Samuel Delany - Babel-17

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!

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.