"How are they a threat?" I said. "I never understood. Why are they doing this? Whatever it is they're doing." are they a threat?" I said. "I never understood. Why are they doing this? Whatever it is they're doing."

Bren struggled. "It's hard to explain. I don't know how to say."

"You don't know," I said. He bobbed his head in a half-yes-half- no.

"How's your Language, Avice?" said one of YlSib. They spoke to Spanish Dancer and it answered. I could follow some, and when I shook my head Yl or Sib would translate a few clauses.

It's not good that we are this. We wish to be other than this. We're like the girl who was hurt in darkness and ate what was given her because we imbibe what is given to us by EzCal. There was a long silence. We want instead to be like the girl who was hurt in darkness and ate what was given to her in that we want to be We want instead to be like the girl who was hurt in darkness and ate what was given to her in that we want to be . . . and then there was silence again, and Spanish Dancer shook its limbs. . . . and then there was silence again, and Spanish Dancer shook its limbs.

"It tried to use your simile twice, contradictorily," Sib said. "But it couldn't quite manage."

Now, Spanish Dancer went on, it's worse. We didn't expect this. It was a bad thing when we were made intoxicated and helpless by the G.o.d-drug's words, lost ourselves, but now it's different and worse. Now when the G.o.d-drug speaks we obey it's worse. We didn't expect this. It was a bad thing when we were made intoxicated and helpless by the G.o.d-drug's words, lost ourselves, but now it's different and worse. Now when the G.o.d-drug speaks we obey. Yes, it said that with modulations that meant nothing to me, but no matter how alien the Ariekene mental map, sense of self, I thought that must be truly terrible. I'd seen the crowds respond instantly to EzCal's instructions, choiceless about it. We want to decide what to hear, how to live, what to say, what to speak, how to mean, what to obey. We want Language to put to our use We want to decide what to hear, how to live, what to say, what to speak, how to mean, what to obey. We want Language to put to our use.

They resented their new druggy craving and their newer inability to disobey. This conclave could hardly be unique in that. But it dovetailed with what they had always wanted to achieve: their longtime striving for lies, to make Language mean what they wanted. That older desire seemed to make them execrate their new condition even more than other conscious Ariekei.

"We promised to bring you here," Bren said. "Said it like a Host." He smiled at the child's oath. "They were adamant they had to see you. I better get you back before you're missed, then YlSib will have to go on. Other drops. These people aren't the only ones trying to find a different way."

What a dangerous circuit, through rebel cells in the collapsed, regrowing city. I'd always stressed, as I'd had it stressed to me, how incommensurable Terre and Ariekene thinking were. But I thought about who it was had told me that, those many times. Staff, and Amba.s.sadors with a monopoly on comprehension. It was giddying to feel suddenly that I was allowed and able to make any sense of Ariekene actions. What I saw there was dissent, and I understood it.

I saw only these liars, these fervent attempters to change their speech. Bren and YlSib might go from them to others trying to eradicate all their cravings and live Languageless; from there perhaps to those fighting to disobey EzCal's casual orders; then to others who were maybe searching for chemical cures. I wasn't even really partic.i.p.ant on this trip, the first visit, though I was present and Bren trusted me. He hadn't brought me out of camaraderie-I was there because I was a simile, and these dissidents wanted me for strategic purposes, as another group might request a piece of 'ware, or a chemical, or explosives.

Emba.s.sytown in its crisis was throwing up fervour. Give me three days, I thought, and I'd find people who believed that EzCal, or Ez, or Cal, was the messiah, or the devil, or both; that the Amba.s.sadors were angels; or devils; that the Ariekei were; that the only hope was to leave the planet as fast we could; that we must never leave. So with the Ariekei, I thought, and felt hopeful and depressed at once. Language was incapable of formulating the uncertainties of monsters and G.o.ds common elsewhere, and I was abruptly convinced that these gatherings were the Ariekene cargo cults. Was I at a Ghost Dance? Bren and YlSib were patronising the far-fetched, millennial and desperate.

