"Ra's coming," Ehrsul said.

"What do we call him?" I said. "What are he and Ez to each other? They're not doppels."

Wherever in the room he was, and with whom, Scile, I knew, would be as tense at the strangeness of all this as I. Ez and Ra approached each other, changing how they held themselves, getting into another mode.

How could it have happened?

All those structures in place, for all those thousands of hours, years. Emba.s.sytown years, the years I grew up with, long months named in silly nostalgia for an antique calendar, each many dozen-day weeks long. For almost an Emba.s.sytown century, since Emba.s.sytown was born, structures had been in place. Clone farms had been run; careful and unique child rearing had raised doppels into Amba.s.sadors, with the skills of governance they would need. It was all under Bremen's aegis of course: they were our home power; our public buildings all displayed clocks and calendars in Charo City time. But so far out here in the immer, everything should have been under Staff control.

CalVin once told me that Bremen's original expectations of Arieka's reserves, of luxuries and oddities and local gold, had been over-optimistic. Ariekene bioriggery was valuable, though, certainly. More elegant and functional than any of the crude chimeras or particle-spliced jiggery-pokery any Terre I knew of had ever managed, these Ariekene things were moulded from fecund plasms by the Hosts with techniques we could not merely not mimic, but that were impossible according to our sciences. Was that enough? In any case, no colony is ever wound down.

How and why had Charo City trained this impossible Amba.s.sador? I'd heard, like we all had, the story of the experiment and the freak result, the empathy reading spiking off the Stadt scale. But even if these two random friends did have such a connection, for whatever contingent psychic reason, why would they become Amba.s.sadors?

"Wyatt's excited," Ehrsul said.

"They all are." Gharda had approached, her music shift over, her instrument folded away. "Why wouldn't they be?" she said.

"Ladies and gentlemen." Augmens relayed JoaQuin's voices to hidden speakers. JoaQuin and MayBel went into encomia to their Ariekene guests. When that was done, they welcomed the new Amba.s.sador.

I'd been to comings-out when Amba.s.sadors came of age (strange, arrogant, charming young doppels greeting the crowd). But this of course was nothing like those appointments.

JoaQuin said, "This is an extraordinary time. We find ourselves with the task . . ." ". . . the enviable enviable task, the task, the strange strange task . . ." ". . . of coming up with a new kind of welcome. Perhaps some of you had heard that we have a new Amba.s.sador?" Polite laughs. "We've spent a good deal of time with them over the last few days . . ." ". . . got to know them, and they us." "These are unusual times." task . . ." ". . . of coming up with a new kind of welcome. Perhaps some of you had heard that we have a new Amba.s.sador?" Polite laughs. "We've spent a good deal of time with them over the last few days . . ." ". . . got to know them, and they us." "These are unusual times." Hear hear Hear hear, said RanDolph. "It's a privilege to be here, at an event I hope you will indulge us . . ." ". . . if we describe as history. This is an historic moment." "Ladies and gentlemen . . ." ". . . Hosts . . ." ". . . all our guests. It's our very great pleasure to welcome to Emba.s.sytown . . ." ". . . Amba.s.sador EzRa."

As the applause died, JoaQuin turned to the Hosts who stood beside them, and said our new Amba.s.sador's name accurately, in Language. "[image]," they said. The Hosts craned their eye-corals.

"Thank you, Amba.s.sador JoaQuin," Ez said. He conferred quietly with Ra. "It's a great pleasure to be here," Ez continued. He said a few standard, gracious things. I was watching the other Amba.s.sadors. Ra's self-introduction was brief, little more than his own name.

"We want to stress what an honour this is for us," Ez said. "Emba.s.sytown's one of the most important outposts of Bremen, and a vibrant community in its own right. We're more grateful than we can say for your wonderful welcome. We look forward to becoming a part of the Emba.s.sytown community, working together for its future, and working together for Bremen's." There was applause of course. Ez waited.

"We look forward to working with you," Ra said. Some Staff and Amba.s.sadors were trying to hide nervousness. Some, I thought, eagerness.

