It disgusted me. My mouth twisted. Everything beyond Emba.s.sytown shuddered with relief. It moved through pipework, wires and tethers, to every corner of the grid, into the power stations stamping in a sudden wrong bliss. Withdrawal would start again within hours. By the edge of our zone we could feel it in the paving: a shaking as houses moved. We could track their biorhythms through our windows, could gauge how badly the drug of speech was needed.

IN THE PAST, each few months at harvest- or weaning-time, we'd send aeolied Amba.s.sadors and barter-crews out to where Ariekene shepherds of the biorig flocks would explain different wares, these machines half-designed half-born to chance, what each did and how. Now, the Ariekei neglected their out-of-city lands. Biorigging still entered the city, and we could see by the convulsions of the enormous throats that stretched kilometres to the foodgrounds that pabulum was still coming in too. And that, with reverse peristalsis, addiction was being pa.s.sed out.

"This world's dying," I said. "How can they let it go like this?"

We saw no attempts at self-treatment, no struggles. No Ariekene heroes. Amba.s.sadors could converse with them in the hours after they'd had a hit of EzRa's voice, when they seemed to humans lucid, but only to make the shortest of plans, for scant hours ahead.

"What do you think they should be doing?" MagDa was one of the few Amba.s.sadors working to usher in change. I'd joined them. I was trying to be part of this new team. I knew MagDa and Simmon, scientists like Southel. Mostly though it was people new to me. "There's no equilibrium equilibrium possible." "This is chance. A cosmic b.a.l.l.s-up." MagDa hadn't equalised. I saw broken veins beneath the eyes of one and one only, and new lines beside the mouth of the other. "This is just a glitch between two evolutions," they said. "How would they accommodate it?" "This doesn't mean anything." "They'll listen themselves to death before they'll try to change." possible." "This is chance. A cosmic b.a.l.l.s-up." MagDa hadn't equalised. I saw broken veins beneath the eyes of one and one only, and new lines beside the mouth of the other. "This is just a glitch between two evolutions," they said. "How would they accommodate it?" "This doesn't mean anything." "They'll listen themselves to death before they'll try to change."

The Hosts had always been incomprehensible. In that one sense, nothing had altered.

The upper floors of the Emba.s.sy had become a moral ruin. A little farther down, I saw Mag and Da cajole the Ariekei who came, force them to focus just long enough that we could be sure they'd understood our requests, for materials and expertise. And in return, what was it MagDa offered?

Have it say about colour, I thought I heard one Host say.

It will, MagDa said. You will bring us the tool-animals before tomorrow and we will make sure it describes every colour of the walls.

"We keep going through colours for them," Mag said to me.

"They're loving it," Da said. "But eventually . . ." ". . . the piquancy piquancy of it's going to wear off." of it's going to wear off."

After this exchange I made new sense of EzRa's little speeches to the city. Someone would generally translate. Some nodded to logic. Others were random sentences, or statements of preference or condition. I'm tired I'm tired, subject-verb-object like children's grammars. What I'd previously thought whims of subject I realised might be gifts for particular Ariekene listeners, in return for this or that favour. Economies and politics.

In the Emba.s.sy corridors, Ra, that impossible not-doppel, joined MagDa and me. Mag and Da kissed him. His presence meant we were approached by people desperate for some kind of intercession. He was as kind to them as he could be. I'd seen too many messiahs thrown up by Emba.s.sytown. "How long do we have to go on?" one distraught woman asked him.

"Until the relief," he said. So many hundreds of thousands of hours, scratching out an interst.i.tial living while the Hosts hankered for EzRa's sounds.

"Then what?" the woman said. "Then what? Do we leave?"

No one answered. I saw MagDa's faces. I thought of what life would be, for them, in the out.

Reliefs had arrived on catastrophised worlds before. No communications could warn; there's no outracing an immer ship. No crew could know what they'd see when their doors opened. There were famous cases of trade vessels emerging from immer to find charnel grounds on once-established colonies. Or disease, or ma.s.s insanity. I wondered how it would be for our incoming captain to emerge in our orbit, as close as she or he dared to the Ariekene pharos. If we were lucky, that ship would find a populace desperate to become refugees.

MagDa in the out? CalVin? Or even Mag and Da and Cal and Vin? What would they do? And they were among the most collected of the Amba.s.sadors. By then most others were falling, to various degrees, apart.

