PART
ONE:

RYDRA
WONG

. . . Here is the hub of ambiguity.
Electric spectrums splash across the street.
Equivocation knots the shadowed features
of boys who are not boys; a quirk of darkness
shrivels a full mouth to senility
or pares it to a razor-edge, pours acid
across the amber cheek . . -
... or smashes in the pelvic arch
and wells a dark clot oozing on a chest
dispelled with motion or a flare of light
that swells the lips and dribbles them with blood . . .
They say the same crowd surges up the street
and surges down again, like driftwood borne
tidewise ashore and sucked away with backwash,
only to slap into the sand again,
only to be jerked out and spun away.
Driftwood; me narrow hips, and liquid eyes,
the widefiung shoulders and the rough-cast hands,
the gray-faced jackals kneeling to their prey.
The colors disappear at break of day
when stragglers toward the west riverdocks meet
young sailors ambling shipward on the street . . .

—from Prism and Lens, M -H,

IT'S A PORT CITY.

Here fumes mst the sky, the'General thought. Indus-
trial gases flushed the evening with oranges, salmons,
purples with too much red. West, ascending and de-
scending transports, shuttling cargoes to stellarcenters
and satellites, lacerated the clouds. It's a rotten poor
city too, thought the General, turning the comer by the
garbage-strewn curb.

Since the Invasion six ruinous embargoes for months
apiece had strangled this city whose lifeline must pulse
with interstellar commerce to survive. Sequestered,
how could this city exist? Six times in twenty years he'd
asked himself that. Answer? It couldn't.

Panics, riots, burnings, twice cannibalism—

The General looked front the silhouetted loading
towers that jutted behind the rickety monorail to the
grimy buildings. The streets were smaller here, clut-
tered with transport workers, loaders, a few stellarmen
in green uniforms, and the hoard of pale, proper men
and women who managed the intricate sprawl of cus-
toms operations. They are quiet now, intent on home or
work, the General thought. Yet all of these people have
lived for two decades under the Invasion. They've
starved during the embargoes, broken windows,
looted, run screaming before fire-hoses, torn flesh from
a corpse's arm with decalcified teeth.

Who is this animal man? He asked himself the
abstract question to blur the lines of memory. It was
easier, being a general, to ask about the 'animal man'

BABEL-17

than about the woman who had sat in the middle of the
sidewalk during the last embargo holding l^er skeletal
baby by one leg, or the three scrawny teen-age girls
who had attacked him on the street with razors (—she
had hissed through brown teeth, the bar of metal glis-
tening toward his chest, "Come here. Beefsteak! Come
getme.Lunchmeat- . ."He had used karate—)orthe
blind man who had walked up the avenue screaming.      \

Pale and proper men and women now, who spoke
softly, who always hesitated before they let an expres-
sion fix their faces, with pale, proper patriotic ideas:

work for victory over the Invaders; Alona Star and Kip
Rhyak were great in "Stellar Holiday" but Ronald
Quar was the best serious actor around. They listened to
Hi Lite's music (or did they listen, wondered the Gen-
eral, during those slow dances where no one touched).
A position inCustoms was a good secure job—working
directly in Transport was probably more exciting and
fun to watch in the movies; but really, such strange

people—

Those with more intelligence and sophistication dis-
cussed Rydra Wong's poetry.

They spoke of the Invasion often, with some hundred
phrases consecrated by twenty years' repetition on
newscasts and in the papers. They referred to the em-
bargoes seldom, only by the one word.

Take any of them, take any million. Who arc they?
What do they want? What would they say if given a
chance to say anything?

Rydra Wong has become this age's voice. The Gen-
eral recalled the glib line from a hyperbolic review.
Paradoxical: a military leader with a military goal, he
was going to meet Rydra Wong now.

The street lights came on and his image glazed sud-

••¥.

BABEL-17

denly on the plate glass window of the bar. That's right,
I'm not wearing my uniform now. He saw a tall, mus-
cular man with the authority of half a century in his
craggy face. He was uncomfortable in the gray civilian
suit. Till age thirty, the physical impression he had left
with people was 'big and bumbling'. Afterwards—the
change had coincided with the Invasion—it was 'mas-
sive and authoritarian',

Had Rydra Wong come to see him at Administrative
Alliance Headquarters, he would have felt secure. But
he was in civvies, not in stellarman-green. The bar was
new to him. And she was the most famous poet in.five
explored galaxies. For the first time in a long while he
felt bumbling again.

He went inside.

And whispered, "MyGod, she's beautiful, without
even having to pick her from among the few other
women. I didn't know she was so beautiful, not from
the pictures. ...

She turned to him (as the ^gure in the mirror behind
the counter caught sight of him and turned away), stood
up from the stool, smiled.

He walked forward, took her hand, the words Good
evening, Miss Wong tumbling on his tongue till he
swallowed them unspoken. And now she was about to
speak. She wore copper lipstick, and the pupils of her
eyes were like beaten disks of copper—

"Babel-17," she said. '"I haven't solved it yet,
General Forester."

A knitted indigo dress, and her hair like fast water at
night spilling over one shoulder; he said, "That doesn't
really surprise me. Miss Wong."

Surprise, he thought. She puts her hand on the bar,
she leans back on the stool, hip moving in knitted blue,

BABEL-17

and with each movement, 1 am amazed, surprised,
bewildered. Can I be this off guard, or can she really be

that—

"But I've gotten further than you people at Military

have been able to." The gentle line of her mouth bowed

with gentler laughter.

"From what I've been led to expect of you. Miss
Wong, that doesn't surprise me either." Who is she? he
thought. He had asked the question of the abstract
population. He had asked it of his own reflected image,
He asked it of her now, thinking. No one else matters,
but I must know about her- That's important. I have to

know.

"First of all. General," she was saying, '*Babel-17

isn't a code."

His mind skidded back to the subject and arrived
teetering. "Not a code? But I thought Cryptography
had at least established—" He stopped, because he
wasn't sure what Cryptography had established, and
because he needed another moment to haul himself
down from the ledges of her high cheekbones, to retreat
from the caves of her eyes. Tightening the muscles of
his face, he marshaled his thoughts to Babel-17. The
Invasion: Babel-17 might be one key to ending this
twenty-year scourge. "You mean we've just been try-
ing to decipher a lot of nonsense?"

"It's not a code," she repeated. "It's a language."
The General frowned. "Well, whatever you call it,
code or language, we still have to figure out what it
says. As long as we don't understand it, we're a hell of
a way from where we should be." The exhaustion and
pressure of the last months homed in his belly, a secret
beast to strike the back of his tongue, harshening his
words.

BABEL-17

Her smile had left, and both hands were on the
counter. He wanted to retract the harshness. She said,
"You're not directly connected with the Cryptography
Department." The voice was even, calming.

He shook his head.

"Then let me tell you this. Basically .General Fores-
ter, there are two types of codes. In the first, letters, or
symbols that stand for letters, are shuffled and juggled
according to a pattern. In the second, letters, words, or
groups of words are replaced by other letters, symbols,
or words. A code can be one type or the other, or a
combination. But both have this in common: once you
find the key, you just plug it in and out come logical
sentences. A language, however, has its own internal
logic, its own grammar, its own way of putting
thoughts together with words that span various spectra
of meaning. There is no key you can plug in to unlock
the exact meaning. At best you can get a close approx-
imation."

"Do you mean that Babel-17 decodes into some
other language?''

"Not at all. That's the first thing I checked. We can
take a probability scan on various elements and see if
they are congruent with other language patterns, even if
these elements are in the wrong order. No. Babel-17 is
a language itself which we do not understand."

' 'I think''—General Forester tried to smile—"What
you're trying to tell me is that because it isn't a code,
but rather an alien language, we might as well give
up." If this were defeat, receiving it from her was
almost relief.

But she shook her head. "I'm afraid that's not what
I'm saying at all. Unknown languages have been de-
ciphered without translations. Linear B and Hittite for

BABEl-17
example. But if I'm to get further with Babel-17, I'll
have to know a great deal more."

The General raised his eyebrows. "What more do
'you need to know? We've given you all our samples.
When we get more, we'll certainly—"

"General, 1 have to know everything you know
about Babel-17 where you got it, when, under what
circumstances, anything that might give me a clue to
the subject matter."

"We're released all the information that we—"

"You gave me ten pages of double-spaced typewrit-
ten garble with the code name Babel-17 and asked me
what it meant. With just that I can't tell you. With
more, I might. It's that simple."

He thought: If it were that simple, if it were only that
simple, we would never have called you in about it,
Rydra Wong.

She said: "If it were that simple, if it were only that
simple, you would never have called me in about it,
General Forester."

He started, for one absurd moment convinced she
had read his mind. But of course „ she would know that.
Wouldn't she?

"General Forester, has your Cryptography Depart-
ment discovered it's a language?"

"If they have, they haven't told me."

"I'm fairly sure they don't know. I've made a few
structural inroads on the grammar. Have they done
that?"

"No."

"General, although they know a hell of a lot about
codes, they know nothing of the nature of language.
That sort of idiotic specialization is one of the reasons I
haven't worked with them for the past six years."

BABEL-17

Who is she? he thought again. A security dossier had
been handed him that morning, but he had passed it to
his aide and merely noted, later, that it had been marked
'approved'. He heard himself say, "Perhaps if you
could tell me a little about yourself. Miss Wong, I could
speak more freely with you.'' Illogical, yet he'd spoken
it with measured calm and surety. Was her expression
quizzical?

"What do you want to know?"

"What I already know is only this: your name, and
that some time ago you worked for Military Cryptog-
raphy. I know that even though you left when very
young, you had enough of a reputation so that, six years
later, the people who remembered you said
unanimously—after they had struggled with Babel-17
for a month—'Send it to Rydra Wong.' " He paused.
"And you tell me you have gotten someplace with it.
So they were right."

"Let's have drinks," she said.

The bartender drifted forward, drifted back, leaving
two small glasses of smoky green. She sipped, watch-
ing him. Her eyes, he thought, slant up like astounded
wings.

"I'm not from Earth," she said. "My father was a
Communications engineer at StellarcenterX-11-Bjust
beyond Uranus. My mother was a translator for the
Court of Outer Worlds. Until I was seven I was the
spoiled brat of the Stellarcenter. There weren't many
children. We moved rockside to Uranus-XXVlI in '52.
By the time I was twelve, I knew seven Earth languages
and could make myself understood in five extra-
terrestrial tongues. I pick up languages like most people
pick up the lyrics to popular songs. 1 lost both parents
during the second embargo."

BABEL-17

"You were on Uranus during the embargo?'*

"You know what happened?"
'l! know the Outer Planets were hit a lot harder than

the Inner."

"You don't know. But yes, they were." She drew a

breath as memory surprised her. "One drink isn't
enough to make me talk about it, though. When I came
out of the hospital, there was a chance 1 may have had

brain damage."

"Brain damage—?"
"Malnutrition you know about. Add neuro-sciatic

plague."

"1 know about plague, too."

"Anyway, 1 came to Earth to stay with an aunt and
uncle here and receive neuro-therapy. Only I didn't
need it. And I don't know whether it was psychological
or physiological, but I came out of the whole business
with total verbal recall. I'd been bordering on it all my
life so it wasn't too odd. But 1 also had perfect pitch."

'Doesn't that usually go along with lightning calcula-
tion and eidetic memory? 1 can see how all of them

would be of use to a cryptographer."

"I'm a fair mathematician, but no lightning cal-
culator. I test high on visual conception and spacial
relations—dream in technicolor and all that—but the
total recall is strictly verbal. I had already begun writ-
ing. During the summer I got a job translating with the
government, and began to bone up on codes. In a little
while 1 discovered that I had a certain—knack. I'm not
a good cryptographer. I don't have the patience to work
that hard on anything written down that I didn't write
myself. Neurotic as hell; that's another reason I gave it
up for poetry. But the ' knack' was sort of frightening.
Somehow, when 1 had too much work to do, and

10

BABEL-17

- somewhere else I really wanted to be, and was scared
my supervisor would start getting on my back, sud-
denly everything I knew about communication would
come together in my head, and it was easier to read the
thing in front of me and say what it said than to be that
scared and tired and miserable."

She glanced at her drink.

"Eventually the knack got to where I could control
it. By then I was nineteen and had a reputation as the
little girl who could crack anything. I guess it was
knowing something about language that did it, being
more facile at recognizing patterns—like distinguish-
ing grammatical order from random rearrangement by
feel, which is what I did with Babel-17."

"Why did you leave?"

"I've given you two reasons. A third is simply that
when I mastered the knack, I wanted to use it for my
own purposes. At nineteen, I quit the Military and,
well, got . . . married, and started writing seriously.
Three years later my first book came out." She shrug-
ged, smiled. "For anything after that, read the poems.
' It's all there."

"And on the worlds of five galaxies, now, people
delve your imagery and meaning for the answers to the
riddles of greatness, love, and isolation." The three
words jumped his sentence like vagabonds on a boxcar.
She was before him, and was great; here, divorced from

. the military, he felt desperately isolated and he was
desperately in—No!
That was impossible and ridiculous and too simple to

i- explain what coursed and pulsed behind his eyes, inside
his hands. "Another drink?" Automatic defense. But
she will take it for automatic politeness. Will she? The
bartender came, left.

n

BABEL-17

"The worlds of five galaxies," she repeated.
"That's so strange. I'm only twenty-six." Her eyes
fixed somewhere behind the mirror. She was only half

through her first drink.

"By the time Keats was your age, he was dead."
She shrugged. * This is an odd epoch. It takes heroes

very suddenly, very young, then drops them as

quickly."
He nodded, recalling half a dozen singers, actors,

even writers in their late teens or early twenties who had
been named genius for a year, two, three, only to
disappear. Her reputation was only a phenomenon of

three years duration.

"I'm part of my times," she said. "I'd like to

transcend my times, but the times themselves have a
good deal to do with who I am." Her hand retreated
across the mahogany from her glass.k 'You in Military,
it must be much the same." She raised her head. "Have

I given you what you want?"
He nodded. It was easier to lie with a gesture than a

word.

"Good. Now, GeneralForester, what's Babel-17?''

He looked around for the bartender, but a glow
brought his eyes back to her face—the glow was simply
her smile, but from the comer of his eye he had actually
mistaken it for a light. "Here," she said, pushing her
second drink, untouched, to him.' *I won't finish this. *'

He took it, sipped. "The Invasion, Miss Wong , . .

it's got to be involved with the Invasion."

She leaned on one arm, listening with narrowing

eyes.

"It started with a series of accidents—well, at first

they seemed like accidents. Now we're sure it's sabo-
tage. They've occurred all over the Alliance regularly

12

-"•                      BABEL-17

since December'68. Some on warships, some in Space
Navy Yards, usually involving the failure of some
important equipment. Twice, explosions have caused
the death of important officials. Several times these
'accidents' have happened in industrial plants produc-
ing essential war products."

"What connects all these 'accidents,' other than that
they touched on the war? With our economy working
this way, it would be difficult for any major industrial
accident not to affect the war."

"The thing that connects them all. Miss Wong, is
Babel-17."

He watched her finish her drink and set the glass
precisely on the wet circle.

"Just before, during, and immediately after each
accident, the area is flooded with radio exchanges back
and forth from indefinite sources; most of them only
have a carrying power of a couple of hundred yards.
But there are occasional bursts through hyperstatic
,^ channels that blanket a few lightyears. We have tran-
i: scribed the stuff during the last three 'accidents' and
;| - given it the working title Babel-17. Now. Does that tell
^ you anything you can use?"

-y. "Yes. There's a good chance you're receiving radio
^instructions for the sabotage back and forth between
^ 'whatever is directing the 'accidents'—"
;-:' 'l—But we can't find a thing!" Exasperation struck.
'I4 "There's nothing but that blasted gobbledy-gook, pip-
1|itng away at double speed! Finally someone noticed
||iE:ertain repetitions in the pattern that suggested a code.
gpryptography seemed to think it was a good lead but
couldn't crack it for a month; so they called you."
5 As he talked, he watched her think. Now she said,
^General Forester, I'd like the original monitors of

13

BABEL-17

these radio exchanges, plus a thorough report, second
by second if it's available, of those accidents timed to

the tapes."

"I don't know if—"

"If you don't have such a report, make one during
the next'accident' that occurs. If this radio garbage is a
conversation, I have to be able to follow what's being
talked about. You may not have noticed, but, in the
copy Cryptography gave me, there was no distinction
as to which voice was which. In short, what I'm work-
ing with now is a transcription of a highly technical
exchange run together without punctuation, or even

word breaks,"

"I can probably get you everything you want except

the original recordings—''

"You have to. I must make my own transcription,
carefully, and on my own equipment."

"We'll make a new one to your specifications."
She shook her head. "I have to do it myself, or I
can't promise a thing. There's the whole problem of
phonemic and allophonic distinctions. Your people
didn't even realize it was a language, so it didn't occur

to them—"

Now he interrupted her. "What sort of distinc-
tions?"

"You know the way some Orientals confuse the
sounds of R and L when they speak a Western lan-
"guage? That's because R and L in many Eastern lan-
guages are allophones, that is, considered the same
sound, written and even heard the same—just like the
th at the beginning of they and at the beginning of

theater."

"What's different about the sound of heater and

fAey?"

14

BABEL-17

"Say them again and listen. One's voiced and the
other's unvoiced. They're as distinct as V and F; only
they're allophones in English and you're used to hear-
ing them as if they were the same phoneme."

"Oh."

"But you see the problem a 'foreigner' has transcrib-
ing a language he doesn't speak; he may come out with
too many distinctions of sound, or not enough."

"How do you propose to do it?"

"By what I know about the sound systems of a lot of
other languages and by feel."

"The 'knack' again?"

She smiled. "I suppose."

She waited for him to grant approval. What wouldn't
he have granted her? For a moment he had been dis-
tracted by her voice through subtleties of sound. "Of
course, Miss Wong," he said, "you're our expert.
Come to Cryptography tomorrow and you can have
access to whatever you need."

"Thank you. General Forester. I'll bring my official
report in then."

He stood in the static beam of her smile. I must go
now, he thought desperately. Oh, let me say something
to her. "Fine, Miss Wong. I'll speak to you then."
Something more, something—

He wrenched his body away (I must turn from her)
say one thing more, thank you, be you, love you. He
walked to the door, his thoughts quieting: who is she?
^ Oh, the things that should have been said. I have been
brusque, military, efficient. But the luxuriance of
thought and word I would have given her. The door
stayed open and evening brushed blue fingers on his
eyes.

My god, he thought, as coolness struck his face, all

15

BABEL-17

that inside me and she doesn't know! 1 didn't com-
municate a thing! Somewhere in the depths the words,
not a thing, you're still safe. But stronger on the surface
was the outrage at his own silence. Didn't communi-
cate a thing at all—

Rydra stood up, her hands on the edge of the counter,
looking at the mirror. The bartender came to remove
the glasses at her fingertips. As he reached for them, he
frowned.

"Miss Wong?"

Her face was fixed.

"Miss Wong, are you—"

Her knuckles were white and as the bartender
watched, the whiteness crept along her hands till they
looked like shaking wax.

"Is there something wrong. Miss Wong?"

She snapped her face toward him. "You noticed?"
Her voice was a hoarse whisper, harsh, sarcastic,
strained. She whirled from the bar and started toward
the door, stopped once to cough, then hurried on.

16

II

"MOCKY, HELP ME'"

"Rydra?" Dr. Markus T'mwarba pushed himself
from the pillow in the darkness. Her face sprung in
smoky light above the bed. "Where are you?"

"Downstairs, Mocky- Please, I've got to talk to
you."

Her agitated features moved right, left, trying to
avoid his look. He squinched his eyes against the glare,
then opened them slowly. "Come on up."

Her face disappeared.

He waved his hand across the control board and soft
light filled the sumptuous bedroom. He shoved back
the gold quilt, stood on the fur rug, took a black silk
robe from a gnarled bronze column, and as he swung it
across his back the automatic contour wires wrapped
the panels across his chest and straightened the shoul-
ders. He brushed the induction bank in the rococo
frame again, and aluminum flaps fell back on the
sideboard. A steaming carafe and liquor decanters
rolled forward.

Another gesture started bubble chairs inflating from
the floor. As Dr. T'mwarba turned to the entrance
cabinet, it creaked, mica wings slid out, and Rydra
caught her breath.

"Coffee?" He pushed the carafe and the force-field
caught it and carried it gently toward her. "What've
you been doing?"

17

BABEL-17

"Mocky, it . . . I . . . ?"
"Drink your coffee."

She poured a cup, lifted it halfway to her mouth.
"No sedatives?"

"Creme de cacao or creme de cafe?" He held up
two small glasses. "Unless you think alcohol is cheat-
ing, too. Oh, and there's some franks and beans left
over from dinner. I had company."
She shook her head. "Just cacao."
The tiny glass followed the coffee across the beam.
"I've had a perfectly dreadful day." He folded his
hands. "No work all afternoon, dinner guests who
wanted to argue, and then deluged with calls from the
moment they left. Just got to sleep ten minutes ago."
He smiled. "How was your evening?"
"Mocky, it . . .it was terrible."
Dr. T'mwarba sipped his liqueur. "Good. Other-
wise I'd never forgive you for waking me up."

In spite of herself she smiled. "I can . . . can
always c-c-count on you for s-sympathy, Mocky."

"You can count on me for good sense and cogent
psychiatric advice. Sympathy? I'm sorry, not after
eleven-thirty. Sit down. What happened?" A final
sweep of his hand brought a chair up behind her. The
edge tapped the back of her knees and she sat. "Now
stop stuttering and talk to me. You got over that when

you were fifteen." His voice had become very gentle
and very sure.

She look another sip of coffee. "The code, you
remember the code I was working on?"

Dr. T'mwarba lowered himself to a wide leather
hammock and brushed back his white hair, still awry
from sleep. "I remember you were asked to work on

18

•••w

^

%                    BABEL-17

^something for the government. You were rather scorn-
;lul of the business."

;.'; "Yes. And. . , well, it's not the code—which is a
language, by the way—but just this evening, 1—I
talked to the General in charge. General Forester, and it
happened ... I mean again, it happened, and I
knew!"

"Knew what?"

"Just like last time, knew what he was thinking!"

"You read his mind?"

"No. No, it was just like last time! I could tell, from
what he was doing, what he was saying . . ,"

"You've tried to explain this to me before, but I still
.don't understand, unless you're talking about some sort
of telepathy."

She shook her head, shook it again.

Dr. T'mwarba locked his fingers and leaned back,
Suddenly Rydra said in an even voice;' 'Now I do have
some idea of what you're trying to say, dear, but you'll
have to put it in words yourself. That's what you were
about to say, Mocky, wasn't it?'-'

T'mwarba raised the white hedges of his eyebrows.
"Yes. It was. You say you didn't read my mind?
You've demonstrated this to me a dozen times—"

"I know what you're trying to say; and you don't
know what/'m trying to say. It's not fair!" She nearly
rose from her seat.

They said in unison: "That's why you're such a fine
poet," Rydra went on, "I know, Mocky. I have to
work things out carefully in my head and put them in
my poems so people will understand. But that's not
what I've been doing for the past ten years. You know
what I do? I listen to other people, stumbling about with

19

BABEL-17

their half thoughts and half sentences and their clumsy
feelings that they can't express, and it hurts me. So I go
home and burnish it and polish it and weld it to a
rhythmic frame, make the dull colors gleam, mute the
garish artificiality to pastels, so it doesn't hurt any
more: that's my poem. I know what they want to say,
and I say it for them."

"The voice of your age," said T'mwarba.

She said something unprintable. When she finished
there were tears starting on her lower lids. "What /
want to say, what/ want to express,/ just. . ."Again
she shook her head. "I can't say it."

"If you want to keep growing as a poet, you'll have
to."

She nodded. "Mocky, up till a year ago, 1 didn't
even realize 1 was just saying other people's ideas. I
thought they were my own."

"Every young writer who's worth anything goes
through that. That's when you leam your craft."

"And now I have things to say that are all my own.
They're not what other people have said before, put in
an original way. And they're not just violent contradic-
tions of what other people have said, which amounts to
the same thing. They're new, and I' m scared to death."

^Every young writer who becomes a mature writer
has to go through that."

"It's easy to repeat; it's hard to speak, Mocky."

"Good, if you're learning that now. Why don't you
start by telling me exactly how this . . . this business
of your understanding works?"

She was silent for five, stretching to ten seconds.
"All right. I'll try again. Just before I left the bar, I was
standing there, looking in the morror, and the bartender
came up and asked me what was wrong."

20

I

BABEL-17

"Could he sense you were upset?"

"Hedidn't 'sense' anything. He looked at my hands.
They were clenched on the edge of the bar and they
were turning white. He didn't have to be a genius to
figure out something odd was going on in my head,"

"Bartenders are pretty sensitive to that sort of signal.
It's part of their job." He finished his coffee- "Your
fingers were turning white? All right, what was this
General saying to you, or not saying to you that he
wanted to say?"

A muscle in her cheek jumped twice, and Dr.
T'mwarba thought. Should I be able to interpret that
more specifically than just her nervousness?

"He was a brisk, ramrod efficient man," she
explained, "probably unmarried, with a military
career, and all the insecurity that implies. He was in his
fifties, and feeling odd about it. He walked into the bar
where we were supposed to meet; his eyes narrowed,
then opened, his hand was resting against his leg, and
the fingers suddenly curled, then straightened, his pace
slowed as he came in, but quickened by the time he was •
three steps toward me, and he shook my hand like he
was afraid it would break."

T'mwarba's smile turned into laughter. "He fell in
love with you!"

She nodded.

"But why in the world should that upset you? I think
you should be flattered."

"Oh, I was!" She leaned forward. "I was flattered.
And I could follow the whole thing through his head.
Once, when he was trying to get his mind back on the
code, Babel-17, I said exactly what he was thinking,
just to let him know I was so close to him. I watched the
thought go by that perhaps I was reading his mind—"

21

BABEL-17

"Wait a minute. This is the part I don't understand.
How did you know exactly what he was thinking?"

She raised her hand to her jaw. "He told me here. I
said something about needing more information to
crack the language. He didn't want to give it to me. I
said I had to have it or I couldn't get any farther, it was
that simple. He raised his head just a fraction—to avoid
shaking it. If he had shaken his head, with a slight
pursing of the lips, what do you think he would have
been saying?"

Dr. T'mwarba shrugged. "That it wasn't as simple
as you thought?"

"Yes. Now he made one gesture to avoid making
that one. What does that mean?"

T'mwarba shook his head.                .„.

"He avoided the gesture because he connected its
not being that simple with my being there. So he raised
his head instead."

"Something like: If it were that simple, we wouldn't
need you," T'mwarba suggested.

"Exactly. Now, while he raised his head, there was a
slight pause halfway up. Don't you see what that
adds?"

"No."

"If it were that simple—now the pause—if only it
were that simple, we wouldn't have called you in about
it." She turned her hands up in her lap. "And I said it
back to him; then his jaw clenched—"

"In surprise?"

"—Yes. That's when he wondered for a second if I
could read his mind."

Dr. T'mwarba shook his head. "It's too exact,
Rydra. What you're describing is muscle-reading,
which can be pretty accurate, especially if you know

22

ifs'

t

BABEL-17

the logical area the person's thoughts are centered on.
But it's still too exact. Get back to why you were upset
by the business. Your modesty was offended by the
attention of this . . . uncouth stellarman?"

She came back with something neither modest nor
couth.

Dr. T'mwarba bit the inside ofhis-lip and wondered
if she saw.

"I'm not a little girl," she said. "Besides, he wasn't
thinking anything uncouth. As I said, I was flattered by
the whole thing. When I pulled my little joke, I was just
trying to let him know how much in key we were. I
thought he was charming. And if he had been able to
see as clearly as I could he would have known I had
nothing but good feeling for him. Only when he left—''

Dr. T'mwarba heard roughness work back into her
voice.

"—when he left, the last thing he thought was, *She
doesn't know; I haven't communicated a thing to
her.' "

Her eyes darkened—no, she bent slightly forward
and half dropped her upper lids so that her eyes looked
darker. He had watched that happen thousands of ti mes
since the scrawny autistic twelve year old girl had been
sent to him for neuro-therapy, which had developed
into psychotherapy, and then into friendship. This was
the first time he'd understood the mechanics of the
effect. Her precision of observation had inspired him
before to look more closely at others. Only since
therapy had officially ended had it come full circle and
made him look more closely at her. What did the
darkening signify other than change? He knew there
were myriad marks of personality about him that she
read with a microscope- Wealthy, worldly, he had

23

BABEL-17

known many people equal to her in reputation. The
reputation did not awe him. Often she did. "

' 'He thought I didn't understand. He thought nothing
had been communicated. And 1 was angry. I was hurt.
All the misunderstandings that tie the world up and
keep people apart were quivering before me at once,
waiting for me to untangle them, explain them, and 1
couldn't. 1 didn't know the words, the grammar, the
syntax. And—"

Something else was happening in her Oriental face,
and he strained to catch it. "Yes?"

•t—Babel-17."

"The language?"

"Yes. You know what I used to call my 'knack'?"

"You mean you suddenly understood the lan-
guage?"

"Well, General Forester had just told me what I had
was not a monologue, but a dialogue, which I hadn't
known before. That fit in with some other things I had
in the back of my mind. 1 realized I could tell where the
voices changed myself. And then—"

"Do you understand it?"

"1 understand some of it better than I did this after-
noon. There's something about the language itself that
scares me even more than General Forester."

Puzzlement fixed itself to T'mwarba's face. "About
the language itself?"

She nodded.

"What?"

The muscle in her cheek jumped again. "For one
thing, 1 think I know where the next accident is going to
be."

"Accident?"

"Yes. The next sabotage that the Invaders are plan-

24

BABEl-17

ning, if it is the Invaders, which I' m not sure of. But the
language itself—it's . . . it's strange."

"How?"

"Small," she said. "Tight. Close together—That
doesn't mean anything to you, does it? In a language, I
mean?"

"Compactness?" asked Dr. T'mwarba. "I would
think it's a good quality in a spoken tongue."

"Yes," and the sibilant became a breath. "Mocky,I
am scared!"

"Why?"

"Because I'm going to try to do something, and I
don't know if I can or not."

"If it's worth trying, you should be a little afraid.
What is it?"

"I decided it back in the bar, and I figured out I'd
better talk to somebody first. That usually means you.''

"Give."

"I'm going to solve this whole Babel-17 business
myself."

T'mwarba leaned his head to. the right-

"Because I have to find out who speaks this lan-
guage, where it comes from. and what it's trying to
say."

His head went left.

"Why? Well, most textbooks say language is a
mechanism for expressing thought, Mocky. But lan-
guage is thought. Thought is information given form.
The form is language. The form of this language is
. . . amazing."

"What amazes you?"

"Mocky, when you leam another tongue, you leam
the way another people see the world, the universe."

He nodded.

25

BABEL-17

"And as I see into this language, I begin to see . . .
too much."

"It sounds very poetical."

She laughed. "You always say that to me to bring me
back to earth."

"Which 1 don't have to do too often. Good poets
tend to be practical and abhor mysticism."

"Something about trying to hit reality; you figure it
out," she said. "Only, as poetry tries to touch some-
thing real, maybe this is poetical."

"All right. I still don't understand. But how do you
propose to solve the Babel-17 mystery?"

"You really want to know?" Her hands fell to her
knees. "I'm going to get a spaceship, get a crew to-
gether, and get to the scene of the next accident."

"That's right, you do have Interstellar Captain's
papers. Can you afford it?"

"The government's going to subsidize it."

"Oh, fine- But why?"

"I'm familiar with a half-dozen languages of the
Invaders. Babel-17 isn't one of them. It isn't a language
of the Alliance. I want to find out who speaks this
language—because I want to find out who, or what, in
the Universe thinks that way. Do you think I can,
Mocky?"

"Have another cup of coffee." He reached back
over his shoulder and sailed the carafe across to her
again. "That's a good question. There's a lot to con-
sider, You're not the most stable person in the world-
Managing a spaceship crew takes a special sort of
psychology which—you have. Your papers, if I re-
member, were the result of that odd—eh, marriage of
yours, a couple of years ago. But you only used an

26

BABEL-17

automatic crew. For a trip this length, won't you be
managing Transport people?"
She nodded.

"Most of my dealings have been with Customs per-
sons. You're more or less Customs."

"Both parents were Transport. I was Transport up
till the time of the Embargo."

"That's true. Suppose I say, 'yes, I think you can'?"
"I'd say, 'thanks,' and leave tomorrow."
"Suppose I said I'd like a week to check over your
psycheindices with a microscope, while you took a
vacation at my place, taught no classes, gave no public
readings, avoided cocktail parties?"
"I'd say, 'thanks.' And leave tomorrow."
He grinned. "Then why are you bothering me?"
"Because—" She shrugged. "Because tomorrow
I'm going to be busy as the devil. . . and I won't have
time to say good-bye."

' 'Oh.'' The wry ness of his grin relaxed into a smile.
And he thought about the myna bird again.

Rydra, thin, thirteen, and1' gawky, had broken
through the triple doors of the conservatory with the
new thing called laughter she had just discovered how
to make in her mouth. And he was parental proud that
the near corpse, who had been given into his charge six
months ago, was now a girl again, with boy-cropped
hair and sulks and tantrums and questions and caresses
for the two guinea pigs she had named Lump and
Lumpkin. The air-conditioning pressed back the
shrubbery to the glass wall and sun struck through
the transparent roof. She had said, "What's that,
Mocky?"

And he, smiling at her, sun-spotted in white shorts

27

BABE1.-17

and superfluous halter, said, "It's a myna bird. It'll talk
to you. Say hello."

The black eye was dead as a raisin with a pinhead of
live light jammed in the comer. The feathers glistened
and the needle beak lazed over a thick tongue. She
cocked her head as the bird head cocked, and whis-
pered, "Hello?"

Dr. T'mwarba had trained it for two weeks with
fresh-dug earthworms to surprise her. The bird looked
over its left shoulder and droned,' 'Hello, Rydra. it's a
fine day out and I'm happy."

Screaming.

As unexpected as that.

He'd thought she'd started to laugh. But her face was
contorted, she began to beat at something with her
arms, stagger backwards, fall. The scream rasped in
near collapsed lungs, choked, rasped again. He ran to
gather up her flailing, hysterical figure, while the drone
of the bird's voice undercut her wailing:' 'It's a fine day
out and I'm happy."

He'd seen acute anxiety attacks before. But this
shook him. When she could talk about it later, she
simply said—tensely, with white lips, "It frightened
me!"

Which would have been it, had the damn bird not
gotten loose three days later and flown up into the
antenna net he and Rydra had put up together for her
amateur radio stasis-crafter with which she-could listen
to the hyperstatic communications of the transport
ships in this arm of the galaxy. A wing and a leg got
caught, and it began to beat against one of the hot lines
so that you could see the sparks even in the sunlight.
"We've got to get him out of there!" Rydra had cried.
Her fingertips were over her mouth, but as she looked at

28

BABEL-17

the bird, he could see the color draining from under her
tan. "I'll take care of it, honey," he said. "You just
forget about him."

"If he hits that wire a couple of more times he'll be

dead.

But he had already started inside for the ladder.
When he came out, he stopped. She had shinned four-
fifths up the guy wire on the leaning catalpa tree that
shaded the corner of the house. Fifteen seconds later he
was watching her reach out, draw back, reach out again
toward the wild feathers. He knew damn well she
wasn't afraid of the hot line, either; she'd strung it up
herself. Sparks again. So she made up her mind and
grabbed. A minute later she was coming across the
yard, holding the rumpled bird at arm's length. Her
face looked as if it had been blown across with pow-
dered lime.

"Take it, Mocky," she said, with no voice behind
her trembling lips, "before it says something and 1 start
hollering again."

So now, thirteen years later, something else was
speaking to her, and she said she was scared. He knew
how scared she could be; he also knew with what
bravery she could face down her fears.

He said, "Good-bye. I'm glad you woke me up. I'd
be mad as a damp rooster if you hadn't come."

"The thanks is yours, Mocky," she said. "I'm still
frightened,"

29

ni

DANIL D. APPLEBY. who seldom thought of himself by
his name—he was a Customs Officer—stared at the
order through wire-framed glasses and rubbed his hand
across his crewcut red hair, "Well, it says you can, if
you want to."

"And—?"

"And it is signed by General Forester."

'Then I expect you to cooperate.'*

"But I have to approve—"

"Then you'll come along and approve on the spot. I
don't have time to send the reports in and wait for
processing."

"But there's no way—"

"Yes, there is. Come with me."

"But Miss Wong, I don't walk around Transport
town at night."

"I enjoy it. Scared?"

"Not exactly. But—"

* 'I have to get a ship and a crew by the morning. And
it's General Forester's signature. All right?"

"I suppose so."

"Then come on. I have to get my crew approved."

Insistent and protesting respectively, Rydra and the
officer left the bronze and glass building.

They waited for the monorail nearly six minutes.
When they came down, the streets were smaller, and a
continuous whine of transport ships fell across the sky.

30

BABEL-17

Warehouses and repair and supply shops, sandwiched
rickety apartments and rooming houses. A larger street
cut past, rumbling with traffic, busy loaders, stellar-
men. They passed neon entertainments, restaurants of
many worlds, bars and brothels. In the crush the Cus-
toms Officer pulled his shoulders in, walked more
quickly to keep up with Rydra's long-legged stride.

"Where do you intend to find . - . ?"

"My pilot?That's who I want to pick up first." She
stopped on the comer, shoved her hands into the
pockets of her leather pants, and looked around.

"Do you have someone in mind?"

"I'm thinking of several people. This way." They
turned on a narrower street, more cluttered, more
brightly lit.

"Where are we going? Do you know this section?"

But she laughed, slipped her arm through his, and,
pke a dancer leading without pressure, she turned him
toward an iron stairway.

"In here?"

"Have you ever been to this place before?" she
asked with an innocent eagerness that made him feel for
a moment he was escorting her.

He shook his^iead.

Up from the basement cafe black burst—a man,
ebony-skinned, with red and green jewels set into his
chest, face, arms and thighs. Moist membranes, also
Jeweled, fell from his arms, billowing on slender tines
as he hurried up the steps.

Rydra caught his shoulder. "Hey, Lome!"

"Captain Wong!" The voice was high, the white
^  teeth needle-filed. He whirled to her with extending
t sails. Pointed ears shifted forward. "What you here
i' for?"

