Embassytown

Avice Benner Cho tells Embassytown's story across a deliberately shifting chronology. In her childhood, the small human enclave sits within the vastly larger living city of the indigenous Ariekei, called Hosts by the settlers. The colony survives through trade in Ariekene biological technology, under the distant political authority of Bremen. Human visitors breathe with the aid of aeoli and communicate with the Hosts only through specially trained Ambassador pairs. The Ariekei speak Language with two simultaneous voices, one Cut and one Turn. Hearing both from a single coherent speaker, and the truthfulness of what is said, are indispensable to their recognition of speech. Their words describe things that are true; they cannot ordinarily say an untruth. To express a simile, they must first make its literal basis real. As a girl Avice is enlisted in one such enactment, becoming the person designated in Language as the girl who was hurt in darkness and ate what was given to her. This makes her part of the Hosts' vocabulary, not a fluent speaker of Language.

Avice eventually leaves as an immerser, traveling through the immer between distant ports, and returns years later with her husband Scile, a linguist fascinated by Language and its implications for thought. She reconnects with the cleaved former Ambassador Bren, whose other half Dan has died, with her autom friend Ehrsul, and with the influential Ambassador pair CalVin, with whom she has had an intimate relationship. The Ambassadors' apparent unity conceals strained personal bonds and a political monopoly: they are the colony's indispensable interpreters, trained from childhood at considerable human cost. Scile studies the Hosts' attempts to lie, particularly the remarkable Ariekes Surl Tesh-echer and its circle. At a Festival of Lies Surl Tesh-echer, sometimes called Beehive, makes an unprecedented quick lie by declaring that before the humans came the Hosts did not speak. Soon afterward a man named Hasser kills Surl Tesh-echer and is shot dead himself. Avice later suspects a conspiracy involving conservative Hosts and people close to the Ambassadors, but the full motives and arrangements remain partly inferred.

The arrival of EzRa, a new pair appointed from Bremen rather than raised in Embassytown's Ambassador system, precipitates catastrophe. When Ez and Ra first speak to the Hosts, the Ariekei respond with shock; repeated exposure reveals that the imperfectly unified, contradictory quality of their speech is an intensely addictive stimulus. The effect is not confined to individual bodies. Ariekene buildings, machinery and the biological systems sustaining the city also respond. Increasing numbers of Hosts abandon work, nourishment and social responsibilities to obtain another dose, while the human settlement loses food, energy, trade and physical security. Initial broadcasts, recordings and attempted controls fail as supply and civic order disintegrate. Avice and Bren encounter competing responses among the Ariekei, from helpless addicts to a small movement determined to struggle toward lies and independent meaning. Scile, increasingly convinced that changing Language destroys something sacred in the Hosts, associates with those determined to stop this development.

Bren discloses an earlier incident in which an imperfect Ambassador pair elicited a limited addictive response, then speculates that some local authorities allowed EzRa to speak in hopes of discrediting Bremen's choice. These remain his conjectures. Bremen's actual intervention is explained later by its agent Wyatt: Ez is Joel Rukowsi, a specialist altered by implants and training to synchronize his brain activity with that of Ra, agent Coley Wren. The pair was designed to undermine Embassytown's exclusive control of Language and therefore its capacity to seek independence. The ultimate prize is not simply the planet's exports, but its position at the edge of an exploitable region of the immer, where Bremen wants a controlled last port for future exploration. The scheme unexpectedly produces a world-threatening drug instead of a replaceable professional diplomatic corps. When Ez kills Ra, the colony loses its source of fresh intoxicating speech, and dwindling recordings cannot sustain the addicts. Amid the collapse, Vin, one half of CalVin, dies by suicide after reading Scile's farewell letter, leaving Cal alive and profoundly changed.

The human committee's desperate experiments expose the Embassy's secret infirmary, where numerous unsuccessful or damaged prospective Ambassadors have been confined, including children. Testing seventeen imprisoned pairs fails to reproduce EzRa's voice. MagDa then authorizes the dissection of a captive Host, but the operation provides no useful cure. Embassytown fortifies itself and survives attacks from starving and addicted Ariekei. Other Hosts have escaped addiction by tearing out their fanwings, the organs essential to hearing and speaking Language. This mutilation prevents them from hearing the drug but also cuts them off from their original mode of communication. These fanwingless Ariekei, later called the Absurd, kill humans and other Hosts, forcefully mutilate some survivors to swell their ranks and assemble a vast army marching toward Embassytown. They seem unable to communicate, yet organize attacks with a precision no one can explain.