I watched Spanish Dancer struggle to express me, to make me mean things I'd never meant before, try to force similes into new shapes. We are like the girl who was hurt in the dark and ate what was given to her because we We are like the girl who was hurt in the dark and ate what was given to her because we . . . . . . because like her we are because like her we are . . . . . . we are hurt we are hurt . . . It circled me and stared at me, and tried to say ways it was like me. . . . It circled me and stared at me, and tried to say ways it was like me.

"Why won't MagDa's plan work?" I said. "I know, I know, but . . . just say to me once why we can't just keep going until the ship."

Bren, Sib and Yl looked at each other, to see who would speak. "You've seen how EzCal's acting." It was Sib. "You think it's safe for us to carry on like this?"

"And, among other things," Bren said, sounding, if I'm honest, disappointed, "even if it did work, you saw what happened to the Ariekei when EzRa ended, without their . . . dose. So what about when the relief gets here? When we leave?" He indicated Spanish Dancer. "What happens then, to them?"

21.

ANOTHER OF OUR FLYERS disappeared. It had been doing rounds of farmsteads close to the city, as per EzCal's orders, asking for-insisting on-what we needed: it wouldn't be hard for us to dismantle the speakers if what we required wasn't forthcoming, and the Ariekene farmers knew that. The coms broke off and weren't re-established. We released vespcams. disappeared. It had been doing rounds of farmsteads close to the city, as per EzCal's orders, asking for-insisting on-what we needed: it wouldn't be hard for us to dismantle the speakers if what we required wasn't forthcoming, and the Ariekene farmers knew that. The coms broke off and weren't re-established. We released vespcams.

Squads were subduing the last independent zones on isolated floors of the Emba.s.sy, where squatter-chiefs and their groups had refused amnesty. I was out at a barricade, a ma.s.s of broken furniture, odds and sods of houses, unneeded machines; but coagulated here, unusually, not with plastone but a quick-setting polymer, a resin poured all over and set hard as brick and gla.s.s-clear. The detritus was visible, like rubbish floating in water, frozen in a moment. We weren't at war anymore, and machines were cutting a V-trench walkway through the barrier, an excised wedge with perfect flat faces through the tough transparency and the c.r.a.p within. The pa.s.s's edges were randomly punctuated with sectioned debris.

I was with Simmon. We were watching the gusting staticky visions of vespcams on his handscreen. "What's that?" I said. It was the lost corvid. It was dead. The ground around it was scorched. There were heaps that might be human bodies.

WE CAME FAST and armed over the wild, over paths made by Ariekei and their animals and zelles, perhaps by wild outsider humans, exiles from Emba.s.sytown, in outland farms. We hadn't established contact with all of them. I was surprised by a brief and strong sense of loss for floaking, of all things. I tried to tell myself that this, what I was doing, was heir to that tough going-with-the-flow, but I was hardly taken in. and armed over the wild, over paths made by Ariekei and their animals and zelles, perhaps by wild outsider humans, exiles from Emba.s.sytown, in outland farms. We hadn't established contact with all of them. I was surprised by a brief and strong sense of loss for floaking, of all things. I tried to tell myself that this, what I was doing, was heir to that tough going-with-the-flow, but I was hardly taken in.

The airship was spread across the ground. We descended into a terrible aftermath. Eventually we went to work. The closest thing we had to a specialist took samples from what might be bite-marks or burn-marks on all the corpses. They were everywhere.

"Oh G.o.d," said our investigator. There was Lo, of Amba.s.sador LoGan. His chest was caved and cauterised. "That's not a crash injury. That's not not a crash injury." a crash injury."

Vizier Jaques was there, and the edge of his wound, his missing arm, was neither shorn clear nor burned, but a rip from which he'd bled out. He'd died in excruciation, it looked like, scrabbling for his flung-away limb. The microbes the group had brought inside them had started the job of decay, and the Ariekene landscape in which they worked made for chemical oddness, so the rot wasn't like rot in Emba.s.sytown.

Everyone was dead. The expedition had included a rare Kedis functionary. A mature hermale I hadn't known. "Oh Jesus, it's Gorrin," someone said. "The Kedis are going to be . . ."

We went slowly from body to body, putting off each as long as we could. The wind was cold as we picked through the remnants of our friends. We tried to gather them: some fell apart; others we wrapped to take home.