31

BABEI.-17

"Lome, Brass is wrestling tonight?"

"You want see him? Aye, Skipper, with the Silver
Dragon, and it's an even match. Hey, I look for you on
Deneb. I buy your book too. Can't read much, but I
buy. And I no find you. Where you been a' six
months?"

"Earthside, teaching at the University. "But I'm
going out again."

"You ask Brass for pilot? You heading out Specelli
way?"

'That's right."

Lome dropped his black arm around her shoulder and
the sail cloaked her, shimmering.' 'You go out Caesar,
you call Lome for pilot, ever you do. Know Caesar—"
He screwed his face and shook his head. "Nobody
know it better."

"When I do, I will. But now it's Specelli."

"Then you do good with Brass. Work with him
before?''

"We got drunk together when we were both quaran-
tined for a week on one of the Cygnet planetoids. He
seemed to know what he was talking about."

"Talk, talk, talk," Lome derided. "Yeah, I re-
member you. Captain who talk. You go watch that son
of a dog wrestle; then you know what sort of pilot he
make."

'That's what I came to do," nodded Rydra. She..
turned to the Customs Officer, who shrank against the
iron banister. God, he thought, she's going to introduce
me. But she cocked her head with a half smile and
turned back. "I'll see you again, Lome, when I get
home."

"Yeah, yeah, you say that and say that twice. But I
no in six months see you." He laughed. "But I like

32

BABEL-17

you, lady Captain. Take me toCaesar some day, I show
you."

"When I go, you go, Lome."

A needle leer. "Go, go, you say. I got go now.
Bye-bye, lady Captain"—he bowed and touched his
head in salute—"Captain Wong." And was gone.

"You shouldn't be afraid of him," Rydra told the
Officer.

"But he's—" During his search for a word, he
wondered. How did she know? "Where in five hells
did he come from?"

"He's an Earthman. Though I believe he was born
en route from Arcturus to one of the Centauris. His
mother was a Slug. I think, if he wasn't lying about that
too. Lome tells tall tales.'f

"You mean all that getup is cosmeti surgery?"

"Um-hm." Rydra started down the stairs.

"But why the devil do they do that to themselves?
They're all so weird- That's why decent people won't
have anything to do with them."

"Sailors used to get tattoos. Besides, Lome has
nothing else to do. I doubt he's had a pilot's job in forty
years."

"He's not a good pilot? What was all that about the
Caesar nebula?"

"I'm sure he knows it. But he's at least a hundred
and twenty years old. After eighty, your reflexes start
to go, and that's the end of a pilot's career. He just
shuttle-bums from port city to port city, knows every-
thing that happens to everybody, stays good for gossip
and advice."

They entered the cafe on a ramp that swerved above
me heads of the customers drinking at bar and table
thirty feet below. Above and to the side of them, a

33

BABEL-17

fifty-foot sphere hovered like smoke, under spotlights.
Rydra looked from the globe to the Customs Officer.
"They haven't started the games yet."

"Is this where they hold those fights?"

"That's right."

"But that's supposed to be illegal!"

"Never passed the bill. After they debated, it got
shelved."

"Oh."

As they descended among the jovial transport work-
ers, the Officer blinked. Most were ordinary men and
women, but the results of cosmeti surgery were numer-
ous enough to keep his eyes leaping. "I've never been
in a place like this before!" he whispered. Amphibians
or reptilian creatures argued and laughed with griffins
and metallic-skinned sphinxes.

"Leave your clothing here?" smiled the check girl.
Her naked skin was candy green, her immense coil
piled like pink cotton. Her breasts, navel, and lips
flashed.

'*! don't believe so," the Customs Officer said
quickly.

"At least take your shoes and shirt off," Rydra said,
slipping off her blouse. "People will think you're
strange." She bent, rose and handed her sandals over
the counter. She had begun to unbuckle her waist cinch
when she caught his desperate look, smiled, and fas-
tened the buckle again.

Carefully he removed jacket, vest, shirt, and under-
shirt. He was about to untie his shoes when someone
grabbed his arm. "Hey, Customs!"

He stood up before a huge, naked man with a frown
on his pocked face like a burst in rotten rind. His only
ornaments were mechanical beetle lights that swarmed

34

BABEL-17

in patterns over his chest, shoulders, legs and arms.
"Eh, pardon me?"

"What you doing here. Customs?"

"Sir, I am not bothering you."

"And I'm not bothering you. Have a drink, Cus-
toms. I'm being friendly."

"Thank you very much, but I'd rather—"

"I'm being friendly. You're not. If you're not gonna
be friendly. Customs, I'm not gonna be friendly
either."

"Well, I'm with some—" He looked helplessly at
Rydra.

' 'Come on. Then you both have a drink. On me. Real
friendly, damn it." His other hand fell toward Rydra's
shoulder, but she caught his wrist. The fingers opened
from the many scaled stellarimeter grafted onto his
palm. "Navigator?"

He nodded, and she let the hand go, which landed.

"Why ore you so 'friendly' tonight?"

The intoxicated man shook his head. His hair was
knotted in a stubby black braid over his left ear. "I'm
just friendly with Customs here. I like you."

"Thanks. Buy us that drink and I'll buy you one
back."

As he nodded heavily, his green eyes narrowed. He
reached between her breasts and fingered up the gold
;  disk that hung from the chain around her neck. "Cap-
% tain Wong?"

She nodded.

"Better not mess with you, then." He laughed.
"Come on. Captain, and I'll buy you and Customs here
J;  something to make you happy.'' They pushed their way
| to the bar.

What was green and came in small glasses at the

35

BABEL-17

more respectable establishments, here was served in
mugs.

"Who you betting on in the Dragon-Brass skirmish,
and if you say the Dragon, I'll throw this in your face.
Joking, of course. Captain."

"I'm not betting," Rydra said. "I'm hiring. You
know Brass?"

"Was a navigator on his last trip. Got in a week
ago."

"You're friendly for the same reason he's wres-
tling?"

"You might say that."

The Customs Officer scratched his collarbone and
looked puzzled.

"Last trip Brass made went bust," Rydra explained
to him. "The crew is out of work. Brass is on exhibit
tonight." She turned again to the Navigator. "Will
there be many captains bidding for him?"

He put his tongue just under his upper lip, squinted
one eye and dropped his head. He shrugged.

"I'm the only one you've run into?"

A nod, a large swallow of liquor.

"What's your name?"

"Calli, Navigator-Two."

"Where are your One and Three?"

"Three's over there somewhere getting drunk. One
was a sweet girl namedCathyO'Higgins-She's dead."
He finished the drink and reached over for another one.

"My treat," Rydra said. "Why's she dead?"

"Ran into Invaders. Only people who ain't dead,
Brass, me and Three, and our Eye. Lost the whole
platoon, our Slug. Damn good Slug too. Captain, that
was a bad trip. The Eye, he cracked up without the Ear

36

BABEL-17

and Nose. They'd been discorporate for ten years to-
gether. Ron, Cathy and me, we'd only been tripled for a
couple of months. But even so . . ."He shook his
head. "It's bad."

"Call your Three over," Rydra said.

"Why?"

"I'm looking for a full crew."

Calli wrinkled his forehead. "We don't got no One
anymore."

"You're going to mope around here forever? Go to
the Morgue."

Calli humphed. "You gonna see my Three, you
come on."

Rydra shrugged in aquiescence, and the Customs
Officer followed behind them.

"Hey, stupid, swing around."

The kid who turned on the bar stool was maybe
nineteen. The Customs Officer thought of a snarl of
metal bands. Calli was a large, comfortable man—

"Captain Wong, this is Ron, best Three to come out
of the Solar System."     ^ ,

—But Ron was small, thin, with uncannily sharp
muscular definition: pectorals like scored metal plates
beneath drawn wax skin; stomach like ridged hosing,
"arms like braided cables. Even the facial muscles stood
at the back of the jaw and jammed against the separate
columns of his neck. He was unkempt and towheaded
and sapphire eyed, but the only cosmeti surgery evident
was the bright rose growing on his shoulder. He flung
out a quick smile and touched his forehead with a
forefinger in salute. His nails were nub-gnawed on
fingers like knotted lengths of white rope.

"Captain Wong is looking for a crew."

37

BABEl-17

Ron shifted on the stool, raising his head a little;

every other muscle in his body moved too. like snakes
under milk,

The Customs Officer saw Rydra's eyes widen. Not
understanding her reaction, he ignored it.

"Don't got no One,'* Ron said. His smile was quick
and sad again.

"Suppose I found a One for you?"

The Navigators looked at each other.

Calli turned to Rydra and rubbed the side of his nose
with his thumb." 'You know the thing about a triple like
us—"

Rydra's left hand caught her right. "Like this, you
have to be. My choice is subject to your approval, of
course."

"Well, it's pretty difficult for someone else—"

"It's impossible. But it's your choice. I just make
suggestions. But my suggestions are damn good ones.
What do you say?"

Calli's thumb moved from his nose to his earlobe. He
shrugged. "You can't make an offer much better than
that."

Rydra looked at Ron.

The kid put one foot up on the stool, hugged his
knee, and peered across his patella. "I say, let's see
who you suggest."

She nodded. "Fair."

"You know, jobs for broken triples aren't all that
common." Calli put his hand on Ron's shoulder.

"Yeah, but—"

Rydra looked up. "Let's watch the wrestling."

Along the counter people raised their heads. At the
tables, patrons released the catch in their chair arms so
that the backs swung to half recline.

38

BABEL-17

Calli's mug clinked on the counter, and Ron raised
both feet to the stool and leaned back against the bar.

"What are they looking at?" the Customs Officer
asked. "Where's everybody—" Rydra put her hand on
the back of his neck and did something so that he
laughed and swung his head up. Then he sucked a great
breath and let it out slowly.

The smoky globe, hung in the vault, was shot with
colored light. The room had gone dim. Thousands of
watts of floodlights struck the plastic surface and
gleamed on the faces below as smoke in the bright
sphere faded.

"What's going to happen?" the Customs Officer
asked. **Is that where they wrestle . . . ?"

Rydra brushed her hand over his mouth and he nearly
swallowed his tongue: but was quiet.

And the Silver Dragon came, wings working in the
smoke, silver feathers like clashed blades, scales on the
grand haunches shaking; she rippled her ten-foot body
and squirmed in the antigravity [leld, green lips leering,
silver lids batting over green orbs,. "It's a woman!"
breathed the Customs Officer.

An appreciative tattoo of finger snapping scattered
through the audience.

Smoke rolled in the globe—

"That's our Brass!" whispered Calli.

—and Brass yawned and shook his head, ivory saber
teeth glistening with spittle, muscles humped on shoul-
ders and arms; brass claws unsheathed six inches from
yellow plush paws. Bunched bands on his belly bent
above them. The barbed tail beat on the globe's wall.
His mane, sheared to prevent handholds, ran like wa-
ter.

Calli grabbed the Customs Officer's shoulder.

39

BABEI.-17

"Snap your fingers, man! That's our Brass!"

The Customs Officer, who had never been able to,
nearly broke his hand.

The globe flared red. The two pilots turned to one
another across the sphere's diameter. Voices quieted.
The Customs Officer glanced from the ceiling to the
people around him. Every other face was up. The
Navigator, Three, was hunched in a foetal knot on the
bar stool. Copper shifting; Rydra too dropped her eyes
to glance at the lean bunched arms and striated thighs of
the rose-shouldered boy.

Above, the opponents flexed and stretched, drifting.
A sudden movement from the Dragon, and Brass drew
back, then launched from the wall.

The Customs Officer grabbed something.

The two forms struck, grappled, spun against a wall
and ricocheted. People began to stamp. Arm over arm,
leg wrapped around leg, till Brass whirled loose from
her and was hurled to the upper wall of the arena.
Shaking his head, he righted. Below, alert, the Dragon
twisted and writhed, anticipation jerking her wings.
Brass leapt from the ceiling, reversed suddenly, and
caught the Dragon with his hind feet. She staggered
back, flailing. Saber teeth came together and missed-

"What are they trying to do?" the Customs Officer
whispered. "How can you tell who's winning?" He
looked down again: what he'd grabbed was Calli's
shoulder.

"When one can throw the other against the wall and
only touch the far wall himself with one limb on the
ricochet," Calli explained, not looking down, "that's a
fall."

The Silver Dragon snapped her body like bent metal
released, and Brass shot away and spread-eagled

40

BABEL-17

against the globe. But as she floated back to take the
shock on one hind leg, she lost her balance and the
second leg touched, too.

The anticipatory breath loosed in the audience. En-
couraging snapping; Brass recovered, leaped, pushed
her to the wall, but his rebound was too sharp and he,
too, staggered on three limbs.

A twist in the center again. The Dragon snarled,
stretched, shook her scales. Brass glowered, peering
with eyes like gold coins hooded, spun back quaking,
then forward.

Silver whirled beneath his shoulder blow, hit the
globe. She looked for the world as if she were trying to
climb the side. Brass rebounded lightly, caught himself
on one paw, then pushed away.

The globe flashed green, and Calli pounded the bar.
"Look at him show that tinsel bitch!"

Grappling limbs braided one another, and claw
caught claw till the stifled arms shook, broke apart.
Two more falls that went to neither side; then the Silver
Dragon came head first into Brass' chest, knocked him
back, and recovered on tail alone. Below the crowd
stamped.

"That's a foul!" Calli exclaimed, shaking the Cus-
toms Officer away. "Damn it, that's a foul!" But the
globe flashed green again. Officially the second fall
was hers.

Warily now they swam in the sphere. Twice the
Dragon feinted, and Brass jerked aside his claws or
sucked in his belly to avoid her.

"Why don't she lay off him?'' Calli demanded of the
sky.' 'She's nagging him to death. Grapple and fight!"

As if in answer. Brass sprang, again swiping her
shoulder; what would have been a perfect fall got

41

BABEL-17

messed up because the Dragon caught his arm and he
swerved off, smashing clumsily against the plastic sur-
face.

"She can't do that!" This time it was the Customs
Officer. He grabbed Calli again. "Can she do that? I
don't think they should allow—' * And he bit his tongue
because Brass swung back, hauled her from the wall,
flipped her between his legs, and as she scrambled off
the plastic, he bounced on his forearm and hovered
centrally, flexing for the crowd.

"That's it!" cried Calli. "Two out of three!"

The globe flashed green again. Snapping broke into
applause. "Did he win?" demanded the Customs Of-
ficer. "Did he win?"

"Listen! Of course he won! Hey, let's go see him.
Come on. Captain!"

Rydra had already started through the crowd. Ron
sprang behind her, and Calli, dragging the Customs
Officer, came after- A flight of black tile steps took
them into a room with couches where a few groups of
men and women stood around Condor, a great gold and
crimson creature, who was being made ready to fight
Ebony who waited alone in the comer. The arena exit
opened and Brass came in sweating.

"Hey," Calli called. "Hey, that was great, boy.
And the Captain here wants to talk to you."

Brass stretched, then dropped to all fours, a low
rumble in his chest. He shook his mane, then his gold
eyes widened in recognition. "Ca'tain Wong!" The
mouth, distended through cosmetisurgically implanted
fangs, could not deal with a plosive labial unless it was
voiced- "How you'd like me tonight?"

"Well enough to want you to pilot me through the

42

BABEL-17

Specelli." She roughed a tuft of yellow behind his ear.
"You said sometime ago you'd like to show me what
you could do."

"Yeah," Brass nodded. "I just think I'm dream-
ing." He pulled away his loin rag and swabbed his neck
and arms with the bunched cloth, then caught the Cus-
toms Officer's amazed expression. "Just cos-
metisurgery." He kept on swabbing.

"Hand him your psyche-rating," Rydra said, "and
he'll approve you."

"That means we leave tomorrow. Ca'tain?"

"At dawn."

From his belt pouch Brass drew a thin metal card.
"Here you go. Customs."

The Customs Officer scanned the runic marking. On
a metal tracing plate from his back pocket, he noted the
shift in stability index, but decided to integrate for the
exact summation later on. Practice told him it was welt
above acceptable. "Miss Wong, I mean Captain
Wong, what about their cards?" He turned to Calli and
Ron.

Ron reached behind his neck and rubbed his scapula.
"You don't worry about us till you get a Navigator-
One." The hard, adolescent face held an engaging
belligerence.

"We'll check them later," Rydra said- "We've got
more people to find first."

"You're looking for a full crew?" asked Brass.

Rydra nodded. "What about the Eye that came back
with you?"

Brass shook his head. "Lost his Ear and Nose, They
were a real close tri'le, Ca'tain. He hung around maybe
six hours before he went back to the Morgue."

43

BABEL-17

"I see. Can you recommend anyone?"

"No one in 'articular. Just hang around the Dis-
cor'orate Sector and see what turns u'."

"If you want a crew by morning, we better start
now," said Calli.

"Let's go," saidRydra.

As they walked to the ramp's foot, the Customs
Officer asked, "The Discorporate Sector?"

1 'What about it?'' Rydra was at the rear of the group.

"That's so—well, 1 don't like the idea."

Rydra laughed. "Because of the dead men? They
won't hurt you."

"And I know that's illegal, for bodily persons to be
in the Discorporate Sector."

"In certain parts," Rydra corrected, and the other
men laughed now. "We'll stay out of the illegal
sections—if we can."

"Would you like your clothes back?" the check-girl
asked.

People had been stopping to congratulate Brass,
pounding at his hip with appreciative fists and snapping
their fingers. Now he swung his contour cape over his
head. It fell to his shoulders, clasped his neck, draped
under his arms and around his thick hams. Brass waved
to the crowd and started up the ramp.

"You can really judge a pilot by watching him wres-
tle?" the officer inquired of Rydra.

She nodded. "In the ship, the pilot's nervous system
is connected directly with the controls. The whole
hyperstasis transit consists of him literally wrestling the
stasis shifts. You judge by his reflexes, his ability to
control his artificial body. An experienced Transporter
can tell exactly how he'll work with hyperstasis cur-
rents."

44

BABEL-17

"I'd heard about it, of course. But this was the first
time I've seen it- It was . . . exciting."

"Yes," Rydra said.

As they reached the ramp's head, lights again
pierced the globe. Ebony and Condor circled in the
fighting sphere.

On the sidewalk Brass dropped back, loping on all
fours, to Rydra's side. "What about a Slug and a
'latoon?"

"I'd like to get a one-trip platoon if I can."

"Why so green?"

'' I want to train them my way. The older groups tend
to be too set."

"A one-tri' grou' can be a hell of a 'roblem to dis-
ci'line. And inefficient as 'iss, so I've heard. Never
been with one myself."

' 'As long as there're no out and out nuts, I don't care.
Besides, if I want one now, I can be surer of getting one
by morning if I put my order in at Navy."

Brass nodded. "Your request in yet?"

' 'I wanted to check with my pilot first and see if you
had any preferences."

They were passing a street phone on the comer
lamppost. Rydra ducked beneath the plastic hood. A
minute later she was saying, "—a platoon for a run
toward Specelli scheduled at dawn tomorrow. I know
that it's short notice, but I don't need a particularly
seasoned group. Even a one trip will do." She looked
from under the hood and winked at them. "Fine. I'll
call later to get their psyche-indices for customs ap-
proval. Yes, I have an Officer with me. Thank you."

She came from under the hood. "Closest way to the
Discorporate Sector is through there."

45

BABEL-17

The streets narrowed about them, twisting through i
one another, deserted. Then a stretch of concrete where
metal turrets rose, crossed, and recrossed. Wires
webbed them. Pylons of bluish light dropped half
shadows.

"Isthis. . .?" the Customs Officer began. Then he
was quiet. Walking out, they slowed their steps.
Against the darkness red light shot between towers.
"What . . . ?"

"Just a transfer. They go all night," Calli explained.
Green lightning crackled to their left.
"Transfer?"

"It's a quick exchange of energies resulting from the
relocation of discorporate states," the Navigator-Two
volunteered glibly.

"But I still don't . . ."

They had moved between the pylons now when a
glickering coalesced. Silver latticed with red fires
glimmered through industrial smog. Three figures
formed: women, sequined skeletons glittered toward
them, casting hollow eyes.

Kittens clawed the Customs Officer's back, for strut
work pylons gleamed behind the apparitional bellies.

"The faces," he whispered. "As soon as you look
away, you can't remember what they look like. When
you look at them, they look like people, but when you
look away—" He caught his breath as another passed.
"You can't remember!" He stared after them.
"Dead?" He shook his head. "You know I've been
approving psyche-indices on Transport workers corpo-
rate and discorporate for ten years. And I've never been
close enough to speak to a discorporate soul; Oh, I've
seen pictures and occasionally passed one of the less
fantastic on the street. But this . . ."

"There's some jobs"--Calli's voice was as heavy

46

BABEL-17

with alcohol as his shoulders with muscle—"Some
jobs on a Transport Ship you just can't give to a live
human being."

"I know, I know," said the Customs Officer. "So
you use dead ones."

"That's right." Calli nodded. "Like the Eye, Ear,
and Nose, A live human scanning all that goes on in
those hyperstasis frequencies would—well, die first,
and go crazy second."

"I do know the theory," the Customs Officer stated
sharply.

Calli suddenly cupped the Officer's cheek in his
hand and pulled him close to his own pocked face.
"You don't know anything. Customs." The tone was
of their first exchange in the cafe. "Aw, you hide in
your Customs cage, cage hid in the safe gravity of
Earth, Earth held firm by the sun, sun fixed headlong
toward Vega, all in the predicted tide of this spiral
arm—'' He gestured across night where the Milky Way
would run over a less bright city. "And you never
break free!" Suddenly he pushed the little spectacled
red head away. "Ehhh! You have nothing to say to
me!"

The bereaved navigator caught a guy cable slanting
from support to concrete. It twanged. The low note set
something loose in the Officer's throat which reached
his mouth with the metal taste of outrage.

He would have spat it, but Rydra's copper eyes were
now as close to his face as the hostile, pitted visage had
been.

She said; "He was part," the words lean, calm, her
eyes intent on not losing his, "of a triple, a close,
precarious, emotional and sexual relation with two
other people. And one of them has just died."

The edge of her tone hued away the bulk of the
47

BABEL-17

Officer's anger; but a sliver escaped him: "Perverts!"

Ron put his head to the side, his musculature show-
ing clear the double of hurt and bewilderment.
"There're some jobs," he echoed Calli's syntax,
"some jobs on a Transport Ship you just can't give to
two people alone. The jobs are too complicated."

"I know." Then he thought, I've hurt the boy, too.
Calli leaned on a girder. Something else was working in
the Officer's mouth,

"You have something to say," Rydra said.

Surprise that she knew prized his lips. He looked
from Calli to Ron, back. "I'm sorry for you."

Calli's brows raised, then returned, his expression
settling. "I'm sorry for you too."

Brass reared. "There's a transfer conclave about a
quarter of a mile down in the medium energy states.
That would attract the sort of Eye, Ear and Nose you
want for Specelli." He grinned at the Officer through
his fangs. "That's one of your illegal sections. The
hallucination count goes way u', and some cor'orate
egos can't handle it. But most sane 'eo'le don't have
any 'roblem."

"If it's illegal, I'd just as soon wait right here," the
Customs Officer said. "You can just come back and
pick me up. I'll approve their indices then."

Rydra nodded. Calli threw one arm around the waist
of the ten-foot pilot, the other around Ron's shoulder.
"Come on. Captain, if you want to get your crew by
morning."

"If we don't find what we want in an hour, we'll be
back anyway," she said.

The Customs Officer watched them move away be-
tween the slim towers -

48

IV

—RECALL FROM broken banks the color of earth break-
ing into clear pool water her eyes; the figure blinking
her eyes and speaking.

He said: "An Officer, ma'am. A Customs Officer."

Surprise at her witty return, at first hurt, then
amusement following. He answered: "About ten
years. How long have you been discorporate?"

And she moved closer to him, her hair holding the
recalled odor of. And the sharp transparent features
reminding him of. More words from her, now, making
him laugh.

"Yes, this is all very new to me. Doesn't the whole
vagueness with which everytning seems to happen get
you, too?"

Again her answer, both coaxing and witty.

"Well, yes," he smiled. "For you I guess it
wouldn't be."

Her ease infected him; and either she reached play-
fully to take his hand or he amazed himself by taking
hers, and the apparition as real beneath his fingers with
skin as smooth as.

"You're so forward. I mean I'm not used to young
women just coming up and ... behaving like this."

Her charming logic again explained it away, making
him feel her near, nearer, nearing, and her banter made
music, a phrase from.

49

BABEL-17

"Well, yes, you're discorporate, so it doesn't mat-
ter. But—"

And her interruption was a word or a kiss or a frown
or a smile, sending not humor through him now, but
luminous amazement, fear, excitement; and the feel of
her shape against his completely new. He fought to
retain it, pattern of pressure and pressure, fading as the
pressure itself faded. She was going away' She was
laughing like, as though, as if. He stood, losing her
laughter, replaced by whirled bewilderment in the tides
of his consciousness fading—

50

V

WHEN THEY RETURNED, Brass called, ' 'Good news' We
got who we wanted."

"Crew's coming along," commented Calli.

Rydra handed him the three index cards. "They'll
report to the ship discorporate two hours before—
what's wrong?"

DaniID.Appleby reached to take the cards. "I. . .
she . . ." and couldn't say anything else.

"Who?" Rydra asked. The concern on her face was
driving away even his remaining memories, and he
resented it, memories of, of.

Calli laughed. "A succubus! While we were gone,
he got hustled by a succubus^"

"Yeah!" from Brass. "Look at him!" Ron laughed,
too.

"It was a woman ... I think. I can remember what
/ said—"

"How much did she take you for?" Brass asked.

"Take me?"

Ron said, "I don't think he knows."

Calli grinned at the Navigator-Three and then at the
Officer. "Take a look in your billfold."

"Huh?"

"Take a look."

Incredulously he reached in his pocket. The metallic
envelope flipper apart in his hands. "Ten . . .twenty
. . . But I had fifty in here when I left the cafe!"

51

BABEL-17

Calli slapped his thighs laughing. He loped over and
encircled the Customs Officer's shoulder. "You'll end
up a Transport man after that happens a couple of more

times."

"But she. . -I. . ." The emptiness of his thefted
recollections was real as any love pain. The rifled
wallet seemed trivial. Tears banked his eyes. "But she
was—" and confusion snarled the sentence's end.

"What was she, friend?" Calli asked.

"She . , . was." That was the sad entirety.

"Since discor'oration, you can take it with you,"
said Brass. "They try for it with some 'retty shady
methods, too. I'd be embarrassed to tell you how many
times that's ha* 'ened to me."

"She left you enough to get home with," Rydra
said. "I'll reimburse you."

"No, I ..."

"Come on. Captain. He paid for it, and he got his

money's worth, ay Customs?"
Choking on the embarrassment, he nodded.
"Then check these ratings," Rydra said. "We still
have a Slug to pick up, and a Navigator-One."

At a public phone, Rydra called back toNavy. Yes, a
platoon had turned up. A Slug had been recommended
along with them. "Fine," Rydra said, and handed the
phone to the officer. He took the psyche-indices from
the clerk and incorporated them for final integration
with the Eye, Ear, and Nose cards that Rydra had given
him. The Slug looked particularly favorable. "Seems
to be a talented coordinator," he ventured.

"Can't have too good a Slug. Es'ecially with a new
'latoon." Brass shook his mane. "He's got to keep
those kids in line."

52

BABEL-17

"This one should do it. Highest compatibility index
I've seen in a long while."

"What's the hostility on him?" asked Calli. "Com-
patibility , hell! Can he give your butt a good kick when
you need it?''

The Officer shrugged.' 'He weighs two hundred and
seventy pounds and he's only five nine. Have you met a
fat person yet who wasn't mean as a rat underneath it
all?"

"There you go!" Calli laughed.

"Where do we go to fix the wound?" Brass asked
Rydra.

She raised her brows questioningly.

"To get a first navigator," he explained.

"To the Morgue."

Ron frowned. Calli looked puzzled. The flashing
bugs collared his neck, then spilled his chest again,
scattering. "You know our first navigator's got to be a
girl who will—"

"She will be," Rydra said.

They left the Discorporate Sector and took the
monorail through the tortuous remains of Transport
Town, then along the edge of the space-field. Black-
ness beyond the windows was flung with blue signal
lights. Ships rose with a white flare, blued through
distance, became bloody stars in the rusted air.

They joked for the first twenty minutes over the
humming runners. The fluorescent ceiling dropped
greenish light on their faces, in their laps. One by one,
the Customs Officer watched them go silent while the
side-to-side inertia became a headlong drive. He had
not spoken at all, still trying to regain her face, her
words, her shape. But it stayed away, frustrating as the

53

BABEL-17

imperative comment that leaves your mind as speech
begins, and the mouth is left empty, a lost reference to
love.

When they stepped onto the open platform at Thule
Station, warm wind flushed from the east. The clouds
had shattered under an ivory moon. Gravel and granite
silvered the broken edges. Behind was the city's red
mist. Before, on broken night, rose the blackMorgue.

They went down the steps and walked quietly
through the stone park. The garden of water and rock
was eerie in the dark. Nothing grew here.

At the door slabbed metal without external light
blotted the darkness. "How do you get in?" the Offi-
cer asked, as they climbed the shallow steps.

Rydra lifted theCaptain's pendant from her neck.and
placed it against a small disk. Something hummed, and
light divided the entrance as the doors slid back. Rydra
stepped through, the rest followed.

Calli stared at the metallic vaults overhead. "You
know there's enough transport meat deep-frozen in this
place to service a hundred stars and all their planets."

"And Customs people too," said the Officer.

"Does anybody ever bother to call back a Customs
who decided to take a rest?" Ron asked with candid
ingenuousness.

"Don't know what for," said Calli.

"Occasionally it's been known to happen," re-
sponded the Officer dryly.

"More rarely than with Transport," Rydra said.
' *As of yet, the Customs work involved in getting ships
from star to star is a science. The transport work ma-
neuvering through hyperstasis levels is still an art. In a
hundred years they may both be sciences. Fine. But

54

BABEL-17

today a person who leams the rules of art well is a little
rarer than the person "who leams the rules of science.
Also, there's a tradition involved. Transport people are
used to dying and getting called back, working with
dead men or live. This is still a little hard for Customs to
take. Over here to the Suicides."

They left the main lobby for the labeled corridor that
sloped up through the storage chamber. It emptied them
onto a platform in an indirectly lighted room, racked up
its hundred-foot height with glass cases, catwalked and
laddered like a spider's den. In the coffins, dark shapes
were rigid beneath frost shot glass.

"What I don't understand about this whole busi-
ness," theOfficer whispered, "is the calling back. Can
anybody who dies be made corporate again? You're
right. Captain Wong, inCustoms it's almost impolite to
talk about things like . . . this."

"Any suicide who discorporates through regular
Morgue channels can be called back. But a violent
death where the Morgue just retrieves the body after-
wards, or the run of the mill senile ending that most of
us hit at a hundred and fifty or so, then you're dead
forever; although there, if you pass through regular
channels, your brain pattern is recorded and your think-
ing ability can be tapped if anyone wants it, though
your consciousness is gone wherever consciousness
goes."

Besides them, a twelve-foot filing crystal glowed
like pin quartz. "Ron," said Rydra. "No, Ron and
Calli, too."

The Navigators stepped up, puzzled.

"You know some first navigator who suicided re-
cently that you think we might—"

Rydra shook her head. She passed her hand before

55

BABEL-17

the filing crystal. In the concaved screen at the base,
words flashed. She stilled her fingers. "Navigator-
Two. . . ." She turned her hand. "Navigator-One.
..." She paused and ran her hand in a different
direction.". . . male, male, male, female. Now, you
talk to me, Calli, Ron."
"Huh? About what?"
"About yourselves, about what you want."
Rydra's eyes moved back and forth between the
screen and the man and boy beside her.

"Well, huh ... ?" Calli scratched his head.
"Pretty," said Ron. "I want her to be pretty." He
leaned forward, an intense light in his blue eyes.

"Oh, yes," said Calli, "but she can't be a sweet,
plump Irish girl with black hair and agate eyes and
freckles that come out after four days of sun. She can't
have the slightest lisp that makes you tingle even when
she reels off her calculations quicker and more accurate
than a computer voice, yet still lisping, or makes you
tingle when she holds your head in her lap and tells you
about how much she needs to feel—''

"Calli!" from Ron.
And the big man stopped with his fist against his

stomach, breathing hard.

Rydra watched, her hand drifting through centime-
ters over the crystal's face. The names on the screen

flashed back and forth.

"But pretty," Ron repeated. "And likes sports, to
wrestle, I think, when we're planet side. Cathy wasn't
very athletic. I always thought it would have been
better, for me, if she was, see. 1 can talk better to people
1 can wrestle with. Serious though, 1 mean about work-
ing. And quick like Cathy could think. Only . . ."

56

BABEL-17

Rydra's hand drifted down, then made a jerky mo-
tion to the left.

"Only," said Calli, his hand falling from his belly,
his breath more easy,' 'she's got to be a whole person, a
new person, not somebody who is half what we re-
member about somebody else."

"Yes," saidRon. "I mean if she's agood navigator,
and she loves us."

". . , could love us," said Calli.

"If she was all you wanted and herself besides,"
asked Rydra, her hand shaking between two names on
the screen, "could you love her?"

The hesitation, and nod slow from the big man,
quick from the boy.

Rydra's hand came down on the crystal face, and the
name glowed on the screen. ' 'Mollya Twa,
Navigator-One." Her coordinate numbers followed.
Rydra dialed them at the desk.

Seventy-five feet overhead something glittered. One
among hundreds of thousands of glass coffins was
tracking from the wall above them on an inductor
beam.

The recall-stage jutted up a pattern of lugs, the tips
glowing. The coffin dropped, its contents obscured by
streaks and hexagonal bursts of frost inside the glass.
The lugs caught the tramplateon the coffin's base. It
rocked a moment, settled, clicked.

The frost melted of a sudden, and the inside surface
fogged, then ran with droplets. They stepped forward
to see.

Dark band on dark. A movement beneath the glaring
glass; then the glass parted, melting back from her
deep, warm skin and beating, terrified eyes.

57

BABEL-17

"It's all right," Calli said, touching her shoulder.
She raised her head to look at his hand, then dropped
back to the pillow. Ron crowded the Navigator-Two.

"Hello?"

"Eh . . . Miss Twa?" Calli said. "You're alive

now. Will you love us?"

"Ninyini nani?" Her face was puzzled. "Nikowapi

hapa?"
Ron looked up amazed. "I don't think she speaks

English."

* * Yes. I know,'' Rydra grinned. " But other than that

she's perfect. This way you'll have time to get to know
each other before you can say something really foolish.
She likes to wrestle, Ron."

Ron looked at the young woman in the case. Her
graphite colored hair was boy short, her full lips purple
with chill. "You wrestle?"

"Ninyi ni nani?" she asked again.

Calli lifted his hand from her shoulder and stepped
back. Ron scratched his head and frowned.

"Well?" said Rydra.

Calli shrugged. "Well, we don't know."

"Navigation Instruments are standard gear. There
won't be any trouble communicating there."

"She is pretty," Ron said. "You are pretty. Don't
be frightened. You're alive now."

"Ninaogapa!" she seized Calli's hand. "Jee, ni
usiku au mchana?" Her eyes were wide.

"Please don't be frightened!" Ron took the wrist of

the hand that had seized Calli's.

"Sielewi lugha yenu." She shook her head, a ges-
ture containing no negation, only bewilderment.
"Sikujuweni ninyi nani. Ninaogapa."

58

BABEL-17

And with bereavement-bom urgency, both Ron and
Calli nodded in affirmative reassurance.
Rydra stepped between them and spoke.
After a long silence, the woman nodded slowly.
"She says she'll go with you. She lost two-thirds of
her triple seven years ago, also killed through the Inva-
sion. That's why she came to the Morgue and killed
herself. She says she will go with you. Will you take
her?"

"She's still afraid," Ron said. "Please don't be. I
won't hurt you. Calli won't hurt."

"If she'll come with us," Calli said, "we'll take
her."

The Customs Officer coughed. "Where do I get her
psyche rating?"

"Right on the screen under the filing crystal. That's
how they're arranged within the larger categories."

The Officer walked back to the crystal. "Well"—
He took out his pad and began to record the indices.
"It's taken a while, but you'^ve got just about every-
body."

"Integrate," Rydra said.

He did, and looked up, surprised in spite of himself.
"Captain Wong, I think you've got your crew!"

59

VI

Dear Mocky,

When you get this I'll have taken off two hours ago.
It's a half hour before dawn and I want to talk to you,
but I won't wake you up again.

I am, nostalgically enough, taking out Fobo's old
ship, the Rimbaud (the name was Muels' idea, re-
member). At least, I'm familiar with it: lots of good
memories here. I leave in twenty minutes.

Present location: I'm sitting in a folding chair in the
freight lock looking over the field. The sky is star
specked to the west, and gray to the east. Black needles
of ships pattern around me. Lines of blue signal lights
fade toward the east. It is calm now. Subject of my
thinking: a hectic night of crew hunting that took me all
over Transport Town and out to the Morgue, through
dives and glittering byways, etc. Loud and noisy at the
beginning, calming to this at the end.

To get a good pilot you watch him wrestle. A trained
captain can tell exactly what sort of a pilot a person will
make by observing his reflexes in the arena. Only I am
not that well trained.

Remember, what you said about muscle-reading?
Maybe you were righter than you thought. Last night I
ran into a kid, a Navigator, who looks like Brancusi's
graduation offering, or maybe what Michelangelo
wished the human body was. He was born in Transport
and knows pilot wrestling inside out, apparently. So I

60

BABEL-17

watched him watch my pilot wrestle, and just looking at
his quivers and jerks I got a complete analysis of what
was going on over my head.

