"Some of them," said Da. ". . . there's some kind of debate, some kind of . . ." "Some of them want to be cured."

Like f.u.c.king fungus, rumours spread. Our cams still gusted through the city. Some were intercepted by the antibodies the houses secreted, which came up like segmented predators. But when their investigations left them satisfied that the cams were no threat, they left them unmolested. The footage taught us more about our Hosts' city than we had ever known: too late. And every little half-seen movement, everything we saw out there, the what-and-where of which we couldn't identify or clarify, gave traction to stories about missing secrets, fifth columns, Staff self-exiled, old grudges.

In the farmlands, huge flocks of biorigging sp.a.w.ned in irregular harvests. Foods and tech came from those stretches by biotic ways. Addiction was chemical: there was a slow stream of it from the city to the kraals and the rural Ariekei. They began to neglect their charges and come to the city, for the sound they suddenly needed without ever having heard. Their deserted manors grew sick, wheezing and hungry. Herds of rigged equipment, medical tech and building tools, girdered and rhino-sized spinners of protein and polymer foundations, went feral.

When their shepherds reached the city there was no one to meet them. The country Ariekei saw their worst-afflicted compatriots lying by speakers and starving to death, waiting for the next sentence. Their bodies lay unhonoured. If the buildings around them were still healthy enough their dog-sized animalculae would break the corpses down: if not, the slower processes of internal rot would smear them gradually into the road.

Fights were common. Withdrawal and Ariekene need meant aggression. The afflicted would tear into things on sudden searches for EzRa's Language. A less affected Ariekes, usually from the country, might frill its fanwing in formal pugnacity, but the more addicted had no time for traditional displays and would simply hurl themselves hooves and giftwings at their startled opponents. Once I saw footage of EzRa's broadcast start in the middle of such a battle. The combatants slumped against each other immediately and coiled together as if in affection, still bleeding their blood.

"Things are getting worse again," Da said. We were going to infect the entire planet.

"That's not the only thing we have to contend with." It was Bren.

He stood in the doorway. A suspiciously perfect pose, all framed. "h.e.l.lo Avice Benner Cho," he said.

I rose. I shook my head at him. "You prodigal b.a.s.t.a.r.d b.a.s.t.a.r.d," I said.

"Prodigal?" he said.

"Where have you been been?"

"Prodigal extravagant?" he said. "Or penitent?" A little cautiously, he smiled at me. I didn't quite smile at him for a minute, but then, f.u.c.k it, yes I did.

"HOW DID YOU get in here?" someone said, so newly promoted by circ.u.mstance that they added "Who are you?" to hisses of embarra.s.sment. Ra shook Bren's hand and tried to welcome him. Bren waved him away. get in here?" someone said, so newly promoted by circ.u.mstance that they added "Who are you?" to hisses of embarra.s.sment. Ra shook Bren's hand and tried to welcome him. Bren waved him away.

"It's not just these Ariekene refugees we have to contend with," Bren said. "Though they'll certainly complicate matters." He spoke with monotone authority. "There are other things."

Of course he couldn't speak Language since his doppel had died, but there were some Ariekei-you might sentimentally and misleadingly call them old friends-that came to his house and told him things.

"Do you think none of them want this to change?" Bren said.

"No, we know," Mag said, but he continued.

"You think there are no Hosts who are horrified? They're thinking through a fug, true, but some of them are still thinking. You know what they call EzRa? The G.o.d-drug."

After a silence I said carefully, "That is a kenning."

"No," Bren said. He glanced around the room, gauging who knew that old term for the compound trope. "It's not like a bone-house, Avice." He thumped his chest, his bone-house. "It's more straightforward. It's just truth."

"Huh," someone said shakily, "that's religion for you . . ."

"No it is not not," Bren said. "G.o.ds are G.o.ds and drugs are drugs but here here, here, there's a city not only of the addicted but of . . . a sort of faithful."

"They don't have have G.o.ds," I said. "How . . . ?" G.o.ds," I said. "How . . . ?"

