Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany
"But today's Wednesay!" the General exclaimed, beginning to fluster.
"How convenient. Now, now. General, don't hold your breath until you're blue in the face."
"I'm not holding my breath!"
"I didn't say you were. But just answer yes or no: have you stopped beating your wife?"
"Damn it, I can't answer a question like . . ."
"Well, while you think about your wife, decide whether to hold your breath, bearing in mind that it's Wednesday, and tell me, who shaves the barber?"
The General's confusion broke open into laughter. "Paradoxes. You mean you're going to feed him paradoxes he's got to contend with."
"When you do it to a computer, they bum 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 bum 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'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 atArmsedge. 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 toTW-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, 1 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
"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."
"Come again?"
"Chimpanzees," Dr. T'mwarba interrupted, "are quite coordinated enough to learn to drive cars, and smart enough to distinguish between red and green lights. But once they leam, they still can't be turned loose, because when the light goes green, they will drive through a brick wall if it's in front of them, and if the light turns red, they will stop in the middle of an intersection even if a truck is bearing down on top of them. They don't have the symbolic process. For them, red is stop, and green is go."
"Anyway," Rydra went on. "Babel-17 as a language contains a pre-set program for the Butcher to become a criminal and saboteur- If you turn somebody with no memory loose in a foreign country with only the words for tools and machine parts, don't be surprised if he ends up a mechanic. By manipulating his vocabulary properly you could just as easily make him a sailor, or an artist. Also, Babel-17 is such an exact analytical language, it almost assures you technical mastery of any situation you look at. And the lack of an I blinds you to the fact that though it's a highly useful way to look at things, it's the only way."
"But you mean that this language could even turn you against the Alliance?" the General asked.
"Well," said Rydra, "to start off with, the word for Alliance in Babel-17 translates literally into English as: one-who-has-invaded. You take it from there. It has all sorts of little diabolisms programmed into it. While thinking in Babel-17 it becomes perfectly logical to try and destroy your own ship and then blot out the fact with self-hypnosis so you won't discover what you're doing and try and stop yourself."
"That's your spy!" Dr. T'mwarba interrupted.
Rydra nodded. "It 'programs' a self-contained schizoid personality into the mind of whoever learns it, reinforced by self-hypnosis—which seems the sensible thing to do since everything else in the language is 'right’, whereas any other tongue seems so clumsy. This 'personality' has the general desire to destroy the Alliance at any cost, and at the same time remain hidden from the rest of the consciousness until it's strong enough to take over. That's what happened to us. Without the Butcher's pre-capture experience, we weren’t strong enough to keep complete control, although we could stop them from doing anything destructive."
"Why didn't they completely dominate you?" Dr. Tmwarba asked.
"They didn't count on my 'talent', Mocky," Rydra said. "I analyzed it with Babel-17 and it's very simple. The human nervous system puts out radio noise. But you'd have to have an antenna of several thousand miles surface area to tune in anything fine enough to make sense out of that noise. In fact the only thing with that sort of area is another human nervous system. It happens to an extent in everybody. A few people like me just happen to have better control of it. The schizoid personalities aren't all that strong, and I've also got some control of the noise I send out- I've just been jamming them."
"And what am I supposed to do with these schizy espionage agents each of you is housing in your head? Lobotomize you?"
“No,” Rydra said. “The way you fix your computer isn't to hack out half the wires. You correct the language, introduce the missing elements and compensate for ambiguities."
"We introduced the main missing elements," the Butcher said, "back in Tarik's graveyard. We're well on the way to the rest."
The General stood up slowly. "It won't do." He shook his head. "Tmwarba, where's that tape?"
"Right in my pocket where it's been all along," Dr. T'mwarba said, pulling out the spool.
"I'm taking this right down to cryptography, then we're going to start all over again." He walked to the door. "Oh, yes, and I'm locking you in." He left, and the three looked at each other.
