Babel-17

I

THE SPOOL of tape, the imperative directive from General Forester, and the infuriated Dr. T'mwarba reached Danil D. Appleby's office within thirty seconds of each other.

He was opening the flat box when the noise outside the partition made him look up. "Michael," he asked the intercom, "what's that?"

"Some madman who says he's a psychiatrist!"

"I am not mad!" Dr. T'mwarba said loudly. "But I know how long it takes a package to get from Administrative Alliance Headquarters to Earth, and it should have reached my door with this morning's mail. It didn't, which means it's been held up, and this is where you do things like that. Let me in."

Then the door crashed back against the wall and he was.

Michael craned around T'mwarba's hip: "Hey, Dan, I'm sorry. I'll call the—"

Dr. T'mwarba pointed to the desk and said. "That's mine. Gimme."

"Don't bother, Michael," the Customs Officer said before the door was slammed again. “Good afternoon, Dr. T'mwarba. Won't you sit down? This is addressed to you, isn't it? Don't look so surprised that I know you. I also handle security psyche-index integration, and all of us in the department know your brilliant work in schizoid-differentiation. I'm so glad to meet you."

"Why can't I have my package?"

"One moment and I'll find out." As he picked up the directive. Dr. T'mwarba picked up the box and stuck it in his pocket:

"Now you can explain."

The Customs Officer opened the letter. "It seems," he said, pressing his knee against the desk to release some of the hostility that had built up in very little time, "that you may have . . . eh, keep the tape on condition you leave for Administrative Alliance Headquarters this evening on the Midnight Falcon and bring the tape with you. Passage has been booked, thanking you in advance for your cooperation, sincerely, General X .J. Forester."

"Why?"

"He doesn't say. I'm afraid, doctor, that unless you agree to go, I won't be able to let you keep that. And we can get it back.

"That's what you think. Have you any idea what they want?"

The Officer shrugged. "You were expecting it. Who's it from?"

"Rydra Wong."

“Wong?" The Customs Officer had put both knees against the desk. He dropped them. “The poet, Rydra Wong? You know Rydra, too?"

"I've been her psychiatric advisor since she was twelve. Who are you?"

"I'm Danil D. Appleby. Had I known you were Rydra's friend, I would have ushered you up here myself!" The hostility had acted as a take off from which to spring into ebullient camaraderie. "If you're leaving on the Falcon, you've got time to step out a little while with me, haven't you? I was going to leave work early anyway. I have to stop off at . . . well someplace in Transport Town. Why didn't you say you knew her before? There's a delightfully ethnic place right near where I'm going. Get a reasonable meal and a good drink there; do you follow the wrestling? Most people think it's illegal, but you can watch it there. Ruby and Python are on display this evening. If you'll just make that one stop with me first, I know you'll find it fascinating. And I'll get you to the Falcon on time."

"I think I know the place."

“You go downstairs and they have this big bubble on the ceiling, where they fight. . . ?" Effervescent, he leaned forward. "As a matter of fact, Rydra first took me there."

Dr. T'mwarba began to smile.

The Customs Officer slapped the desk top. "We had a wild time that night! Simply wild!" He narrowed his eyes. "Ever been picked up by one of those . . ." He snapped his fingers three times. ”. . . in the discorporate sector? Now that still is illegal. But take a walk out there some evening."

"Come," laughed the doctor. “Dinner and a drink; best idea I've heard all day. I'm starved and I haven't seen a good match in four months."

"I've never been inside this place before," the Officer said, as they stepped from the monorail. "I called to make an appointment but they told me I didn't need me, just to come in; they were open till six. I figured what the hell, I'd take off from work." They crossed the street and passed the newsstand where frayed, unshaven loaders were picking up schedule sheets for incoming flights. Three stellarmen in green uniforms lurched along the sidewalk, arms about each other's shoulders. "You know," the Customs Officer was saying, "I've had quite a battle with myself, I've wanted to do it ever since I first came down here—hell, ever since I first went to the movies and saw pictures. But anything really bizarre just wouldn't go at the office. Then I said to myself, it could be something simple, covered up when I was wearing clothes. Here we are."

The Officer pushed open the door of PIastiplasm Plus ("Addendums, Superscripts, and Footnotes to the Beautiful Body").

"You know I always meant to ask someone in authority; do you think there's anything psychologically off about wanting something like this?"

"Not at all."

A young lady with blue eyes, lips, hair, and wings said, "You can go right in. Unless you want to check our catalogue first."

"Oh, I know exactly what I want," the Customs Officer assured her. "This way?"

"That's right."

"Actually," Dr. T'mwarba went on, "it's psychologically important to feel in control of your body, that you can change it, shape it. Going on a six month diet or a successful muscle building program can give quite a sense of satisfaction. So can a new nose, chin, or set of scales and feathers."

They were in a room with white operating tables. "Can I help you?" asked a smiling, Polynesian cosmetisurgeon in a blue smock. "Why don't you lie down here?"

"I'm just watching," Dr. T'mwarba said.

"It's listed in your catalogue as 5463," the Customs Officer declared. "I want it there." He clapped his left hand to his right shoulder.

"Oh yes. I rather like that one myself. Just a moment." He opened the top of a stand by the table. Instruments glittered.

The surgeon was off to the glass-faced refrigeration unit at the far wall where behind the glass doors intricate plastiplasm shapes were blurred by frost. He returned with a tray full of various fragments. The only recognizable one was the front half of a miniature dragon with jeweled eyes, glittering scales, and opalescent wings: it was less than two inches long.

