I went away a time and now I've returned.

THE CITY WOKE. Even its dead parts shuddered. We all bloomed like flowers, too.

Through the wires below our streets, past the barracks and barricades, at the speed of electricity under brick and tarmacked roads empty of Terre and picked through now by Ariekei suddenly still, into the kilometres of rotting architecture, the house-beasts waiting for death, up and through the speakers. From scores of loudhailers came the voice of the new G.o.d-drug, of ez ez/cal, and the city came out of hermetic miserable withdrawal ez into a new high.

Thousands of eye-corals craned; fanwings that had been slack suddenly flapped rigid and strained to capture vibrations; mouths opened. Flights of collapsed chitin stairs raised in tentative display, suddenly stronger with the onrush of chemical fix that came with that new voice. I went away a time and now I've returned I went away a time and now I've returned, and we heard the creak of reinflating skin, of flesh responding, metabolisms far faster than ours sucking on the junk energy it drew from the dissonance of EzCal's Language. All the way to the horizon, the city, its zelles and its inhabitants, rose and found themselves wherever in their walking death they'd stumbled.

Ariekene towers and gas-raised dwellings woke over the edges of Emba.s.sytown, looked down at us, opened their ears and listened. The addicted city came out of its coma of need. Our guards and gunners shouted. They didn't know what they were seeing. Their quarries, the oratees, were suddenly still and listening.

There was to be nothing more about Joel Rukowsi's life, it was clear. This was Cal's script, not Ez's. In several different ways, varying the shape of the sentences so the Language wouldn't lose its efficacy, he and Ez repeated that EzCal had come to speak. Emba.s.sytowners were crying. We knew we might live.

We would have to re-establish ways of communicating our needs to the Ariekei, and working out what we offered. Somewhere in that city now trying to rouse itself there must be those Hosts with which we had established understandings, which might now be able to take some kind of control again, with which we could deal. It wouldn't be a healthy polity. A few in control of their addiction would rule over those not, compradors at our behest: a narcocracy of language. We'd have to be careful pushers of our product.

Bren was on the stairs, and I waved, pushed through the crowd to him. We kissed, believing we wouldn't die. EzCal were silent. Elsewhere, out of my sight, hundreds of thousands of Ariekei stared at each other, high but coming lucid for the first time in a long time.

"Hosts!" we heard from the barriers. There were only a few minutes before they began to gather, to clear away their dead.

For one moment, simultaneously in every quarter, every Ariekes listening and their revivifying rooms stiffened again, in an aftershock of feeling. I saw it on the cam, later. It happened when, without looking at each other, according to I don't know what impulse, Cal and Ez leaned forward and with flawless timing, spoke the staccato Cut-and-Turn Language word that meant yes yes.

Part Seven

THE LANGUAGELESS.

20.

I WAS A TRADER AGAIN WAS A TRADER AGAIN. I went with others in corvids to the country. Business. Now in this reign of EzCal, G.o.d-drug II, we could leave again.

MayBel was our speaker on this trip. They could say that name:[image] . .

In the weeks since I'd flown out last, the landscape had raggedly changed. By the jut of rocks there were skeletons, where biorigging had come to die. The meadows were torn up by the tracks of stampeding machines, the new routes of refugees into the city in search of the G.o.d-drug voice, and later refugees out, in that exodus we still didn't understand. The city had been depleted, by more than the numbers of dead.

We came down where there were farmlands worked, newly, differently from before. A society was starting. It wasn't strong. The farmers were addicts again, of a new drug, but it was better than being the mindless starvelings they had been. We had no choice but to be dealers.

We went with our datchips beyond the reach of the speakers. We found Ariekei who still thought EzRa was the ruler and voice of Emba.s.sytown, and had unaccountably been silent these past days. Despite MayBel's articulacy it wasn't clear they understood what had changed, until with eager giftwing fingers, they played the files, and heard the voice of EzCal.

I want more of the other one, a farmer said. It tried to remember the way we used to trade: the haggling Terre had taught the Ariekei when our predecessors first arrived. Clumsily it offered us more of the medical rigging it had grown if we would give it another of EzRa's chips. We explained that we had none. Another, though, preferred the newcomer. It indicated several of its chewing beasts, which would defecate fuel and components: it would give us more than ever before, if we would give it more of this new EzCal.

