Embassytown Part 2

"You're a story?"

I was glad to be able to give Scile something. He and his colleagues were more excited at my having been similed than I was.

SOMETIMES I teased Scile that he only wanted me for my Hosts' language, or because I'm part of a vocabulary. I teased Scile that he only wanted me for my Hosts' language, or because I'm part of a vocabulary.

He'd finished the bulk of his research. It was a comparative study of a particular set of phonemes, in several different languages-and not all of one species, or one world, which made little sense to me. "What are you looking for?" I said.

"Oh, secrets," he said. "You know. Essences. Inherentnesses."

"Bravo on that that ugly word. And?" ugly word. And?"

"And there aren't any."

"Mmm," I said. "Awkward."

"That's defeatist talk. I'll cobble something together. A scholar can never let mere wrongness get in the way of the theory."

"Bravo again." I toasted him.

We stayed together in that hotel much longer than either of us had planned, and then I, having no plans and no commission, sought work on the vessel taking him a trade route home. I was experienced and well-referenced, and getting the job wasn't hard. It was only a short trip, 400 hours or somesuch. When I realised how bad was Scile's reaction to immersion I was very touched that he chose not to travel in sopor that first time together. It was a pointless gesture-he endured my shifts in lonely nausea, and despite meds could hardly even speak to me when I was off-duty. But even irritated at his condition, I was touched.

From what I gathered, it wouldn't have taken very much for him to tidy up his last few chapters, the charts, sound files and trids. But Scile suddenly announced to me that he was not going to hand in his thesis.

"You've done all that work and you won't jump the last hoop?" I said.

"Sod it," he said, flamboyantly unconcerned. He made me laugh. "The revolution stalled!"

"My poor failed radical."

"Yeah. Well. I was bored."

"But, hold on," I tried to say, more or less, "but are you serious? Surely it would be worth-"

"It's done, it's old news, forget it. I have other research projects anyway, simile. What are you like like?" He bowed at that bad joke, clicked his fingers and moved us, thematically, on. He kept asking about Emba.s.sytown. His intensity was exciting, but he diluted it with enough self-mockery that I believed his sometimes obsessive demeanour was partly performance.

We didn't stay long in his parochial university town. He said he'd follow me and pester me until I gave in and took him I-knew-where. I didn't believe any of this, but when I got my next commission he took transit with me, as a pa.s.senger.

Once on that trip, when we were in shallow, calm immer, I brought Scile out of sopor to see a school of the immer predators we call hai. I've spoken to captains and scientists who don't believe them to be anything like life, only aggregates of immer, their attacks and jackknife precision just the jostles of an immer chaos in which our manchmal brains can't learn to see the deep random. Myself, I've always thought them monsters. Scile, fortified with drugs, and I watched our a.s.sertion-charges shake the immer and send the hai darting.

When we emerged wherever we emerged, wherever our vessel had delivery or pickup, Scile would register at local libraries, picking at old research and starting his new project. Where there were sights we saw them. We shared beds but fairly quickly we gave up on s.e.x.

He learnt languages wherever we were, with his ferocious concentration, slang if he already knew the formal vocabulary. I'd travelled far more than he had, but I spoke and read only Anglo-Ubiq. I was pleased by his company, often amused, always interested. I tested him, taking jobs that hauled us through immer for hundreds of hours at a time, nothing cruelly long but long enough. He finally pa.s.sed, according to my unclear emotional accounting, when I realised that I wasn't only watching to see if he'd stay, but was hoping he wouldn't leave.

We were married on Dagostin, in Bremen, in Charo City, to where I'd sent my childish letters. I told myself, and it was true, that it was important for me to emerge in my capital port sometimes. Even at the dragged-out pace of interworld letterexchanges, Scile had corresponded with local researchers; and I, never a loner, had contacts and the quick intense friendships that come and go among immersers; so we knew we'd have a reasonable turnout. There in my national capital, which most Emba.s.sytowners never saw, I could register with the union, download savings into my main account, ama.s.s news of Bremen jurisdiction. The flat I owned was in an unfashionable but pleasant part of the city. Around my house I rarely saw anyone accoutremented with the silly luxury tech imported from Emba.s.sytown.

Being married under local law would make it easier for Scile to visit any of Bremen's provinces or holdings. I responded for a long time to his pestering fascination, never the joke he at first pretended, with the information that I'd no intention of returning to Emba.s.sytown. But I think by the time we married I was ready to give him the gift of taking him to my first home.

