Scile always wanted details of what had happened, who had said what, which Hosts had been there. "It's not fair," I told him. "You won't come with me, but you get annoyed if I can't repeat every tedious thing anyone said?"

"I wouldn't be welcome and you know it." That was true. "Why do you keep going if it's so dull?"

It was a reasonable question. The excitement with which the other similes reacted to the Host visitors, and the range, or its lack, of what they talked about when there were no Hosts there, irritated me, greatly, every time. I think I had, though, a sense that this was where things might occur, that this was important.

THERE WAS A H HOST who often accompanied Spanish Dancer. It was squatter than most, its legs gnarled, its underbelly more pendulous, as it approached old age. For some reason I forget we named it Beehive. who often accompanied Spanish Dancer. It was squatter than most, its legs gnarled, its underbelly more pendulous, as it approached old age. For some reason I forget we named it Beehive.

"I've seen it before," said Shanita. It spoke incessantly, and we listened, but it seemed a mixture of half-sentences. We could make no sense of what it said. I remembered where I knew it from: my first-ever journey into the city. It had competed at that Festival of Lies. It had been unusually able to misdescribe that untruth-target object. It had called the thing some wrong colour.

"It's a liar," I said. I was clicking my fingers. "I've seen it before too."

"Hm," said Valdik. He looked rather suspicious. "What's it saying now?" Beehive was circling, watching us, scratching at the air with its giftwing.

" 'Like this, like this,' " Ha.s.ser translated. He shook his head, I've no idea I've no idea. " 'Like, they are, similar, different, not the same, the same.' "

The Cravat wasn't the only place we met, but it was by far the most common venue. Occasionally we might get together in a restaurant near the shopping districts, or the ca.n.a.lside benches of another parlour, but only when planned in advance and only from some vague sense of propriety, of not being hidebound. The Cravat, though, was where the Hosts had come to know they might find us, and being so found was very much the point.

The similes thought of themselves as a salon of debate, but only a certain range of dissidence was permissible. Once a young man tried to engage us with arguments that turned from independence to seditionism, anti-Staffist stuff, and I had to intervene to save him from a beating.

I took him outside. "Go," I told him. A crowd of the similes were gathered, jeering, shouting at him to come back and try impugning the Amba.s.sadors one more time.

He said, "I thought they were supposed to be radicals." He looked so forlorn I wanted to give him a hug.

"That lot? Depends who you ask," I said. "Yeah, they'd be traitors according to Bremen. But they're more loyal to Staff Staff than the Staff are." than the Staff are."

Plebiscite politics were absurd in Emba.s.sytown. As if any of us could speak to Hosts! And for The Cravat crew, even ignoring the fact of Emba.s.sytown's inevitable collapse in the event of their absence, without Amba.s.sadors, who would speak these men and women so proud of being similes to the Hosts?

Latterday, 7

THE ARIEKEI didn't respond to any attempts at contact. In those incommunicado hours, I more than once considered buzzing CalVin, or Scile, to demand information: they would be more likely than anyone else I knew to have some. It wasn't the confrontation that stopped me, but the conviction that I wouldn't be able to shame or bully anything out of them. didn't respond to any attempts at contact. In those incommunicado hours, I more than once considered buzzing CalVin, or Scile, to demand information: they would be more likely than anyone else I knew to have some. It wasn't the confrontation that stopped me, but the conviction that I wouldn't be able to shame or bully anything out of them.

It was a spring in Emba.s.sytown and the chill was dissipating. From high in the Emba.s.sy I looked over the roofscape of the city, to animalships and blinking architecture. Something was changing. A colour or its lack, a motion, a palsy.

A corvid rose from an Emba.s.sy landing pad, moved through the sky to the city's airs.p.a.ce, edged from place to place, hovering, looking for somewhere to land; defeated, it returned. The Amba.s.sadors aboard must have sent messages down to the various housebodies they overflew, without response.

There were probably still plenty of Emba.s.sytowners who didn't yet know anything was wrong. The official press were loyal or inefficient. But there had been many people at that party, and stories were spreading.

