Dhalgren

by Samuel R. Delany

  He started down the alley, running his hand on the stone and occasionally glancing up for the imaginary gunman to lean out a window and blast straight down.

  There's nobody in there, he thought.

  There's nobody coming up behind me-

  At the end of the block something-moved? No, it was a shadow between two parked trucks.

  "Hey," somebody said directly across the alley in a voice just under normal. "What the fuck you think you doin', huh?"

  He bruised his shoulder on the wall, then came away, rubbing it.

  A thick shoulder pushed from behind a metal door across the alley. "Don't get excited." Half of Nightmare's face emerged. Kid could see half the mouth speaking: "But when I count three, you get your ass over here so fast I wanna see smoke. One. Two . . ." The visible eye rose to look somewhere up the department store wall, looked back down. "Three."

  Nightmare caught Kid's arm, and the memory of traversed pavement was battered out by bruises on his back, knee, and jaw-"Hey, man, you don't have to-" as Nightmare snatched him through the quarter-opened doorway.

  He was in four-fifths darkness with a lot of people breathing.

  "God damn," Nightmare said. "I mean Jesus Christ."

  He said, "You don't have to break my head," softer than he'd started to.

  Somebody very black in a vinyl vest, laughed loudly. For a moment he thought it was Dragon Lady, but it was a man.

  Nightmare made some disgusted sound. The laugh cut off.

  Nightmare's scarred shoulder (it was the first thing Kid saw as his eyes cleared of the dark) hid half of Denny's face as the door had hidden half of Nightmare's. The other faces were darker. "You don't think so?" Nightmare still held Kid's arm. With his other hand, he grabbed Kid's hair-"Hey!"-and marched him around 180 degrees: Kid's face came up against wire, behind some dirty glass, and behind that was-

  "Now look up there."

  Kid focused outside the dirty window on the second story of the department store.

  "You lookin' good?"

  -was a window where gold letters arched: New Fashions. And behind them, a man, with a rifle in one hand, scratched his thin neck under the too large collar of his blue sports shirt, then ambled on.

  "Now what-" with sweetness-"the hell are you doing here?" Nightmare yanked Kid's head back from the window before he let go. "Come on. Tell me now."

  "I just-" pain sat in him blankly as anxiety-"was coming by and-" Pain subsided.

  "I should break your head open, you know?"

  "Hey, man, you-"

  "Shut up, Copperhead," Nightmare said.

  The big, bearded, redhead spade leaned in the corner. "-you don't have to do that," he finished. "I'll do it for you, if you want." He nodded at Kid in damped recognition. "Give 'im to me."

  "Fuck off." Nightmare waved a peremptory fist. "You just come by, huh? We been planning this three months and you just come by?"

  "Well, Pepper told me you guys were maybe down here-"

  Nightmare sucked some more. "We been planning-"

  "I got him," Denny said. "Let him go with us. He won't hurt nothing. I'll tell him what to do."

  Nightmare glanced questioningly over his shoulder.

  "Sure," Denny insisted.

  In his corner, Copperhead turned his stick up behind his arm.

  "He can go with my group," Denny repeated. "He won't get in the way."

  Kid thought, unsure: Three against two.

  Once more Nightmare flung round his fist; and growled.

  "Come on," Denny said. "You come with me."

  "You don't let him mess up anything!" Nightmare admonished with his chin.

  "Yeah. The Kid'll be okay."

  "He'd better be."

  "He's a good guy, Nightmare. Come on, you said he was a good guy yourself."

  Nightmare growled once more.

  Kid stepped by him, tried and failed not to look at Copperhead. Copperhead blinked and started to smile. Kid decided it was worth his life to fail at anything among them again.

  Denny clapped Kid's arm. "Let's go." He looked around and, louder: "You guys, let's go."

  Some dozen (safer . . .) clustered; and they were walking through another door, following Denny. The hall of some sort of warehouse? Maybe the back corridor of another store? He looked at the faces around him. The real black guy in vinyl looked up from Kid's orchid, blinked, looked away; he wore one too, but in a leather strap.

  "Here," Denny said, primarily to Kid. "We just wait here. You follow us when we go. Don't worry."

  They stopped before another door. A window on one side showed the Emboriky's sandy wall.

  Denny looked over the scorpions with him.

  Kid thought: They top Pepper, I guess.

  Denny folded his arms, leaned beside the window, occasionally looked out.

  Like Copperhead's little blond brother.

  They have a plan, Kid thought, caught in it

  I am not thinking of Lanya.