"They go into the city," MagDa told me when we were alone. She was talking about Amba.s.sadors. "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 Amba.s.sadors 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 Amba.s.sadors 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 comes, I thought, I could leave.

WHERE'S W 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, pa.s.sed 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 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 a desperation that made me shudder. I looked down to avoid his eyes and saw something I could barely believe. 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 a 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 Amba.s.sadors had become abruptly nothing.

In the corridor behind him his doppel appeared. "You're talking to her her?" he said. He tried to grab his brother, who didn't take his eyes from me but shook his doppel off. "Come on 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 backwards to join his brother, looking at me for several seconds before he turned.

12.

I TRAVELLED INTO TRAVELLED INTO the city with MagDa and Staff, part of a group trying to keep a paralysed Emba.s.sytown 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. the city with MagDa and Staff, part of a group trying to keep a paralysed Emba.s.sytown 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 happening. Like mythical polar explorers, or the pioneers of h.o.m.o diaspora h.o.m.o diaspora, we trudged in formation, carrying trade goods.

The architecture quivered as we came and related to us as germs in a body. Ariekei saw us. They murmured, and MagDa spoke to them, and often they would respond in ways that suggested they hardly knew we were there. We were not relevant. We went past the speakers Staff had helped to place, and around each of them, though they were currently silent, were gatherings of Ariekei. These were the furthest gone: we were learning to distinguish degrees of addiction. They would wait there for more sound, whispering to each other and to the speakers, repeating whatever they had last heard EzRa speak.

Ra had to cajole and threaten Ez into their performances, now. One concession-because Ez was treated like a capricious child, with castor oil and sugar-was, within the limits of barter necessity, to let Ez decide what they would say. What we would hear translated into Language, then, were rambling discussions of Ez's past. If EzRa spoke during one of our trips into the city we couldn't escape listening to them. Christ knows what Ra thought as he spoke these plat.i.tudes that Ez wanted his audience to get drunk on.

. . . I always felt different from the others around me I always felt different from the others around me, the Ariekei listeners would repeat. We would walk past a patchwork of Ez's ego in scores of voices. She never understood me . . ., . . . so it was my turn . . ., . . . things would never be the same again She never understood me . . ., . . . so it was my turn . . ., . . . things would never be the same again . . . It was almost unbearable to hear the Ariekei say these things. Ez, I realised, built up an arc over many days. These weren't disparate anecdotes: it was an autobiography. . . . It was almost unbearable to hear the Ariekei say these things. Ez, I realised, built up an arc over many days. These weren't disparate anecdotes: it was an autobiography. And that And that, I heard in an Ariekene voice, was where the trouble really started, and what happened next you'll have to wait to hear was where the trouble really started, and what happened next you'll have to wait to hear. Ez was ending each session on a cliffhanger, as if that was what kept his listeners avid. They would have listened no less hard had he expounded details of import duties or bylaws on construction specifications or dreams or shopping lists.

WE WOULD MAKE our way to some nursery for the processing of bioriggage, a cremator full of memory, a residence or leviathan hearthlair or wherever, and when we found through the efforts of MagDa or another Amba.s.sador the Host for which we were looking, there would follow careful discussion. It was a tortured business, negotiation with an exot addict. But we would generally achieve something. And in the company of a Host or with a cage full of the tool-parasites our maintenance needed, or with plans or the maps we were learning to use and draw, we would retrace our way. It was always a full day's expedition. The city would react vividly to us, walls sweating, window-ventricles opening. The ears that each house had grown would flex with expectation. our way to some nursery for the processing of bioriggage, a cremator full of memory, a residence or leviathan hearthlair or wherever, and when we found through the efforts of MagDa or another Amba.s.sador the Host for which we were looking, there would follow careful discussion. It was a tortured business, negotiation with an exot addict. But we would generally achieve something. And in the company of a Host or with a cage full of the tool-parasites our maintenance needed, or with plans or the maps we were learning to use and draw, we would retrace our way. It was always a full day's expedition. The city would react vividly to us, walls sweating, window-ventricles opening. The ears that each house had grown would flex with expectation.

