Embassytown - China Mieville [78]
“They go into the city,” MagDa told me when we were alone. She was talking about Ambassadors. “Those of them who can still pull themselves together a bit.” “They go in, and find Hosts.” “Ones they’ve always worked with.” “Or they just … stand between buildings.” “And they just start to talk.” They shook their heads. “They go in groups of two or three or four Ambassadors and just …” “… they just … they try …” “… to make the Ariekei listen.” They looked at me. “We did it once, ourselves. Early on.”
But the Ariekei wouldn’t listen. They understood, and might even answer. But they would always go back to waiting for EzRa’s announcements. The vespcams got everywhere, wouldn’t let Ambassadors hide their breakdowns. I’d seen footage of JoaQuin howling, and speaking Language, and in their misery losing their rhythm with each other, so the Ariekes to which they desperately tried to talk didn’t understand them.
“Did you hear about MarSha?” MagDa said. I remember nothing about their voices that warned me that they were about to say anything shocking. “They killed themselves.”
I stopped in my work. I leaned on the table and looked at MagDa slowly. I couldn’t speak. I put my hand over my mouth. MagDa watched me. “There’ll be others,” they said quietly, at last. When the ship came, I thought, I could leave.
“Where’s Wyatt?” I asked Ra.
“Jail. Just up the corridor from Ez.”
“Still? Are they … debriefing him … or what?” Ra shrugged. “Where’s Scile?” I had not seen, nor heard from, nor heard of, my husband, since the start of this ruinous time.
“Don’t know,” Ra said. “You know I don’t really know him, right? There was always a crowd of Staff around us when we were talking … before. I don’t even know if I’d recognise him. I don’t even know who he is, let alone where he is.”
I descended, passed searchers looking through a room full of papers for useful things. We were doing a lot of scavenging. More floors down, and I heard someone call my name. I stopped. It was Cal, or Vin, in the entrance to a stairwell. He blocked my way and stared at me.
“I heard you were around here,” he said. He was alone. I frowned. His aloneness continued. He took my hands. It was months since we’d spoken. I kept looking around him and I kept frowning. “I don’t know where he is,” he said. “Close, I’m sure. He’ll be here soon. I heard you were here.” This was the one I’d meant to wake. He stared with desperation that made me shudder. I looked down to avoid his eyes and saw something I could barely believe.
“You turned off your link,” I said. Its lights were off. I stared at it.
“I was looking for you, because …” He ran out of anything to say and his voice got to me. I touched his arm. He looked so suddenly needful at that that I couldn’t help pitying him.
“What’s been happening to you?” I said. Bad enough for me, but the Ambassadors had become abruptly nothing.
In the corridor behind him his doppel appeared. “You’re talking to her?” he said. He tried to grab his brother, who didn’t take his eyes from me but shook his doppel off. “Come on.”
They weren’t equalised. As with MagDa, I could see differences. They whispered an altercation and the newcomer backed away.
“Cal.” The first man, the half who had sought me out, said, looking at me. “Cal.” He pointed at his brother, at the other end of the corridor. He prodded his own chest with his thumb. “Vin.”
I knew his look of longing wasn’t, or wasn’t just, for me. I met it. Vin walked backward to join his brother, looking at me for several seconds before he turned.
12
I travelled into the city with MagDa and Staff, part of a group trying to keep a paralysed Embassytown alive. Aeolius on me exhaling air I could breathe, I walked at last into that geography. We couldn’t risk corvids: the systems in place to ensure safe landing were now too often not operated.
We couldn’t wait—our biorigged medical equipment, our food-tech, the living roots and pipes of our water system needed Ariekene attention. And I think there was also in us something that needed to keep checking, to try to test what was