"Look." We were trying to reconstruct what had happened, following the sc.r.a.ped earth, reading it, it and the dead become hieroglyphs. "This was brought down." A hot toothed missile had burst into the flyer's side.

"There are no predators like that . . ." someone started to say.

"But it came down slow enough for them to get out." That was me. "They came out and then they were . . . they were hit outside."

We found remnants of biorigging eggs, from a recent barter trip, smears of yolk and foetal machines. The crew had been returning. The aeoli we wore made our own voices loud in our ears, as if each of us was alone. Carrying our dead we flew with carronades ready, looking for the ranch where our compatriots had been. It was announced by smoke. Outlying dwellings were ruined, the nurseries mostly gone. There was one hutch that seemed still just alive, and in distress, but we had no idea how to provide it a coup de grace, and could only try to ignore its pain.

There were no Ariekene dead. The kraal was empty. Dust-coloured animals ran away, and our arrival sent up rag-paper scavengers, flocks that moved like thinking smoke.

Someone fired and we all dived for the floor shouting. The gun howled: it was of one of Emba.s.sytown's treasures, an old banshee-tech gun cobbled into a form humans could use. The officer had shot it at nothing-a movement, a scuttling of tiny fauna. Ariekene young had been abandoned, and floated in a broth of dead. There were bodies of their elders. Hoofprints were everywhere. We set cams to follow what we thought might be trails.

Body-thick arteries emerged from the farm, entangled in the earth and the tube that went over the rockscape toward the city. The pipeline was burst. The matter of it was spewed by a sabotage blast, the ground a quag of dirt and amniotic fluids.

"What's this?"

In a hollow were organic discards. Frameworks like splayed fish ribs; skin in webbing between tines; a nest of intricate bones. These were remnants of fanwings. We gathered the little trophies. Behind us we heard the distress call of a last building left alive.

We'd put speakers in the farms with which we'd made contact, and the ongoing supplies of EzCal's voice should have guaranteed us what we needed, but we'd had trouble before. Now we knew why. We sent crews and cams along the supply pipes, and found other ruptures. We lost another flight, and then the officers we sent to find it.

EzCal went to the centre of the city to broadcast. Their journey there from Emba.s.sytown was as extreme in its pomp as we could do, then. There was pressure on those of us in the committee, still ostensibly Ez and Cal's organisers, Ez's jailers, indeed, to attend and wear smart clothes. Wyatt came with us. His reward for birthing EzCal was that he was freed, kept under watch but made committee. He was expert in crisis politics, and he wasn't a Bremen agent anymore, or not just then. Whatever happened later we'd deal with later.

"If he could get away with a G.o.dd.a.m.n canopy, he would," I said quietly to MagDa. The G.o.d-drug walked in the city, Ez looking down and unsmiling, Cal, his head still shaved in the style he now maintained, his st.i.tches gone but new tattoos mimicking them on his scarred scalp, looking up, occasionally glancing at Ez with energy and hate. "They'd have us carrying them on our f.u.c.king shoulders."

MagDa didn't smile. We were in the middle of that daily promenade from Emba.s.sytown, behind EzCal, surrounded by Ariekei who followed their instructions and shouted sort-of cheers. Mag and Da were stricken. Wait Wait, I wanted to say to them. It's alright. There are others. There are people and Ariekei looking for ways out. It's alright. There are others. There are people and Ariekei looking for ways out. I wouldn't betray Bren, and I knew he was right: there was too much risk that MagDa might be unnerved by these plans. I wouldn't betray Bren, and I knew he was right: there was too much risk that MagDa might be unnerved by these plans.

"I don't know . . ." said MagDa to me. "I don't even know what we'll do." "When the ship comes."

"We have to guard our resources," Cal said, after their performance, looking at footage of ruined farms. EzCal insisted that the rations of Emba.s.sytowners be reduced. They ordered squads of constables to the nearest plantations, and to those that provided our most needed pabulum. The attacks were becoming more frequent. Each group of officers that went out was accompanied, as they had to be for communication with those they were sent to protect, by an Amba.s.sador.

"It'll be fine," PorSha said to me, preparing. "It's not the first time." "We're used to it." "We had to go out to haggle, before, didn't we?" "Out of the city." "It's the same."