He interrupted me. "They've known about them ever since we got here and told them what they are and what they do. They couldn't talk about voidcraft or trousers either, before we arrived, but they find ways now. And there are some Hosts who'll do anything to stop this. That might not be much yet, maybe, until they can get themselves free enough to try to free themselves more. But if they do, well. They'll end it however they can. You should think of all the ways a few determined Ariekei might try to . . . liberate . . . afflicted compatriots."

He joined me again, in private, that night, in my rooms. He asked me where was my friend Ehrsul and I told him that I didn't know. That was almost all I said that night. Bren himself didn't have much to say, but he had come, and we sat together while he said it.

I LEFT THE CITY LEFT THE CITY. Three times.

Seeing those immigrant Ariekei from the outlands gave us ideas. There were some which hadn't yet left their homesteads but had started to yearn for EzRa's p.r.o.nouncements. We went to them.

Our craft had ventricles through which I could put my head and look down as we flew. It exuded air in its belly-bridge, pressurised enough that the bad atmosphere couldn't push in. I took breaths, then put my head out to watch the ground.

A kilometre below, the demesnes of the Host city. Plateaus and cultivation and simple ma.s.sive rocks, fractured, their fractures filled with black weedstuff. Meadows crossed with tracks and punctuated by habitations. More grown architecture: rooms suspended by gas-sacs watched us as we flew, with simple eyes.

Leaving Emba.s.sytown and then the city felt as dramatic as entering immer. It might have been beautiful. Swaying through fields, even now during the breakdown, farms ambled hugely after their keepers if they still had them, or alone. Symbionts cleaned their pelts. The farms would birth components or biomachines in wet cauls.

Orchards of lichen were crisscrossed with the gut-pipework that spanned out from the city, still looked after in places by tenacious Host tenders. A long way off were steppes where herds of semiwild factories ran, which twice each long year Ariekene scientist-gauchos would corral. We hoped to find a few of these cowboy bioriggers left, to trade their creatures' offspring.

There was I; Henrych, who had been a stallholder and now had joined the new committees; Sarah, with just enough knowledge of science to be useful; BenTham the Amba.s.sador. The Amba.s.sador were unkempt, bewildered and resentful. Unlike several of their fellows, though, they had still enough decorum to ensure that they were exactly equally dishevelled.

We landed and from the hillside came the distress call of gra.s.s, as our vehicles began to graze. In our aeoli masks we gathered equipment, made camp, called in to Emba.s.sytown, established a timetable. Checked once more over the orders and the wish list. "I don't think this tribe exchanges many reactor pups," I said, down the line to home. "Talk to KelSey. They're with the wetland cultivators, aren't they? That's where they'll get them, along with some incinerators." So on. We divided hunting duties between the various crews beyond the city.

Our spancarts were skittish, their foreparts stretched in rippling caterpillar motion. We stacked them full of datchips, all sound-files. Some were stolen, some made with Ez's grudging consent, when this system had been formulated and mooted to them.

I was almost certainly not as calm as this telling would imply. I'd been looking down onto the surface of the country I was born in, grew up in, returned to, that was my home, and that, that that view beyond Emba.s.sytown, had been impossible for me till then. So there was that, and there was what I was doing, and the stakes of it. I was looking into a season and a surface without cognates. I'd been into the out, but in homily fashion, my own planet was the most alien place I'd seen. view beyond Emba.s.sytown, had been impossible for me till then. So there was that, and there was what I was doing, and the stakes of it. I was looking into a season and a surface without cognates. I'd been into the out, but in homily fashion, my own planet was the most alien place I'd seen.

Things like crossbred anemones and moths froze as we pa.s.sed, waved sensory limbs behind us. Our cart rutted toward settlements and animals like rags of paper flew in the hot sky. The farmstead at the end of knotted man-thick tributaries of the pipework was as restless as most architecture. A squirming tower laid young machinery in eggs. The paper-shred birds picked parasites from it. Its keepers started when they saw us, then galloped for our company. The farm lowed.

So far out, the addiction seemed weaker or different. BenTham could communicate our desires and understand theirs. They knew that we might have something they could hear, and they clamoured for that, unsatisfied by the degraded remnants of fix that backwashed down the arteries from the city whenever EzRa spoke, or what they half-heard from the nearest speakers, kilometres away, or what previous barterers had offered.

