Babel-17

by Samuel R. Delany

  "On Rhea-lV."

  "Oh, a small one. But, still—and you stayed free for six months. Any idea what happened to you before you lost your memory?"

  The Butcher shrugged.

  "I suppose they went through all the possibilities that you were working for somebody else under hypnotics. 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 I and you just from picking up new words."

  "Why must these sounds mean something?"

  "Because you asked a question just now that I can't answer if you don't understand them."

  “No.'' Discomfort shadowed his voice. “No. There is an answer. The words of the answer must be simpler, 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 unclear, and you mean nothing."

  She sighed. "That's because-I was using the word phatically—ritually, without regard for its real meaning . . . 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 learn 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 smooth under her palm. "The fist was trying to tell something. And if you had used the word 'I', you wouldn't have had to use your fist. What you wanted to say was: You knew what ships to destroy and I destroyed the ships. You want to go down the Dragon's Tongue, I will get Tarik down the Dragon'sTongue".' "

  The Butcher frowned. "Yes, the fist to tell something."

  "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 strike 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 then mist blew away before them. In star-flecked blackness something drifted, flimsy and flickering. 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 Ciribia-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 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 - centigrade, 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 Yiribian 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 intelligent, with as complicated an economy, seven of them engaged in the same war we are, still 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 Ciribians, 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 Yiribians and ourselves at the Court of Outer Worlds, I remember that sentence took forty-five minutes to say in Yiribian. 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 enclosure 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 electrical energy for the Court. The heat amplifying and reducing components take up an area a little bigger than Tarik. One Yiribian can slither through that plant and then go describe it to another Yiribian who never saw it before so that the-second can build an exact duplicate, even to the color the walls are painted—and this actually happened, because they thought we'd done something 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,"

  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 Yiribian 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 I?"

  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 Yiribian ship. "That's a question only you can answer."

  "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. "Nobody 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 warm. She put her hand on top of his. "Sometimes you frighten me."

  "I am me," t
he Butcher said. "Only a morphological 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 handles in people's eyes, Butcher!"

  "You do?" Then his surprise left. "Yes, you do, don't you. You forgot."

  "But I 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 I 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.

  "I 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 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 like 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 Tarik, I've realized it's got something to do with telepathy. Anyway, this myna bird had been trained to talk by feeding 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 combination 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', I knew immediately it was lying. There was another earthworm coming, 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. I 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 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? I 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 I and you so much, and you just now are beginning to learn 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 learn 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 something 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 I 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 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? I do understand you. Please believe that. But trust me that you have a little more to learn."

  "You trust me," he said firmly-

  "Then listen. Right now we've met each other halfway. I haven't really taught you about you. We've made up our own language, and that's what we're talking now."

  "But . . ."

  "Look, every time you've said you in the last ten minutes, you should have said I. Every time you've said I, 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."

  "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 I to kill you 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 t
o 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."

  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."

  "I can't," he said hoarsely. "I can't. I can't tell you." And the one thing she understood immediately was that it was the most horrible thing he could conceive 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. . .I. . . I 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."