Embassytown - China Mieville [73]
“Known about oratees, you mean? Why would we tell Bremen about that? I don’t know what they had in mind, but this, letting EzRa speak, was the Embassy’s riposte, I think. Not that they expected this, though. Not like this. Language like this, right there but so impossible, so doping, that EzRa are infecting every, single, Host. All of which are spreading the word. All hooked on the new Ambassador.”
Our everyday pantheon gone needy, desperate for hits of Ez and Ra speaking together, fermenting Language into some indispensable brew of contradiction, insinuation and untethered meaning. We were quartered in an addict city. That procession I’d seen had been craving.
“What happens now?” I said. It was very quiet in the room. There were hundreds of thousands of Ariekei in the city. Maybe millions. I didn’t know. We knew hardly anything at all. Their heads were all made of Language. EzRa spoke it and changed it. Every Host, everywhere, would become hardwired with need, do anything, for the blatherings of a newly trained bureaucrat.
“Sweet Jesus Pharotekton Christ light our way,” I said.
“It is,” said Bren, “the end of the world.”
10
The Ariekei told us how it would be. I was ahead of this curve, but it didn’t take long for the rest of the Embassytowners to understand that the Hosts were junkies, though they may not have known how or why. I suspect there was a power struggle in the Embassy, that some would have tried, out of habit, without rationale, to wall up information. They didn’t win.
The streets of Embassytown were something between carnival and apocalypse: moods of ending; hysteria; happiness, or its giddy approximation. Constables apprehended people walking determinedly toward the edge of town, in biorigging that might let them breathe the city air.
“You’re going nowhere!” the officers said. “Get that off. People are dying …” Some would-be city voyagers must have got through. Embassytowners wanting something from the Hosts. Pointless—the Ariekei wouldn’t perceive them as people, but as the meat belongings of Ambassadors.
I was able to bluff my way back into the Embassy. Seeing the way the Ambassadors were scurrying I felt for a moment almost protective of them. They didn’t question me. Even JasMin seemed to have forgotten they disliked me. One of EdGar gave me a kiss, to my surprise. I couldn’t see his doppel. I saw the discomfort in Ed or Gar’s eyes, from stretching their link’s field.
“Where …?” I said.
“Coming, coming.” Being so separated must have made it hard to concentrate. We didn’t say much until his doppel turned a corridor corner and joined us.
“Have you been into the city?” I said. (“Of course.” “No one’ll talk to us.”) “D’you know what’s happening?” (“No.” “No.”) “Where’s EzRa? Where’s Wyatt?” (“Don’t know.” “Don’t care.”)
“You don’t know where EzRa are?” I said. “After they caused all this shit? So what, you’ve just left them to fucking conspire?”
“Conspire?” Ed and Gar laughed. “They won’t even talk to each other.”
An Ariekene ship-beast came toward us over their city, in which the outline of that obscure malaise was spreading, building to building. When the flyer touched down on the pad, we rigged up something like an official welcome. It’s perhaps tendentious to say “we,” but I made myself part of that community then, around the Staff and Ambassadors, and I think no one resented it.
Every Ambassador I could think of was there. The Ariekei entered the hall with gusts of aeoli breath, our wind, with the gilded curtains snapping like capes around them. They walked on the altwood floor with the sound of fingernails. Not a fraction so many as had come that last pilgrimage time, but this was a more formal group. JoaQuin and MayBel stepped forward, and others shuffled behind them. Our two sides watched each other. Eye-corals craned.
The Ariekei spoke so quickly only the most fluent listeners could follow. I turned to see how the crowd were taking all this, and with shock saw my husband. He stood in the doorway, and with him was the new Ambassador.
I was the first, but a few