THE SUN still rose, and the shops sold things, and people went to work. It was a slow catastrophe. still rose, and the shops sold things, and people went to work. It was a slow catastrophe.

I called the number Ehrsul had given me, which she had extracted from a newly and imperfectly upgraded net, which she had told me was Ez's. He-or whomever it was I'd called-didn't answer. I kept swearing, as quietly as I could make myself, and tried again, again without result.

Later I learnt that that day, in desperation, Amba.s.sadors went into the city on foot. Pairs of desperate doppels accosted the Hosts they met, speaking Language at them through the transmitters of their aeoli helmets and receiving polite non-answers, or incomprehension, or unhelpful intimations of disaster.

Someone came to my house. I opened the door and it was Ra, standing there on my threshold. I stared at him in silence for long seconds.

"You look surprised," he said.

"Understatement," I said. I stepped aside for him. Ra kept taking his buzzer out and making as if to switch it off, then leaving it on. "They trying to reach you?" I said.

"Only Wyatt," he said.

"Really? No one else? No Amba.s.sadors? You not being followed?"

"How are you?" he said. "I was thinking . . ." We sat for a long time on chairs facing each other. He looked over his shoulder, behind himself, more than once. There was nothing there but my wall.

"Where's Ez?" I said.

He shrugged. "He's gone out."

"Shouldn't you be together?" He shrugged again. "In the Emba.s.sy? Look, Ra, how did you even get out? I'd have thought they'd have you on b.l.o.o.d.y lockdown." If it had been me in charge, I would have incarcerated EzRa, to control the situation, or contain it, whatever the situation was. Perhaps they had tried. But if Ra was telling the truth, both the new Amba.s.sador had got away.

"Yeah, well," he said. "You know. Needs must. I just wanted to . . . Had to split." I had to laugh a second at that. There had to be quite a story there.

"So," I said eventually. "How do you like our little town?" He laughed in turn.

"Jesus," he said. As if he'd seen something good and unexpected. Outside, gulls sounded. They veered, headed constantly for the sea they glimpsed kilometres away, were turned back constantly by sculpted winds and aeoli breath. It was very rare that any broke out into the proper local air, and died.

"You have to help me," he said. "I need to know what's going on."

"Are you joking joking?" I said. "What do you think I know? Jesus, this is a comedy of errors. What do you think I've been trying to find out, for G.o.d's sake? Why have you you come to come to me me?"

"I've spoken to everyone I could find who was at that party-"

"Didn't try very hard, did you, if you only just got to me . . ."

"All the Staff, I mean, and other people from the Emba.s.sy. The higher-up ones wouldn't say anything to me, and the rest . . . A couple of them told me to talk to you."

"Well, I don't know why. I thought you were in the middle of it all, I thought you'd . . ."

"Whoever up there does know something, they're not telling me. Us. But these others, they just . . . They said you know people, Avice. Amba.s.sadors. And that people tell you things."

I shook my head. "That's just b.l.o.o.d.y outsider-chic," I exhaled. "You thought you could go a roundabout way, get something through me? They're just saying that because I'm immerser. And because I was sleeping with CalVin, for a while. But not for months. Local months, not Bremen months. My own d.a.m.n husband's husband's a foreigner and he knows more than me, and he won't even talk to me." I stared at him. "You seriously telling me you've got no idea what's happening? Does Wyatt know you're here?" a foreigner and he knows more than me, and he won't even talk to me." I stared at him. "You seriously telling me you've got no idea what's happening? Does Wyatt know you're here?"

"No. He helped me slip away, but . . . And neither does Ez. It's not their business." He bit his lip. "Well, officially it is, I mean . . . I just wanted . . ." After a silence, Ra met my eye. He stood. "Look," he said, all of a sudden calm. "I need to find out what's going on. Wyatt is worse than useless. Ez's trying to pull rank. We'll see how far that gets him. And I hear you might know people who know things." In that moment he seemed not like Ez's luggage, but an officer and an agent of a colonial power.

