I said, “I don’t know what...” It was some time since I’d seen my husband. I didn’t want a scene. I bit a knuckle for a moment, stood up straighter. “He’s with CalVin, isn’t he?”
“Am I going to have to separate you two girls?” It was Ez again. He made me start. He’d extricated himself from JoaQuin’s anxious stewarding. He offered me a drink. He flexed something inside himself, and his augmens glimmered, changing the colour of his vague halo. I realised that with the help of his innard tech he might have been listening to us. I focused on him and tried not to look for Scile. Ez was shorter than me, and muscular. His hair was cut close.
“Ez, this is Ehrsul,” I said. To my astonishment he looked at her, said nothing and looked back at me. The rudeness made me gasp.
“Having a good time?” he said to me. I watched tiny lights move across his corneas. Ehrsul was moving away. I was going to go with her and blank him haughtily, but behind his back she flashed a quick display: Stay, learn.
“You’re going to have to do a lot better than that,” I said to him quietly.
“What?” He was startled. “What? Your—”
“She’s not mine,” I said. He stared at me.
“The autom? I apologise. I’m sorry.”
“It isn’t me you owe that to.” He inclined his head.
“What are you monitoring?” I said to him after a silence. “I can see your displays.”
“It’s just habit. Temperature, air impurities, ambient noise. Mostly pointless. A few other things: I worked for years in situations that... well, I got used to checking for trid, cameras, ears, that sort of thing.” I raised an eyebrow. “And I tend to run translationware as a default.”
“No!” I said. “How exciting. Now, tell me the truth. Got ’ware in your ears? Are you running a soundtrack?”
He laughed. “No,” he said. “I grew out of that. I haven’t done that for... a good week or two.”
“Why are you running translation programs? You...” I put my arm on his and looked suddenly exaggeratedly stricken. “You do speak Language, don’t you? Oh dear, there’s been a terrible misunderstanding.”
He laughed again. “Oh, I can get by in Language, that’s not it.” More seriously: “But I don’t speak any of the Shur’asi or Kedis dialects, or...”
“Oh, you won’t find exots here tonight. Apart from Mine Host, obviously.” I was surprised he didn’t know this. Embassytown was a Bremen colony, under Bremen laws that restricted our few exots to guestworker status.
“What about you?” he said. “I don’t see augmens. So you speak Language?”
For a moment I really didn’t understand what he meant. “No. I let my sockets close up. I had a few bits and pieces once. They can be useful for immersion. And also,” I said, “yes, you know, I can see how a bit to help make sense of what the Hosts say is... useful. But I’ve seen them, they’re too... It’s intrusive.”
“That’s sort of the point,” he said.
“Right, and I can put up with that if it’s any use, but Language is beyond it,” I said. “Get them, when you hear a Host speak you get a whole eyeful or earful of nonsense. Hello slash query is all well? parenthesis enquiry after suitability of timing slash insinuations of warmness sixty percent insinuations of belief that interlocutor has topic to be discussed forty percent blah blah.” I raised an eyebrow. “It was pointless.”
Ez watched me. He knew I was lying. He must have known that the notion of using translationware for Language would be, to an Embassytowner, profoundly inappropriate. Not illegal, but an appalling impertinence. I didn’t even know quite why I had said all that.
“I’ve heard of you,” he said. I waited. If EzRa were even slightly good at their job they’d have prepared something personal to say to most of the people they might meet, tonight. What Ez said next, though, astonished me. “Ra reminded me where we’d heard your name. You’re in a simile, aren’t you? And I gather you’ve been to the city? Outside Embassytown.” Someone brushed past him. He didn’t stop looking at me.
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve been there.”
“I’m sorry, I think I’ve... Sorry if I’ve... It’s not my business.”
“No, it’s just, I’m surprised.”
“Of course I’ve heard of you. We do our research, you know. There’s not many Embassytowners who’ve done what you’ve done.”
I didn’t say anything. I felt I don’t know what, to hear that I featured in the Bremen reports on Embassytown. I inclined a glass at Ez, said some goodbye, and went to find Ehrsul manoeuvring her chassis through the crowd.
“SO WHAT'S THEIR STORY?” I said. Ehrsul gave her display shoulders a shrug.
“Ez is a charmer, isn’t he?” she said. “Ra seems better but he’s shy.”
“Anything online?” She’d probably been trying to hack into data floating around.
“Not much,” she said. “It’s some kind of coup for Wyatt that they’re here. He’s crowing so hard hens everywhere are getting randy. That’s why the Staff are so tense. I decrypted the tail end of something... I’m pretty sure Staff made EzRa sit a test. I suppose, you know, it’s the first time in Christ-knows-how-long there’s been an Ambassador from the out, and they queried whether anyone who didn’t grow up speaking Language could possibly get the nuances. They must resent this appointment.”
“They’re all technically appointees too, don’t forget,” I said. It was something that rankled with Staff: on his arrival, Wyatt, like every attaché, had had to formally license all the Ambassadors to speak for Bremen. “Anyway, they can speak Language? EzRa?”
She shrugged again. “Wouldn’t be here if they’d failed,” she said.
Something happened in the room. A feeling, a moment when, conviviality notwithstanding, it was suddenly imperative to focus. It was like that every time the Hosts came into a room, as they had just come into Diplomacy Hall.
THE PARTYGOERS tried not to be rude—as if it were possible for us to be rude to them, as if the Hosts considered politesse on axes that would make any sense to us. Nonetheless, most of us kept up our chitchat and did not ogle.
An exception was the crew, who stared frankly at the Ariekei they had never seen before. Across the room I saw my helmsman and I saw the expression on his face. Once I had heard a theory. It was an attempt to make sense of the fact that no matter how travelled people are, no matter how cosmopolitan, how biotically miscegenated their homes, they can’t be insouciant at the first sight of any exot race. The theory is that we’re hardwired with the Terre biome, that every glimpse of anything not descended from that original backwater home, our bodies know we should not ever see.
Formerly, 2
I WASN'T SURE how Embassytown would be for Scile. He can’t have been the first settler from the out to be brought back by a returnee, but I’d never known others.
I’d spent a long time on ships in the immer, or in ports on planets with diurnal durations inimical to humanity’s. My return was the first time for thousands of hours that I’d been able to dispense with circadian implants and settle into actual solar rhythms. Scile and I acclimatised to the nineteen-hour Ariekene days by traditional means, spending most of our time outside.
“I warned you,” I told him. “It’s a tiny place.”
Now I remember those days with real pleasure. Still. I kept telling Scile about my sacrifice in returning to that little place—to come back from the out! to funnel back down!—but I was happier than I’d imagined I would be when I emerged from the sealed train in the aeolian zone, and breathed Embassytown smells. It felt like being a child again, though it was not. Being a child is like nothing. It’s only being. Later, when we think about it, we make it into youth.