Rydra watched the hesitation in his face. “But not officially?”
Again he laughed. “How could we, Captain Wong?” He stroked a ruff of feathers between Klik’s shoulder blades. The jester arched his back. “Even official warships cannot receive their orders and directions in the Snap because of the radio-density. So Administrative Alliance Headquarters is lenient with us. We do our job well; they look the other way. They cannot give us orders; neither can they supply us with weapons or provisions. Therefore we ignore certain salvage conventions and capture regulations. Stellarmen call us looters.” He searched her for a reaction. “We are staunch defenders of the Alliance, Captain Wong, but…” He raised his hand, made a fist, and brought the fist against his belly. “But if we are hungry, and no Invader ship has come by—well, we take what comes past.”
“I see,” Rydra said. “Do I understand I am taken?” She recalled the Baron, the rapaciousness implicit in the lean figure.
Tarik’s fingers opened on his stomach. “Do I look hungry?”
Rydra grinned. “You look very well fed.”
He nodded. “This has been a prosperous month. Were it not, we would not be sitting together so amiably. You are our guests for now.”
“Then you will help us repair the burned-out generators?”
Tarik raised his hand again, signaling her to halt. “…for now,” he repeated.
Rydra had moved forward on her seat; she sat back again.
Tarik spoke to Klik: “Bring the books.” The jester stepped quickly away and delved into a stand beside the couches. “We live dangerously,” Tarik went on. “Perhaps that is why we live well. We are civilized—when we have time. The name of your ship convinced me to heed the Butcher’s suggestion to hook you out. Here on the rim we are seldom visited by a Bard.” Rydra smiled as politely as she could at the pun.
Klik returned with three volumes. The covers were black with silver edging. Tarik held them up. “My favorite is the second. I was particularly struck with the long narrative ‘Exiles in Mist.’ You tell me you have never heard of shadow-ships, yet you do know the feelings ‘that loop night to bind you’—that is the line, isn’t it? I confess, your third book I do not understand. But there are many references and humorous allusions to current events. We here are out of the mainstream.” He shrugged. “We…salvaged the first from the collection of the captain of an Invader Transport tramp that had wandered off course. The second—well, it came from an Alliance destroyer. I believe there’s an inscription on the inside cover.” He opened it and read: “ ‘For Joey on the first flight; she says so well what I have always wanted to say so much. With so much, much love, Lenia.’ ” He closed the cover. “Touching. The third I only acquired a month ago. I will read it several times more before I speak of it to you again. I am astounded at the coincidence that brings us together.” He placed the books in his lap. “How long has the third one been out?”
“A little under a year.”
“There is a fourth?”
She shook her head.
“May I inquire what literary work you are engaged in now?”
“Now, nothing. I’ve done some short poems that my publisher wants to put out in a collection, but I want to wait until I have another large, sustained work to balance them.”
Tarik nodded. “I see. But your reticence deprives us of great pleasure. Should you be moved to write, I will be honored. At meals we have music, some dramatic or comic entertainment, directed by clever Klik. If you would give us prologue or epilogue with what fancy you choose, you will have an appreciative audience.” He extended his brown, hard hand. Appreciation is not a warm feeling, Rydra realized, but cool, and makes your back relax at the same time that you smile. She took his hand.
“Thank you, Tarik,” she said.
“I thank you,” Tarik returned. “Having your good will, I shall release your crew. They are free to wander Jebel as my own men are.” His brown gaze shifted and she released his hand. “The Butcher.” He nodded, and she turned.
The convict who had been with him on the ramp now stood on the step below.
“What was that blot that lay toward Rigel?” Tarik asked.
“Alliance running, Invader tracking.”