"When he's connected up to your nervous system, you'll be able to make him whistle, hiss, roar, flap his wings and spit sparks, though it may take a few days to assimilate him into your body picture. Don't be surprised if at first he just burps and looks seasick. Take your shirt off, please."

The Officer opened his collar.

"We'll just block off all sensation from your shoulder on . . . there, that didn't really hurt. This? Oh, it's a local venial and arterial constrictant; we want to keep things clean. Now, we'll just cut you along the—well, if it upsets you, don't look. Talk to your friend there. It'll just take a few minutes. Oh, that must have tickled all down in your tummy! Never mind. Just once more. Fine. That's your shoulder joint. I know; your arm does look sort of funny hanging there without it. We'll just stick in this transparent platisplasm cage now. Exact same articulation as your shoulder joint, and it holds your muscles out of the way. See, it's got grooves for your arteries. Move your chin, please. If you want to watch, look in the mirror. Now we'll just crimp it around the edges. Keep this vivatape around the rim of the cage for a couple of days until things grow together. There's not much chance of its pulling apart unless you strain your arm suddenly but you ought to be safe. Now I'll just connect the little fellow in there to the nerve. This will hurt—"

"Gnnnnn!" The Customs Officer half rose.

"—Sit! Sit! All right, the little catch here—look in the mirror—is to open the cage. You'll leam how to make him come out and do tricks, but don't be impatient. It takes a bit of time. Let me turn the feeling back on in your arm."

The surgeon removed the electrodes and the Officer whistled.

“Stings a little. It will for about an hour. If there's any redness or inflammation, please don't hesitate to come back. Everything that comes through that doorway gets perfectly sterilized, but every five or six years somebody comes down with an infection. You can put your shirt on now."

As they walked into the street, the Customs Officer flexed his shoulder. "You know they claim it should make absolutely no difference." He made a face. "My fingers feel funny. Do you think he might have bruised a nerve?"

"I doubt it," Dr. T'mwarba said, "but you will if you keep twisting like that. You'll pull the vivatape loose. Let's go eat."

The Officer fingered his shoulder. "It feels odd to have a three inch hole there and your arm still working."

"So," Dr. Tmwarba said over his mug, "Rydra first brought you to Transport Town."

"Yes. Actually—well, I only met her that once. She was getting a crew together for a government sponsored trip. I was just along to approve indices. But something happened that evening."

"What was it?"

“I saw a bunch of the weirdest, oddest people I have ever met in my life, who thought different, and acted different, and even made love different. And they made me laugh, and get angry, and be happy, and be sad, and excited, and even fall in love a little." He glanced up at the sphere of the wrestling arena aloft in the bar. "And they didn't seem to be so weird or strange anymore."

"Communication was working that night?"

“I guess so. It's presumptuous my calling her by her first name. But I feel like she's my . . . friend. I'm a lonely man, in a city of lonely men. And when you find some place where . . . communications are working, you come back to see if it will happen again."

"Has it?"

Danil D. Appteby looked down from the ceiling and began to unbutton his shirt. "Let's have dinner." He shrugged his shirt over the back of the chair and glanced down at the dragon caged in his shoulder. "You come back anyway." Turning in his seat, he picked his shirt up, folded it neatly, and put it down again. "Dr. T'mwarba, have you any idea why they want you to come to Administrative Alliance Headquarters?"

"I assume it concerns Rydra and this tape."

“Because you said you were her doctor I just hope it isn't a medical reason. If anything happened to her, it would be terrible— For me, I mean. She managed to say so much to me in that one evening, so very simply." He laughed and ran his finger around the rim of the cage.

The beast inside gurgled. "And half the time she wasn't even looking in my direction when she said it.”

"I hope she's all right," Dr. T'mwarba said. "She'd better be."

II

BEFORE THE Midnight Falcon landed, he inveigled the captain into letting him speak with Flight Control. “I want to know when the Rimbaud came in."

"Just a moment, sir. I don't believe it has. Certainly not within the past six months. It would take a little time to check back further than—"

"No. It would be more like the past few days. Are you sure the Rimbaud did not land here recently under Captain Rydra Wong?"

"Wong? I believe she did land yesterday, but not in the Rimbaud. It was an unmarked fighter ship. There was some mix-up because the serial numbers had been filed off the tubes and there was a possibility it might have been stolen."

"Was Captain Wong all right when she disembarked?"

"She'd apparently relinquished command to her—" The voice stopped.

"Well?"

"Excuse me, sir. This has been all marked classified. I didn't see the sticker, and it was accidentally put back in the regular file. I can't give you any more information. It's only cleared to authorized persons."

"I'm Dr. Markus T'mwarba," the doctor said, with authority and no idea whether it would do any good.

"Oh, there is a notation concerning you, sir. But you're not on the cleared list."

"Then what the hell does it say, young lady?"

“Just that if you requested information, to refer you directly to General Forester."

An hour later he walked into General Forester's office. "All right, what's the matter with Rydra?"

"Where's the tape?"

"If Rydra wanted me to have it, she had good reason. If she'd wanted you to have it, she would have given it to you. Believe me, you won't get your hands on it unless I give it to you."

"I'd expected more cooperation. Doctor."

"I am cooperating. I'm here. General. But you must want me to do something, and unless I know exactly what's going on, I can't."