You know DeFaure's theory that psychic indices
have their corresponding muscular tensions (a re-
statement of the old Wilhelm Reich hypothesis of mus-
cular armature): I was thinking about it last night. The
kid I was telling you about was part of a broken triple,
two guys and a girl and the girl got it from the Invaders.
The boys made me want to cry. But I didn't. Instead I
took them to the Morgue and found them a replace-
ment. Weird business. I'm sure they'll think it was
magic for the rest of their lives. The basic require-
ments, however, were all on file: a female Navigator-
One who lacks two men. How to adjust the indices? I
read Ron's and Calli'sfrom watching them move while
they talked. The Corpses are filed under psyche-indices
so I just had to feel out when they were congruent. The
final choice was a stroke of genius, if I do say so. I had
it down to six young ladies whoyould do. But it needed
to be more precise than that, and I couldn' tplay it more
precise, at least not by ear. One young lady was from
N'gonda Province in Pan Africa. She'd suicided seven
years ago. Lost two husbands in an Invasion attack,
and returned to earth in the middle of an embargo. You
remember what the politics were like then between Pan
Africa and Americasia; I was sure she didn't speak
English. We woke her, and she didn't. Now, at this
point, their indices may be a mite jarring. But. by the
time they fight through learning to understand each
other—and they will, because they need to—they'll
graph out congruent afoot down the logarithmic grid.
Clever?

And Babel-17, the real reason for this letter. Told

61

BABEL-17

you I had deciphered it enough to know where the next
attack will be. The Alliance War Yards at Armsedge.
Wanted to let you know that's where I'm going, just in
case. Talk and talk and talk: what sort of mind can talk
like that language talks? And why? Still scared-like a
kid at a spelling bee-but having fun. My platoon re-
ported an hour ago. Crazy, lazy lovable kids all. Injust
a few minutes I'll be going to see my Slug (fat galoof
with black eyes. hair, beard; moves slow and thinks
fast). You know, Mocky, getting this crew together I
was interested in one thing (above competency, and
they are all competent): they had to be people I could
talk to. And I can.

Love, Rydra.

62

VII

LIGHT BUT NO SHADOW. The General stood on the
saucer-sled, looking at the black ship, the paling sky.
At the base he stepped from the gliding fwo-foot diame-
ter disk, climbed onto the lift, and rose a hundred feet
toward the lock. She wasn't in the captain's cabin. He
ran into a fat bearded man who directed him up the
comdor to the freight lock. He climbed to the top of the
ladder and took hold of his breath because it was about
to run away.

She dropped her feet from the wall, sat up in the
canvas chair and smiled. "General Forester, I thought I
might see you this morning." She folded a piece of
message tissue and sealed tl^e edge.

'* I wanted to see you . . ." and his breath was gone
and had to be caught once more, "before you left."

"I wanted to see you, too."

"You told me if I gave you license to conduct this
expedition, you would inform me where you—"

"My report, which you should find satisfactory, was
mailed last night and is on your desk at Administrative
Alliance Headquarters—or will be in an hour."

"Oh. 1 see,"

She smiled. "You'll have to go shortly. We take off
in a few minutes."

"Yes. Actually, I'm taking off the Administrative
Alliance Headquarters myself this morning, so I was
here at the field, and I'd already gotten a synopsis of

63

BABEL-17

your report by stellarphone a few minutes ago, and 1
just wanted to say—" and he said nothing.

"General Forester, once I wrote a poem I'm re-
minded of. It was called 'Advice to Those Who Would
Love Poets'."

The General opened his teeth without separating his
lips.

"It started something like:

Young man, she will gnaw out your tongue. Lady,
he will steal your hands . . .
You can read the rest. It's in my second book. If you're
not willing to lose a poet seven times a day, it's frustrat-
ing as hell."

He said simply: "You knew I ..."
"I knew and I know. And I'm glad."
The lost breath returned and an unfamiliar thing was
happening to his face: he smiled. "When I was a
private. Miss Wong, and we'd be confined to barracks,
we'd talk about girls and girls and girls. And somebody
would say about one: she was so pretty she didn't have
to give me any, just promise me some." He let the
stiff ness leave his shoulders a moment, and though they
actually fell half an inch, the effect was that they
seemed broader by two. "That's what I was feeling."

"Thank you for telling me," she said, "I like you,
General. And I promise I'll still like you the next time I
see you."

"I. . . thank you. I guess that's all. Just thank you
... for knowing and promising." Then he said, "I
have to go now, don't I?"

"We'll be taking off in ten minutes."
"Your letter," he said, "1*11 mail it for you."
"Thanks." She handed it to him, he took her hand,

64

BABEL-17

and for the slightest moment with the slightest pressure,
held her. Then he turned, left. Minutes later she
watched his saucer-sled glide across the concrete, its
sun-side flaring suddenly as light blistered the east.

65

a.

ly..

PART TWO:

VER
DORCO

... If words are paramount I am afraid that words are
all my hands have ever seen . - .

—from Quartet, M.H.

67

THE RETRANSCRIBED MATERIAL passed on the sorting
screen. By the computer console lay the four pages of
definitions she had amassed and a cuaderno full of
grammatical speculations. Chewing her lower lip, she
ran through the frequency tabulation of depressed
diphthongs. On the wall she had tacked three charts
labeled:

Possible Phonemic Structure . . .

Probable Phonetic Structure . . .

Siotic, Semantic, and Syntactic Ambiguities . . .

The last contained the problems to be solved. The
questions, formulated and answered, were transferred
as certainties of the first two. 1-

"Captain?"

She turned on the bubble seat.

Hanging from the entrance hatch by his knees was
Diavalo.

"Yes?"

"What you want for dinner?" The little cook was a
boy of seventeen. Two cos met i surgical horns jutted
from shocked, albino hair. He was scratching one ear
with the tip of his tail.

Rydra shrugged. "No preferences. Check around
with the rest of the platoon."

"Those guys'11 eat liquified organic waste if I give it
to them. No imagination. Captain. What about pheas-
ant under glass, or maybe rock Cornish game hen?"

69

BABEL-17

"You're in the mood for poultry?"

"Well—" He released the bar with one knee and
kicked the wall so he swung back and forth.' '1 could go
for something birdy."

"If nobody objects, try coq au vin, baked Idahos,
and broiled beefsteak tomatoes."

"Now you're cookin'!"

"Strawberry shortcake for dessert?"

Diavalo snapped his fingers and swung up toward the
hatch. Rydra laughed and turned back to the console.

k "Reisling on the coq, May wine with the mealr'' The
pink-eyed face was gone.

Rydra had discovered the third example of what
might have been syncope when the bubble chair sagged
back. The cuardemo slammed against the ceiling. She
would have, too, had she not grabbed the edge of the
desk. Her shoulders wrenched. Behind her the skin of
the bubble chair split and showered suspended sili-
con.

The cabin stilled and she turned to see Diavalo spin
through the hatch and crack his hip as he grabbed at the
transparent wall.

Jerk.

She slipped on the wet, deflated skin of the bubble
chair. The Slug's face jounced on the intercom. "Cap-
tain!"

"What the hell . . .'"she demanded.

The blinker from Drive Maintenance was flashing.
Something jarred the ship again.

"Are we still breathing?"

"Just a . . ." The Slug's face, heavy and rimmed
with a thin black beard, got an unpleasant expression.
"Yes, Air; all right. Drive Maintenance has the prob-
lem."

70

BABEL-17

"If those damn kids have - . ." She clicked them
on.

Flop, the Maintenance Foreman, said, "Jesus, Cap-
tain, something blew."

"What?"

"I don't know." Flop's face appeared over his
shoulder.

"A and B shifters are all right. C's glittering..! ike a
Fourth of July sparkler. Where the hell are we, any-
way?"

' 'On the first hour shift between Earth and Luna. We
haven't even got free of Stellarcenter-9. Navigation?"
Another click.

Mollya's dark face popped up.

"Wie gehts?" demanded Rydra.

The first Navigator reeled off their probability curve
and located them between two vague logarithmic spi-
rals- "We're orbiting Earth so far," Ron's voice cut
over. "Something knocked us way off course. We
don't have any drive power and we're just drifting."

"How high up and how fast?'.'

"Calli's trying to find out now."

"I'm going to take a look around outside." She
called down to the Sensory Detail. "Nose, what does it
smell like out there?"

"It stinks. Nothing in this range. We've hit soup."

"Can you hear anything. Ear?"

"Not a peep. Captain. All the stasis currents in this
area are at a standstill. We're too near a large gravita-
tional mass. There's a faint ethric undertow about fifty
spectres K-ward. But I don't think it will take us any-
where except around in a circle. We're riding on
momentum from the last stiff wind from Earth's mango
sphere."

71

BABEL-17

"What's it look like. Eyes?"

"Inside of a coal scuttle. Whatever happened to us,
we picked a dead spot to have it happen in. In my range
that undertow is a little stronger and might move us into
a good tide."

Brass cut in. "But I'd like to know where it's going
before I went jumping off into it. That means I gotta
know where we are, first."

"Navigation?"

Silence for a moment. Then the three faces appeared.
Calli said, "We don't know. Captain."

The gravity field had stabilized a few degrees off.
The silicon suspension collected in one comer. Little
Diavalo shook his head and blinked. Through the con-
tortion of pain on his face he whispered, "What hap-
pened, Captain?"

*'Damned if I know, "Rydra said. "But I'm going to
find out."

Dinner was eaten silently. The platoon, all kids
under twenty-one, made as little noise as possible. At
the officers' table the Navigators sat across from the
apparitional figures of the discorporate Sensory Obser-
vers, The hefty Slug at the table's head poured wine for
the silent crew. Rydra dined with Brass.

"I don't know." He shook his maned head, turning
his glass in gleaming claws. "It was smooth sailing
with nothing in the way. Whatever happened, hap-
pened inside the ship."

Diavalo, hip in a pressure bandage, dourfully
brought in the shortcake, served Rydra and Brass, then
retired to his seat at the platoon table.

"So," Rydra said, "we're orbiting Earth with all

72

BABEL-17

our instruments knocked out and can't even tell where
we are."

"The hyperstasis instruments are good," he re-
minded her. "We just don't know where we are on this
side of the jum'."

"And we can't jump if we don't know where we're
jumping from." She looked over the dining room. "Do
you think they're expecting to get out of this. Brass?"

"They're ho'ing you can get them out, Ca'tain."

She touched the rim of her glass to her lower lip.

k k If somebody doesn't, we' It sit here eating
Diavalo's good food for six months, then suffocate. We
can't even get a signal out until after we lea' for
hy'erstasis with the regular communicator shorted. I
asked the Navigators to see if they could im'rovise
something, but no go. They just had time to see that we
were launched in a great circle."

"We should have windows," Rydra said, "At least
we could look out at the stars and time our orbit. It can't
be more than a couple of hours."

Brass nodded. "Shows you what modern conve-
niences mean. A 'orthote and an old-fashioned sextant
could get us right, but we're electronicized to the gills,
and here we sit, with a neatly insoluble 'roblem."

"Circling—"Rydra put down her wine.

"What is it?"

"Der Kreis," said Rydra. She frowned.

"What's that?" asked Brass.

"Ratas, orbis, Ucerchio." She put her palms flat on
the table top and pressed. "Circles," she said. "Cir-
cles in different languages!"

Brass' confusion was terrifying through his fangs.
The glinting fleece above his eyes bristled.

73

BABEL-17

"Sphere," she said, "il gtobo, gumlas." She stood
up. "Kule, kuglet, kring!"

"Does it matter what language it's in? A circle is a
cir—''

But she was laughing, running from the dining room.

In her cabin she grabbed up her translation. Her eyes
fled down the pages. She banged the button for the
Navigators. Ron, wiping whipped-cream from his
mouth, said, "Yes, Captain? What do you want?"

"A watch," saidRydra, "and a—bag of marbles!"

"Huh?" asked Calli.

"You can finish your shortcake later. Meet me in
G-center right now."

"Mar-bles?" articulated Mollya wonderingly.
"Marbles?"

"One of the kids in the platoon must have brought
along a bag of marbles. Get it and meet me in
G-center."

She jumped over the ruined skin of the bubble seat
and leapt up the hatchway, turned off at the radial shaft
seven, and launched down the cylindrical corridor to-
ward the hollow spherical chamber of G-center. The
calculated center of gravity of the ship, it was a
chamber thirty feet in diameter in constant free fall
where certain gravity-sensitive instruments took their
readings. A moment later the three Navigators ap-
peared through the diametric entrance- Ron held up a
mesh bag of glass balls. "Lizzy asks you to try and get
these back to her by tomorrow afternoon because she's
been challenged by the kids in Drive and she wants to
keep her championship."

"If this works she can probably have them back
tonight."

"Work?" Mollya wanted to know. "Idea you?"

74

BABEl-17

"I do. Only it's not really my idea."

"Whose is it, and what is it?" Ron asked.

"I suppose it belongs to somebody who speaks
another language- What we've got to do is arrange the
marbles around the wall of the room in a perfect sphere,
and then sit back with the clock and keep tabs on the
second hand."

"What for?" asked Calli.

"To see where they go and how long it takes them to
get there."

"I don't get it," said Ron.

"Our orbit tends toward a great circle about the
Earth, right? That means everything in the ship is also
tending to orbit in a great circle, and, if left free of
influence, will automatically seek out such a path."

"Right. So what?"

"Help me get these marbles in place," Rydra said.
"These things have iron cores. Magnetize the walls,
will you, to hold them in place, so they can all be
released at once." Ron, confused, went to power the
metal walls of the spherical chamber. "You still don't
see? You're mathematicians, tell me about great cir-
cles."

Calli took a handful of marbles and started to space
them—tiny click after click—over the wall. "A great
circle is the largest circle you can cut through a
sphere."

* *The diameter of the great circle equals the diameter
of the sphere," from Ron, as he came back from the
power switch.

"The summation of the angles of intersection of any
three great circles within one topologically contained
shape approaches five hundred and forty degrees. The
summation of the angles ofN great circles approaches

75

BABEL-17

N times one hundred and eighty degrees." Mollya
intoned the definitions, which she had begun memoriz-
ing in English with the help of a personafix that mom-
ing, with her musically inflected voice. * 'Marbles here,
yes?"

"All over, yes. Even as you can space them, but they
don't have to be exact. Tell me some more about the
intersections."

"Well," said Ron, "on any given sphere all great
circles intersect each other—or lie congruent."

Rydra laughed. "Just like that, hey? Are there any
other circles on a sphere that have to intersect no matter
how you maneuver them?"

"I think you can push around any other circles so that
they're equidistant at all points and don't touch. All
great circles have to have at least two points in com-
mon."

'Think about that for a minute and look at these
marbles, all being pulled along great circles."

Mollya suddenly floated back from the wall with an
expression of recognition and brought her hands to-
gether. She blurted something in Kiswahili, and Rydra
laughed. "That's right," she said. To Ron's and Cal-
li's bewilderment she translated: "They'll move to-
ward each other and their paths'll intersect."

Calli's eyes widened. "That's right, at exactly a
quarter of the way around our orbit, they should have
flattened out to a circular plane."

"Lying along the plane of our orbit," Ron finished.

Mollya frowned and made a stretching motion with
her hands. "Yeah," Ron said, "a distorted circular
plane with a tail at each end, from which we can
compute which way the earth lies."

"Clever, huh?" Rydra moved back into the corridor

76

BABEL-17

opening. "I figure we can do this once, then fire our
rockets enough to blast us maybe seventy or eighty
mites either up or down without hurting anything. From
that we can get the length of our orbit, as well as our
speed. That'll be all the information we need to locate
ourselves in relation to the nearest major gravitational
influence. From there we can jump stasis- All our
communications instruments for stasis are in working
order. We can signal for help and pull in some replace-
ments from a stasis station."

The amazed Navigators joined her in the corridor.
"Count down," Rydra said.

At zero Ron released the magnetic walls. Slowly the
spheres began to drift away, lining up slowly.

"Guess you learn something every day," Calli said.
"If you'd asked me, I would have said we were stuck
here forever. And knowing things like this is supposed
to be my job. Where did you get the idea?"

"From the word for 'great circle' in ... another
language."

' 'Language speaking tongue?'' Mollya asked.' 'You
mean?"

"Well," Rydra took out a metal tracing plate and a
stylus. "I'm simplifying it a little, but let me show
you." She marked the plate. "Let's say the word for
circle is: 0. This language has a melody system to
illustrate comparatives. We'll represent this by the
diacritical marks: v - " , respectively smallest, ordi-
nary, and biggest. So what would 0 mean?"

"Smallest possible circle?" said Calli. "That's a
single point."

Rydra nodded.' 'Now, when referring to a circle on a
sphere, suppose the word for just an ordinary circle isO
followed by either of two symbols, one of which means

77

BABEL-17

not touching anything else, the other of which means
crossing—11 orX. What would OX mean?"

"Great circles that intersect,*' said Ron.

"And because all great circles intersect, in this lan-
guage the word for great circle is always OX. It carries
the information right in the word. Just like busstop or
foxhole carry information in English that la gare or Ie
terrier—comparable words in French—lack. 'Great
Circle' carries some information with it, but not^the
right information to get us out of the jam we're in. We
have to go to another language in order to think about
the problem clearly without going through all sorts of
roundabout paths for the proper aspects of what we
want to deal with."

"What language is this?" asked Calli.

"I don't know its real name. For now it's called
Babel-17. From what little I know about it already,
most of its words carry more information about things
they refer to than any four or five languages I know put
together, and in less space." She gave a brief transla-
tion for Mollya.

"Who speak?" Mollya asked, determined to stick to
her minimal English.

Rydra bit the inside of her lip. When she asked
herself that question, her stomach would tighten,
her hands start toward something and the yearning for
an answer grow nearly to pain in the back of her throat.
It happened now; it faded. "I don't know. But I wish I
did. That's what the main reason for this trip is, to find
out."

"Babel-17," Ron repeated.

One of the platoon tube-boys coughed behind them.

"What is it, Carlos?"

Squat, taurine, with a lot of curly black hair, Carlos

78

BABEL-17

had big, loose muscles, and a slight hiss. "Captain,
could I show you something?" He shifted from side to
side in adolescent awkwardness, scuffing his bare
soles, heat-callused from climbing over the drive tubes,
against the door sill. "Something down in the tubes. I
think you should take a look at it yourself."

"Did Slug tell you to get me?"

Carlos prodded behind his ear with a gnawed
thumbnail. "Um-hm."

"You three can take care of this business, can't
you?"

"Sure, Captain." Calli looked at the closing mar-
bles.

Rydra ducked after Carlos. They rode down the
ladderlift and hunched through the low ceilinged
causeway.

"Down here," Carlos said, hesitantly taking the
lead beneath arched bus bars. At a mesh platform he
stopped and opened a component cabinet in the wall.
"See." He removed a board of printed circuits.
"There." A thin crack ran across the plastic surface.
"It's been broken."

"How?" Rydra asked.

"Like this." He took the plate in both hands and
made a bending gesture.

"Sure it didn't crack by itself?"

"It can't," Carlos said. "When it's in place, it's
supported too well. You couldn't crack it with a sledge
hammer. This panel carries all the communication cir-
cuits."

Rydra nodded.

"The gyroscopic field deflectors for all our regular
space maneuvering . . ."He opened another door and
took out another panel. "Here."

79

BABEL-17

Rydra ran her fingernail along the crack in the second
plate. "Someone in the ship broke these," she said.
"Take them to the shop. Tell Lizzy when she finishes
reprinting them to bring them to me and I'll put them in.
I'll give her the marbles back then."

80

II

DROP A GEM in thick oil. The brilliance yellows slowly,
ambers, goes red at last, dies. That was the leap into
hyperstatic space.

At the computer console, Rydra pondered the charts.
The dictionary had doubled since the trip began. Satis-
faction filled one side of her mind like a good meal.
Words, and their easy pattering, facile always on her
tongue, in her fingers, ordered themselves for her,
revealing, defining, and revealing.

And there was a traitor. The question, a vacuum
where no information would come to answer who or
what or why, made an emptiness on the other side other
brain, agonizing to collapse. Someone had deliberately
broken those plates. Lizzy said so, too. What words for
this? The names of the entire crew, and by each, a
question mark.

Fling a jewel into a glut of jewels. This is the leap out
of hyperstasis into the.area of the Alliance War Yards at
Armsedge.

At the communication board, she put on the Sensory
Helmet. "Do you want to translate for me?"

The indicator light blinked acceptance- Each discor-
porate observer perceived the details of the gravita-
tional and electro-magnetic flux of the stasis currents
for a certain frequency with all his senses, each in his
separate range. Those details were myriad, and the

81

BABEL-17

pilot sailed the ship through those currents as sailing
ships winded the liquid ocean. But the helmet made a
condensation that the captain could view for a general
survey of the matrix, reduced to terms that would leave
the corporate viewer sane.

She opened the helmet, covering her eyes, ears, and
nose.

Flung through loops of blue and wrung with indigo
drifted the complex of stations and planetoids making
up the War Yards. A musical hum punctuated with
bursts of static sounded over the earphones. The olfac-
tory emitters gave a confused odor of perfumes and hot
oil charged with the bitter smell of burning citrus peel.
With three of her senses filled, she was loosed from the
reality of the cabin to drift through sensory abstrac-
tions. It took nearly a minute to collect her sensations,
to begin their interpretation.

"All right. What am I looking at?"

"The lights are the various planetoids and ring sta-
tions that make up the War Yards," the Eye explained
to her. "That bluish color to the left is a radar net they
have spread out toward Stellarcenter Forty-two. Those
red flashes in the upper right hand comer are just a
reflection of Bellatrix fron) a half-glazed solar-disk
rotating four degrees outside your field of vision."

"What's that low humming?" Rydra asked.

* The ship's drive,'' the Ear explained.' 'Just ignore
it. I'll block it out if you want."

Rydra nodded, and the hum ceased.

"That clicking—" the Ear began.

"—is morse code," Rydra finished. "I recognize
that. It must be two radio amateurs that went to keep off
the visual circuits."

"That's right," the Ear confirmed.

82

BABEL-17

"What stinks like that?"

"The overall smell is just Betlatrix's gravitational
field. You can't receive the olfactory sensations in
stereo, but the burnt lemon peel is the power plant that's
located in that green glare right ahead of you."

"Where do we dock?"

"In the sound of the E-minor triad."

'' In the hot oil you can smell bubbling to your left.' *

"Home in on that white circle."

Rydra switched to the pilot. "O.K., Brass, take her
in."

The saucer-disk slid down the ramp as she balanced
easily in the four-fifths gravity. A breeze through the
artificial twilight pushed her hair back from her shoul-
ders. Around her stretched the major arsenal of the
Alliance. Momentarily she pondered the accident of
birth that had seated her firmly inside the Alliance's
realm. Bom a galaxy away, she might as easily have
been an Invader. Her poems^were popular on both
sides. That was upsetting. She put the thought away.
Here, gliding the Alliance War Yards, it was not clever
to be upset over that-

"Captain Wong, you come under the auspices of
General Forester."

She nodded as her saucer stopped.

' 'He forwarded us information that you are at present
the expert on Babel-17."

She nodded once more. Now the other saucer paused
before hers.

"I'm very happy then, to meet you, and for any
assistance I can offer, please ask."

She extended her hand. "Thank you, Baron Ver
Dorco."

83

BABEL-17

The black of his eyebrows raised and the slash of
mouth curved in the dark face, "You read heraldry?"
He raised long fingers to the shield on his chest.

"I do."

"An accomplishment. Captain. We live in a world
of isolated communities, each hardly touching its
neighbor, each speaking, as it were, a different lan-
guage."

"I speak many."

The Baron nodded. "Sometimes 1 believe. Captain
Wong, that without the Invasion, something for the
Alliance to focus its energies upon, our society would
disintegrate. Captain Wong—" He stopped, and the
fine lines of his face shifted, contracted to concentra-
tion, then a sudden opening. "Rydra Wong . . .?"

She nodded, smiling at his smile, yet wary before
what the recognition would mean.   ,

"I didn't realite—" He extended his^iand as though
he were meeting her all over again. "But, of course—''
The surface of his manner shaled away, and had she
never seen this transformation before she would have
warmed to his warmth. "Your books, I want you to
know—'' The sentence trailed in a slight shaking of the
head. Dark eyes too wide; lips, in their, humor, too
close to a leer; hands seeking one another: it all spoke to
her of a disquieting appetite for her presence, a hunger
for something she was or might be, a ravenous—
"Dinner at my home is served at seven." He inter-
rupted her thought with unsettling appropriateness.
"You will dine with the Baroness and myself this
evening."

"Thank you. But I wanted to discuss with my
crew—"

k' I extend the invitation to your entire entourage. We

r*

84

BABEL-17

have a spacious house, conference rooms at your dis-
posal, as well as entertainment, certainly less confined
than your ship." The tongue, purplish and flickering
behind white, white teeth; the brown lines of his lips,
she thought, form words as languidly as the slow man-
dibles of the cannibal mantis.

' 'Please come a little early so we can prepare you—*'

She caught her breath, then felt foolish; a faint nar-
rowing of his eyes told her he had registered, though
not understood, her start.

' *—for your tour through the yards. General Forester
has suggested you be made privy to all our efforts
against the Invaders. That is quite an honor, Madam.
There are many well-seasoned officers at the yards who
have not seen some of the things you will be shown. A
good deal of it will probably be tedious, I dare say. In
my opinion, it's stuffing you with a lot of trivial tidbits.
But some of our attempts have been rather ingenious.
We keep our imaginations simmering."

This man brings out the paranoid in me, she thought.
I don't like him. "I'd prefer not to impose on you,
Baron. There are some matters on my ship that I
must—"

"Do come. Your work here will be much facilitated
if you accept my hospitality, I assure you. A woman of
your talent and accomplishment would be an honor to
my house. And recently I have been starved"—dark
lips slid together over gleaming teeth—"for intelligent
conversation."

She felt her jaw clamp involuntarily on a third cere-
monious refusal. But the Baron was saying: "I will
expect you, and your crew, leisurely, before seven."

The saucer-disk slid away over the concourse. Rydra
looked back at the ramp where her crew waited,

85

BABEL-17

silhouetted against the false evening. Her disk began to
negotiate the slope to the Rimbaud.

"Well," she said to the little albino cook who had
just come out of his pressure bandage the day before,
"you're off tonight. Slug, the crew's going out to
dinner. See if you can brush the kids up on their table
manners—make sure every one knows which knife to
eat his peas with, and all that."

"The salad fork is the little one on the outside," the
Slug announces suavely, turning to the platoon.

"And what about the little one outside that?" Al-
legra asked.

"That's for oysters."

"But suppose they don't serve oysters?"

Flop rubbed his underlip with the knuckle of his
thumb. "I guess you could pick your teeth with it."

Brass dropped a paw on Rydra's shoulder. "How
you feel, Ca'tain?"

"Like a pig over a barbecue pit."

"You look sort of done—" Calli began.

"Done?" she asked.

**—in," he finished, quizzically.

"Maybe I've been working too hard. We're guests at
the Baron VerDorco's this evening. I suppose we can
all relax a bit there."

"VerDorco?" asked Mollya.

"He's in charge of coordinating the various research
projects against the Invaders."

"This is where they make all the bigger and better
secret weapons?" Ron asked.

"They also make smaller, more deadly ones. 1
imagine it should be an education."

"These sabotage attem'ts," Brass said. She had
given them a rough idea of what was going on. "A

86

BABEL-17

successful one here at the War Yards could be 'retty bad
to our efforts against the Invaders."

"I^s about as central a hit as they could try, next to
planting a bomb in Administrative Alliance Headquar-
ters itself."

"Will you be able to stop it?" Slug asked.

Rydra shrugged, turning to the shimmering absences
of the discorporate crew. "I've got a couple of ideas.
Look, I'm going to ask you guys to be sort of unhospi-
table this evening and do some spying. Eyes, I want
you to stay on the ship and make sure you're the only
one here. Ears, once we leave for the Baron's, go
invisible and from then on, don't get more than six feet
away from me until we're all back to the ship. Nose,
you run messages back and forth. There's something
going on that I don't like. I don't know whether it's my
imagination or what."

The Eye spoke something ominous. Ordinarily, the
corporate could only converse with the discorporate—
and remember the conversation—over special equip-
ment. Rydra solved the problem by immediately trans-
lating whatever they spoke to her into Basque before
the weak synapses broke. Though the original words
were lost, the translation remained: Those broken cir-
cuit plates weren't your imagination, was the gist of the
Basque she retained.

She looked over the crew with gnawing discomfort.
If one of the kids or officers was merely psychotically
destructive, it would show up on his psyche index.
There was among them, a consciously destructive one.
It hurt, like an unlocatable splinter in the sole of her
foot that jabbed occasionally with the pressure of walk-
ing. She remembered how she had searched them from
the night. Pride. Warm pride in the way their functions

87

BABEL-17

meshed as they moved her ship through the stars. The
warmth was the relieved anticipation for all that could
go wrong with the machine-called-the-ship, if the
machine-called-the-crew were not interlocked and pre-
cise. Cool pride in another part of her mind, at the ease
with which they moved by one another: the kids, inex-
perienced both in living and working; the adults, so
near pressure situations that might have scarred their
polished efficiency and made psychic burrs to snag one
another. But she had chosen them, and the ship, her
world, was a beautiful place to walk, work, live,-for a
journey's length.

But there was a traitor.

That shorted something. Somewhere in Eden, now
. . . she recalled, again looking over the crew. Some-
where in Eden, now, a worm, a worm. Those cracked
plates told her: the worm wanted to destroy not just her,
but the ship, its crew and contents, slowly. No blades
plunged in the night, no shots from around a comer, no
cord looped on the throat as she entered a dark cabin.
Babel-17, how good a language would it be to argue
with for your life?

"Slug, the Baron wants me to come soon and see
some of the latest methods of slaughter. Have the kids
there decently early, will you? I'm leaving now. Eye
and Ear, hop aboard."

"Righto, Captain," from Slug.
The discorporate crew deperceptualized.
She leaned her sled over the ramp again and slid
away from the milling youngsters and officers, curious
at the source of her apprehension.

88

III

"GROSS, UNCIVILIZED weapons." The Baron gestured
toward the row of plastic cylinders increasing in size
along the rack. "It's a shame to waste time on such
clumsy contraptions. The little one there can demolish
an area of about fifty square miles, The big ones leave a
crater twenty-seven miles deep and a hundred and fifty
across. Barbaric. I frown on their use. That one on the
left is more subtle: it explodes once with enough force
to demolish a good size building, but the bomb casing
itself is hidden and unhurt under the rubble. Six hours
later it explodes again and does the damage of a fair-
sized atomic bomb. This leaves the victims enough
time to concentrate their reclamation forces, all sorts of
reconstruction workers. Red Cross Jiurses, or whatever
the Invaders call them, lots of experts determining the
size of the damage. Then poof. A delayed hydrogen
explosion, and a good thirty or forty miles crater. It
doesn't do as much physical damage as even fhe
smallest of these others, but it gets rid of a lot of
equipment and busybody do-gooders. Still, a school-
boy's weapon. I keep them in my own personal collec-
tion just to show them we have standard fare."

She followed him through the archway into the next
hall. There were filing cabinets along the wall and
single display case in the center of the room.

"Now here is one I'm justly proud of." The Baron
walked to the case and the transparent walls fell apart.

89

BABEL-17

"What," Rydra asked, "exactly is it?"

"What does it look like?"

"A - . . piece of rock."

"A chunk of metal," corrected the Baron.

"Is it explosive, or particularly hard?"

"It won't go bang," he assured her. "Its tensile
strength is a bit over titanium steel, but we have much
harder plastics."

Rydra started to extend her hand, then thought to
ask, "May I pick it up and examine it?"

"I doubt it," the Baron said. "Try."

"What will happen?"

"See for yourself."

She reached out to take the dull chunk. Her hand
closed on air two inches above the surface. She moved
her fingers down to touch it, but they came together
inches to the side- Rydra frowned,

She moved her hand to the left, but it was on the other
side of the strange shard.

"Just a moment." The Baron smiled, picked up the
fragment, "Now if you saw this just lying on the
ground, you wouldn't look twice, would you?"

"Poisonous?" Rydra suggested. "Is it a component
of something else?"

"No." The Baron turned the shape about thought-
fully. ' 'Just highly selective. And obliging." He raised
his hand. "Suppose you needed a gun"—in the Bar-
ons's hand now was a sleek vibra-gun of a model later
than she had ever seen—'' or a crescent wrench.'' Now
he held a foot long wrench. He adjusted the opening.
"Or a machete." The blade glistened as he waved his
arm back. "Or a small crossbow." It had a pistol grip
and a bow length of not quite ten inches. The spring,
however, was doubled back on itself and held with
quarter inch bolts. The Baron pulled the trigger—there
90

BABEL-17

was no arrow—and the thump of the release, fol-
lowed by the continuous pinnnnnng of the vibrating
tensile bar, set her teeth against one another.

"It's some sort of illusion," Rydra said. "That's
why I couldn't touch it."

"A metal punch," said the Baron. It appeared in his
hand, a hammer with a particularly thick head. He
swung it against the floor of the case that had held the
'weapon' with a strident clang. "There."

Rydra saw the circular indentation left by the ham-
merhead, Raised in the middle was the faint shape of
the Ver Dorco shield. She moved the tips of her
fingers over the bossed metal, still warm from im-
pact.

"No illusion," said the Baron. "That crossbow will
put a six inch shaft completely through three inches of
oak at forty yards. And the vibra-gun—I'm sure you
know what it can do."

He held the—it was a chunk of metal again—above
its stand in the case. "Put it l^ack for me."

She stretched her hand beneath.his, and he dropped
the chunk. Her fingers closed to grab it. But it was on
the standard again.

"No hocus-pocus. Merely selective and . . . oblig-
ing."

He touched the edge of the case and the plastic sides
closed over the display. "A clever plaything. Let's
look at something else."

"But how does it work?"

Ver Dorco smiled. "We've managed to polarize
alloys of the heavier elements so that they exist only on
certain perceptual matrices. Otherwise, they deflect-
That means that, besides visually—and we can blank
that out as well—it's undetectable. No weight, no vol-
ume; all it has is inertia. Which means simply by

91

BABEL-17

carrying it aboard any hyperstasis craft, you'll put its
drive controls out of commission. Two or three grams
of this anywhere near the inertia-stasis system will
create all sorts of unaccounted-for strain. That's its
major function right there. Smuggle that on board the
Invaders' ships and we can stop worrying about them.
The rest—that's child's play. An unexpected property
of polarized matter is tensile-memory." They moved
toward an archway Into the next room. "Annealed in
any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that
shape is retained down to the molecules. At any angle
to the direction that the matter has been polarized in,
each molecule has completely free movement. Just jar
it, and it falls into that structure like a rubber figure
returning to shape." The Baron glanced back at the
case. "Simple, really. There"—he motioned toward
the filing cabinets along the wall—"is the real weapon:

approximately three thousand individual plans incor-
porating that little polarized chunk. The 'weapon' is the
knowledge of what to do with what you have. In hand-
to-hand combat, a six-inch length of vanadium wire can
be deadly. Inserted directly into the inner comer of the
eye, piercing diagonally across the frontal lobes, then
brought quickly down, it punctures the cerebellum,
causing general paralysis; thrust completely in,' and it
wiH mangle the joint of spinal cord and the medulla:

Death. You can use the same piece of wire to short out a
Type 27-QX communications unit, which is the sort
currently employed in the Invaders' stasis systems."

Rydra felt the muscles along her spine lighten- The
repulsion which she had quelled till now came flooding
back.

"This next display is from the Borgia. The Borgia,"
he laughed, "my nickname for our toxicology depart-

92

BABEL-17

ment. Again, some terribly gross products." He picked
a sealed glass phial from a wall rack. "Pure diphtheria
toxin. Enough here to make the reservoir of a good-
sized city fatal."

"But standard vaccination procedure—" Rydra be-
gan.

"Diphtheria toxin, my dear.Toxin! Back when con-
tagious diseases were a problem, you know, they
would examine the corpses of diphtheria victims and
discover nothing but a few hundred thousand baccilli,
all in the victim's throat. Nowhere else. With any other
sort of bacillis, that's enough of an infection to cause a
minor cough. It took years to discover what was going
on. That tiny number of bacilli produced an even tinier
bit of a substance that is still the most deadly natural
organic compound we know of. The amount required
to kill a man—oh, I'd even say thirty or forty men—is,
for all practical purposes, undetectable. Up till now,
even with all our advances, the only way you could
obtain it was from an obliging diphtheria bacillus. The
Borgia has-changed that." He pointed to another bottle.
"Cyanide, the old war horse! But then, the telltale
smell of almonds—are you hungry? We can go up for
cocktails any time you wish."

She shook her head, quickly and firmly.

"Now these are delicious. Catalytics." He moved
his hand from one phial to the next. "Color blindness,
total blindness, tone deafness, complete deafness,
ataxia, amnesia, and on and on." He dropped his hand
and smiled like a hungry rodent. "And they're all
controlled by this. You see, the problem with anything
of such a specific effect is that you have to introduce
comparatively huge amounts of it. All these require at
least a tenth of a gram or more. So, catalytics. None of

93

BABEL-17

what I've shown you would have any effect at all even
if you swallowed the whole phial." He lifted the last
container he had pointed to and pressed a stud at the end
and there was a faint hiss of escaping gas. "Until now.
A perfectly harmless atomized steroid."

"Only it activates the poisons here to produce . . .
those effects?"

"Exactly," smiled the Baron. "And the catalyst can
be in doses nearly as microscopic as the diphtheria
toxin. The contents of that blue jar will give you a mild
stomach ache and minor head pains for half an hour.
Nothing more. The green one beside it: total cerebral
atrophy over a period of a week. The victim becomes a
living vegetable the rest of his life. The purple one:

death." He raised his hands, palms up, and laughed.
"I'm famished." The hands dropped, "Shall we go
back to dinner?"

Ask him what's in that room over there, she said to
herself, and would have dismissed the passing curios-
ity, but she was thinking in Basque: it was a message
from her discorporate bodyguard, invisible beside her.

"When I was a child, Baron"—she moved toward
the door—"soon after 1 came to Earth, 1 was taken to
the circus. It was the first time I had ever seen so many
things so close together that were so fascinating. I
wouldn't go home till almost an hour after they had
intended to leave. What do you have in this room?"

Surprise in the little movement in the muscles of his
forehead.

She smiled. "Show me."

