Embassytown (56 page)

According to Wyatt’s instructions, our next relief is due to deliver to Embassytown several new Ambassadors of EzRa’s kind. They’ve improved their empathic techniques. EzRa was the test: next was supposed to come Bremen’s coup.

Too late. We got our coup in first. Instead, the new Ambassadors will have a job pushing product to addicts.

“
,” Spanish Dancer will say. It’ll gesture politely with its giftwing to the armed Embassytowners waiting.

“
.”

T
HE
N
EW
A
RIEKEI
were astounded to learn that Terre have more than one language. I uploaded French. “I,
je
. I am,
je suis
,” I said. Spanish Dancer was delighted. It said to me, “
.”

That’s not its only innovation. They don’t speak Anglo-Ubiq here, but Anglo-Ariekei. I’m a student of this new language. It has its nuances. When I asked Spanish if it regretted learning to lie, it paused and said, “
.” A performance perhaps, but I envy that precision.

I wonder if Spanish Dancer ever mourns itself. If it lets me read what it’s writing, which I’m almost certain is the story of the war, I might find out.

It did tell me another story. When Baptist and Toweller returned to Embassytown, pretending to be oratees, to persuade EzCal into the wilderness where we were waiting, the god-drug wouldn’t see them. EzCal told them instead to relay their message through one of their regular Ariekene entourage, which saw and recognised them as followers of the controversial
.

It knew something was wrong: it could have given them up. Baptist and Toweller, in an instant and bravura moment of decision, admitted to their contact the true situation: that new, better times were coming, for all of them,
if
EzCal could be enticed out.

Knowing that like their prophet they might be liars, it still decided to believe them. Given hope for the first time in a long time, that functionary went and told EzCal exactly what Baptist and Toweller had been about to. But they were New and it wasn’t. It knew the truth, and it had never lied before. It had had to dissemble, in Language, managing with Herculean effort and luck to get out words that sounded like grunts to itself. That was the real hero of the war, Spanish Dancer told me, that nameless Ariekes, telling the only lie of its life.

I
T WOULDN’T BE
that hard for Bremen to destroy us. But I think we can make it worth their while not to. War across immer isn’t cheap. We have to make sure we’re useful. We know what our use can be. Look at us here, on the dark edge of the immer!

There will be the port they wanted. Within a local decade. We’ll be the last outpost. That was always our intended role, only now we know it, and while it won’t be quite what our metropole had in mind, we can run ourselves.

Welcome to Embassytown, the frontier. I know how fast the stories’ll come. I’m an immerser: I’ve heard them. Just beyond our planet’s shores will be, people will say, El Dorado immer lands; deserted ships long lost; Earth; God. Alright then.

I know what chancers’ll come, what pirates. I know the likelihood that Embassytown will become slum: but we’ll moulder and die or be eradicated by Bremen shivabomb if we have no use. Scile in his visionary stupidity, trying to save the Ariekei, would have damned them: if they killed us, when the relief came it wouldn’t forbear genociding them in return. I remember Scile’s not from a colony when he fails to think of such things.

So we’re to be ravaged by speculation and thrill-seekers. We’ll be the wilds. I’ve been to deadwood planets and pioneer towns: even those way stations have their good things. We’ll open up the sky. We’ll have knowledge to sell. Uniquely detailed maps. Immer byways only locals like us can find. We have to establish our credentials as an explorocracy; so to survive and rule ourselves, we have to explore.

We’ll soon have one immership in our little navy, and at least one captain. When the next Bremen delegation comes to see what to make of us, we’ll have something to offer.

Immersion’s never safe. This far out, at this edge, we’re back to the dangerous glory days of
homo diaspora
. I don’t have any hesitation. I’ve gone out, I’ve come back, and it’s time to go again, in directions and for distances no immerser has gone. In kilohours, I might be meeting an exot I’m the first Terre ever to see, working tongueware, trying to make a greeting. I might find anything.

I’ve been studying navigation and immerology, techniques that I, the floaker, had always avoided. “You’ve never floaked in your life,” Bren told me, brusquely, when I said that to him. I’ve started to dream of how Embassytown will look, from the ship. That’s why I’m at Lilypad Hill every day. Because I can’t wait.

“Good morning, Captain. You’ll come with us.” And I and my crew will take the skiff to orbit, to the ship.

“Ready,” I’ll say, and set the helm beyond
void cognita
. I’ll push the levers that set us out. Or perhaps the gracious thing will be to allow my first lieutenant to do it. We don’t know how the passage will affect such crew: I’ve warned them that. They’re still insistent.

So perhaps it’ll be Lieutenant Spanish Dancer who’ll instigate that indescribable motion from everyday space through the always. We’ll immerse, into the immer, and into the out.

I
T WOULD BE
foolish to pretend we know what’ll happen. We’ll have to see how Embassytown gets shaped.

By Embassytown I mean the city. Even the New Ariekei have started to call the city by that name.
they say, or
, or
.

A
LSO BY
C
HINA
M
IÉVILLE