YlSib returned, scraping decaying city-stuff off their clothes. “That’s true,” Bren said. “But it’s not true that no one cares anymore. You don’t know where we’re going: your company’s been requested.”
“What?” I had not thought that this infiltration was about me, that I was a task to be fulfilled. YlSib led me to a basement-analogue and ushered me in, into the biolit presence of Ariekei. “Avice Benner Cho,” YlSib said. They spoke my names perfectly simultaneously, at the same pitch, so though it was two voices it sounded to me like one.
The room smelt of Ariekei. There were several. They were making noises, speech and mutterings of thought. One approached me out of the half-dark and spoke a greeting. YlSib told me its name. I looked at its fanwing.
“Christ,” I said. “We’ve met.”
It had been a close companion of Surl Tesh-echer, 
, surl the best liar in Ariekei history. It was the Ariekes I’d once called Spanish Dancer. “Does it remember... ?”
“Of course it remembers, Avice,” Bren said. “Why do you think you’re here?”
BREN AND YLSIB gave to the gathered Ariekei a clutch of datchips. They took them quickly, their limbs and digits betraying agitation. “Do EzCal know you’re recording them?” I said.
“I hope not,” Bren said. “You’ve seen? They’re trying to do what Ez did when he was part of EzRa—make sure we can’t build up a stock of recordings to make them redundant.”
“But you have.”
“These are just their public recitations,” he said. “They can’t stop people tapping those, and why would they? They think because it’s been said, because it’s out there, the Hosts’ve heard it, and it’s lost its thing.”
I looked one by one around the other Ariekei there. There were other patterns on other fanwings I thought I had seen before. “Some of these were in Surl Tesh-echer’s group as well,” I said. I looked at Bren. “They were its friends.”
“Yes,” Bren said.
“What they can do is lie,” Bren said. “Not that any of them’s anything like as virtuoso as Surl Tesh-echer was. It was...” He shrugged. “A harbinger. On the edge of something.”
“Your husband was right,” YlSib said. “To stop it. In his terms he was right. It was changing everything.” There was a silence. “This lot have had to carry on without it since. It’s slow.” “They do what they can.”
Every Ariekes took a datchip, each to a different part of the room. Each in similar elegant motion draped its fanwing over it. Their membranes spread. They withdrew, hunched into sculptures, made the room a drug-house. With the volume very low, they ran the sounds. Responded instantly as I watched, trembling, judders of bio-ecstasy. I could see lights of speakers through taut fanwing skin, hear the muffled chirruping of audio: the soul of EzCal, or its spurious fabricated semblance.
“How the hell can those recordings still work?” I whispered. “They’ve already been heard.”
“Not by them,” Bren said. “They wait. Bloody willpower. They fold up their wings when they know EzCal’s going to speak. They were already doing it with EzRa. They make themselves hold out. They’re trying to go longer and longer without.”
It was hard to imagine that the shuddering figures represented a resistance to the reign of god-drug. Still. “They can take these now because they didn’t take them before,” Yl said.
One by slow one the Ariekei rose. They looked at me. A strange reminiscence. We seemed to pick up where we’d left off. Spanish Dancer came up to me: its companions circled me. They said the succession of sounds in Language that were me. I had not heard myself spoken for a long time.
They said me first as a fact. There was a girl who was hurt in darkness and ate what was given her. Then they began to deploy me as a simile. We now, Spanish Dancer said, when we take what is given in god-drug’s voice, we are like the girl who was hurt in darkness and ate what was given her. The others responded.
“SURL TESH-ECHER was more than just the best liar, you know,” Bren said. “It was sort of a vanguard. It was never just about performing lies. Why would they be so interested in you, if that was all, Avice? How do lying and similes intersect?”
What other things in this world, one of the Ariekei was saying, are like the girl who was hurt in darkness and ate what was given her?
“It’s been hard,” Bren said. “They were all scattered by the war.” The war of not-enough drug. The war of Ez killed Ra. The war of the walking dead. “Now they’ve tracked each other down, they’re going to keep going. They didn’t worship Surl Tesh-echer. But it was sort of a figurehead.”
“Prophet,” Yl or Sib said.
“Why can’t you tell MagDa, and even Cal...” I said, then trailed off because of course the group in this room was a conspiracy. Striving to limit the power of the god-drug. Cal would try to sabotage it. I wished I didn’t believe that. Bren nodded, watching me think.
“Yeah,” said Bren. “Now, MagDa are different. But there’s only so much they’ll risk. They want to get out, now, and they can only see one way to do it, and that’s hanging on. They won’t risk anything else. They might even scupper it.”
“Scupper what? What are you trying to do?”
“Not me,” Bren said.
“All of you. You, you,” I said to YlSib, “these Hosts. What are you plural trying to do?” “MagDa’s way won’t work,” Bren said. “Just to stave things off. That’s why they won’t take on Cal. It’s not enough to try to keep everything going until the ship gets here. We have to change things.” While he spoke, the Ariekei moved around me like flotsam in a current, and they said the phrase I was and tried to make it into new things, to think of new things they could insist that it, I, my past, was like.
“EzCal’s not the only one we have to be careful of,” Bren said. “You have to keep this quiet.” I remembered the parting of Ariekei when Hasser had come and killed .
“You’re worried about other Ariekei,” I said.
“These speakers were dangerous before,” Bren said. “Scile was right about them, and so were their...” He shrugged and shook his head so I would know whatever phrase he used was inexact. “Ruling clique. And I don’t know where they are now, yet, but I bet EzCal have an idea. Or Cal does. They’ve done business before. Why do you think he’s so keen to get into the city?”
I’d thought Cal’s eagerness was newly visionary fervour. But back then, there in the Festival of Lies, Cal, and Pear Tree, looking at me. “Jesus Pharos.” Scile had watched too. A conspirator then, Scile would approve of EzCal now. Their priorities, like CalVin’s before them, were power and survival; Scile’s were always the city and its stasis. Those had overlapped once, but history had left Scile behind. Hence his hopeless walk.
“Cal might already have found his friends again,” Bren said. “This lot...” He indicated the room. “They were a threat once. You saw. Now...” He laughed. “Well, everything’s changed. But they might still be a threat. Different: but maybe even more. Cal might not know this group still exists. If he ever knew. But the Ariekei he worked with before do. So if he finds them, this lot here had better keep very quiet. So we have to, as well.”
“How are they a threat?” I said. “I never understood. Why are they doing this? Whatever it is they’re doing.”