Embassytown Part 5

By now we knew Gharda and Kayliegh and others, Staff and those close to them. I had become friends with Ehrsul. She teased me about my lack of profession (she, unlike most Emba.s.sytowners, had been au fait with the term "floaker" before I introduced it), and I teased her right back about the same thing. As autom, Ehrsul had neither rights nor tasks, but so far as it was understood an owner, a settler of some previous generation, had died intestate, and she'd never become anyone else's property. There were variants of salvage laws by which someone might theoretically have tried to claim her, but by now it would have seemed abominable.

"It's just Turingware," Scile said when she wasn't there, though he allowed that it was better such than he'd seen before. He was amused by how we related to her. I didn't like his att.i.tude, but he was as polite to her as if he did think her a person, so I didn't pick a fight with him about it. The only real interest he ever showed in Ehrsul was when it occurred to him that, because she did not breathe, she would be able to go into the city. I told him the truth: that she said to me when I asked her about it that she never did or would, that I could not say why, and, given how she'd said it, I wasn't minded to ask.

She was sometimes asked to tinker with Emba.s.sytown's artminds and automa, which would bring her into close contact with Staff: we were often at the same official soirees. I was there because I had uses, too. I'd been out more recently than any of my superiors: only a few Staff had ever left for official business to Bremen and returned. I was a source, could tell them about the recent politics and culture in Charo City.

When I'd first left Emba.s.sytown, Dad Renshaw had taken me to one side-literally, he'd steered me to the edge of the room in which I was having a farewell party. I'd waited for fatherly homilies, spurious rumours about life in the out, but what he had told me was that if I ever came back back, Emba.s.sytown would be very interested in information on the state of things in Bremen. It was so polite and matter-of-fact it took me a while to a.s.sure myself I'd been asked to spy. I was only amused, was all, at the unlikeliness. Then I was ruefully amused again when, thousands of hours later, back in Emba.s.sytown, I realised I was making myself useful just as I'd been asked to.

Scile and I would have been objects of interest whatever we did-he, an intense and fascinated outsider, was a curio; I, part of Language, and a returned immerser, a minor celebrity. But purveying facts about Bremen as I did, I, a commoner, and my commoner husband were welcomed into Staff circles even more smoothly than we would otherwise have been. Our invitations continued after Emba.s.sytown's little media stopped running interviews with and stories about the prodigal immerser.

They approached me very soon after I returned. Not Amba.s.sadors, of course, but some viziers and high-level muck-a-mucks, requesting my presence at a meeting where they said things so vague I didn't pa.r.s.e their purpose for a minute, until abruptly I remembered Dad Renshaw's intercession, and understood that the muted questions about some of the trends in Bremen and a.s.sociated powers some of the trends in Bremen and a.s.sociated powers and and possible att.i.tudes to dependencies and their aspirations possible att.i.tudes to dependencies and their aspirations were requests for political intelligence. And that they were offering payment. were requests for political intelligence. And that they were offering payment.

That last seemed silly. I took no money for telling them what little I could. I waved into silence someone's diplomatic explanations of their political concerns: it didn't matter. I showed them newspipes, downloads, gave them perhaps a tiny sense of the balance of power in Bremen's ruling Cosmopolitan Democratic party. Bremen's wars, interventions and exigencies had never fascinated me, but perhaps to those more focused on them, what I told them might give insights into recent vicissitudes. Honestly I doubt any of it was stuff their artminds and a.n.a.lysts wouldn't have predicted or guessed.

It was hardly high espionage drama. A few days later I was introduced to Wyatt, then Bremen's new man in Emba.s.sytown, whom my Staff interlocutors had mentioned to me in obliquely warning fas.h.i.+on. He immediately teased me about that earlier meeting. He asked if I had a camera in his bedroom, or something like that. I laughed. I liked it when we crossed paths. He gave me a personal number.

It was in circles such as this, Emba.s.sytown society, that I met Amba.s.sador CalVin and became their lover. One of the things they did for me was give Scile an opportunity to meet the Hosts.

CalVin were tall, grey-skinned men, a little older than me, with a certain playfulness, and the charming arrogance of the best Amba.s.sadors. They invited me, and, at my request, Scile, to functions, and would come in turn into the town with us, where an Amba.s.sador walking the streets without a Staff retinue was uncommon enough to attract attention.

