Something went clang through the ship.
The pilot glanced at the ceiling. "Maintenance just cut those grapples loose." He edged them into the captain's cabin. As they collapsed on the shock-boards, he called into the intercom: "Hey, Diavalo, come u’ here and get these 'eo'te drunk, huh? They deserve it."
"Brass!" She caught his arms as he started back out. “Can you get us from here to Administrative Alliance Headquarters?"
He scratched his ear. "We're right at the ti' of the Tongue. I only know the inside of the Sna' by chart. But Sensory tells me we're right in something that must be the beginning of Natal-beta Current. I know it flows out of the Sna' and we can take it down to Atlas-run and then into Administrative Alliance's front door. We're about eighteen, twenty hours away."
"Let's go." She looked at the Butcher. He made no objection.
"Good idea," Brass said. "About half of Tarik is . . . eh, discor'orate."
"The Invaders won?"
“Nope. The Yiribians finally got the idea, roasted that big 'ig, and took off. But only after Tarik got a hole in its side large enough to 'ut three s'ider-boats through, sideways. Ki “i tells me everyone who's still alive is sealed off in one quarter of the shi', but they have no running 'ower."
"What about Jebel?" the Butcher asked.
"Dead," Brass said.
Diavalo poked his white head down the entrance hatch. "Here you go."
Brass took the bottle and the glasses.
Then static on the speaker: "Butcher, we just saw you cast off the Invaders' cruiser. So, you got out alive."
Butcher leaned forward and picked up the mike. "Butcher alive, chief."
"Some people have all the luck. Captain Wong, I expect you to write me an elegy."
"Jebel?" She sat down next to the Butcher. "We're going to Administrative Alliance Headquarters now. We'll come back with help."
"At your convenience. Captain. We're just a trifle crowded, though."
"We're leaving now."
Brass was already out the door.
"Slug, are the kids all right?"
"Present and accounted for. Captain, you didn't give anyone permission to bring firecrackers aboard, did you?"
"Not that I remember."
"That's all I wanted to know. Ratt, come back here . . ."
Rydra laughed. "Navigation?"
"Ready when you are," Ron said. In the background she heard Mollya's voice: "Nilitaka kulala, nilale milele—"
"You can't go to sleep forever," Rydra said. "We're taking off!"
"Mollya's teaching us a poem in Swahili," Ron explained.
"Oh. Sensory?"
"Kac/zywM/ I always said, Captain, keep your graveyard clean. You might need it some day. Jebel's a case in point. We're ready."
"Get Slug to send one of the kids down with a dust mop. All wired in. Brass?"
"Checked out and ready, Ca'tain."
The stasis generators cut in and she leaned back on the shock-board. Inside something at last relaxed. "I didn't think we were going to get out of there." She turned to the Butcher, who sat on the edge of his board watching her. "You know I'm nervous as a cat. And I don't feel too well. Oh, hell, it's starting." With the relaxation the sickness which she had put off for so long began to climb her body. "This whole thing makes me feel like I'm about to fly apart. You know when you doubt everything, mistrust all your feelings, I begin to think I'm not me anymore . . ." Her breath got painful in her throat.
"I am," he said softly, "and you are."
"Don't ever let me doubt it, Butcher. But I even have to wonder about that. There's a spy among my crew. I told you that, didn't I? Maybe it's Brass and he's going to hurl us into another nova!" Within ttife sickness was a blister of hysteria. The blister broke and she smacked the bottle from the Butcher's hand. "Don't drink that! D-D-Diavalo, he might poison us!" She rose unsteadily. There was a red haze over everything.". . . Oroneofthed-d-dead. How. . . how can I f-f-f . . . fight a ghost?" Then pain hit her stomach, and she staggered back as away from a blow. Fear came with the pain. The emotions were moving behind his face and even they blurred in her attempt to see them clearly. ". . . to kill . . . k-k-killw^/" she whispered,". . . s-s-something to kill . . .s-s-sono y-you, n-n-no/ . . ."
It was to get away from the pain which meant danger and the danger which meant silence that she did it. He had said, if you are ever in danger . . . then go info my brain, see what is there, and use what you need.
An image in her mind without words: once she, Muels, and Fobo had been in a barroom brawl on Tantor. She had caught a punch in the jaw and staggered back, shocked and turning, just as somebody picked the bar mirror from behind the counter and flung it at her. Her own terrified face had come screaming toward her, smashed over her outstretched hand. As she stared at the Butcher's face, through pain and Babel-17, it happened all over—
PART FOUR
THE BUTCHER
. . . turning in the brain to wake with wires behind his eyes, forking the joints akimbo. He wakes, wired, forked fingers crackling, gagging on his tongue.
We wake, turning.
Spined against the floor, his spine turning, chest hollowed, air in the wires, sparks glint from the wired ceiling tapping his sparking fingernails. Coughs, cries.
The twin behind the eyes coughs, cries.
The dark twin doubles on the floor, swallows his tongue.
Splashed to the dark pole circuited behind the eyes, the dark twin snaps his spine free, slaps his palms against the ceiling. Charged beads fly.
The ceiling, polarized, batters his cheek with metal.
Tears free skin. Tears ribs, torn pectorals off metal curved away black, behind the cracks, dried, that are his torn lips. More.
Buttocks and shoulderblades grind on the floor gritty and green with brine.
They wake.
We wake, turning.
He, gargling blood, turns, born, on the wet floor . . .
I
"WE JUST LEFT the Sna'.Ca'tain. You two drunk yet?"
Rydra's voice: "No."
"How do you like that. I guess you're all right, though."
Rydra's voice: "The brain fine. The body fine."
"Huh? Hey, Butcher, she didn't have one of her s'ells again?"
The Butcher's voice: "No."
"Both of you sound funny as hell. Shall I send the Slug u' there to take a look at you?"
The Butcher's voice: "No."
"All right. It's clear sailing now, and I can cut a cou'le of hours off. What do you say?"
The Butcher's voice: What is it to say?"
"Try 'thanks.' You know, I'm flying my tail off down here."
Rydra's voice: "Thanks."
"You're welcome, I guess. I'll leave you two alone. Hey, I'm sorry if I interru'ted something."
II
BUTCHER, I didn't know! I couldn't have known!
And in the echo their minds fused a cry. Couldn't have—couldn't. This light—
I told Brass, told him you must speak a language without the word I and I said I didn't know of one; but there was one, the obvious one, Babel-17 . . . !
Congruent synapses quivered sympathetically till images locked, and out of herself she created, saw them—
—In the solitary confinement box of Titin, he scratched a map on the green wall paint with his spur over the palimpsestic obscenities of two centuries' prisoners, a map that they would follow on his escape and would take them in the wrong direction; she watched him pace that four-foot space for three months till his six and a half foot frame was starved to a hundred and one pounds and he collapsed in the chains of starvation.
On a triple rope of words she climbed from the pit: starve, stave, stake; collapse, collate, collect; chains, change, chance.