  One on wet leather, one on grit, his feet tingled. How did I get here? Did I choose to come? I want to control these people. (The tingling reached his head, subsided.) I chose. Observe and go, easy with them. He would ask Denny the details of the plan-began to tingle; so didn't. Observe? But his mind twisted in. Well. What did he think? Nightmare, with all his unreciprocity, he liked. Copperhead was efficient and detestable, a combination intriguing because, in his experience, it was unusual. Denny? Astounded, he realized: Denny had given him the clothes he wore, had first lopped the obtrusive d from his name, and now had him in custody. He squinted at two of the black guys leaning by the window (Denny glanced at Kid, at the floor, out the window) in webbed shadow. Nightmare's lieutenant . . . He tried to review the faces left at the hall's end; there were more than three women in the group. Prompted by the bus ride, he mused on Fenster's population percentages: What percentage were black? George? Waiting, chained and flowered (he'd seen half a dozen knives), I don't want to individualize them. Rather deal in their mass than texture. (Priest, Anthrax, Lady of Spain-these names had already been whispered around him: Devastation, Glass (the black in vinyl), California, Filament, Revelation (blond as Bunny but with brutally red skin), Angel, Dollar, D-t.) Fight that. Some two dozen strung down this grey in grey, waiting: there are probably more here who have killed by accident than by intent. That makes them dangerous. What do they become?

  "That thing work?" Denny pointed to Kid's shield.

  "No battery."

  Denny shook his head, aping Nightmare's disgust. "You stay with me, then."

  Either the people or the situation is boring. But either the situation or the people are intriguing. I cannot fix the distinction. Nor, having chosen, would it be useful. Again, I am somewhere where the waiting is more instructive than initial or terminal action. Not thinking of Lanya entails: Her green blinking when something I do surprises her, her expression (it always seems sad) seconds before laughter when something I do amuses. Is this like forgetting a name? I want to be among these people. (Where would she have gone?) It is difficult, because it grosses so little, to consider that I don't want to be with her. But these, who chew their teeth and shuffle, and engage in interesting waiting: what is their plan? Not so much afraid of what I don't know about what they do; the cool, absorptive fear I used to feel before stealing books and comics from corner kiosks, shoplifting small compasses and ornamental bullets from army-navy surplus stores.

  A long time later, a long way away, someone whistled.

  While Denny said, "Come on," everybody moved.

  The doors flapped.

  They ran across the street; scorpions were running up the alley. "In here!" was steps down and a metal door in the Emboriky's side. Kid thought: Grains struggling through the stricture of an hour-glass. He watched Denny three steps before him, paused when Denny paused (at the bottom of more steps) quickened after him (Worlds within worlds: I am in a different world.) At the first landing, Denny motioned the others ahead, glanced to make sure Kid was
still behind him (Plans, completed and synchronized, sketched floor layouts, schedules for the changing guard-he hadn't seen anyone who looked that intelligent), then pulled a heavier chain from his neck and wound two lengths around his fist. "This way." The others' footsteps faded above them as they went from the army drab stairwell through a doorway.

  Kid pulled his orchid from his belt loop (the loop, worn from the blade, snapped) and fitted his wrist into the harness. "What's in here?"

  "Nothin'," Denny said. "I hope."

  The short hall ended on a room full of cardboard boxes. (The wrapping paper in Apartment 19-B. Why?) They had fallen from half-stacked shelves, they covered the floor; they had been pushed into piles and had fallen again.

  "What are we doing, huh?" Kid asked.

  "Keeping our asses out of trouble," Denny said. "They wanna run around and get shot at, you got more brains than that. The store's eight stories high. Covers the whole block. We figure there's maybe ten, fifteen people in here. I think we're on the mezzanine." He glanced back again. "I hope."

  They stepped out into darkness that became three-quarter dark. Kid sniffed. Something had burned in here too. His arm brushed hanging plastic. They snuck through racks of shower curtains, into bathmats and accessories.

  "Sure this is the mezzanine?"

  "The railing should be over there."

  "You been in here before?"

  "Keep it down," Denny said. "No. But I talked to somebody who has."

  "What-" Kid whispered: "What is Nightmare trying to do in here?"

  Denny looked back again. "You think he knows? This is a run!"

  They reached towels. By an overturned counter, they walked across mounds of terrycloth. The cool, charred dark stopped at a glass balcony rail with a brass bar. There was light up from below; leaning out ("Hey, watch it," Denny said, "somebody might be down there.") Kidd could not see its source.

  There're people in here, Kid thought. There're people in here, walking around with guns! He looked over the balcony, down at counters and the paths between where grey ribbons of light lay over riotous indistinguisha-bles.

  Some one, some two scorpions ran out among them.

  Denny took Kid's shoulder.

  Three more, like mazed mice, zagged through the aisles.

  "Hey, what the hell do you people think you're-" shouted by somebody who sounded like he was in a stairwell.

  Five heads, deployed among lingerie and watchbands, swiveled. Two of the scorpions went on like flash bulbs- a rooster and some sort of baby dinosaur.

  Kid pulled back from the light. Denny was looking up, suddenly aware that they both now had shadows swinging across the ceiling.

  "Douse your God-damn lights!" which was Nightmare.

  The gun-clap filled the double story. The echo settled.

  Some flat reflex that held neither fear nor excitement took him back from the rail (for a moment he saw Denny's excited, frightened face) among the dark displays. Then Denny was behind him.

  "Hey, they got in! Hey, they God-damn got in-"

  "Mark?" A woman. "Mark? Mark, what's down there ..."