IT WASN'T wholly straightforward: Bremen controlled entry to some of its territories almost as carefully as it did egress. We were intending to disembark there, so I wasn't just signing up on a merchant run. At Transit House, perplexed officials sent me up a chain of authority. I'd expected that but I was mildly surprised at how high, if my reading of office furniture as evidence wasn't on the fritz, the buck-pa.s.sing went. wholly straightforward: Bremen controlled entry to some of its territories almost as carefully as it did egress. We were intending to disembark there, so I wasn't just signing up on a merchant run. At Transit House, perplexed officials sent me up a chain of authority. I'd expected that but I was mildly surprised at how high, if my reading of office furniture as evidence wasn't on the fritz, the buck-pa.s.sing went.

"You want to go back back to Emba.s.sytown?" a woman who must presumably have been only a rung or two down from the boss said. "You have to realise that's . . . unusual." to Emba.s.sytown?" a woman who must presumably have been only a rung or two down from the boss said. "You have to realise that's . . . unusual."

"So everyone keeps telling me."

"You miss home?"

"Hardly," I told her. "The things we do for love." I sighed theatrically but she didn't want to play. "It's not as if I relish the idea of being stuck so far from the hub." She met my look and did not respond.

She asked me what I planned to do on Arieka, in Emba.s.sytown. I told her the truth-to floak, I said. That didn't amuse her either. To whom would I be reporting on arrival? I told her no one-I was no one's subordinate there, I was a civilian. She reminded me that Emba.s.sytown was a Bremen port. Where had I been since entering the out? Everywhere, she stressed, and who could remember that? I had to go through my cartas and all my old dat-swipes, though she must have known that at plenty of places such formalities of arrival were slapdash. She read my list, including terminuses and brief stops I didn't remember at all. She asked me questions about the local politics of one or two at which I could only smile, so ill-equipped was I to answer; and she stared at me as I burbled.

I wasn't sure what she suspected me of. Ultimately, as a carta-carrying Emba.s.sytown native immerser, crewing and vouching for my fiance, it only took tenacity to get him the rights to entry, and me to reentry. Scile had been preparing for his work there, reading, listening to recordings, watching what few trids and vids there are. He'd even decided on what the t.i.tle of his book would be.

"One shift only," I told him. "We're only going until the next relief." In Charo City, in a cathedral to Christ Uploaded, which to my surprise he asked for, I married Scile according to Bremen law, in the second degree, registering as a nonconnubial love-match, and I took him to Emba.s.sytown.

Part One

INCOME.

Latterday, 1

DIPLOMACY H HALL was jammed. It was usual for every ball, every greeting of leaving visitors, to be busy, but not like that night. It was hardly surprising: there'd been extraordinary antic.i.p.ation. However much the Staff might have insisted to us all that this was a regular arrival, they didn't even attempt to sound as if they believed it. was jammed. It was usual for every ball, every greeting of leaving visitors, to be busy, but not like that night. It was hardly surprising: there'd been extraordinary antic.i.p.ation. However much the Staff might have insisted to us all that this was a regular arrival, they didn't even attempt to sound as if they believed it.

I was jostled among the dress-clothes. I wore jewels and I activated a few augmens that sent a corona of pretty lights around me. I leaned against the wall in the thick leaves.

"Well don't you look good?" Ehrsul had found me. "Short hair. Choppy. Like it. Did you say goodbye to Kayliegh?"

"I thank you, and I did indeed. I still can't believe she got the papers to leave."

"Well." Ehrsul nodded to where Kayliegh hung onto the arm of Damier, a Staffwoman partly responsible for cartas. "I think she may have made a horizontal application." I laughed.

Ehrsul was autom. Her integument was adorned that night with acrylic peac.o.c.k feathers, and trid jewellery orbited her. "I'm so tired," she said. She made her face crackle as if static interrupted it. "I'm just waiting to see our new Amba.s.sador in action-how can I not, really?-then I'm gone."

She only ever used one corpus, according to some Terrephile sense of politesse or accommodation. I think she knew that having to relate to someone variably physically incarnate would trouble us. She was import, of course, though it wasn't clear where she'd come from, or when. She'd been in Emba.s.sytown for longer than the lifetime of anyone I knew. Her Turingware was way beyond local capabilities, and more than the equal of any I'd seen in the out. Spending time with most automa is like accompanying someone brutally cognitively damaged, but Ehrsul was a friend. "Come save me from the village idiots," she sometimes said to me after downloading updates alongside other automa.