"Tell me," I said at last. "What you do do know. What's been going on. What you've heard, suspect, anything." know. What's been going on. What you've heard, suspect, anything."

The Hosts had come back. Two days of silence, and then they had been at the Emba.s.sy, a troupe of heavy presences swaying across a landing pod. "At least forty of them," he said. "Christ knows how they fit into their vessel. They were asking for me and Ez."

The way he told it, the Ariekei had barely responded to Amba.s.sadors' questions and greetings. They demanded, repeatedly and with strange rudeness, to speak to EzRa.

"I trained for this," Ra said. "I've studied them, I've studied Language. You saw the first group meet us at the party? That wasn't normal, was it? I knew it wasn't. This was the same, only more. They were . . . agitated. Talking nonsense. I was there already, but then Ez came in and then then they recognised us. Started saying: 'Please, good evening Amba.s.sador EzRa, please, please, yes.' Like that. they recognised us. Started saying: 'Please, good evening Amba.s.sador EzRa, please, please, yes.' Like that.

"Some of the others-like your friends CalVin-tried to get in our way. Telling us no. We'd said too much said too much." He shook his head. "And the Hosts are edging closer and closer. We've got nowhere to go, and they're huge. It's feeling . . . So we just . . . raised our voices and spoke Language. Ez and I. We said good evening. Told them it was an honour. And when we did-"

When they spoke the same thing happened as had before, but this time to a larger little mult.i.tude. I might have been able to track down footage or trid of the occurrence-there must have been vespcams there-but Ra told me and I could easily imagine it. The crowd of Hosts stiffening; some staggering; maybe tumbling in carapace piles. Sounds, the double-calls of Ariekene distress, becoming something unfamiliar, counterpoints. Were they swooning? Their noises went up and down in complex relation to EzRa's voice. "We tried to keep going," Ra said. "To keep talking. But in the end Ez just petered out. So I did too." When they did, the Host in front rebudded open its eyes and craned them backwards at its companions, without turning its body, and said to them: "I told you."

The Ariekei had staggered in the wood-walled stateroom, with the concrete of Emba.s.sytown beyond, and the sky dusted with birds in their air-cage. The Amba.s.sadors and Staff were left standing half to attention and bewildered.

We thought of Ariekei in terms of stuff from an antique world-we looked at our Hosts and saw insect-horse-coral-fan things. Those were chimeras of our own baggage. There they were, the Hosts, humming polyphonically in reveries that were utterly their own.

"They left. Some Amba.s.sadors were trying to stop them but short of actually getting in their way, what could they do? They were shouting at them to stay, to talk. EdGar and LoGan were screaming, JoaQuin and AgNes were . . . trying to be more persuasive. But the Hosts just marched back out. Me and Ez were saying what should we do, and CalVin and ArnOld were saying we'd done quite enough." He held his head in his hands. "Now not even MagDa'll talk to us. I haven't seen them for days. Don't you want want to know what's going on?" to know what's going on?"

"Of course," I said. "Don't be absurd."

"There was a lot of shouting."

"Who's Oratees?" I said.

"I don't know," he said. "Why?"

"CalVin and HenRy mentioned them," I said. Simmon's half-heard insight. "I think they might be who to find. I thought you might know . . ."

"You mean Oratees, or CalVin, or HenRy might be who to find?"

"I don't know," I said. ". . . Yes." I shrugged, Yes, why not? Yes, why not?

"I thought you could help," he said. "People have a lot of faith in your abilities."

"Did they tell you I can floak?" I said. "I wish I'd never told them that f.u.c.king word. They think I can do anything now. Except they don't, really: they just want the opportunity to say 'floak'."

"They're talking to the exots." Ra said. "The Amba.s.sadors have to let the Kedis and the others know something's happening. They were obviously hoping they'd have things under control, but . . ." My doorbell sounded again. "Wait," he said, but I was already up and out of the room.

I opened my door to constables and Security officers. Some were men younger than me, looking shy.

"Ms. Benner Cho?" one said. "Sorry to disturb you. I believe, uh, is Ra here?" He stumbled over the lack of honorific.

