Babel-17

I

ABSTRACT THOUGHTS in a blue room; Nominative, genitive, etative, accusative one, accusative two, ablative, partitive, illative, instructive, abessive, adessive, inessive, 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 Hungarian, 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 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: respectively, 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, with her 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; an individual was a type of thing for which symbols were inadequate, and so names were invented. I am invented. I am not a round warm blue room. I am someone in that room, I am—

Her lids had been half-closed on her eyeballs. She opened them and came up suddenly against a restraining 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 something 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 musical 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 of which-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 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 ramps, 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 metallic eyebrows. From one distended earlobe hung a thick silver ring. He touched his vibra-gun holster resting on his stomach as he looked from hammock to hammock.

The second man stepped in front. He was a slim, fantastic concoction of cosmetisurgical 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 advantage 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 round-shouldered. 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 cliché. It was a convict's mark from the penal caves of Titin. Something about him was brutal 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, "Jebel Tarik," The wall solidified, Rydra looked down at the web (which was something 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 Repair. Brass had started struggling. "Keep still a second." 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. "Tarik, that's mountain in Old Moorish. Jebel's Mountain, maybe."

Brass sat up as the frayed string fell. "How did you do that?" he asked. "I pushed against the thing for ten minutes and it wouldn't give."

"Tell you some other time. Jebel could be somebody'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 who migrated there all came from North and South America before Americasia 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. “I 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.

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, I 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 wonder we went unconscious. We did some fast drifting."

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."

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 stellarman 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 I 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 three times as long to undo as breaking the net.

"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—"

"Are they all right?"

Jebel nodded.

Rydra thumped Carlos on his head. "I'll see you later," she whispered.

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 tables, 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 galley 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 winking, 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?"

"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 Tarik, over any long-range is undetectable. 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 directions 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-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 belly. "But if we are hungry, and no Invader ship has come by—well, we take what comes past."

"I see," Rydra said. “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 amiably. 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. I was particularly struck with the long narrative Exiles in Mist. You tell me you have never heard of shadowships, yet you do know the 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 together." He placed the books in his 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?"

“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 balance 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 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 Tarik 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."

Jebel’s 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 Invaders."

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."

Without response, the Butcher strode to the bottom of the steps. Those nearest had overheard and the information 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 consistent. 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 Jebel’s 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 trounce the Invaders?"

Jebel smiled. "A supply ship doesn't have much chance against a destroyer."

“I 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 of exactingly necessary expedient curiosity that became in any other language 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 much." 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. “I didn't know whether Tarik had discorporate facilities!"

"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 “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 the T-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 advance. 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 Tarik: 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 in a few moments. We're the yellow lights down here." She left the explanation at that. "Good luck, 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 yellow lights—formed, unformed, and dispersed—drew closer. After three minutes, the Invader stopped running. On the screen there was a sudden shower of red 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 announced. "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 directive 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 identical to the three-way web she had torn off the hammock hours before, with the added factor of timing, 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?" said Calli. "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 commission?"

"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!"

As she put the microphone down, Jebel's voice announced: "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 reinforcements, 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 Reconversion 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 delineated 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, I 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'm going 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 continued across the gallery floor.

Her breath got back to normal when she reached the upper levels. Then, from six different directions, hallways joined with rolling ramps to descend toward other levels. She stopped, confused over which way to take, then turned at a sound.

A group of Tarik'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 amusement over someone who had lost her way was missing. Its presence would not have annoyed her. But its absence 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 she reached the commons.

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 Tarik's pit:

“All 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 jettisoning 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 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 until you have finished with it."

"I see. I guess that's only fair."

"I'm impressed," Jebel went on to change the subject, "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 below.

"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 learn how tiny the Mountain is."

"I forgot myself," Rydra apologized. "I shouldn't have inquired."

An entire foresection of a blasted Invader's cruiser 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 bulkhead. 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 recognized 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," Jebel said, with shocking softness.

"Couldn't we have . . ." and there seemed to be nothing to suggest. On Jebel's face was pain and curiosity. 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 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 Captain 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 like . . ." And she 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."

"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 delineated 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 disturb 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 expression. "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."

"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 discorporate 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 little 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. He wishes not to be disturbed. He is plotting Tarik'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.

His round head and mildly humped shoulders were silhouetted before a bubbling Tarik 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 homunculus, and the gesture that had seemed rough took on an economical grace. "Still—it should have lived."

He switched off the light in the Tarik and the bubbles ceased. He stepped from behind the laboratory table. "What the Lady want?"

"Jebel is planning Tarik'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.

"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 disgust. "Died. No good any more. What the Lady want?"

What leaped and leaped retreated now, and so did she. "I want to know if Jebel will take me to Administrative Alliance Headquarters. I have to deliver some important information concerning the Invasion. My pilot tells me the Specelli Snap runs within ten hyperstatic units, which a spider-boat could make, so Tarik could remain in radio defense space all the way. If Jebel 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 told 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 Tarik 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, "It died," and switched off. "All right. Jebel will take Tarik to Headquarters."

Amazement undercut her initial disbelief. It was an amazement she would have felt before when he responded so unquestioningly to her plan to destroy the Invader's defense, had not Babel-17 precluded such feelings. "Well, thanks," she began, "but you 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 destroyed." 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.

