Babel-17

by Samuel R. Delany

“Why did you leave?” “I’ve given you two reasons. A third is simply that when I mastered the knack, I wanted to use it for my own purposes. At nineteen, I quit the Military and, well, got…married, and started writing seriously. Three years later my first book came out.” She shrugged, smiled. “For anything after that, read the poems. It’s all there.” “And on the worlds of five galaxies, now, people delve your imagery and meaning for the answers to the riddles of language, love, and isolation.” The three words jumped his sentence like vagabonds on a boxcar. She was before him, and was talking; here, divorced from the military, he felt desperately isolated; and he was desperately in…No! That was impossible and ridiculous and too simple to explain what coursed and pulsed behind his eyes, inside his hands. “Another drink?” Automatic defense. But she will take it for automatic politeness. Will she? The bartender came, left. “The worlds of five galaxies,” she repeated. “That’s so strange. I’m only twenty-six.” Her eyes fixed somewhere behind the mirror. She was only half-through her first drink. “By the time Keats was your age, he was dead.” She shrugged. “This is an odd epoch. It takes heroes very suddenly, very young, then drops them just as quickly.”