Were those Ariekei who preferred EzCal more measured? Was there a calm, a focus to them, contrasting with a febrile air to those who still hankered for EzRa? Certainly, after ecstasy and before withdrawal, the composure between the Ariekei's necessary fixes seemed easier for us than they had been before. This EzCal version of Language left the Ariekei clearer-headed, a little more like the Hosts we had grown up with.

We tried to intervene, to shape what structures were emerging. We tried to re-establish conduits for our necessaries. I imagined Scile dead in all the landscapes I pa.s.sed-in the city, huddled where his aeoli had failed; in the first downs beyond.

We overflew desolate remnants of farms, vats dedicated by old agreements to the production of our foods: nutrient-rich pabulum; crops in Terre-air bubbles; food animals and sheets of meatcloth. Fallen and falling, there were parts though that were restorable. Our crews did what they could, coaxed airglands to fill chambers, restarted traumatised birth-pens. We found local Ariekene keepers, and with snips of EzCal's speechifying we restored them to mindfulness and gave them delight, coaxed them back to the farmsteads to help us. They cured the buildings, fixed the cityward flow of what we needed. Cells of food jostled like corpuscles on their way to Emba.s.sytown.

With those peristalses of imports, we might have more or less ignored the city, now that its inhabitants weren't attacking us anymore. We could have just broadcast the G.o.d-drug's announcements to its convalescing boroughs to make its inhabitants pliant. We didn't, of course. Most of us felt concern, even responsibility, for the biopolis. Nonetheless, we weren't expecting what turned out to be the vigorous interventions of EzCal. Really, of Cal. Cal, and with him the other half of the G.o.d-drug, didn't merely broadcast or make careful forays into the streets, to find a new Ariekei government: EzCal paraded.

The committee could have tried to stop them. Ez was our prisoner. When sometimes he tried-always obviously-to make his own plans, to turn a situation to an advantage, he was cackhanded. At first, mostly, he did as we told him; then he did what Cal told him. Cal disturbed me: his fever of importance. What we said was he was ours, that we decided what he did, and Ez with him, and it was true for a few days, until he'd remembered the minutiae of ruling.

"No, let's not go slowly," he said to us after that-to me, in fact, after I'd said that the city was still dangerous, and that with the systems we'd put in place we maybe didn't need to deal too closely with it yet. "Oh yes we do," he said.

EzCal's recitations were quite different from EzRa's. Cal put a transmitter in front of the Emba.s.sy, where he could be seen when he Languaged. He would turn up early for the broadcasts and wait, arms folded or on his hips, looking at the square, and to our surprise, it wasn't only him who did so: Ez would be there, too. He barely spoke except during these performances, in Language, and if he did, his mumbles and monosyllables made you think he was barely with you. But he never made Cal wait.

Cal wouldn't look at Ez except as he had to. It was easy to see he hated him. He found a way, though, to make himself into this new thing, using Ez as a tool.

All you who listen to me, ez ez/cal said. It was the third Utuday in ez the third monthling of October. I didn't look at the feeds but I know what I'd have seen if I had: clutches of Ariekei throughout the city ringing the speakers and clinging to each other. I wasn't aware I was listening to EzCal's words until I reacted with shock to a promise I'd not known I was translating. said. It was the third Utuday in ez the third monthling of October. I didn't look at the feeds but I know what I'd have seen if I had: clutches of Ariekei throughout the city ringing the speakers and clinging to each other. I wasn't aware I was listening to EzCal's words until I reacted with shock to a promise I'd not known I was translating.

I will come and walk among you tomorrow, EzCal said. I swear I heard noises from the city when they did. Faintly, over the membranous walls. That reaction was a revolution of a kind. I'd never seen any Ariekes understand or pay attention to the specifics of what EzRa had said-their voice had been nothing but intoxicant. Where listeners had liked one ba.n.a.l or idiotic phrase over another, it was as abstract and meaningless a preference as that for a favourite colour. This was not the same. Some in the city, even tripping on EzCal's voice, had understood the content of those words. I wished Bren had been there with me when that happened.

"What in h.e.l.l are you doing?" I went and said to Cal. At first he didn't seem to notice me. Then his expression went from bewilderment to irritation to uninterest in less than a second. He walked away, and Ez followed him, and Ez's guards followed them both.

