Babel-17 Part 1 Chapter 3: When Language Becomes a Weapon

So the last two chapters gave us Rydra Wong, famous poet and linguist, getting pulled into a military code-cracking mission. She figured out that Babel-17 is connected to upcoming attacks. And now she needs a ship and a crew. By morning.

This chapter is pure adventure. And honestly, it is one of the most fun chapters in the book so far.

Dragging Customs Along for the Ride

Rydra shows up at the Customs Office with orders signed by General Forester. She needs a crew approved, and she needs it now. The Customs Officer, Danil D. Appleby, is not happy about any of this. He is a paperwork guy. He lives inside rules and regulations. And Rydra is about to pull him into the wildest night of his life.

She basically drags him out of his office and into the streets of Transport Town. And Transport Town is something else.

Think of the roughest port city you can imagine. Now add cosmetic surgery that turns people into dragons, sphinxes, and creatures with jeweled skin. That is where they are heading. At night.

Transport Town After Dark

Here is the thing about Delany’s world-building in this chapter. He does not stop and explain everything. He just drops you into it.

You meet Lome, a retired pilot with ebony skin and jewels set into his chest and face. He has membrane wings on his arms. He is at least 120 years old and has not had a real pilot job in 40 years. But he knows everyone and everything that happens in Transport Town.

The Customs Officer is terrified of him. Rydra treats him like an old friend. And that contrast tells you so much about both characters. Rydra moves through this world like she belongs. The Officer moves through it like he is walking on broken glass.

Delany uses the Customs Officer as our stand-in here. He is the normal person seeing all this wild stuff for the first time. Every time something weird happens, Appleby reacts the way most of us would. “But that’s illegal!” “But he’s so weird!” “What in five hells?”

And Rydra keeps brushing off his fear. “Scared?” she asks when he hesitates about walking through Transport Town at night. She is fearless. Or maybe she just understands people well enough to know who is actually dangerous and who is not.

The Wrestling Match

So Rydra needs a pilot. And in this world, you judge a pilot by watching him wrestle.

That sounds strange. But here is how it works. In the ship, the pilot’s nervous system connects directly to the controls. Flying through hyperstasis is literally wrestling with the ship. So if you watch a pilot wrestle in zero gravity, you can see exactly how good they will be behind the controls.

Brass is the pilot Rydra wants. He looks like a ten-foot lion. Saber teeth, brass claws, a mane, the whole deal. All cosmetic surgery, of course. But his appearance is intimidating enough to make the Customs Officer grab Calli’s shoulder when things get intense.

The wrestling match happens in a fifty-foot smoke-filled globe hanging from the ceiling of an underground bar. Brass fights the Silver Dragon, a woman who looks like, well, a silver dragon with wings and scales. They grapple in zero gravity, bouncing off the walls.

The rules are simple. If you throw your opponent against the wall and only touch the far wall with one limb yourself, that is a fall. Two out of three wins.

Brass wins. And Rydra has her pilot.

Building the Crew

But a pilot is not enough. Rydra also picks up Calli, a Navigator-Two, and Ron, a Navigator-Three. They are part of a broken “triple,” which is a three-person relationship that is both professional and personal.

And here Delany does something interesting. The triple is romantic. Two guys and a girl, working together and loving each other. The girl, Cathy O’Higgins, was killed by Invaders. Calli and Ron are still grieving.

When the Customs Officer calls them “perverts” for their triple relationship, both navigators just look hurt. Ron says, “There are some jobs on a Transport Ship you just can’t give to two people alone. The jobs are too complicated.”

And Rydra, always reading people, forces the Officer to say what he actually feels underneath his judgment. Turns out it is, “I’m sorry for you.”

“I’m sorry for you too,” Calli replies.

This was published in 1966. Delany was writing about polyamorous, non-traditional relationships in science fiction at a time when that was pretty radical. And he does it without making a big deal of it. These are just people. They love each other. They lost someone. That is the story.

The Discorporate Sector

The crew still needs an Eye, Ear, and Nose. These are dead people. Literally dead.

In this future, some jobs on transport ships are so dangerous that living humans cannot do them. So they use “discorporate” souls, people who died and got called back as energy patterns. They can handle the hyperstasis frequencies that would kill a living person.

The Discorporate Sector is where these dead people hang out. Metal turrets, crossing wires, pylons of bluish light. And flickering ghost-like figures that you can see but can’t quite remember once you look away.

“The faces,” the Customs Officer whispers. “As soon as you look away, you can’t remember what they look like.”

That detail stuck with me. Delany does not just say “there are ghosts.” He gives you this specific, creepy detail about how memory fails around them. It makes the whole thing feel real.

What This Chapter Is Really About

On the surface, this is a crew recruitment chapter. Rydra needs people, she goes and finds them. Simple enough.

But underneath, Delany is showing you how Rydra reads people. She watches Ron’s body move while Brass wrestles and reads his entire analysis from his muscle reactions. She picks crew members not just for skill but for compatibility. She reads emotions off faces and bodies the way other people read words off a page.

This is the language theme again. Rydra understands communication at a level that goes beyond words. Body language, muscle tension, emotional undercurrents. She processes all of it.

And the Customs Officer is changing, too. He started the night buttoned up in his jacket and vest, afraid of everything. By the end, he is shirtless in a bar, grabbing Calli’s shoulder during a wrestling match, and telling grieving navigators that he is sorry for their loss. Rydra pulled him out of his comfort zone, and he found something human on the other side.

For a chapter that is basically “let’s go hire some people,” there is a lot happening here.

This is post 4 of 19 in the Babel-17 retelling series.

Previous: Part 1, Ch 2: Assembling the Crew Next: Part 1, Ch 4-6: Dreams and Departure