V
"... Yes, of course I should have known that somebody who could get halfway through to our maximum security room and sabotage the war effort over one whole arm of the galaxy could escape from my locked office! . . . I am not a nitwit, but I thought—I know you don't care what I think, but they—No, it didn't occur to me that they were going to steal a ship. Well, yes, I—No. Of course I didn't assume—Yes, it was one of our largest battleships. But they left a—No, they're not going to attack our—I have no way of knowing except that they left a note saying—Yes, on my desk, they left a note.. . . Well, of course I'll read it to you. That's what I've been trying to do for the last . . ."
VI
Rydra stepped into the spacious cabin of the battleship Chronos. Ratt was riding her piggyback.
As she lowered him to the floor, the Butcher turned from the control panel. “How's everybody doing down there?"
"Anybody really confused with the new controls?" Rydra asked.
The platoon boy pulled his ear. "I don't know, Captain. This here is a lot of ship for us to run."
"We just have to get back to the Snap and give this ship to Jebel and the others on Tarik - Brass says he can get us there if you kids keep everything moving smooth,"
"We're trying. But there're so many orders all coming through from all over the place at once-I should be down there now."
"You can get down there in a minute," Rydra said. "Suppose I make you honorary quipucamayocuna?"
"Who?"
"That's the guy who reads all the orders as they come through and interprets them and hands them out. Your great grandparents were Indian, weren't they?"
"Yeah. Seminoles."
Rydra shrugged. "Quipucamayocuna is Mayan. Same difference. They gave orders by tying knots in rope, we use punch cards. Scoot, and just keep us flying."
Ratt touched his forehead and scooted. "What do you think the General made of your note?" the Butcher asked her.
"It doesn't really matter. It will make its round of all the top officials; and they'll ponder over it and the possibility will be semantically imprinted in their minds, which is a good bit of the job. And we have Babel-17 corrected—perhaps I should call it Babel-18—which is the best tool conceivable to build it into truth."
“Plus my battery of assistants," the Butcher said. "I think six months should do it. You're lucky those sickness attacks weren't from the speeded up metabolic rates after all. That sounded a little odd to me. You should have collapsed before you came out of Babel-17, if that was the case."
"It was the schiz-configuration trying to force its way into dominance. Well, as soon as we finish with Jebel, we have a message to leave on the desk of Invader Commander Meihiow^t Nueva-nueva York.''
“This war will end within six months,'' she quoted. "Best prose sentence I ever wrote. But now we have to work."
"We have the tools to do it no one else has," the Butcher said. He moved over as she sat beside him. "And with the right tools it shouldn't be too difficult. What are we going to do with our spare time?"
"I'm going to write a poem, I think. But it may be a novel. I have a lot to say."
"But I'm still a criminal. Canceling out bad deeds with good is a linguistic fallacy that's gotten people in trouble more than once. Especially if the good deed is in the offing. I' m still responsible for a lot of murders.''
"The whole mechanism of guilt as a deterrent to right action is just as much a linguistic fault. If it bothers you, go back, get tried, be acquitted, then go on about your business- Let me be your business for a while."
"Sure. But who says I get acquitted at this trial?" Rydra began to laugh. She stooped before him, took his hands, and laid her face against them, still laughing. "But I'll be your defense! And even without Babel-17, you should know by now, I can talk my way out of anything."
About the Author
Born 1 April 1942 in New York, New York.
Best known as: Author of Dhalgren
Samuel R. Delany is the winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula awards and one of science fiction's most celebrated authors. Born and raised in New York City, Delany began writing in the early 1960s. His 1966 novel Babel-17 established his reputation, and over the next decade he became famous for his provocative futuristic explorations of race and sexual identity in the novels Nova (1969), Dhalgren (1975) and Triton (1976).
His other works include the Neveryon series of novels (1979-87) and the novel Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984). He has also written frankly about his life as an African-American homosexual, and his non-fiction books include The Motion of Light and Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village, 1957-65 (1988) and Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (Sexual Culture) (1999).
Table of Contents
BABEL-17
Enter the SF Gateway
Contents
PART ONE:RYDRA WONG
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
PART TWO: VER DORCO
I
II
III
IV
V
PART THREE: JEBEL TARIK
I
II
III
IV
V
PART FOUR:THE BUTCHER
I
II