"Amba.s.sador," Scile worked up courage to ask them, at first cautiously, "I have a question about your . . . exchanges with the Hosts." And then into some minutely specific, arcane enquiry. CalVin, earning at that time my grat.i.tude, were patient, though their answers were doubtless disappointing.

In CalVin's company I saw, heard and intuited details about aspects of Emba.s.sytown life I never otherwise would have. I picked up on my lovers' momentary references, hints and asides. They wouldn't always answer me when I pressed them-they might say something about colleagues gone astray, or Ariekene factions, and then refuse to elaborate-but I learnt even just from overhearing.

I asked them about Bren. "I don't see him often," I said. "He doesn't seem to come to gatherings."

"I'd forgotten you've a connection with him," CalVin said, both eyeing me, though in slightly different ways. "No, Bren's rather self-exiled. Not that he'd ever leave leave, you understand." "That wouldn't fit with what he thinks he is, to the rest of us." "And he had the chance. He could could have left." "After he was cleaved." "Instead . . ." They laughed. "He's sort of our licensed misery." "He knows most of what goes on. And further afield, too-he knows things he really shouldn't." "You couldn't call him loyal. But he's useful." "But you really couldn't call him loyal, anymore, if he ever was." Scile listened avidly to them. have left." "After he was cleaved." "Instead . . ." They laughed. "He's sort of our licensed misery." "He knows most of what goes on. And further afield, too-he knows things he really shouldn't." "You couldn't call him loyal. But he's useful." "But you really couldn't call him loyal, anymore, if he ever was." Scile listened avidly to them.

"What's it like?" Scile asked me. "I mean, I've been with two people before and I'm sure you have too, but I don't think that's-"

"No, Pharoi, no. Lord, you're terrible terrible. It's not the same at all." I was adamant at the time: now I have doubts.

"Do they both concentrate on you?" he said. We giggled, he at the silly prurience, me at what felt almost like blasphemy.

"No, it's all very egalitarian. Cal, me and Vin, all in it together. Honestly, Scile, it's not like I'm the only person an Amba.s.sador's ever-"

"You're the only one I've got access to, though." By then I wasn't sure that was true. "I thought h.o.m.os.e.x isn't approved of," he said.

"Now you're just showing off," I said. "That's not what they do together. Them or any of the Amba.s.sadors. You know that. It's . . . masturbation." That was the common if scandalous description, and it made me feel like a kid to say it. "Imagine what it's like when two Amba.s.sadors get together."

Scile spent hours, many hours, listening to recordings of Ariekei speaking, watching trids and flats of encounters between them and the Amba.s.sadors. I watched him mouth things to himself and write illegible notes, one-handedly input into his dats.p.a.ce. He learnt fast. That was no surprise to me. When at last CalVin invited us to an event at which the Hosts would be present, Scile understood Language pretty much perfectly.

It was to be one of the discussions Amba.s.sadors held with Hosts every few weeks. Interworld trade might come only every few thousand hours, but it was backed by and built on exhaustive, careful negotiation. With the arrival of each immers.h.i.+p, terms agreed between Staff and Hosts (with the imprimatur of Bremen's representative) were communicated, the vessel would leave with those details and Ariekene goods and tech, returning on its next round with whatever we had promised the Ariekei in return. They were patient.

"There's a reception," one of CalVin told us. "Would you like to come?"

We were not allowed into the actual negotiations, of course. Scile regretted this. "Why do you care?" I said. "It'll be dull as h.e.l.l. Trade talks? Really? How much of this, what do you want of that . . ."

"I want to know, that's exactly it. What is it they want? Do you even know what we exchange with them?"

"Expertise, mostly. For AI and artminds and things. That they can't make . . ."

"I know, because of Language. But I'd love to hear how they relate relate to that tech, when they get hold of it." to that tech, when they get hold of it."

An Ariekes couldn't type into an artmind, of course: writing was incomprehensible to them. Oral input was no better: as far as any exopsych specialists could discern, the Hosts couldn't ken interacting with a machine. The computer would speak back to them in what we heard as flawless vernacular, but to the Ariekei, with no sentience behind them, those words were just noises.

So our designers had created computers that were eavesdroppers. We built them from the simple loudhailer- and telephone-animals the Ariekei biorigged. They could-though no one made sense of how-understand each other's voices (and those of our Amba.s.sadors) through speakers or even recorded: so long as what was or had been said had that sentience, a genuine mind speaking it, neither distance nor time degraded its compre-hensibility, its meaningness, what Scile had provocatively called the "soul". We took those little mediators and upgraded, altered and sometimes ultimately replaced them with communication tech the Hosts could not have created. We routed their voices through artminds.