LIKE THE KING in a story, EzCal climbed up the barricades and down again into what had been our streets, and into a ma.s.s of hundreds of waiting Ariekei. They were motionless and silent. They moved out of EzCal's way with little hoof-steps. in a story, EzCal climbed up the barricades and down again into what had been our streets, and into a ma.s.s of hundreds of waiting Ariekei. They were motionless and silent. They moved out of EzCal's way with little hoof-steps.

EzCal's retinue of nervous men and women scrambled down the plastone-set rubbish and rubble behind them. No path was cleared for us; we had to weave very tentatively between the Hosts. There were plenty of us, viziers insisting that they were indispensable, I, MagDa and others from the committee after them and trying to issue orders or just watching, collating. I had a sense I couldn't quite articulate that of course course Cal, EzCal, had known that their words wouldn't only fulfil and fuel Ariekei cravings, but would communicate specifics. Cal, EzCal, had known that their words wouldn't only fulfil and fuel Ariekei cravings, but would communicate specifics.

The effortlessness of it. EzRa's audience had fugued as much at agricultural reports as at the narratives Ez had seemed or pretended to think caught them up. Now the stories Ez told had real audiences, but they weren't his stories anymore. The Ariekei kept their fanwings flared, listening hard. Cal walked as if he and Ez would keep on to the edge of historic Emba.s.sytown and into the city. They had no aeoli, so this was pure theatre. Ez kept up with him.

Listeners, EzCal said. They were amplified by tiny point-microphones on their clothes. Cal hadn't been looking at Ez, I'd have put money on it, but they spoke together. EzCal waited so long I might have expected the hold of their voice on the a.s.sembled to ebb. It had only been a single word, not even a clause, with the grammar that seemed particularly succulent to the Ariekei. But they waited.

Listeners, EzCal said. Do you understand me Do you understand me?

The Ariekei told them yes yes.

Raise your giftwings, EzCal said, and the Ariekei did. Shake them Shake them, they said, and again, immediately, the Ariekei did.

I'd never seen anything like this. None of the watching Terre looked anything but stunned. If Ez was excited or surprised he showed no sign of it at all. He just looked out at all these addict-obedient. Raise your giftwings to listen Raise your giftwings to listen, EzCal said. Listen Listen.

They said the city was ill, that it must be healed, that there was very much to do, that there were plenty of hearers in the city who were still dangerous or endangered, or both, but that things would be better now. To the Ariekei, these political plat.i.tudes, in this voice, might be revelations. They listened, and they were transported.

I didn't see any pleasure in Cal's expression. The grim strain of his face, the muscles clenching-it looked to me as if he had no choice but to do and be this, now. Listen Listen, EzCal said, and the Ariekei listened harder. The walls strained. The windows sighed.

WHEN THEY REGREW the city the Ariekei changed it. In this rebooted version the houses segmented into smaller dwellings and were interspersed with pillars like sweating trees. Of course there were still towers, still factories and hangars for the nurturing of young and of biorigging, to process the new chemicals the Ariekei and their buildings emitted when they listened to EzCal. But the housescape we overlooked took on a more higgledy-piggledy aspect. The streets seemed steeper than they had been, and more various: the chitin gables, the conquistador-helmet curves newly intricate. the city the Ariekei changed it. In this rebooted version the houses segmented into smaller dwellings and were interspersed with pillars like sweating trees. Of course there were still towers, still factories and hangars for the nurturing of young and of biorigging, to process the new chemicals the Ariekei and their buildings emitted when they listened to EzCal. But the housescape we overlooked took on a more higgledy-piggledy aspect. The streets seemed steeper than they had been, and more various: the chitin gables, the conquistador-helmet curves newly intricate.

The old halls were still there, and that architecture revived enough by EzCal's voice to fail to die, but not quite to rise. The tracts of decayed city between new village-like neighbourhoods were dangerous. The prowling grounds of animals and of Ariekei so far gone they'd never fully woken. They would crowd isolated loudhailers during announcements and gain enough from EzCal's voice to give them aggressive need, but not enough to give them mind.

