Embassytown - China Mieville [65]
“Yes,” I said. “No. I just … I haven’t seen him for days …” My hesitation was real, though my main reason for being there was not Scile, but to assess Valdik and his theology. He let me in and I saw the trappings of his new beliefs. Papers everywhere, all the crazy cabbala and misplaced rigour of a sect.
“Me neither,” he said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. I think he’s still with CalVin and the others.”
“They haven’t seen him for weeks,” I said.
“No, they were with him a few days ago.” That silenced me. “He was at The Cravat and they came for him,” Valdik said.
“When?” I said. “Who?”
“CalVin and some Staff.”
“CalVin?” I said. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Valdik didn’t sound like a prophet. I had to leave: I could hardly focus on his beliefs at that moment.
When finally CalVin next said they had time to see me, I was careful to be good company. We ate together. They spoke mostly about the Licence Party. One day, one night, half another day. CalVin emerged from their ablutions equalised. Their accrued blemishes were gone or replicated. I said nothing.
I watched them sleep, watched their skins take on differential marks from cotton and the unconscious motion of their hands. When one or other would half-wake, I would be waiting. I would try to murmur-talk to them: gauge what Cal or Vin said. It was strange, trying to do something I’d not known could even occur to me.
He on my left, I decided, at last, murmured my name with a care I recognised, smiled with something really warm. It was desperately hard to tell with only these night-fuddled moments. But he on my left, I decided at last, Cal or Vin, was the one who liked me more. I put my fingers to his lips, made him wake without sound. He opened his eyes.
“Cal,” I whispered. “Or Vin. Tell me. I know he won’t.” I indicated the sleeping other. “I know you’ve seen Scile. I know. Where is he? What’s happening?”
I saw my mistake. I saw it the instant I moved my hands.
“You,” he said, and though he was quiet I could hear his outrage. That I’d try to find out secrets, and that I’d do so by this blasphemy. My expression was frozen in misplaced intimacy. “How dare you …”
I cursed. He sat up. His doppel shifted.
“You have some bastard nerve, Avice,” the man I’d woken said. “How dare you. If we’ve seen Scile it’s not your business …”
“He’s my husband!”
“It’s not your business. We’re taking care of things. Like you begged us to. And you come here and treat us … like this … do this …?”
Beside us the newly woken doppel was rising. I looked at him and felt shame. How could I have mis-seen it? There it was, that thing I’d thought I detected in his brother.
“You thought he was me …?” he said. I saw hurt, and other emotions.
“How could you?” he said. His doppel added: “… do this?”
The raging one stood, sheets puddling on the floor. “Get out,” he said. “Leave. You are damned … fucking lucky we don’t pursue this.”
“I can’t believe you did that,” said the other quietly.
“This is over,” the standing one, Cal or Vin, said, and his doppel, the man I should have woken, looked up at him, looked at me, shook his head, turned away. I left the room having ruined my own plan.
On my way home, through the night, I cursed myself. I passed a little tour of Ariekei murmuring in Language as they looked like curators at our lamplit dwellings.
Formerly, 10
At various fairs and events in Embassytown, I’d been asked to tell stories of the immer. I’d shown trids and images of my hours in the out, supposedly for children, though there were always many adults in the audience. The immer was and is full of renegades and refugees. They emerge where they can and do what they can get away with. I’d tell the stories. I had transported most things to most places; jewellery; immer-miserable livestock; payloads of organic garbage to a trash planet-state run by pirates. I’d save the best for the end, a changing display of the pharos that marks the edge of the known always: here, right beside Arieka. I’d show it through various filters, culminating in the tropeware that made it a lighthouse,