"We realise that you must have questions," Ez said. "Please don't be shy about them. We realise we're an . . . anomaly anomaly, for now . . ." He smiled. "We're happy to talk about it, though to be honest we don't really know why or how we can do what we do, either. We're a mystery to us as well as to you." The laugh he waited for and got was brief. "Now we'd like to do something we've trained very long and hard to do. We are an Amba.s.sador- I'm very proud to say that-and we have a job to do. What we would like to do is to greet our gracious Hosts." This applause seemed genuine.

The vespcams swarmed and wallscreens showed images, from scores of angles, of Ez and Ra coming together, ushered by their new colleagues toward the Hosts. The Ariekei stood in a semicircle. I've no idea what their conception was of what was happening. If nothing else, they knew that this was an Amba.s.sador and that it was called[image] . .

EzRa conferred together like any other Amba.s.sador did, whispering, preparing their words. The Hosts craned their eyes. Every Terre in the room seemed to lean in, to hold her or his breath. With great theatre, EzRa turned and spoke Language.

EZ WAS THE C CUT, Ra the Turn. They spoke well, beautifully. I had heard enough of it to tell that. Their accent was good, their timing good. Their voices were well suited. They said to the Hosts that it was an honour to meet them.[image] , they said. Good greetings. , they said. Good greetings.

That was the moment everything changed. EzRa looked at each other, smiled. Their first official p.r.o.nouncement. If it hadn't been an absurd faux pas I think we would all have clapped. I'm sure many people hadn't really thought them capable.

We were busy listening to them speak, and gauging their abilities. We didn't notice everything change. I don't think any of us at that moment noticed the reactions of the Hosts.

Part Two

FESTIVALS.

Latterday, 4

WE WERE ALL WATCHING the new Amba.s.sador. the new Amba.s.sador.

Ez hunkered down into a slightly pugnacious pose. He opened and closed his fists. I could tell he enjoyed what he was doing. He looked up at the Hosts from below a gathered brow.

Ra watched them sidelong. He pulled himself up, so tall and straight that he seemed to teeter slightly. The two of them were so absurdly distinct it was like a joke that erred in overdoing it. I was reminded of Laurel and Hardy, of Merlo and Rattleshape, of Sancho Panza and Don Quixote.

When they were done speaking, a wave of something went through all of us in Diplomacy Hall so palpably it was as if it rippled the ivy. I turned to Ehrsul and raised my eyebrows. We all knew this had been momentous, but there were perhaps a full five seconds before any of us realised that anything bad had happened.

THE H HOSTS were swaying as if they were at sea. One spasmed its giftwing and its fanwing, another kept them unnaturally still. One opened and closed its membranes several times in neurotic repet.i.tion. were swaying as if they were at sea. One spasmed its giftwing and its fanwing, another kept them unnaturally still. One opened and closed its membranes several times in neurotic repet.i.tion.

Three were plugged into their zelles by flesh skeins that bled in chemicals or energy, and by I suppose feedback the untoward behaviour of the Hosts infected their battery-beasts. The little ambulatory generators staggered, emitted sounds unlike any I'd heard them make before.

In very slow and unnerving unison, the Ariekei emerged from their trance. Their eye-corals drooped toward us, and at last focused. They straightened and unstiffened their legs, as if coming out of sleep.

EzRa were frowning. They whispered to each other, and spoke again.

Are the bodies and/or brains of our Hosts troubled by invading biological ent.i.ties or an allergic reaction to an environmental factor? they said, I later learnt. That is they said, they said, I later learnt. That is they said, Has something happened to make you suboptimal? Has something happened to make you suboptimal? They said, They said, Are you alright? Are you alright?

Their words sounded as if Ez said some stuttering poem while Ra mimicked birds. As they spoke the Ariekei jerked again, again in that ugly simultaneity, the linked zelles snapping back with them. They were lost back to their glaze. This time one made a noise, a moan from its Cut-mouth.

JoaQuin and MayBel conferred in agitation. MayBel approached the Ariekei. The Hosts came gradually again, very gradually, out of what had taken them. CalVin saw me. We stared at each other, across the room, for the first time in some time. I saw in their eyes nothing but fear.

