Babel-17 (23 page)

"Am I supposed to be happy?" Dr. T'mwarba asked.'

"You're supposed to be interested," said General Forester.

"You've looked at the hyperstatic map and discovered that though the sabotage attempts over the last year and a half lie all over a galaxy in regular space, they're within cruiser distance of the Specelli Snap across the jump. Also, you've discovered that during the time the Butcher was in Titin, there were no 'accidents' at all. In other words, you have discovered that the Butcher could be responsible for the whole business, just from physical proximity. No, I am not happy at all."

"Why not?"

"Because he's an important person."

"Important?"

"I know he's . . . important to Rydra. The crew told me that."

"Him?" Then comprehension struck. "Him? Oh, no. Anything else. He's the lowest form of . . .Not that. Treason, sabotage, how many murders ... I mean he's—"

“You don't know what he is. And if he's responsible for the Babel-17 attacks, in his own right he's as extraordinary as Rydra-" The Doctor stood from his bubble seat. "Now will you give me a chance to try out my idea? I've been listening to yours all morning. And mine will probably work."

"I still don't understand what you want, though."

Dr. T' mwarba sighed. “First I want to get Rydra and the Butcher and us in the most heavily guarded, deepest, darkest, impenetrable dungeon Administrative Alliance Headquarters has—"

"But we don't have a dun—"

"Don't put me on," Dr. T'mwarba said evenly. "You're fighting a war, remember?"

The General made a face. "Why all this security?"

"Because of the mayhem this guy has caused up till now. He's not going to enjoy what I plan to do. I'd just be happier if there was something, like the entire military force of the Alliance, on my side. Then I'd feel I had a chance."

Rydra sat on one side of the cell, the Butcher on the other, both strapped to plastic coated chair forms that were part of the walls. Dr. T'mwarba looked after the equipment that was being rolled from the room. "No dungeons and torture chambers, eh. General?" He glanced at a spot of red brown that had dried on the stone floor by his foot, and shook his head. "I'd be happier if the place was swabbed out with acid and disinfected first. But, I suppose on short order—"

"Do you have all your equipment here. Doctor?" the General asked, ignoring the Doctor's goad. "If you change your mind I can have a barrage of specialists here inside of fifteen minutes."

'The place isn't big enough," Dr. T'mwarba said. "I've got nine specialists right here." He rested his hand on a medium-sized computer that had been placed in the comer beside the rest. "I'd just as soon you weren't here, either. But since you won't go, just watch quietly."

"You say," General Forester said, "you want maximum security. I can have a few two hundred and fifty pound akido masters in here also."

"I have a black belt in akido, General. I think the two of us will do."

The General raised his eyebrows. "I'm karate myself. Akido is one martial art I've never really understood. And you have a black belt?"

Dr. T'mwarba adjusted a larger piece of equipment and nodded. "So does Rydra. I don't know what the Butcher can do, so I'm keeping everybody strapped good and tight."

"Very well." The General touched something at the comer of the doorjamb. The metal slab lowered slowly. "We'll be in here five minutes." The slab reached the floor and the line along the edge of the door disappeared. "We're welded in now. We're at the center of twelve layers of defense, all impenetrable. Nobody even knows the location of the place, including myself."

“After those labyrinths we came through, I certainly don't," T'mwarba said.

"Just in case somebody manages to map it, we're moved automatically every fifteen seconds. He's not going to get out." The General gestured toward the Butcher.

"I'm just assuming no one can get in." T'mwarba pressed a switch.

"Go over this once more."

"The Butcher has amnesia, say the doctors on Titin. That means his consciousness is restricted to the section of his brain with synapse connections dating from '61. His consciousness is, in effect, restricted to one segment of his cortex. What this does"—the doctor lifted a metal helmet and put it on the Butcher's head, glancing at Rydra—"is create a series of 'unpleasantnesses' in that segment until he is driven out of that part of the brain back into the rest."

"What if there simply are no connections from one part of the cortex to the other?"

"If it gets unpleasant enough, he will make new ones."

"With the sort of life he's led," commented the General, "I wonder what would be unpleasant enough to drive him out of his head."

"Onoff, Algol, Fortran," said Dr. Tmwarba. The General watched the doctor make further adjustments. "Ordinarily this would create a snake pit situation in the brain. However, with a mind that doesn't know the word 'I', or hasn't known it for long, fear tactics won't work."

"What will?"

"Algol, Onoff, and Fortran, with the help of a barber and the fact that it's Wednesday."

"Dr. Tmwarba, I didn't bother with more than a precursory check of your psyche-index—"

"I know what I'm doing. None of those computer languages have the word for 'I' either. This prevents such statements, as 'I can't solve the problem.' Or, I'm really not interested.' Or 'I've got better things to waste my time with.' General, in a little town on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees there is only one barber. This barber shaves all the men in the town who do not shave themselves. Does the barber shave himself or not?"

The General frowned.

"You don't believe me? But General, I always tell the truth. Except Wednesdays; on Wednesday every statement I make is a lie."

"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?"