"It's a very unmilitary attitude," General Forester said, coming around the desk. "It's one I'm having to deal with more and more, recently. I don't know whether I like it. But I don't know whether I dislike it either." The green-suited stellarman sat on the desk's edge, touched the stars on his collar, looked pensive. "Miss Wong was the first person I've met in a long time to whom I could not say: do this, do that, and be damned if you inquire about the consequences. The first time I spoke to her about Babel-17, I thought I could just hand her the transcription, and she would hand it back to me in English. She told me, flatly: No; I would have to tell her more. That's the first time anyone's told me I had to do anything in fourteen years. I may not like it; I sure as hell respect it." His hands dropped protectively to his lap (Protective? Was it Rydra who had taught him to interpret that movement, T'mwarba wondered briefly.) "It's so easy to get caught in your fragment of the world. When a voice comes cutting through, it's important. Rydra Wong . . ." and the General stopped, and expression settling on his features that made T'mwarba chill as he looked at it with what Rydra had taught him.

“Is she all right. General Forester? Is this something medical?"

"I don't know," the General said. "There's a woman in my inner office—and a man. I can't tell you whether the woman is Rydra Wong or not. It certainly isn't the same woman I talked to that evening on Earth about Babel-17."

But T'mwarba, already at the door, shoved it open.

A man and a woman looked up. The man was a massively graceful, amber-haired—convict, the doctor realized from the mark on his arm. The woman—

He put both fists on his hips: "All right, what am I about to say to you?"

She said: "Non comprehension."

Breathing pattern, curl of hands in lap, carriage of shoulders, the details whose import she had demonstrated to him a thousand times: he learned in the horrifying length of a breath just how much they identified. For a moment he wished she had never taught him, because they were all gone, and their absence in her familiar body were worse than scars and disfigurements. He began in a voice that was habitually for her, the one he had praised or chastened her with, "I was going to say—if this is a joke, sweetheart, I'll . . . paddle you." It ended with the voice for strangers, for salesmen and wrong numbers, and he felt unsteadied. "If you're not Rydra, who are you?"

She said: "Non comprehension of the question. General Forester, is this man Doctor Markus T'mwarba?"

"Yes, he is."

"Look." Dr. T'mwarba turned to the General. "I'm sure you've gone over fingerprints, metabolic rates, retina patterns, that sort of identification."

"That's Rydra Wong's body. Doctor."

“All right: hypnotics, experimental imprinting, graft of pre-synapsed cortical matter—can you think of any other way to get one mind into another head?"

"Yes. Seventeen. There's no evidence of any of them." The General stepped from the door. "She's made it clear she wants to speak to you alone. I'll be right outside." He closed the door.

"I'm pretty sure who you're not," Doctor T'mwarba said after a moment.

The woman blinked and said: "Message from Rydra Wong, delivered verbatim, non comprehension of its significance." Suddenly the face took on its familiar animation. Her hands grasped each other, and she leaned slightly forward: "Mocky, am I glad you got here. I can't sustain this very long, so here goes. Babel-17 is more or less like Onoff, Algol, Fortran. I am telepathic after all, only I've just learned how to control it. I . . . we've taken care of the Babel-17 sabotage attempts. Only we're prisoners, and if you want to get us out, forget about who I am. Use what's on the end of the tape, and find out who he is!" She pointed to the Butcher.

The animation left; the rigidity returned to her face. The whole transformation left T'mwarba holding his breath. He shook his head, started breathing again. After a moment he went back into the General's office. "Who's the jailbird?" he asked matter-of-factly.

"We're tracking that down now. I hoped to have the report this morning." Something on the desk flashed.

"Here it is now." He flipped a slot in the desk top and pulled out a folder. As he slitted the seal, he paused. "Would you like to tell me what Onoff, Algol, and Fortran are?"

"To be sure, listening at keyholes." T'mwarba sighed and sat down in a bubble chair in front of the desk. “They're ancient, twentieth century languages—artificial languages that were used to program computers, designed especially for machines. Onoff was the simplest. It reduced everything to a combination of two words, on and off, or the binary number system. The others were more complicated."

The General nodded, and finished opening the folder. "That guy came from the swiped spider-boat with her. The crew got very upset when we wanted to put them in separate quarters." He shrugged. "It's something psychic. Why take chances? We leave them together."

"Where is the crew? Were they able to help you?"

"Them? It's like trying to talk to something out of your bad dreams. Transport. Who can talk to people like that?"

"Rydra could," Doctor T'mwarba said. "I'd like to see if I might."

"If you wish. We're keeping them at Headquarter's." He opened the folder, then made a face. "Odd. There's a fairly detailed account of his existence for a five year period that starts with some petty thievery, strong arm work, then graduates to a couple of rubouts. A bank robbery—" The General pursed his lips and nodded appreciatively. “He served two years in the penal caves of Titin, escaped—this boy is something. Disappeared into the Specelli Snap where he either died, or perhaps got onto a shadow-ship. He certainly didn't die. But before December '61, he doesn't seem to have existed. He's usually called the Butcher."

Suddenly the General dived into a drawer and came up with another folder. "Kreto, Earth, Minos, Callisto," he read, then slapped the folder with the back of his hand. "Aleppo, Rhea, Olympia, Paradise, Dis!"

"What's that, the Butcher's itinerary until he went into Titin?"