The programs were designed to work between interlocutors, to create their own instructions by insinuation. The Ariekei spoke to each other as they always had, and if their conversations took certain theoretical turns, the 'ware would listen in, make calculations, alter production, perform automated tasks. Just what the Ariekei understood to be occurring was of course beyond me, but they knew, I was told, that we had given them something-they paid for it, after all.

"And what do we get?" Scile said.

CalVin indicated a chandelier above us, tugging itself with slow grace into the darker areas of the room, extruding and reabsorbing tendril-end lights. "Biorigged stuff, of course," they said. "You know that." "You've seen it in Bremen, too. A lot of our food. And some gems and bits and pieces." Like most Emba.s.sytowners I was rather vague on the details of the barters they were describing. "And gold."

They were on duty, but CalVin hosted well, that first party. Scile stood by the table of delicacies, human and Ariekene, waiting. "Fraternising with the locals, at last?" Ehrsul had come quietly up behind me. She spoke suddenly, made me start and laugh.

"He's so well behaved," I said, nodding in Scile's direction.

"Patient," she said. "But then, you don't have to be, you've already met the Hosts."

She was only pa.s.sing through, she said, supposedly on some upgrading errand. She swivelled and rolled past Scile with a whispered word, and he greeted her and watched her go. "You know what CalVin told me?" he said quietly to me. He gestured with his gla.s.s towards Ehrsul's retreating form. "She can speak it. It sounds flawless. All the Amba.s.sadors know exactly what she's saying. But if she tries it with the Hosts, they don't get a word." He met my eyes. "She's not really speaking Language at all."

He continued his effort to cover his impatience-he was, at least, not rude about it. CalVin made sure to introduce him to those Staff and Amba.s.sadors present he didn't know. And of course, finally, when they arrived, with that usual s.h.i.+ft in the room, to the Hosts.

It was the first time for thousands of hours I'd seen them so close. There were four. Three were in prime, in their third instar, and their tall outlines quivered with whiskers. The last was in finis-its dotage. Its abdomen was ma.s.sive and pendulous and its limbs spindled. It walked firmly but was mindless. Its siblings had brought it as a kind of charity. It followed them under instinct, by sight and chemical trail. It was an evolutionary strategy on Arieka shared by more than one phylum that an animal's last incarnation was as a food store for the young. They could gnaw at the nutritional swathings of its abdomen for days without killing it. Our Hosts had done so, in their early history, but they had given the practice up generations before as, we inferred, a barbarism. They mourned when their fellows entered their penultimate form, when their minds died, and respectfully shepherded the ambulatory corpses till they fell apart.

The undead thing b.u.mped the table, upsetting wine and canapes, and HenRy, LoGan, CalVin and the other Amba.s.sadors laughed politely as if at a joke.

"Please," CalVin said, and brought Scile forward, towards the honoured indigens. I could not read Scile's face. "Scile Cho Baradjian, this is Speaker-" and then in Cut and Turn at once they said the lead Host's name.

It looked down at us from its jutting coralline extrusion, each random bud studded with an eye.

"[image]," CalVin said, together. Only Amba.s.sadors could speak Host names.

Waving on a stalk-throat by its neck, its Cut-mouth terribly like human lips, the Host muttered: and at the level of our chests, where its body swelled, its Turn-mouth opened and coughed, emitting little rounded vowel sounds, tao dao thao tao dao thao.

It wore the organs of tiny animals coiled about its neck. Something wound between its stiletto feet, a companion animal. One accompanied all the Ariekei but the brain-dead old-timer. It was the size of a baby, a grub-thing with stump legs and filigree antennae, its back punctuated with holes, some ringed with inlaid metal. Its locomotion was between a scamper and a convulsion. It was a zelle, a biorigged battery-beast, into which leads and wires could be slotted, and out of which, depending on what its owner fed it, different power would flow. The Ariekene city was full of such sources.

[image]stepped forward on four legs a little like a spider's, long, too-jointed, dark-haired, and extended its wings: from its back its auditory fanwing, in many colours; from its front, from below its larger mouth, its limb of interaction and manipulation, its giftwing.