Using technology recovered from Ra, the committee implants Cal and pairs him with Ez to create EzCal. Bren believes Cal's hatred of the man associated with his brother's ruin may be a useful ingredient in the voice, but this is a hypothesis. EzCal can once again intoxicate the Ariekei, temporarily reviving the city and keeping Embassytown alive. The new arrangement is also more coercive: addicts attend to the actual content of EzCal's pronouncements and obey commands they cannot resist. Cal moves from an emergency expedient toward personal rule, installs the Host leader nicknamed Pear Tree as an allied regent and directs joint security operations. The fanwingless army destroys farms and massacres patrols; its members are immune to EzCal because they cannot hear the voice. The colonial authorities build an inadequate defense and cannot successfully negotiate with people they persist in addressing only through spoken Language.

Avice, Bren and the exile Ambassador YlSib pursue a different solution with Spanish Dancer and other former companions of Surl Tesh-echer. They discover that the Absurd have improvised communication by pointing, indicating differences and using gestures to convey meaning, although they do not initially recognize it as a language. That proves the Ariekei can separate signs from their referents without relying on the old truthful correspondence of Language, even at the terrible cost of deafening. Avice instead uses her own status as a living simile to teach hearing Ariekei the progression from being like something to being something. She also insists that human speech is genuine speech and that human individuals, unlike Ambassador pairs, speak as separate minds. As Spanish Dancer and several others begin using metaphors, their conception of Language changes irreversibly. They can hear recordings of EzCal without craving them. Two pupils, Dub and Rooftop, initially remain addicted, providing an involuntary contrast.

Avice's party flees through the countryside with a captive fanwingless soldier to reach the approaching army before EzCal's forces provoke a final massacre. An Ariekene aircraft sent against the fugitives destroys their transport and kills their ally Shonas. The survivors continue teaching and make contact through gestures between Spanish Dancer and the former prisoner. They reach the wreckage of an attempted negotiation: commanded by EzCal to make the Absurd understand, hearing Ariekei had spoken at their deaf enemies through loudspeakers, and thousands died. Near the marching army, Avice plays fresh EzCal recordings while Spanish Dancer and other newly changed Hosts remain unaffected; Dub and Rooftop visibly react with addiction. The self-deafened soldiers begin to understand that some hearing Ariekei are free from the drug, so destroying every human is not the only possible escape. The invasion halts. Over days the two Ariekene groups develop shared signs and an emerging script, while the human refugees are spared. Dub eventually changes as well, but Rooftop cannot. Baptist and Toweller return to Embassytown to lure EzCal to the negotiations by appearing to remain ordinary addicts.

When EzCal arrives, the balance of power is reversed. Representatives of the Absurd, including the formerly captive figure now called Theuth, and the New Hearing dictate the terms. The existing addicted Ariekei must survive long enough to learn metaphor, or if necessary undergo fanwing removal; the change is not a restoration of old Language but a permanent new way of thinking and communicating. Until that happens, EzCal must continue producing controlled speech as a temporary drug supply, without the commands that enabled Cal's rule. Avice makes clear that the Hosts have spared Embassytown because the human source of addiction is no longer an unavoidable threat. At the meeting Scile suddenly reappears, shoots Cal dead and attempts to attack the transformed Hosts before he is disarmed. His presumed suicide walk was, in Avice's reconstruction, a pilgrimage to the Absurd, whose victory he hoped would cleanse Arieka of the linguistic change he abhorred. He survives and is imprisoned. MagDa and the scientists have already devised additional neural boosters; Ez can be paired with other volunteers to supply the remaining addicts, so Cal's murder does not undo the peace.

In the aftermath, Spanish Dancer begins instructing larger gatherings, though only a few Ariekei change at its first public address. Over time New Ariekei and fanwingless people build overlapping forms of communication and an evolving written system. Some Hosts remain unable or unwilling to leave their original Language. Rooftop and others prepare isolated communities where their children may grow up speaking it without exposure to the addictive voices; some other addicts elect deafening. Ehrsul remains withdrawn from Avice, rejecting Spanish Dancer's direct attempts to speak with her even though the New Ariekei can now communicate with automa. Spanish Dancer also tells Avice about an otherwise unnamed addicted Host in EzCal's entourage who recognized Baptist and Toweller's plan and risked telling the sole lie of its life so that their message would reach EzCal. Spanish Dancer calls this uncelebrated act the real heroism of the war.

Embassytown faces a final political problem. Bremen's relief ship is expected with advanced weapons and replacement Ambassadors, originally intended to complete the imperial transfer of authority. The altered settlement plans to receive its crew under guard but avoid a costly confrontation. Its longer-term answer is to make itself indispensable as a frontier port run by its own inhabitants: expeditions can chart difficult immer routes and provide information no metropole yet possesses. Avice is preparing to captain an exploratory immership, with Spanish Dancer potentially serving as her first lieutenant. The voyage has not begun, and neither the colony's political future nor the fate of every Ariekene community is settled. The novel closes with Embassytown's name beginning to designate the shared, transformed city, rather than only the human enclave within it.