He bowed his head in mocking, semi-formal aquies-
cence. "Modem warfare can be fought on so many
delightfully different levels," he continued, walking to
her side as if no interruption of the tour had been

94

BABEL-17

suggested. "One wins a battle by making sure one's
troops have enough blunderbusses and battle axes like
the ones you saw in the first room; or by the well-placed
six-inch length of vanadium wire in a Type 27-QX
communications unit. With the proper orders delayed,
the encounter never takes place. Hand-to-hand
weapons, survival kit, plus training, room, and board:

three thousand credits per unlisted stellarman over a
period of two years active duty. For a garrison of fifteen
hundred men that's an outlay of four million, five
hundred credits. That same garrison will live in and
fight from three hyperstasis battleships which, fully-
equipped, run about a million and a half credits
apiece—a total outlay of nine million credits. We have
spent, on occasion, perhaps as much as a million on the
preparation of a single spy or saboteur. That is rather
higher than usual. And I believe a six-inch length of
vanadium wire costs a third of a cent. War is costly.
And although it has taken some time, Administrative
Alliance Headquarters is beginning to realize subtlety
pays. This way. Miss—Captain Wong."

Again they were in a room with only a single display
case, but it was seven feet high.

A statue, Rydra thought. No, real flesh, with detail
of muscle and joint; no, it must be a statue because a
human body, dead or in suspended animation, doesn't
look that—alive. Only art could produce that vibrancy.

"So you see, the proper spy is important." Though
the door had opened automatically, the Baron held it
with his hand in vestigial politeness.' This is one of our
more expensive models. Still well under a million
credits, but one of my favorites, though in practice he
has his faults. With a few minor alterations I would like
to make him a permanent part of our arsenal."

95

BABEL-17

"A model of a spy?" Rydra asked. "Some sort of
robot or android?"

"Not at all." They approached the display case.
"We made a half a dozen TW-55's. It took the most
exacting genetic search. Medical science has pro-
gressed so that alt sorts of hopeless human refuse lives
and reproduces at a frightening rate—inferior creatures
that would have been too weak to survive a handful of
centuries ago. We chose ourparents carefully, and then
with artificial insemination we got our half dozen zy-
gotes, three male, three female. We raised them in, oh,
such a carefully controlled nutrient environment,
speeding the growth rate by hormones and other things -
But the beauty of it was the experimental imprinting.
Gorgeously healthy creatures; you have no idea how
much care they received."

"I once spent a summer on a cattle farm," Rydra
said shortly.

The Baron's nod was brisk. "We'd used the experi-
mental imprints before, so we knew what we were
doing. But never to synthesize completely the life situa-
tion of, say, a sixteen year old human. Sixteen was the
physiological age we brought them to in six months.
Look for yourself what a splendid specimen it is. The
reflexes are fifty percent above a human aged normally.
The human musculature is beautifully engineered: a
three-day-starved, six-month-atrophied myasthenia
gravis case, can, with the proper stimulant drugs, over-
turn a ton and a half automobile. It will kill him—but
that's still remarkable efficiency. Think what the
biologically perfect body, operating, at all times, on
point nine-nine efficiency, could accomplish in physi-
cal strength alone."

"I thought hormone growth incentive had been out-

96

BABEL-17

lawed. Doesn't it reduce the life span some drastic
amount?' *

"To the extent we used it, the life span reduction is
seventy-five percent and over." He might have smiled
the same way watching some odd animal at its incom-
prehensible antics. "But, Madam, we are making
weapons. lfTW-55 can function twenty years at peak
efficiency, then it will have outlasted the average battle
cruiser by five years. But the experimental imprinting!
To find among ordinary men someone who can func-
tion as a spy, is willing to function as a spy, you must
search the fringes of neurosis, often psychosis. Though
such deviations might mean strength in a particular
area, it always means an overall weakness in the per-
sonality. Functioning in any but that particular area, a
spy may be dangerously inefficient. And the Invaders
have psyche-indices too which will keep the average
spy out of any place we might want to put him. Cap-
tured, a good spy is a dozen times as dangerous as a bad
one- Post-hypnotic suicide suggestions and the like are
easily gotten around with drugs; and are wasteful.
TW-55 here will register perfectly normal on a psyche
integration. He has about six hours of social conversa-
tion, plot synopses of the latest novels, political situa-
tions, music and art criticism—I believe in the course
of an evening he is programmed to drop your name
twice, an honor you share only with Ronald Ouar. He
has one subject on which he can expound with scholarly
acumen for an hour and a half—this one is 'haptoglobin
grouping among the marsupials,' I believe. Put him in
formal wear and he will be perfectly at home at an
ambassadorial ball or a coffee break at a high level
government conference. He is a crack assassin, expert
with all the weapons you have seen up till now, and

97

BABEl-17

more. TW-55 has twelve hours worth of episodes in
fourteen different dialects, accents, or jargons concern-
ing sexual conquests, gambling experiences, fisticuff
encounters, and humorous anecdotes of semi-illegal
enterprises, all of which failed miserably. Tear his
shirt, smear grease on his face and slip a pair of overalls
on him, and he could be a service mechanic on any one
of a hundred spaceyards or stellarcenters on the other
side of the Snap. He can disable any space drive sys-
tem, communications components, radar works, or
alarm system used by the Invaders in the past twenty
years with little more than—"

"Six inches of vanadium wire?"

The Baron smiled. "His fingerprints and retina pat-
tern, he can alter at will. A little neural surgery has
made all the muscles of his face voluntary, which
means he can alter his face structure drastically. Chem-
ical dies and hormone banks beneath the scalp enable
him to color his hair in seconds, or, if necessary, shed it
completely and grow a new batch in half an hour. He's
.a past master in the psychology and physiology of
coercion."

"Torture?"

"If you will. He is totally obedient to the people
whom he has been conditioned to regard as his
superiors; totally destructive toward what he has been
ordered to destroy. There is nothing in that beautiful
head even akin to a super-ego,'*

"He is . . ." and she wondered at herself speaking,
"beautiful." The dark lashed eyes with lids about to
quiver open, the broad hands hung at the naked thighs,
fingers half-curled, about to straighten or become a fist.
The display light was misty on the tanned, yet near

98

BABEL-17

translucent skin. "You say this isn't a model, but
really alive?"

"Oh, more or less. But it's rather firmly fixed in
something like a yoga trance, or a lizard's hibernation.
I could activate it for you—but it's ten to seven. We
don't want to keep the others waiting at the table now,
do we?"

She looked away from the figure in glass to the dull,
taut skin of the Baron's face. His jaw, beneath his
faintly concave cheek, was involuntarily working on its
hinge.

"Like the circus," Rydra said. "But I'm older
now. Come." It was an act of will to offer her arm. His
hand was paper dry, and so light she had to strain to
keep from flinching.

99

IV

"CAPTAIN WONG' I am delighted."

The Baroness extended her plump hand, of a pink
and gray hue suggesting something parboiled. Her
puffy freckled shoulders heaved beneath the straps of
an evening dress tasteful enough over her distended
figure, yet still grotesque.

"We have so little excitement here at the Yards that
when someone as distinguished as yourself pays a visit
. . ." She let the sentence end in what would have
been an ecstatic smile, but the weight of her doughy
cheeks distorted it into something porcine and inflated.

Rydra held the soft, malleable fingers as short a time
as politeness allowed and returned the smile. She re-
membered, as a little girl, being obliged not.to cry
through punishment. Having to smile was worse. The
Baroness seemed a muffled, vast, vacuous silence. The
small muscle shifts, those counter communications that
she was used to in direct conversation, were blunted in
the Baroness under the fat. Even though the voice came
from the heavy lips in strident little screeches, it was as
though they talked through blankets.

"But your crew! We intended them all to be present.
Twenty-one, now I know that's what a full crew con-
sists of." She shook her finger in patronizing disap-
proval. "I read up on these things, you know. And
there are only eighteen of you here."

"1 thought the discorporate members might remain

100

BABEL-17

on the ship," Rydra explained. "You need special
equipment to talk with them and I thought they might
upset your other guests. They're really more content
with themselves for company and they don't eat."

They're having barbecued lamb for dinner and you'll
go to hell for lying, she commented to herself—in
Basque.

"Discorporate?" The Baroness patted the lacquered
intricacies of her high coifed hair. "You mean dead?
Oh, of course. Now I hadn't thought of that at all. You
see how cut off we are from one another in this world?
I'll have their places removed." Rydra wondered
whether the Baron had discorporate detecting equip-
ment operating, as the Baroness leaned toward her and
whispered confidentially, "Your crew has enchanted
everybody! Shall we go on?"

With the Baron on her left—his palm a parchment
sling for her forearm—and the Baroness leaning on her
right—breathy and damp—they walked from the white
stone foyer into the hall.     _

"Hey, Captain!" Calli bellowed, striding towards
them from a quarter of the way across the room. "This
is a pretty fine place, huh?" With his elbows he ges-
tured around at the crowded hall, then held up his glass
to show the size of his drink. He pursed his lips and
nodded approvingly. "Let me get you some of these,
Captain.'' Now he raised a handful of tiny sandwiches,
olives stuffed with liver, and bacon-wrapped prunes.
"There's a guy with a whole tray full running around
over there." He pointed again with his elbow.
"Ma'am, sir"—he looked from the Baroness to the
Baron—"can I get you some, too?" He put one of the
sandwiches in his mouth and followed it with a gulp
from his glass. "Uhmpmnle."

101

BABEM7

"1*11 wait till he brings them over here," the Baro-
ness .said.

Amused, Rydra glanced at her hostess, but there was
a smile, much more the proper size, winding through
her fleshy features. "I hope you like them."

Calli swallowed. "I do." Then he screwed up his
face, set his teeth, opening his lips and shook his head.
"Except those real salty ones with the fish. I didn't like
those at all, ma'am. But the rest are O.K."

"I'll tell you"—the Baroness leaned forward, the
smile crumbling into a chesty chuckle—"I never
really like the salty ones either!"

She looked from Rydra to the Baron with a shrug of
mock surrender. "But one is so tyrannized by one's
caterer nowadays, what can one do?"

"Ifl didn't like them," Calli said, jerking his head
aside in determination, "I'd tell him don't bring
none!"

The Baroness looked back with raised eyebrows.
"You know, you're perfectly right' That's exactly
what I'm going to do!" She peered across Rydra to her
husband. "That's just what I'm going to do, Felix, next
time."

A waiter with a tray of glasses said, "Would you
care for a drink?''

"She don't want one of them little tiny ones,*' Calli
said, gesturing toward Rydra. "Get her a big one like I
got."

Rydra laughed. "I'm afraid I have to be a lady
tonight, Calli."

"Nonsense!" cried the Baroness. **I want a big one,
too. Now let's see, I put the bar somewhere over there,
didn't I?"

"That's where it was when I saw it last," Calli said.

102

BABEL-17

"We're here to have fun this evening, and nobody is
going to have fun with one of those." She seized
Rydra's arm and called back to her husband, "Felix, be
sociable," and led Rydra away. "That's Dr. Keebling.
The woman with the bleached hair is Dr. Crane, and
that's my brother-in-law, Albert. I'll introduce you on
the way back. They're all my husband's colleagues.
They work with him on those dreadful things he was
showing you in the cellar. I wish he wouldn't keep his
private collection in the house. It's gruesome. I'm
always afraid one of them will crawl up here in the
middle of the night and chop our heads off. I think he's
trying to make up for his son. You know we lost our
little boy Nyles—I think it's been eight years. Felix has
thrown himself totally into his work since. But that's a
terribly glib explanation, isn't it? Captain Wong, do
you find us dreadfully provincial?"

"Not at all."

"You should. But then, you don't know any of us
well, do you. Oh, the bright young people who come
here, with their bright, lively imaginations. They do
nothing all day long but think of ways to kill. It's a
terribly placid society, really. But, why shouldn't it be?
All its aggressions are vented from nine to five. Still, I
think it does something to our minds. Imagination
should be used for something other than pondering
murder, don't you think?"

"1 do." Concern grew for the weighty woman.

Just then they were stopped by clotted guests.

"What's going on here?" demanded the Baroness.
"Sam, what are they doing in there?"

Sam smiled, stepped back, and the Baroness wedged
herself into the space, still clutching Rydra's ami.

"Hold 'em back some!" Rydra recognized Lizzy's

103

BABEl-17

voice. Someone else moved and she could see. The
kids from Drive had cleared a space ten feet across, and
were guarding it like junior police. Lizzy crouched with
three boys, who, from their dress, were local gentry of
Armsedge,"What you have to understand," she was
saying, "is that it's all in the wrist." She flipped a
marble with her thumbnail: it struck first one,
then another, and one of the struck ones struck a
third.

"Hey, do that again!"

Lizzy picked up another marble. "Only one knuckle
on the floor, now, so you can pivot. But it's mostly
from the wrist."

The marble darted out, struck, struck, and struck.
Five or six people applauded, Rydra was one.

The Baroness touched her breast. "Lovely shot!
Perfectly lovely!'' She remembered herself and
glanced back. "Oh, you must want to watch this, Sam.
You're the ballistics expert, anyway." With polite
embarrassment she relinquished her place and turned to
Rydra as they continued across the floor. 'There-
There, that is why I'm so glad you and your crew came
to see us this evening. You bring something so cool and
pleasing, so fresh, so crisp."

"You speak about us as though we were a salad."
Rydra laughed. In the Baroness the 'appetite* was not
so menacing.

"I dare say if you stayed here long enough we would
devour you, if you let us. What you bring we are very
hungry for."

"What is it?"

They arrived at the bar, then turned with their drinks.
The Baroness' face strained toward hardness. "Well,
you . . . you come to us and immediately we start to

104

BABEl-17

leam things, things about you, and ultimately about
ourselves."

"I don't understand.

* Take your Navigator. He likes his drinks big and all
the hors d'oeuvres except the anchovies. That's more
than I know about the likes and dislikes of anyone else
in the room. You offer Scotch, they drink Scotch. You
offer tequila, tequila they down by the gallon. And just
a moment ago I discovered"—she shook her supine
hand—"that it's all in the wrist. I never knew that
before."

"We're used to talking to each other."

"Yes, but you tell the important things. What you
like, what you don't like, how to do things. Do you
really want to be introduced to all those stuffy men and
women who kill people?"

"Not really."

"Didn't think so. And 1 don't want to bother myself.
Oh, there are three or four who 1 think you would like.
But I'll see that you meet them before you leave." And
she barreled into the crowd.

Tides, Rydra thought. Oceans, Hyperstasis currents.
Or the movement of people in a large room. She drifted
along the least resistant ways that pulsed open, then
closed as someone moved to meet someone, to get a
drink, to leave a conversation.

Then there was a comer, a spiral stair. She climbed,
pausing as she came around the second turn to watch
the crowd beneath. There was a double door ajar at the
top, a breeze. She stepped outside.

Violet had been replaced by artful, cloud-streaked
purple. Soon the planetoid's chromadome would simu-
late night. Moist vegetation lipped the railing. At one
end, the vines had completely covered the white stone.

105

BABEL-17

"Captain?"

Ron, shadowed and brushed with leaves, sat in the
comer of the balcony, hugging his knees. Skin is not
silver, she thought, yet whenever I see him that way,
curled up in himself, I picture a knot of white metal. He
lifted his chin from his kneecaps and put his back
against the verdant hedge so there were leaves in his
com-silk hair.

"What're you doing?"

'Too many people."

She nodded, watching him press his shoulders
downward, watching his triceps leap on the bone, then
still. With each breath in the gnarled, young body the
tiny movements sang to her. She listened to the singing
for nearly half a minute while he watched her, sitting
still, yet always the tiny entrancements. The rose on his
shoulder whispered against the leaves. When she had
listened to the muscular music a while, she asked:

"Trouble between you, Mollya, and Calli?"

"No. I mean . . . just . . ."

"Just what?" She smiled and leaned on the balcony
edge.

He lowered his chin to his knees again. "I guess
they're fine. But, I'm the youngest . . . and . . ."
Suddenly the shoulders raised. "How the hell would
you understand! Sure, you know about things like this,
but you don't really know. You write what you see. Not
what you do." It came out in little explosions of half
whispered sound. She heard the words and watched the
jaw muscle jerk and beat and pop a small beast inside
his cheek. "Perverts," he said. "That's what you
Customs all really think. The Baron and the Baroness,
all those people in there staring at us, who can't under-

106

BABEL-17

stand why you could want more than two- And you
can't understand either."

"Ron?"

He snapped his teeth on a leaf and yanked it from the
stem.

"Five years ago, Ron, I was . . . tripled."

The face turned to her as if pulling against a spring,
then yanked back. He spit the leaf. "You're Customs,
Captain. You circle-Transport, but just the way you let
them eat you up with their eyes, the way they turn and
watch to see who you are when you walk by: you're a
Queen, yeah. But a Queen in Customs. You're not
Transport."

"Ron, I'm public. That's why they look. I write
books. Customs people read them, yes, but they look
because they want to know who the hell wrote them.
Customs didn't write them. I talk to Customs and
Customs looks at me and says: 'You're Transport.' "
She shrugged. "I'm neither. But even so, I was tripled.
I know about that."

"Customs don't triple," he said.

"Two guys and myself. If 1 ever do it again it'll be
with a girl and a guy. For me that would be easier, I
think. But I was tripled for three years. That's over
twice as long as you've been.

"Yours didn't stick, then. Ours did. At least it was
sticking together with Cathy."

"One was killed," Rydra said. "One is in sus-
pended animation at Hippocrates General waiting for
them to discover a cure for Caulder's disease. 1 don't
think it will be in my lifetime, but if it is—" In the
silence he turned to her. "What is it?" she asked.

"Who were they?"

107

BABEL-17

"Customs or Transport?" She shrugged. "Like me,
neither really. Fobo Lombs, he was captain of an in-
terstellar transport; he was the one who made me go
through and get my Captain's papers. Also he worked
planetside doing hydroponics research, working on
storage methods for hyperstatic hauls. Who was he? He
was slim and blond and wonderfully affectionate and
drank too much sometimes, and would come back from
a trip and get drunk and in a fight and injaii, and we'd
bail him out—really it only happened twice—but we
teased him with it for a year. And he didn't like to sleep
in the middle of the bed because he always wanted to let
one arm hang over."

Ron laughed, and his hands, grasping high on his
forearms, slid to his wrists.

' 'He was killed in a cave-in exploring the Ganymede
Catacombs during the second summer that the three of
us worked together on the Jovian Geological Survey.''

"Like Cathy," Ron said, after a moment.

"Muels Aranlyde was—"

"Empire Star!" Ron said, his eyes widening, "and
the 'Comet Jo' books! You were tripled with Muels
Aranlyde?''

She nodded.' Those books were a lot of fun, weren' t

they?"

"Hell, I musfve read all of them," Ron said. His
knees came apart. "What sort of a guy was he? Was he
anything like Comet?"

"As a matter of fact. Comet Jo started out to be
Fobo. Fobo would get involved in something or other,
I'd get upset, and Muels would start another novel."

"You mean they're like true stories?"

She shook her head. "Most of the books are just all
the fantastic things that could have happened, or that

108

BABEL-17

we worried might have happened. Muels himself? In
the books he always disguises himself as a computer.
He was dark, and withdrawn, and incredibly patient
and incredibly kind. He showed me all about sentences
and paragraphs—did you know the emotional unit in
writing is the paragraph?—and how to separate what
you can say from what you can imply, and when to do
one or the other—"She stopped. "Then he'd give me a
manuscript and say, *Now you tell me what's wrong
with the words.' The only thing I could ever find was
that there were too many of them. It was just after Fobo
was killed that I really got down to my poetry. Muels
used to tel! me if I ever would, I'd be great because I
knew so much about its elements to start. I had to get
down to something then, because Fobo was . . . but
you know about that, though. Muels caught Caulder's
disease about four months later. Neither one of them
saw my first book, though they'd seen most of the
poems. Maybe someday Muels will read them. He
might even write some more of Comet's adventures—
and maybe even go to the Morgue and call back my
thinking pattern and ask, *Now you tell me what's
wrong with the words'; and I'll be able to tell him so
much more, so much. But there won't be any con-
sciousness left . . ." She felt herself drift toward the
dangerous emotions, let them get as close as they
would. Dangerous or not, it had been three years since
her emotions had scared her too much to watch them.

" . . .so much more." Ron sat cross-legged now,
forearms on his knees, hands hanging, "Empire Star
and Comet Jo; we had so much fun with those stories,
whether it was arguing about them all night over coffee,
or correcting galleys, or sneaking into bookshops and
pulling them out from behind the other books."

109

BABEL-17

"I used to do that, too," Ron said. "But just "cause I

liked them."

"We even had fun arguing about who was going to
sleep in the middle."

It was like a cue. Ron began to pull back together,
knees rising, arms locking around them, chin down. "I
got both of mine, at least," he said. "I guess I should
be pretty happy."

"Maybe you should. Maybe you shouldn't. Do they
love you?"

"They say so."

"Do you love them?"

"Christ, yes. I talk to Mollya and she's trying to
explain something to me and she still don't talk so good
yet, but suddenly I figure out what she means, and
. . ." He straightened his body and looked up as
though the word he was searching for was someplace
high.

"It's wonderful," she supplied.

"Yeah, it's—"He looked at her. "It'swonderful."

"YouandCalIi?"

"Hell, Calli's just a big old bear and I can tumble
him around andplay with him. But it's him andMollya.
He still can't understand her so well. And because I'm
the youngest, he thinks he should leam quicker than
me. And he doesn't, so he keeps away from both of us.
Now like I say, when he gets in a mood, I can always
handle him. But she's new, and thinks he's mad at
her."

"Want to know what to do?" Rydra asked, after a
moment.

"Do you know?"

She nodded. "It hurts more when there's something

no

BABEL-17

wrong between them because there doesn't seem to be
anything you can do. But it's easier to fix."

"Why?"

"Because they love you."

He was waiting now.

"Calli gets into one of his moods, and Mollya
doesn't know how to get through to him."

Ron nodded.

"Mollya speaks another language, and Calli can't
get through that."

He nodded again.

"Now you can communicate with both of them. You
can't act as a go-between; that never works. But you
can teach each of them how to do what you know
already."

"Teach?"

"What do you do with Calli when he gets moody?"

"I pull his ears," Ron said. "He tells me to cut it out
until he starts laughing, and then I roll him around on
the floor."

Rydra made a face. "It's unorthodox, but if it works,
fine. Now show Mollya how. She's athletic. Let her
practice on you till she gets it right, if you have to."

"I don't like to get my ears pulled," Ron said.

"Sometimes you have to make sacrifices." She tried
not to smile and smiled anyway.

Ron rubbed his left earlobe with the ham of his
thumb. "I guess so."

"And you have to teach Calli the words to get
through to Mollya."

"But I don't know the words myself, sometimes. I
can just guess better than he can."

"If he knew the words, would it help?"

111

BABEL-17

"Sure.'*

"I've got a Kiswahili grammar in my cabin. Pick it
up when we get back to the ship."

"Hey, that would be fine—" He stopped, withdraw-
ing just a bit into the leaves. "Only Calli don't read
much or anything."

"You'll help him."

"Teach him," Ron said.

'That's right."

"Do you think he'll do it?" Ron asked.

"To get closer to Mollya?" asked Rydra. "Do you
think so?"

"He will." Like metal unbending, Ron suddenly
stood. "He will."

"Are you going inside now?" she asked. "We'll be
eating in a few minutes."

Ron turned to the rail and looked at the vivid sky.
"They keep a beautiful shield up here."

"To keep from being burned up by Bellatrix,"
Rydra said.

"So they don't have to think about what they're
doing."

Rydra raised her eyebrows. Still the concern over
right and wrong, even amidst domestic confusion.
"That, too," she said and wondered about the war.

His tensing back told her he would come later,
wanted to think some more. She went through the
double doors and started down the staircase.

"I saw you go out, and I thought I'd wait for you to
come back in."

Deja vu, she thought. But she couldn't have seen
him before in her life. Blue-black hair over a face
craggy for its age in the late twenties. He stepped back
to make way for her on the stairway with an incredible

112

BABEL-17

economy of movement. She looked from hands to face
for a gesture revealing something. He watched her
back, giving nothing; then he turned and nodded to-
ward the people below. He indicated the Baron, who
stood alone toward the middle of the room. "Yon
Cassius has a lean and hungry look."

"I wonder how hungry he is?" Rydra said, and felt
strange again.

The Baroness was churning toward her husband
through the crowd, to ask advice about whether to
begin dinner or wait another five minutes, or some
other equally desperate decision.

' 'What must a marriage between two people like that
be?" the stranger asked with austerely patronizing
amusement.

"Comparatively simple, 1 suppose," Rydra said.
"They've just got each other to worry about."

A polite look of inquiry. When she offered no eluci-
dation, the stranger turned back to the crowd. "They
make such odd faces when they glance up here to see if
it's you. Miss Wong."

"They leer," she said, shortly.

"Bandicoots. That's what they look like. A pack of
them."

"I wonder if their artificial sky makes them seem so
sickly?" She felt herself leaking a controlled hostility.

He laughed. "Bandicoots with thalassanemia!"

"I guess so. You're not from the Yards?" His com-
plexion had a life that would have faded under the
artificial sky.

"As a matter of fact, I am."

Surprised, she would have asked him more, but the
loudspeakers suddenly announced: "Ladies and Gen-
tlemen, dinner is served."

113

BABEL-17

He accompanied her down the stairs, but two or three
steps into the crowd she discovered he had disappeared.
She continued toward the dining room alone.

Under the arch the Baron and Baroness waited for
her. As the Baroness took her arm, the chamber 'or-
chestra on the dais fell to their instruments.

"Come, we're down this way."

She kept near the puffy matron through the people
milling about the serpentine table that curved and
twisted back on itself.

"We're over there."

And the Basque message:'Captain, on your tran-
scriber, something's coming over back on the ship. The
small explosion in her mind stopped her.

"Babel-17!"

The Baron turned to her. "Yes, Captain Wong?"
She watched uncertainty score tense lines on his face.

"Is- there any place in the yards with particularly
important materials or research going on that might be
unguarded now?"

"That's all done automatically. Why?"

"Baron, there's a sabotage attack about to lake
place, or taking place right now."

"But how did you—"

"I can't explain now, but you'd better make sure
everything is all right."

And the tension turned.

The Baroness touched her husband's arm, and said
with sudden coolness. "Felix, there's your seat."

The Baron pulled out his chair, sat down, and un-
cermoniously pushed aside his place setting. There was
a control panel beneath his doily. As people seated
themselves, Rydra saw Brass, twenty feet away, lower

114

BABEL-17

himself on the special hammock that had been set up for
his glittering, gigantic bulk.

"You sit here, my dear. We'll simply go on with the
party as if nothing was happening. I think that's best."

Rydra seated herself next to the Baron, and the
Baroness lowered herself carefully to the chair on her
left. The Baron was whispering into a throat mi-
crophone- Pictures, which she was at the wrong angle
to see clearly, flashed on the eight inch screen. He
looked up long enough to say, "Nothing yet. Captain
Wong.''

"Ignore what he's doing," the Baron said. "This is
much more interesting over here."

Into her lap she swung out a small console from
where it had hung beneath the table edge.

"Ingenious little thing," the Baroness continued,
looking around. "I think we're ready. There!" Her
pudgy forefinger struck at one of the buttons, and lights
about the room began to lower. "I control the whole
meal just by pressing the right one at the right time.
Watch!" She struck at another one.

Along the center of the table now, under the gentled
light, panels opened and great platters of fruit, candied
apples and sugared grapes, halved melons filled with
honeyed nuts, rose up before the guests.

"And wine!" said the Baroness, reaching down
again.

Along the hundreds of feet of table, basins rose.
Sparkling froth foamed the brim as the fountain
mechanism began. Spurting liquid streamed.

"Fill your glass, dear. Drink up," prompted the
Baroness, raising 'her own beneath a jet; the crystal
splashed with purple.

115

BABEL-17

On her right the Baron said: 'The Arsenal seems to
be all right. I'm alerting all the special projects. You're
sure this sabotage attack is going on right now?"

"Either right now," she told him, "or within the
next two or three minutes. It might be an explosion, or
some major piece of equipment may fail."

"That doesn't leave me much to go on. Though
communications had picked up your Babel-17. I've
been alerted to how these attempts run."

"Try one of these. Captain Wong," The Baroness
handed her a quartered mango which Rydra discov-
ered, when she tasted it, had been marinated in Kirsch.

Nearly all the guests were seated now. She watched a
platoon kid, named Mike, searching for his name-card
halfway across the hall. And down the table length she
saw the stranger who had stopped her on the spiral stair
hurrying toward them behind the seated guests.

"The wine is not grape, but plum," the Baroness
said. "A little heavy to start with, but so good with
fruit. I'm particularly proud of the strawberries. The
legumes are a hydroponicist's nightmare, you know,
but this year we were able to get such lovely ones."

Mike found his seat and reached both hands into the
fruit bowl. The stranger rounded the last loop of table.
Calli was holding a goblet of wine in each hand, look-
ing from one to the other, probably trying to determine
the larger.

"I could be a tease," the Baroness said, "and bring
out the sherbets first. Or do you think I ought best to go
to the caldo verde? The way I prepare it, it's very light.
I can never decide—"

The stranger reached the Baron, leaned over his
shoulder to watch the screen, and whispered some-
thing. The Baron turned to him, turned back slowly

116

BABEL-17

with both hands on the table—and fell forward! A
trickle of blood wormed from beneath his face.

Rydra jerked back in her chair. Murder. A mosaic
came together in her head, and when it was together, it
said: murder. She leapt up.

The Baroness exhaled hoarse breath and rose, over-
turning her chair. She flapped her hands hysterically
toward her husband and shook her head.

Rydra whirled to see the stranger snatch a vibra-gun
from beneath his jacket. She yanked the Baroness out
of the way. The shot was tow and struck the console.

Once moved, the Baroness staggered to her husband
and grasped him. Her breathy moan took voice and
became a wail. The hulking form, like a blimp deflat-
ing, sank and pulled Felix Ver Dorco's body from the
table, till she was kneeling on the floor, holding him in
her arms, rocking him gently, screaming.

Guests had risen now; talk became roaring.

With the console smashed, along the table the fruit
platters were pushed aside by emerging peacocks,
cooked, dressed, and reassembled with sugared heads,
tail feathers swaying. None of the clearing mechanisms
were operating. Tureens of caldo verde crowded the
wine basins till both overturned, flooding the table.
Fruit rolled over the edge.

Through the voices, the vibra-gun hissed on her left,
left again, then right. People ran from their chairs,
blocked her view. She heard the gun once more and saw
Dr. Crane double over, to be caught by a surprised
neighbor as her bleached hair came undone and tum-
bled her face.

Spitted lambs rose to upset the peacocks. Feathers
swept the floor. Wine fountains spurted the glistening
amber skins which hissed and steamed. Food fell back

117

BABEL-17

into the opening and struck red heating coils. Rydra
smelled burning.

She darted forward, caught the arm of the fat,
black-bearded man. "Slug, get the kids out of here!"

"What do you think I'm doing. Captain?"

She darted away, came up against a length of table,
and vaulted the steaming pit. The intricate, oriental
dessert—sizzling bananas dipped first in honey then
rolled to the plate over a ramp of crushed ice—was
emerging as she sprang. The sparkling confections shot
across the ramp and dropped to the floor, honey crystal-
lized to glittering thorns. They rolled among the guests,
cracked underfoot. People slipped and flailed and fell.

"Snazzy way to slide on a banana, huh. Captain?"
commented Calli. "What's going on?"

"Get Mollya and Ron back to the ship!"

Ums rose now, struck the rotisserie arrangement,
overturned, and grounds and boiling coffee splattered.
A woman shrieked, clutching her scalded arm.

"This ain't no fun anymore," Calli said. "I'll round
them up."

He started away as Slug hurried back the other way.
k 'Slug, what's a bandicoot?'' She caught his arm again.

"Vicious little animal. Marsupial, I think. Why?"

1 'That* s right. 1 remember now. And thalas-
sanemia?"

"Funny time to ask. Some sort of anemia."

"I know that. What sort? You're the medic on the
ship."

"Let me see." He closed his eyes a moment. "1 got
all this once in a hypno-course. Yeah, I remember. It's
hereditary, the Caucasian equivalent of sickle cell
anemia, where the red blood cells collapse because the
haptoglobins break down—"

•   118

BABEL-17

"—and allow the hemoglobins to leak out and the
cell gets crushed by osmotic pressure. I've figured it
out. Get the hell out of here."
Puzzled, the Slug started toward the arch.
Rydra started after him, slipped in wine sherbet, and
grabbed Brass, who now gleamed above her. "Take it
easy, Ca'tain!"

"Out of here, baby," she demanded. "And fast."
"Ho' a ride?" Grinning, he hooked his arm at his
hip, and she climbed to his back, clutching his sides
with her knees and holding his shoulders. The great
muscles that had defeated the Silver Dragon bunched
beneath her, and he leapt, clearing the table and landing
on all fours. Before the fanged, golden beast, guests
scattered. They made for the arched door.

119

v

HYSTERICAL EXHAUSTION frothed in her head.

She smashed through it, into the Rimbaud's cabin,
and punched the intercom. "Slug, is every—"

"All present and accounted for. Captain."

"The discorporate—"

"Safe aboard, all three."

Brass, panting, filled the entrance hatch behind her.

She switched to another channel, and a near musical
sound filled the room- "Good. It's still going."

"That's it?" asked Brass.

She nodded. "Babel-l?. It's been automatically
transcribed so I can study it later. Anyway, here goes
nothing." She threw a switch.

"What you doing?"

"I prerecorded some messages and I'm sending
them out now. Maybe they'll get through." She
stopped the first take and started a second. "I don't
know it well, yet. I know it a little, but not enough. 1
feel like someone at a performance of Shakespeare
shouting catcalls in pidgin English."

An outside line signaled for her attention. "Captain
Wong, this is Albert VerDorco." The voice was per-
turbed. "We've had a terrible catastrophe, and we're in
total confusion here. I could not find y*ou at my
brother's, but flight clearance just told me you had
requested immediate take off for hyperstasis jump."

"1 requested nothing of the kind. I just wanted to get

120

BABEL-17

my crew out of there. Have you found out what's going
on?"

"But, Captain, they said you were in the process of
clearing for flight. You have top priority, so I can't very
well countermand your order. But I called to request
that you please stay until this matter is cleared up,
unless you are acting on some information that—"

"We're not taking off," Rydra said.

"We better not be," interjected Brass. "I'm not
wired into the ship yet."

"Apparently your automatic James Bond ran ber-
serk," Rydra told Ver Dorco.

"... Bond?"

"A mythological reference. Forgive me. TW-55
flipped."

"Oh, yes. I know. It assassinated my brother, and
four extremely important officials. It couldn't have
picked out four more key figures if it had been plan-
ned."

"It was. TW-55 was sabotaged. And no, I don't
know how. I suggest you contact General Forester back
at—"

"Captain, flight clearance says you're still signaling
for take off! I have no official authority here, but you
must—"

"Slug! Are we taking off?"

"Why, yes. Didn't you just issue orders down here
for emergency hyperstasis exit?" '

"Brass isn't even at his station yet, you idiot!"

"But I have just received clearance from you thirty
seconds ago. Of course he's hooked in. I just spoke—"

Brass lumbered across the floor'and bellowed into
the microphone. "I'm standing right behind her,
numbskull! What are you, gonna dive into the middle

121

BABEL-17

Bellatrix?0r maybe come out inside some nova?These
things head for the biggest mass around when they
drift!"

"But you just—"

A grinding started somewhere below them. And a
sudden surge.

Over the loudspeaker from Albert VerDorco:k 'Cap-
tain Wong!"

Rydra shouted again, "Idiot, cut the stasis gen—"

But the generators were already whistling over the
roar.

And surge again; she jerked against her hands hold-
ing the desk edge, saw Brass flail one claw in,the air.
And—

122

>;:

fi

PART
THREE:

JEBEL
TARIK

. . . Real, grimy and exiled, he
eludes us.

I would show him books and bridges.
I would make a language we could alt speak.
No blond fantasy

Mother has sent to plague us in the Spring,
he has his own bad dreams, needs work. gets drunk,
maybe would not have chosen to be beautiful . . .
—from The Navigators, M.H.

. . You have imposed upon me a treaty of silence . . .
—from The Song of Liadan, M.H.

123

ABSTRACT THOUGHTS in a blue room; Nominative, geni-
tive, etative, accusative one, accusative two, ablative,
partitive, illative, instructive, abessive, adessive, ines-
sive, essive, allative, translative, comitative. Sixteen
cases of the Finnish noun. Odd, some languages get by
with only singular and plural. The American Indian
languages even failed to distinguish number. Except
Sioux, in which there was a plural only for animate
objects. The blue room was round and warm and
smooth. No way to say warm in French. There was only
hot and tepid If there's no word for it, how do you
think about it? And, if there isn't the proper form, you
don't have the how even if you have the words.
Imagine, in Spanish having to assign a sex to every
object: dog, table, tree, can-opener. Imagine, in Hun-
garian, not being able to assign a sex to anything: he,
she, it all the same word. Thou art my friend, but you
are my king; thus the distinctions of Elizabeth the
First's English. But with some oriental languages,
which all but dispense with gender and number, you are
my friend, you are my parent, and YOU are my priest,
and YOU are my king, and YOU are my servant, and
YOU are my servant whom I'm going to fire tomorrow
if YOU don't watch it, and YOU are my king whose
policies I totally disagree with and have sawdust in
YOUR head instead of brains, YOUR highness, and

125

BABEL-17

YOU may be my friend, but I'm still gonna smack
YOU up side the head if YOU ever say that to me again;

and who the hell are you anyway . . .?

What's your name? she thought in a round warm blue
room.

Thoughts without a name in a blue room: Ursula,
Priscilia, Barbara, Mary, Mona, and Natica: respec-
tively, Bear, Old Lady, Chatterbox, Bitter, Monkey,
and Buttock. Name. Names? What's in a name? What
name am I in? In my father's father's land, his name
would come first, Wong Rydra. In Mollya's home, I
would not bear my father's name at all, .but my
mother's. Words are names for things. In Plato's time
things were names for ideas—what better description
of the Platonic Ideal? But were words names for things,
or was that just a bit of semantic confusion? Words
were symbols for whole categories of things, where a
name was put to a single object: a name on something
that requires a symbol jars, making humor. A symbol
on something that takes a name jars, too: a memory that
contained a torn window shade, his liquored breath, her
outrage, and crumpled clothing wedged behind a
chipped, cheap night table. "All right, woman, come
here!" and she had whispered, witlrher hands achingly
tight on the brass bar, "My name is Rydra!" An
individual, a thing apart from its environment, and
apart from all things in that environment; and indi-
vidual was a type of thing for which symbols were
inadequate, and so names were invented. I am in-
vented. I am not a round warm blue room. I am some-
one in that room, I am—

Her lids had been half-closed on her eyeballs. She
opened them and came up suddenly against a restram-

126

BABEL-17

ing web. It knocked her breath out, and she fell back,
turning about to look at the room.