"It just so happens it is. But it's also the locations of a series of accidents that began in December '61. We'd just gotten around to connecting them up with Babel-17. We'd only been working with recent 'accidents', but then this pattern from a few years ago turned up. Reports of the same sort of radio exchange. Do you think Miss Wong has brought home our saboteur?"

"Could be. Only that isn't Rydra in there."

"Well, yes, I guess you could say that."

"For similar reasons I would gather that the gentleman with her is not the Butcher."

"Who do you think he is?"

"Right now I don't know. I'd say it's fairly important we found out." He stood up. "Where can I get hold of Rydra's crew?"

III

"A PRETTY snazzy place!" Calli said as they stepped from the lift at the top floor of Alliance Towers.

"Nice now," said Mollya, "to be able to walk about."

A headwaiter in white formal wear came across the civet rug, looked just a trifle askance at Brass, then said, "This is your party, Dr. T'mwarba?"

"That's right. We have an alcove by the window. You can bring us a round of drinks right away. I've ordered already."

The waiter nodded, turned, and led them toward a high, arched window that looked over Alliance Plaza. A few people turned to watch them.

"Administrative can be a very pleasant place," Dr. T'mwarba smiled.

"If you got the money," said Ron. He craned to look at the blue-black ceiling, where the lights were arranged to simulate the constellations seen from Rymik, and whistled softly. “I read about places like this but I never thought I'd be in one."

"Wish I could have brought the kids," the Slug mused. "They thought the Baron's was something."

At the alcove the waiter held Mollya's chair.

"Was that Baron Ver Dorco of the War Yards?"

"Yeah," said Calli. "Barbequed lamb, plum wine, the best looking peacocks I've seen in two years. Never got to eat 'em." He shook his head.

"One of the annoying habits of aristocracy," T'mwarba laughed, "they'll go ethnic at the slightest provocation. But there're only a few of us left, and most of us have the good manners to drop our titles.”

"Late weapons master of Armsedge," the Slug corrected.

"I read the report of his death. Rydra was there?"

"We all were. It was a 'retty wild evening."

"What exactly happened?"

Brass shook his head. "Well, Ca'tain went early . . ." When he had finished recounting the incidents, with the others adding details. Dr. T'mwarba sat back in his chair. "The papers didn't give it that way. But they wouldn't. What was this TW-55 anyway?"

Brass shrugged.

There was a click as the discorporaphone in the doctor's ear went on; "It's a human being who's been worked over and over from birth till it isn't human anymore," the Eye said. "I was with Captain Wong when the Baron first showed it to her."

Dr. T'mwarba nodded. "Is there anything else you can tell me?"

Slug, who had been trying to get comfortable in the hard-backed chair, now leaned his stomach against the table edge. "Why?"

The others got still, quickly.

The fat man looked at the rest of the crew. “Why are we telling him all this? He's going back and give it to the stellarmen."

"That's right," Dr. T'mwarba said. "Any of it that might help Rydra."

Ron put down his glass of iced cola. “The stellarmen haven't been what you'd call nice to us, Doc," he explained.

"They didn't take us to no fancy restaurants." Calli tucked his napkin into the zircon necklace he'd worn for the occasion. A waiter placed a bowl of French fried potatoes on the table, turned away, and came back with a platter of hamburgers.

Across the table Mollya picked up the tall, red flask and looked at it questioningly.

"Ketchup," Dr. T'mwarba said.

"Ohhh," breathed Mollya and returned it to the damask table cloth.

"Diavalo should be here now." The Slug sat back slowly and stopped looking at the doctor. "He's an artist with a carbo-synth, and he's got a feel for a protein-dispenser that's fine for good solid meals like nut stuffed pheasant, fillet of snapper-creyonnaise, and good stick-to-your-ribs food for a hungry spaceship crew. But this fancy stuff"—he spread mustard carefully across his bun—"give him a pound of real chopped meat, and I bet he'd run out of the galley 'cause it might bite him."

Brass said: "What's wrong with Ca'tain Wong? That's what nobody wants to ask."

"I don't know. But if you'll tell me all you can, I'll have a lot better chance of doing something."

"The other thing nobody wants to say," Brass went on, "is that one of us don't want you to do anything for her. But we don't know which."

The others silenced again.

“There was a s'y on the shi'. We all knew about it. It tried to destroy the shi' twice. I think it's responsible for whatever ha'ened to Ca'tain Wong and the Butcher."

"We all think so," the Slug said.

"This is what you didn't want to tell the stellar-men?"

Brass nodded.

“Tell him about the circuit boards and the phony take off before we got to Tarik," Ron said.

Brass explained.

"If it hadn't been for the Butcher," the discorporaphone clicked again, "we would have reentered normal space in the Cygnus Nova. The Butcher convinced Jebel to hook us out and take us aboard."

"So." Dr. Tmwarba looked around the table. "One of you is a spy."

"It could be one of the kids," the Slug said. "It doesn't have to be someone at this table."

"If it is," Dr. Tmwarba said, "I'm talking to the rest of you. General Forester couldn't get anything out of you. Rydra needs somebody's help— It's that simple."

Brass broke the lengthening silence. "I'd just lost a shi' to the Invaders, Doc; a whole 'latoon of kids, more than half the officers. Even though I could wrestle well and was a good 'ilot, to any other trans'ort ca'tain, that run-in with the Invaders made me a stiff jinx. Ca'tain Wong's not from our world. But wherever she came from, she brought a set of values with her that said, 'I like your work and I want to hire you.' I'm grateful."