STAFF RALLIED, Amba.s.sadors stepped in, bustled and led the Hosts away. As the Ariekei woke from whatever this was, they started declaiming, talking across each other, loud and chaotically. They were asking for the new Amba.s.sador. Where is Where is[image] ? ? they kept saying. they kept saying. Where is Where is[image] ? ? I understood enough Language to know that. I understood enough Language to know that.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, please," one of JoaQuin said. Someone from Staff must have spoken to the musicians on duty, because their playing started again. I'd not even realised they had stopped. Waiters recirculated. I saw security officers going somewhere, Simmon among them, controlled but in obvious urgency.

"Excuse us, ladies and gentlemen," JoaQuin said. "Our guests, the Hosts, have been . . ." JoaQuin paused and conferred. "There's been a small misunderstanding . . ." ". . . absolutely nothing to be concerned about . . ." I saw LoGan, CharLott, LuCy, AnDrew crowding the Hosts away. "Nothing at all important and entirely our own fault . . ." The two of them laughed. "We're rectifying things now." "There's absolutely no reason to concern yourselves!" "The party continues. Please join us in raising your gla.s.ses."

Many locals were eager to be rea.s.sured. Newcomers and temporary guests didn't know how concerned they should be. We raised our gla.s.ses.

"To the captain and crew of the immership Tolpuddle Martyrs' Response Tolpuddle Martyrs' Response . . ." said JoaQuin, ". . . to our most welcome immigrants, new citizens . . ." ". . . and above all, to Amba.s.sador EzRa. May they have a long and happy career here in Emba.s.sytown." "To EzRa!" . . ." said JoaQuin, ". . . to our most welcome immigrants, new citizens . . ." ". . . and above all, to Amba.s.sador EzRa. May they have a long and happy career here in Emba.s.sytown." "To EzRa!"

We all said it. The recipients of our toast raised their own drinks in reciprocation. They looked at the door through which the Hosts had been taken. It was to the credit of Staff that the party didn't die. Within ten minutes most people were behaving more or less as they had been before.

"What the f.u.c.k was that?" I said quietly to Gharda.

"No b.l.o.o.d.y idea," she said.

I couldn't see Scile. There were several Amba.s.sadors still in the room, along with Staff. I approached EdGar, but to my shock they turned away from me. I said their name in such a way that they couldn't pretend not to have heard, and they glanced and said, "Not now, Avice."

"You don't even know what I want," I said.

"Really, Avice." "Not now." They interspersed their words with smiles of greeting to those who pa.s.sed them.

The crowd parted a moment and as if by plan revealed Cal or Vin. He still stared right at me. I was so startled I stopped moving. I couldn't see my watcher's doppel. The party concealed him again.

Gharda reappeared, with the pilot on her arm. She saw me and hesitated, looked a query at me. I waved, by all means by all means. It mattered not at all how much more travelled I was than my city's rulers, how airily I'd given them knowledge, how eagerly they'd received it. As EdGar walked away, I was nothing. It was they and the other Amba.s.sadors who would, in closed session, decide what had happened, and what would happen now. They made law.

Formerly, 3

A LONG TIME AGO LONG TIME AGO I performed a strange unpleasant ritual in the sh.e.l.l of a restaurant. For that I was, Amba.s.sadors and Staff had occasionally told me, feted by the Ariekei in my absence. That had meant nothing until the moment in the hall, at the festival, after the lying, when the Hosts discovered who I was. I performed a strange unpleasant ritual in the sh.e.l.l of a restaurant. For that I was, Amba.s.sadors and Staff had occasionally told me, feted by the Ariekei in my absence. That had meant nothing until the moment in the hall, at the festival, after the lying, when the Hosts discovered who I was.

They spoke rapidly, craned their eye-corals. They spoke me every day, Scile told me afterwards. That was what they said to CalVin. I do not know I do not know, one Host said to CalVin, about me, how I did without her, how I thought what I needed to think. how I did without her, how I thought what I needed to think.