No.

She didn't "look at the room."

She "something at the something." The first some-
thing was a tiny vocable that implied an immediate, but
passive, perception that could be aural or olfactory as
well as visual. The second something was three
equally tiny phonemes that blended at different musi-
cal pitches: one an indicator that fixed the size of the
chamber at roughly twenty-five feet long and cubical,
the second identifying the color and probable substance
of the walls—some blue metal—while the third was at
once a place holder for particles that should denote the
room's function when she discovered it, and a sort of
grammatical tag by which she could refer to the whole
experience with only the one symbol for as long as she
needed. All four sounds took less time on her tongue
and in her mind than the one clumsy diphthong in
'room'. Babel-17; she had felt it before with other
languages, the opening, the widening, the mind forced
to sudden growth. But this, this was like the sudden
focusing of a lens blurry for years.

She sat up again. Function?

What was the room used for? She rose slowly, and
the web caught her around the chest. Some sort of
infirmary. She looked down at the—not 'webbing', but
rather a three particle vowel differential, each particle
ofwhich-defined one stress of the three-way tie, so that
the weakest points in the mesh were identified when the
total sound of the differential reached its lowest point.
By breaking the threads at these points, she realized,
the whole web would unravel. Had she flailed at it, and

127

BABEL-17

not named it in this new language, it would have been
more than secure enough to hold her. The transition
from 'memorized' to 'known' had taken place while
.she had been—

Where had she been? Anticipation, excitement, fear!
She pulled her mind back into English. Thinking in
Babel-17 was like suddenly seeing the water at the
bottom of a well that a moment ago you thought had
only gone down a few feet. She reeled with vertigo.

It took her a blink to register the others. Brass hung in
the large hammock at the far wall—she saw the tines of
one yellow claw over the rim. The two smaller ones on
the other side must have been platoon kids. Above one
edge she saw shiny black hair as a head turned in sleep:

Carlos. She couldn't see the third. Curiosity made a
small, unfriendly fist on something important in her
lower abdomen.

Then the wall faded.

She had been about to try to fix herself, if not in place
and hour, at least in some set of possibilities. With the
fading wall, the attempt stopped. She watched.

It happened in the upper part of the wall to her left. It
glowed, grew transparent, and a tongue of metal
formed in the air, sloped gently toward her.

Three men:

The closest, at the ramp's, head, had a face like
brown rock cut roughly and put together fast. He wore
an outdated garment, the son that had preceded contour
capes. It automatically formed to the body, but was
made of porous plastic and looked rather like armor. A
black, deep piled material cloaked one shoulder and
arm. His worn sandals were laced high on his calves.
Tufts of fur beneath the thongs prevented chafing. His
only cosmetisurgury was false silver hair and upswept

128

BABEL-17

metallic eyebrows. From one distended earlobe hung a
thick silver ring. He touched his vibra-gun holster rest-
ing on his stomach as he looked from hammock to
hammock.

The second man stepped in front. He was a slim,
fantastic concoction ofcosmetisurgical invention, sort
of a griffin, sort of a monkey, sort of a sea horse: scales,
feathers, claws and beak had been grafted to a body she
was sure had originally resembled a cat's. He crouched
at the first man's side, squatting on surgically distended
haunches, brushing his knuckles on the metal flooring.
He glanced up as the first man absently reached down to
scratch his head.

Rydra waited for them to speak. A word would
release identification; Alliance or Invader. Her mind
was ready to spring on whatever tongue they spoke, to
extract what she knew of its thinking habits, tendencies
toward logical ambiguities, absence or presence of
verbal rigor, in whatever areas she might take advan-
tage of—                  ^

The second man moved back and she saw the third
who still stood at the rear. Taller, and more powerfully
built than the others, he wore only a breech, was mildly
roundshouldered. Grafted onto his wrists and heels
were cocks' spurs—they were sometimes sported by
the lower elements of the transport underworld, and
bore the same significance as brass knuckles or
blackjacks of centuries past. His head had been recently
shaved and the hair had started back in a dark, elektra
brush. Around one knotty bicep was a band of red flesh,
like a blood bruise or inflamed scar. The brand had
become so common on characters in mystery novels
five years back, that now it had been nearly dropped as
a hopeless cliche. It was a convict's mark from the

129

BABEL-17

penal caves ofTitin. Something about him was bmtal
enough to make her glance away. Something was
graceful enough to make her look back.

The two on the head of the ramp turned to the third.
She waited for words, to define, fix, identify. They
looked at her, then walked into the wall. The ramp
began to retract.                   •

She pushed herself up. "Please," she called out.
"Where are we?"

The silver-haired man said, "JebeiTarik," The wall
solidified,

Rydra looked down at the web (which was some-
thing else in another language) popped one cord,
popped another. The tension gave, till it unraveled and
she jumped to the floor. As she stood she saw the other
platoon kid was Kile, who worked with Lizzy in Re-
pair. Brass had started struggling. "Keep still a sec-
ond." She began to pop cords.

"What did he say to you?" Brass wanted to know.
"Was that his name, or was he telling you to lie down
and shut u'?"

She shrugged and broke another. "Tank, that's
mountain inOld Moorish. Jebel's Mountain, maybe."

Brass sat up as the frayed string fell. "How did you
do that?" he asked."1 pushed against the thing for ten
minutes and it wouldn't give."

'Tell you some other time. Jebel could be some-
body's name."

Brass looked back at the broken web, clawed behind
one tufted ear, then shook his puzzled head and reared.

"At least they're not Invaders," Rydra said.

"Who says?"

"I doubt that many humans on the other side of the
axis have been heard of Old Moorish. The Earthmen

130

BABEL-17

who migrated there all came from North and South
America beforeAmericasia was formed and Pan Africa
swallowed up Europe. Besides, the Titin penal caves
are inside Caesar."

"Oh yeah," Brass said. "Hmm. But that doesn't
mean one of its alumni has to be."

She looked at where the wall had opened. Grasping
their situation seemed as futile as grasping that blue
metal.

"What the hell ha"ened anyway?"

"We took off without a pilot," Rydra said. "I guess
whoever broadcasts in Babel-17 can also broadcast
English."

"I don't think we took off without a 'ilot. Who did
Slug talk to just before we shot? If we didn't have a
'ilot, we wouldn't be here. We'd be a grease s'ot on the
nearest, biggest sun."

"Probably whoever cracked those circuit boards."
Rydra cast her mind into the past as the plaster of
unconsciousness crumbled. ^'1 guess the saboteur
doesn't want to kill me- TW-55 could have picked me
off as easily as he picked off the Baron."

"I wonder if the s'y on the shi' s'eaks Babel-17
too?"

Rydra nodded. "So do I."

Brass looked around. "Is this all there is? Where's
the rest of the crew?"

"Sir, Ma'am?"

They turned.

Another opening in the wall. A skinny girl, with a
green scarf binding back brown hair, held out a bowl.

' 'The master said you were about, so I brought this.''
Her eyes were dark and large, and the lids beat like bird
wings. She gestured with the bowl.

^
131

BABEL-17

Rydra responded to her openness, yet also detected a
fear of strangers. Yet the thin fingers grasped surely on
the bowl's edge. "You're kind to bring this."

The girl bowed slightly and smiled.

"You're frightened of us, 1 know," Rydra said.
"You shouldn't be."

The fear was leaving; bony shoulders relaxed.

"What's your master's name?" Rydra asked.

"Jebel."

Rydra looked back and nodded to Brass.

"And we're in Jebel's Mountain?" She took the
bowl from the girl. "How did we get here?"

"He hooked your ship up from the center of the
Gygnus-42 nova just before your stasis generators
failed this side of the jump."

Brass hissed, his substitute for a whistle. "No won-
der we went unconscious. We did some fast drift-
ing."

The thought pulled the plug from Rydra's stomach.
"Then we did drift into a nova area. Maybe we didn't
have a pilot after all."

Brass removed the white napkin from the bowl.
' 'Have some chicken, Ca'tain.'' They were roasted and
still hot.

"In a minute," she said. "I have to think about that
one some more." She turned back to the girl. "Jebel's
Mountain is a ship, then. And we're on it?"

The girl put her hands behind her back and nodded.
"And it's a good ship, too."

"I'm sure you don't take passengers. What cargo do
you haul?"

She had asked the wrong question. Fear
again; not a personal distrust of strangers, something
formal and pervasive. "We carry no cargo, ma'am."

132

BABEL-17

Then she blurted, "I'm not supposed to talk to you
none. You have to speak with Jebel." She backed into
the wall.

"Brass," Rydra said, turning slowly and scratching
her head, "there're no space-pirates any more, are
there?''

"There haven't been any hi-jacks on transport ships
for seventy years."

"That's what I thought. So what sort of ship are we
on?"

"Beats me." Then the burnished planes of his
cheeks shifted in the blue light. Silken brows pulled
down over the deep disks of his eyes. "Hooked the
Rimbaud out of the Cygnus-42? I guess I know why
they call it Jebel's Mountain. This thing must be big as
a damn battleshi'."

"If it is a warship, Jebel doesn't look like any stel-
larman I ever saw."

"And they don't allow ex-convicts in the army,
anyway. What do you think we've stumbled on, Ca'-
tain?"

She took a drumstick from the bowl. "I guess we
wait till we speak to Jebel." There was movement in
the other hammocks. "I hope the kids are all right.
Why didn't 1 ask that girl if the rest of the crew was
aboard?" She strode to Carlos' hammock. "How do
you feel this morning?" she asked brightly. For the first
time she saw the snaps that held the webbing to the
underside of the sling.

"My head," Carlos said, grinning. "I got a hang-
over, I think."

"Not with that leer on your face. What do you know
about hangovers, anyway?'' The snaps took there times
as long to undo as breaking the net.

133

BABEL-17

"The wine," Carlos said, "at the party. I had a lot.
Hey, what happened?"

"Tell you when I find out. Upsy-daisy." She tipped
the hammock and he rolled to his feet.

Carlos pushed the hair out of his eyes. "Where's
everybody else?"

"Kile's over there. That's all of us in this room."

Brass had freed Kile, who sat on the hammock edge
now, trying to put his knuckles up his nose.

"Hey, baby," Carlo said. "You all right?"

Kile ran his toes up and down his Achilles tendon,
yawned, and said something unintelligible at the same
time.

"You did not," Carlos said, "because I checked it
just as soon as I got in."

Oh well, she thought, there were still languages left
at which she might gain more fluency.

Kile was scratching his elbow now. Suddenly he
stuck his tongue in the corner of his mouth and looked
up.

So did Rydra.

The ramp was extending from the wall again. This
time it joined the floor.

"Will you come with me, Rydra Wong?"

Jebel, bolstered and silver-haired, stood in the dark
opening.

"The rest of my crew," Rydra said, "are they all
right?"

"They are all in other wards. If you wish to see
them—"

"Arc they all right?"

Jebel nodded.

Rydra thumped Carlos on his head. "I'll see you
later," she whispered.

134

BABEL-17

The commons was arched and balconied, the walls
dull as rock. The expanses were hung with green and
crimson zodiac signs or representations of battles. And
the stars—at first, she thought the light flecked void
beyond the gallery columns was an actual view-port;

but it was only a great, hundred-foot long projection of
the night beyond their ship.

Men and women sat and talked around wooden ta-
bles, or lounged by the walls. Down a broad set of steps
was a wide counter filled with food and pitchers. The
opening hung with pots, pans, and platters, and behind
it she saw the aluminum and white recess of the gal-
ley where aproned men and women prepared
dinner.

The company turned when they entered. Those
nearest touched their foreheads in salute. She followed
Jebel to the raised steps and walked to the cushioned
benches on the top.

The griffin man came scurrying up, "Master, this is
she?"

Jebel turned to Rydra, his rocky face softening.
"This is my amusement, my distraction, my ease of
ire. Captain Wong, In him I keep the sense of humor
that all around will tell you I lack. Hey, Klik, leap up
and straighten the seats for conference."

The feathered head ducked brightly, black eye wink-
ing, and Klik whacked the cushions puffy. A moment
later Jebel and Rydra sank into them.

"Jebel," asked Rydra, "what route does your ship
run?"

"We stay in the Specelli Snap." He pushed his cape
back from his three-knobbed shoulder. "What was
your original position before you were caught in the
noval tide?"

135

BABEl-17

"We . . . took off from the War Yards at
Armsedge."

Jebel nodded. "You are fortunate. Most shadow-
ships would have left you to emerge in the nova when
your generators gave out. It would have been a rather
final discorporation.

"I guess so," Rydra felt her stomach sink at the
memory. Then she asked, "Shadow-ships?"

"Yes. That's Jebel Tarik."

"I'm afraid I don't know what a shadow-ship is."

Jebel laughed, a soft, rough sound in the back of his
throat. "Perhaps it's just as well. I hope you never have
occasion to wish I had not told you."

"Go ahead," Rydra said. "I'm listening."

"The Specelli Snap is radio-dense. A ship, even a
mountain like Tank, over any long-range is undetect-
able. It also runs across the stasis side of Cancer."

"That galaxy lies under the Invaders," Rydra said,
with conditioned apprehension.

"The Snap is the boundary along Cancer's edge. We
. . . patrol the area and keep the Invader ships ... in
their place."

Rydra watched the hesitation in his face. "But not
officially?"

Again he laughed. "How could we. Captain
Wong?" He stroked a ruff of feathers between Klik's
shoulder blades. The jester arched his back. "Even
official warships cannot receive their orders and direc-
tions in the Snap because of the radio-density. So
Administrative Alliance Headquarters is lenient with
us. We do our job well; they look the other way. They
cannot give us orders; neither can they supply us with
weapons or provisions. Therefore we ignore certain
salvage conventions and capture regulations. Stellar-

136

BABEL-17

men call us looters." He searched her for a reaction.
"We are staunch defenders of the Alliance, Captain
Wong, but . . ." He raised his hand, made a fist and
brought the fist against his beily. "But if we are hun-
gry, and no Invader ship has come by—well, we take
what comes past."

" I see," Rydra said.k 'Do I understand I am taken?''
She recalled the Baron, the hesitant spring implicit in
his lean figure.

Jebel's fingers opened on his stomach. "Do I look
hungry?"

Rydra grinned. "You look very well fed."

He nodded. "This has been a prosperous month.
Were it not, we would not be sitting together so ami-
ably. You are our guests for now."

"Then you will help us repair the burned-out
generators . . -"

Jebel raised his hand again, signaling her to halt.
". . -for now." he repeated.

Rydra had moved forward on her seat; she sat back
again.

Jebel spoke to Klik: "Bring the books." The jester
stepped quickly away and delved into a stand beside the
couches. "We live dangerously," Jebel went on,
"Perhaps that is why we live well. We are civilized—
when we have time. The name of your ship convinced
me to heed the Butcher's suggestion to hook you out.
Here on the Rim we are seldom visited by a Bard."
Rydra smiled as politely as she could at the pun.

Klik returned with three volumes. The covers were
black with silver edging. Jebel held them up. "My
favorite is the second. 1 was particularly struck with the
long narrative Exiles in Mist. You tell me you have
never heard of shadowships, yet you do know the

137

BABEL-17

feelings 'that loop night to bind you"—that is the line,
isn't it? I confess, your third book I do not understand.
But there are many references and humorous allusions
to current events. We here are out of the mainstream."
He shrugged. "We . . . salvaged the first from the
collection of the captain of an Invader transport tramp
that had wandered off course. The second—well, it
came from an Alliance destroyer. I believe there's an
inscription on the inside cover." He opened it and read:

" 'For Joey on his first flight; she says so well what I
have always wanted to say so much. With so much,
much love, Lenia.' "He closed the cover. "Touching.
The third I only acquired a month ago. I will read it
several times more before I speak of it to you again. I
am astounded at the coincidence that brings us to-
gether."He placed the books inhis lap. "How long has
the third one been out?"

'*A little under a year."

"There is a fourth?"

She shook her head.

"May I inquire what literary work you are engaged
in now?"

1 'Now, nothing. I 've done some short poems that my
publisher wants to put out in a collection, but I want to
wait until I have another large, sustained work to bal-
ance them."

Jebel nodded. "I see. But your reticence deprives us
of great pleasure. Should you be moved to write, I will
be honored. At meals we have music, some dramatic or
comic entertainment, directed by clever Klik. If you
would give us prologue or epilogue with what fancy
you choose, you will have an appreciative audience."
He extended his brown, hard hand. Appreciation is not
a warm feeling, Rydra realized, but cool, and makes

138

BABEL-17

your back relax at the same time that you smile. She
took his hand.

"Thank you, Jebel," she said.

"I thank you," Jebel returned. "Having your good
will, I shall release your crew. They are free to wander
Tank as my own men are." His brown gaze shifted and
she released his hand. "The Butcher." He nodded and
she turned.

The convict who had been with him on the ramp now
stood on the step below.

"What was that blot that lay toward Rigel?" Jebel
asked.

"Alliance running. Invader tracking."

JebePs face furrowed, then relaxed. "No, let them
both pass. We eat well enough this month. Why upset
our guests with violence? This is Rydra—"

The Butcher brought his right fist cracking into his
left palm. People below turned. She jumped at the
sound and with her eyes she tried to strip meaning from
the faintly quivering muscle^, the fixed, full-lipped
face: lancing but inarticulate hostility; an outrage at
stillness, a fear of motion halted, safely in silence
furious with movement—

Now Jebel spoke again, voice lower, slower, harsh.
' 'You're right. But what whole man is not of two minds
on any matter of moment, eh. Captain Wong?" He
rose- "Butcher, pull us closer to their trajectory. Are
they an hour out? Good. We will watch a while, then
trounce"—he paused and smiled at Rydra—"the In-
vaders."

The Butcher's hands came apart, and Rydra saw
relief (or release) ease his arms. He breathed again.

"Ready Tarik, and I will escort our guest to where
she may watch."

139

BABEL-17                            ^'

i                                                  »'•

Without response, the Butcher strode to the bottom
of the steps. Those nearest had overheard and the in-
formation saturated the room. Men and women rose
from their benches. One upset his drinking horn. Rydra
saw the girl who had served them in the infirmary run
with a towel to sop the drink.

At the head of the gallery stairs she looked over the
balcony rail at the commons below, empty now.

"Come," Jebel motioned her through the columns
toward the darkness and the stars.' The Alliance ship is
coming through there." He pointed to a bluish cloud.
"We have equipment that can penetrate a good deal of
this mist, but I doubt the Alliance ship even knows it is
being tracked by Invaders." He moved to a desk and
pressed a raised disk. Two dots of light flashed in the
mist. "Red for Invaders," Jebel explained. "Blue for
Alliance. Our little spider-boats will be yellow. You
can follow the progress of the encounter from here. All
our sensory evaluations and sensory perceptors and
navigators remain on Tarik and direct the major
strategy by remote control, so formations remain con-
sistent. But within a limited range, each spider-boat
battles for itself. It's fine sport for the men."

"What sort of ships are these you hunt?" She was
amused that the slight archaic tone that perfused JebePs
speech had begun to affect hers.

"The Alliance ship is a military supply ship. The
Invader is tracking her with a small destroyer."

"How far apart are they?"

"They should engage each other in about twenty
minutes."

"And you are going to wait sixty minutes before you       j
. . . trounce the Invaders?"                              -'1'

140

BABEL-17

Jebel smiled. "A supply ship doesn't have much
chance against a destroyer."

tt! know." She could see him waiting, behind the
smile, for her to object. She looked for objection in
herself, but it was blocked by a clot of tiny singing
sounds on an area of her tongue smaller than a coin:

Babel-17. They defined a concept ofexactingly neces-
sary expedient curiosity that became in any other lan-
guage a clumsy string of polysyllables. "I've never
watched a stellar skirmish," she said.

"I would have you come in my flagship, but I know
that the little danger there is danger enough, From here
you can follow the whole battle much more clearly."

Excitement caught her up. "I'd like to go with you."
She hoped he might change his mind.

"Stay here," Jebel said. "The Butcher rides with
me this time. Here's a sensory helmet if you wish to
view the stasis currents. Though with combat weapons,
there's so much electromagnetic confusion I doubt that
even a reduction would mean^nuch." A run of lights
flashed across the desk top.' 'Excuse me. I go to review
my men and check my cruiser." He bowed shortly.
"Your crew has revived. They will be directed up here
and you may explain their status as my guests however
you see fit."

As Jebel walked to the steps, she looked back to the
glittering view-screen and a few moments later
thought: What an amazing graveyard they have on this
hulk; it must take fifty discorporate souls to do all the
sensory reading for Tarik and its spider-boats—in
Basque again. She looked back and saw the translucent
shapes of her Eye, Ear, and Nose across the gallery.

"Am I glad to see you!" she said. *T didn't know
whether Tarik had discorporate facilities!"

141

BABEL-17

"Does it!" came the Basque response. "We'll take
you on a trip through the Underworld here. Captain.
They treat you like the lords of Hades."

From the speaker came Jebel 's voice:k 'Hear this: the
strategy is Asylum. Asylum. Repeat a third time,
Asylum. Inmates gather to face Caesar. Psychotics
ready at the K-ward gate. Neurotics gather before the
R-ward gate. Criminally insane prepare for discharge at
theT-ward gate. All right, drop your straitjackets."

At the bottom of the hundred-foot screen appeared
three groups of yellow lights—the three groups of
spiderboats that would attack the Invader once it had
overtaken the Alliance supply ship, "Neurotics ad-
vance. Maintain contact to avoid separation anxiety."
The middle group began to move slowly forward. On
the underspeakers now, punctuated with static, Rydra
heard lower voices as the men began to report back to
the Navigators on Tank:

Keep us on course, now, Kippi, and don' t get shook.
Sure thing. Hawk, will you get your reports back

on time!

Ease up. My caper-unit keeps sticking.
Who told you to leave without getting overhauled?
Come on, ladies, be kind to us for once.
Hey, Pigfoot, you want to be lobbed in high or low?
Low, hard, and fast. Don't hang me up.
You just get your reports in, honeybunch.
Over the main speaker Jebel said: "The Hunter and
the Hunted have engaged—*' The red light and the blue
light started blinking on the screen. Calli, Ron, and
Molly a came from the head of the steps.

"What's going. . .?" Calli started, but silenced at
a gesture from Rydra.

"That red light's an Invader ship. We're attacking it

142

BABEL-17

in a few moments. We're the yellow lights down
here." She left the explanation at that.
"Good tuck, us," Mollya said, dryly.
In five minutes there was only the red light left. By
now Brass had clanked up the steps to join them. Jebel
announced: "The Hunter has become the Hunted. Let
the criminally-insane schiz out." The yellow group on
the left started forward, spreading apart.
That Invader looks pretty big, there. Hawk.
Don't worry. She'll run us out tough.
Hell. I don't like hard work. Got my reports yet?
Right-o. Pigfoot, stop jamming Ladybird's beam!
O.K. O.K. O.K. Did anyone check over tractor-nine

and ten?

You think of everything at the right time, don't you?
Just curious. Don' t the spiral look pretty back there?
"Neurotics proceed with delusions of grandeur.
Napoleon Bonaparte take the lead. Jesus Christ bring
up the rear.'' The ships on the right moved forward now
in diamond formation- "Simulate severe depression,
non-communicative, with repressed hostility."

Behind her she heard young voices. The Slug herded
the platoon up the steps. Arriving, they quieted before
the vast representation of night. The explanation of the
battle filtered back among the children in whispers.

"Commence the first psychotic episode." Yellow
lights ran forward into the darkness.

The Invader must have spotted them at last, for it
began to move away. The gross bulk could not outrun
the spiders unless it jumped currents. And there was not
enough leeway to check out. The three groups of yel-
low lights—formed, unformed, and dispersed—drew
closer. After three minutes, the Invader stopped run-
ning. On the screen there was a sudden shower of red

143

BABEL-17

lights. It had released its own barrage of cruisers which
also separated into the three standard attack groups.

'The life goal has become dispersed," Jebel an-
nounced. "Do not become despondent."
Come on, let them babies fry and gel us!
Remember, Kippi, low, fast, and hard!
If we scare them into offensive, we got it made!
"Prepare to penetrate hostile defense mechanisms.
All right. Administer medication!"

The formation of the Invader's cruiser, however,
was not offensive. A third of them fanned horizontally
across the stars, the second group combed over their
paths at a sixty degree angle, and the third group moved
through another rotation of sixty degrees so they made a
three-way defensive grid before the mother ship. The
red cruisers doubled back on themselves at the end of
their run and swept out again, netting the space before
the Invader with small ships.

"Take heed. The enemy has tightened its defense
mechanisms."

What's with this new formation, anyway?
We'll get through. You worried?
Static chopped out one speaker.
Damn, they strafed Pigfoot!
Pull me back, Kippi. There you go. Pigfoot?
Did you see how they got him? Hey, let's go.
"Administer active therapy to the right. Be as direc-
tive as you can. Let the center enjoy the pleasure
principle. And the left go hang."

Rydra watched, fascinated, as yellow lights engaged
the red which still swept hypnotically along their grid,
net, web—

Webbing! The picture Hipped over in her mind and
the other side had all the missing lines. The grid was

144

BABEL-17

identical to the three-way web she had torn off the
hammock hours before, with the added factor of tim-
ing, because the strands were the paths of ships, not
strings; but it worked the same way. She snatched up a
microphone from the desk. "Jebel!" The word took
forever to slide back and forth from postdental through
labial stop and back to palatal fricative, beside the
sounds that danced through her brain now. She barked
at the Navigators beside her "Calli, Mollya, Ron,
coordinate the battle area for me."

"Huh?" saidCalli. "All right." He began to adjust
the dial of the stellari meter in his palm. Slow motion,
she thought. They're all moving in slow motion. She
knew what should be done, must be done, and watched
the situation changing.

"Rydra Wong, Jebel is occupied," came the
Butcher's gravelly voice.

Calli said over her left shoulder: "Coordinates 3-B,
41-F, and 9-K. Pretty quick, huh?"

It seemed she'd asked for them an hour ago.
"Butcher, did you get those coordinates down? Now
look, in ... twenty-seven seconds a cruiser will pass
through—" She gave a three number location. "Hit it
with your closest neurotics." While she waited for a
response, she saw where the next hit must lie. "Forty
seconds off, starting—eight, nine, ten, now. an Invader
cruiser will pass through—" another location. "—Get
it with whatever's nearest. Is the first ship out of com-
mission?"

"Yes, Captain Wong."

Her amazement and relief took no breath. At least the
Butcher was listening; she gave the coordinates of three
more ships in the' web. *' *Now hit them straight on and
watch them fall apart!"

145

BABEL-17

As she put the microphone down, Jebel's voice an-
nounced: "Advance for group therapy'"

The yellow spider-boats surged into the darkness
again. Where there should have been Invaders, there
were empty holes; where there should have been rein-
forcements, there was confusion. First one, then
another, red cruiser fled its position.

The yellow lights were through. The flare of a
vibra-blast shattered the red glow of the Invader ship.

Ratt jumped up and down, holding on to Carlos' and
Flop's shoulder. 'Hey, we won!" the midget Recon-
version Engineer cried out. "We won!"

The platoon murmured to one another. Rydra felt
oddly far away. They talked so slowly, taking such
impossible time to say what could be so quickly de-
lineated by a few simple—

"Are you all right, Ca'tain?" Brass put his yellow
paw around her shoulder.

She tried to speak, but it came out a grunt. She
staggered against his arm.

The Slug had turned now. "You feel well?" he
asked.

"Sssssss," and realized that she didn't know how to
say it in Babel-17, Her mouth bit into the shape and feel
of English. "Sick," she said. "Jesus, I feel sick."

As she said it, the dizziness passed.

"Maybe you better lie down?" suggested the Slug.

She shook her head. The tenseness in her shoulders
and back, the nausea was leaving. "No. I'm all right. I
just got a little too excited, 1 think."

"Sit down a minute," Brass said, letting her lean
against the desk. But she pushed herself upright-

"Really, I'm O.K. now." She took a deep breath.
"See?" She pulled from under Brass' arm. "I'mgoing

146

BABEL-17

to take a walk. I'll feel better then." Still unsteady, she
started away. She felt their wariness to let her go, but
suddenly she wanted to be somewhere else. She con-
tinued across the gallery floor.

Her breath got back to normal when she reached the
upper levels. Then, from six different directions, hall-
ways joined with rolling ramps to descend toward other
levels. She stopped, confused over which way to take,
then turned at a sound.

A group ofTarik's crew was crossing the corridor.
The Butcher, among them, paused to lean against the
door frame. He grinned at her, seeing her confusion,
and pointed to the right. She didn't feel like speaking,
so merely smiled and touched her forehead in salute. As
she started toward the right-hand ramp, the meaning
behind his grin surprised her. There was the pride of
their joint success (which had allowed her to remain
silent), yes; and a direct pleasure at offering her his
wordless aid. But that was all. The expected amuse-
ment over someone who had lost her way was missing.
Its presence would not have anneyed her. But its ab-
sence charmed. Also it fit the angular brutality she had
watched before, as well as the great animal grace of
him.

She was still smiling when s'he reached the com-
mons.

147

II

SHE LEANED on the catwalk railing to watch the activity
in the cradle of the loading dock curving below. "Slug,
take the kids down to give a hand with those carter-
winches. Jebel said they could use some help."

Slug guided the platoon to the chair-lift that dropped
into Tank's pit:

'*. . . ail right, when you get down there, go over to
that man in the red shirt and ask him to put you to work.
Yeah, work. Don't look so-surprised, stupid. Kile,
strap yourself in, will you. It's two hundred and fifty
feet down and a little hard on your head if you fall. Hey,
you two, cut it out. I know he started first. Just get
down there and be constructive . . ."

Rydra watched machinery, organic supplies—
Alliance and Invader—handed in from the dismantling
crews that worked over the ruins of the two ships and
their swarm of cruisers; the stacked, sorted crates were
piled along the loading area.

"We'll be jettisonning the cruiser ships shortly. I'm
afraid Rimbaud will have to go, too. Is there anything
you'd like to salvage before we dump it, Captain?'' She
turned at Jebel's voice.

"There are some important papers and recordings I
have to get. I'll leave my platoon here and take my
officers with me."

"Very well." Jebel joined her at the railing. "As

148

BABEL-17

soon as we finish here, I'll send a work-crew with you
in case there's anything large you want to bring back."

"That won't be . . ." she began. "Oh, I see. You
need fuel, don't you."

Jebel nodded. "And stasis components, also spare
parts for our own spider-boats. We will not touch the
Rimbaud unti] you have finished with it."

"I see. I guess that's only fair."

"I'm impressed," Jebel went on to change the sub-
ject, "with your method of breaking the Invader's
defense net. That particular formation has always given
us some trouble. The Butcher tells me you tore it apart
in less than five minutes, and we only lost one spider.
That's a record. I didn't know you were a master
strategist as well as a poet. You have many talents. It is
lucky that Butcher took your call, though. I would not
have had sense enough to follow your instructions just
on the spur of the moment. Had the results not been so
praiseworthy, I would have been put out with him. But
then his decisions have never yet brought me less than
profit." He looked across the pit.-

On a suspended platform in the center, the ex-
convict lounged, silent overseer to the operations be-
low.

"He's a curious man,"Rydra said. "What was he in
prison for?"

"I have never asked," Jebel said, raising his chin.
' 'He has never told me. There are many curious persons
on Tarik. And privacy is important in so small a space.
Oh, yes. In a month's time you will leam how tiny the
Mountain is."

"I forgot myself," Rydra apologized. "I shouldn't
have inquired."

An entire foresection of a blasted Invader's cruiser

149

BABEl-17

was being dragged through the funnel on a twenty-foot
wide, pronged conveyor. Dismantlers swarmed up the
side with bolt punches and laser spots. Gig-cranes
caught on the smooth hull and began to turn it slowly,

A workman at the port-disk suddenly cried out and
swung hastily aside. His tools clattered down the bulk-
head. The port-disk swung up and a figure in a silver
skin suit dropped the twenty-five feet to the conveyor
belt, rolled between two prongs, regained footing,
leaped down the next ten-foot drop to the floor, and ran.
The hood slipped from her head to release shoulder-
length brown hair which swung wildly as she changed
her course to avoid a trundling sludge. She moved fast,
yet with a certain awkwardness. Then Rydra recog-
nized that what she had taken for paunchiness in the
fleeing Invader was at least a seven month's pregnancy.
A mechanic flung a wrench at her, but she dodged so
that it deflected off her hip. She was running toward an
open space between the stacked supplies.

Then the air was cut by a vibrant hiss: the Invader
stopped, sat down hard on the floor as the hiss repeated;

she pitched to the side, kicked out one leg, kicked

again.

On the tower, the Butcher put his vibra-gun back in
the holster.

"That was unnecessary," Jebet said, with shocking
softness.

"Couldn't we have ..." and there seemed to be
nothing to suggest. On Jebel's face was pain and curios-
ity . The pain, she realized, was not at the double death
on the deck below, but the chagrin of a gentleman
caught at something ugly. His curiosity was at her
reaction. And it might be worth her life to react to the
twisting in her stomach. She watched him preparing to

150

BABEL-17

speak: he was going to say—and so she said it for
him—: 'They will put pregnant women on fighting
ships. Their reflexes are faster." She watched for him
to relax, saw the relaxation begin.

The Butcher was already stepping from the chair-lift
onto the catwalk. He came toward them, banging his
fist against his corded thigh with impatience. "They
should ray everything before they take it on. They
won't listen. Second time in two months now." He
grunted.

Below, Tarik's men and her platoon mingled over
the body.

"They will next time." Jebel's voice was still soft
and cool. "Butcher, you seemed to have pricked Cap-
tain Wong's interest. She was wondering what sort of a
fellow you were, and I really couldn't tell her. Perhaps
you can explain why you had to—"

"Jebel,"Rydra said. Her eyes, seeking his, snagged
on the Butcher's dark gaze. "I'd like to go to my ship
now and see to it before you start salvaging."

Jebel exhaled the rest of a breath he'd held since the
hiss of the vibra-gun. "Of course."

"No, not a monster, Brass." She unlocked the door
to the captain's cabin of the Rimbaud and stepped
through. "Just expedient. It's just flke . . ."Andshe
said a lot more to him till his fang-distended mouth
sneered and he shook his head.

"Talk to me in English, Ca'tain. I don't understand
you."

She took the dictionary from the console and placed
it on top of the charts. "I'm sorry," she said. "This
stuff is wicked. Once you learn it, it makes everything
so easy. Get those tapes out of the playback. I want to
run through them again."

151

BABEl-17

"What are they?" Brass brought them over.

* 'Transcriptions of the last Babel-17 dialogues at the
War Yards just before we took off." She put them on
the spindle and started the first playing.

A melodious torrent rippled through the room,
caught her up in ten and twenty second bursts she could
understand. The plot to undermine TW-55 was de-
lineated with hallucinatory vividness. When she
reached a section she could not understand, she was left
shaking against the wall of non-communication. While
she listened, while she understood, she moved through
psychedelic perceptions. When understanding left, her
breath left her lungs with shock, and she had to blink,
shake her head, once accidentally bit her tongue, before
she was free again to comprehend.

"Captain Wong?"

It was Ron. She turned her head, aching slightly
now, to face him.

"Captain Wong, I don't want to distrub you."

'That's all right," she said. "What is it?"

"I found this in the Pilot's Den."He held up a small
spool of tape.

Brass was still standing by the door. "What was it
doing in my part of the shi'?"

Ron's features fought with each other for an expres-
sion. "I just played it back with Slug. It's Captain
Wong's—or somebody's—request to Flight Clearance
back at the War Yards for take off, and the all clear
signal to Slug to get ready to blast."

"I see," Rydra said. She took the spool. Then she
frowned, "This reel is from my cabin. I use the three-
lobed spools I brought with me from the University. All
the other machines on the ship are supplied with four-
lobed ones. That tape came from this machine here."

152

BABEL-17

"So," Brass said. "a' 'arently somebody snuck in
and made it when you were out."

"When I'm out, this place is locked so tight a discor-
porate flea couldn't crawl under the door." She shook
her head. "I don't like this. I don't know where I'll be
fouled up next. Well"—she stood up—"at least I
know what I have to do about Babel-17 now."

"What's that?" Brass asked. Slug had come to the
door and was looking over Ron's flowered
shoulder.

Rydra looked over the crew. Discomfort or distrust,
which was worse?" "I really can't tell you now, can
I?" she said. "It's that simple." She walked to the
door. "I wish I could. But it would be a littie silly after
this whole business."

"But I would rather speak to Jebel!"

The jester, Klik, ruffled his feathers and shrugged.
"Lady, I would honor your desire above all others' on
the mountain, save Jebel's himself. And it is Jebel's
desire that you now counter. JHe wishes not to be
disturbed. He is plotting Tank's destination over the
next time-cycle. He must judge the currents carefully,
and weigh even the weights of the stars about us. It is an
arduous task, and—"

"Then where's the Butcher? I'll ask him, but I would
prefer to talk directly with—"

The jester pointed with a green talon. "He is in the
biology theatre. Go down through the commons and
take the first lift to level twelve. It is directly to your
left."

"Thank you." She headed toward the gallery steps.
At the top of the lift she found the huge iris door, and

pressed the entrance disk. Leaves folded back, and she

blinked in green light.

153

BABEL-17

His round head and mildly humped shoulders were
silhouetted before a bubbling tank in which a tiny figure
floated: the spray of bubbles that rose about the form
deflected on the feet, caught in the crossed curved
hands like sparks, frothed the bent head, and foamed in
the brush of birthhair that swirled up in the miniature

currents.

The Butcher turned, saw her, and said, "It died."
He nodded with vigorous belligerence. "It was alive
until five minutes ago. Seven and a half months. It
should have lived. It was strong enough!" His left fist
cracked against his right palm, as she had seen him do
before in the commons. Shaking muscles stilled. He
thumbed toward an operating table where the Invader's
body lay—sectioned. "Badly hurt before she got out.
Internal organs messed up. A lot of abdominal necrosis
all the way through." He turned his hand so the thumb
now pointed over his shoulder to the drifting homun-
culus, and the gesture that had seemed rough took on an
economical grace. "Still—it should have lived."

