Babel-17

by Samuel R. Delany

  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 department. 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 began.

  "Diphtheria toxin, my dear.Toxin! Back when contagious 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 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 stomachache 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 curiosity, 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 I came to Earth, I 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 aquiescence. "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 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."

  "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 progressed so that all 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 our parents carefully, and then with artificial insemination we got our half dozen zygotes, 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 experimental imprints before, so we knew what we were doing. But never to synthesize completely the life situation 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, overturn 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 physical strength alone."

  "I thought hormone growth incentive had been outlawed. 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 incomprehensible antics. "But, Madam, we are making weapons. If TW-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 function 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 personality. 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. Captured, 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 conversation, plot synopses of the latest novels, political situations, 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 o
ne 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 more. TW-55 has twelve hours worth of episodes in fourteen different dialects, accents, or jargons concerning 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 system, 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 pattern, 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. Chemical 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 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.

  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 remembered, 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 consists of." She shook her finger in patronizing disapproval. "I read up on these things, you know. And there are only eighteen of you here."

  "I thought the discorporate members might remain 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 equipment 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 gestured 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."

  "I’ll wait till he brings them over here," the Baroness 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?"

  "If I 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.

  "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. Imagi
nation should be used for something other than pondering murder, don't you think?"

  "I 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 arm.

  "Hold 'em back some!" Rydra recognized Lizzy's 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 leam things, things about you, and ultimately about ourselves."