Samuel Delany - Babel-17

"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."