It wasn't the same. Before, with Emba.s.sytown and the world collapsing, they, and all the better Amba.s.sadors, had kept us alive with their desultory trades. This time they followed orders. I had originally thought that Cal would do as little as he could when he became part of G.o.d-drug II. I was used to being wrong.

EZCAL DID FIND Pear Tree, the erstwhile leader of that once-powerful Ariekene faction. Perhaps Cal had his own investigators. Not all the city-dwelling Emba.s.sytowner exiles would share Yl and Sib's perspective: they might have enemies, of whom some were perhaps agents for EzCal. Pear Tree, the erstwhile leader of that once-powerful Ariekene faction. Perhaps Cal had his own investigators. Not all the city-dwelling Emba.s.sytowner exiles would share Yl and Sib's perspective: they might have enemies, of whom some were perhaps agents for EzCal.

What had happened was that during one of their speakings in the city plaza EzCal had been suddenly in the middle of a small group of Ariekei retracting and extruding their eyes and staring. EzCal hadn't been afraid. One of the group had been Pear Tree.

It accompanied EzCal on their following performance, walking with them all the way from a meeting in Emba.s.sytown. There were other Ariekei with them, some closer to EzCal than any humans, Staff, committee or Amba.s.sador. My memory was unreliable, but watching the trids-I played hookey from my accompanying duties-I suspected at least two others might have been among those that had stood aside to let Ha.s.ser murder[image] . I held my breath: I was on a side in a secret war. . I held my breath: I was on a side in a secret war.

That time, EzCal didn't speak for a while. They rationed their words. When they did, they announced that[image] -Pear Tree-was chief of this township. That this area was chosen from all the scattered remnant parts of the city, to be EzCal's node, and that its regent there was -Pear Tree-was chief of this township. That this area was chosen from all the scattered remnant parts of the city, to be EzCal's node, and that its regent there was[image] . EzCal couldn't speak except as the G.o.d-drug, and the words they said were always compulsions. This wasn't like a momentary order to raise gift-wings: it was a ruling, and when EzCal finished speaking, the Ariekei who had heard them remained ruled by . EzCal couldn't speak except as the G.o.d-drug, and the words they said were always compulsions. This wasn't like a momentary order to raise gift-wings: it was a ruling, and when EzCal finished speaking, the Ariekei who had heard them remained ruled by[image] . The Ariekei were very quiet, and then did not complain. . The Ariekei were very quiet, and then did not complain.

For all I knew[image] might already have been head of whatever clutch of streets it frequented. EzCal might have changed nothing-except that by saying it, they changed it. There was now a collaboration, an allegiance, between Emba.s.sytown and this new heart of the city. I had just seen the tasks of Bren, YlSib and their comrades, get harder. might already have been head of whatever clutch of streets it frequented. EzCal might have changed nothing-except that by saying it, they changed it. There was now a collaboration, an allegiance, between Emba.s.sytown and this new heart of the city. I had just seen the tasks of Bren, YlSib and their comrades, get harder.

I think I had been avoiding thinking about what Cal, EzCal, really was, and were. Whether it was design, buffoonery or luck that underlay our new politics, I was not safe.

ARIEKI FROM the new township EzCal had inaugurated left the city with PorSha, KelSey and the constables. These were now joint operations. KelSey came back, but PorSha did not. the new township EzCal had inaugurated left the city with PorSha, KelSey and the constables. These were now joint operations. KelSey came back, but PorSha did not.

We had receivers and cams around all the farm grounds. They flagged us when anything beyond their expectation-algorithms occurred, which is how it was that all of us in the committee were buzzed instantly, and the footage relayed direct to our rooms, at the next attack.

Corvids headed out. They wouldn't arrive in time, but we had to act, even pointlessly. I was with Bren. We scrolled as fast as we could back and forth through chaotic images. Scenes of tending, of interaction with farmhands. PorSha, a pair of tall diffident women, communicating necessities to the Ariekei. Convulsions as the tube pa.s.sed goods that would be shat out in Emba.s.sytown. s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation in Anglo-Ubiq. The time-counter skipped. This dats.p.a.ce was fritzing. "We need Ehrsul," Bren said. "Do you ever . . . ?" I shook my head. A constable was standing with mud across her. She stared anxiously not at us but over our shoulders, attempting to report.