We would like to shake your giftwing with our hands, CalVin said in Language, and Scile, his face still closed to me, only pursing his lips a tiny bit, held out his hand. The Host clasped my husband's hand in a greeting that would have made no sense to it, and then it clasped mine.

So Scile saw Language spoken. He listened. He asked quick questions of CalVin between their exchanges with the Host, which they, to my surprise, put up with.

"What? Is he insinuating that you couldn't agree . . . ?"

"No, it's . . ." ". . . more complicated than that." "Hold on."

Then CalVin would speak together. "[image]," I heard them say at one point; they were saying please please.

"I got almost all of it," Scile told me afterwards. He was very excited. "They s.h.i.+ft tenses," he said. "When they mentioned the negotiations they-the Ariekei, I mean-were in present discontinuous, but then they s.h.i.+fted into the elided past-present. That's for, uh . . ." I knew what it was for, I a.s.sured him. He'd told me already. How could you not smile at him? I'd listened to him with affection, if not always with interest, over hundreds of hours.

"Does it ever occur to you that this language is impossible, Avice?" he said. "Im, poss, ih, bul. It makes no sense. They don't have polysemy. Words don't signify: they It makes no sense. They don't have polysemy. Words don't signify: they are are their referents. How can they be sentient and not have symbolic language? How do their their referents. How can they be sentient and not have symbolic language? How do their numbers numbers work? It makes no sense. And Amba.s.sadors are twins, not single people. There's work? It makes no sense. And Amba.s.sadors are twins, not single people. There's not not one mind behind Language when they speak it . . ." one mind behind Language when they speak it . . ."

"They're not twins, love," I said.

"Whatever. You're right. Clones. Doppels. The Ariekei think they're hearing one mind, but they're not." I raised one eyebrow and he said, "No they're not. It's like we can only talk to them because of a mutual misunderstanding. What we call their words aren't words: they don't, you know, signify signify. And what they call our minds aren't minds at all." He didn't laugh when I did. "You have to wonder," he said. "Don't you? What it is they do-Staff I mean-to make two people think they're one."

"Yeah but they're not not two," I said. "That's the point about Amba.s.sadors. That's where your whole theory falls down." two," I said. "That's the point about Amba.s.sadors. That's where your whole theory falls down."

"But they could have been. Should have been. So what did they do?"

Unlike monozygots', even doppels' fingerprints were moulded and made identical. On principle. Every evening and morning Amba.s.sadors corrected. Artmind microsurgery found whatever tiny marks and abrasions each half of each pair had uniquely picked up over the preceding day or night, and if they couldn't be eradicated, they were replicated in the untouched half. Scile meant that, and more. He wanted to see the children: young doppels in the creche. He could still scandalise me with stuff like that. Not that such requests got responses. He wanted to watch how they were raised.

STAFF AND A AMBa.s.sADORS went into the city regularly, but only the young or gauche would ask for details. As naughty children we hacked communications and found pictures and reports we thought were secret (that of course weren't very), that gave us insinuations of what occurred. went into the city regularly, but only the young or gauche would ask for details. As naughty children we hacked communications and found pictures and reports we thought were secret (that of course weren't very), that gave us insinuations of what occurred.

"Sometimes," CalVin told us, "they call us in for what we call moots. They chant-not words, or words we don't know." "And when they're done, one by one we take a turn, singing to them."

"What's it for?" I asked, and simultaneously CalVin replied, "We don't know," and smiled.

Everyone was in his or her best again, for another event. Very different from any previous. I wore a dress studded with oxblood jade. Scile wore a tuxedo and white rose. The flyer that came for us was a biorigged mongrel, Ariekene breed-techniques but its quasi-living interior tailored to Terre needs, and piloted by our artminds.

It had been a huge shock to us when CalVin had told us we could accompany them. This wasn't a party in the Emba.s.sy. We were going into the Host city, to a Festival of Lies.

I'd spent thousands of hours in the immer. I'd been to ports on tens of countries on tens of worlds, had even experienced that travellers' shock we floakers called the retour, when after preparations for the alterity of a new world, one walks a quite inhuman capital and stares at intricate indigens, and starts to suspect that one has been there before. Still, the night Scile and I dressed to go into the city, I was nervous as I had not been since I left Arieka.

