Embassytown - China Mieville [87]
He didn’t come clean about much. He didn’t tell us whatever his original task had been, that I was sure he’d had, his—and Ra’s—intended role to undermine Embassytown’s power. His motivations for this secrecy were obscure: motivations are.
I don’t know how the news of Ra’s death—that he had, I suppose, technically, become Ra—got out, but word of his death, and therefore that of EzRa, did spread. A guard; a rogue vespcam; an Ambassador; a doppel saying it to a momentary partner, just because it was something that could be said. The knowledge just seemed to well up in Embassytown. On the fourth day after Ra’s death I woke to church bells. Sects were calling their faithful. Soon, I knew, the mere knowledge that there was nothing we Staff could do wouldn’t stop the crowds from marching on us to demand we did anything. Embassytown would fall, perhaps even before the craving Ariekei came for us. In the time that was my own, for various reasons, foremost among them a sudden urgency, a sense that he might understand all this from his weird perspective, might help me or want help, I started hunting again for Scile.
After what CalVin had done with Scile’s collaboration, I’d tried to avoid finding out which other Ambassadors were complicit in ’s execution. I couldn’t face thinking about it. Cowardice or pragmatism, I don’t know. In these later days that ignorance was a relief: it was hard enough to live in Embassytown right then without relating to my new colleagues with that murder in mind. I did at last meet CalVin, at a gathering of Ambassadors, both those on MagDa’s committee and those too dissolute or afraid to be. I went straight to them. “Where is he?” I asked Vin. “Scile.” This time I didn’t mistake him for his doppel. Neither of them answered me.
Bren buzzed me. “People are being attacked. In Carib Alley.”
A corvid took constables, MagDa and me to the flashpoint in Embassytown’s outskirts. Bren was there already, on the ground, waving us down, torch in his hand: it was night. Down a small street Ariekei were clamouring outside a block. A small group of Terre were inside. They hadn’t joined the exodus from this area. “Idiots,” someone said.
The Ariekei were hurling things: rubbish, rock, glass. They each gripped the door in turn, frustrated by its mechanism. They were shouting in Language. EzRa’s voice. Where is it? “This lot are the weakest,” Bren said. “They’re too far gone to be satisfied with what we give them now.” We were increasingly parsimonious with the recorded god-drug. “They know there are Terre here, must think they’re holding EzRa’s voice, on datchip or something. Don’t look like that. This isn’t about logic. They’re desperate.”
Vespcams gathered. We watched their feeds. What do you feel, witnessing the end? In my case it wasn’t despair but disbelief and shock, endlessly. There, stepped into red mud by the hooves of the Ariekei, was a Terre body. A pulped man. I wasn’t the only one who cried out at that sight.
The cams darted closer. One was slapped from the air by an irate giftwing. Constables touched their weapons, but would we attack the Ariekei? We couldn’t retaliate. We didn’t know what that would invoke.
Officers reached the rear of the buildings, made surreptitious entrances, got the terrified inhabitants away. We watched in split visuals: them with their charges; the Hosts clamouring as they attacked the house. There was more motion. Ariekei newcomers were approaching.
“There,” said Bren. He wasn’t surprised by what he saw.
There were four or five new arrivals. I thought they were coming to join the attack on the house, but to my