Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany Read Free Book Online

caught his breath as another passed.
    "You can't remember!" He stared after them.
    "Dead?" He shook his head. "You know I've been approving psyche-indices on Transport workers corporate and discorporate for ten years. And I've never been close enough to speak to a discorporate soul; Oh, I've seen pictures and occasionally passed one of the less fantastic on the street. But this . . ."
    "There's some jobs"--Calli's voice was as heavy with alcohol as his shoulders with muscle—"Some jobs on a Transport Ship you just can't give to a live human being."
    "I know, I know," said the Customs Officer. "So you use dead ones."
    "That's right." Calli nodded. "Like the Eye, Ear, and Nose, A live human scanning all that goes on in those hyperstasis frequencies would—well, die first, and go crazy second."
    "I do know the theory," the Customs Officer stated sharply.
    Calli suddenly cupped the Officer's cheek in his hand and pulled him close to his own pocked face. "You don't know anything. Customs." The tone was of their first exchange in the cafe. "Aw, you hide in your Customs cage, cage hid in the safe gravity of Earth, Earth held firm by the sun, sun fixed headlong toward Vega, all in the predicted tide of this spiral  arm—'' He gestured across night where the Milky Way would run over a less bright city. "And you never break free!" Suddenly he pushed the little spectacled red head away. "Ehhh! You have nothing to say to me!"
    The bereaved navigator caught a guy cable slanting from support to concrete. It twanged. The low note set something loose in the Officer's throat which reached his mouth with the metal taste of outrage.
    He would have spat it, but Rydra's copper eyes were now as close to his face as the hostile, pitted visage had been.
    She said; "He was part," the words lean, calm, her eyes intent on not losing his, "of a triple, a close, precarious, emotional and sexual relation with two other people. And one of them has just died."
    The edge of her tone hued away the bulk of the Officer's anger; but a sliver escaped him: "Perverts!"
    Ron put his head to the side, his musculature showing clear the double of hurt and bewilderment. "There're some jobs," he echoed Calli's syntax, "some jobs on a Transport Ship you just can't give to two people alone. The jobs are too complicated."
    "I know." Then he thought, I've hurt the boy, too. Calli leaned on a girder. Something else was working in the Officer's mouth,
    "You have something to say," Rydra said.
    Surprise that she knew prized his lips. He looked from Calli to Ron, back. "I'm sorry for you."
    Calli's brows raised, then returned, his expression settling. "I'm sorry for you too."
    Brass reared. "There's a transfer conclave about a quarter of a mile down in the medium energy states. That would attract the sort of Eye, Ear and Nose you want for Specelli." He grinned at the Officer through his fangs. "That's one of your illegal sections. The hallucination count goes way u', and some cor'orate egos can't handle it. But most sane 'eo'le don't have any 'roblem."
    "If it's illegal, I'd just as soon wait right here," the Customs Officer said. "You can just come back and pick me up. I'll approve their indices then."
    Rydra nodded. Calli threw one arm around the waist of the ten-foot pilot, the other around Ron's shoulder. "Come on. Captain, if you want to get your crew by morning."
    "If we don't find what we want in an hour, we'll be back anyway," she said.
    The Customs Officer watched them move away between the slim towers —

IV
    —Recall from broken banks the color of earth breaking into clear pool water her eyes; the figure blinking her eyes and speaking.
    He said: "An Officer, ma'am. A Customs Officer."
    Surprise at her witty return, at first hurt, then amusement following. He answered: "About ten years. How long have you been discorporate?"
    And she moved closer to him, her hair holding the  recalled odor of. And the sharp transparent features reminding him of. More words from