Her? This was the question that we called the Tallying Mystery: did the Hosts consider each Amba.s.sador one mind, double-bodied people? And if so, did they think the rest of us half-things, irrelevances, machines? A city full of the Amba.s.sadors' marionettes? When they knew me as simile, they asked for me to come back, but I was never sure if I was guest, exhibit, or something else. When we went, the Hosts took care of us, whether or not they understood that we were people.

I accepted their invitations because Scile could always come with me. A present to him, for which he was effusive, though I think he wanted to talk, to debrief, after the events more than I would. We would be ushered to the Hosts' halls. There were usually Amba.s.sadors and viziers and others there too, and these glimpses of secrets that had gone on all my life, the toing and froing of Staff in the Host city, were almost as disturbing to me as anything else that happened. I'd keep spotting Amba.s.sadors walking flesh corridors in conversation with Ariekei, places I couldn't imagine any human having a purpose.

These events, to which they had no in, were t.i.tillations to most of my friends. "A festival? Of lies?" Gharda said at a party after the first one. "The Hosts asked asked for you?" They were all gathered around me demanding to know what the city was like, and I laughed because someone said for you?" They were all gathered around me demanding to know what the city was like, and I laughed because someone said That's import! That's import! exactly as we had when we were children. exactly as we had when we were children.

My occasional presence in the city was troubling, I could tell, to the Amba.s.sadors. They didn't like seeing me there. This was their mystery. Staff debriefed me exhaustively after each of these trips, asking what I'd seen, what I'd understood.

The second time I entered the city, into another hall with a crowd of Hosts, I was left near a collection of obscure objects and anaesthetised Ariekene animals, and with four other humans, enzymatic lights bowing in the curves of their aeoli helmets. Two were Amba.s.sador LeNa, who ignored me. The other two were young men, commoners like me.

"h.e.l.lo," said one. He smiled enthusiastically and I did not smile back. "I'm Ha.s.ser: I'm an example. Davyn's a topic. You're Avice, aren't you? You're a simile."

NEITHER THIS, nor any of the other times I went in, was an event the same as the first gathering I'd attended. They were more chaotic, and, I learnt, less focused. There had for a while been a vogue among the Hosts for what were, more or less, conventions. Celebrations of Language, with broader remits than just the rare lies. They would gather as many of us necessary constructed facts as they could in one place, as many enLanguaged elements as possible-animate, inanimate, sentient and not-and come to look at us, use and theorise us, without consensus. We sat polite through wheezing, stuttering, sung arguments around and about us. I found it less compelling than the devoted lying I'd first seen.

I was lulled by the roar and whisper of the Cut- and the Turn-mouths, while Scile tried to translate. Hosts stamped back and forward, disagreeing in factions. Something like a polemic, I gathered, went on between those who thought me a useful figure of speech, and those who did not.

It was a crippled, strange debate, I think. There were those Hosts who thought something better could have been said and better thoughts therefore thought, had I only been made to do other things than I had. That I could have been a better simile for those in need of one to speak precisely; to speak about those somethings other than me that I was-they would have a.s.serted- like. But those critics of course couldn't say what those thoughts would have been, because they could not have them.

"But . . ." said Scile. He was unhappy.

"They must be in the back of their minds, those thoughts," I said. "Is that why they're angry? They've been denied them."

"Hold on," he said. "One of them's saying about you: 'It's a comparison, and . . . it is something new.' I don't understand. I don't understand."

"Alright, my love, just . . ."

"Hey," Scile whispered. "They're using the other figures of speech." He indicated our Emba.s.sytown companions, at whom the Hosts stared. He turned his head in surprise. "If I understand them . . . that man Ha.s.ser-he lied to us. He's not an example: he's a simile, like you."

Whatever the question marks over my efficacy, I must have had my uses: for the several weeks these events were in vogue, the Hosts kept bringing me back.

SOMETHING SOURED between CalVin and me. For weeks during our s.e.x I'd teased them that I could tell the difference in the way they touched me: they probably knew there was a little truth to it. When we'd first got together I'd been immaturely excited that I was between CalVin and me. For weeks during our s.e.x I'd teased them that I could tell the difference in the way they touched me: they probably knew there was a little truth to it. When we'd first got together I'd been immaturely excited that I was sleeping with an Amba.s.sador sleeping with an Amba.s.sador. But that rather performed giddiness didn't last long.

