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By Root 1371 0

they would be unable to hear lies, too, like two-thirds of the fabular monkeys, but it’s more random and beautiful, so that was only the case for those few who managed to speak them, of their own little untruths. Unbacked by signifieds, the lies of Language were just noises to their own liar. Biology’s lazy: if mouths speak truth, why should ears discriminate between it and its opposite? When what was spoken was, definitionally, what was? And by this hole in adaptation, though or because they were not built to say them, the Hosts could understand lies. And either believe them—belief being a meaningless given—or, where the falsity was ostentatious and the point, experience them as some giddying impossible, the said unthinkable.

It’s I who’s monomaniacal, here: it’s unfair to insinuate that all Hosts cared about was Language, but I can’t fail to do so. This is a true story I’m telling, but I am telling it, and that entails certain things. So: the Hosts cared about everything, but Language most of all.

Radical and cussed, got that lie out into the world, a vomit of phonemes, against its own mind.

The public were rapturous. We’d witnessed a rare performance. I was delighted. Ambassador ArnOld was astonished. Hasser was bemused. Valdik and Scile were aghast.

Latterday, 8

Kedis and Shur’asi were being escorted to the Embassy. The newscasts’ little vespcams saw them.

Midlevel Staff gathered troikas and quads from the Kedis community, a few Shur’asi think-captains. Vehicles arced over our roofs, antennas and the girders of our construction, over the white smoke from our chimneys. One shot recurred on the bulletins: a young Staff member swatting at the cam through which we saw. He must have been very tense to be so unprofessional.

The newscasts, voice and text, were flummoxed. Perhaps to most locals there’d been no sense of crisis until this ingathering of our exots. The pods that took them to the Ambassadorial explanations flocked with birds, and fist-sized cams that rose and fell among the birds.

Beyond Embassytown, the oddness of angles and movements that had touched the city seemed to be spreading.

I buzzed Ehrsul, RanDolph, Simmon, but could get through to no one. After a hesitation I tried Wyatt, but he didn’t answer either.

My handset still contained Hasser’s number, and Valdik’s, and several other similes’. It had been a long time. I considered calling one. What does it matter now? I thought, but I didn’t do it.

I’m sure I wasn’t the only one doing so, but I’d begun to prepare, for whatever it was. I was copying what data I thought precious, hiding treasured objects, packing essentials into a shoulder bag. I’d always been fascinated at how my body ran things sometimes. While I felt like I was agonising, my limbs did what was needed.

Night would come without my noticing, and the aeoli-breath was still cool. Then on this crucial change-moment I remember there were night-bird noises and the gibbering of local animals. It wasn’t yet so late there was no traffic. I wasn’t tired at all. It was hard to make sense of the shots from Embassytown that I was watching. The newsware was still processing. A human commentator said, “We’re not sure what … we … we’re seeing something from the city … ah … movement from …”

The figures in cam-view were Ariekei. The Ariekei were moving. On my screen and through my window, I saw corvids frantic in several directions in the air. I heard things. I was already leaning out of my house and I saw their source. The Hosts were coming out of their city into Embassytown.

I ran to the interzone between Embassytown and the city. Lights came on as people woke to the noise, but though I was joined by more and more blinking citizens I didn’t feel part of anything. I passed under light globes whispering where moths touched them. Below arches I’d known all my life, and, tasting the thinning air, I knew I was only a street or two from the edge of the city. I was in Beckon Street, which swept downhill out of our enclave.

It was an old part of Embassytown. There were plaster griffins at