"Do you joke to yourself when no one's watching?" I had asked her once.

"Does it matter?" she had said at last, and I felt scolded. It had been rude and adolescent to raise the question of her personality, her apparent consciousness, of whether it was for my benefit. It was a tradition that none of the few automs whose behaviour was human enough to prompt the question would answer it.

She was my best friend, and somewhat well known, oddity that she was. When I met her I was certain I had seen her before. I couldn't place it, at first; then when I realised what I thought the situation had been I asked her abruptly (as if I could startle her): "What did they want you there for? At Bren's place, ages ago, when the Amba.s.sadors recited my simile to me? That was you, wasn't it? Remember?"

"Avice," she had said, gently reproving, and made her face shake as if disappointed. That was all I ever got from her on the matter and I didn't push it.

We huddled together by the indoor ivy and watched little cams flit around the room, recording. Decorative biorigging shed colours from carapaces.

"Have you met them, then?" Ehrsul said. "The esteemed intake for whom we wait? I haven't."

That surprised me. Ehrsul had no job, wasn't under the obligation of any t.i.the, but as a computer she was valuable to Staff, and often acted for them. I would have said the same about me-that my inside-outside status had been useful to them-until I fell from favour. I'd have expected Ehrsul to be part of whatever discussions had been ongoing, but since the new Amba.s.sador had arrived, apparently, the Staff had retreated into clique.

"There's tussling," Ehrsul said. "That's what I've heard." People told Ehrsul things: perhaps it was because she wasn't human, but was almost. I think she also tapped into the localnet, broke encryption on enough snips to be a good source of information to friends. "People are worried. Though I gather some have rather taken a shine . . . Watch MagDa. And now Wyatt's been insisting on getting involved."

"Wyatt?"

"He's been citing old laws, trying to brief the Amba.s.sador alone, thank you very much. That sort of thing."

Wyatt, the Bremen representative, had arrived with his small staff on the previous trade vessel, to relieve Chettenham, his predecessor. He was scheduled to leave in one more tour's time. Bremen had established Emba.s.sytown somewhat more than two megahours ago. We were all juridically Bremeni: protectees. But the Amba.s.sadors who governed formally in Bremen's name were born here, of course, as were Staff and we who made up their canton. Wyatt, Chettenham and other attaches on their lengthy postings relied on Staff for trade information, for suggestions, for access to Hosts and tech. It was rare for them to issue orders other than "Carry on." They were advisors to Staff, too, useful for gauging the politics in the capital. I was intrigued that Wyatt was now interpreting his remit in so muscular a fashion.

This was the first time in living memory that an Amba.s.sador had arrived from the out. Had the party not forced their hands-the ship was leaving and the ball couldn't be delayed- I suspected the Staff would have tried to quarantine the new arrivals longer, and continued with whatever their intrigues were.

"CalVin's here," Ehrsul warned quietly, her displayed face glancing over my shoulder. I did not look round. She looked at me and made a little what? what? face, telling me without words that she'd still like to know what had happened there, sometime. I shook my head. face, telling me without words that she'd still like to know what had happened there, sometime. I shook my head.

Yanna Southel, Emba.s.sytown's senior research scientist, arrived, and with her an Amba.s.sador. I whispered to Ehrsul, "Good, it's EdGar. Time to schmooze. I'll report back in a bit." I made it slowly through the crowd into the Amba.s.sador's...o...b..t. There in the middle of laughter and buffeted a little by those dancing, I raised my gla.s.s and made EdGar face me.

"Amba.s.sador," I said. They smiled. "So," I said. "Are we ready?"

"Christ Pharos no," said Ed or Gar. "You ask as if I should know what's going on, Avice," said the other. I inclined my head. EdGar and I had always enjoyed an exaggerated flirtation. They liked me; they were garrulous, gossips, always giving up as much as and a little more than they should. The dapper older men glanced side to side, raised eyebrows in theatrical alarm as if someone might swoop in and stop them speaking. That conspiratorialism was their shtick. They had probably been warned off me in the last few months, but they still treated me with a chatty courtesy I appreciated. I smiled but hesitated when I realised that despite their party faces, they seemed genuinely unhappy.

