Samuel Delany: Babel-17

"If he hits that wire a couple of more times he'll be dead.

But he had already started inside for the ladder. When he came out, he stopped. She had shinned four-fifths up the guy wire on the leaning catalpa tree that shaded the corner of the house. Fifteen seconds later he was watching her reach out, draw back, reach out again toward the wild feathers. He knew damn well she wasn't afraid of the hot line, either; she'd strung it up herself. Sparks again. So she made up her mind and grabbed. A minute later she was coming across the yard, holding the rumpled bird at arm's length. Her face looked as if it had been blown across with powdered lime.

"Take it, Mocky," she said, with no voice behind her trembling lips, "before it says something and I start hollering again."

So now, thirteen years later, something else was speaking to her, and she said she was scared. He knew how scared she could be; he also knew with what bravery she could face down her fears.

He said, "Good-bye. I'm glad you woke me up. I'd be mad as a damp rooster if you hadn't come."

"The thanks is yours, Mocky," she said. "I'm still frightened,"

DANIL D. APPLEBY who seldom thought of himself by his name—he was a Customs Officer—stared at the order through wire-framed glasses and rubbed his hand across his crewcut red hair, "Well, it says you can, if you want to."

"And—?"

"And it is signed by General Forester."

“Then I expect you to cooperate.”

"But I have to approve—"

"Then you'll come along and approve on the spot. I don't have time to send the reports in and wait for processing."

"But there's no way—"

"Yes, there is. Come with me."

"But Miss Wong, I don't walk around Transport town at night."

"I enjoy it. Scared?"

"Not exactly. But—"

“I have to get a ship and a crew by the morning. And it's General Forester's signature. All right?"

"I suppose so."

"Then come on. I have to get my crew approved."

Insistent and protesting respectively, Rydra and the officer left the bronze and glass building.

They waited for the monorail nearly six minutes. When they came down, the streets were smaller, and a continuous whine of transport ships fell across the sky.

Warehouses and repair and supply shops, sandwiched rickety apartments and rooming houses. A larger street cut past, rumbling with traffic, busy loaders, stellar-men. They passed neon entertainments, restaurants of many worlds, bars and brothels. In the crush the Customs Officer pulled his shoulders in, walked more quickly to keep up with Rydra's long-legged stride.

"Where do you intend to find—?"

"My pilot? That's who I want to pick up first." She stopped on the corner, shoved her hands into the pockets of her leather pants, and looked around.

"Do you have someone in mind?"

"I'm thinking of several people. This way." They turned on a narrower street, more cluttered, more brightly lit.

"Where are we going? Do you know this section?"

But she laughed, slipped her arm through his, and, like a dancer leading without pressure, she turned him toward an iron stairway.

"In here?"

"Have you ever been to this place before?" she asked with an innocent eagerness that made him feel for a moment he was escorting her.

He shook his head.

Up from the basement cafe black burst—a man, ebony-skinned, with red and green jewels set into his chest, face, arms and thighs. Moist membranes, also Jeweled, fell from his arms, billowing on slender tines as he hurried up the steps.

Rydra caught his shoulder. "Hey, Lome!"

"Captain Wong!" The voice was high, the white teeth needle-filed. He whirled to her with extending sails. Pointed ears shifted forward. "What you here for?"

"Lome, Brass is wrestling tonight?"

"You want see him? Aye, Skipper, with the Silver Dragon, and it's an even match. Hey, I look for you on Deneb. I buy your book too. Can't read much, but I buy. And I no find you. Where you been a' six months?"

"Earthside, teaching at the University. "But I'm going out again."

"You ask Brass for pilot? You heading out Specelli way?"

"That's right."

Lome dropped his black arm around her shoulder and the sail cloaked her, shimmering. “You go out Caesar, you call Lome for pilot, ever you do. Know Caesar—" He screwed his face and shook his head. "Nobody know it better."

"When I do, I will. But now it's Specelli."

"Then you do good with Brass. Work with him before?"

"We got drunk together when we were both quarantined for a week on one of the Cygnet planetoids. He seemed to know what he was talking about."

"Talk, talk, talk," Lome derided. "Yeah, I remember you. Captain who talk. You go watch that son of a dog wrestle; then you know what sort of pilot he make."

"That's what I came to do," nodded Rydra. She turned to the Customs Officer, who shrank against the iron banister. God, he thought, she's going to introduce me. But she cocked her head with a half smile and turned back. "I'll see you again, Lome, when I get home."

"Yeah, yeah, you say that and say that twice. But I no in six months see you." He laughed. "But I like you, lady Captain. Take me to Caesar some day, I show you."

"When I go, you go, Lome."

A needle leer. "Go, go, you say. I got go now. Bye-bye, lady Captain,"—he bowed and touched his head in salute—"Captain Wong." And was gone.

"You shouldn't be afraid of him," Rydra told the Officer.

"But he's—" During his search for a word, he wondered. How did she know? "Where in five hells did he come from?"

"He's an Earthman. Though I believe he was born en route from Arcturus to one of the Centauris. His mother was a Slug. I think, if he wasn't lying about that too. Lome tells tall tales.”

"You mean all that getup is cosmeti surgery?"

"Um-hm." Rydra started down the stairs.

"But why the devil do they do that to themselves? They're all so weird— That's why decent people won't have anything to do with them."

"Sailors used to get tattoos. Besides, Lome has nothing else to do. I doubt he's had a pilot's job in forty years."

"He's not a good pilot? What was all that about the Caesar nebula?"

"I'm sure he knows it. But he's at least a hundred and twenty years old. After eighty, your reflexes start to go, and that's the end of a pilot's career. He just shuttle-bums from port city to port city, knows everything that happens to everybody, stays good for gossip and advice."

They entered the cafe on a ramp that swerved above me heads of the customers drinking at bar and table thirty feet below. Above and to the side of them, a fifty-foot sphere hovered like smoke, under spotlights. Rydra looked from the globe to the Customs Officer. "They haven't started the games yet."

"Is this where they hold those fights?"

"That's right."

"But that's supposed to be illegal!"

"Never passed the bill. After they debated, it got shelved."

"Oh."

As they descended among the jovial transport workers, the Officer blinked. Most were ordinary men and women, but the results of cosmetic surgery were numerous enough to keep his eyes leaping. "I've never been in a place like this before!" he whispered. Amphibians or reptilian creatures argued and laughed with griffins and metallic-skinned sphinxes.

"Leave your clothing here?" smiled the check girl. Her naked skin was candy green, her immense coil piled like pink cotton. Her breasts, navel, and lips flashed.

“I don't believe so," the Customs Officer said quickly.

"At least take your shoes and shirt off," Rydra said, slipping off her blouse. "People will think you're strange." She bent, rose and handed her sandals over the counter. She had begun to unbuckle her waist cinch when she caught his desperate look, smiled, and fastened the buckle again.