What’s the Deal with Ehrsul?

One of the details I first gravitated to when we started Embassytown (back when I was confused about 99% of everything instead of 95% of everything, like I am now) was Ehrsul, Avice’s automaton best friend. In the first chapters, it seems like Ehrsul is going to be a pretty big player in the novel. It’s clear that she is close to Avice – the two have a special report, and Avice makes sure to tell us that Ehrsul is smarter than the average bot. In fact, we get lots of crazy awesome details about Ehrsul’s existence. She has advanced turingware “way beyond local capabilities, and more than the equal” of anything that Avice has seen in her travels (44). Ehrsul “[isn’t] human, but [is] almost” (45). Even cooler, Ehrsul is of indeterminate age and origin. Nobody’s really sure where’s she’s from or when she was made.

Details of even more importance: Ehrsul can’t communicate with Hosts because they can’t sense a presence behind her speech. Also, she was most likely in Bren’s home when Avice first heard her simile. So, she has connections and a certain level of importance within the Embassytown elite, though we can only guess how and why she got to be in that position.

All of these details, and especially the last two, seem to suggest that Ehrsul will play an important role in Embassytown. Given that the novel is all about communication and empathy, why shouldn’t she? Her presence is an interesting wrinkle within the Hosts’ Language, and an intriguing commentary on empathy and artificial intelligence. Ehrsul can understand Language and can even use doublespeak as one being, but she fails because there is supposedly nothing behind the “door” in her mind when she speaks. The Hosts cannot empathize with her because Ehrsul is incapable of empathy. (I guess Ehrsul comforting Avice by changing forms and hugging her was sympathy, then, and not empathy — but I’m not totally sold on that.)

But Ehrsul disappears from the story. We see her only briefly after the first chapters, and in two later moments we can tell that she’s changed. She refuses to talk about the Hosts with Avice. In fact, it seems like she’s incapable of it (or maybe she’s been silenced by someone who doesn’t want her to talk about them?). Her last appearance, however, shows that the fault in her turingware likely comes from a place deeper than stubbornness or sabotage. She sounds like a typical automata, “someone brutally cognitively damaged,” and it’s heartbreaking (44). She insists (while she is talking to Spanish Dancer) that she CANNOT talk to Spanish Dancer because the Arieki will not understand her. It’s as if the idea of a Host speaking to her — being able to empathize with her, essentially — has broken her and made her an incomprehensible paradox to herself.

All in all, Ehrsul’s presence in Embassytown raises more questions than answers. I’m still not sure why Mieville doesn’t give her a larger role in the novel. I think it would have been cool to see Ehrsul travel with Avice on her journey, and to see the Arieki not only comprehend Avice’s existence, but to comprehend Ehrsul’s as well. What would they compare Ehrsul to, a single being who can speak the sounds of Language, who is different from Avice but very similar to Avice?

However, maybe Ehrsul’s reaction to Spanish Dancer shows that there is only so much an AI can comprehend about their own existence without going bananas.