That was another reason we preferred not to be outside when EzRa broadcast. I wasn't alone in finding the gluttony of the architecture and its inhabitants, the frantic eavesdropping of the walls, horrible.

Order was tenuous and dangerous but there: this wasn't the collapse it so might have been. The ship would come. Until then we lived on the brink. When we left, we would leave a world of desperate Ariekei crawling in withdrawal. I couldn't think about that, or what would happen after that. It would be a long time until we had the luxury of guilt.

I met the same Ariekei more than once on our expeditions. Their nicknames were Scissors; RedRag; Skully. If EzRa's broadcast sounded they would snap to as utterly as any other Ariekei. But other times they did their best with us: a cadre was emerging among the Hosts who were, perhaps, our counterparts; trying, from their side, to keep things going. Harder for them, given that they were afflicted.

IN E EMBa.s.sYTOWN we had countertendencies, now, to the drive toward collapse. Schools and creches started running again. Though no one knew yet on quite what basis our economy worked any more, shiftparents mostly kept care of their charges, and our hospitals and other inst.i.tutions continued. Out of necessity our town didn't fuss about the lines of profit or accounting that had previously driven its production and its distribution. we had countertendencies, now, to the drive toward collapse. Schools and creches started running again. Though no one knew yet on quite what basis our economy worked any more, shiftparents mostly kept care of their charges, and our hospitals and other inst.i.tutions continued. Out of necessity our town didn't fuss about the lines of profit or accounting that had previously driven its production and its distribution.

I mustn't give the impression that it was healthy. Emba.s.sytown was violently dying. When we citynauts returned it was to streets that weren't safe. Constables escorted us. We couldn't punish those determined to party their way to the end of the world. Besides, all of us sometimes went to their convivials. (I wondered if I'd meet Scile at any: I never did.) The curfew was unforgiving, though. Constables even left some dead, their bodies censored by pixellation on our news channels. There were fights in Emba.s.sytown, and a.s.saults, and murders. There were suicides.

There are fashions in suicide, and some of ours were dramatic and melancholy. More than one person took what was known as the Oates Road, strapping on a mask to breathe and simply walking out of Emba.s.sytown, and on, out of sight and into the city; even, some stories had it, out beyond it; to let what would, happen. But the most common choice for those oppressed to death by the new times was hanging. According to what protocols I've no idea, news editors decided that those mostly bloodless bodies could be shown without digital disguise. We grew used to shots of dangling dead.

The news didn't report the suicides of Amba.s.sadors.

MagDa showed me footage of the bodies of Hen and Ry, lying entangled on their bed, intertwined by the spasms caused by poison.

"Where are ShelBy?" I said. ShelBy and HenRy had been together.

"Gone," MagDa said.

"They'll turn up," Mag said. Da said: "Dead." "HenRy won't be the last." "They won't be able to hide this sort of thing much longer." "In fact, given the population size . . ." ". . . the rate's higher higher than average." "We're killing ourselves than average." "We're killing ourselves more more than others." than others."

"Well," I said. All business. "I suppose it's no wonder."

"No, it's not, is it?" MagDa said. "It really isn't." "Is it any wonder?"

WE DRAGOONED some of Emba.s.sytown's transient machines, uploading what 'ware we could to make them less stupid. Still they were unfit for all but basic tasks. some of Emba.s.sytown's transient machines, uploading what 'ware we could to make them less stupid. Still they were unfit for all but basic tasks.

Ehrsul would still not answer my buzzes, or, I learnt, anyone's. I realised how many days it was since I'd seen her, was ashamed and abruptly fearful. I went to her apartment. Alone: I wasn't the only one from the new Staff who knew her, but if any of the worst outcomes I suddenly pictured were true, I could only bear to find out, to find her, on my own.

But she opened her door to my knocking almost immediately. "Ehrsul?" I said. "Ehrsul?"

She greeted me with her usual sardonic humour, as if her name hadn't been a question. I could not understand. She asked me how I'd been, said something about her work. I let her blather a while, getting me a drink. When I asked her what she'd been doing, where she'd been, why she hadn't responded to my messages, she ignored me.

"What's going on?" I said. I demanded to know what she made of our catastrophe. I asked, and her avatar-face simply froze, flickered, and came back, and she continued her meaningless tasks and directionless wit. She said nothing to my question at all.