"She knows about so much," Calli said. "This is the wildest trip I've ever been on. Worlds. That's it, Doc. She cuts through worlds and don't mind taking you along. When's the last time somebody took me to a Baron's for dinner and espionage? Next day I'm eating with pirates. And here I am now. Sure I want to help."

"Calli's too mixed up with his stomach," Ron interrupted. "What it is, is she gets you thinking. Doc. She made me think about Mollya and Calli. You know she was tripled with Muels Aranlyde, the guy who wrote Empire Star. But I guess you must, if you're her doctor. Anyway, you start thinking that maybe those people who live in other worlds—like Calli says—where people write books or make weapons, are real. If you believe in them, you're a little more ready to believe in yourself. And when somebody who can do that needs help, you help."

"Doctor," Motlya said, "I was dead. She made me alive. What can I do?"

"You can tell me everything you know"—he leaned across the table and locked his fingers—"about the Butcher."

"The Butcher?" Brass asked. The others were surprised. "What about him? We don't know anything exce't that Ca'tain and him got to be real close."

"You were on the same ship with him for three weeks. Tell me everything you saw him do."

They looked at one another, silence questioning.

"Was there anything that might have indicated where he was from?"

"Titin," Calli said. "The mark on his arm."

"Before Titin, at least five years before. The problem is that the Butcher doesn't know either."

They looked even more perplexed. Then Brass said, "His language. Ca'tain said he originally had s'oken a language where there was no word for I."

Dr. Tmwarba frowned more deeply as the discorporaphone clicked again. "She taught him how to say I and you. They wandered through the graveyard in evening, and we hovered over them while they taught each other who they were."

"The 'I'," Tmwarba said, "that's something to go on." He sat back. "It's funny. I suppose I know everything about Rydra there is to know. And I know just that little about—"

The discorporaphone clicked a third time. "You don't know about the myna bird."

T'mwarba was surprised. "Of course I do. I was there."

The discorporate crew laughed softly. "But she never told you why she was so frightened."

"It was a hysterical onset brought about by her previous condition—"

Ghostly laughter again. "The worm. Dr. T'mwarba. She wasn't afraid of the bird at all. She was afraid of the telepathic impression of a huge worm crawling toward her, the worm that the bird was picturing."

"She told you this—" and never told me, was the ending of what had began in minor outrage and ceased in wonder.

“Worlds," the ghost reiterated. “Sometimes worlds exist under your eyes and you never see— This room might be filled with phantoms, you'd never know. Even the rest of the crew can't be sure what we're saying now. But Captain Wong, she never used a discorporaphone. She found a way to talk with us without one. She cut through worlds, and joined them—that's the important part—so that both became bigger."

"Then somebody's got to figure out where in the world, yours, mine, or hers, the Butcher came from." A memory resolved like a cadence closing, and he laughed. The others looked puzzled. "A worm. Some where in Eden now, a worm, a worm . . . That was one of her earliest poems. And it never occurred to me."

IV

"AM I SUPPOSED to be happy?" Dr. T'mwarba asked.

"You're supposed to be interested," said General Forester.

"You've looked at the hyperstatic map and discovered that though the sabotage attempts over the last year and a half lie all over a galaxy in regular space, they're within cruiser distance of the Specelli Snap across the jump. Also, you've discovered that during the time the Butcher was in Titin, there were no 'accidents' at all. In other words, you have discovered that the Butcher could be responsible for the whole business, just from physical proximity. No, I am not happy at all."

"Why not?"

"Because he's an important person."

"Important?"

"I know he's . . . important to Rydra. The crew told me that."

"Him?" Then comprehension struck. "Him? Oh, no. Anything else. He's the lowest form of . . . Not that. Treason, sabotage, how many murders . . . I mean he's—"

“You don't know what he is. And if he's responsible for the Babel-17 attacks, in his own right he's as extraordinary as Rydra-" The Doctor stood from his bubble seat. "Now will you give me a chance to try out my idea? I've been listening to yours all morning. And mine will probably work."

"I still don't understand what you want, though."

Dr. T'mwarba sighed. “First I want to get Rydra and the Butcher and us in the most heavily guarded, deepest, darkest, impenetrable dungeon Administrative Alliance Headquarters has—"

"But we don't have a dun—"

"Don't put me on," Dr. T'mwarba said evenly. "You're fighting a war, remember?"

The General made a face. "Why all this security?"

"Because of the mayhem this guy has caused up till now. He's not going to enjoy what I plan to do. I'd just be happier if there was something, like the entire military force of the Alliance, on my side. Then I'd feel I had a chance."

Rydra sat on one side of the cell, the Butcher on the other, both strapped to plastic coated chair forms that were part of the walls. Dr. T'mwarba looked after the equipment that was being rolled from the room. "No dungeons and torture chambers, eh. General?" He glanced at a spot of red brown that had dried on the stone floor by his foot, and shook his head. "I'd be happier if the place was swabbed out with acid and disinfected first. But, I suppose on short order—"

"Do you have all your equipment here. Doctor?" the General asked, ignoring the Doctor's goad. "If you change your mind I can have a barrage of specialists here inside of fifteen minutes."

"The place isn't big enough," Dr. T'mwarba said. "I've got nine specialists right here." He rested his hand on a medium-sized computer that had been placed in the corner beside the rest. "I'd just as soon you weren't here, either. But since you won't go, just watch quietly."