He switched off the light in the tank and the bubbles
ceased. He stepped from behind the laboratory table.
"What the Lady want?"

"Jebel is planning Tank's route for the next months.
Could you ask him . . ." She stopped. Then she
asked, "Why?"

Ron's muscles, she thought, were living cords that
snapped and sang out their messages. On this man,
muscles were shields to hold the world out, the man in.
And something inside was leaping up again and again,
striking the shield from behind. The scored belly
shifted, the chest contracted over a let breath, the brow
smoothed, then creased again.

154

BABEL-17

"Why?" she repeated. "Why did you try to save the
child?"

He twisted his face for answer, and his left hand
circled the convict's mark on his other bicep as though
it had started to sting. Then he gave up with dis-
gust. "Died. No good any more. What the Lady
want?''

What leaped and leaped retreated now, and so did
she. "1 want to know ifJebe) will take me to Adminis-
trative Alliance Headquarters. I have to deliver some
important information concerning the Invasion. My
pilot tells me the Specelli Snap runs within ten hyper-
static units, which a spider-boat could make, so Tank
could remain in radio defense space all the way. IfJebel
will escort me to Headquarters, I will guarantee him
protection and a safe return to the denser part of the
Snap."

He eyed her. "All the way down the Dragon's
Tongue?"

"Yes. That's what Brass to[d me the tip of the Snap
was called."

"Protection guaranteed?"

"That's right. I'll show you my credentials from
General Forester of the Alliance if you . . ."

But he waved for her silence. "Jebel?" He spoke
into the wall intercom.

The speaker was directional so she couldn't hear the
answer.

"Make Tank go down the Dragon's Tongue during
the first cycle."
There was either questioning or objection.

"Go down the Tongue and it'll be good."

He nodded to the unintelligible whisper, then said,

155

BABEL-17

"It died," and switched off. "All right. Jebel will take
Tank to Headquarters."

Amazement undercut her initial disbelief. It was an
amazement she would have felt before when he re-
sponded so unquestioningly to her plan to destroy the
Invader's defense, had not Babel-17 precluded such
feelings. "Well, thanks," she began, "butyou haven't
even asked me . . ." Then she decided to phrase the
whole thing another way.

But the Butcher made a fist;

"Knowing what ships to destroy, and ships are de-
stroyed." He banged his fist against his chest. "Now to
go down the Dragon's Tongue, Tarik go down the
Dragon's Tongue." He banged his chest again.

She wanted to question, but looked at the dead fetus
turning in dark liquid behind him and said instead,
"Thank you, Butcher." As she stepped through the iris
door, she mulled over what he had said to her, trying to
frame some explanation of his actions. Even the rough
way in which his words fell—

His words!

It struck her at once, and she hurried down the

corridor.

156

in

"BRASS, he can't say 'I'!" She leaned across the table,
surprised curiosity impelling her excitement.

The pilot locked his claws around his drinking horn.
The wooden tables across the commons were being set
up for the evening meal.

"Me, my, mine, myself. I don't think he can say any
of those either. Or think them. I wonder where the hell
he's from."

"You know any language where there's no word for
-I'?"

"lean think of a couple where it isn't used often, but
no one that doesn't even have the concept, if only
hanging around in a verb ending."

"Which all means what"?"

"A strange marr with a strange way of thinking. I
don't know why, but he's aligned himself with me, sort
of my ally on this trip and a go-between with Jebel, I'd
like to understand, so I won't hurt him."

She looked around the commons at the bustle of
preparation. The girl who had brought them chicken
was glancing at her now, wondering, still afraid, fear
melting to curiosity which brought her two tables
nearer, then curiosity evaporating to indifference, and
seh was off for more spoons from the wall drawer.

She wondered what would happen if she translated
her perceptions of people's movement and muscle tics
into Babel-17. It was not only a language, she under-

157

BABEl-17

stood now, but a flexible matrix of analytical pos-
sibilities where the same *word' defined the stresses in
a webbing of medical bandage, or a defensive grid of
spaceships. What would it do with the tensions and
yearnings in a human face? Perhaps the flicker of
eyelids and fingers would become mathematics, with-
out meaning. Or perhaps— While she thought, her
mind changed gears into the headlong compactness of
Babel-17. And she swept her eyes around the —voices.

Expanding and defining through one another, not the
voices themselves, but the minds making the voices,
braiding with one another, so that the man entering the
hall now she knew to be the grieving brother ofPigfoot,
and the girl who'd served them was in love, so in love
with the dead youth from the discorporate sector who
tickled and teased her dreams . . .

That she was sitting in the great commons while men

and women filed infer the evening meal was a very

small part of her consciousness.
. . . turning about the general hunger, a belly-beast
with teeth in one man, a lazy pool in another, now the
familiar rush of adolescent confusion as theRimbaud's
platoon came pummeling in, driven by the deep con-
cern of Slug, and further over amidst ebullience,
hunger, and love, a/ear! It gonged in the hall, flashed
red in the indigo tide, and she searched for Jebel or the
Butcher because their names were in the fear, but found
neither in the room; instead, a thin man named Geoffry
Cord in whose brain crossed wires sparked and sput-
tered Make death with the knife I have sheathed to my
leg, and again With my tongue make me a place in an
eyrie high on Tarik, and the minds about him, groping
and hungering, mumbling over humor and hurt, loving
a little and groping for more, all crosshatched with

158

BABEL-17

relaxation one way at the coming meal, and in others
anticipation at what clever Klik would present that
evening, the minds of the actors of the pantomime
keyed to performance while they perused the spectators
whom, at an earlier hour, they had worked and slept
with, one elderly navigator with a geometrical head
hurrying to give the girl, who was to play in the play at
being in love, a silver clasp he had melted and scribed
himself to see if she would play at loving him . . .
They set her place, brought first a flagon, and then
bread, which she saw and smiled at, but was seeing
so much else; around her people were sitting,

relaxing, while the serving people hurried to the food
counter where the roasts and fried fruit steamed.
... yet through all this her mind circled back to the
alarm of Geoffry Cord, / must act this evening as the
actors close, and unable to focus on anything but his
urgency, she watched him roil and ravel through his
plotting, to hurry forward when the pantomime began
as if he wanted to get a closer U?ok as many would do,
slip beside the table where Jebel would be sitting,
then blade between JebeFs ribs with his serpent fang,
grooved metal which ran with paralytic poison, then
chomp down on his hollow tooth that was filled with
hypnotic drugs so that when he was taken prisoner they
would think he was under somebody else's control, and
at last he would release a wild story, implanted below
the level of the hypnotics by many painful hours under
the personafix, that he was under the Butcher's control;

then somehow he would contrive to be alone with the
Butcher and bite the Butcher's hand or wrist or leg,
injecting the same hypnotic drugs that poisoned his
own mouth and rend the hulking convict helpless, and
he would control him, and when the Butcher ultimately

159

BABEL-17

became Tank's ruler after the assassination, Geoffry
Cord would become the Butcher's lieutenant, as the
Butcher was now Jebel's, and when Jebel's Tank was
the Butcher'sTarik, Geoffry would control the Butcher
the same way he suspected the Butcher controlled
Jebel, and there would be a reign of harshness and all
strangers expelled from the berg to death by vacuum,
and they would fall mightily on ail ships. Invader,
Alliance, or Shadow in the Snap, and Rydra tore her
mind from his and swept the brief surface of Jebel and
the Butcher, and saw no hypnotics, but also that they
suspected no treachery and her own delayed fear, tak-
ing her from what she felt in her slipping and lapping
with doubled and halved voice . . . (her fear broke
from her vast wordview, while she felt schismic rages
of him and still would survive it and found his fear as
porous, porous as a sponge) and no yes, she was able,
even as she walked to pick the words and images that
would drive and push him to his betrayal . . . (and no
yes, once struck by his fear and rebounding, she
brought herself back) . . . to a single line that scribed
through both perception and action, speech and com-
munication, both one now, picking down sounds that
would persuade with the deliberation this lengthened

time lent . . .

She saw so much more than the little demonic jester
on the stage saying, "Before our evening's enter-
tainment I wish to ask our guest. Captain Wong, if
she would speak some few words or perhaps recite
for us." And she knew with a very small part of her
mind—but it took no more—that she must use this
chance to denounce him. The realization momentar-
ily blotted out everything else, but then returned of
its proper size, for she knew she could not let Cord

160

BABEL-17

stop her from getting to Headquarters, so she stood
up and walked to the stage at the end of the com-
mons, picking from Cord's mind as she walked a
deadly blade so quickly honed to fit into the cracks of
Geoffry Cord . - -

. . . and she reached the platform beside the gorgeous
beast, Klik, and mounted, hearing the voices that sang
in the hall's silence, and tossed her words now from the
sling of her vibrant voice, so that they hung outside her,
and she watched them and watched his watching; the
rhythm which was barely intricate to most ears in the
commons was to him painful because it was timed to
the processes of his body, to jar and strike against
them . . .

"All right. Cord,

to be lord of this black barrick

Tarik, you need more than jackal lore,

or a belly full of murder and jelly knees.

Open your mouth and your hands. To understand

power, use your wit, please.

Ambition like a liquid ruby stains

your brain, birthed in the cervixed will

to kill, swing in the arc of death's again,

you name yourself victim each time you fill

with swill the skull's cup lipping murder. It

predicts your fingers' movement toward the blade

long laid against the leather sheath cord-fixed

to pick the plan your paling fingers made;

you stayed in safety, missing worlds of wonder,
under the lithe hiss of the personafix
inflicting false memories to make them blunder
while thunder cracks the change of Tarik.
You stick pins in peaches, place your strange
blade, ranged with a grooved tooth, while the long

161

BABEL-17

and strong lines of my meaning make your mind
change from fulgent tofrangent. Now you hear the
wrong cord-song, to instruct you. Assassin, .
pass in . . .

. . and she was surprised he had held up this long-
She looked directly at Geoffry Cord. Geoffry Cord
looked directly at her and shrieked,

The scream snapped something- She had been think-
ing in Babel-17 and choosing her English words with it.
But now she was thinking in English again.

Geoffry Cord jerked his head sideways, black hair
shaking, flung his table over, and ran, raging, toward
her. The drugged knife which she had seen only
through his mind was out and aimed at her stomach.

She jumped back, kicked at his wrist as he vaulted
the platform edge, missed, but struck his face. He fell
backwards, rolling on the floor.

Gold, silver, amber: Brass was running from his side
of the room. Silver-haired Jebel was coming from the
other, his cloak billowing. And the Butcher had already
reached her, was between her and the uncoiling Cord.
"What is this?" Jebel demanded.
Cord was on one knee, knife still poised. His black
eyes went from vibra-gun muzzle to vibra-gun muzzle,
then to Brass' unsheathed claws. He froze.
"I don't appreciate attacks on my guests."
"That knife is meant for you, Jebel," she panted.
"Check the records of Tank's personafix. He was
going to kill you and get the Butcher under hypnotic
control, and take over Tank."

"Oh," Jebel said. "One of those-"He turned to the
Butcher. "It was time for another one, wasn't it? About
once every six months. I'm again grateful to you,
Captain Wong."

162

BABEL-17

The Butcher stepped forward and took the knife from
Cord, whose body seemed frozen, whose eyes danced.
Rydra listened to Cord's breath measure out the si-
lence, while the Butcher, holding the knife by the
blade, examined it. The blade itself, in the Butcher's
heavy fingers, was printed steel. The handle, a seven
inch length of bone, was ridged, runneled, and stained
with walnut dye.

With his free hand, the Butcher caught his fingers in
Cord's black hair. Then, not particularly quickly, he
pushed the knife to the hilt intoCord's right eye, handle
first.

The scream became a gurgle. The flailing hands fell

from the Butcher's shoulders- Those sitting close
stood.

Rydra's heart banged twice to break her ribs. "But
you didn't even check.. . . Suppose I was wrong . . .
Maybe there was more to it than ..." Her tongue
wagged through the meaningless protests. And maybe
her heart had stopped.

The Butcher, both hands^ bloody, looked at her
coldly. "He moved with a knife on Tank toward Jebel
or Lady and he dies." Right fist ground on left palm,
now soundless with red lubricant.

"Miss Wong," Jebel said, "from what I've seen,
there's little doubt in my mind that Cord was certainly
dangerous. I'm sure there's not much in yours, either.
You are highly useful. I am highly obliged. I hope this
trip down the Dragon's Tongue proves propitious. The
Butcher had just told me it was at your request that we
are going."

"Thank you, but ..." Her heart was pounding
again. She tried to form some clause to hang from
the hook of 'but' still hesitant in her mouth. Instead she

163

BABEL-17

got very sick, pitched forward, half blind. The Butcher

caught her on red palms.
The round, warm, blue room again. But alone, and

she was at last able to think about what had happened in
the commons. It was not what she'd repeatedly tried to
describe to Mocky. It was what Mocky had repeatedly
insisted to her: telepathy. But apparently, telepathy was
the nexus of old talent and a new way of thinking. It
opened worlds of perception, of action. Then why was
she sick? She recalled how time slowed when her mind
worked under Babel-17, how her mental processes
speeded up. If there was a corresponding increase in her
physiological functions, her body might not be up to the

strain.

The tapes from the Rimbaud had told her the next

'sabotage' attempt would be at Administrative Alliance
Headquarters. She wanted to get there with the lan-
guage, the vocabulary and grammar, give it to them,
and retire. She was almost ready to hand over the search
for this mysterious speaker. But no, not quite, there
was still something, something to be heard and

spoken . . .
Sick and falling, she snagged on bloody fingers,

woke starting. The Butcher's egoless brutality, ham-
mered linear by what she could not know, less than
primitive, was for all its horror, still human. Though
bloody handed, he was safer than the precision of the
world linguistically corrected. What could you say to a
man who could not say T? What could he say to her?
Jebel's cruelties, kindnesses, existed in the articulate
limits of civilization. But this red bestiality—
fascinated her!

164

IV

SHE ROSE FROM the hammock, this time unsnapping the
bandage. She'd felt better nearly an hour, but she had
lain still thinking most of the time. The ramp tilted to
her feet.

When the infirmary wall solidified behind her, she
paused in the corridor. The airflow pulsed like breath.
Her translucent slacks brushed the tops of her bare feet.
The neckline of her black silk blouse lay loose on her
shoulders.

She had rested well intoTarik's night shift. During a
period of high activity, the sleeping time was
staggered, but when they merely moved from location
to location, there were hours when nearly the whole
population slept.

Rather than head toward the commons, she turned
down an unfamiliar sloping tunnel. White light dif-
fused from the floor, became amber fifty feet on, then
amber became orange—she stopped and looked at her
hands in the orange light—and forty feet further, the
orange light was red. Then: blue.

The space opened around her, the walls slanting
back, the ceiling rising into darkness too high to see.
The air flickered and blotted with the after-image from
the change in color. Insubstantial mist plus her unset-
tled eyes made her turn to orient herself.

A man was silhouetted against the red entrance to the
hall. "Butcher?"

165

BABEL-17

He walked toward her, blue light fogging his features
as he neared. He stopped, nodded.

"1 decided to take a walk when 1 felt better," she
explained. "What part of the ship is- this?"

"Discorporate quarters."

"I should have known." They fell in step with one
another. "Are you just wandering around, too?"

He shook his heavy head. "An alien ship passes
close toTarik and Jebel wants its sensory vectors."

"Alliance or Invader?"

The Butcher shrugged.l 'Only to know that it is not a

human ship."

There were nine species among the seven explored
galaxies with interstellar travel. Three had allied them-
selves definitely with the Alliance. Four had sided with
the Invaders. Two were not committed.

They had gone so far into the discorporate sector,
nothing seemed solid. The walls were blue mist without
comers. The echoing crackle of transference energies
caused distant lightning, and her eyes were deviled by
half-remembered ghosts, who had always passed mo-
ments ago, yet were never present,

"How far do we go?" she asked, having decided to
walk with him, thinking as she spoke: If he doesn't
know the word for T, how can he understand 'we'?

Understanding or not he answered, "Soon," Then
he looked directly at her with dark, heavy ridged eyes

and asked, "Why?"

The tone of his voice was so different, she knew he
was not referring to anything in their exchange during
the past few minutes. She cast in her mind for anything
she had done that might strike him as perplexing.

He repeated, "Why?"

"Why what. Butcher?"

166

BABEL-17

"Why the saving of Jebel from Cord?"

There was no objection in his question, only ethical
curiosity. "Because I like him and because 1 need him
to get me to Headquarters and I would feel sort of funny
if I'd let him . . ." She stopped. "Do you know who
T amp-
He shook his head.

"Where do you come from. Butcher? What planet
were you bom on?"

He shrugged. "The head," he said, after a moment,
"they said there was something wrong with the brain."

"Who?"

"The doctors."

Blue fog drifted between them.

"The doctors on Titin?" she hazarded.

The Butcher nodded.

"Then why didn't they put you in a hospital instead
of a prison?"

"The brain is not crazy, they said. This hand"—he
held up his left—"kill four people in three days. This
hand"—he raised the other—^'kill seven. Blow up
four buildings with thermite. The foot"—he slapped
his left leg—"kicked in the head of the guard at the
Telechron Bank. There's a lot of money there, too
much to carry. Carry maybe four hundred thousand
credits- Not much."

"You robbed the Telechron Bank of four hundred
thousand credits!"

"Three days, eleven people, four buildings: all for
four hundred thousand credits. But Titin"—his face
twisted—"was not fun at all."

"So I'd heard- How long did it take for them to
catch you?"

"Six months."

167

BABEL-17

Rydra whistled. tt! take my hat off to you, if you
could keep out of their hands that long, after a bank
robbery. And you know enough biotics to perform a
difficult Caesarean section and keep the fetus alive.
There's something in that head."

"The doctors say the brain not stupid."

"Look, you and I are going to talk to each other. But
first I have to teach"—she stopped—"the brain some-
thing."

"What?"

"About you and /. You must hear the words a
hundred times a day. Don't you ever wonder what

they mean?"

"Why? Most things make sense without them."

"Hey, speak in whatever language you grew up
with."

"No."
"Why not? I want to see if it's one I know anything

about."

"The doctors say there's something wrong with the

brain."

"All right. What did they say was wrong?"

"Aphasia, alexia, amnesia."

"Then you were pretty messed up." She frowned.
"Was that before or after the bank robbery?"

"Before."

She tried to order what she had learned.'' Something
happened to you that left you with no memory, unable
to speak or read, and so the first thing you did was rob
the Telechron bank—which Telechron Bank?"

"OnRhea-lV."

"Oh, a small one. But, still—and you stayed free tor
six months. Any idea what happened to you before you
lost your memory?"

168

BABEL-17                    "

The Butcher shrugged.

"I suppose they went through all the possibilities
that you were working for somebody else under hynot-
ics. You don't know what language you spoke before
you lost your memory? Well, your speech patterns now
must be based on your old language or you would have
learned about / and you just from picking up new
words."                                        -'

"Why must these sounds mean something?"     i

"Because you asked a question just now that 1 can't|
answer if you don't understand them."            |

' 'No.'' Discomfort shadowed his voice.k 'No. There ?
is an answer. The words of the answer must be simpler, j
that's all."

"Butcher,, there are certain ideas which have words
for them. If you don't know the words, you can't know
the ideas- And if you don't have the idea, you don't
have the answer."

"The word you four times, yes? Still nothing un-
clear, and you mean nothing."

She sighed. "That's because-1 was using the word
phatically—ritually, without regard for its real mean-
ing . . . as a figure of speech. Look, I asked you a
question that you couldn't answer."

The Butcher frowned.

"See, you have to know what they mean to make
sense out of what I just said. The best way to leam a
language is by listening to it. So listen. When you"—
she pointed to him—"said to me," and she pointed to
herself.' 'Knowing what ships to destroy, and ships are
destroyed. Now to go down the Dragon's Tongue,
Tarik go down the Dragon's Tongue, twice the
fist''—she touched his left hand—"banged the chest.''
She raised his hand to his chest. The skin was cool and

169

BABEl-17

smooth under her palm. "The fist was trying to tell
something. And if you had'used the word '1', you
wouldn't have had to use your fist. What you wanted to
say was: 'You knew what ships to destroy and'I de-
stroyed the ships. You want to go down the Dragon's
Tongue, I will get Tank down the Dragon'sTongue".' "

The Butcher frowned. "Yes, the fist to tell some-
thing."

"Don't you see, sometimes you want to say things,
and you're missing an idea to make them with, and
missing a word to make the idea with. In the beginning
was the word. That's how somebody tried to explain it
once. Until something is named, it doesn't exist. And
it's something the brain needs to have exist, otherwise
you wouldn't have to beat your chest, or stirke your fist
on your palm. The brain wants it to exist; let me teach it
the word."

The frown cut deeper into his face.
Just men mist blew away before them. In star-
flecked blackness something drifted, flimsy and flick-
ering. They had reached a sensory port, but it was
transmitting over frequencies close to regular light.
"There," said the Butcher, "there is the alien ship."

"It's from ^iribia-IV," Rydra said. "They're
friendly to the Alliance."

The Butcher was surprised she'd recognized it. "A
very odd ship."

"It does look funny to us, doesn't it."
"Jebel did not know where it came from." He shook
his head.

"I haven't seen one since I was a kid. We had to
entertain delegates from ^iribia to the Court of Outer
Worlds. My mother was a translator there.'' She leaned
on the railing and gazed at the ship. "You wouldn't

170

BABEL-17

think something that's so flimsy and shakes around like
that would fly or make stasis jumps. But it does."

"Do they have this word, I?"
\ "As a matter of fact they have three forms of it:

I - below - a - temperature - of - six - degrees - centi-
grade, I - between - six - and ninety - three - degrees -
centigrade, and I - above - ninety - three."

The Butcher looked confused.

"It has to do with their reproductive process,"
Rydra explained. "When the temperature is below six
degrees they're sterile. They can only conceive when
the temperature is between six and ninety-three, but to
actually give birth, they have to be above ninety-
three."

The (,'iribian ship moved like floppy feathers across
the screen.

"Maybe I can explain something to you this way;

with all nine species of galaxy-hopping life forms, each
as widespread as our own, each as technically intelli-
gent, with as complicated an economy, seven of them
engaged in the same war we are, stiil we hardly ever run
into them; and they run into us or each other about as
frequently: so infrequently, that even when an experi-
enced spaceman like Jebel passes alongside one of their
ships, he can't identify it. Wonder why?"

"Why?"

"Because compatibility factors for communication
are incredibly low. Take the ^iribians, who have
enough knowledge to sail their triple-yoked poached
eggs from star to star: they have no word for 'house',
'home', or 'dwelling'. 'We must protect our families
and our homes.' When we were preparing the treaty
between the (^iribians and ourselves at the Court of
Outer Worlds, i remember that sentence took forty-five

171

BABEL-17

minutes to say in ^iribian. Their whole culture is
based on heat and changes in temperature. We're just
lucky that they do know what a 'family' is, because
they're the only ones besides humans who have them.
But for'house'you have to end up describing'. . .an
enclosure that creates a temperature discrepancy with
the outside environment of so many degrees, capable of
keeping comfortable a creature with a uniform body
temperature of ninety-eight-point-six, the same enclo-
sure being able to lower the temperature during the
months of the warm season and rise it during the cold
season, providing a location where organic sustenance
can be refrigerated in order to be preserved, or warmed
well above the boiling point of water to pamper the taste
mechanism of the indigenous habitant who, through
customs that go back through millions of hot and cold
seasons, have habitually sought out this temperature
changing device . . .' and so forth and so on. At the
end you have given them some idea of what a 'home' is
and why it is worth protecting. Give them a schematic
of the air-conditioning and central heating system and
things begin to get through. Now: there is a huge
solar-energy conversion plant that supplies all the elec-
trical energy for the Court. The heat amplifying and
reducing components take up an area a little bigger than
Tarik. One (,'iribian can slither through that plant and
then go describe it to another ^iribian who never saw it
before so that the-second can build an exact duplicate,
even to the color the walls are painted—and this actu-
ally happened, because they thought we'd done some-
thing ingenious with one of the circuits and wanted to
try it themselves—where each piece is located, how big
it is, in short completely describe the whole business, in
nine words. Nine very small words, too,"

172

BABEL-17

The Butcher shook his head. "No. A solar-heat
conversion system is too complicated. These hands
dismantle one, not too long ago. Too big. Not—"

"Yep, Butcher, nine words. In English it would take
a couple of books full of schematics and electrical and
architectural specifications. They have the proper nine
words- We don't."
"Impossible."

"So's that." She pointed toward the ^iribian ship.
"But it's there and flying." She watched the brain,
both intelligent and injured, thinking. "If you have the
right words," she said, "it saves a lot of time and
makes things easier."
After a while he asked, "What is /?"
She grinned. "First of all it's very important. A good
deal more important than anything else. The brain will
let any number of things go to pot as long as 'I' stay
alive. That's because the brain is part of I. A book is, a
ship is, Jebel is, the universe is, but, as you must have
noticed, I am."

The Butcher nodded. "Yes. But I am what?"
Fog closed over the view-port, misting stars and the
^iribian ship. "That's a question only you can an-
swer."

"You must be important too," the Butcher mused,
"because the brain has overheard that you are."

' 'Good boy!''

Suddenly he put his hand on her cheek. The cock's
spur rested lightly on her lower lip. "You and I," the
Butcher said. He moved his face close to hers. "No-
body else is here. Just you and I. But which is
which?"

She nodded, cheek moving on his fingers. "You're
getting the idea." His chest had been cool; his hand was

173

BABEL-17

warm. She put her hand on top of his. "Sometimes you

frighten me."

"I am me," the Butcher said. "Only a morphologi-
cal difference, yes? The brain figure that out before.
Why does you frighten me sometimes?"

"Do frighten. A morphological correction. You
frighten me because you rob banks and put knife han-
dles in people's eyes, Butcher!"

"You do?" Then his surprise left. "Yes, you do,
don't you. You forgot."

"But 1 didn't," Rydra said.

"Why does that frighten I? . . . correction, me."

"Because it's something I've never done, never
wanted to do, never could do; And 1 like you, I like
your hand on my cheek, so that if you suddenly decided
to put a knife handle in my eye, well . - ."

"Oh. You never would put a knife handle in my
eye," the Butcher said. "I don't have to worry."

"You could change your mind."

"You won't." He looked at her closely. "1 don't
really think you're going to kill me. You know that. I
know that. It's something else. Why don't I tell you
something else that frightened me? Maybe you can see
some pattern and you will understand then. The brain is

not stupid."

His hand slid to her neck, and there was concern in
his puzzled eyes. She had seen it before the moment
he'd turned from the dead fetus in the biology theater.
"Once. . ." she began slowly, ". . .well, there was
a bird."

"Birds frighten me?"

"No. But this bird did. I was just a kid. You don't
remember being a kid, do you? In most people what

174

BABEL-17

you were as a kid has a lot to do with what you are
now.''

"And what I am too?"

"Yes, me too. My doctor had gotten this bird for me
as a present. It was a myna bird, which can'talk. But it
doesn't know what it's saying. It just repeats tike a tape
recorder. Only I didn't know that. A lot of times I know
what people are trying to say to me, Butcher. I never
understood it before, but since I've been on Tank, I've
realized it's got something to do with telepathy. Any-
way, this myna bird had been trained to talk by feed-
ing it earthworms when it said the right thing. Do you
know how big an earthworm is?"

"Like so?"

"That's right. And some of them even run a few
inches longer. And a myna bird is about eight or nine
inches long. In other words an earthworm can be about
five-sixths as long as a myna bird, which is what's
important. The bird had been trained to say: Hello,
Rydra, it's a fine day out and I'm happy. But the only
thing this meant in the bird's mind was a rough combi-
nation of visual and olfactory sensations that translated
loosely, There's another earthworm coming. So when
I walked into the greenhouse and said hello to this myna
bird, and it replied, 'Hello, Rydra, it's a fine day and
I'm happy', 1 knew immediately it was lying. There
was another earthworm coining, that I could see and
smell, and it was this thick and five-sixths as long as I
was tall. And I was supposed to eat it. 1 got a little
hysterical. I never told my doctor, because I never
could figure exactly what happened until now. But
when I remember, I still get shaky,"

The Butcher nodded. "When you left Rhea with the

175

BABEL-17

money, you eventually holed up in a cave in the ice-hell
of Dis- You were attacked by worms, twelve foot ones.
They burrowed up out of the rocks with acid slime on
their skins. You were scared, but you killed them. You
rigged up an electric net from your hop-sled power
source. You killed them, and when you knew you could
beat them, you weren't afraid any more. The only
reason you didn't eat them was because the acid made
their flesh toxic. But you hadn't eaten anything else for
three days."

"I did? 1 mean . . . you did?"

"You are not frightened of the things I am frightened
of, I am not frightened of the things you are frightened
of. That's good isn't it?"

"I guess so."

Gently he leaned his face against hers, then pulled
away, and searched her face for a response.

"What is it that you're frightened of?" she asked.

He shook his head, not in negation but in confusion,
as she saw him trying to articulate. "The baby, the
baby that died," he said. "The brain afraid, afraid for
you, that you would be alone."

"How afraid that you would be alone. Butcher?"

He shook his head again.

"Loneliness is not good."

She nodded.

"The brain knows that. For a long time it didn't
know, but after a while it learned. Lonely on Rhea, you
were, even with all the money. Lonelier on Dis; and in
Titin, even with the other prisoners, you were loneliest
of all. No one really understood you when you spoke to
them. You did not really understand them. Maybe
because they said/ andyou so much, and you just now

176

BABEL-17

are beginning to leam how important you are and I

am."

"You wanted to raise the baby yourself so he would
grow up and . . . speak the same language you speak?
Or at any rate speak English the same way you spoke
it?"

"Then both not be alone."
"I see."

"It died," Butcher said- He grunted once again,
"But now you are not quite so alone. I teach you to
understand the others, a little. You're not stupid, and
you leam fast.'' Now he turned fully toward her, rested
his fists on her shoulder and spoke gravely. "You like
me. Even when I first came on Tarik, there was some-
thing about me that you liked. I saw you do things I
thought were bad, but you liked me. I told you how to
destroy the Invaders defense net, and you destroyed it,
for me. I told you I wanted to go to the tip of the
Dragon's Tongue, and you saw that I get there. You
will do anything I ask. It's_ important that 1 know
that."

"Thank you. Butcher," she said wonderingly.

"If you ever rob another bank, you will give me all
the money."

Rydra laughed. "Why, thank you. Nobody ever
wanted to do that for me. But I hope you don't have to
rob—"

"You wilt kill anyone that tries to hurt me, kill them
a lot worse than you ever killed anyone before."

"But you don't have to—"

"You will kill all of Tarik if it tries to take you and I
apart and keep us alone."

"Oh, Butcher—" She turned from him and put her

177

BABEL-17

fist against her mouth. * 'One hell of a teacher I am! You
don't understand a thing—I—I am talking about."

The voice, astonished and slow: "I don't understand
you, you think."

She turned back to him. "But I do, Butcher? \ do
understand you. Please believe that. But trust me that
you have a little more to leam."

"You trust me," he said firmly-

"Then listen. Right now we've met each other half-
way. I haven't really taught you about/ wdyou. We've
made up our own language, and that's what we're
talking now."

"But . . ."

"Look, every time you've sa\dyou in the last ten
minutes, you should have said /. Every time you've
said/, you meant you."

He dropped his eyes to the floor, then raised them
again, still without answer.

"What I talk about as I, you must speak of as you.
And the other way around, don't you see?"

"Are they the same word for the same thing, that
they are interchangeable?"

"No, just. . .yes'They both mean the same sort of
thing. In a way they're the same."

"Then you and I are the same."

Risking confusion, she nodded.

"I suspect it. But you"—he pointed to her—"have
taught me." He touched himself.

"And that's why you can't go around killing people.
At least you better do a hell of a lot of thinking before
you do. When you talk to Jebel, I and you still exist.
With anyone you look at on the ship, or even through a
view-screen, I and you are still there."

"The brain must think about that."

178

BABEL-17

"You must think about that, with more than your
brain."

"If I must then I will. But we are one, more than
others." He touched her face again. "Because you
taught me. Because with me you do not have to be
afraid of anything. I have just learned, and I may make
mistakes with other people; for an/ to kill ayou without
a lot of thought is a mistake, isn't it? Do I use the words
correctly now?"

She nodded.

"I will make no mistakes with you. That would be
too terrible. I will make as few mistakes as I possibly
can. And someday I will learn completely." Then he
smiled. "Let's hope nobody tries to make any mistakes
with me, though. I am sorry for them if they do,
because I will probably make a mistake with them very
quickly and with very little thought."

"That's fair enough for now, I guess," Rydra said.
She took his arms in her hands. "I'm glad you and I are
together. Butcher." Then his arms came up and caught
her against his body, and she pressed her face on his
shoulder.

"I thank you," he whispered. "I thank you and
thank you."

"You're warm," she said into his shoulder. "Don't
let go for a little while."

When he did, she blinked up at his face through blue
mist and turned all cold. "What is it. Butcher!"

He took her face between his hands and bent his head
till amber hair brushed her forehead.

' 'Butcher, remember I told you I can tell what people
are thinking? Well, I can tell something's wrong now,
and you said I didn't have to be afraid of you, but you're
scaring me now."

179

BABEL-17

She raised his face. There were tears on it.

"Look, just the way something wrong with me
would scare you, one thing that's going to scare hell out
of me for a long time is something wrong with you. Tell
me what it is."

"1 can't," he said hoarsely. "/ can't. / can't tell
you." And the one thing she understood immediately
was that it was the most horrible thing he could con-
ceive with his new knowledge-
She watched him fight, and fought herself: * 'Maybe I
can help. Butcher! There's a way I can go into the brain
and find out what it is."

He backed away and shook his head. "You mustn't.
You mustn't do that to me. Please."

"Butcher, I w . . . won't." She was confused.
'Th . . . then I ... I won't." Confusion hurt.
"Butcher. . .1. . . 1 won't!" Her adolescent stutter
staggered in her mouth.

"I—" he began, breath hard, but becoming softer,
**I have been alone and not I for a long time. I must be
alone for a little while longer."

"I s . . . see." Suspicion, very small and easily
dealt with, came now. When he had backed away, it
entered the space between them. But that was human,
too. "Butcher? Can you read my mind?"

He looked surprised. "No. I don't even understand
how you can read mine.''

"All right. I thought maybe there was something in
my head that you might be picking up that makes you
afraid of me."

He shook his head.

"That's good. Hell, I wouldn't want somebody pry-
ing under my scalp. I think I understand."

"I tell you now," he said, coming toward her again,

180

BABEL-17

"I and you are one; but I and you are very different. I
have seen a lot you will never know. You know of
things that I will never see. You have made me not
alone, a little. There is a lot in the brain, my brain,
about hurting and running and fighting and, even
though I was in Titin, a lot about winning. If you are
ever in danger, but a real danger where someone might
make a mistake with you, then go into the brain, see
what is there. Use whatever you need. 1 ask you, only,
to wait until you have done everything else first."

"I'll wait. Butcher," she said.

He held out his hand. "Come."

She took his hand, avoiding the cock spurs.

"No need to see the stasis currents about the alien
ship if it is friendly to the Alliance. You and I will stay
together a while."

She walked with her shoulder against his arm.
' 'Friend or enemy,'' she said as they passed through the
twilight, heavy with ghosts. "This whole Invasion—
sometimes it seems so stupid^ That's something they
don't allow you to think back where I come from. Here
on Jebel Tank you more or less avoid the question. I
envy you that."

"You are going to Administrative Alliance Head-
quarters because of the Invasion, yes?"

"That's right. But after I go, don't be surprised if I
come back." Steps later she looked up again. "That's
another thing I wish I could get straight in my head. The
Invaders, killed my parents, and the second embargo
almost killed me. Two of my Navigators lost their first
wife to the Invaders. Still, Ron could wonder about just
how right the War Yards were. Nobody likes the Inva-
sion, but it goes on. It's so big 1 never really thought
about trying to get out of it before. It's funny to see a

181

BABEL-17

whole bunch of people in their odd, and maybe destruc-
tive, way doing just that. Maybe I should simply not
bother to go to Headquarters, tetl Jebel to turn around
and head toward the densest part of the Snap."

4 The Invaders," the Butcher said, almost musingly,
*' they hurt lots of people, you, me. They hurt me too.''

"They did?"

"The brain sick, I told you. Invaders did that."

"What did they do?"

The Butcher shrugged. "First thing I remember is
escaping from Nueva-nueva York."

"That's the huge port terminal for the Cancer clus-
ter?"

"That's right."

"The Invaders had captured you?"

He nodded. "And did something. Maybe experi-
ment, maybe torture." He shrugged. "It doesn't mat-
ter. I can't remember. But when I escaped, I escaped
with nothing: no memory, voice, words, name."

* 'Perhaps you were a prisoner of war, or maybe even
somebody important before they captured you—"

He bent and put his cheek against her lips to stop her
talking. When he rose, he smiled, sadly she saw.
"There are some things the brain may not know, but it
can guess: I was always a thief, a murderer, a criminal.
And I was no I. The Invaders caught me once. I es-
caped. The Alliance caught me later at Titin. I
escaped—"

"You escaped from Titm?"

He nodded. "I will probably be caught again, be-
cause that's what happens to criminals in this universe.
And maybe I will escape once more." He shrugged.
"Maybe I wilt not be caught again, though." He
looked at her, surprised not at her but at something in

182

BABEL-17

himself. "I was no I before, but now there is a reason to
stay free. I will not be caught again. There is a reason.''

"What is it. Butcher?"

"Because I am," he said softly, "and you are."

183

v

"You FINISHING u' your dictionary?" Brass asked.

* 'Finished yesterday. Poem." She closed the
notebook. "We should be at the tip of the Tongue soon.
Butcher just told me this morning that the ^iribians
have been keeping us company for four days, Brass, do
you have any idea what they—''

Magnified by the loudspeakers, Jebel's voice:

"Ready Tank for immediate defense. Repeat, im-
mediate defense."

"What the hell is going on now?' Rydra asked.
Around them the commons rose in unified acrivity-
"Look, hunt up the crew and get them down to ejection
gates."

"That's where the s'ider-boats leave from?"

"Right." Rydra stood.

"We gonna mix it u' some, Ca'tain?"

