Babel-17 Read Online Free Page A

couldn't. I didn't know the words, the grammar, the syntax. And—"
    Something else was happening in her Oriental face, and he strained to catch it. "Yes?"
    "The language?"
    "Yes. You know what I used to call my 'knack'?"
    "You mean you suddenly understood the language?"
    "Well, General Forester had just told me what I had was not a monologue, but a dialogue, which I hadn't known before. That fit in with some other things I had in the back of my mind. I realized I could tell where the voices changed myself. And then—"
    "Do you understand it?"
    "I understand some of it better than I did this afternoon. There's something about the language itself that scares me even more than General Forester."
    Puzzlement fixed itself to T'mwarba's face. "About the language itself?"
    She nodded.
    "What?"
    The muscle in her cheek jumped again. "For one thing, I think I know where the next accident is going to be."
    "Accident?"
    "Yes. The next sabotage that the Invaders are planning, if it is the Invaders, which I' m not sure of. But the language itself—it's . . . it's strange."
    "How?"
    "Small," she said. "Tight. Close together—That doesn't mean anything to you, does it? In a language, I mean?"
    "Compactness?" asked Dr. T'mwarba. "I would think it's a good quality in a spoken tongue."
    "Yes," and the sibilant became a breath. "Mocky, I am scared!"
    "Why?"
    "Because I'm going to try to do something, and I don't know if I can or not."
    "If it's worth trying, you should be a little afraid. What is it?"
    "I decided it back in the bar, and I figured out I'd better talk to somebody first. That usually means you.''
    "Give."
    "I'm going to solve this whole Babel-17 business myself."
    T'mwarba leaned his head to the right.
    "Because I have to find out who speaks this language, where it comes from, and what it's trying to say."
    His head went left.
    "Why? Well, most textbooks say language is a mechanism for expressing thought, Mocky. But language is thought. Thought is information given form. The form is language. The form of this language is . . . amazing."
    "What amazes you?"
    "Mocky, when you learn another tongue, you learn the way another people see the world, the universe."
    He nodded.
    "And as I see into this language, I begin to see . . . too much."
    "It sounds very poetical."
    She laughed. "You always say that to me to bring me back to earth."
    "Which I don't have to do too often. Good poets tend to be practical and abhor mysticism."
    "Something about trying to hit reality; you figure it out," she said. "Only, as poetry tries to touch something real, maybe this is poetical."
    "All right. I still don't understand. But how do you propose to solve the Babel-17 mystery?"
    "You really want to know?" Her hands fell to her knees. "I'm going to get a spaceship, get a crew together, and get to the scene of the next accident."
    "That's right, you do have Interstellar Captain's papers. Can you afford it?"
    "The government's going to subsidize it."
    "Oh, fine- But why?"
    "I'm familiar with a half-dozen languages of the Invaders. Babel-17 isn't one of them. It isn't a language of the Alliance. I want to find out who speaks this language—because I want to find out who, or what, in the Universe thinks that way. Do you think I can, Mocky?"
    "Have another cup of coffee." He reached back over his shoulder and sailed the carafe across to her again. "That's a good question. There's a lot to consider; You're not the most stable person in the world - Managing a spaceship crew takes a special sort of psychology which—you have. Your papers, if I remember, were the result of that odd—eh, marriage of yours, a couple of years ago. But you only used an automatic crew. For a trip this length, won't you be managing Transport people?"
    She nodded.
    "Most of my dealings have been with Customs persons. You're more or less Customs."
    "Both parents were Transport. I was Transport up till the time of the Embargo."
    "That's true. Suppose I say, 'yes, I think you