Samuel Delany - Babel-17

" . . .so much more." Ron sat cross-legged now, forearms on his knees, hands hanging, "Empire Star and Comet Jo; we had so much fun with those stories, whether it was arguing about them all night over coffee, or correcting galleys, or sneaking into bookshops and pulling them out from behind the other books."

"I used to do that, too," Ron said. "But just "cause I liked them."

"We even had fun arguing about who was going to sleep in the middle."

It was like a cue. Ron began to pull back together, knees rising, arms locking around them, chin down. "I got both of mine, at least," he said. "I guess I should be pretty happy."

"Maybe you should. Maybe you shouldn't. Do they love you?"

"They say so."

"Do you love them?"

"Christ, yes. I talk to Mollya and she's trying to explain something to me and she still don't talk so good yet, but suddenly I figure out what she means, and . . ." He straightened his body and looked up as though the word he was searching for was someplace high.

"It's wonderful," she supplied.

"Yeah, it's—"He looked at her. "It's wonderful."

"You and Calli?"

"Hell, Calli's just a big old bear and I can tumble him around and play with him. But it's him and Mollya. He still can't understand her so well. And because I'm the youngest, he thinks he should learn quicker than me. And he doesn't, so he keeps away from both of us. Now like I say, when he gets in a mood, I can always handle him. But she's new, and thinks he's mad at her."

"Want to know what to do?" Rydra asked, after a moment.

"Do you know?"

She nodded. "It hurts more when there's something wrong between them because there doesn't seem to be anything you can do. But it's easier to fix."

"Why?"

"Because they love you."

He was waiting now.

"Calli gets into one of his moods, and Mollya doesn't know how to get through to him."

Ron nodded.

"Mollya speaks another language, and Calli can't get through that."

He nodded again.

"Now you can communicate with both of them. You can't act as a go-between; that never works. But you can teach each of them how to do what you know already."

"Teach?"

"What do you do with Calli when he gets moody?"

"I pull his ears," Ron said. "He tells me to cut it out until he starts laughing, and then I roll him around on the floor."

Rydra made a face. "It's unorthodox, but if it works, fine. Now show Mollya how. She's athletic. Let her practice on you till she gets it right, if you have to."

"I don't like to get my ears pulled," Ron said.

"Sometimes you have to make sacrifices." She tried not to smile and smiled anyway.

Ron rubbed his left earlobe with the ham of his thumb. "I guess so."

"And you have to teach Calli the words to get through to Mollya."

"But I don't know the words myself, sometimes. I can just guess better than he can."

"If he knew the words, would it help?"

"Sure.”

"I've got a Kiswahili grammar in my cabin. Pick it up when we get back to the ship."

"Hey, that would be fine—" He stopped, withdrawing just a bit into the leaves. "Only Calli don't read much or anything."

"You'll help him."

"Teach him," Ron said.

"That's right."

"Do you think he'll do it?" Ron asked.

"To get closer to Mollya?" asked Rydra. "Do you think so?"

"He will." Like metal unbending, Ron suddenly stood. "He will."

"Are you going inside now?" she asked. "We'll be eating in a few minutes."

Ron turned to the rail and looked at the vivid sky. "They keep a beautiful shield up here."

"To keep from being burned up by Bellatrix," Rydra said.

"So they don't have to think about what they're doing."

Rydra raised her eyebrows. Still the concern over right and wrong, even amidst domestic confusion. "That, too," she said and wondered about the war.

His tensing back told her he would come later, wanted to think some more. She went through the double doors and started down the staircase.

"I saw you go out, and I thought I'd wait for you to come back in."

Deja vu, she thought. But she couldn't have seen him before in her life. Blue-black hair over a face craggy for its age in the late twenties. He stepped back to make way for her on the stairway with an incredible economy of movement. She looked from hands to face for a gesture revealing something. He watched her back, giving nothing; then he turned and nodded toward the people below. He indicated the Baron, who stood alone toward the middle of the room. "Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look."

"I wonder how hungry he is?" Rydra said, and felt strange again.

The Baroness was churning toward her husband through the crowd, to ask advice about whether to begin dinner or wait another five minutes, or some other equally desperate decision.

“What must a marriage between two people like that be?" the stranger asked with austerely patronizing amusement.

"Comparatively simple, I suppose," Rydra said. "They've just got each other to worry about."

A polite look of inquiry. When she offered no elucidation, the stranger turned back to the crowd. "They make such odd faces when they glance up here to see if it's you, Miss Wong."

"They leer," she said, shortly.

"Bandicoots. That's what they look like. A pack of them."

"I wonder if their artificial sky makes them seem so sickly?" She felt herself leaking a controlled hostility.

He laughed. "Bandicoots with thalassanemia!"

"I guess so. You're not from the Yards?" His complexion had a life that would have faded under the artificial sky.

"As a matter of fact, I am."

Surprised, she would have asked him more, but the loudspeakers suddenly announced: "Ladies and Gentlemen, dinner is served."

He accompanied her down the stairs, but two or three steps into the crowd she discovered he had disappeared. She continued toward the dining room alone.

Under the arch the Baron and Baroness waited for her. As the Baroness took her arm, the chamber orchestra on the dais fell to their instruments.

"Come, we're down this way."

She kept near the puffy matron through the people milling about the serpentine table that curved and twisted back on itself.

"We're over there."

And the Basque message: Captain, on your transcriber, something's coming over back on the ship. The small explosion in her mind stopped her.

"Babel-17!"

The Baron turned to her. "Yes, Captain Wong?" She watched uncertainty score tense lines on his face.

"Is there any place in the yards with particularly important materials or research going on that might be unguarded now?"

"That's all done automatically. Why?"

"Baron, there's a sabotage attack about to take place, or taking place right now."

"But how did you—"

"I can't explain now, but you'd better make sure everything is all right."

And the tension turned.

The Baroness touched her husband's arm, and said with sudden coolness. "Felix, there's your seat."

The Baron pulled out his chair, sat down, and unceremoniously pushed aside his place setting. There was a control panel beneath his doily. As people seated themselves, Rydra saw Brass, twenty feet away, lower himself on the special hammock that had been set up for his glittering, gigantic bulk.

"You sit here, my dear. We'll simply go on with the party as if nothing was happening. I think that's best."

Rydra seated herself next to the Baron, and the Baroness lowered herself carefully to the chair on her left. The Baron was whispering into a throat microphone. Pictures, which she was at the wrong angle to see clearly, flashed on the eight inch screen. He looked up long enough to say, "Nothing yet. Captain Wong."

"Ignore what he's doing," the Baron said. "This is much more interesting over here."