"I wouldn't have thought it were . . ." ". . . possible," EdGar said. "There's things going on here . . ." ". . . that we don't understand."

"What about the rest of the Amba.s.sadors?" I said.

We looked around the room. Many of their colleagues had arrived now. I saw EsMe in iridescent dresses; ArnOld fingering the tight collars wedged uncomfortably below their links; JasMin and HelEn debating complexly, each Amba.s.sador interrupting the other, each half of each Amba.s.sador finishing their doppel's words. So many Amba.s.sadors in one place made for a dreamish feel. Socketed into their necks and variously ornamental, according to taste, diodes in their circuited links staccattoed through colours in simultaneous pairs.

"Honestly?" said EdGar. "They're all worried." "To various degrees." "Some of them think we're . . ." ". . . exaggerating. RanDolph thinks it'll all be good for us." "To have a newcomer, to shake us up. But no one's sanguine."

"Where's JoaQuin? And where's Wyatt?"

"They're bringing the new boy along. Together." "Neither's been letting the other out of their sight."

Staff were making s.p.a.ce in front of the entrance to the hall, preparing for JoaQuin, the Chair of the Amba.s.sadors, for Wyatt the Bremen attache, and for the new Amba.s.sador. There were people I didn't recognise. I'd lost sight of the pilot, so couldn't ask if they were crew, immigrants or temporaries.

At most of these b.a.l.l.s the newly arrived-permanent or single-tour-would be surrounded by locals. They wouldn't lack company, s.e.xual or conversational. Their clothes and accoutrements, their augmens, would be like grails. What 'ware they had would be pirated, and for weeks the localnet would be twittering with exotic new algorithms. This time, no one cared about anything but the new Amba.s.sador.

"What else arrived? Anything useful?" Amba.s.sador JasMin was in earshot, and I made a point of asking them, rather than EdGar. JasMin didn't like me so I spoke to them when I could to let them know they didn't intimidate me. They didn't answer and I walked, greeted Simmon, a security officer. We hadn't been close for years, but we liked each other sincerely enough that there was little awkwardness, though I was present as a guest, and an out-of-favour one at that, while he was working. He shook my hand with his biorigged right limb, which he'd worn since a gun had burst on a target range and taken off his own flesh version.

I went through the crowd, talked to friends, watching the glimmer of augmens interact, hearing s.n.a.t.c.hes of immer slang and turning to the immersers who spoke them with a word or two in the same dialect, or a hand held in the fingerlock that told them what ship I'd last served on, to their delight. I might touch their gla.s.ses, and I'd go on.

Mostly, like everyone else, I was watching for the new Amba.s.sador.

AND THEN they came, in a moment that could only have been an anticlimax. It was Wyatt who opened the doors, more careful and hesitant than usual. JoaQuin smiled beside him, and I admired how well they hid the anxiety they must have felt. Conversation hushed. I was holding my breath. they came, in a moment that could only have been an anticlimax. It was Wyatt who opened the doors, more careful and hesitant than usual. JoaQuin smiled beside him, and I admired how well they hid the anxiety they must have felt. Conversation hushed. I was holding my breath.

There was some little commotion behind them, a moment of dispute between the figures who followed. The new Amba.s.sador stepped forward past their guides, into Diplomacy Hall. That was a palpable moment.

One of the two men was tall and thin, with hair receding- a blinking, shyly smiling, sallow man. The other was stocky, muscular and more than a hand shorter. He grinned. He was looking around. He ran his hand through his hair. He wore augmens in his blood: I could see the shine of them around him. His companion seemed to have none. The shorter man had a Roman nose, the other a snub. Their skins were different colours, their eyes. They didn't look like or at each other.

They stood, the new Amba.s.sador, smiling in their very different ways. They stood there mooncalf and quite impossible.

Formerly, 1

KILOHOURS BEFORE, as we prepared for our travel, Scile came to some arrangement with his employers-c.u.m-supervisors. I never made much effort to understand his academic world. So far as I could gather, he had arranged a very extended sabbatical, and technically his residence in Emba.s.sytown was part of a project minutely funded by his university. They were paying him a peppercorn retainer and keeping his access accounts live, with a view to ultimately publishing Forked Tongues: The SocioPsychoLinguistics of the Ariekei. Forked Tongues: The SocioPsychoLinguistics of the Ariekei.

