What do you think I know? Jesus, this is a comedy of errors. What do you think I’ve been trying to find out, for God’s sake? Why have you come to me?”
“I’ve spoken to everyone I could find who was at that party—”
“Didn’t try very hard, did you, if you only just got to me …”
“All the Staff, I mean, and other people from the Embassy. The higher-up ones wouldn’t say anything to me, and the rest … a couple of them told me to talk to you.”
“Well, I don’t know why. I thought you were in the middle of it all, I thought you’d …”
“Whoever up there does know something, they’re not telling me. Us. But these others, they just … They said you know people, Avice. Ambassadors. And that people tell you things.”
I shook my head. “That’s just bloody outsider-chic,” I exhaled. “You thought you could go a roundabout way, get something through me? They’re just saying that because I’m immerser. And because I was sleeping with CalVin, for a while. But not for months. Local months, not Bremen months. My own damn husband’s a foreigner and he knows more than I, and he won’t even talk to me.” I stared at him. “You seriously telling me you’ve got no idea what’s happening? Does Wyatt know you’re here?”
“No. He helped me slip away, but … And neither does Ez. It’s not their business.” He bit his lip. “Well, officially it is, I mean … I just wanted …” After a silence, Ra met my eye. He stood. “Look,” he said, all of a sudden calm. “I need to find out what’s going on. Wyatt is worse than useless. Ez’s trying to pull rank. We’ll see how far that gets him. And I hear you might know people who know things.” In that moment he seemed not like Ez’s luggage, but an officer and an agent of a colonial power.
“Tell me,” I said at last. “What you do know. What’s been going on. What you’ve heard,