I watched through boat windows as we flew over the ivy and roofs of my little ghetto city. I breathed out when we crossed over the zone where the architecture went from the brick and ivied wood of my youth to the polymers and biorigged flesh of the Hosts, from alley-tangles to street-a.n.a.logues of other topographies. Building-things were coming down and being replaced. Construction sites like combined slaughterhouses, puppy farms and quarries.

There were about twenty of us: five Amba.s.sadors, a handful of Staff, and we two. Scile and I smiled at each other through our masks and breathed in the exhalations of our little portable aeoli. Quickly, very quickly, we were touched down on a roof, and followed our companions out and down and into an edifice, in the city.

A complex, many-chambered place the angles of which astonished me. Everyone who had ever talked about my poise poise would have laughed to see me literally stagger backwards in that room. Walls and ceilings moved with ratcheting mechanical life like the offspring of chains and crabs. A kind Staff member steered Scile and me. Our party walked without Ariekene chaperone. I wanted to touch the walls. I could hear my heart. I heard Hosts. Suddenly we were among them. More than I'd ever seen. would have laughed to see me literally stagger backwards in that room. Walls and ceilings moved with ratcheting mechanical life like the offspring of chains and crabs. A kind Staff member steered Scile and me. Our party walked without Ariekene chaperone. I wanted to touch the walls. I could hear my heart. I heard Hosts. Suddenly we were among them. More than I'd ever seen.

The rooms were alive, cells rainbowing as we entered. Ariekei were speaking in turn, and the Amba.s.sadors sung in alien politeness. Through a swallowing corridor, several Hosts in their final instars milled in dignified mindlessness. A bridge whistled to us.

For the first time in my life I saw Host young: steaming nutrient broths effervesced with elvers. Further off was the fightcreche, where the savage little second instars played with and killed each other. In a hall crisscrossed with walkways on tendons and platforms on muscular limbs were hundreds of Ariekei, giftwings extended, fanwings pretty with inks and natural pigments, gathered for the Festival of Lies.

FOR H HOSTS, speech was thought. It was as nonsensical to them that a speaker could say, could claim, something it knew to be untrue as, to me, that I could believe something I knew to be untrue. Without Language for things that didn't exist, they could hardly think them; they were vaguer by far than dreams. What imaginaries any of them could conjure at all must be misty and trapped in their heads.

Our Amba.s.sadors, though, were human. They could lie as well in Language as in our own language, to the Hosts' unending delight. These eisteddfods of mendacity had not existed-how could they?-before we Terre came. The Festivals of Lies had occurred almost as long as Emba.s.sytown had existed: they were one of our first gifts to the Hosts. I'd heard of them, but never expected to see one.

Our Amba.s.sadors went among the hundreds of whickering Ariekei. Staff, Scile and I-we who couldn't speak here-watched. The room was punctured with ventricles: I could hear it breathing.

"They're welcoming us," Scile told me, listening to all the voices. More. "It's saying that, uh, they'll see, I think, miracles, now. He's asking our first something something to step forward. It's a compound, wait, uh . . ." He sounded tense. "Our first to step forward. It's a compound, wait, uh . . ." He sounded tense. "Our first liar liar."

"How do they make that word?" I said.

"Oh you know," he said. "Sayer-of-things-that-are-not, that sort of thing."

Furniture was extruding in the room as it self-organised into a vague amphitheatre. Amba.s.sador MayBel, elderly, stylish women, stood before an Ariekes, which raised what looked like a big fibre-trailing fungus in its giftwing. It inserted the dangles into the sockets of the zelle jigging by its legs, and the mushroom-thing made a sound and glowed quickly changing colours, cycling to a nacreous blue.

The Host spoke. "It says: 'describe it,' " Scile whispered. MayBel answered, May in the Cut, Bel the Turn voice.

The Ariekei stepped up and down, a sudden unanimity. A tense excitement. They tottered and chattered.

"What did they say?" I said. "MayBel? What did they-?"

Scile looked as if in disbelief at me. "They're saying 'It's red.' "

MayBel bowed. The Ariekene hubbub continued while Amba.s.sador LeRoy took their place. The Ariekes stroked its zelle, and the object attached to it changed shape and colour, altered into a great green teardrop. "Describe it," Scile translated again.

LeRoy glanced at each other and began. "They said: 'It's a bird,' " Scile said. The Ariekei muttered. The noun was shorthand for a local winged form, as well as meaning our Emba.s.sytown birds. LeRoy spoke again and several Ariekei shouted, out of control. "LeRoy says it's flying away," Scile said into my helmet. I swear I saw Hosts crane their eye-corals up as if the lifeless plasm might have taken off. Le and Roy spoke together again. "They say . . ." Scile frowned as he followed. "They say it's become a wheel," he said, over the strange pandemonium of the audience.