"Sergeant Tracer at . . .," she said. There were violent noises. She watched something off-screen. "Under attack," she said. "Groups of . . . . . . hundreds, f.u.c.king hundreds hundreds, f.u.c.king hundreds . . ." . . ."

Her transmission ended, the picture spasmed and was replaced by a view rapidly diminishing as the cam flew up. Tracer was lying on her back, among human dead. She tugged off her aeoli mask, an unthinking spasm of dying fingers. Images strobed. A great company of Ariekei, moving quite unlike the farmhands. They galloped, they swung giftwings, they trailed blood, liquid drizzled from weapons, a spray of dust. None of them spoke-they shouted wordlessly, voicing only attack-meanings, without Language.

They beheaded a minor Staff-man I'd once known a bit. I held my mouth closed. One kicked him down, gripped him with its giftwing, another swung a blade worked out of some coralline stuff. They had biorigged weapons they turned on the farm walls. One Ariekes shot our women and men with a carbine, wielding the Terre weapon with surprising precision. We saw them murder Terre without weapons at all, send jags of their own bone into human innards, or yank masks away, suffocating our people in alien wind.

Bren sped up the footage. He brought us up to live shots. Carnage was ongoing. The officers were vastly outnumbered. They were trying to reach the corvid, and were taken down. PorSha was shouting Language to the attackers. Wait, wait, no more of these actions Wait, wait, no more of these actions, they said. Please, we ask you not to do this Please, we ask you not to do this- We lost that cam, and when it came back PorSha were dead. Bren cursed.

All the speakers we had placed in the farmland started suddenly to shout, in EzCal's voice. The G.o.d-drug had found each other, here in Emba.s.sytown, and were yelling down the line. Stop! Stop! they said, and things stilled. I leaned towards the crude picture. The carnage, all the motionless Ariekei. they said, and things stilled. I leaned towards the crude picture. The carnage, all the motionless Ariekei.

"Jesus," I said at the numbers. I held up my hands. Bren said, "What are they doing?"

Stand still, the G.o.d-drug shouted across the kilometres. Come forward, stand in front of the dead Amba.s.sador Come forward, stand in front of the dead Amba.s.sador.

For seconds there was no motion. Then an Ariekes stepped out of the crowd, took careful hoof-steps into the cam's view. The others watched it. Its back, its extended fanwing, stretched open, listening to the voice from the speaker, turning into and out of the light as it listened to EzCal's voice.

There were no other fanwings in the crowd of killers.

"That's a farmer," it's said. "It's not one of them."

A large Ariekes slapped two of its companions with its giftwing and pointed at the enthralled on-comer. It arced its back to display a wound. EzCal continued to speak.

"They saw the buildings hearing, and that one," I said. "That's why they stopped. Not because they had to."

One by one at first, then countless at a time, the murder-squad of Ariekei arched their backs. I saw the quivering of scores of fanwing stubs. I heard Bren whisper, "G.o.d." The Ariekei displayed their wounds. Some made wordless sounds I'm certain were of triumph.

"They know we can see them," I said.

Following speechless giftwing-jabbed instructions from their larger comrade, self-mutilated Ariekei stood either side of the entranced farmhand, and held it. It didn't even notice. Stop what you are doing, release your grips Stop what you are doing, release your grips, we heard EzCal say. Their Language petered out. The farmer raised and opened its giftwing repeatedly, obeying the instruction not intended for it. Those it was intended for ignored it, did not hear it, kept hold of their quarry.

The big Ariekes tugged the biorigging-farmer's fanwing. I winced. It twisted. Its victim screamed doubly and tried and failed to get away. Its tormentor's giftwing moved like a human hand uprooting a plant. The fanwing wrenched free: roots of gristle and muscle parted and with a burst of blood came finally away, pulling fibres out of the quivering back, trailing them.

Fanwings are at least as sensitive as human eyes. The traumatised Ariekes opened its mouth and fell, stupefied with pain. It was dragged away. The deafener held up its grotesque dripping bouquet. It made a loud wordless noise. Triumph or rage.

EzCal were speaking again, I realised. They issued orders and were ignored.

22.