We showed our wares, voila voila , like a peddler in the hills in old books. I played a datchip, and from it, in Language, EzRa said, , like a peddler in the hills in old books. I played a datchip, and from it, in Language, EzRa said, When my father died I was sad but there was a freedom in it too When my father died I was sad but there was a freedom in it too. The Hosts reared and said something. "They've got this one," BenTham said. They'd played it many times, and it had no more effect: they at last heard it for its content, and they didn't care about Ez's father.

We offered other bits from his history, cliche's of diplomacy, idle thoughts, weather reports. We gave them for free. We are very happy about the increased opportunities for technical a.s.sistance We are very happy about the increased opportunities for technical a.s.sistance, and tempted them with the first few phonemes of I broke my leg when I fell out of a tree I broke my leg when I fell out of a tree.

"They're asking if we have the one about unacceptable levels of wastage in the refinement industry," Ben or Tham said. "They heard about it from neighbours."

Husbanding carefully, we gave them enough to buy the biorigging we needed, and some expertise, some explanations. Doing so we spread the addiction, too: we knew that. We brought out pure product, EzRa speech, and these as yet only half-affected outlanders would succ.u.mb.

I made a similar journey twice more after that first time. Soon afterwards, another of our buoyant dirigible beasts didn't return.

When at last our cams found it they reeled back to us footage and trid of it dead and strewn in burnt-out flesh and a slick of guts across the countryside. There drowned in it and shattered, all dead, were our people. Amba.s.sador; navigator; technician; Staff.

I'd known Amba.s.sador LeNa slightly, one of the crewmembers well. I held my mouth closed with my hands as we watched. We were all affected. We fetched back the bodies and honoured them as well as we could with new ceremonies. Our crews searched the mouldering wreckage.

"The ship wasn't sick, I don't think," our investigator told us in committee. "I don't know what happened."

IN E EMBa.s.sYTOWN we did our best to stand in the way of warlordism, but we small band of ersatz organisers could only slow a degeneration toward that kind of rule. More Amba.s.sadors were joining us, terrified into organisation, inspired by MagDa. Others of course remained useless. Two more killed themselves. Some deactivated their links. we did our best to stand in the way of warlordism, but we small band of ersatz organisers could only slow a degeneration toward that kind of rule. More Amba.s.sadors were joining us, terrified into organisation, inspired by MagDa. Others of course remained useless. Two more killed themselves. Some deactivated their links.

Ez seemed . . . not calmer perhaps, but more broken, I thought, when I chaperoned him again. Delivering him finally to Ra, though, they argued even more viciously than before. "I can make things bad for you," Ez kept shouting. "There are things I could say."

When we went into the city, we had to pa.s.s the corpses of houses and Hosts. The death breakdown of biorigging designed and bred to be immortal contaminated the air with unexpected fumes. We heard more Ariekei fighting around speakers. Some of their dead had died from the violence of the desperate; some, those without enough of the new sustenance they needed, just died; and in some places there were more organised brutalities, cadres exerting new kinds of control. The living grabbed what datchips we gave them: these were rewards for these new tough local organisers, in crude concert with which we were just managing to maintain a tenuous system.

One evening as we returned to Emba.s.sytown, I lagged behind my colleagues, shaking the mulch of rotting bridges from my boots. I looked back into the Ariekene city, and I saw two human women looking at me.

They were only there a second. They stood one to either side of an alley mouth, metres away, looking at me gravely, and then they were gone. I couldn't have described them well, probably not even recognised them again, but I knew that they had had the same face.

IT WAS ONLY LATER, when things went wrong all over again and these new routines were made bulls.h.i.t, that I realised I'd come to expect us to muddle through until the ship came and flew us all away.

One scheduled evening we could find neither Ez nor Ra at the time of their broadcast. Neither would answer our buzzes. That was like Ez, but it wasn't like Ra.

Ez was in none of his preferred places. We searched the dangerous corridors of the Emba.s.sy: no one had seen him. We tried to buzz Mag or Da, who were often with Ra, but they wouldn't answer either.