Researchers had come to Emba.s.sytown before, particularly Bremen scientists fascinated by the Hosts' biological contrivings: there were one or two still there, waiting for relief. But there hadn't been outsider linguists on Arieka in living memory, not since the pioneers who had striven to crack Language, nearly three and a half megahours before.

"I can stand on their shoulders," Scile told me. "They had to work out how it worked from scratch. Why we could understand the Ariekei but they couldn't understand us. Now we know that."

While we prepared to arrive in Emba.s.sytown on what he called our honeymoon, Scile searched the libraries in Charo City. With my help he tried to tap into immerser-lore about the place and its inhabitants, and finally when we arrived he hunted in our own archives in Emba.s.sytown, but he found nothing systematic on his topic. That made him happy.

"Why's no one written on it before?" I asked him.

"No one comes here," he said. "It's too far. It's-no offence-stuck out in the middle of nowhere."

"Lord, none taken."

"And dangerous nowhere, as well. Plus Bremen red tape. And to be honest, none of it makes much sense, anyway."

"The language?"

"Yes. Language."

Emba.s.sytown had its own linguists, but most, carta-denied if they even bothered to apply, were scholars in the abstract. They learnt and taught Old and New French, Mandarin, Panarabic, spoke them to each other as exercises like others played chess. Some learnt exot languages, to the extent that physiology allowed. The local Pannegetch forgot their native languages when they learnt our Anglo-Ubiq, but five Kedis languages and three Shur'asi dialects were spoken in Emba.s.sytown, four and all of which respectively we could approximate.

Local linguists didn't work on the language of the Hosts. Scile, though, was unaffected by our taboos.

HE WASN'T FROM Bremen, nor from any of its outposts, nor from another nation on Dagostin. Scile was from an urban moon, Sebastapolis, which I'd vaguely heard of. He grew up very polyglot. I was never quite sure which language, if any, he considered his first. While we travelled I was envious of the blitheness, the sheer uninterest with which he ignored his birth home. Bremen, nor from any of its outposts, nor from another nation on Dagostin. Scile was from an urban moon, Sebastapolis, which I'd vaguely heard of. He grew up very polyglot. I was never quite sure which language, if any, he considered his first. While we travelled I was envious of the blitheness, the sheer uninterest with which he ignored his birth home.

Our route to Emba.s.sytown was roundabout. The ships we took were crewed by immersers from more places than I'd ever see. I knew the charts of Bremen's crowded immer cognita immer cognita, could once have told you the names of nations on many of its core worlds, and some of those I served with on my way home were from none of them. There were Terre from regions so far off that they teased, telling me the name of their world was Fata Morgana, or Fiddler's Green.

Had I ship-hopped in other directions, I could have gone to regions of immer and everyday where Bremen was the fable. People get lost in the overlapping sets of knowns.p.a.ce. Those who serve on exot vessels, who learn to withstand the strange strains of their propulsion-of swallowdrives, overlight foldings, bansheetech-go even farther with less predictable trajectories, and become even more lost. It's been this way for megahours, since women and men found the immer and we becameh.o.m.o diaspora.

Scile's fascination with the Hosts' language was always a bit of a t.i.tillation to me. I don't know if, as an outsider not only to Emba.s.sytown but to Bremen s.p.a.ce itself, he could appreciate the frisson he produced in me every time he said "Ariekei" instead of the respectful "Hosts," every time he pa.r.s.ed their sentences and told me what they meant. I'm sure it's some kind of irony or something that it was through my foreign husband's researches that I learnt most of what I know about the language of the city in a ghetto of which I was born.

ACL-ACCELERATED C CONTACT L LINGUISTICS-was, Scile told me, a speciality crossbred from pedagogics, receptivity, programming and cryptography. It was used by the scholarexplorers of Bremen's pioneer ships to effect very fast communication with indigenes they encountered or which encountered them.

In the logs of those early journeys, the excitement of the ACLers is moving. On continents, on worlds vivid and drab, they record first moments of understanding with menageries of exots. Tactile languages, bioluminescent words, all varieties of sounds that organisms can make. Dialects comprehensible only as palimpsests of references to everything already said, or in which adjectives are rude and verbs unholy. I've seen the trid diary of an ACLer barricaded in his cabin, whose vessel has been boarded by what we didn't then know as Corscans-it was first contact. He's afraid, as he should be, of the huge things battering at his door, but he's recording his excitement at having just understood the tonal structures of their speech.