"Avice, where is he?"

I knew that voice. "MagDa?" I said. I'd not seen them behind the escort.

The Amba.s.sador pushed their way to the front. "We need to talk to them." "Urgently."

"h.e.l.lo." It was Ra, come up behind me. I didn't turn.

"Ra." I thought they'd be furious, but Mag and Da looked just relieved to see him. Emotional. "There you are." "You have to come back."

"You need protective custody protective custody, sir," an officer said. MagDa seemed exasperated by that, in fact, but they didn't interrupt. "For your safety. Until we've got things under control. Please come with us."

Ra stood up tall. The officer met his eye. Ra nodded to me, after a moment, and let them take him. I nodded back. I was vaguely disappointed in him.

When they led him away they didn't lock his hands together. They walked respectfully beside him, like what they said they were, a protective corps. It was a sort of courtesy, I suppose, though I don't think anyone with a pa.s.sing understanding of Emba.s.sytown politics wouldn't have known he was more or less under arrest. I watched him go, to join Ez, and perhaps Wyatt, in what I was sure would be scrupulously well-kept rooms, locked and guarded from the outside.

Formerly, 6

IN ITS RELIGIOUS LAWS Emba.s.sytown was a cutting from Bremen. There was no established church, but as with many smaller colonies, its founders had included a reasonable minority of faithful. The Church of G.o.d Pharotekton was as close as we came to an official congregation. Its lighthouse towers jutted through Emba.s.sytown roofs, their beacons spinning, rotating spokes of light at night. Emba.s.sytown was a cutting from Bremen. There was no established church, but as with many smaller colonies, its founders had included a reasonable minority of faithful. The Church of G.o.d Pharotekton was as close as we came to an official congregation. Its lighthouse towers jutted through Emba.s.sytown roofs, their beacons spinning, rotating spokes of light at night.

There were other congregations: tiny synagogues; temples; mosques; churches, mustering a few score regulars. A handful of ultra-orthodox in each tradition stood firm against unG.o.dly innovations, attempting to maintain religious calendars based on Bremen's thirty-seven-hour days, or according to insane nostalgia on the supposed days and seasons of Terre.

Like the Hosts, the Kedis of Emba.s.sytown had no G.o.ds: according to their professed faith the souls of their ancestors and of their unborn were united in a never-ending jealous war against them, the living, but they mostly displayed a far less bleak and embattled outlook than that theology would suggest. There were religious Shur'asi, but only dissidents: most were atheist, perhaps because apart from through accident, they didn't die and were very rarely born.

Emba.s.sytowners were free not to believe. I wasn't used to thinking about evil.

BEEHIVE'S NAME was was[image] , we gleaned from its conversations with other Hosts. I told CalVin, mangling the name with my monovoice, saying the Cut and Turn one after the other. "Can you find out when it's competing at another Festival of Lies?" I said. "It's a loyal fan of mine, and I'd like to . . . return the favour." , we gleaned from its conversations with other Hosts. I told CalVin, mangling the name with my monovoice, saying the Cut and Turn one after the other. "Can you find out when it's competing at another Festival of Lies?" I said. "It's a loyal fan of mine, and I'd like to . . . return the favour."

"You want to go . . ." ". . . to another festival?"

"Yeah. Me and another couple of the similes." It had occurred as a whim, mere curiosity about my observer, but having thought of it I could not let the idea go. When I'd mooted it to Ha.s.ser and a couple of the others, they'd been enthusiastic. "Do you think we could do that? Think you could get us in again?" It had been a while since we'd been summoned to any Languagefests, and though I was alone among them in being more intrigued by the lying than by my own deployment, the other Cravateers would hardly say no to any entry.

CalVin did pursue this, though not with the best grace. I wondered at the time why they were indulging me at all. One or the other always behaved with surliness to me. The differences in their demeanours were tiny, but I was used to Amba.s.sadors and could sense them. I thought that they were taking turns to be colder and warmer, in a variant of traditional police procedure.

