The Novels of Samuel R. Delany Volume One

  “I used to do that, too,” Ron said. “But just ’cause I liked them.”

  “We even had fun arguing about who was going to sleep in the middle.”

  It was like a cue. Ron began to pull back together, knees rising, arms locking around them, chin down. “I got both of mine, at least,” he said. “I guess I should be pretty happy.”

  “Maybe you should. Maybe you shouldn’t. Do they love you?”

  “They said so.”

  “Do you love them?”

  “Christ, yes. I talk to Mollya and she’s trying to explain something to me and she still don’t talk so good yet, but suddenly I figure out what she means, and…” He straightened his body and looked up as though the word he was searching for was someplace high.

  “It’s wonderful,” she supplied.

  “Yeah, it’s…” He looked at her. “It’s wonderful.”

  “You and Calli?”

  “Hell, Calli’s just a big old bear and I can tumble him around and play with him. But it’s him and Mollya. He still can’t understand her so well. And because I’m the youngest he thinks he should learn quicker than me. And he doesn’t, so he keeps away from both of us. Now like I say, when he gets in a mood, I can always handle him. But she’s new, and thinks he’s mad at her.”

  “Want to know what to do?” Rydra asked, after a moment.

  “Do you know?”

  She nodded. “It hurts more when there’s something wrong between them because there doesn’t seem to be anything you can do. But it’s easier to fix.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they love you.”

  He was waiting now.

  “Calli gets into one of his moods, and Mollya doesn’t know how to get through to him.”

  Ron nodded.

  “Mollya speaks another language, and Calli can’t get through that.”

  He nodded again.

  “Now you can communicate with both of them. You can’t act as a go-between; that never works. But you can teach each of them how to do what you know already.”

  “Teach…?”

  “What do you do with Calli when he gets moody?”

  “I pull his ears,” Ron said. “He tells me to cut it out until he starts laughing, and then I roll him around on the floor.”

  Rydra made a face. “It’s unorthodox, but if it works, fine. Now show Mollya how. She’s athletic. Let her practice on you till she gets it right, if you have to.”

  “I don’t like to get ray ears pulled,” Ron said.

  “Sometimes you have to make sacrifices.” She tried not to smile; and smiled anyway.

  Ron rubbed his left earlobe with the ham of his thumb. “I guess so.”

  “And you have to teach Calli the words to get through to Mollya.”

  “But I don’t know the words myself, sometimes. I can just guess better than he can.”

  “If he knew the words, would it help?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ve got Kiswahili grammar books in my cabin. Pick them up when we get back to the ship.”

  “Hey, that would be fine—” He stopped, withdrawing just a bit into the leaves. “Only Calli don’t read much of anything.”

  “You’ll help him.”

  “Teach him?” Ron asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you think he’ll do it?”

  “To get closer to Mollya?” asked Rydra. “Do you think so?”

  “He will.” Like metal unbending, Ron suddenly stood. “He will.”

  “Are you going inside now?” she asked. “We’ll be eating in a few minutes.”

  Ron turned to the rail and looked at the vivid sky. “They keep a beautiful shield up here.”

  “To keep from being burned up by Bellatrix,” Rydra said.

  “So they don’t have to think about what they’re doing.”

  Rydra raised her eyebrows. Still the concern over right and wrong, even amidst domestic confusion. “That, too,” she said and wondered about the war.

  His tensing back told her he would come later, wanted to think some more. She went through the double doors and started down the staircase.

  “I saw you go out, and I thought I’d wait for you to come back in.”

  Déjà vu, she thought. But she couldn’t have seen him before in her life. Blue-black hair over a face craggy but in its late twenties. He stepped back to make way for her on the stairway with an incredible economy of movement. She looked from hands to face for a gesture revealing something. He watched her back, giving nothing; then he turned and nodded toward the people below. He indicated the Baron, who stood alone toward the middle of the room. “Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look.”

  “I wonder how hungry he is?” Rydra said, and felt strange again.

