Babel-17

by Samuel R. Delany

  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 Invaders. 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, “All 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 ship, so I ste “ed on his head.'' The pilot heaved the limp bodies onto the hull plates. "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 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 drunk, huh? They deserve it."

  "Brass!" She caught his arms as he started back out. “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.

  "Good idea," Brass said. "About half of Tarik is . . .eh, discor'orate."

  "The Invaders won?"

  “Nope. The Yiribians 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."

  "That's all I 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 kulala, 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 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 into 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—

  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 shoulderblades grind on the fl
oor

  gritty and green with brine.

  They wake.

  We wake, turning.

  He, gargling blood, turns,

  born, on the wet floor . . .

  —from The Dark Twin

  I

  "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."

  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 I 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' prisoners, 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 challenge a player of your skill?" He was taken to a magnificent 3-D chessboard with glazed ceramic pieces.

  "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 pleasure, strange emotions because they were ego-less and inarticulate, magic, seductive, mythical. Butcher-

  She managed to interrupt the headlong circling-if you understood Babel-17 all 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 everything and make no attempt to keep things for yourself?

  What 'self? There was no I.

  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 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 astounded.

  But the Greeks were 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 had started to think something like-Flanking it, shapes called Baudelaire—Ahhh!—and Villon.

  They were ancient French po-

  Too bright! Too bright! The 'I' 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.

  My poems! It was the embarrassment of nakedness. Definitions of I 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 vegetative symbol for death -you ignite my words with meanings I can only glimpse. What am I surrounding? What am I, surrounding you?

  Still watching, she saw him commit robbery, murder, 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 loneliness, that made you make Jebel 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?" Unnamed warmth mixed in him with unnamed impatience. 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, about Paris, I'll tell Mr. Big. If I were a smart girl, I'd wait till after you took me there before I let us get ... friendly." Her breath was perfumed 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, to Paris. Don't just be pretending. 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 backwards. 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 drying the mud on his arms, the long grass hissing against the runners.

  Butcher . . . I . . .

  But tha
t'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 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 suddenly 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 automatic pilot a moment before he collapsed, dizzy with heat. He fainted ten minutes before he pulled into Gotterdammerung.

  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 because 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 bigger than I thought I was, Butcher, and I don't know whether to thank you or damn you for showing me. And something inside was crying, stuttering, 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.