Tarik’s face furrowed, then relaxed. “No, let them both pass. We eat well enough this month. Why upset our guests with violence? This is Rydra—”
The Butcher brought his right fist cracking into his left palm. People below turned. She jumped at the sound, and with her eyes she tried to strip meaning from the faintly quivering muscles, the fixed, full-lipped face: lancing but inarticulate hostility; an outrage at stillness, a fear of motion halted, safety in silence furious with movement—
Now Tarik spoke again, voice lower, slower, harsh. “You’re right. But what whole man is not of two minds on any matter of moment, eh, Captain Wong?” He rose. “Butcher, pull us closer to their trajectory. Are they an hour out? Good. “We will watch awhile, then trounce—” he paused and smiled at Rydra—“the Invaders.”
The Butcher’s hands came apart, and Rydra saw relief (or release) ease his arms. He breathed again.
“Ready Jebel; and I will escort our guest to where she may watch.”
Without response, the Butcher strode to the bottom of the steps. Those nearest had overheard, and the information saturated the room. Men and women rose from their benches. One upset his drinking horn. Rydra saw the girl who had served them in the infirmary run with a towel to sop the drink.
At the head of the gallery stairs she looked over the balcony rail at the commons below, empty now.
“Come.” Tarik motioned her through the columns toward the darkness and the stars. “The Alliance ship is coming through there.” He pointed to a bluish cloud. “We have equipment that can penetrate a good deal of this mist, but I doubt the Alliance ship even knows it is being tracked by Invaders.” He moved to a desk and pressed a raised disk. Two dots of light flashed in the mist. “Red for Invaders,” Tarik explained. “Blue for Alliance. Our little spider-boats will be yellow. You can follow the progress of the encounter from here. All our sensory evaluations and sensory perceptors and navigators remain on Jebel and direct the major strategy by remote control, so formations remain consistent. But within a limited range, each spider-boat battles for itself. It’s fine sport for the men.”
“What sort of ships are these you hunt?” She was amused that the slight archaic tone that perfused Tarik’s speech had begun to affect hers.
“The Alliance ship is a military supply ship. The Invader is tracking her with a small destroyer.”
“How far apart are they?”
“They should engage each other in about twenty minutes.”
“And you are going to wait sixty minutes before you…trounce the Invaders?”
Tarik smiled. “A supply ship doesn’t have much chance against a destroyer.”
“I know.” She could see him waiting, behind the smile, for her to object. She looked for objection in herself, but it was blocked by a clot of tiny singing sounds on an area of her tongue smaller than a coin: Babel-17. They defined a concept of exactingly necessary expedient curiosity that became in any other language a clumsy string of polysyllables. “I’ve never watched a stellar skirmish,” she said.
“I would have you come in my flagship, but I know that the little danger there is, is danger enough. From here you can follow the whole battle much more clearly.”
Excitement caught her up. “I’d like to go with you.” She hoped he might change his mind.
“Stay here,” Tarik said. “The Butcher rides with me this time. Here’s a sensory helmet if you wish to view the stasis currents. Though with combat weapons, there’s so much electromagnetic confusion I doubt that even a reduction would mean much.” A run of lights flashed across the desktop. “Excuse me. I go to review my men and check my cruiser.” He bowed shortly. “Your crew has revived. They will be directed up here and you may explain their status as my guests however you see fit.?
??
As Tarik walked to the steps, she looked back to the glittering view-screen and a few moments later thought: What an amazing graveyard they have on this hulk; it must take fifty discorporate souls to do all the sensory reading for Tarik and its spiderboats—in Basque again. She looked back and saw the translucent shapes of her Eye, Ear, and Nose across the gallery.
“Am I glad to see you!” she said. “I didn’t know whether Tarik had discorporate facilities!”
“Does it ever!” came the Basque response. “We’ll take you on a trip through the Underworld here, Captain. They treat you like the lords of Hades.”
From the speaker came Tarik’s voice: “Hear this: the strategy is Asylum. Asylum. Repeat a third time, Asylum. Inmates gather to face Caesar. Psychotics ready at the K-ward gate. Neurotics gather before the R-ward gate. Criminally insane prepare for discharge at the T-ward gate. All right, drop your strait jackets.”
