Babel-17

by Samuel R. Delany

Tides, Rydra thought. Oceans. Hyperstasis currents. Or the movement of people in a large room. She drifted along the least resistant ways that pulsed open, then closed as someone moved to meet someone, to get a drink, to leave a conversation. Then there was a corner, a spiral stair. She climbed, pausing as she came around the second turn to watch the crowd beneath. There was a double door ajar at the top, a breeze. She stepped outside. Violet had been replaced by artful, cloud-streaked purple. Soon the planetoid’s chromadome would simulate night. Moist vegetation lipped the railing. At one end, the vines had completely covered the white stone. “Captain?” Ron, shadowed and brushed with leaves, sat in the corner of the balcony, hugging his knees. Skin is not silver, she thought, yet whenever I see him that way, curled up in himself, I picture a knot of white metal. He lifted his chin from his kneecaps and put his back against the verdant hedge so there were leaves in his corn-silk hair. “What’re you doing?” “Too many people.” She nodded, watching him press his shoulders downward, watching his triceps leap on the bone, then still. With each breath in the young gnarled body, the tiny movements sang to her. She listened to the singing for nearly half a minute while he watched her, sitting still, yet always the tiny entrancements. The rose on his shoulder whispered against the leaves. When she had listened to the muscular music awhile, she asked: “Trouble between you, Mollya, an...