We found the four of them in MagDa's new rooms, high in the Emba.s.sy. There were several of us, constables and new Staff like me. When we turned onto a last stretch of hallway we saw a figure huddled by the apartment door. We levelled our gun-things but she didn't move.

It was Da. As I approached I thought she was dead. But then she looked up at us, with despair.

Into the rooms and to a dreadful scene. Still as a diorama. Mag on the bed, in the same precise pose as Da outside, the wall between them. She looked up at us too, and back at the dead man on the bed with her. It was Ra, quite ruined with blood. A handle emerged from his chest, like a lever.

Ez sat a way off, rubbing his head and face, smearing blood on himself, blubbing. ". . . I really didn't, it wasn't, oh, G.o.d, it was, look, I, I'm so, it . . ." he said, and so on. When he saw us, among other emotions I swear I saw shame broader than for one dead man: he knew what he'd done to all of us. My hand kept twitching as if I'd take the thing out of Ra.

Later we found out that at first the argument had been, ostensibly, about MagDa. That was the marshalling of unconvincing, rote things to express other deeper terrors and resentments. The surface specifics didn't really matter. This wasn't about whatever they shouted as they fumbled and implements turned deadly.

We weren't very used to murder. It wasn't me who closed Ra's eyes but it was me who held Mag's hand and led her away. There wasn't much time to just grieve: the ramifications of the situation were obvious. I was already thinking of the tiny stock we had of EzRa prerecorded on datchip.

When I returned the others were hauling Ez away and taking Da to join her doppel. I secured the scene. I was alone for some minutes with Ra's corpse.

"Did you have to?" I said. I think I whispered out loud. I was trying hard to keep myself together and I succeeded. "Couldn't you have backed down?" I put my hand on Ra's face. I looked at him and shook my head and knew that Emba.s.sytown and I and all the Emba.s.sytowners would die.

Part Five

NOTES.

14.

WE HID THE DEATH for days. We were miserable with secrecy. There'd be panic when Emba.s.sytown knew. I couldn't convince myself panic in three days' time would be much worse than panic now: still we hid it, like a reflex. for days. We were miserable with secrecy. There'd be panic when Emba.s.sytown knew. I couldn't convince myself panic in three days' time would be much worse than panic now: still we hid it, like a reflex.

We had only a few recordings of EzRa. Ez had been careful. Once we risked repeating a speech that the Ariekei had heard before, but the footage we saw of consternation, the fights we spurred among outraged listeners, frightened us. We didn't try that again. We had perhaps twenty days of broadcasts. When we played them to the city we kept them as brief as we dared.

New hierarchies were a.s.serting among the Hosts, from what we could tell. We didn't understand them.

After the murder, MagDa equalised again, for the first time in days. They entered the committee room where we were meeting, smart and unsmiling and precisely identical. I couldn't tell if it was a good or a bad reaction. In any case it didn't last.

They accepted some condolences. They'd lost no authority, remained our de facto leader, listening, debating, and offering their thoughts and almost-orders. Obeying MagDa, and out of some prurience, I became Ez's keeper.

He wanted to talk. He maundered through self-justification, self-disgust, anger, regret. I'd sit in the room where he was held and listen. At first I tried to glean the specifics of what had happened. "What was it?" I asked MagDa once. They looked weary. One of them shook her head and the other said, "That's really not the point." This outcome had been waiting for a long time.

Plenty among us advocated simply ending Ez. I and others argued against it. MagDa took our side, which was what settled it. They calculated that an excess of mercy, ultimately, would work for them better than vengefulness. Even at that time when none of us really believed we had a future, MagDa were planning for it.

I pitied Ez, though I despised him too, of course. I felt that as shocking an act as he'd committed should change someone; that he should emerge either better or fully a monster. That he could kill someone and remain the pathetic figure he was previously shocked me. He was idiotic with resentment. He responded to all my questions with a child's churlishness. He wanted to continue telling me about his life, as he had the Hosts, with Ra, in Language. He picked up where they had left off.