At the bottom of the hundred-foot screen appeared three groups of yellow lights—the three groups of spider-boats that would attack the Invader once it had overtaken the Alliance supply ship. “Neurotics advance. Maintain contact to avoid separation anxiety.” The middle group began to move slowly forward. On the under-speakers now, punctuated with static, Rydra heard lower voices as the men began to report back to the Navigators on Jebel:
Keep us on course, now, Kippi, and don’t get shook.
Sure thing. Hawk, will you get your reports back on time?
Ease up. My caper-unit keeps sticking.
Who told you to leave without getting overhauled?
Come on, ladies, be kind to us for once.
Hey, Pigfoot, you want to be lobbed in high or low?
Low, hard, and fast. Don’t hang me up.
You just get your reports in, honeybunch.
Over the main speaker Tarik said: “The Hunter and the Hunted have engaged—” The red light and the blue light started blinking on the screen. Calli, Ron, and Mollya came from the head of the steps.
“What’s going…?” Calli started, but silenced at a gesture from Rydra.
“That red light’s an Invader ship. We’re attacking it in a few moments. We’re the yellow lights down here.” She left the explanation at that.
“Good luck, us,” Mollya said, dryly.
In five minutes there was only the red light left. By now Brass had clanked up the steps to join them. Tarik announced: “The Hunter has become the Hunted. Let the criminally-insane schiz out.” The yellow group on the left started forward, spreading apart.
That Invader looks pretty big, there, Hawk.
Don’t worry. She’ll run us out tough.
Hell. I don’t like hard work. Got my reports yet?
Right-o. Pigfoot, stop jamming Ladybird’s beam!
Okay, okay, okay. Did anyone check out tractor’s nine and ten?
You think of everything at the right time, don’t you?
Just curious. Don’t the spiral look pretty back there?
“Neurotics proceed with delusions of grandeur. Napoleon Bonaparte take the lead. Jesus Christ bring up the rear.” The ships on the right moved forward now in diamond formation. “Stimulate severe depression, noncommunicative, with repressed hostility.”
Behind her she heard young voices. The Slug herded the platoon up the steps. Arriving, they quieted before the vast representation of night. The explanation of the battle filtered back among the children in whispers.
“Commence the first psychotic episode.” Yellow lights ran forward into the darkness.
The Invader must have spotted them at last, for it began to move away. The gross bulk could not outrun the spiders unless it jumped currents. And there was not enough leeway to check out. The three groups of yellow lights—formed, unformed, and dispersed—drew closer. After three minutes, the Invader stopped running. On the screen there was a sudden shower of red lights. It had released its own barrage of cruisers which also separated into the three standard attack groups.
“The life goal has become dispersed,” Tarik announced. “Do not become despondent.”
Come on, let them babies try and get us!
Remember, Kippi, low, fast, and hard!
If we scare them into offensive, we got it made!
“Prepare to penetrate hostile defense mechanisms. All right. Administer medication!”
The formation of the Invader’s cruiser, however, was not offensive. A third of them fanned horizontally across the stars, the second group combed over their paths at a sixty-degree angle, and the third group moved through another rotation of sixty degrees so they made a three-way defensive grid before the mother ship. The red cruisers doubled back on themselves at the end of their run and swept out again, netting the space before the Invader with small ships.
“Take heed. The enemy has tightened its defense mechanisms.”
What’s with this new formation, anyway?
We’ll get through. You worried—Static chopped out one speaker.
Damn, they strafed Pigfoot!
Pull me back, Kippi. There you go. Pigfoot?
Did you see how they got him? Hey, let’s go.
“Administer active therapy to the right. Be as directive as you can. Let the center enjoy the pleasure principle. And the left go hang.”