"Come with me," I said. I asked her to join MagDa and me. I asked her to come with me into the city. But whenever I mooted anything that would mean her leaving her room, the same stuttering fugue occurred. She would skip a moment, then continue as if I'd said nothing, and talk about something outdated or irrelevant.

"It's either a f.u.c.kup of some kind or she's doing it deliberately," a harried Emba.s.sy 'waregener told me later, when I described it to her. You think You think? I was about to respond, but she clarified: it might be an autom equivalent of a child singing I can't hear you I can't hear you, with fingers in its ears.

When I left Ehrsul's, I saw a letter in front of her door, opened and discarded. She didn't acknowledge it, even as I bent very slowly to pick it up, right in front of her, looking at her the whole time.

Dear Ehrsul, it read. I'm worried about you. Of course what's going on's got us all terrified, but I'm concerned . . . and so on. Ehrsul waited while I read. What must my expression have been? I was holding my breath, certainly. Her avatar stuttered in and out of focus until I was done. . . . and so on. Ehrsul waited while I read. What must my expression have been? I was holding my breath, certainly. Her avatar stuttered in and out of focus until I was done.

I didn't recognise the name at the letter's end. I saw from the way it fluttered, minutely, when I bent to put it back on the floor, that my fingers were shaking. How many best friends had she collected? Maybe I was her uptown version, linked to Staff. Perhaps each of us had a niche. Perhaps all of us had been afraid for her.

Thinking about her made me think also of CalVin, of whatever pointless actions they were performing, and of Scile, from whom I had still heard nothing. I buzzed Bren, repeatedly, but to my infuriation and concern he didn't answer. I went back to his house but no one came to the door.

I DON'T THINK DON'T THINK I'd understood what Ra dealt with until I was on Ez duty. We could of course have simply held a gun to Ez's head, but when we threatened too hard, he threatened us back, and his behaviour was so unpredictable we had to take seriously the possibility that he'd refuse to speak, and d.a.m.n us all, out of spite. So instead we chaperoned him everywhere, at once jailers, companions and foils. That way when it was time for him to perform, he could make our lives hard, and we could let him kick us around, until, sulkily, he acquiesced. I'd understood what Ra dealt with until I was on Ez duty. We could of course have simply held a gun to Ez's head, but when we threatened too hard, he threatened us back, and his behaviour was so unpredictable we had to take seriously the possibility that he'd refuse to speak, and d.a.m.n us all, out of spite. So instead we chaperoned him everywhere, at once jailers, companions and foils. That way when it was time for him to perform, he could make our lives hard, and we could let him kick us around, until, sulkily, he acquiesced.

Security was always in at least twos. I asked to join Simmon. When I met him he gripped my right hand in greeting with his left. I stared. The right arm he'd worn for years, an Ariekene biorigged contrivance of imprecise colour and texture but exactly mimicking Terre morphology, was gone. The sleeve of his jacket was neatly pinned.

"It was addicted," he said. "When I was charging it it must've . . ." He had used a zelle, like the Hosts and their city. "It was sort of spasming. It tried to grow ears," he said. "I cut it off. It was still trying to listen, even lying there on the floor.".

Ez was in EzRa's Emba.s.sy chambers. He was drunk and wheedling, excoriating Ra for cowardice and conspiracy, calling MagDa filthy names. Nasty but no nastier than many arguments I'd heard. Ra was what surprised me. He stood differently than I'd seen him do before. He whom we often mocked for his taciturnity spat back epithets.

"Make sure he's ready to speak when he gets back," Ra said to us. Ez gesticulated an obscenity at him.

"Can I at least go to a party party? Or will you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds try to keep me even from that that?" Ez moaned as we followed him to the venue in the Emba.s.sy's lower floors. We stood watch, policed the drink he took, though we'd never seen excess seem to alter his abilities to speak Language. We watched him f.u.c.k and argue. The glints on his link puttered frantically, hunting for and not finding its pair, striving to boost a connection Ez was avoiding.

I could say it was depressing, that party, like a walk through purgatory, we at the end of the world rutting into oblivion and drugging ourselves idiot to autogenerated rhythms and a hammer of lights through smoke. Perhaps to those partic.i.p.ating it was joyful. It didn't hold Ez's interest. I was as impa.s.sive as a soldier.