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 Emba.s.sytown's power. His motivations for this secrecy were obscure: all motivations are.

I don't know how the news of Ra's death-that he had, I suppose, technically, become Ra Ra-got out, but word of his death, and therefore that of EzRa, did spread. A guard; a rogue vespcam; an Amba.s.sador; 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 Emba.s.sytown. 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.

Emba.s.sytown 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 Amba.s.sadors were complicit in[image] '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 Emba.s.sytown right then without relating to my new colleagues with that murder in mind. I did at last meet CalVin, at a gathering of Amba.s.sadors, 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. '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 Emba.s.sytown right then without relating to my new colleagues with that murder in mind. I did at last meet CalVin, at a gathering of Amba.s.sadors, 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 Emba.s.sytown'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, gla.s.s. They each gripped the door in turn, frustrated by its mechanism. They were shouting in Language. EzRa's voice. Where is it 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 G.o.d-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 what, 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 surrept.i.tious 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 great shock they shoved in a wedge into the crowd of Ariekei with their giftwings whipping. They reared and slammed hooves into their fellows, shattering carapaces. The fight was fast and brutal.

Ariekene blood sprayed, and there were the calls of Hosts in pain. "Look." I pointed. The cameras flitted and gave me another moment's view of some of the new attackers. "Do you see?" They were without fanwings. They had only stumps, flesh rags. Bren hissed.

The traumatised human inhabitants made it to our flyer, joined us watching that new fight. The attackers killed one of the other Ariekei. Seeing it die made me think of Beehive. The Host lay there red with hoofprints in familiar gore: its attacker had slipped in what remained of the Terre man.

"So . . . we have Ariekene protectors, now?" I said.

"No," Bren said. "That's not what you just saw."

WE MOVED the last people from the edges of Emba.s.sytown, into blocks we could guard with constables and rapidly inducted militia. Some holdouts we forced to leave. Ariekei gathered at the ends of streets and watched their human neighbours go. We timed a broadcast of EzRa to coincide with our evacuation: the double-voice called and the Ariekei reeled and stampeded to the speakers and left us alone. the last people from the edges of Emba.s.sytown, into blocks we could guard with constables and rapidly inducted militia. Some holdouts we forced to leave. Ariekei gathered at the ends of streets and watched their human neighbours go. We timed a broadcast of EzRa to coincide with our evacuation: the double-voice called and the Ariekei reeled and stampeded to the speakers and left us alone.

Between the ruining city and the centre of Emba.s.sytown was a deserted zone: our buildings, our houses without men and women in them, valuables taken and only the shoddy and dispensable left behind. I helped supervise the exodus. Afterwards, in the thin air at the edge of the aeoli breath, I walked through half-empty rooms.

Power was still connected. In some places screens and flats had been left on, and newscasters talked to me, describing the very removals that had left them alone, interviewing Mag and Da, who nodded sternly and insisted that this was necessary, temporarily. I sat in empty homes and watched my friends dissemble. I picked up books and trinkets and put them down again.

Ehrsul's rooms were in this zone. I stood outside them, and after a long time I buzzed her. I rang her doorbell. It was the first time I'd tried her in a long time. She didn't answer.

The Ariekei began to move into the emptied streets. A vanguard of their most desperate. With their pining battery-animals, and followed by slow carrion-eaters they would have bothered to kill as pests before, the Hosts searched the houses, too. They pressed with incomprehension and care at computers, their random ministrations running no-longer-relevant programs, cleaning rooms, working out finances, playing games, organising the minutiae of those missing. The Ariekei found no Language to listen to. The absence of their drug didn't wean them off it: there was no cold turkey for them; EzRa's speech had insinuated too deep into them for that. Instead, more of the weakest of them just began to die. Among the Terre, Amba.s.sador SidNey committed suicide.

"Avice." Bren buzzed me. "Can you come to my house?"

HE WAS WAITING for me. Two women were with him. They were older than me but not old. One was by the window, one by Bren's chair. They watched me as I entered. No one spoke. for me. Two women were with him. They were older than me but not old. One was by the window, one by Bren's chair. They watched me as I entered. No one spoke.