"You say," General Forester said, "you want maximum security. I can have a few two hundred and fifty pound akido masters in here also."

"I have a black belt in akido, General. I think the two of us will do."

The General raised his eyebrows. "I'm karate myself. Akido is one martial art I've never really understood. And you have a black belt?"

Dr. T'mwarba adjusted a larger piece of equipment and nodded. "So does Rydra. I don't know what the Butcher can do, so I'm keeping everybody strapped good and tight."

"Very well." The General touched something at the corner of the doorjamb. The metal slab lowered slowly. "We'll be in here five minutes." The slab reached the floor and the line along the edge of the door disappeared. "We're welded in now. We're at the center of twelve layers of defense, all impenetrable. Nobody even knows the location of the place, including myself."

“After those labyrinths we came through, I certainly don't," T'mwarba said.

"Just in case somebody manages to map it, we're moved automatically every fifteen seconds. He's not going to get out." The General gestured toward the Butcher.

"I'm just assuming no one can get in." T'mwarba pressed a switch.

"Go over this once more."

"The Butcher has amnesia, say the doctors on Titin. That means his consciousness is restricted to the section of his brain with synapse connections dating from '61. His consciousness is, in effect, restricted to one segment of his cortex. What this does"—the doctor lifted a metal helmet and put it on the Butcher's head, glancing at Rydra—"is create a series of 'unpleasantnesses' in that segment until he is driven out of that part of the brain back into the rest."

"What if there simply are no connections from one part of the cortex to the other?"

"If it gets unpleasant enough, he will make new ones."

"With the sort of life he's led," commented the General, "I wonder what would be unpleasant enough to drive him out of his head."

"Onoff, Algol, Fortran," said Dr. Tmwarba. The General watched the doctor make further adjustments. "Ordinarily this would create a snake pit situation in the brain. However, with a mind that doesn't know the word 'I', or hasn't known it for long, fear tactics won't work."

"What will?"

"Algol, Onoff, and Fortran, with the help of a barber and the fact that it's Wednesday."

"Dr. Tmwarba, I didn't bother with more than a precursory check of your psyche-index—"

"I know what I'm doing. None of those computer languages have the word for 'I' either. This prevents such statements, as 'I can't solve the problem.' Or, I'm really not interested.' Or 'I've got better things to waste my time with.' General, in a little town on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees there is only one barber. This barber shaves all the men in the town who do not shave themselves. Does the barber shave himself or not?"

The General frowned.

"You don't believe me? But General, I always tell the truth. Except Wednesdays; on Wednesday every statement I make is a lie."

"But today's Wednesay!" the General exclaimed, beginning to fluster.

"How convenient. Now, now. General, don't hold your breath until you're blue in the face."

"I'm not holding my breath!"

"I didn't say you were. But just answer yes or no: have you stopped beating your wife?"

"Damn it, I can't answer a question like . . ."

"Well, while you think about your wife, decide whether to hold your breath, bearing in mind that it's Wednesday, and tell me, who shaves the barber?"

The General's confusion broke open into laughter. "Paradoxes. You mean you're going to feed him paradoxes he's got to contend with."

"When you do it to a computer, they burn out unless they've been programmed to turn off when confronted with them."

"Suppose he decides to discorporate?"

"Let a little thing like discorporation stop me?" He pointed to another machine. "That's what this is for."

"Just one more thing. How do you know what paradoxes to give him? Surely the ones you told me wouldn't . . ."

"They wouldn't. Besides, they only exist in English and a few other analytically clumsy languages. Paradoxes break down into linguistic manifestations of the language in which they're expressed. For the Spanish barber, and Wednesday, it's the words 'every' and 'all' that hold contradictory meanings. The construction 'don't until' has a similar ambiguity. The same with the word 'stop'. The tape Rydra sent me was a grammar and vocabulary of Babel-17. Fascinating.

It's the most analytically exact language imaginable. But that's because everything is flexible, and ideas come in huge numbers of congruent sets, governed by the same words. This just means that the number of paradoxes you can come up with is staggering. Rydra had filled the whole last half of the tape up with some of the more ingenious. If a mind limited to Babel-17 got caught up in them, it would burn itself out, or break down—"

“Or escape to the other side of the brain. I see. Well, go ahead. Start."

"I did two minutes ago."

The General looked at the Butcher. "I don't see anything."

"You won't for another minute." He made a further adjustment. “The paradoxical system I've set up has to worm itself through the entire conscious part of his brain. There are a lot of synapses to start clicking on and off."

Suddenly the lips of the hard muscled face pulled back from the teeth.

"Here we go," Dr. T'mwarba said.

"What's happening to Miss Wong?"

Rydra's face underwent the same contortion.

"I'd hoped that wouldn't happen," Dr. T'mwarba sighed, "but I suspected it would. They're in telepathic union."

A crack from the Butcher's chair. The headstrap had been slightly loose and his skull struck the back of his chair.

A sound from Rydra, opening into a full-throated wail that suddenly choked off. Her startled eyes blinked twice, and she cried, "Oh, Mocky, it hurts!"

One of the armstraps gave on the Butcher's chair, and the fist flew up.

Then a light by Dr. Tmwarba's thumb went from white to amber, and the thumb jammed down a switch. Something happened in the Butcher's body; he relaxed.

General Forester started, "He discor—"

But the Butcher was panting.

"Let me out of here, Mocky," came from Rydra.