  The Baroness was churning toward her husband through the crowd, to ask advice about whether to begin dinner or wait another five minutes, or some other equally desperate decision.

  “What must a marriage between two people like that be?” the stranger asked with austerely patronizing amusement.

  “Comparatively simple, I suppose,” Rydra said. “They’ve just got each other to worry about.”

  A polite look of inquiry. When she offered no elucidation, the stranger turned back to the crowd. “They make such odd faces when they glance up here to see if it’s you, Miss Wong.”

  “They leer,” she said, shortly.

  “Bandicoots. That’s what they look like. A pack of them.”

  “I wonder if their artificial sky makes them seem so sickly?” She felt herself leaking a controlled hostility.

  He laughed. “Bandicoots with thalassanemia!”

  “I guess so. You’re not from the Yards?” His complexion had a life that would have faded under the artificial sky.

  “As a matter of fact, I am.”

  Surprised, she would have asked him more, but the loudspeakers suddenly announced: “Ladies and Gentlemen, dinner is served.”

  He accompanied her down the stairs, but two or three steps into the crowd she discovered he had disappeared. She continued toward the dining room alone.

  Under the arch the Baron and Baroness waited for her. As the Baroness took her arm, the chamber orchestra on the dais fell to their instruments.

  “Come, we’re down this way.”

  She kept near the puffy matron through the people milling about the serpentine table that curved and twisted back on itself.

  “We’re over there.”

  And the Basque message: Captain, on your transcriber, something’s coming over back on the ship. The small explosion in her mind stopped her.

  “Babel-17—!”

  The Baron turned to her. “Yes, Captain Wong?” She watched uncertainty score tense lines on his face.

  “Is there anyplace in the Yards with particularly important materials or research going on that might be unguarded now?”

  “That’s all done automatically. Why?”

  “Baron, there’s a sabotage attack about to take place, or taking place right now.”

  “But how do you—”

  “I can’t explain now, but you’d better make sure everything is all right.”

  And the tension turned.

  The Baroness touched her husband’s arm, and said with sudden coolness, “Felix, there’s your seat.”

  The Baron pulled out his chair, sat down, and unceremoniously pushed aside his place setting. There was a control panel beneath the doily. As people seated themselves, Rydra saw Brass, twenty feet away, lower himself on the special hammock that had been set up for his glittering, gigantic bulk.

  “You sit here, my dear. We’ll simply go on with the party as if nothing was happening. I think that’s best.”

  Rydra seated herself next to the Baron, and the Baroness lowered herself carefully to the chair on her left. The Baron was whispering into a throat microphone. Pictures, which she was at the wrong angle to see clearly, flashed on the eight-inch screen. He looked up long enough to say, ??
?Nothing yet, Captain Wong.”

  “Ignore what he’s doing,” the Baroness said. “This is much more interesting over here.”

  Into her lap she swung out a small console from where it had hung beneath the table edge.

  “Ingenious little thing,” the Baroness continued, looking around. “I think we’re ready. There!” Her pudgy forefinger struck at one of the buttons, and lights about the room began to lower. “I control the whole meal just by pressing the right one at the right time. Watch!” She struck at another one.

  Along the center of the table now, under the gentled light, panels opened and great platters of fruit, candied apples and sugared grapes, halved melons filled with honeyed nuts, rose up before the guests.

  “And wine!” said the Baroness, reaching down again.

  Along the hundreds of feet of table, basins rose. Sparkling froth foamed the brim as the fountain mechanism began. Spurting liquid streamed.

  “Fill your glass, dear. Drink up,” prompted the Baroness, raising her own beneath a jet; the crystal splashed with purple.

  On her right the Baron said: “The Arsenal seems to be all right. I’m alerting all the special projects. You’re sure this sabotage attack is going on right now?”

  “Either right now,” she told him, “or within the next two or three minutes. It might be an explosion, or some major piece of equipment may fail.”