Rydra watched, fascinated, as yellow lights engaged the red, which still swept hypnotically along their grid, net, web—
Webbing! The picture flipped over in her mind and the other side had all the missing lines. The grid was identical to the three-way web she had torn off the hammock hours before, with the added factor of timing, because the strands were the paths of ships, not strings; but it worked the same way. She snatched up a microphone from the desk. “Tarik!” The word took forever to slide from post-dental, to palatal stop, beside the sounds that danced through her brain now. She barked at the Navigators beside her: “Calli, Mollya, Ron, coordinate the battle area for me.”
“Huh?” said Calli. “All right.” He began to adjust the dial of the stellarimeter in his palm. Slow motion, she thought. They’re all moving in slow motion. She knew what should be done, must be done, and watched the situation changing.
“Rydra Wong, Tarik is occupied,” came the Butcher’s gravelly voice.
Calli said over his shoulder: “Coordinates 3-B, 41-F, and 9-K. Pretty quick, huh?”
It seemed she’d asked for them an hour ago. “Butcher, did you get those coordinates down? Now look in…twenty-seven seconds a cruiser will pass through—” She gave a three-number location. “Hit it with your closest neurotics.” While she waited for a response, she saw where the next hit must lie. “Forty seconds off, starting—eight, nine, ten, now, an Invader cruiser will pass through—” another location—“Get it with whatever’s nearest. Is the first ship out of commission?”
“Yes, Captain Wong.”
Her amazement and relief took no breath. At least the Butcher was listening; she gave the coordinates of three more ships in the “web.” “Now hit them straight on and watch things fall apart!”
As she put the microphone down, Tarik’s voice announced: “Advance for group therapy!”
The yellow spider-boats surged into the darkness again. Where there should have been Invaders, there were empty holes; where there should have been reinforcements, there was confusion. First one, then another, red cruiser fled its position.
The yellow lights were through. The flare of a vibra-blast shattered the red glow of the Invader ship.
Ratt jumped up and down, holding on to Carlos’ and Flop’s shoulder. “Hey, we won!” the midget Reconversion Engineer cried out. “We won!”
The platoon murmured to one another. Rydra felt oddly far away. They talked so slowly, taking such impossible time to say what could be so quickly delineated by a few simple—
“Are you all right, Ca’tain?” Brass put his yellow paw around her shoulder.
She tried to speak, but it came out a grunt. She staggered against his arm.
The Slug had
turned now. “You feel well?” he asked.
“Sssssss,” and realized that she didn’t know how to say it in Babel-17. Her mouth bit into the shape and feel of English. “Sick,” she said. “Jesus, I feel…sick.”
As she said it, the dizziness passed.
“Maybe you better lie down,” the Slug suggested.
She shook her head. The tenseness in her shoulders and back, the nausea was leaving. “No. I’m all right. I just got a little too excited, I think.”
“Sit down a minute,” Brass said, letting her lean against the desk. But she pushed herself upright.
“Really, I’m okay now.” She took a deep breath. “See?” She pulled from under Brass’s arm. “I’m going to take a walk. I’ll feel better then.” Still unsteady, she started away. She felt their wariness to let her go, but suddenly she wanted to be somewhere else. She continued across the gallery floor.
Her breath got back to normal when she reached the upper levels. Then, from six different directions, hallways joined with rolling ramps to descend toward other floors. She stopped, confused over which way to take, then turned at a sound.
A group of Tarik’s crew was crossing the corridor. The Butcher, among them, paused to lean against the door frame. He grinned at her, seeing her confusion, and pointed to the right. She didn’t feel like speaking, so merely smiled and touched her forehead in salute. As she started toward the right-hand ramp, the meaning behind his grin surprised her. There was the pride of their joint success (which had allowed her to remain silent), yes; and a direct pleasure at offering her his wordless aid. But that was all. The expected amusement over someone who had lost her way was missing. Its presence would not have annoyed her. But its absence charmed. Also it fit the angular brutality she had watched before, as well as the great animal grace of him.
She was still smiling when she reached the commons.
2
SHE LEANED ON THE catwalk railing to watch the activity in the cradle of the loading dock curving below. “Slug, take the kids down to give a hand with those carter-winches. Tarik said they could use some help.”