I remember the feel of them, the cool of their links in their necks, minimalist jewellery amplifying their thoughts into each other. I remember watching them touch each other-peculiar, unique erotics. Afterwards, I might grin salaciously when I distinguished them, but it was an edgy game. "Cal," I would say, pointing at one, then the other. "Vin. Cal . . . Vin." They might smile, might look away. I could sometimes, especially in the mornings, see differences. The marks of night-time-a face imprinted by a pillow, particular bags below eyes. CalVin never left long before ablutions, locking the door to the correction chamber and emerging with all those tiny differences effaced or copied.

They didn't like that I was being asked back to the conferences and conventions. But Staff would hardly turn down Host requests like that. Once one of CalVin told me in sudden fury, apropos of nothing I'd noticed, that Amba.s.sadors had no b.l.o.o.d.y power at all, that the other Staff and viziers and the rest made all the b.l.o.o.d.y decisions, that he and his doppel had less say than anyone.

I argued with them, now, sometimes. After one really unpleasant altercation I swear I did not start, Cal or Vin stayed for seconds in the doorway staring at me, with an expression I couldn't read, while his doppel walked away. Perhaps I wouldn't have liked it if they could immerse, I supposed. I doubted I would have cared, though.

"It's not the same," I said to the one still there. "You speak Language. I am it."

THERE WERE H HOSTS who favoured my simile above all others, and came to every event at which I was present. They extolled my uses, over all the allegories or rhetorical devices embedded in varying ways in men and women and other things present. "You have fans," Scile said. These were my months of simile fame. who favoured my simile above all others, and came to every event at which I was present. They extolled my uses, over all the allegories or rhetorical devices embedded in varying ways in men and women and other things present. "You have fans," Scile said. These were my months of simile fame.

I saw Ha.s.ser several other times; we would stand and wait while we were deployed in harsh arguments. There were Language dissidents, urging a reconception of what I and the other similes might have been. From the reactions of the other Hosts, this thought-experiment was in bad taste. After one such, I asked Scile if he'd heard the Hosts speak to Ha.s.ser, and if so what he was about.

Scile understood Language as well as an Amba.s.sador, but "I don't know how you b.l.o.o.d.y things work," he said. "I never see any relation between what you mean and what they're talking about, what they compare you with and use you for. So are you asking what do they think think with Ha.s.ser? I've no idea." with Ha.s.ser? I've no idea."

"That isn't what I mean."

"You mean literally literally what does he mean?" what does he mean?"

"Right. Like, foundation-fact, like I mean girl who ate . . . girl who ate . . . well, you know." well, you know."

Scile hesitated. "I'm not sure," he said, "but I think it was, is . . . what they said was it's like the boy who was opened up and closed again it's like the boy who was opened up and closed again." We stared at each other.

"Oh G.o.d," I said.

"Yes. I can't be sure, so don't . . . but, yes."

"Jesus."

In the corvid, being hauled back to Emba.s.sytown, I said to Ha.s.ser, "Why didn't you tell me you were a simile?"

"Sorry," he said. "Overheard, then?" He smiled. "It's complicated. It's something I think about a lot, being simile. But I don't know how you feel about it . . . For some of us, if you're . . . If you want to talk about this stuff," and he sounded guarded but excited, "there are a few of us who think it's important."

"Similes?" I said. "You, what, hang out?"

Well. They knew other tropes and Language moments too, of course, he explained. But it was certain of the similes in particular who had found a community with each other. I despised them instantly he told me.

"I don't know how we missed you," he said. "I know they say you, but how did the Hosts miss you for these events all this time? How did you miss us?"

"I suppose being Language was never the main thing in my life," I said. I think I accidentally showed my contempt. If I'd not learnt to immerse and hadn't got into the out, I reminded myself, I might have spent my days in the bars and halls and drink houses where these similes gathered. It must be a strange kind of life and notoriety, but it was something. I wanted to apologise for showing my sneer. I asked him what it all meant to him. After an initial guardedness, he said, "To be part of it! Language."

Latterday, 5