In The Cravat, conversations between the Hosts illuminated disagreements. They had camps, const.i.tuted by theories and arcane politics. Some seemed to love us-of course I shouldn't use that word-as spectacle. Some rated our various merits: we called them the critics. The man who swims with the fishes is simple The man who swims with the fishes is simple, one said. The girl who ate what was given to her is like more things. The girl who ate what was given to her is like more things. Valdik laughed but wasn't happy to hear that the trope of him was trite. Beehive, which I started to call "Surl Tesh-echer", a failure closer to its name, was the guru of another group. Champion liar. Valdik laughed but wasn't happy to hear that the trope of him was trite. Beehive, which I started to call "Surl Tesh-echer", a failure closer to its name, was the guru of another group. Champion liar.

It had regular companions: Spanish Dancer; and one we called Spindle; and one Longjohn-it had a biorigged replacement hoof. Of what any of us understood it's hard to approximate what they said in Anglo-Ubiq: think of people circling an exhibit in a gallery, staring at it, from time to time uttering a single word or short phrase, like "Incomplete", or "Potential", or "Intricacies of fact and uncertainties of expression", and occasional longer opaque things.

" 'The birds circle like the girl who ate what was put in front of her,' " Ha.s.ser translated. " 'The birds are like the girl who ate what was put in front of her and are like the man who swims with fishes and are like the split stone . . .' "

The other Ariekei, those not of[image] 's party, loudly answered these garbled claims. They responded to the presence of 's party, loudly answered these garbled claims. They responded to the presence of[image] and its companions with excitement or agitation. Contrariwise, and its companions with excitement or agitation. Contrariwise,[image] , Spanish Dancer and the others didn't acknowledge the critics at all, that I could tell. We called , Spanish Dancer and the others didn't acknowledge the critics at all, that I could tell. We called[image] 's group the Professors. 's group the Professors.

[image]stretched the logic of a.n.a.logy-the birds were not not like me, having eaten the food given to me, as far as most of the other Ariekei could see. "They think it's being disrespectful when it says they are," Ha.s.ser said. He looked unhappy. like me, having eaten the food given to me, as far as most of the other Ariekei could see. "They think it's being disrespectful when it says they are," Ha.s.ser said. He looked unhappy. The birds are like the girl who ate what she was given The birds are like the girl who ate what she was given, one of the Professors said again. It stuttered as it spoke, it mangled its words, had to stop and start and try again.

AN EARLY winter day I came to The Cravat-still attending, I noted wryly-dirty with leaf-muck and cold dust from Emba.s.sytown alleys. Valdik was the only other simile there. He was uncomfortable with me, less talkative even than usual. I wondered if perhaps he'd had some bad news about his outside life, of which I knew and wanted to know nothing. We sat in silence that was not companionable. winter day I came to The Cravat-still attending, I noted wryly-dirty with leaf-muck and cold dust from Emba.s.sytown alleys. Valdik was the only other simile there. He was uncomfortable with me, less talkative even than usual. I wondered if perhaps he'd had some bad news about his outside life, of which I knew and wanted to know nothing. We sat in silence that was not companionable.

After one coffee I was ready to leave, when Shanita and Darius came in together. She was a taciturn simile I'd always sensed was a bit intimidated by me; he was frank and ingenuous, not very smart. They greeted me pleasantly enough.

"Why was Scile here?" Darius said as he sat. I was aware of Valdik sitting still and not reacting.

"Scile?" I said.

"He was here again, earlier," Darius said. "A Host was here. Being really weird. Your husband, not the Host. He walked around putting little . . ." He fingered the air for the words. "Little nuts and bolts on all the tables. Wouldn't tell me why."

"Again? Here again again?"

He had come once before when I was not there, it seemed, late at night, with three Hosts present. Darius hadn't seen it but Ha.s.ser had, and told him. That time Scile had been strangely dressed, in clothes all one colour. Shanita nodded at the anecdote. Scile had, she said, while Valdik said nothing, laid down the same objects that first time, too.

"What's that all about?" Darius said.