Ted Chiang - Tower of Babylon

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Ted Chiang, I am told, is a modest and self-effacing young man, but this trait evidently does not incline

him toward modest and self-effacing subjects. The last story of his I read, "Division by Zero," roundly

announces the death of what we're accustomed to calling mathematics. In the Nebula-winning novelette

you're about to experience, some postdiluvian miners break into heaven's anteroom. What will Chiang do

for an encore? A transcript of God's first press conference, complete with equations?

Born and raised in Port Jefferson, New York, Chiang holds a degree in computer science from Brown

University. In 1989 he attended the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop, a program that has

incubated and hatched more of today's functioning SFWA members than all its rivals combined. Since

gracing the pages of Omni with "Tower of Babylon," Chiang has enjoyed sales to Asimov's and Full

Spectrum 3 (source of "Division by Zero").

"The inspiration for this story came during a conversation with a friend," Chiang tells us, "when he

mentioned the version of the Tower of Babel myth he'd been taught in Hebrew school. I knew only the

Old Testament account, and it had never made a big impression on me. But in the full-length version, the

tower is so tall that it takes a year to climb; when a man falls to his death, no one mourns, but when a

brick is dropped, the workers at the top weep because it will take a year to replace it.

"I suppose the original storyteller was questioning the morality of the project. For me, however, the tale

conjured up images of a fantastic city in the sky, reminiscent of Magritte's Castle in the Pyrenees. I was

astonished at the audacity, the chutzpah of the person who had imagined such a thing.

"Readers have commented on the science-fictional way this story extrapolates from a primitive world

view. I must admit I didn't notice that aspect of the story while writing it. (Perhaps because I was acutely

aware of how many scientific laws I was breaking; the Babylonians themselves knew enough physics and

astronomy to recognize this story as utter fantasy.) What I did think was science-fictional about the story

was the rationalistic position it takes on the existence of God. If you believe God exists, you can easily

interpret the universe in a way that supports your belief. But if you believe the universe is purely

mechanistic, you can find abundant evidence for that view too."

Tower of Babylon

TED CHIANG

Were the tower to be laid down across the plain of Shinar, it would be two days' journey to walk from

one end to the other. While the tower stands, it takes a full month and a half to climb from its base to its

summit, if a man walks unburdened. But few men climb the tower with empty hands; the pace of most

men is much slowed by the cart of bricks that they pull behind them. Four months pass between the day

a brick is loaded onto a cart and the day it is taken off to form a part of the tower.

Hillalum had spent all his life in Elam, and knew Babylon only as a buyer of Elam's copper. The copper

ingots were carried on boats that traveled down the Karun to the Lower Sea, headed for the Euphrates.

Hillalum and the other miners traveled overland, alongside a merchant's caravan of loaded onagers. They

walked along a dusty path leading down from the plateau, across the plains, to the green fields sectioned

by canals and dikes.

None of them had seen the tower before. It became visible when they were still leagues away: a line as

thin as a strand of flax, wavering in the shimmering air, rising up from the crust of mud that was Babylon

itself. As they drew closer, the crust grew into the mighty city walls, but all they saw was the tower.

When they did lower their gazes to the level of the river plain, they saw the marks the tower had made

outside the city; the Euphrates itself now flowed at the bottom of a wide, sunken bed, dug to provide clay

for bricks. To the south of the city could be seen rows upon rows of kilns, no longer burning.

As they approached the city gates, the tower appeared more massive than anything Hillalum had ever

imagined: a single column that must have been as large around as an entire temple, yet it rose so high that

it shrank into invisibility. All of them walked with their heads tilted back, squinting in the sun.

Hillalum's friend Nanni prodded him with an elbow, awestruck. "We're to climb that? To the top?"

"Going up to dig. It seems… unnatural."

The miners reached the central gate in the western wall, where another caravan was leaving. While they

crowded forward into the narrow strip of shade provided by the wall, their foreman Beli shouted to the

gatekeepers who stood atop the gate towers. "We are the miners summoned from the land of Elam."

The gatekeepers were delighted. One called back, "You are the ones who are to dig through the vault of

heaven?"

"We are."

The entire city was celebrating. The festival had begun eight days ago, when the last of the bricks were

sent on their way, and would last two more. Every day and night, the city rejoiced, danced, feasted.

Along with the brickmakers were the cart pullers, men whose legs were roped with muscle from climbing

the tower. Each morning a crew began its ascent; they climbed for four days, transferred their loads to

the next crew of pullers, and returned to the city with empty carts on the fifth. A chain of such crews led

all the way to the top of the tower, but only the bottommost celebrated with the city. For those who lived

upon the tower, enough wine and meat had been sent up earlier to allow a feast to extend up the entire

pillar.

In the evening, Hillalum and the other Elamite miners sat upon clay stools before a long table laden with

food, one table among many laid out in the city square. The miners spoke with the pullers, asking about

the tower.

Nanni said, "Someone told me that the bricklayers who work at the top of the tower wail and tear their

hair when a brick is dropped, because it will take four months to replace, but no one takes notice when a

man falls to his death. Is that true?"

One of the more talkative pullers, Lugatum, shook his head. "Oh no, that is only a story. There is a

continuous caravan of bricks going up the tower; thousands of bricks reach the top each day. The loss of

a single brick means nothing to the bricklayers." He leaned over to them. "However, there is something

they value more than a man's life: a trowel."

"Why a trowel?"

"If a bricklayer drops his trowel, he can do no work until a new one is brought up. For months he cannot

earn the food that he eats, so he must go into debt. The loss of a trowel is cause for much wailing. But if a

man falls, and his trowel remains, men are secretly relieved. The next one to drop his trowel can pick up

the extra one and continue working without incurring debt."

Hillalum was appalled, and for a frantic moment he tried to count how many picks the miners had

brought. Then he realized. "That cannot be true. Why not have spare trowels brought up? Their weight

would be nothing against all the bricks that go up there. And surely the loss of a man means a serious

delay, unless they have an extra man at the top who is skilled at bricklaying. Without such a man, they

must wait for another one to climb from the bottom."

All of the pullers roared with laughter. "We cannot fool this one," Lugatum said with much amusement.

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