Embassytown - China Mieville [67]
When after long heady minutes they were done, Hosts stepped up in their place. Each Ariekes spoke only one or two short lies. Most did it by verbal trickery like a whispered final clause. Each success was marked with Terre cheers and Ariekene approval. Many competitors stumbled and said something true. The Host audience responded with what could have been scorn or could have been pity.
I stand, I don’t stand.
This before me is not red.
stepped forward at last, for a scheduled confrontation. Opposite it was an Ambassador, LuCy, moving like pugilists, swinging their arms as if limbering. I realised I was surprised, that when I’d read about this contest, I had thought it would be CalVin representing Embassytown. Ambassador and Host squared. This was some blasphemy, I thought. Who could have allowed this? There was cheering, but I heard a man beside me, as if channelling my opinion, muttering, “This is not right.”
Before the humans came we didn’t speak so much of certain things, said.
The MC was shouting the rules of the standoff. Before the humans came we didn’t speak so much of certain things, said again, and shucked its wings. Whatever alien feelings it was feeling, they looked to us like bravado. The two women of the Ambassador and that intricate big beast the Ariekes stared at each other. The Ambassador opened their mouths. Before they spoke, said, Before the humans came we didn’t speak so much.
Ruckus. Before the humans came, the Host went on, and I knew what the lie would be, we didn’t speak.
It said it clearly. There was a moment, then the Ariekei stuttered in their ecstasy of reception. Even the Terre knew that we had heard something extraordinary. There was noise everywhere. Some shouted argument. I saw jostling in the crowd.
“Not true!” someone was shouting. “Not true!”
Men and women were got suddenly, violently, out of someone else’s way. They screamed and parted. I could see the man coming, and it was Valdik.
“Not true!” he said. He ran and shouted and brought a cudgel down on the ground, and I felt a spasming report. There was energy in his weapon. So much for security. He faced . Valdik shouted that it was not true. He raised his weapon. Eye-corals strained. People were running toward us. Valdik shouted, “Fucking snake!” watched him, its coral spreading wide as horns. I heard the bark of a weapon and Valdik went down, his club scorching the floor. Constables grabbed him. He was beaten down.
“He went for a Host?” people were gasping.
I could hear Valdik still shouting: “The devil! He’ll fucking destroy us! Don’t let it lie!”
None of the Ariekei made a sound. The officers hauled Valdik upright finally, blood-smeared and ragged, hardly conscious. They began to drag him, his feet scratching on the floor, out of the grounds. Tens of seconds had passed since his attack. In that whole hall, I think I was the only person watching CalVin and their silent colleagues, one of the very few not staring at the battered would-be assassin being taken away.
I saw Scile. He was with them, among the Ambassadors and Staff. That was it; that was where to look. They were looking not at Valdik but at , and beyond it at Pear Tree and its group of Ariekei. I was one of very few in that hall who saw what happened then.
Pear Tree moved. From behind it stepped Hasser. He walked quickly. Even was still looking at Valdik. No constables saw Hasser coming, or were there to intervene. They were busy suckers to the oldest feint. I moved.
One of ’s eyebuds glimpsed something and the whole coral arced backward, to stare. I saw Spanish Dancer, heard it calling, its giftwing moving in alien distress. Hasser aimed a biorigged thing. A ceramic carapace, a pistolgrip that gripped him back. He fired. No one was there to stop him.
He fired and the gun-animal opened its throat and howled. He blasted across the lying ground, spraying mud-coloured Host blood.
It broke apart as it flew. Hasser didn’t stop firing. The assault tore ’s giftwing from its body.