"We'll clear them out, when we can," Cal said. In the meantime the city was scattered fiefdoms, with each of which we tried to establish protocols. I found out something of their specifics-"that one's run by a little coalition of the not-very dependent; that one's too risky to go into right now; the Ariekes running that place there, around the minaret, it was a functionary before the fall"-from Bren. Bren learnt them from YlSib.

"MagDa won't push you on it," Bren said to me. "But . . ." Bren saw the expression on my face. "You can see what's going on," he said finally. "They're not running things now, they're not in a position to close the infirmary . . ."

"You think they would if they could?"

"I don't know and just now I don't care. Cal certainly won't. You saw what happened when EzCal spoke. If MagDa needs to know anything you know, please tell them. We need them clued in. They're smart, they must know the sort of source you're getting information from, but they won't ask. They have plans, I'm sure. They've been spending time in Southel's lab. Have you seen them talking to her?"

It wasn't as part of an official group, committee business, that I went back into the city, when I did. I went with Bren, to meet his friends again: YlSib, that secret rogue Amba.s.sador.

OUR AIR-SHAPING was weak enough now that we had to wear aeoli within what had recently been Emba.s.sytown streets. So far as we could Bren and I were careful to avoid vespcams, though I knew if we were seen we'd only be a rumour among many. We stationed ourselves in the ruins. From a balcony in an apartment where children had lived (I trod over the debris of toys) we saw EzCal go again among crowds of Ariekei that listened and obeyed their instructions. was weak enough now that we had to wear aeoli within what had recently been Emba.s.sytown streets. So far as we could Bren and I were careful to avoid vespcams, though I knew if we were seen we'd only be a rumour among many. We stationed ourselves in the ruins. From a balcony in an apartment where children had lived (I trod over the debris of toys) we saw EzCal go again among crowds of Ariekei that listened and obeyed their instructions.

"Next time they're going to head into the city," said Sib. I hadn't heard YlSib enter. "So . . ." Sib pointed out of the window at EzCal. "Language works differently with this one."

"We should have called them OgMa, not EzCal" Bren said. We looked at him for an explanation. "A G.o.d," he said, "who did sort of the same thing."

YlSib wore biorigged pistols. Bren and I had cruder weapons. YlSib moved with vastly more facility than the halting citynauts with whom I'd made earlier forays. They didn't hesitate on the way to where brickwork in ruins became biology. The air changed on our way. The way the currents went over me wasn't like the wind in Emba.s.sytown. We were in a place full of new sounds. Small fauna claimed areas. Ariekei in the streets didn't stop for us, though some raised eye-corals and stared. There were pools overhung by bladderwrackish polyps that dripped reactions into the liquid. I wondered if they were foundations, deliberate town planning.

I looked down an avenue of marrowy-trees to Emba.s.sytown. An Ariekes near us startled me, asked repeatedly in Language what we were doing. I raised my weapon but YlSib were speaking. I'm I'm[image] , they said. , they said. These are These are- and then they said something yl that wasn't our names. They are coming with me. I'm going home They are coming with me. I'm going home.[image] , YlSib said, and they put stress in their formulation by making it a personal. I, , YlSib said, and they put stress in their formulation by making it a personal. I, homegoer homegoer, was what they said, so I wondered if going home was a powerful thing to the Ariekei too.

"They know us," said Yl. "These days some are too gone to remember, but if we meet any who can speak, we should be alright." "Although," Sib said, "I guess there might be new allegiances. Some of them might have . . ." ". . . reasons to not let us pa.s.s."

In fact some Language we heard on that journey made little sense. Phrases spoken by wrecks of speakers out of nostalgia for meaning. YlSib led us finally to a shredded clearing. I gasped. There was a man waiting for us. He leaned below a column of metal that recurved over his head very like a streetlamp. He looked transplanted from an old flat image of a Terre town.

They nodded, muttered to Yl and Sib and Bren. They made sure I couldn't hear them. The man reminded me of no one. He was nondescript and dark-skinned, in old clothes, an aeoli of a kind I didn't recognise breathing into him. There was nothing I could have said about him. He left with YlSib and Bren came back to me.

"Who the f.u.c.k is that?" I said. "Is he cleaved?"