Ez took us to what had been an office equipment warehouse in the middle floors of the Emba.s.sy and was now an ersatz bar. He drank until I intervened, which made him delighted because then he could denounce me. The only people in this peculiar thrown-together place were ex-Staff and one or two Amba.s.sadors. They showed no concern that he was risking our world with every gla.s.s.

"Your friends," I whispered, and shook my head. He met my eyes quite unmoved by the disgust.

Emba.s.sytowners had taken over the lower floors of the Emba.s.sy, looking for safety. Those levels had become back-alleys. Men and women, nurseries and shiftparents reconfigured cupboards and spilled out of meeting rooms, turning architecture inside-out. We went walking through these night streets made of corridors, where lights not broken had been reprogrammed into diurnal rhythms and house numbers were chalked on inside doors by which people leaned and talked while children played games past their bedtime. Emba.s.sytown had come inside.

Sotted and maudlin, Ez began to badmouth Ra. "That lanky s.h.i.t," he muttered as we followed him through semiautonomous zones policed by their own incompetent constables. "Coattailing me, then coming the big I-am." Ra was the only person in Emba.s.sytown who shared Ez's colloquialisms and accent. "Don't you see what he's doing? Easy for him to play the nice boy when, with . . . he can . . ." Cheap lamps flickered above us, new stars. "I shouldn't . . ." Ez said. "I'm tired, and I want to stop this . . . and I want Ra to leave me alone."

I said, "Ez, I don't think I know what you mean."

"Please stop calling me that! me that! f.u.c.king f.u.c.king stupid, stupid . . . It's . . ." stupid, stupid . . . It's . . ."

I knew his former name. He was the man who had been Joel Rukowsi. I looked at him in the rubbish-specked hall. I wouldn't call him Rukowsi, or Joel, and when I repeated his name Ez Ez he slumped and accepted it. he slumped and accepted it.

Simmon and I rescued him from the fights he provoked. When it was time eventually for him and Ra to perform their dawn chorus, the first speech of the day, he insulted us as we led him back up through the changed building, through new fiefdoms, embryonic slums, where new ways of living were incubating. At the chamber I reached for the door, and Ez halted me with a touch and without speaking asked me for a moment. That was the only time that night I felt anything from him other than scorn. He closed his eyes. He sighed and his face went back to drunk and ornery.

"Come on then, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d," he shouted, and shoved open the door. Ra and MagDa were waiting. They disentangled while Ez mocked them.

We watched EzRa fight. When Ez made some prurient cruel comment about MagDa, Ra shouted at him.

"What do you think you are are?" Ez laughed back. "What do you think this is? 'You leave her out of this!'? Are you serious?" Even I had to bite back a bit of laughter at that unexpected imitation, and Ra seemed a little shamefaced.

"Here," said Ez later, as sound engineers and bioriggers prepared him for broadcast. Ra read the paper Ez handed him.

"Not going to go over that stuff from yesterday?" Ra said. His voice was suddenly and surprisingly neutral.

"No," said Ez. "I want to keep on. I think I left it at a good moment, let's keep things going." They don't care They don't care! I wanted to shout. You could describe the f.u.c.king carpet, the effect would be the same. You could describe the f.u.c.king carpet, the effect would be the same.

Ra asked questions about cadence and timing, wrote notes in the margin. Ez had no copy: he'd memorised what he wanted to say. When they spoke I wasn't looking at them but over the city, and it twitched as the first hit of language came, as EzRa continued with their stories of Ez's youth.

13.

CYNICALLY, WHO WERE WE? Not many, a gathering of no ones, floakers, dissident Staff, a handful of precious Amba.s.sadors. But our numbers were growing, and our edicts weren't completely ignored. Emba.s.sytowners had begun to do as we suggested, asked, or ordered.

We-MagDa above all-worked hard at our few Ariekei contacts. We worked hard full stop, too hard for me to feel just then whatever it was I ultimately probably would, from Ez's abuse, from reading Ehrsul's letter. MagDa even persuaded some of the most contained and coherent Ariekei into the corridors of the Emba.s.sy, not simply on eager pilgrimage to EzRa, but on new business. She might reward them with a snip of unheard recording of EzRa, one of our rare stolen buggings.

"Some of them know this is a problem," said Mag. "The Ariekei. You can tell."