  “That doesn’t leave me much to go on. Though communications has picked up your Babel-17. I’ve been alerted to how these attempts run.”

  “Try one of these, Captain Wong.” The Baroness handed her a quartered mango which Rydra discovered, when she tasted it, had been marinated in Kirsch.

  Nearly all the guests were seated now. She watched a platoon kid, named Mike, searching for his name-card halfway across the hall. And down the table length she saw the stranger who had stopped her on the spiral stair hurrying toward them behind the seated guests.

  “The wine is not grape, but plum,” the Baroness said. “A little heavy to start with, but so good with fruit. I’m particularly proud of the strawberries. The legumes are a hydroponicist’s nightmare, you know, but this year we were able to get such lovely ones.”

  Mike found his seat and reached both hands into the fruit bowl. The stranger rounded the last loop of table. Calli was holding a goblet of wine in each hand, looking from one to the other—trying to determine the larger…?

  “I could be a tease,” the Baroness said, “and bring out the sherbets first. Or do you think I ought best go on to the caldo verde? The way I prepare it, it’s very light. I can never decide—”

  The stranger reached the Baron, leaned over his shoulder to watch the screen, and whispered something. The Baron turned to him, turned back slowly with both hands on the table—and fell forward! A trickle of blood wormed from beneath his face.

  Rydra jerked back in her chair. Murder. A mosaic came together in her head, and when it was together, it said: murder. She leapt up.

  The Baroness exhaled hoarse breath and rose, overturning her chair. She flapped her hands hysterically toward her husband and shook her head.

  Rydra whirled to see the stranger snatch a vibra-gun from beneath his jacket. She yanked the Baroness out of the way. The shot was low and struck the console.

  Once moved, the Baroness staggered to her husband and grasped him. Her breathy moan took voice and became a wail. The hulking form, like a blimp deflating, sank and pulled Felix Ver Dorco’s body from the table, till she was kneeling on the floor, holding him in her arms, rocking him gently, screaming.

  Guests had risen now; talking became roaring.

  With the console smashed, along the table the fruit platters were pushed aside by emerging peacocks, cooked, dressed, and reassembled with sugared heads, tail feathers swaying. None of the clearing mechanisms were operating. Tureens of caldo verde crowded the wine basins till both overturned, flooding the table. Fruit rolled over the edge.

  Through the voices, the vibra-gun hissed on her left, left again, then right. People ran from their chairs, blocked her view. She heard the gun once more and saw Dr. Crane double over, to be caught by a surprised neighbor as her bleached hair came undone and tumbled her face.

  Spitted lambs rose to upset the peacocks. Feathers swept the floor. Wine fountains spurted the glistening amber skins which hissed and steamed. Food fell back into the opening and struck red heating coils. Rydra smelled burning.

  She darted forward, caught the arm of the fat, black-bearded man. “Slug, get the kids out of here!”

  “What do you think I’m doing, Captain?”

  She darted away, came up against a length of table, and vaulted the steaming pit. The intricate, oriental dessert—sizzling bananas dipped first in honey then rolled to the plate over a ramp of crushed ice—was emerging as she sprang. The sparkling confections shot across the ramp and dropped to the floor, honey crystallized to glittering thorns. They rolled among the guests, cracked underfoot. People slipped and flailed and fell.

  “Snazzy way to slide on a banana, huh, Captain?” commented Calli. “What’s going on?”

  “Get Mollya and Ron back to the ship!”

  Urns rose now, struck the rotisserie arrangement, overturned, and grounds and boiling coffee splattered. A woman shrieked, clutching her scalded arm.

  “This ain’t no fun anymore,” Calli said. “I’ll round them up.”

  He started away as Slug hurried back the other way. “Slug, what’s a bandicoot?” She caught his arm again.

  “Vicious little animal. Marsupial, I think. Why?”

  “That’s right. I remember now. And thalassanemia?”

  “Funny time to ask. Some sort of anemia.”

  “I know that. What sort? You’re the medic on the ship.”

