Embassytown - China Mieville [74]
Scile saw me. He met my eye, then looked around the room again. Standing where he stood, he could have been shoring EzRa up, could have been protecting them, could have been menacing them.
I recognised some of the visitors. On one fanwing I saw a moment of bird-shape in tree-shape. Pear Tree. I stared at it. The Hosts said EzRa’s name.
EzRa found a reserve of dignity, and met that attention. The Ariekei spoke in a confusion, one then another, squabbling even, until at last something like sense emerged. Someone began to translate what they said.
This is how it will be.
An unqualified future tense, rare in Language. This wasn’t an aspiration: the Hosts could only envisage that this was how it would be. They didn’t allow discussion: later we would make sense of it all. They didn’t raise details. They didn’t present requests or even demands, not really. They expressed need. All they could say, repeatedly, in various ways, was that they needed.
We will hear EzRa speak. This is how it will be. We will hear them speak. First now we will hear EzRa speak.
I could see some Staff making calculations, muttering: the best of them could strategise even during this. I admired that. They were working out what to do, what relations could remain and how others would be saved, how we could live, what we would make Embassytown be. They made me hope, and I’d not expected that.
The Hosts had a simple and single priority, it seemed. I was never a fool; I’d known there must be antagonisms, camps and struggles among them, before I ever saw that bloody result of one; and now a paradox, that that memory rose in me at that moment, when all that was evident was one implacable agenda. First we will hear EzRa speak.
Ez came forward, then, grudgingly, Ra. They looked at each other with very different emotions, those two unalike men. They whispered. They spoke Language together, and brought the Hosts to rapture.
11
As they unfolded those times seemed pure chaos, but by the prodigious efforts of the better Staff, a kind of life emerged. Even routines. It’s shocking how fast a whole city can be made to change.
Trade, all the moments and minutiae of exchange: knowledge, services, goods, promises and extras. Our culture. The way we lived. All of those things had to be fixed.
There was a dangerous excitement, an amoralism manifesting in small cruelties and mass indulgence, that some let take them, while others struggled to make things work. In the first weeks, if you came to the Embassy, it would probably be guarded, but perhaps not. Meeting rooms and galleries might be uncleaned, might contain detritus of parties. I didn’t find much pleasure in transgressions. I knew the vomited-up red wine wasn’t puked in ostentation, nor left to rot in libertine performance, but because those who partied had seen or heard about the Ariekene demand; couldn’t conceive of how we could keep going or what would happen if we failed to fulfill them; so didn’t know if they would live another week, and had never been so afraid.
Ehrsul did not answer my buzzes, and I was so overwhelmed I didn’t pursue it or visit her, as a good friend perhaps should have. EzRa was at some parties, I heard from others, then saw myself. After a short time it was only Ez who was there, at the millennial debauches. Ra did other things.
There were assignations and the collapses of relationships. There were many marriages. I had my own hurried liaisons. Really those first days are hard to talk about. The heroes who ensured that Embassytown wasn’t swept away by insistent addicted Hosts were the clerks, who set up structures while the rest of us failed not to fall apart. A little later I became something again, something important to Embassytown: just then I was not.
In those days Embassytown felt as small as it ever had to me. Not two days could