"If we have to," Rydra said, and started across the
floor.

She beat the crew by a minute and caught the Butcher

at the ejection hatch. Tank's fighting crew hurried

along the corridor in ordered confusion.

"What's going on? Did the ^iribians get hostile?"
He shook his head. "Invaders twelve degrees off

galactic center."

"This close to Administrative Alliance?"
"Yes. And if JebelTarik doesn't attack first, Tarik's

184

BABEL-17

had it. They're bigger than Tarik, and Tank's going to
bump right into them."

"Jebel's going to attack them?"

"Yes."

"Then come on, let's attack."

"You are going with me?"

"I'm a master strategist, remember?"

' Tarik is in danger,'' the Butcher said.' This will be
a greater battle than you saw before."

"The better to use my talents on, my dear. Is your
boat equipped to hold a full crew?"

"Yes. But we use the Navigation and Sensory detail
of Tarik by remote control."

"Let's take a crew, anyway, just in case we want to
break strategy in a hurry. Is Jebe! riding with you this
time?"

"No."

Up the hall Slug turned the comer, followed by
Brass, the Navigators, the insubstantial figures of the
discorporate trio, and the platoon.

The Butcher looked from them to Rydra. "All right.
Come on."

She kissed his shoulder because she couldn't reach
his cheek; the Butcher opened the ejection hatch, and
motioned them inside. "Get in, gang!"

Allegra, as she started up the ladder, caught Rydra's
arm. "Are we gonna fight this time. Captain?" There
was an excited smile on her freckled face.

"There's a good chance. Scared?"

"Yep," Allegra said, still grinning, and scurried
into the dark tunnel. Rydra and the Butcher brought up
the rear.

'They won't have any trouble with this equipment if
they have to take over from remote control, will they?''

185

BABEL-17

"This spider-boat is ten feet shorter than the Rim-
baud. Things are more cramped in discorporate quar-
ters, but everything else is the same."

Rydra thought: We've worked the sensory details on
a forty-foot one-generator sloop; this is a breeze,
Captain—Basque.

"The captain's cabin is different," he added.
"That's where the weapon controls are. We're going to
make some mistakes."

"Moralize later," she said. "We'll fight like hell for
Jebel Tank. But on the chance fighting like hell won't
do any good, I want to be able to get out of here. No
matter what happens, I've got to get back to Adminis-
trative Alliance Headquarters."

"Jebel wanted to know if the ^iribian ship will
fight beside us. They're still hanging T-ward."

"They'll probably watch the whole business and not
understand what's going on, unless they're directly
attacked. If they are, they can pretty well take care of
themselves. But I doubt they'll join us in an offen-
sive."

"That's bad," the Butcher said. "Because we'll
need help."

"Strategy Workshop. Strategy Workshop," Jebef's
voice came over the speaker. "Repeat, Strategy Work-
shop."

Where language charts had hung in her cabin, a
viewing screen—replica of the hundred-foot projection
in Tank's gallery—spread over the wall. Where her
console had been were ranged and banked assortments
of bomb and vibra-blast controls." Gross, uncivilized
weapons," she commented as she sat down on one of
the curved shock-boards where her bubble seat had

186

BABEL-17

been. "But effective as hell, I would imagine, if you
know what you're doing."

"What?" The Butcher strapped himself beside her.

"I was misquoting the late Weapons Master of
Armsedge."

The Butcher nodded. "You see to your crew. I'll go
over the check list up here."

She switched on the intercom. "Brass, you wired in
place?''

"Right."

"Eye, Ear, Nose?"

"It's dusty down here. Captain. When's the last time
they swept out this graveyard?"

tt! don't care about the dust. Does everything
work?''

' 'Oh, everything works all right..." The sentence
ended with a ghostly sneeze-

"Gesundheit. Slug, what's happening?"

"All in place. Captain." Then muffled: "Will you
put those marbles away!"

"Navigation?"

"We're fine- Mollya is teaching Calli judo. But I'm
right here and'll call them soon as something hap-
pens."

"Keep alert."

The Butcher bent toward her, stroked her hair, and
laughed.

"I like them too," she told him. "I just hope we
don't have to use them. One of them is a traitor who's
tried to get me twice now. I'd rather not give him a third
chance. Though if I have to, I think I can handle him
this time."

Jebel's voice over the speaker: "Carpenters gather to
face thirty-two degrees off galactic center. Hacksaws at

187

BABEL-17

the K-ward gate. Ripsaws make ready at the R-w,ard
gate- Crosscut blades ready at T-ward gate."

The ejectors clicked open. The cabin went black and
the view-screen flickered with stars and distant gases.
Controls gleamed with red and yellow signal lights
along the weapon board. Through the underspeakers
the chatter of the crews, back with the Navigatipn de-
partment of Tank, began.

This is gonna be a rough one. Can you see her,
Jehosaphat?

She's right in front of me. A big mother.

I just hope she ain't seen us yet. Keep us cool, Kippi.

"Drill presses, Handsaws, and Lathes: make sure
your components are oiled and your power-lines plug-
ged in."

"That's us," the Butcher said. His hands leapt in the
half-dark among the weapon controls.

What's the three ping-pong balls in the mosquito

netting?

Jebel says it's a (^iribian ship.

Long as it's on our side, baby, it's fine with me.

"Power tools commence operations. Hand tools
mark out for finishing work."

"Zero," the Butcher whispered. Rydra felt the ship
jump. The stars began to move. Ten seconds later she
saw the snub-snouted Invader rooting toward them.

"Ugly, isn't it," Rydra said.

"Tarik looks about the same, only smaller. And
when we come home, it will be beautiful. There's no
way to enlist the ^iribians' help? Jebel will have to
attack the Invader directly at her ports and smash as
many as he can, which won't be a lot. Then they'll
attack, and if they still outnumber Tank's spider-boats,

188

BABEL-17

and surprise doesn't play heavily on Jebel's side, then
that's"—she heard fist strike palm in the darkness—
"it."

' 'You can't just lob a gross, uncivilized atom bomb
at them?"

"They have deflectors that would explode it in
Jebel's hands."

"I'm glad I brought the crew then. We may have to
make a quick exit to Administrative Alliance Head-
quarters."

"If they let us," the Butcher said, grimly. "What
strategies then to win?"

"Tell you soon as the attack starts. I have a method,
but if I use it too much I pay high." She recalled the
illness after the incident with Geoffry Cord.

While Jebel continued to set up formations, the men
chatted with Tarik and the spider-boats slipped ahead in
the night.

It started so fast she nearly missed it. Five hacksaws
had slipped within a hundred yards of the Invader.
Simultaneously they blasted at the ejector ports, and
red beetles scurried the sides of the black hog. It took
four and a half seconds for the remaining twenty-seven
ejectors to open and shoot their first barrage of cruisers.
But Rydra was already thinking in Babel-17.

Through her distended time sense she saw they did
need help. And the articulation of their need was also
the answer.

"Break strategy. Butcher. Follow me with ten ships.
My crew is taking over."

The maddening feeling that her English words took
so long on her tongue! The Butcher's request—* 'Kippi,
put hacksaws on tail and leave them there!".—seemed

189

BABEL-17

like a tape played at quarter speed- But her crew\was
already in control of the spider-boat. She hissed their
trajectory into the mike.

Brass flung them at right angles to the tide, and for a
moment she saw the hacksaws behind her. Now a
hairpin turn and they drove behind the first sheet of
Invader cruisers.

"Warm their behinds!"

The Butcher's hand hesitated at a weapon. "'Drive
them toward Tarik?"

"The hell I will. Fire, sweetheart!"

He fired, and the hacksaws followed suit.

In ten seconds it was clear she was right. Tank lay
R-ward. Ahead were the poached eggs, the mosquito
netting, the flimsy, feathery vessel of ^iribia.
^iribia was Alliance, and at least one of the Invaders
knew it because he fired at the weird contraption hung
up on the sky. Rydra saw the Invader's gun-port cough
green fire, but the fire never reached the ^iribians.
The Invader cruiser turned into white-hot smoke that
blackened and dispersed. Then another cruiser went,
then three more, then three more.

' 'Out of here. Brass! *' and they swung up and away.

"What was—" the Butcher started.

"A (^iribian heat ray. But they won't use it unless
they' re attacked. Part of the treaty signed at the Court in
'47. So we make the Invaders attack. Want to do it
again?"

Brass' voice over te speaker: "We already are, Ca'-
tain."

She was thinking in English again, waiting for the
nausea to hit, but excitement held it back.

"Butcher," came from Jebel now, "what are you
doing?"

190

BABEL-17

"It's working, isn't it?"

"Yes, But you've left a hole in our defenses ten
miles across."

"Tell him we'll plug it up in a minute as soon as we
drive the next batch through."

Jebel must have heard her. "And what do we do for
the next sixty seconds, young lady?"

"Fight like hell." And the next batch of herded
cruisers disappeared before the ^iribian heat ray.
Then from the underspeakers:

Hey, Butcher, they're out for you.

They got the idea you're spearheading this thing.

Butcher, six on your tail. Shake 'emfast.

"I can dodge them easy, Ca'tain," Brass called up.
"They're all on remote control. I've got more free-
dom."

' "One more and we can really put the odds on Jebel's
side."

"Jebel outnumbers them already," the Butcher said.
"This spider-boat has got to shake those burrs." He
called into the mike, "Hacksaws disperse and brake up
the cruisers behind."

Will do. Hold onto your heads, fellows.

Hey, Butcher, one of them's not giving up.

Jebel said: "I thank you for my hacksaws back, but
there's something following you that may be out for a
hand-to-hand."

Rydra questioned him with a look.

"Heroes," the Butcher grunted disgustedly.
"They'll try to grapple, board, and fight."

"Not with those kids on this ship' Brass, turn around
and ram them, or come close enough to make them
think we're crazy."

"Maybreakacou'leribs. . ."The ship swung and

191

BABEL-17

they were flung hard against the straps of the'
shock-boards.

A youngster's voice through the intercom.
"Wheeeee ..."

On the view-screen the Invader cruiser swerved to
the side.

"Good chance if they grapple," the Butcher said.
"They don't know there's a full crew aboard. They
have no more than two—"

"Watch out, Ca'tain'"

The Invader cruiser filled the screen. Clannnggg
sang in the bones of the spider-boat.

The Butcher yanked at the straps of the shock-board
and grinned. "Now to fighting hand-to-hand. Where
are you going?"

"With you."

"You have a vibra-gun?" He tightened the holster
on his stomach.

"Sure do." She pushed aside a panel of her loose
blouse. "And this, too. Vanadium wire, six inches.
Wicked thing."

"Come." He slapped the lever on a gravity inductor
down to full field.

"What's that for?"

They were already in the corridor.

"To fight in a space suit out there is no good. False
gravity field released around both ships will keep a
breathable atmosphere to about twenty feet from sur-
face and keep some heat in . . . more or less."

"What's less?" She swung behind him into the lift.

"It's about ten degrees below zero out there."

He had abandoned even his breeches since the eve-
ning they had met in Tank's graveyard. All he wore

192

BABEL-17

was the holster. "I guess we won't be out there long
enough to need overcoats."

"I guarantee you, whoever is out there more than a
minute will be dead, and not from overexposure." His
voice suddenly deepened as they ducked into the
hatchway. "If you don't know what you're doing, stay
back." Then he bent to brush her cheek with amber
hair. "But you know, and I know. We must do it
well."

In the same motion that he raised his head, he re-
leased the hatch. Cold came in for them. She didn't feel
it. The increased metabolic rate that accompanied
Babel-17 wrapped her in a shield of physical indiffer-
ence. Something went flying overhead. They knew
what to do and both did it; they ducked. Whatever it
was exploded—the explosion identifying it as grenade
that had just missed coming into the hatch—and light
bleached the Butcher's face. He leaped and the fading
glow slid down his body.

She followed him, reassured by the slow motion
effect of Babel-17. She spun as she jumped. Someone
ducked behind the ten foot bulge of an outrigger. She
fired at him, the slow motion giving her time to take
careful aim. She didn't wait to see if she hit, but kept
turning. The Butcher was making for the ten foot wide
column of the Invader's grapple.

Like a triple clawed crab, the enemy boat angled
away into the night. K-ward rose the flattened spiral of
the home galaxy. Shadows were carbon-paper black on
the smooth hulls. From the K-ward side nobody could
see her, unless her movement blotted a fugitive star or
passed into the direct light of Specelli arm itself.

She jumped again—at the surface of the Invader

193

BABEL-17

cruiser now. For a moment it got much colder. Then
she struck, near the grappler base, and rolled to her
knees as, below, someone heaved another grenade at
the hatch. They hadn't realized she and the Butcher
were out yet. Good. She fired. And another hiss
sounded from where the Butcher must be.

In the darkness below, figures moved. Then a
vibra-blast stung the metal beneath her hand. It came
from her own ship's hatch and she wasted a quarter of a
sound analyzing and discarding the idea that the spy she
had been afraid of from her crew had joined the Invad-
ers. Rather, the Invader's first tactic had been to keep
them from leaving their ship and blow them up in the
hatch. It had failed, so now they had taken cover in the
hatch itself for safety and were firing from there. She
fired, fired again. From his hiding place behind the
other grapple, the Butcher was doing the same.

A section of the hatch rim began to glow from the
repeated blasts. Then a familiar voice was calling, * *A11
right, all right already. Butcher! You got them, Ca'-
tain!"

Rydra monkeyed down the grapple, as Brass turned
the hatch light on and stood up in the light that fanned
across the bulkhead. The Butcher, gun down, came
from his hiding place.

The underlighting distorted Brass' demon features
still further. He held a limp figure in each claw.

"Actually this one's mine." He shook the right one.
"He was trying to crawl back into the shf, so I ste' 'ed
on his head.'' The pilot heaved the limp bodies onto the
hullplates. "I don't know about you folks, but I'm
cold. Reason I came up here in the first 'lace was
Diavalo told me to tell you when you were ready for a
coffee break, he'd fixed u' some Irish whiskey. Or

194

BABEL-17

maybe you'd 'refer hot buttered rum? Come on, come
on! You're blue!"

At the lift her mind got back to English and she began
to shiver. The frost on the Butcher's hair had started to
melt to shiny droplets along his hairline. Her hand
stung where she had just missed a burning.

"Hey," she said, as they stepped into the corridor,
"if you're up here. Brass, who's watching the store?"

"Kippi. We went back on remote control."

"Rum," the Butcher said. "No butter and not hot.
Just rum."

"Man after my own heart," nodded Brass. He
dropped one arm around Rydra's shoulder, the other
around the Butcher's. Friendly, but also, she realized,
he was half-carrying both of them.

Something went clang through the ship.

The pilot glanced at the ceiling. "Maintenance just
cut those grapples loose." He edged them into the
captain's cabin. As they collapsed on the shock-boards,
he called into the intercom; "Hey, Diavalo, come u*
here and get these 'eo'te drtmk, huh? They deserve
it."

"Brass!" She caught his arms as he started back out.
1 'Can you get us from here to Administrative Alliance
Headquarters?"

He scratched his ear. "We're right at the ti' of the
Tongue. I only know the inside of the Sna' by chart.
But Sensory tells me we're right in something that must
be the beginning of Natal-beta Current. I know it flows
out of the Sna' and we can take it down to Atlas-run and
then into Administrative Alliance's front door. We're
about eighteen, twenty hours away."

"Let's go." She looked at the Butcher. He made no
objection.

195

BABEM7

"Good idea," Brass said. "About half of Tank is
. . .eh, discor'orate."

"The Invaders won?"

*'No*e. The ^iribians finally got the idea, roasted
that big 'ig, and took off. But only after Tarik got a hole
in its side large enough to 'ut three s'ider-boats
through, sideways. Ki' 'i tells me everyone who's still
alive is sealed off in one quarter of the shi', but they
have no running 'ower."

"What about Jebel?" the Butcher asked.

"Dead," Brass said.

Diavalo poked his white head down the entrance
hatch. "Here you go."

Brass took the bottle and the glasses.

Then static on the speaker: "Butcher, we just saw
you cast off the Invaders' cruiser. So, you got out
alive."

Butcher leaned forward and picked up the mike.
"Butcher alive, chief."

"Some people have all the luck. Captain Wong, I
expect you to write me an elegy."

"Jebel?" She sat down next to the Butcher. "We're
going to Administrative Alliance Headquarters now,
We'll come back with help."

"At your convenience. Captain. We're just a trifle
crowded, though."

"We're leaving now."

Brass was already out the door.

"Slug, are the kids all right?"

"Present and accounted for. Captain, you didn't
give anyone permission to bring firecrackers aboard,
did you?"

"Not that I remember."

196

BABEL-17

"That's all 1 wanted to know. Ratt, come back
here ..."

Rydra laughed. "Navigation?"

"Ready when you are," Ron said. In the
background she heard Mollya's voice: "Nilitaka kula-
la, nilale milele—"

"You can't go to sleep forever," Rydra said.
"We're taking off!"

"Mollya's teaching us a poem in Swahili," Ron
explained.

"Oh. Sensory?"

"Kac/zywM/ I always said, Captain, keep your
graveyard clean. You might need it some day. Jebel's a
case in point. We're ready."

"Get Slug to send one of the kids down with a dust
mop. All wired in. Brass?"

"Checked out and ready, Ca'tain."

The stasis generators cut in and she leaned back on
the shock-board. Inside something at last relaxed. "I
didn't think we were going to get out of there." She
turned to the Butcher, who sat on the edge of his board
watching her. "You know I'm nervous as a cat. And I
don't feel too well. Oh, hell, it's starting." With the
relaxation the sickness which she had put off for so
long began to climb her body. "This whole thing
makes me feel like I'm about to fly apart. You know
when you doubt everything, mistrust all your feelings, I
begin to think I'm not me anymore . . ." Her breath
got painful in her throat.

"I am," he said softly, "and you are."

"Don't ever let me doubt it, Butcher. But I even
have to wonder about that. There's a spy among my
crew. I told you that, didn't I? Maybe it's Brass and

197

BABEL-17

he's going to hurl us into another nova!" Within ttife
sickness was a blister of hysteria. The blister broke and
she smacked the bottle from the Butcher's hand.
"Don't drink that! D-D-Diavalo, he might poison
us!" She rose unsteadily. There was a red haze over
everything.". . .Oroneofthed-d-dead.How. . .
how can I f-f-f . . . fight a ghost?" Then pain hit her
stomach, and she staggered back as away from a blow.
Fear came with the pain. The emotions were moving
behind his face and even they blurred in her attempt to
see them clearly. ". . . to kill . . . k-k-killw^/" she
whispered,". . . s-s-something to kill . . .s-s-sono
y-you, n-n-no/ ..."

It was to get away from the pain which meant danger
and the danger which meant silence that she did it. He
had said. If you are ever in danger . . . then go info my
brain, see what is there, and use what you need.

An image in her mind without words: once she,
Muels, and Fobo had been in a barroom brawl on
Tantor. She had caught a punch in the jaw and
staggered back, shocked and turning, just as somebody
picked the bar mirror from behind the counter and flung
it at her. Her own terrified face had come screaming
toward her, smashed over her outstretched hand. As
she stared at the Butcher's face, through pain and
Babel-17, it happened all over—

198

PART
FOUR;

THE
BUTCHER

. . . turning in the brain to wake

with wires behind his eyes, forking the joints

akimbo. He wakes, wired,

forked fingers crackling, gagging on his tongue.

We wake, turning.

Spined against the floor,

his spine turning, chest hollowed,

air in the wires, sparks

glint from the wired ceiling tapping

his sparking fingernails. Coughs, cries.

The twin behind the eyes coughs, cries.

The dark twin doubles on the floor, swallows his

tongue.

Splashed to the dark pole circuited behind
the eyes, the dark twin snaps his spine free, slaps
his palms against the ceiling. Charged beads fly.
The ceiling, polarized, batters his cheek with metal.
Tears free skin. Tears ribs,
torn pectorals off metal curved away
black, behind the cracks, dried,
that are his torn lips. More.
Buttocks and shoulderb lades grind on the floor
gritty and green with brine.

199

BABEL-17

They wake.                          ^
We wake, turning.

He, gargling blood, turns,
born, on the wet floor . . .

—from The Dark Twin, M.H.

200

"WE JUST LEFT the Sna'.Ca'tain. You two drunk yet?"

Rydra's voice: "No."

"How do you like that. I guess you're all right,
though."

Rydra's voice: "The brain fine. The body fine."

"Huh? Hey, Butcher, she didn't have one of her
s'ells again?"

The Butcher's voice: "No."

"Both of you sound funny as hell. Shall I send the
Slug u' there to take a look at you?"

The Butcher's voice: "No."

"All right. It's clear sailing now, and I can cut a
cou'le of hours off. What do you say?"

The Butcher's voice: What is it to say?"

"Try 'thanks.' You know, I'm flying my tail off
down here."

Rydra's voice: "Thanks."

"You're welcome, I guess. I'll leave you two alone.
Hey, I'm sorry if I interru'ted something."

201

II

BUTCHER, I didn't know! I couldn't have known!

And in the echo their minds fused a cry. Couldn't
have—couldn't. This light—

I told Brass, told him you must speak a language
without the word T and I said I didn't know of one; but
there was one, the obvious one, Babel-17 . . . !

Congruent synapses quivered sympathetically till
images locked, and out of herself she created, saw

them—

—In the solitary confinement box of Titin, he
scratched a map on the green wall paint with his spur
over the palimpsestic obscenities of two centuries' pris-
oners, a map that they would follow on his escape and
would take them in the wrong direction; she watched
him pace that four-foot space for three months till his
six and a half foot frame was starved to a hundred and
one pounds and he collapsed in the chains of starvation.

On a triple rope of words she climbed from the pit:

starve, stave, stake; collapse, collate, collect; chains,

change, chance.

He collected his winnings from the cashier and was
about to stride across the maroon carpet of Casino
Cosmica to the door when the black croupier blocked
his way, smiling at the thick money case. "Would you
like to take one more chance, sir? Something to chal-
lenge a player of your skill?" He was taken to a mag-
nificent 3-D chessboard with glazed ceramic pieces.

202

BABEL-17

"You play against the house computer. Against each
piece you lose, you stake a thousand credits. Each piece
you win, gains you the same. Checks win or lose you
five hundred. Checkmate gains the winner one hundred
times the rest of the game's earnings, for either you or
the house." It was a game to even out his exorbitant
winnings—and he had been winning exorbitantly.
"Going home and take this money now," he said to the
croupier. The croupier smiled and said, "The house
insists you play." She watched, fascinated, while the
Butcher shrugged, turned to the board—and
checkmated the computer in a seven move fool's mate.
They gave him his million credits—and tried to kill him
three times before he got to the mouth of the casino.
They did not succeed, but the sport was better than the
gambling.

Watching him function and react in these situations,
her mind shook inside his, curving to his pain or plea-
sure, strange emotions because they were ego-less and
inarticulate, magic, seductive, mythical. Butcher-

She managed to interrupt trie headlong circling.

-if you understood Babel-17 alt along, her. questions
hurled in her own storming brain, why did you only use
it gratuitously for yourself, an evening of gambling, a
bank robbery, when a day later you would lose every-
thing and make no attempt to keep things for yourself?

What 'self? There was no 7'.
She had entered him in some bewildering, reversed
sexuality. Enclosing her, he was in agony. The light-
you make! You make! his crying in terror.

Butcher, she asked, more familiar in patterning
words about emotional turbulences than he, what does
my mind in yours look like?

Bright, bright moving, he howled, the analytical

203

BABEL-17

precision of Babel-17, crude as stone to articulate their
melding, making so many patterns, reforming them,

That's just being a poet. she explained, the oblique
connection momentarily cutting the flood through. Poet
in Greek means maker or builder.

There's one? There's a pattern now. Ahhhh!-so
bright, bright!

Just that simple semantic connection? She was as-
tounded.

But the Greeks werf poets three thousand years ago
and you are a poet now. You snatch words together
over such distance and their wakes blind me. Your
thoughts are all fire, over shapes I cannot catch. They
sound like music too deep, that shakes me.

That's because you were never shaken before. But

I'm flattered.

You are so big inside me I will break. I see the
pattern named The Criminal and artistic consciousness
meeting in the same head with one language between
them . . .

Yes, I hod started to think something like-
Flanking it, shapes called Baudelaire—Ahhh!—
and Villon.

They were ancient French po-
Too bright! Too bright! The '/' in me is not strong
enough to hold them. Rydra, when I look at the night
and stars, it is only a passive act, but you are active
even watching, and halo the stars with more luminious

flame.

What you perceive you change, Butcher. But you

must perceive it.

I must-the light; central in you I see mirror and
motion/used, and the pictures are meshed, rotating,
and everything is choice.

204

BABEL-17

My poems! It was the embarrassment of nakedness.
Definitions of T each great and precise.
She thought: I/Aye/Eye, the self, a sailor's yes, the
organ of visual perception-
He began, You-

You/Ewe/Yew, the other self, a female sheep, the
Celtic vegitative symbol for death.

-you ignite my words with meanings I can only
glimpse. What am I surrounding? What am I, sur-
rounding you?

Still watching, she saw him commit robbery, mur-
der, mayhem, because the semantic validity of mine
and thine were ruined in a snarl of frayed synapses.
Butcher, I heard it ringing in your muscles, that loneli-
ness, that made you make Jebet hook up the Rimbaud
just to have someone near you who could speak this
analytical tongue, the same reason you tried to save the
baby, she whispered.

Images locked on her brain.
Long grass whispered by the weir. Alleppo's moons
fogged the evening. The plamsmobile hummed, and
with measured impatience he flicked the ruby emblem
on the steering wheel with the tip of his left spur. Lill
twisted against him, laughing. "You know. Butcher, if
Mr. Big thought you'd driven out there with me on such
a romantic night he'd get very hostile. You're really
gonna take me to Paris when you finish here?" Un-
named warmth mixed in him with unnamed impa-
tience. Her shoulder was damp under his hand, her lips
red. She had coiled her champagne colored hair high
over one ear: Her body beside his moved in a rippling
motion that had the excuse of her turning to face him.
"If you're kidding me, aboutParis, I'll tell Mr. Big. If
I were a smart girl, I'd wait till after you took me there

205

BABEL-17

before I let us get ... friendly." Her breath was per-
fumed in the sweltering night. He moved his other hand
up her arm. "Butcher, get me off this hot, dead world,
Swamps, caves, rain! Mr. Big scares me. Butcher!
Take me away from him, toParis. Don't just be pretend-
ing. I want to go with you so bad." She made another
laughing sound with only her lips. "I guess I'm . . .
I'm not a smart girl after all." He placed his mouth
against her mouth—and broke her neck with one thrust
of his hands. Her eyes still open, she sagged back-
wards. The hypodermic ampule she had been about to
plunge into his shoulder fell from her hand, rolled
across the dashboard, and dropped among the foot
pedals. He carried her into the weir, and came back
muddy to mid-thigh. In the seat he flipped on the radio.
"It's finished, Mr. Big."

"Very good. I was listening. You can pick up your
money in the morning. It was very silly of her to try and
double cross me out of that fifty thousand."

The plainsmobile was rolling, the warm breeze dry-
ing the mud on his arms, the long grass hissing against
the runners.

Butcher . . . !

But that's me, Rydra.

I know. But I . . .

I had to do the same thing to Mr. Big himself two
weeks later.

Where did you promise to take him?

The gambling caves of Minos. And once I had to
crouch-

—Though it was his body crouching under the green
light of Kreto, breathing with wide open mouth to stop
all sound, it was her anticipation, her fear controlled to

206

BABEl-17

calm. The loader in his red uniform halts and wipes his
forehead with a bandanna. Step out quickly, tap his
shoulder- The loader turns, surprised, and the hands
come up leading with the heel, cock spurs opening the
loader's belly, which spills alt over the platform and
then running, while the alarms start, vaulting the
sandbags, snatching up the hawser chain and swinging
it down on the amazed face of the guard standing on the
other side who turned to see him with anus surprised
open—

-broke into the open and got away, he told her.
The trail disguise worked and the Tracers couldn't
follow me past the lava pits.

Opening you up, Butcher. All the running, opening
me?

Does it hurt, does it help? I don't know.

But there were no words in your mind. Even Babel-
17 was like the brain noise of a computer engaged in a
purely synoptical analysis.

Yes. Now do you begin to understand-

—standing, shivering in the roaring caves of Dis
where he had been wombed nine months, eaten all the
food, Lonny's pet dog, then Lonny who had frozen to
death trying to climb over the mounded ice—till sud-
denly the planetoid swung out from the shadow of
Cyclops and blazing Ceres flared in the sky so that in
forty minutes the cave was flooded with ice water to his
waist. When he finally freed his hop-sled, the water
was warm and he was slimy with sweat. He ran at top
speed for the two mile twilight strip, setting the auto-
matic pilot a moment before he collapsed, dizzy with
heat. He fainted ten munutes before he pulled into
Gotterdammerung.

207

BABEL-17

Faint in the darkness of your lost memory. Butcher,
I must find vou. Who were you before Nueva-nueva
York?

And he turned to her in gentleness. You're afraid,
Rydra? Like before . . .

No, not like before. You're leaching me something,
and it's shaking my whole picture of the world and
myself. I thought I was afraid before because I couldn' t
do what you could do. Butcher. The white flame went
blue, protective, and trembled. But I was afraid be-
cause I could do all those things, and for my own
reasons, not your lack of reasons, because I am, and
you are. I'm a lot biggerthan I thought IWas, Butcher,
and I don't know whether to thank you or damn you for
showing me. And something inside was crying, stutter-
ing, was still. She turned in the silences she had taken
from him, fearfully, and in the silences something
waited for her to speak, alone, for the first time.

Look at yourself, Rydra.

Mirrored in him, she saw growing in the light of her,
a darkness without words, only noise—growing! And
cried out at its name and shape. The broken circuit
boards! Butcher, those tapes that could only have been
made on my console when I was there! Of course-!

Rydra, we can control them if we can name them.

How can we, now? We have to name ourselves first.
And you don't know who you are.

Your words, Rydra, can we somehow use your
words to find out who I am ?

Not my words. Butcher. But maybe yours, maybe
Babel-17.                     '   '.

No . . .

I am. she whispered, believe me, Butcher, and you
are.

208

III

"HEADQUARTERS, CAPTAIN. Take a look through the
sensory helmet. Those radio nets look like fireworks,
and corporate souls tell me it smells like comedbeef
hash and fried eggs. Hey, thanks for getting us dusted
out. Had a tendency toward hayfever when 1 was alive
that I never did shake."

Rydra's voice: "The crew will debark with the Cap-
tain and the Butcher. The crew will take them to Gen-
eral Forester, together, and not let them be separated.''

The Butcher's voice: "There is a tape recording in
the Captain's cabin on the console containing a gram-
mar of Babel-17. The Slug will send that tape im-
mediately to Dr. Markus T' mwarba on Earth by special
delivery. Then inform Dr. T'mwarba by stellarphone
that the tape was sent, at what time', and its contents."

"Brass, Slug! Something's wrong up there!" Ron's
voice overcut the Captain's signal. "You ever heard
them talk like that? Hey, Captain Wong, what's the
matter . . .?"

209

PART
FIVE:

MARKUS
T'MWARBA

Growing older I descended November.
The asymptotic cycle of the year
plummets to now. In crystal reveries
I pass beneath a fixed white line of trees
where dry leaves lie for footsteps to dismember.
They crackle with a muted sound like fear.
I ask cold air, "What is the word that frees?"
The wind says, "Change," and the white sun, "Re-
member."

—from Elektra, M.H

211

THE SPOOL of tape, the imperative directive from Gen-
eral Forester, and the infuriated Dr. T'mwarba reached
DanilD. Appleby's office within thirty seconds of each
other.

He was opening the flat box when the noise outside
the partition made him look up. "Michael," he asked
the intercom, "what's that?"

"Some madman who says he's a psychiatrist!"

"I am not mad!" Dr. T'mwarba said loudly. "But 1
know how long it takes a package to get from Adminis-
trative Alliance Headquarters to Earth, and it should
have reached my door with this morning's mail. It
didn't, which means it's been held up, and this is where
you do things like that. Let me in."

Then the door crashed back against the wall and he
was.

Michael craned around T'mwarba's hip: "Hey,
Dan, I'm sorry. I'll call the—"

Dr. T'mwarba pointed to the desk and said. "That's
mine. Gimme."

"Don't bother, Michael," the Customs Officer said
before the door was slammed again. ' 'Good afternoon,
Dr. T'mwarba. Won't you sit down?This is addressed
to you, isn't it? Don't look so surprised that I know you.
1 also handle security psyche-index integration, and all
of us in the department know your brilliant work in
schizoid-differentiation. I'm so glad to meet you."

213

BABEL-17

"Why can't I have my package?"

"One moment and I'll find out." As he picked up the
directive. Dr. T'mwarba picked up the box and stuck it
in his pocket:

"Now you can explain."

The Customs Officer opened the letter. "It seems,"
he said, pressing his knee against the desk to release
some of the hostility that had built up in very little time,
"that you may have . . .eh, keep the tape on condition
you leave for Administrative Alliance Headquarters
this evening on the Midnight Falcon and bring the tape
with you. Passage has been booked, thanking you in
advance for your cooperation, sincerely, General X ,J.
Forester."

"Why?"

"He doesn't say. I'm afraid, doctor, that unless you
agree to go, I won't be able to let you keep that. And we
can get it back.

"That's what you think. Have you any idea what
they want?"

The Officer shrugged. "You were expecting it.
Who's it from?"

"Rydra Wong."

* 'Wong?'' The Customs Officer had put both knees
against the desk. He dropped them. 'The poet, Rydra
Wong? You know Rydra, too?"

"I've been her psychiatric advisor since she was
twelve. Who are you?"

"I'm Danil D. Appleby. Had I known you were
Rydra's friend, I would have ushered you up here my-
self!" The hostility had acted as a take off from which
to spring into ebullient camaraderie. "If you're leaving
on the Falcon, you've got time to step out a little while
with me, haven't you? I was going to leave work early

214

BABEL-17

anyway. I have to stop off at .   . well someplace in
Transport Town. Why didn't you say you knew her
before? There's a delightfully ethnic place right near
where I'm going. Get a reasonable meal and a good
drink there; do you follow the wrestling? Most people
think it's illegal, but you can watch it there. Ruby and
Python are on display this evening. If you'll just make
that one stop with me first, I know you'll find it fas-
cinating. And I'll get you to the Falcon on time."

"I think I know the place."

' 'You gu downstairs and they have this big bubble on
the ceiling, where they fight. . . ?" Effervescent, he
leaned forward. "As a matter of fact, Rydra first took
me there."

Dr. T'mwarba began to smile.

The Customs Officer slapped the desk top. "We had
a wild time that night! Simply wild!" He narrowed his
eyes. "Ever been picked up by one of those . . ."He
snapped his fingers three times.l'. . . in the discorpo-
rate sector? Now that still is illegal. But take a walk out
there some evening."

"Come," laughed the doctor. ^'Dinnerand a drink;

best idea I've heard all day. I'm starved and I haven't
seen a good match in four months."

"I've never been inside this place before," the Of-
ficer said, as they stepped from the monorail. "I called
to make an appointment but they told me I didn't need
me, just to come in; they were open till six. I figured
what the hell, I'd take off from work." They crossed
the street and passed the newsstand where frayed, un-
shaven loaders were picking up schedule sheets for
incoming flights. Three stellarmen in green uniforms
lurched along the sidewalk, arms about each other's

215

BABEL-17

shoulders. "You know," the Customs Officer was
saying, "I've had quite a battle with myself, I've
wanted to do it ever since I first came down here—hell,
ever since I first went to the movies and saw pictures.
But anything realty bizarre just wouldn't go at the
office. Then I said to myself, it could be something
simple, covered up when I was wearing clothes. Here
we are."

The Officer pushed open the door ofPIastiplasm Plus
("Addendums, Superscripts, and Footnotes to the
Beautiful Body").

"You know I always meant to ask someone in au-
thority; do you think there's anything psychologically
off about wanting something like this?"

"Not at all."

A young lady with blue eyes, lips, hair, and wings
said, "You can go right in. Unless you want to check
our catalogue first."

"Oh, I know exactly what I want," the Customs
Officer assured her. "This way?"

"That's right."

"Actually," Dr. T'mwarba went on, "it's
psychologically important to feel in control of your
body, that you can change it, shape it. Going on a six
month diet or a successful muscle building program can
give quite a sense of satisfaction- So can a new nose,
chin, or set of scales and feathers."

They were in a room with white operating tables.
"Can I help you?" asked a smiling, Polynesian cos-
metisurgeon in a blue smock. "Why don'tyou lie down
here?"

"I'm just watching," Dr. T'mwarba said.

"It's listed in your catalogue as 5463," the Customs

216

BABEl-17

Officer declared. "I want it there." He clapped his left
hand to his right shoulder.

"Oh yes. I rather like that one myself. Just a mo-
ment." He opened the top of a stand by the table.
Instruments glittered.

The surgeon was off to the glass-faced refrigeration
unit at the far wall where behind the glass doors intri-
cate plastiplasm shapes were blurred by frost. He re-
turned with a tray full of various fragments. The only
recognizable one was the front half of a miniature
dragon with jeweled eyes, glittering scales, and opales-
cent wings: it was less than two inches long.

"When he's connected up to your nervous system,
you'll be able to make him whistle, hiss, roar, flap his
wings and spit sparks, though it may take a few days to
assimilate him into your body picture. Don't be sur-
prised if at first he just burps and looks seasick. Take
your shirt off, please."

The Officer opened his collar.

"We'll just block off all sensation from your shoul-
deron. . . there, that didn't really hurt. This?0h, it's
a local veinal and arterial constrictant; we want to keep
things clean. Now, we'll just cut you along the—well,
if it upsets you, don't look. Talk to your friend there.
It'll just take a few minutes. Oh, that must have tickled
all down in your tummy! Never mind. Just once more.
Fine. That's your shoulder joint. I know; your arm does
look sort of funny hanging there without it. We'll just
stick in this transparent platisplasm cage now. Exact
same articulation as your shoulder joint, and it holds
your muscles out of the way. See, it's got grooves for
your arteries. Move your chin, please. If you want to
watch, look in the mirror. Now we'll just crimp it

217

BABEL-17

around the edges. Keep this vivatape around the rim of
the cage for a couple of days until things grow together.
There's not much chance of its pulling apart unless you
strain your arm suddenly but you ought to be safe. Now
I'll just connect the little fellow in there to the nerve.
This will hurt—"

"Gnnnnn!" The Customs Officer half rose.