"No," said Bren. He shrugged. "I don't think so. Maybe his brother's dead by now, but I don't think so. They just didn't like each other very much." Of course I knew this counterworld of exiles existed now, of misbehaving cleaved, Staff unstaffed, bad Amba.s.sadors; but to see its doings astounded me. How had they kept going during the days of collapse, before G.o.d-drug II?

"Do you speak to any of the similes still?" Bren said.

"Jesus," I said. "Why? Not really. I saw Darius at a bar, ages ago. We were both embarra.s.sed. I mean Emba.s.sytown's too small for me not to run into them sometimes, but it's not as if we talk talk."

"Do you know what they're doing?"

"I don't think there's a 'they', Bren. It's all . . . disbanded. After what happened. Maybe some of them still meet . . . But that scene was ruined ages ago. After Ha.s.ser. Can you imagine now? No one cares about them anymore, including their speakers. Language . . ." I laughed. "It isn't what it used to be."

YlSib returned, sc.r.a.ping decaying city-stuff off their clothes. "That's true," Bren said. "But it's not true that no one cares anymore. You don't know where we're going: your company's been requested."

"What?" I had not thought that this infiltration was about me, that I was a task to be fulfilled. YlSib led me to a bas.e.m.e.nt-a.n.a.logue and ushered me in, into the biolit presence of Ariekei. "Avice Benner Cho," YlSib said. They spoke my names perfectly simultaneously, at the same pitch, so though it was two voices it sounded to me like one.

The room smelt of Ariekei. There were several. They were making noises, speech and mutterings of thought. One approached me out of the half-dark and spoke a greeting. YlSib told me its name. I looked at its fanwing.

"Christ," I said. "We've met."

It had been a close companion of Surl Tesh-echer,[image] , surl the best liar in Ariekei history. It was the Ariekes I'd once called Spanish Dancer. "Does it remember . . . ?" , surl the best liar in Ariekei history. It was the Ariekes I'd once called Spanish Dancer. "Does it remember . . . ?"

"Of course course it remembers, Avice," Bren said. "Why do you think you're here?" it remembers, Avice," Bren said. "Why do you think you're here?"

BREN AND Y YLSIB gave to the gathered Ariekei a clutch of datchips. They took them quickly, their limbs and digits betraying agitation. "Do EzCal know you're recording them?" I said. gave to the gathered Ariekei a clutch of datchips. They took them quickly, their limbs and digits betraying agitation. "Do EzCal know you're recording them?" I said.

"I hope not," Bren said. "You've seen? They're trying to do what Ez did when he was part of EzRa-make sure we can't build up a stock of recordings to make them redundant."

"But you have."

"These are just their public recitations," he said. "They can't stop people tapping those, and why would they? They think because it's been said said, because it's out there, the Hosts've heard it, and it's lost its thing."

I looked one by one around the other Ariekei there. There were other patterns on other fanwings I thought I had seen before. "Some of these were in Surl Tesh-echer's group as well," I said. I looked at Bren. "They were its friends."

"Yes," Bren said.

"What they can do is lie," Bren said. "Not that any of them's anything like as virtuoso as Surl Tesh-echer was. It was . . ." He shrugged. "A harbinger. On the edge of something."

"Your husband was right," YlSib said. "To stop it. In his terms he was right. It was changing everything." There was a silence. "This lot have had to carry on without it since. It's slow." "They do what they can."

Every Ariekes took a datchip, each to a different part of the room. Each in similar elegant motion draped its fanwing over it. Their membranes spread. They withdrew, hunched into sculptures, made the room a drug-house. With the volume very low, they ran the sounds. Responded instantly as I watched, trembling, judders of bio-ecstasy. I could see lights of speakers through taut fanwing skin, hear the m.u.f.fled chirruping of audio: the soul of EzCal, or its spurious fabricated semblance.

"How the h.e.l.l can those recordings still work?" I whispered. "They've already been heard."

"Not by them," Bren said. "They wait. b.l.o.o.d.y willpower. They fold up their wings when they know EzCal's going to speak. They were already doing it with EzRa. They make themselves hold out hold out. They're trying to go longer and longer without."

It was hard to imagine that the shuddering figures represented a resistance to the reign of G.o.d-drug. Still. "They can take these now because they didn't take them before," Yl said.

