Embassytown - China Mieville [96]
Cal looked at me. God knows what he saw in my face right then. “I didn’t feel it,” he said. “I didn’t know. I …” He touched his neck, his link. “It was … but we turned it on again. I should have known. I didn’t know. How could … I didn’t know.”
He sounded bestial with loss. “How?” he shouted. “Who is this?” He threw out his hands at his dead doppel, his brother, impossibly alone dead.
PART SIX
NEW KINGS
17
I held Scile’s letter for hours, and I don’t think I even knew it. It was I who ended up alone with Cal, after we’d taken him to the Embassy and given him drugs to calm him.
“Did you cut him down?” he said.
“We took care of him,” I said.
“Why are you here?” he said to me as others came and went.
“MagDa’ll be here in a minute,” I said, “they’re just organising some—”
“I didn’t mean …” He didn’t speak for seconds. “I wasn’t complaining, Avice. Vin’s gone … Why are you here with me?” Even now it was hard to acknowledge something we’d known for months, the fact of disparity. After a long time I just shrugged.
“I just didn’t know.” He spoke with wonder. “I had to … we separate sometimes now, we have to, a little bit. And … I was just … He and Scile were working, I thought, and …”
He put his own note, from his doppel, on the bed. He let me pick it up. People brought food and murmured in sympathy: CalVin had collapsed fast into selfishness, as others fought to fix the world, but Cal, and CalVin, had been central enough beforetimes to retain something. CalVin had been a leading Ambassador. Tipped to head the Embassy when JoaQuin retired. For many of the committee, their failure hadn’t been a failing but a sickness, and this was its dreadful result. I unfolded Vin’s message.
I’m not like you. Forgive me.
Tell her something from me.
Please forgive me. I’m not so strong. I’ve had enough.
Perhaps I’d expected or hoped for something like that second line.
“You see my orders,” Cal said. “So what shall I tell you?” And though he tried to make it unpleasant, I couldn’t bear the break in his voice. I looked at the other paper, Scile’s letter. “I think it was … Vin found that just before …” Cal said. I hadn’t heard MagDa and Bren come in. I realised they were there when Cal said something like, “Avice Benner Cho and I are just comparing our valedictories.”
Dearest Avice, I read.
Dearest Avice,
This is to say goodbye. I am walking. Out. I hope you can forgive me for this but I cannot stay, I will not do life here anymore—
And then I stopped, refolded the thing. Even Cal looked at me with a bit of sympathy.
“He was something, once,” I said. “I won’t indulge this.” This isn’t the man I married, I could have said, and I shocked them by laughing coldly. I pictured the visionary enthusiast I’d loved traipsing through Embassytown to find a place to end himself. I wondered when we would find him.
MagDa took the note from me. Da read it, handed it to Mag.
“You should read this,” Da said.
“I’m not going to read it,” I said.
“It explains things. His … theories …”
“Jesus fucking Christ Pharotekton, MagDa, I’m not going to read it.” I stared them down. “He took the Oates Road. He’s gone. I don’t care about his fucking theologies. I can tell you what it says. Language is the language of God. The Ariekei are angels. Scile’s their messenger, maybe. And now it’s the fall. Our lies corrupt them?”
Bren’s expression was fixed. MagDa shifted and couldn’t deny the accuracy of what I said.
“You think you’re the only one suffering?” they said. “Get over yourself and do it now, Avice.” “It was when he read this”—Mag or Da shook Scile’s letter—“that Vin did himself in, do you realise that?”
“What were they doing?” I said. “What was Vin thinking? So does Scile say what …?” I regretted asking.
“Just that he can’t bear it here anymore,” Bren said. “So he’s gone. And the reasons why. The ones you said.”
The fanwingless, self-mutilated Ariekei were murdering more of their neighbours. Bren sent vespcams searching. He followed vague directions I was sure came from YlSib and other contacts. We saw