Samuel Delany - Babel-17

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 He wore an outdated garment, the son that had preceded contour capes.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?"