Dr. T'mwarba brushed his hand across a microswitch and the bands that had bound her forehead, calves, wrists, and arms came loose with popping sounds. She rushed across the cell to the Butcher. "Him too?"

She nodded.

He pushed the second micro-switch and the Butcher fell forward into her arms. She went down on the floor with his weight, at the same time began working her knuckles along the stiffened muscles on his back.

General Forester was holding a vibra-gun on them. "Now who the hell is he and where is he from?" he demanded.

The Butcher started to collapse again, but his hands slapped the floor and held himself up, "Ny . . ." he began. "I . . . I'm Nyles VerDorco." His voice had lost the grating mineral quality. This pitch was nearly a fourth higher and a slight aristocratic drawl suffused his words. "Armsedge. I was born at Armsedge. And I've . . . I've killed my father!"

The door slab raised into the wall. There was an inrush of smoke and the odor of hot metal. “Now what the devil is the smell?" General Forester said. "That's not supposed to happen."

"I would guess," Dr. T'mwarba said, "the first half dozen layers of defenses for this security chamber have been broken through. Had it taken a few minutes longer, chances are we wouldn't be here."

A rush of footsteps. A soot-streaked stellannan staggered through the door. “General Forester, are you all right? The outer wall exploded, and somehow the radio-locks on the double-gates were shorted out—something cut halfway through the ceramic walls. It looks like lasers or something."

The General got very pale. "What was trying to get in here?"

Dr. T'mwarba looked at Rydra.

The Butcher got to his feet, holding on to her shoulder. "A couple of my father's more ingenious models, first cousins to TW-55. There are maybe six in inconspicuous, but effective, positions throughout the staff here at Administrative Alliance Headquarters. But you don't have to worry about them any more."

"Then I'd appreciate it," General Forester said measuredly, "if you would all get the hell up to my office and explain what's going on."

“No. My father wasn't a traitor. General. He simply wanted to make me into the Alliance's most powerful secret agent. But the weapon is not the tool; rather the knowledge of how to use it. And the Invaders had that, and that knowledge is Babel-17."

"All right. You could be Nyles VerDorco. But that just makes a few things I thought I understood an hour ago more confusing."

"I don't want him to talk too much," Dr. T'mwarba said. "The strain his whole nervous system has just been through—"

"I'm all right. Doctor. I've got a complete spare set. My reflexes are quite above normal and I've got control of my whole autonomic layout, down to how fast my toenails grow. My father was a very thorough man."

General Forester swung his boot heel against the front of his desk. "Better let him go on. Because if I don't understand this whole business in five minutes, I'll put you all away."

"My father had just begun his work on custom tailored spies when he got the idea. He had me doctored up into the most perfect human he could devise. Then he sent me into Invader territory with the hope I would wreak as much confusion among them as I could. And I did a lot of damage too, before they captured me. Another thing Dad realized was that he would be making rapid progress with the new spies, and eventually, they would far outstrip me—which was quite true. I don't hold a candle to TW-55 for example. But because of—I guess it was family pride, he wanted to keep control of their operations in the family. Every spy from Armsedge can receive radio commands through a pre-established key. Grafted under my meduia is a hyperstasis transmitter most of whose parts are electro-plastiplasms. No matter how complex the future spies became, I was still in primary control of the whole fleet of them. Over the past years, several thousand have been released into Invader territory. Up until the time I was captured, we made a very effective force."

"Why weren't you killed?" the General asked. "Or did they find out and manage to turn that entire army of spies back on us?"

"They did discover that I was an Alliance weapon. But that hyperstasis transmitter breaks down under certain conditions and flushes out with my body's waste matter. It takes me about three weeks to grow a new one. So they never learned I was in control of the rest. But they had just come up with their secret weapon, Babel-17. They gave me a thorough case of amnesia; left me with no communication facilities save Babel-17, then let me escape from Nueva-nueva York back into Alliance territory. I didn't get any instructions to sabotage you. The powers I had, the contact with the other spies dawned on me very painfully and very slowly. And my whole life as a saboteur masquerading as a criminal just grew up. How, or why, I still don't know."

"I think I can explain that. General," Rydra said. "You can program a computer to make mistakes, and you do it not by crossing wires, but my manipulating the language you teach it to 'think' in. The lack of an 'I' precludes any self-critical process. In fact it cuts out any awareness of the symbolic process at all—which is the way we distinguish between reality and our expression of reality."

"Come again?"

"Chimpanzees," Dr. T'mwarba interrupted, "are quite coordinated enough to learn to drive cars, and smart enough to distinguish between red and green lights. But once they leam, they still can't be turned loose, because when the light goes green, they will drive through a brick wall if it's in front of them, and if the light turns red, they will stop in the middle of an intersection even if a truck is bearing down on top of them. They don't have the symbolic process. For them, red is stop, and green is go."

"Anyway," Rydra went on. "Babel-17 as a language contains a pre-set program for the Butcher to become a criminal and saboteur- If you turn somebody with no memory loose in a foreign country with only the words for tools and machine parts, don't be surprised if he ends up a mechanic. By manipulating his vocabulary properly you could just as easily make him a sailor, or an artist. Also, Babel-17 is such an exact analytical language, it almost assures you technical mastery of any situation you look at. And the lack of an I blinds you to the fact that though it's a highly useful way to look at things, it's the only way."

"But you mean that this language could even turn you against the Alliance?" the General asked.