III

"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'?"

"I can 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 wha`?"

"A strange man 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 she 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 understood now, but a flexible matrix of analytical possibilities 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, without 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 of Pigfoot, 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 the Rimbaud's platoon came pummeling in, driven by the deep concern of Slug, and further over amidst ebullience, hunger, and love, and fear! 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 sputtered 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 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, I 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 look as many would do, slip beside the table where Jebel would be sitting, then blade between Jebel’s 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 became Tarik's ruler after the assassination, Geoffry Cord would become the Butcher's lieutenant, as the Butcher was now Jebel's, and when Jebel's Tarik was the Butcher's Tarik, 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 all 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, taking 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 communication, 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 entertainment 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 momentarily blotted out everything else, but then returned of its proper size, for she knew she could not let Cord stop her from getting to Headquarters, so she stood up and walked to the stage at the end of the commons, 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

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 thinking 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 Tarik's personafix. He was going to kill you and get the Butcher under hypnotic control, and take over Tarik."

"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."

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 silence, 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 into Cord'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 Tarik 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 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 language, 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, hammered 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 I? What could he say to her? Jebel's cruelties, kindnesses, existed in the articulate limits of civilization. But this red bestiality—fascinated her!

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 into Tarik'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 diffused 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 unsettled eyes made her turn to orient herself.

A man was silhouetted against the red entrance to the hall. "Butcher?"

He walked toward her, blue light fogging his features as he neared. He stopped, nodded.

"I decided to take a walk when I 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 to Tarik and Jebel wants its sensory vectors."

"Alliance or Invader?"

The Butcher shrugged. “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 themselves 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 corners. The echoing crackle of transference energies caused distant lightning, and her eyes were deviled by half-remembered ghosts, who had always passed moments 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 I, 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?"

"Why the saving of Jebel from Cord?"

There was no objection in his question, only ethical curiosity. "Because I like him and because I 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 I am—"

He shook his head.

"Where do you come from Butcher? What planet were you born 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."

Rydra whistled. “I 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 something."

"What?"

"About you and I. 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?"

"On Rhea-IV."

"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's Tongue."

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 Yiribia-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 Yiribia 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 Yiribians, 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," the 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 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."

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."

He shook his head.

"That's good. Hell, I wouldn't want somebody prying under my scalp. I think I understand."

"I tell you now," he said, coming toward her again, "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. I 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 Tarik you more or less avoid the question. I envy you that."

"You are going to Administrative Alliance Headquarters 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 Invasion, but it goes on. It's so big I never really thought about trying to get out of it before. It's funny to see a whole bunch of people in their odd, and maybe destructive, way doing just that. Maybe I should simply not bother to go to Headquarters, tell Jebel to turn around and head toward the densest part of the Snap."

“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 cluster?"

"That's right."

"The Invaders had captured you?"

He nodded. "And did something. Maybe experiment, maybe torture." He shrugged. "It doesn't matter. 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 escaped. The Alliance caught me later at Titin. I escaped—"

"You escaped from Titin?"

He nodded. "I will probably be caught again, because that's what happens to criminals in this universe. And maybe I will escape once more." He shrugged. "Maybe I will not be caught again, though." He looked at her, surprised not at her but at something in 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."

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 Yiribians have been keeping us company for four days, Brass, do you have any idea what they—"

Magnified by the loudspeakers, Jebel's voice: "Ready Tarik for immediate defense. Repeat, immediate defense."

"What the hell is going on now?' Rydra asked. Around them the commons rose in unified activity—"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. Tarik's fighting crew hurried along the corridor in ordered confusion.

"What's going on? Did the Yiribians get hostile?" He shook his head. "Invaders twelve degrees off galactic center."

"This close to Administrative Alliance?"

"Yes. And if Jebel Tarik doesn't attack first, Tarik's had it. They're bigger than Tarik, and Tarik'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 Jebel riding with you this time?"

"No."

Up the hall Slug turned the corner, 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?"

"This spider-boat is ten feet shorter than the Rimbaud. Things are more cramped in discorporate quarters, 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 Tarik. 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 Administrative Alliance Headquarters."

"Jebel wanted to know if the Yiribian 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 offensive."

"That's bad," the Butcher said. "Because we'll need help."

"Strategy Workshop. Strategy Workshop," Jebel's voice came over the speaker. "Repeat, Strategy Workshop."

Where language charts had hung in her cabin, a viewing screen—replica of the hundred-foot projection in Tarik'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 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?"

“I 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 happens."

"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 the K-ward gate. Ripsaws make ready at the R-ward 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 Navigation department of Tarik, 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 plugged 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 Yiribian 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 Yiribians' 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 Tarik's spider-boats, 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 Headquarters."

"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 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. Tarik lay R-ward. Ahead were the poached eggs, the mosquito netting, the flimsy, feathery vessel of Yiribia. Yiribia 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 Yiribians. 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 Yiribian 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 the 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?"

"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 Yiribian 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 'em fast.

"I can dodge them easy, Ca'tain," Brass called up. "They're all on remote control. I've got more freedom."

"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 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 surface 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 evening they had met in Tarik's graveyard. All he wore 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 released 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 indifference. 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 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 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 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—