Babel-17 Part 5, Ch 1-2: Enter Markus T'mwarba

We have a new part, a new name in the title, and a new point of view. Part 5 is called “Markus T’mwarba.” If you’ve been following along, you might remember that name. Dr. T’mwarba is Rydra Wong’s psychiatrist. He’s been mentioned a few times, but we’ve never met him directly.

Now he takes center stage. And right away, things are moving fast.

Chapter I: The Package

A spool of tape, a military directive from General Forester, and one very angry psychiatrist all arrive at the office of a customs officer named Danil D. Appleby within thirty seconds of each other.

Dr. T’mwarba is furious. The Butcher told the crew to send him a tape containing a grammar of Babel-17. Special delivery. But it got held up in customs. T’mwarba, being the kind of man who doesn’t wait patiently, crashes through the door and demands his package.

What follows is a really fun scene. Appleby, the customs officer, recognizes T’mwarba’s name from psychiatric research. He also happens to be a huge fan of Rydra Wong. Turns out Rydra once took him to Transport Town for an evening that changed his life.

The deal is simple. Forester’s directive says T’mwarba can have the tape, but only if he flies to Alliance Headquarters tonight on the Midnight Falcon. T’mwarba agrees. But first, Appleby wants to make a quick stop.

The Dragon in the Shoulder

And here Delany gives us one of those wonderful, weird little detours that make this book so alive.

Appleby takes T’mwarba to a place called Plastiplasm Plus. Their slogan: “Addendums, Superscripts, and Footnotes to the Beautiful Body.” It’s a cosmetic surgery shop. But not the nose-job kind. This is the future. People get all kinds of modifications.

Appleby has always wanted a miniature dragon implanted in his shoulder. A tiny thing, less than two inches, with jeweled eyes and opalescent wings. When connected to his nervous system, he’ll be able to make it whistle, hiss, roar, flap its wings, and spit sparks.

The surgeon installs it into a transparent cage built into his shoulder joint. The whole procedure takes a few minutes. It’s casual. Routine. The doctor tells him the dragon might “just burp and look seasick” for the first few days until his body adjusts.

I love this scene because it tells you so much about Delany’s world without any exposition dumps. Body modification is normal. It’s like getting a tattoo. People walk around with wings, scales, feathers. The customs officer is nervous about it the way someone might be nervous about getting their first piercing. “Do you think there’s anything psychologically off about wanting something like this?” he asks. T’mwarba, being a psychiatrist, assures him it’s perfectly healthy.

What Appleby Reveals

Over dinner, Appleby opens up about Rydra. He only met her once, when she was assembling a crew. But that one evening changed something in him.

“I saw a bunch of the weirdest, oddest people I have ever met in my life,” he says. “Who thought different, and acted different, and even made love different. And they made me laugh, and get angry, and be happy, and be sad, and excited, and even fall in love a little. And they didn’t seem to be so weird or strange anymore.”

T’mwarba asks: “Communication was working that night?”

And Appleby says yes. That’s what Rydra does. She makes communication work. She connects people across worlds.

It’s a small moment, but it tells you exactly what the book is about. Language, communication, connection. Rydra doesn’t just study languages. She uses them to bridge gaps between people who otherwise would never understand each other.

Appleby is a lonely man in a city of lonely men. He came back to Transport Town hoping to feel that connection again. He didn’t find it. But he keeps coming back anyway.

Chapter II: Who Is In Rydra’s Body?

T’mwarba arrives at Alliance Headquarters and goes straight to General Forester. Where is Rydra? What happened to her?

The General tells him something disturbing. There’s a woman in his office, and a man. The woman has Rydra Wong’s body. Fingerprints, metabolic rates, retina patterns, all confirmed. But it isn’t Rydra. Not the same person who talked to the General about Babel-17.

T’mwarba rushes in. He puts his fists on his hips and tests her: “All right, what am I about to say to you?”

She says: “Non comprehension.”

And T’mwarba, who has known Rydra since she was twelve years old, sees instantly that this is not her. Not because of how she looks. Because of all the tiny details she taught him to read. Breathing patterns. How she holds her hands. The way her shoulders sit. Every signature of her personality is gone. He says it’s worse than scars or disfigurements.

Then something incredible happens. The woman’s face suddenly comes alive. Her hands move the way Rydra’s hands move. She leans forward and starts talking fast: “Mocky, am I glad you got here.”

It’s Rydra. But she can only sustain it for a moment. She’s surfacing from inside whatever Babel-17 has done to her, just long enough to deliver a message.

She tells T’mwarba: Babel-17 is like Onoff, Algol, Fortran. Old computer programming languages. She is telepathic after all, she’s just learned to control it. They’ve stopped the sabotage attempts. But they’re prisoners. And if T’mwarba wants to help, he needs to forget about who she is and figure out who the Butcher is.

Then the animation leaves. She’s back to that empty, mechanical state.

The Butcher’s Trail

T’mwarba asks the General about the Butcher. The report shows five years of criminal activity. Thievery, strong arm work, murders, a bank robbery, two years in prison at Titin, an escape through the Specelli Snap. Before December ‘61, the Butcher doesn’t seem to have existed at all.

But here’s what catches Forester’s attention. He pulls out another folder. The Butcher’s travel history matches exactly with a series of sabotage “accidents” connected to Babel-17 transmissions. Kreto, Earth, Minos, Callisto, Aleppo, Rhea, Olympia, Paradise, Dis. Every planet the Butcher visited had an “accident.”

And during the two years the Butcher was locked up in Titin? No accidents at all.

This looks very bad for the Butcher. But T’mwarba pushes back. The Butcher is important. Important to Rydra. And if he’s responsible for all those Babel-17 attacks, then in his own way, he’s as extraordinary as she is.

Rydra said the key is figuring out who the Butcher was before the amnesia. Before Babel-17 erased his identity. She said to look at the end of the tape.

T’mwarba asks to see the crew. There’s more to learn. And whoever the Butcher really is, finding out might be the only way to save them all.

What Delany Is Doing Here

I want to point out something clever about the structure. We’ve just spent all of Part 4 inside the most intimate, intense experience of the whole book, the mind-fusion between Rydra and the Butcher. Raw emotion. Pure thought.

Now Delany pulls us completely outside. We’re seeing everything from the perspective of people who weren’t there. T’mwarba. Appleby. The General. They’re trying to piece together what happened from clues, reports, and a woman who can barely speak.

It’s like the difference between being inside a burning building and standing outside trying to figure out why there’s smoke. The contrast is deliberate. And it makes you feel, deeply, what Babel-17 has cost Rydra. We saw her alive and brilliant just one chapter ago. Now she says “non comprehension” like a broken machine.

That’s what this language does. It gives you power, but it takes away the person using it.

This is post 16 of 19 in the Babel-17 retelling series.

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