"Well," said Rydra, "to start off with, the word for Alliance in Babel-17 translates literally into English as: one-who-has-invaded. You take it from there. It has all sorts of little diabolisms programmed into it. While thinking in Babel-17 it becomes perfectly logical to try and destroy your own ship and then blot out the fact with self-hypnosis so you won't discover what you're doing and try and stop yourself."

"That's your spy!" Dr. T'mwarba interrupted.

Rydra nodded. "It 'programs' a self-contained schizoid personality into the mind of whoever learns it, reinforced by self-hypnosis—which seems the sensible thing to do since everything else in the language is 'right’, whereas any other tongue seems so clumsy. This 'personality' has the general desire to destroy the Alliance at any cost, and at the same time remain hidden from the rest of the consciousness until it's strong enough to take over. That's what happened to us. Without the Butcher's pre-capture experience, we weren’t strong enough to keep complete control, although we could stop them from doing anything destructive."

"Why didn't they completely dominate you?" Dr. Tmwarba asked.

"They didn't count on my 'talent', Mocky," Rydra said. "I analyzed it with Babel-17 and it's very simple. The human nervous system puts out radio noise. But you'd have to have an antenna of several thousand miles surface area to tune in anything fine enough to make sense out of that noise. In fact the only thing with that sort of area is another human nervous system. It happens to an extent in everybody. A few people like me just happen to have better control of it. The schizoid personalities aren't all that strong, and I've also got some control of the noise I send out— I've just been jamming them."

"And what am I supposed to do with these schizy espionage agents each of you is housing in your head? Lobotomize you?"

“No,” Rydra said. “The way you fix your computer isn't to hack out half the wires. You correct the language, introduce the missing elements and compensate for ambiguities."

"We introduced the main missing elements," the Butcher said, "back in Tarik's graveyard. We're well on the way to the rest."

The General stood up slowly. "It won't do." He shook his head. "Tmwarba, where's that tape?"

"Right in my pocket where it's been all along," Dr. T'mwarba said, pulling out the spool.

"I'm taking this right down to cryptography, then we're going to start all over again." He walked to the door. "Oh, yes, and I'm locking you in." He left, and the three looked at each other.

V

". . . YES, of course I should have known that somebody who could get halfway through to our maximum security room and sabotage the war effort over one whole arm of the galaxy could escape from my locked office! . . . I am not a nitwit, but I thought—I know you don't care what I think, but they—No, it didn't occur to me that they were going to steal a ship. Well, yes, I—No. Of course I didn't assume—Yes, it was one of our largest battleships. But they left a—No, they're not going to attack our—I have no way of knowing except that they left a note saying—Yes, on my desk, they left a note. . . . Well, of course I'll read it to you. That's what I've been trying to do for the last . . ."

VI

RYDRA STEPPED into the spacious cabin of the battleship Chronos. Ratt was riding her piggyback.

As she lowered him to the floor, the Butcher turned from the control panel. “How's everybody doing down there?"

"Anybody really confused with the new controls?" Rydra asked.

The platoon boy pulled his ear. "I don't know, Captain. This here is a lot of ship for us to run."

"We just have to get back to the Snap and give this ship to Jebel and the others on Tarik — Brass says he can get us there if you kids keep everything moving smooth,"

"We're trying. But there're so many orders all coming through from all over the place at once-I should be down there now."

"You can get down there in a minute," Rydra said. "Suppose I make you honorary quipucamayocuna?"

"Who?"

"That's the guy who reads all the orders as they come through and interprets them and hands them out. Your great grandparents were Indian, weren't they?"

"Yeah. Seminoles."

Rydra shrugged. "Quipucamayocuna is Mayan. Same difference. They gave orders by tying knots in rope, we use punch cards. Scoot, and just keep us flying."

Ratt touched his forehead and scooted. "What do you think the General made of your note?" the Butcher asked her.

"It doesn't really matter. It will make its round of all the top officials; and they'll ponder over it and the possibility will be semantically imprinted in their minds, which is a good bit of the job. And we have Babel-17 corrected—perhaps I should call it Babel-18—which is the best tool conceivable to build it into truth."

“Plus my battery of assistants," the Butcher said. "I think six months should do it. You're lucky those sickness attacks weren't from the speeded up metabolic rates after all. That sounded a little odd to me. You should have collapsed before you came out of Babel-17, if that was the case."

"It was the schiz-configuration trying to force its way into dominance. Well, as soon as we finish with Jebel, we have a message to leave on the desk of Invader Commander Meihiow^t Nueva-nueva York.''

“This war will end within six months," she quoted. "Best prose sentence I ever wrote. But now we have to work."

"We have the tools to do it no one else has," the Butcher said. He moved over as she sat beside him. "And with the right tools it shouldn't be too difficult. What are we going to do with our spare time?"

"I'm going to write a poem, I think. But it may be a novel. I have a lot to say."

"But I'm still a criminal. Canceling out bad deeds with good is a linguistic fallacy that's gotten people in trouble more than once. Especially if the good deed is in the offing. I'm still responsible for a lot of murders."

"The whole mechanism of guilt as a deterrent to right action is just as much a linguistic fault. If it bothers you, go back, get tried, be acquitted, then go on about your business. Let me be your business for a while."

"Sure. But who says I get acquitted at this trial?" Rydra began to laugh. She stooped before him, took his hands, and laid her face against them, still laughing. "But I'll be your defense! And even without Babel-17, you should know by now, I can talk my way out of anything."