"—Sit! Sit! All right, the little catch here—look in
the mirror—is to open the cage. You'll leam how to
make him come out and do tricks, but don't be impa-
tient . It takes a bit of time. Let me turn the feeling back
on in your arm."

The surgeon removed the electrodes and the Officer
whistled.

'Stings a little. It will for about an hour. If there's any
redness or inflammation, please don't hesitate to come
back. Everything that comes through that doorway gets
perfectly sterilized, but every five or six years some-
body comes down with an infection. You can put your
shirt on now."

As they walked into the street, the Customs Officer
flexed his shoulder. "You know they claim it should
make absolutely no difference." He made a face. "My
fingers feel funny. Do you think he might have bruised
a nerve?"

"I doubt it," Dr. T'mwarba said, "but you will if
you keep twisting like that. You'll pull the vivatape
loose. Let's go eat."

The Officer fingered his shoulder. "It feels odd to
have a three inch hole there and your ami still work-
ing."

"So," Dr. Tmwarba said over his mug, "Rydra
first brought you to Transport Town."

218

BABEL-17

"Yes. Actually—well, I only met her that once. She
was getting a crew together for a government sponsored
trip. I was just along to approve indices. But something
happened that evening."

"What was it?"

1' I saw a bunch of the weirdest', oddest people I have
ever met in my life, who thought different, and acted
different, and even made love different. And they made
me laugh, and get angry, and be happy, and be sad,
and excited, and even fall in love a little." He glanced
up at the sphere of the wrestling arena aloft in the bar.
"And they didn't seem to be so weird or strange any-
more."

"Communication was working that night?"

'T guess so. It's presumptuous my calling her by her
first name. But I feel like she's my ... friend. I'm a
lonely man, in a city of lonely men. And when you find
some place where-^-communications are working, you
come back to see if it will happen again."

"Has it?"

Danil D. Appteby looked down from the ceiling and
began to unbutton his shirt. "Let's have dinner." He
shrugged his shirt over the back of the chair and glanced
down at the dragon caged in his shoulder. "You come
back anyway." Turning in his seat, he picked his shirt
up. folded it neatly, and put it down again. "Dr.
T'mwarba, have you any idea why they want you to
come to Administrative Alliance Headquarters?"

"I assume it concerns Rydra and this tape."

1 'Because you said you were her doctor. I just hope it
isn't a medical reason. If anything happened to her, it
would be terrible- For me, I mean. She managed to say
so much to me in that one evening, so very simply." He
laughed and ran his finger around the rim of the cage.

219

BABEL-17

The beast inside gurgled. "And half the time she
wasn't even looking in my direction when she said it.' *

"I hope she's all right,'* Dr. T'mwarba said. "She'd
better be."

220

II

BEFORE THE Midnight Falcon landed, he inveigled the
captain into letting him speak with Flight Control. tt!
want to know when the Rimbaud came in."

"Just a moment, sir. I don't believe it has. Certainly
not within the past six months. It would take a little time
to check back further than—"

"No. It would be more like the past few days. Are
you sure the Rimbaud did not land here recently under
Captain Rydra Wong?"

"Wong? I believe she did land yesterday, but not in
the Rimbaud. It was an unmarked fighter ship. There
was some mix-up because the serial numbers had been
filed off the tubes and there was a possibility it might
have been stolen."

"Was Captain Wong all right when she disem-
barked?"

"She'd apparently relinquished command to her—''
The voice stopped.

"Well?"

"Excuse me, sir. This has been all marked clas-
sified. 1 didn't see the sticker, and it was accidentally
put back in the regular file. I can't give you any more
information. It's only cleared to authorized persons."

"I'm Dr. Markus T'mwarba," the doctor said, with
authority and no idea whether it would do any good.

"Oh, there is a notation concerning you, sir. But
you're not on the cleared list."

221

BABEL-17

"Then what the hell does it say, young lady?"
' 'Just that if you requested information, to refer you
directly to General Forester."

An hour later he walked into General Forester's
office. "All right, what's the matter with Rydra?"

"Where's the tape?"

"If Rydra wanted me to have it, she had good
reason. If she'd wanted you to have it, she would have
given it to you. Believe me, you won't get your hands
on it unless I give it to you."

"I'd expected more cooperation. Doctor."

"I am cooperating. I'm here. General. But you must
want me to do something, and unless I know exactly
what's going on, I can't."

"It's a very unmilitary attitude," General Forester
said, coming around the desk. "It's one I'm having to
deal with more and more, recently. I don't know
whether I like it. But I don't know whether I dislike it
either." The green-suited stellarman sat on the desk's
edge, touched the stars on his collar, looked pensive.
"Miss Wong was the first person I've met in a long
time to whom I could not say: do this, do that, and be
damned if you inquire about the consequences. The
first time I spoke to her about Babel-17, I thought I
could just hand her the transcription, and she would
hand it back to me in English. She told me, flatly: No; I
would have to tell her more. That's the first time any-
one's told me I had to do anything in fourteen years. I
may not like it; I sure as hell respect it." His hands
dropped protectively to his lap (Protective? Was it
Rydra who had taught him to interpret that movement,
T'mwarba wondered briefly.) "It's so easy to get
caught in your fragment of the world. When a voice

222

BABEL-17

comes cutting through, it's important. Rydra Wong
. . ." and theGeneral stopped, and expression settling
on his features that made T'mwarba chill as he looked
at it with what Rydra had taught him.

* 'Is she all right. General Forester? Is this something
medical?''

"I don't know," the General said. "There's a
woman in my inner office—and a man. I can't tell you
whether the woman is Rydra Wong or not. It certainly
isn't the same woman I talked to that evening on Earth
about Babel-17."

ButT'mwarba, already at the door, shoved it open.

A man and a woman looked up. The man was a
massively graceful, amber-haired—convict, the doctor
realized from the mark on his arm. The woman—

He put both fists on his hips: "All right, what am I
about to say to you?"

She said: "Non comprehension."

Breathing pattern, curl of hands in lap, carriage of
shoulders, the details whose import she had dem-
onstrated to him a thousand times: he learned in the
horrifying length of a breath just how much they iden-
tified. For a moment he wished she had never taught
him, because they were all gone, and their absence in
her familiar body were worse than scars and disfigure-
ments. He began in a voice that was habitually for her,
the one he had praised or chastened her with, "I was
going to say—if this is a joke, sweetheart, I'll . . .
paddle you." It ended with the voice for strangers, for
salesmen and wrong numbers, and he felt unsteadied.
"If you're not Rydra, who are you?"

She said: "Non comprehension of the question.
General Forester, is this man Doctor Markus
T'mwarba?" .

223

BABEL-17

"Yes, he is."

"Look." Dr. T'mwarba turned to the General. "I'm
sure you've gone over fingerprints, metabolic rates,
retina patterns, that sort of identification."

"That's Rydra Wong's body. Doctor."

1 'All right: hypnotics, experimental imprinting,
graft of pre-synapsed cortical matter—can you think of
any other way to get one mind into another head?"

"Yes. Seventeen. There's no evidence of any of
them." The General stepped from the door. "She's
made it clear she wants to speak to you alone. I'll be
right outside." He closed the door.

"I'm pretty sure who you're not," Doctor
T'mwarba said after a moment.

The woman blinked and said: "Message from Rydra
Wong, delivered verbatim, non comprehension of its
significance." Suddenly the face took on its familiar
animation. Her hands grasped each other, and she
leaned slightly forward: "Mocky, am I glad you got
here. I can't sustain this very long, so here goes. Babel-
17 is more or less like Onoff, Algol, Fortran. I am
telepathic after all, only I've just learned how to control
it. I . . . we've taken care of the Babel-17 sabotage
attempts. Only we're prisoners, and if you want to get
us out, forget about who I am. Use what's on the end of
the tape, and find out who he is!" She pointed to the
Butcher.

The animation left, the rigidity returned to her face.
The whole transformation left T'mwarba holding his
breath. He shook his head, started breathing again.
After a moment he went back into the General's office.
"Who's the jailbird?" he asked matter-of-factly.

"We're tracking that down now. I hoped to have the
report this morning." Something on the desk flashed.

224

BABEL-17

"Here it is now." He flipped a slot in the desk top and
pulled out a folder. As he slitted the seal,- he paused.
"Would you like to tell me what Onoff, Algol, and
Fortran are?*'

"To be sure, listening at keyholes." T'mwarba
sighed and sat down in a bubble chair in front of the
desk.   ' They're   ancient,   twentieth   century
languages—artificial languages that were used to pro-
gram computers, designed especially for machines.
Onoff was the simplest. It reduced everything to a
combination of two words, on and off, or the binary
number system. The others were more complicated."

The General nodded, and finished opening the
folder. "That guy came from the swiped spider-boat
with her. The crew got very upset when we wanted to
put them in separate quarters." He shrugged. "It's
something psychic. Why take chances? We leave them
together."

"Where is the crew? Were they able to help you?"

"Them? It's like trying to talk to something out of
your bad dreams. Transport. Who can talk to people
like that?"

"Rydra could," DoctorT'mwarba said. "I'd like to
see if I might."

"If you wish. We're keeping them at Headquar-
ter's." He opened the folder, then made a face. "Odd.
There's a fairly detailed account of his existence for a
five year period that starts with some petty thievery,,
strong arm work, then graduates to a couple of rub-
outs. A bank robbery—" The General pursed his lips
and nodded appreciatively.' 'He served two years in the
penal caves ofTitin, escaped—this boy is something.
Disappeared into the Specelli Snap where he either
died, or perhaps got onto a shadow-ship. He certainly

225

BABEL-17

didn't die. But before December '61, he doesn't seem
to have existed. He's usually called the Butcher."

Suddenly the General dived into a drawer and came
up with another folder. "Kreto, Earth, Minos, Cal-
listo," he read, then slapped the folder with the back of
his hand. "Aleppo, Rhea, Olympia, Paradise, Dis!"

"What's that, the Butcher's itinerary until he went
intoTitin?"

"It just so happens it is. But it's also the locations of
a series of accidents that began in December '61. We'd
just gotten around to connecting them up with Babel-
17. We'd only been working with recent 'accidents',
but then this pattern from a few years ago turned up.
Reports of the same sort of radio exchange. Do you
think Miss Wong has brought home our saboteur?"

"Could be. Only that isn't Rydra in there."

"Well, yes, I guess you could say that."

"For similar reasons I would gather that the gentle-
man with her is not the Butcher."

"Who do you think he is?"

"Right now I don't know. I'd say it's fairly impor-
tant we found out." He stood up. "Where can I get
hold ofRydra's crew?"

226

III

"A PRETTY snazzy place!" Calli said as they stepped
from the lift at the top floor of Alliance Towers.

"Nice now," said Mollya, "to be able to walk
about."

A headwaiter in white formal wear came across the
civet rug, looked just a trifle askance at Brass, then
said, "This is your party. Dr. T'mwarba?"

"That's right. We have an alcove by the window.
You can bring us a round of drinks right away. I've
ordered already."

The waiter nodded, turned, and led them toward a
high, arched window that looked over Alliance Plaza.
A few people turned to watch them.

"Administrative can be a very pleasant place," Dr.
T'mwarba smiled.

"If you got the money," said Ron. He craned to look
at the blue-black ceiling, where the lights were ar-
ranged to simulate the constellations seen from Rymik,
and whistled softly. * 'I read about places like this but I
never thought I'd be in one."

"Wish I could have brought the kids," the Slug
mused. "They thought the Baron's was something." <

At the alcove the waiter held Mollya's chair.

"Was that Baron Ver Dorco of the War Yards?"

"Yeah," said Calli. "Barbequed lamb, plum wine,
the best looking peacocks I've seen in two years. Never
got to eat 'em." He shook his head.

227

BABEl-17

"One of the annoying habits of aristocracy,"
T'mwarba laughed, "they'll go ethnic at the slightest
provocation. But there're only a few of us left, and
most of us have the good manners to drop our titles. *'

"Late weapons master of Armsedge," the Slug cor-
rected.

"1 read the report of his death. Rydra was there?"

"We all were. It was a 'retty wild evening."

"What exactly happened?"

Brass shook his head. "Well, Ca'tain went early
. . ." When he had finished recounting the incidents,
with the others adding details. Dr. T'mwarba sat back
in his chair. "The papers didn't give it that way. But
they wouldn't. What was thisTW-55 anyway?"

Brass shrugged.

There was a click as the discorporaphone in the
doctor's ear went on; "It's a human being who's been
worked over and over from birth till it isn't human
anymore," the Eye said. "I was with Captain Wong
when the Baron first showed it to her."

Dr. T'mwarba nodded- "Is there anything else you
can tell me?"

Slug, who had been trying to get comfortable in the
hard-backed chair, now leaned his stomach against the
table edge. "Why?"

The others got still, quickly.

The fat man looked at the rest of the crew.' 'Why are
we telling him all this? He's going back and give it to
the stellarmen."

"That's right,"Dr. T'mwarba said. "Any of it that
might help Rydra."

Ron put down his glass of iced cola.' 'The stellarmen
haven't been what you'd call nice to us, Doc," he
explained.

228

BABEL-17

"They didn't take us to no fancy restaurants." Calli
tucked his napkin into the zircon necklace he'd worn
for the occasion. A waiter placed a bowl of french
fried potatoes on the table, turned away, and came
back with a platter of hamburgers.

Across the table Mollya picked up the tall, red flask
and looked at it questioningly.

"Ketchup," Dr. T'mwarba said.

"Ohhh," breathed Mollya and returned it to the
damask table cloth.

"Diavalo should be here now." The Slug sat back
slowly and stopped looking at the doctor. "He's an
artist with a carbo-synth, and he's got a feel for a
protein-dispenser that's fine for good solid meals like
nut stuffed pheasant, fillet of snapper-creyonnaise, and
good stick-to-your-ribs food for a hungry spaceship
crew. But this fancy stuff"—he spread mustard care-
fully across his bun—"give him a pound of real
chopped meat, and 1 bet he'd run out of the galley
'cause it might bite him."

Brass said: "What's wrong with Ca'tain Wong?
That's what nobody wants to ask."

"1 don't know. But if you'll tell me all you <an, I'll
have a lot better chance of doing something."

"The other thing nobody wants to say," Brass went
on, "is that one of us don't want you to do anything for
her. But we don't know which."

The others silenced again.

' 'There was a s'y on the shi'. We all knew about it. It
tried to destroy the shi' twice. I think it's responsible for
whatever ha"ened to Ca'tain Wong and the Butcher."

"We all think so," the Slug said.

"This is what you didn't want to tell the stellar-
men?' '

229

BABEL-17

Brass nodded.

'Tell him about the circuit boards and the phony
take off before we got to Tarik," Ron said.

Brass explained.

"If it hadn't been for the Butcher," the discor-
poraphone clicked again, "we would have reentered
normal space in the Cygnus Nova. The Butcher con-
vinced Jebel to hook us out and take us aboard."

"So." Dr. Tmwarba looked around the table. "One
of you is a spy."

"It could be one of the kids," the Slug said. "It
doesn't have to be someone at this table."

"If it is," Dr. Tmwarba said, "I'm talking to the
rest of you. General Forester couldn't get anything out
of you. Rydra needs somebody's help- It's that sim-
ple."

Brass broke the lengthening silence. "I'd just lost a
shi' to the Invaders, Doc; a whole 'latoon of kids, more
than half the officers. Even though I could wrestle well
and was a good 'ilot, to any other trans'ort ca'tain, that
run-in with the Invaders made me a stiff jinx. Ca'tain
Wong's not from our world. But wherever she came
from, she brought a set of values with her that said, 'I
like your work and I want to hire you.' I'm grateful."

"She knows about so much," Calli said. "This is
the wildest trip I've ever been on. Worlds. That's it,
Doc. She cuts through worlds and don't mind taking
you along. When's the last time somebody took me to a
Baron's for dinner and espionage? Next day I'm eating
with pirates. And here 1 am now. Sure 1 want to help.''

"Calli's too mixed up with his stomach," Ron inter-
rupted. "What it is, is she gets you thinking. Doc. She
made me think about Mollya and Calli. You know she

230

BABEl-17

was tripled with Muels Aranlyde, the guy who wrote
Empire Star. But I guess you must, if you're her doc-
tor. Anyway, you start thinking that maybe those
people who live in other worlds—like Calli says—
where people write books or make weapons, are real. If
you believe in them, you're a little more ready to
believe in yourself. And when somebody who can do
that needs help, you help."

"Doctor," Motlya said, "I was dead. She made me
alive. What can I do?"

"You can tell me everything you know"—he
leaned across the table and locked his fingers—"about
the Butcher."

"The Butcher?" Brass asked. The others were sur-
prised. "What about him? We don't know anything
exce't that Ca'tain and him got to be real close."

"You were on the same ship with him for three
weeks. Tell me everything you saw him do."

They looked at one another, silence questioning.

"Was there anything that ^ might have indicated
where he was. from?"

"Titin," Calli said. "The mark on his arm."

"Before Titin, at least five years before. The prob-
lem is that the Butcher doesn't know either."

They looked even more perplexed. Then Brass said,
"His language. Ca'tain said he originally had s'oken a
language where there was no word for T."

Dr. Tmwarba frowned more deeply as the discor-
poraphone clicked again.'' She taught him how to say /
wdyou. They wandered through the graveyard in eve-
ning , and we hovered over them while they taught each
other who they were."

"The 'I'," Tmwarba said, "that's something to go

231

BABEL-17

on." He sat back. "It's funny. I suppose I know every-
thing about Rydra there is to know. And I know just that
little about—"

The discorporaphone clicked a third time. "You
don't know about the myna bird."

T'mwarba was surprised. "Of course I do. I was
there."

The discorporate crew laughed softly. "But she
never told you why she was so frightened."

"It was a hysterical onset brought about by her
previous condition—"

Ghostly laughter again. "The worm. Dr. T'mwarba.
She wasn't afraid of the bird at all. She was afraid of the
telepathic impression of a huge worm crawling toward
her, the worm that the bird was picturing."

"She told you this—" and never lold me, was the
ending of what had began in minor outrage and ceased
in wonder.

1' Worlds," the ghost reiterated.k' Sometimes worlds
exist under your eyes and you never see- This room
might be filled with phantoms, you'd never know.
Even the rest of the crew can't be sure what we're
saying now. But Captain Wong, she never used a
discorporaphone. She found a way to talk with us
without one. She cut through worlds, and joined
them—that's the important part—so that both became
bigger."

"Then somebody's got to figure out where in the
world, yours, mine, or hers, the Butcher came from."
A memory resolved like a cadence closing, and he
laughed. The others looked puzzled. "A worm. Some-
where in Eden now, a worm, a worm . . . That was
one of her earliest poems. And it never occurred to
me."

232

IV

"AM 1 SUPPOSED to be happy?" Dr. T'mwarba askerf.'

"You're supposed to be interested," said General
Forester.

"You've looked at the hyperstatic map and discov-
ered that though the sabotage attempts over the last
year and a half lie all over a galaxy in regular space,
they're within cruiser distance of the Specelli Snap
across the jump. Also, you've discovered that during
the time the Butcher was in Titin, there were no 'acci-
dents' at all. In other words, you have discovered that
the Butcher could be responsible for the whole busi-
ness, just from physical proximity. No, I am not happy
at all."

"Why not?"

"Because he's an important person."

"Important?"

"I know he's . . . important to Rydra. The crew
told me that."

"Him?" Then comprehension struck. "Him? Oh,
no. Anything else. He's the lowest form of . . .Not
that. Treason, sabotage, how many murders ... I
mean he's—"

' 'You don't know what he is. And if he's responsible
for the Babel-17 attacks, in his own right he's as ex-
traordinary as Rydra-" The Doctor stood from his
bubble seat. "Now will you give me a chance to try out

233

BABEL-17

my idea? I've been listening to yours all morning. And
mine will probably work."
"I still don't understand what you want, though."
Dr. T' mwarba sighed.' 'First I want to get Rydra and
the Butcher and us in the most heavily guarded,
deepest, darkest, impenetrable dungeon Administra-
tive Alliance Headquarters has—"
"But we don't have a dun—"
"Don't put me on," Dr. T'mwarba said evenly.
"You're fighting a war, remember?"
The General made a face. "Why all this security?"
"Because of the mayhem this guy has caused up till
now. He's not going to enjoy what I plan to do. I'd just
be happier if there was something, like the entire mili-
tary force of the Alliance, on my side. Then I'd feel I
had a chance."

Rydra sat on one side of the cell, the Butcher on the
other, both strapped to plastic coated chair forms that
were part of the walls. Dr. T'mwarba looked after the
equipment that was being rolled from the room. "No
dungeons and torture chambers, eh. General?" He
glanced at a spot of red brown that had dried on the
stone floor by his foot, and shook his head. "I'd be
happier if the place was swabbed out with acid and
disinfected first. But, I suppose on short order—"

"Do you have all your equipment here. Doctor?"
the General asked, ignoring the Doctor's goad. "If you
change your mind I can have a barrage of specialists
here inside of fifteen minutes."

'The place isn't big enough," Dr. T'mwarba said.
"I've got nine specialists right here." He rested his
hand on a medium-sized computer that had been placed
in the comer beside the rest. "I'd just as soon you

234

BABEL-17

weren't here, either. But since you won't go Just watch
quietly."

"You say," General Forester said, "you want
maximum security. I can have a few two hundred and
fifty pound akido masters in here also."

"I have a black belt in akido, General. I think the two
of us will do."

The General raised his eyebrows. "I'm karate my-
self. Akido is one martial art I've never really under-
stood. And you have a black belt?"

Dr. T'mwarba adjusted a larger piece of equipment
and nodded. "So does Rydra. I don't know what the
Butcher can do, so I'm keeping everybody strapped
good and tight."

"Very well." The General touched something at the
comer of the door jamb. The metal slab lowered slow-
ly. "We'll be in here five minutes." The slab reached
the floor and the line along the edge of the door disap-
peared. "We're welded in now. We're at the center of
twelve layers of defense, all*, impenetrable. Nobody
even knows the location of the place, including my-
self."

1 "After those labyrinths we came through, I certainly
don't," T'mwarba said.

"Just in case somebody manages to map it, we're
moved automatically every fifteen seconds. He's not
going to get out." The General gestured toward the
Butcher.

"I'm just assuming no one can get in." T'mwarba
pressed a switch.

"Go over this once more."

"The Butcher has amnesia, say the doctors on
Titin. That means his consciousness is restricted to the
section of his brain with synapse connections dating

235

BABEL-17

from '61. His consciousness is, in effect, restricted to
one segment of his cortex. What this does"—the doc-
tor lifted a metal helmet and put it on the Butcher's
head, glancing at Rydra—"is create a series of 'un-
pleasantnesses' in that segment until he is driven out of
that part of the brain back into the rest."

"What if there simply are no connections from one

part of the cortex to the other?"

"If it gets unpleasant enough, he will make new

ones."

"With the sort of life he's led," commented the

General, "I wonder what would be unpleasant enough

to drive him out of his head."

"Onoff, Algol, Fortran," said Dr. Tmwarba.
The General watched the doctor make further ad-
justments. "Ordinarily this would create a snake pit
situation in the brain. However, with a mind that
doesn't know the word '1', or hasn't known it for long,

fear tactics won't work."

"What will?"
"Algol, Onoff, and Fortran, with the help of a

barber and the fact that it's Wednesday."

"Dr. Tmwarba, I didn't bother with more than a

precursory check of your psyche-index—"

"I know what I'm doing. None of those computer

languages have the word for '1' either. This prevents
such statements as 'I can't solve the problem.' Or, 'I'm
really not interested.' Or 'I've got better things to waste
my time with.' General, in a little town on the Spanish
side of the Pyrenees there is only one barber. This
barber shaves all the men in the town who do not shave
themselves. Does the barber shave himself or not?"

The General frowned.
"You don't believe me? But General, 1 always tell

336

BABEL-17

the truth. Except Wednesdays; on Wednesday every -

statement I make is a lie."

"But today's Wednesay!" the General exclaimed,

beginning to fluster.

"How convenient. Now, now. General, don't hold
your breath until you're blue in the face."

"I'm not holding my breath!"

"I didn't say you were. But just answer yes or no:

have you stopped beating your wife?"

"Damn it, I can't answer a question like . . ."

"Well, while you think about your wife, decide
whether to hold your breath, bearing in mind that it's
Wednesday, and tell me, who shaves the barber?"

The General's confusion broke open into laughter.
"Paradoxes. You mean you're going to feed him
paradoxes he's got to contend with."

"When you do it to a computer, they bum out unless
they've been programmed to turn off when confronted

with them."

"Suppose he decides to discorporate?"
"Let a little thing like discorporation stop me?" He

pointed to another machine. "That's what this is for."
"Just one more thing. How do you know what

paradoxes to give him? Surely the ones you told me

wouldn't ..."

"They wouldn't. Besides, they only exist in English

and a few other analytically clumsy languages.
Paradoxes break down into linguistic manifestations of
the language in which they're expressed. For the
Spanish barber, and Wednesday, it's the words 'every'
and 'all' that hold contradictory meanings. The con-
struction 'don't until' has a similar ambiguity. The
same with the word 'stop'. The tape Rydra sent me was
a grammar and vocabulary of Babel-17. Fascinating.

237

BABEL-17

It's the most analytically exact language imaginable.
But that's because everything is flexible, and ideas
come in huge numbers of congruent sets, governed by
the same words. This just means that the number of
paradoxes you can come up with is staggering. Rydra
had filled the whole last half of the tape up with some of
the more ingenious. If a mind limited to Babel-17 got
caught up in them, it would bum itself out, or break
down—''

k 'Or escape to the other side of the brain. I see. Well,
go ahead. Start."

"I did two minutes ago."

The General looked at the Butcher. "I don't see
anything."

"You won't for another minute." He made a further
adjustment.' The paradoxical system I've set up has to
worm itself through the entire conscious part of his
brain. There are a lot of synapses to start clicking on
and off."

Suddenly the lips of the hard muscled face pulled
back from the teeth.

"Here we go," Dr. T'mwarba said.

"What's happening to Miss Wong?"

Rydra's face underwent the same contortion.

"I'd hoped that wouldn't happen," Dr. T'mwarba
sighed, "but I suspected it would. They're in telepathic
union."

A crack from the Butcher's chair. The headstrap had
been slightly loose and his skull struck the back of his
chair.

A sound from Rydra, opening into a full-throated
wail that suddenly choked off. Her startled eyes blinked
twice, and she cried, "Oh, Mocky, it hurts!"

238

BABEL-17

One of the armstraps gave on the Butcher's chair,
and the fist flew up.

Then a light by Dr. Tmwarba's thumb went from
white to amber, and the thumb jammed down a switch.
Something happened in the Butcher's body; he relaxed.

General Forester started, "He discor—"

But the Butcher was panting.

"Let me out of here, Mocky," came from Rydra.

Dr. T'mwarba brushed his hand across a micro-
switch and the bands that had bound her forehead,
calves, wrists, and arms came loose with popping
sounds. She rushed across the cell to the Butcher.
"Him too?"

She nodded.

He pushed the second micro-switch and the Butcher
fell forward into her arms. She went down on the floor
with his weight, at the same time began working her
knuckles along the stiffened muscles on his back.

General Forester was holding a vibra-gun on them.
"Now who the hell is he and where is he from?" he
demanded.

The Butcher started to collapse again, but his hands
slapped the floor and held himself up, "Ny . . ."he
began."!. . . I'm Nyles VerDorco." His voice had
lost the grating mineral quality. This pitch was nearly a
fourth higher and a slight aristocratic drawl suffused his
words. "Armsedge. I was born atArmsedge. And I've
. . . I've killed my father!"

The door slab raised into the wall. There was an
inrush of smoke and the odor of hot metal.' 'Now what
the devil is the smell?" General Forester said. "That's
not supposed to happen."

"I would guess," Dr. T'mwarba said, "the first half

239

-BABEL-17

dozen layers of defenses for this security chamber have
been broken through. Had it taken a few
minutes longer, chances are we wouldn't be here."

A rush of footsteps. A soot-streaked stellannan
staggered through the door. * 'General Forester, are you
all right? The outer wall exploded, and somehow the
radio-locks on the double-gates were shorted out-
Something cut halfway through the ceramic walls. It
looks like lasers or something."

The General got very pale. "What was trying to get

in here?"

Dr. T'mwarba looked at Rydra.

The Butcher got to his feet, holding on to her shoul-
der. "A couple of my father's more ingenious models,
first cousins toTW-55. There are maybe six in incon-
spicuous, but effective, positions throughout the staff
here at Administrative Alliance Headquarters. But you
don't have to worry about them any more."

"Then I'd appreciate it," General Forester said
measuredly, "if you would all get the hell up to my
office and explain what's going on."

' 'No. My father wasn't a traitor. General. He simply
wanted to make me into the Alliance's most powerful
secret agent. But the weapon is not the tool; rather the
knowledge of how to use it. And the Invaders had that,
and that knowledge is Babel-17."

"All right. You could beNyles VerDorco. But that
just makes a few things I thought I understood an hour
ago more confusing."

"I don't want him to talk too much," Dr. T'mwarba
said. "The strain his whole nervous system has just
been through—"

240

BABEL-17

"I'm all right. Doctor. I've got a complete spare set.
My reflexes are quite above normal and I've got control
of my whole autonomic layout, down to how fast
my toenails grow. My father was a very thorough
man."

General Forester swung his boot heel against the
front of his desk. "Better let him go on. Because if I
don't understand this whole business in five minutes,
I'll put you all away."

"My father had just begun his work on custom tail-
ored spies when he got the idea- He had me doctored
up into the most perfect human he could devise. Then
he sent me into Invader territory with the hope I would
wreak as much confusion among them as I could. And I
did a lot of damage too, before they captured me.
Another thing Dad realized was that he would be mak-
ing rapid progress with the new spies, and eventually,
they would far outstrip me—which was quite true. I
don't hold a candle to TW-55 for example. But because
of—I guess it was family pride, he wanted to keep
control of their operations in the family. Every spy
from Armsedge can receive radio commands through a
pre-established key. Grafted under my meduia is a
hyperstasis transmitter most of whose parts are
electro-plastiplasms. No matter how complex the
future spies became, 1 was still in primary control of the
whole fleet of them. Over the past years, several
thousand have been released into Invader territory. Up
until the time I was captured, we made a very effective
force."

"Why weren't you killed?" the General asked. "Or
did they find out and manage to turn that entire army of
spies back on us?"

241

BABEL-17

"They did discover that I was an Alliance weapon.
But that hyperstasis transmitter breaks down under
certain conditions and flushes out with my body's
waste matter. It takes me about three weeks to grow a
new one. So they never learned I was in control of the
rest. But they had just come up with their secret
weapon, Babel-17. They gave me a thorough case of
amnesia, left me with no communication facilities save
Babel-17, then let me escape from Nueva-nueva York
back into Alliance territory- I didn't get any instruc-
tions to sabotage you. The powers I had, the contact
with the other spies dawned on me very painfully and
very slowly. And my whole life as a saboteur mas-
querading as a criminal just grew up. How, or why, I
still don't know."

"I think I can explain that. General," Rydra said.
"You can program a computer to make mistakes, and
you do it not by crossing wires, but my manipulating
the'language' you teach it to 'think' in. The lack of an
'I' precludes any self-critical process. In fact it cuts out
any awareness of the symbolic process at all—which is
the way we distinguish between reality and our expres-
sion of reality."

"Come again?"

"Chimpanzees," Dr. T'mwarba interrupted, "are
quite coordinated enough to leam to drive cars, and
smart enough to distinguish between red and green
lights. But once they leam, they still can't be turned
loose, because when the light goes green, they will
drive through abrick wall if it's in front of them, and if
the light turns red, they will stop in the middle of an
intersection even if a truck is bearing down on top of
them. They don't have the symbolic process. For them,
red is stop, and green is go."

242

BABEL-17

"Anyway," Rydra went on. "Babel-17 as a lan-
guage contains a pre-set program for the Butcher to
become a criminal and saboteur- If you turn somebody
with no memory loose in a foreign country with only
the words for tools and machine parts, don't be sur-
prised if he ends up a mechanic. By manipulating his
vocabulary properly you could just as easily make him
a sailor, or an artist. Also, Babel-17 is such an exact
analytical language, it almost assures you technical
mastery of any situation you look at. And the lack of an
T blinds you to the fact that though it's a highly useful
way to look at things, it's the only way."

"But you mean that this language could even turn
you against the Alliance?" the General asked.

"Well," said Rydra, "to start off with, the word for
Alliance in Babel-17 translates literally into English as:

one-who-has-invaded. You take it from there. It has all
sorts of little diabolisms programmed into it. While
thinking in Babel-17 it becomes perfectly logical to try
and destroy your own ship and then blot out the fact
with self-hypnosis so you won't discover what you're
doing and try and stop yourself."

"That's your spy!" Dr. T'mwarba interrupted.

Rydra nodded. "It 'programs' a self-contained
schizoid personality into the mind of whoever learns it,
reinforced by self-hypnosis—which seems the sensible
thing to do since everything else in the language is
'right*, whereas any other tongue seems so clumsy.
This 'personality' has the general desire to destroy the
Alliance at any cost, and at the same time remain
hidden from the rest of the consciousness until it's
strong enough to take over. That's what happened to
us. Without the Butcher's pre-capture experience, we
weren*t strong enough to keep complete control, al-

243

BABEL-17

though we could stop them from doing anything de-
structive."

"Why didn't they completely dominate you?" Dr.
Tmwarba asked.

"They didn't count on my 'talent', Mocky," Rydra
said. "1 analyzed it with Babel-17 and it's very simple.
The human nervous system puts out radio noise. But
you'd have to have an antenna of several thousand
miles surface area to tune in anything fine enough to
make sense out of that noise. In fact,.the only thing with
that sort of area is another human nervous system. It
happens to an extent in everybody. A few people like
me Just happen to have better control of it. The schizoid
personalities aren't all that strong, and I've also got
some control of the noise I send out- I've just been
jamming them."

"And what am I supposed to do with these schizy
espionage agents each of you is housing in your head?
Lobotomize you?"

' 'No,' * Rydra said.' The way you fix your computer
isn't to hack out half the wires. You correct the lan-
guage, introduce the missing elements and compensate
for ambiguities."

"We introduced the main missing elements," the
Butcher said, "back in Tarik's graveyard. We're well
on the way to the rest."

The General stood up slowly. "It won't do." He
shook his head. "Tmwarba, where's that tape?"

"Right in my pocket where it's been all along," Dr.
T'mwarba said, pulling out the spool.

"I'm taking this right down to cryptography, then
we're going to start all over again." He walked to the
door. "Oh, yes, and I'm locking you in." He left, and
the three looked at each other.

244

V

"... YES, of course I should have known that some-
body who could get halfway through to our maximum
security room and sabotage the war effort over one
whole arm of the galaxy could escape from my locked
office! . . . I am not a nitwit, but I thought—I know
you don't care what I think, but they—No, it didn't
occur to me that they were going to steal a ship. Well,
yes, I—No. Of course I didn't assume—Yes, it was
one of our largest battleships. But they left a—No,
they're not going to attack our—I have no way of
knowing except that they left a note saying—Yes, on
my desk, they left a note.. . . Well, of course I'll read
it to you. That's what I've been trying to do for the
last . . ."

245

VI

RYDRA STEPPED into the spacious cabin of the battleship
Chronos. Ratt was riding her piggyback.

As she lowered him to the floor, the Butcher turned
from the control panel. * 'How's everybody doing down
there?"

"Anybody really confused with the new controls?"
Rydra asked.

The platoon boy pulled his ear. "I don't know,
Captain. This here is a lot of ship for us to run."

"We just have to get back to the Snap and give this
ship to Jebel and the others on Tarik- Brass says he can
get us there if you kids keep everything moving
smooth,"

"We're trying. But there're so many orders all com-
ing through from all over the place at once-1 should be
down there now."

"You can get down there in a minute," Rydra said.
"Suppose I make you honorary quipucamayocuna?"

"Who?"

"That's the guy who reads alt the orders as they
come through and interprets them and hands them out.
Your great grandparents were Indian, weren't they?"

"Yeah. Seminoles."

Rydra shrugged. "Quipucamayocuna is Mayan.
Same difference. They gave orders by tying knots in
rope, we use punch cards. Scoot, and just keep us
flying."

246

BABEL-17

Ratt touched his forehead and scooted.
"What do you think the General made of your
note?" the Butcher asked her.

"It doesn't really matter. It will make its round of all
the top officials; and they'll ponder over it and the
possibility will be semantically imprinted in their
minds, which is a good bit of the job. And we have
Babel-17 corrected—perhaps'I should call it Babel-
18—which is the best tool conceivable to build it into
truth."

' 'Plus my battery of assistants," the Butcher said. " I
think six months should do it. You're lucky those
sickness attacks weren't from the speeded up metabolic
rates after all. That sounded a little odd to me. You
should have collapsed before you came out of Babel-
17, if that was the case."

"It was the schiz-configuration trying to force its
way into dominance. Well, as soon as we finish with
Jebel, we have a message to leave on the desk of
Invader Commander Meihiow^t Nueva-nueva York.''

' 'This war will end within six months,'' she quoted.
"Best prose sentence I ever wrote. But now we have to
work."

"We have the tools to do it no one else has," the
Butcher said. He moved over as she sat beside him.
"And with the right tools it shouldn't be too difficult.
What are we going to do with our spare time?"

"I'm going to write a poem, I think. But it may be a
novel. I have a lot to say."   •' \

"But I'm still a criminal. Canceling out bad deeds
with good is a linguistic fallacy that's gotten people in
trouble more than once. Especially if the good deed is
in the offing. I' m still responsible for a lot of murders.''

"The whole mechanism of guilt as a deterrent to

247

BABEL-17

right action is just as much a linguistic fault. If it
bothers you, go back, get tried, be acquitted, then go on
about your business- Let me be your business for a
while."

"Sure. But who says I get acquitted at this trial?"
Rydra began to laugh. She stooped before him, took
his hands, and laid her face against them, still laughing.
"But I'll be your defense! And even without Babel-17,
you should know by now, I can talk my way out of
anything."

248