  “Let me see.” He closed his eyes a moment. “I got all this once in a hypno-course. Yeah, I remember. It’s hereditary, the Caucasian equivalent of sickle cell anemia, where the red blood cells collapse because the haptoglobins break down—”

  “—and allow the hemoglobins to leak out and the cell gets crushed by osmotic pressure. I’ve figured it out. Get the hell out of here.”

  Puzzled, the Slug started toward the arch.

  Rydra started after him, slipped in wine sherbet, and grabbed Brass, who now gleamed above her. “Take it easy, Ca’tain!”

  “Out of here, baby,” she demanded. “And fast.”

  “Ho’ a ride?” Grinning, he hooked his arms at his hip, and she climbed to his back, clutching his sides with her knees and holding his shoulders. The great muscles that had defeated the Silver Dragon bunched beneath her, and he leapt, clearing the table and landing on all fours. Before the fanged, golden beast, guests scattered. They made for the arched door.

  5

  HYSTERICAL EXHAUSTION FROTHED.

  She smashed through it, into the Rimbaud’s cabin, and punched the intercom. “Slug, is every—”

  “All present and accounted for, Captain.”

  “The discorporate—”

  “Safe aboard, all three.”

  Panting, Brass filled the entrance hatch behind her.

  She switched to another channel, and a near-musical sound filled the room. “Good. It’s still going.”

  “That’s it?” asked Brass.

  She nodded. “Babel-17. It’s being automatically transcribed so I can study it later. Anyway, here goes nothing.” She threw a switch.

  “What you doing?”

  “I prerecorded some messages and I’m sending them out now. Maybe they’ll get through.” She stopped the first tape and started a second. “I don’t know it well, yet. I know a little, but not enough. I feel like someone at a performance of Shakespeare shouting catcalls in pidgin English.”

  An outside line signaled for her attention. “Captain Wong, this is Albert Ver Dorco.” The voice was perturbed. “We’ve had a terrible catastrophe, and we’re in total confusion here. I could not find you at my brother’s, but flight clearance just told me you h
ad requested immediate takeoff for hyperstasis jump.”

  “I requested nothing of the kind. I just wanted to get my crew out of there. Have you found out what’s going on?”

  “But, Captain, they said you were in the process of clearing for flight. You have top priority, so I can’t very well countermand your order. But I called to request that you please stay until this matter is cleared up, unless you are acting on some information that—”

  “We’re not taking off!” Rydra said.

  “We better not be,” interjected Brass. “I’m not wired into the ship yet.”

  “Apparently your automatic James Bond ran berserk,” Rydra told Ver Dorco.

  “…Bond?”

  “A mythological reference. Forgive me. TW-55 flipped.”

  “Oh, yes. I know. It assassinated my brother, and four extremely important officials. It couldn’t have picked out four more key figures if it had been planned.”

  “It was. TW-55 was sabotaged. And no, I don’t know how. I suggest you contact General Forester back at—”

  “Captain, flight clearance says you’re still signaling for takeoff! I have no official authority here, but you must—”

  “Slug! Are we taking off?”

  “Why, yes. Didn’t you just issue orders down here for emergency hyperstasis exit?”

  “Brass isn’t even at his station yet, you idiot!”

  “But I just received clearance from you thirty seconds ago. Of course he’s hooked in. I just spoke—”

  Brass lumbered across the floor and bellowed into the microphone. “I’m standing right behind her, numbskull! What are you gonna do, dive into the middle of Bellatrix? Or maybe come out inside some nova? These things head for the biggest mass around when they drift!”

  “But you just—”

  A grinding started somewhere below them. And a sudden surge.

  Over the loudspeaker from Albert Ver Dorco: “Captain Wong…!”

  Rydra shouted again, “Idiot, cut the stasis gen—”

  But the generators were already whistling over the roar.

  A surge again; she jerked against her hands holding the desk edge, saw Brass flail one claw in the air. And—

  part three