One by slow one the Ariekei rose. They looked at me. A strange reminiscence. We seemed to pick up where we'd left off. Spanish Dancer came up to me: its companions circled me. They said the succession of sounds in Language that were me. I had not heard myself spoken for a long time.

They said me first as a fact. There was a girl who was hurt in darkness and ate what was given her There was a girl who was hurt in darkness and ate what was given her. Then they began to deploy me as a simile. We now, Spanish Dancer said, when we take what is given in G.o.d-drug's voice, we are like the girl who was hurt in darkness and ate what was given her when we take what is given in G.o.d-drug's voice, we are like the girl who was hurt in darkness and ate what was given her. The others responded.

"SURL TESH-ECHER was more than just the best liar, you know," Bren said. "It was sort of a vanguard. It was never just about performing lies. Why would they be so interested in was more than just the best liar, you know," Bren said. "It was sort of a vanguard. It was never just about performing lies. Why would they be so interested in you you, if that was all, Avice? How do lying and similes intersect?"

What other things in this world, one of the Ariekei was saying, are like the girl who was hurt in darkness and ate what was given her are like the girl who was hurt in darkness and ate what was given her?

"It's been hard," Bren said. "They were all scattered by the war." The war of not-enough drug. The war of Ez killed Ra. The war of the walking dead. "Now they've tracked each other down, they're going to keep going. They didn't worship Surl Tesh-echer. But it was sort of a figurehead."

"Prophet," Yl or Sib said.

"Why can't you tell MagDa, and even Cal . . ." I said, then trailed off because of course the group in this room was a conspiracy. Striving to limit the power of the G.o.d-drug. Cal would try to sabotage it. I wished I didn't believe that. Bren nodded, watching me think.

"Yeah," said Bren. "Now, MagDa are different. But there's only so much they'll risk. They want to get out, now, and they can only see one way to do it, and that's hanging on. They won't risk anything else. They might even scupper it."

"Scupper what? What are you trying to do?"

"Not me me," Bren said.

"All of you. You, you," I said to YlSib, "these Hosts. What are you plural you plural trying to do?" "MagDa's way won't work," Bren said. "Just to stave things off. That's why they won't take on Cal. It's not enough to try to keep everything going until the ship gets here. We have to change things." While he spoke, the Ariekei moved around me like flotsam in a current, and they said the phrase I was and tried to make it into new things, to think of new things they could insist that it, I, my past, was like. trying to do?" "MagDa's way won't work," Bren said. "Just to stave things off. That's why they won't take on Cal. It's not enough to try to keep everything going until the ship gets here. We have to change things." While he spoke, the Ariekei moved around me like flotsam in a current, and they said the phrase I was and tried to make it into new things, to think of new things they could insist that it, I, my past, was like.

"EzCal's not the only one we have to be careful of," Bren said. "You have to keep this quiet." I remembered the parting of Ariekei when Ha.s.ser had come and killed[image] . .

"You're worried about other Ariekei," I said.

"These speakers were dangerous before," Bren said. "Scile was was right about them, and so were their . . ." He shrugged and shook his head so I would know whatever phrase he used was inexact. "Ruling clique. And I don't know where right about them, and so were their . . ." He shrugged and shook his head so I would know whatever phrase he used was inexact. "Ruling clique. And I don't know where they they are now, yet, but I bet EzCal have an idea. Or Cal does. They've done business before. Why do you think he's so keen to get into the city?" are now, yet, but I bet EzCal have an idea. Or Cal does. They've done business before. Why do you think he's so keen to get into the city?"

I'd thought Cal's eagerness was newly visionary fervour. But back then, there in the Festival of Lies, Cal, and Pear Tree, looking at me. "Jesus Pharos." Scile had watched too. A conspirator then, Scile would approve of EzCal now. Their priorities, like CalVin's before them, were power and survival; Scile's were always the city and its stasis. Those had overlapped once, but history had left Scile behind. Hence his hopeless walk.

"Cal might already have found his friends again," Bren said. "This lot . . ." He indicated the room. "They were a threat once. You saw. Now . . ." He laughed. "Well, everything's changed. But they might still be a threat. Different: but maybe even more. Cal might not know this group still exists. If he ever knew. But the Ariekei he worked with before do. So if he finds them them, this lot here had better keep very quiet. So we have to, as well."