THAT WAS THE START of open war. We called it the First Farm Ma.s.sacre though it was the only one we then knew of-a horrible perspicacity. It took us days to understand what was coming. of open war. We called it the First Farm Ma.s.sacre though it was the only one we then knew of-a horrible perspicacity. It took us days to understand what was coming.

That final mutilation, by one Ariekes of another, was a recruitment. If the victim survived the shock and pain, it was made another soldier, on the enemy side. "How does it receive orders?" I said, but no one could answer me. Perhaps there were no orders, only rage stripped of language. Can they think? If they can't speak, can they think? Can they think? If they can't speak, can they think? Language for Ariekei was speech and thought at once. Language for Ariekei was speech and thought at once. Wasn't it? Wasn't it?

We didn't know whether to roll back our presence from the outlying farms or bolster it, so we tried both. More visceral pipelines blew. The pictures were the same in different settings: in a copse of trees like organs; in a dustbowl; in scree; each time a burst of flesh and a litter of ruined cargo. Our stores depleted.

Infrastructure wasn't the only thing attacked. After the Farm Ma.s.sacre the fanwingless swept into an encampment defended by other, hearing, Ariekei: this became the Cliff-Edge Incident. We had troops there with them equipped with rare out-tech, and they were able to shoot several of the attackers. But half our officers were killed by the time the marauders suddenly left, galvanised by some signal we couldn't understand. Perhaps by an empathy to tides we couldn't sense, like birds circling and become one organism.

We didn't become inured to the footage. EzCal called the committee together, and brought[image] , Pear Tree, with them. EzCal told us they were making changes in the way the city was administered, as if that might help. Cal talked about making allegiances against "bandits". I tried to listen, to understand the shape of politics now. From Bren's scorn I knew that where there wasn't anarchy or secret renegacy in the city, there were strange comprador authorities like that of , Pear Tree, with them. EzCal told us they were making changes in the way the city was administered, as if that might help. Cal talked about making allegiances against "bandits". I tried to listen, to understand the shape of politics now. From Bren's scorn I knew that where there wasn't anarchy or secret renegacy in the city, there were strange comprador authorities like that of[image] . .

We had to witness absurd joint patrols. Under EzCal's orders, our constables policed outlands beyond the city accompanied by Ariekei dragooned into militia. An Amba.s.sador had to be present, of course, to transmit instructions, on what EzCal stressed was G.o.d-drug authority. They took weapon training: career bureaucrats attempted to transform themselves.

The missions disaggregated, failed, as orders relayed by disorientated Amba.s.sadors were interpreted differently by Ariekei and Terre. The Ariekei were not even resentful, so far as I could see-and I knew now that there was such a thing as Ariekene resentment-only bewildered. The first three such patrols achieved nothing and the fourth was attacked. When we reached the site the rescue squad found our Terre people dead and their Ariekei colleagues mostly gone, inducted no doubt by brute surgery into the rebels. The joint patrols were ended.

"WHAT IF THEY don't want to fight? Even after they've had their fanwing taken? Or what if they want to fight the ones that took their fanwing?" I, traitor, was at the secret liars' club in the city, again, so Spanish Dancer's comrades could consider me. They contemplated urgently. As urgently as Bren had brought me back through the city. Spanish Dancer itself wasn't there. don't want to fight? Even after they've had their fanwing taken? Or what if they want to fight the ones that took their fanwing?" I, traitor, was at the secret liars' club in the city, again, so Spanish Dancer's comrades could consider me. They contemplated urgently. As urgently as Bren had brought me back through the city. Spanish Dancer itself wasn't there.

"A fanwing isn't just an ear," Yl said. She and Sib looked at me. "It hears, yes." "It's the mind's main doorway." "More important than sight." "Their physiology's nothing like ours." "If they've got no fanwing, they hear no sounds at all all." "And with no sound, they can't hear their own speech." "Which means an Ariekes can't speak." "So it can't speak Language."

Perhaps there was no sense of truth left for them, or thought. Those rebels must be a fractured community, without speech, if they were a community at all. Language, for the Ariekei, was truth: without it, what were they? An unsociety of psychopaths.

"So even if they didn't want to be part of the rebellion," I said, "with their fanwings taken, they're . . ."