One at a time every Amba.s.sador lied. The Hosts grew boisterous in a fas.h.i.+on I'd never seen, then to my alarm seemed intoxicated, literally lie-drunk. Scile was tense. The room was whispering, echoing the furore of its inhabitants.

It was CalVin's turn. They declaimed. " 'And the walls are disappearing,' " Scile translated. " 'And the ivy of Emba.s.sytown is winding about our legs . . ." Hosts examined their limbs. ". . . and the room's turning to metal and I'm growing larger and the room and I are becoming one.' "

That's enough, I thought, and someone must have agreed, and whispered to CalVin. They bowed and stepped away.

The Ariekei slowly calmed. I thought it was over. But then, as we stared, a few Host came forward.

"It's a sport," said Cal, or Vin, who approached, sweating, as they saw my surprise. "An extreme sport," said the other. "For- oh for years now, they've been trying to mimic us." "A few are getting not-too-bad at it." I watched.

"What colour is it?" the Ariekes holding the target object asked the compet.i.tors, as it had the Terre. One by one each Host would try to lie.

Most could not. They emitted croons and clickings that were effort.

"Red," Scile translated. The bulb was red, and the speaker double-whined in what I presumed was disappointment. "Blue," said another, also truthfully; the object changed each time. "Green." "Black." Some made noises that were only noises, clicks and wheezes of failure, not words at all.

Every tiniest success was celebrated. When the object was a yellow, the Host trying to lie, an Ariekes with a scissor-shape on its fanwing, shuddered and retracted several of its eyes, gathered itself, and in its two voices said a word that would have translated as something like "yellow-beige." It was hardly a dramatic untruth, but the crowd were rapturous at it.

A group of Hosts approached us. "Avice," Cal or Vin said politely. "This is . . ." and they started to say names.

I never saw the point of these niceties between the likes of me and Ariekei. Understanding only Language-speakers to have minds, they must have thought it odd when Amba.s.sadors carefully introduced them to speechless amputated half-things. As if an Ariekes insisted on one politely saying h.e.l.lo to its battery animal.

So I thought, but it didn't turn out that way. The Ariekei shook my hand with their giftwings when CalVin asked them to. They had cool dry skin. I shut my mouth to obscure whatever emotion was rising in me (I'm still not sure what it was). The Ariekei registered something as the Amba.s.sadors told them my name. They spoke, and Scile quickly translated into my ear.

"They're saying: 'This?' " he told me. " 'This is the one?' "

Latterday, 3

THERE ARE WAYS to tell Hosts apart. There's the fingerprint-unique patterning on each fanwing (any observation of this fact was generally followed by the tedious mention of the fact that Emba.s.sytown was the only place where Terre fingerprints were to tell Hosts apart. There's the fingerprint-unique patterning on each fanwing (any observation of this fact was generally followed by the tedious mention of the fact that Emba.s.sytown was the only place where Terre fingerprints were not not all unique). There are subtleties of carapace shading, of spines on limbs, of eye-antler shape. These days I rarely bothered to pay attention, nor with a few exceptions did I learn the names of the Ariekei I met. So I couldn't say if during that first or any later visit to the city, I had previously met any of the Host delegation that joined us all those kilohours later, in Diplomacy Hall, to greet EzRa, the impossible new Amba.s.sador. all unique). There are subtleties of carapace shading, of spines on limbs, of eye-antler shape. These days I rarely bothered to pay attention, nor with a few exceptions did I learn the names of the Ariekei I met. So I couldn't say if during that first or any later visit to the city, I had previously met any of the Host delegation that joined us all those kilohours later, in Diplomacy Hall, to greet EzRa, the impossible new Amba.s.sador.

So far as I could tell all were in middle age, in their third instar, and therefore sentient. Some wore sashes indicating incomprehensible (to me) rank or predilections; some were studded with ugly little jewels where their chitin was thick. The most senior of the Amba.s.sadors, MayBel and JoaQuin, were walking them slowly through the room, giving each of them a gla.s.s of champagne-carefully rigged to be palatable to them. The Hosts held them daintily and sipped with their Cut mouths. I saw Ez watch them.