"Insane." "Or something like it." "Maybe some don't don't take part." "Maybe they drift. Get lost." "Maybe they die." "But they're not what they were." "It's no surprise that most of them join." ". . . The bandits." YlSib smiled without humour at EzCal's absurd terminology. take part." "Maybe they drift. Get lost." "Maybe they die." "But they're not what they were." "It's no surprise that most of them join." ". . . The bandits." YlSib smiled without humour at EzCal's absurd terminology.

"They can't all have been press-ganged," I said. The key cadre of that army was surely those that had deafened themselves. That despairing, literally maddening act of revolt had perhaps been performed independently, risen up in hundreds of Ariekei; perhaps a gathering had agreed together, and in a ma.s.s act of self-inflicted agony, between EzRa's meaningless p.r.o.nouncements-because we realised these dissidents had been attacking us, if in more disorganised fashion, before the reign of G.o.d-drug II-had made themselves an organising core. There might be a room somewhere littered with rotting fanwings, the birthplace of this millennial ma.s.s.

Each trapped in itself. G.o.d knew how many of them, a strike-force of the lonely and lost. How did they move together? How did they coordinate their a.s.saults? I thought again that they must be gusted by instinct and some deep-grammar of chaos: they could not plan. Maybe each strike wasn't a careful raid but just a sharp edge of the random. I remembered, though, what had looked like interactions among the self-deafened during the First Farm Ma.s.sacre, and was perturbed.

"They've started coming into the city in squads," Sib said. It wasn't a city, just tribes of junkies and thralls where a city had been. "What they used to do was kill kill the other Ariekei." "If you've broken free from something like G.o.d-drug . . ." ". . . maybe they thought those who didn't were disgusting." But they weren't killing them now: they were recruiting. YlSib made simultaneous plucking motions, twisting imagined fanwings from their anchorings. the other Ariekei." "If you've broken free from something like G.o.d-drug . . ." ". . . maybe they thought those who didn't were disgusting." But they weren't killing them now: they were recruiting. YlSib made simultaneous plucking motions, twisting imagined fanwings from their anchorings.

I shuddered and turned it into a headshake, and told them I wanted to see Spanish Dancer, as if it was a friend. I wanted to understand it, to make sense of its strategy for emanc.i.p.ation. YlSib were pleased. They took me to the grotto under eaves fringed like fingers where the Ariekes lived. For quite a long time, we all sat silently.

A HAMLET OF HAMLET OF houses in the suburbs, gently regrowing, were taken suddenly down with biorigged weapons of serious power, crossbred from existing strains. Informer Ariekei working with the G.o.d-drug told us that something terrible was coming. houses in the suburbs, gently regrowing, were taken suddenly down with biorigged weapons of serious power, crossbred from existing strains. Informer Ariekei working with the G.o.d-drug told us that something terrible was coming.

All who live in the city and all who live in Emba.s.sytown must stand against these attackers, EzCal said, with[image] beside them. No matter how a.s.siduously the compelled Ariekei tried to obey them, those words were too nebulous to mean much. EzCal never spoke an intoxicating order making all Ariekei obey beside them. No matter how a.s.siduously the compelled Ariekei tried to obey them, those words were too nebulous to mean much. EzCal never spoke an intoxicating order making all Ariekei obey[image] : they must have been afraid of unintended consequence. : they must have been afraid of unintended consequence.

I wanted to return, as often and for as long as I could, to the liars in the city straining to meet[image] 's challenge. I was trying to learn how to get there-the route and strategies for the route-but still could only go when YlSib and Bren came with me. After that dramatic attack on the remains of the city, Spanish Dancer and the other gathered Ariekei were distressed (I recognised it). One of their number had left them. 's challenge. I was trying to learn how to get there-the route and strategies for the route-but still could only go when YlSib and Bren came with me. After that dramatic attack on the remains of the city, Spanish Dancer and the other gathered Ariekei were distressed (I recognised it). One of their number had left them.

YlSib listened. "They argued with it." "It told them . . ." "It said it was ashamed." Bad enough when the first G.o.d-drug had pushed them into trips: so much worse now they could see their tripping selves made to obey. "It . . . oh." "It plucked itself."

"No," I said.