  "You get back! Did they get in? You didn't see-"

  Echo botched all meaning in a fourth, fricative voice.

  Someone nearer tried to interrupt: "What are you-? Why don't you-? Hey, look ..."

  "I saw their lights! For God's sakes, I saw their lights! Somebody called out, too. I saw . . ."

  Draped plastic dragged Kid's shoulder. And the woman standing behind it shook the rifle at them, said, "Hhhhhhhhaa . . ." and started walking backward.

  Mutually, Kid thought, paralyzed with terror.

  But Denny wasn't paralyzed. He grabbed his shield projector and disappeared in light.

  Neither was the woman. She staggered backward, in the sudden glare and fired somewhere between them. The rifle gave a breathy crack, and Kid recognized her green dress: it was the woman, Lynn, he'd sat next to, his last visit to the Richards'. Now, squinting, and screaming, she held up the rifle to block the light. On the handle, lit by Denny's shield, in four-color decalcomania, Red Rider smiled at Little Beaver, surrounded by a yellow lariat. The air-pump rattled. A bee-bee in the eye, he mused: And lunged.

  He thought she would throw the gun at him.

  But she held it, and when she didn't let go on the second jerk (the blades of the orchid clicked on the barrel he grasped), he turned it hard and kicked her. She jerked her twisted hands away, shook them, turned. He smacked her shoulder with the rifle butt, and she dodged in darkness.

  He turned, mainly to see what Denny was:

  A ten-foot blob of light, colorful and disfocused, ran into itself like an amoeba erupting.

  It went out, and Denny's hand came down from his neck. Kid pushed the bee-bee gun at him. "What the hell," he whispered, "are you supposed to be?" The fear made him laugh.

  Waving the gun, they stalked through the mezzanine shadows.

  "Huh?"

  "Your shield."

  "Oh. About a month ago, something happened to it. I shorted something, I guess, and the projection grid- it's plastic-melted or something. So it comes out like that. I sort of like it."

  "What did it used to be?" They turned past bolts of fabric.

  Denny gave a confidential whisper. "A frog."

  With the woman, Kid thought all of a sudden, did that really happen?

  People were screaming again. Below, Nightmare cried, "Hey, man, look at that!" and his excited laugh.

  They went into a stairwell: it was pitch-black. Three steps down Kid said, "Wait up-"

  Half a flight down, Denny asked, "What happened?"

  "My sandal strap broke. I lost my sandal." Listening to Denny's breathing, Kid felt around with his feet, on the step above, on the one below.

  Denny suddenly stopped panting and said, "Hey, thank you."

  "I can't find it," Kid said. "Thanks for what?"

  "I guess you saved my life."

  "Huh?"

  "That woman. She would have shot me if she got a chance."

  "Oh." Kid's toes stubbed the wall. "It wasn't anything. She would have shot me too." He thought: a bee-bee gun? Fifteen-year-old Denny was very young all of a sudden. "Damn thing's got to be around here somewhere."

  ' Lemme make a light," Denny said and made one.

  Kid moved to see if his sandal was under his shadow. "Maybe it fell over . . ." He glanced across the bannister. "Look, never mind . . . put that out, will you." The luminous amoeboid collapsed. The stairwell filled up with darkness, to his eyes, and over. "Can you hear anything?"

  The pulsing blot on the black said, tentatively, "No."

  "Come on then." Kid started down.

  "Okay," was whispered in front of him.

  -shot me if she got a chance: would she have if she recognized me? Or would I have wrested the rifle if I hadn't recognized her? (He collided softly with Denny's shoulder.) He thinks I saved his life. What-because he saw light-are they doing out there? Shoulders bumping, they walked into the silent first floor.

  Denny stepped between racks of twilit tweed and corduroy.

  Kid glanced at the figure standing just beyond the doorway beside him (which was, of course, a dressing mirror, in a wooden stand, slightly tilted so that the reflected floor sloped) and-in a gym locker-room, that opened onto the field, someone had once thrown snow at his naked back.

  Looking, he re-experienced (and remembered) the moment from that Vermont winter. Then forgot it, looking at the reflection, trying to recall, now that he had stared for a third, a fourth, a fifth second what had struck him first. He raised his hand (the reflected hand raised), turned his head a little (the head turned a little) took a breath (the reflection breathed); he touched his vest (the reflection touched its khaki shirt) then suddenly raised his hand to knuckle his chin (the reflection's knuckle dug into its full, black beard) and blinked (its eyes blinked behind black plastic glass frames).

  The pants, he thought, the pants are the same! There was a white
thread snaking across the black denim of his thigh. He (and the reflection) picked it warily away, suddenly arching his naked toes on the carpet (the tips of the black engineer boots flexed), then once more raised his hand toward the glass. He opened his fingers (reflected fingers opened), the string dropped (the string dropped).

  Between gnarled knuckles and gnawed nails he looked at the smooth undersides of fingers thinner than his own. (He's taller than I am, Kid thought inanely, taller and stockier.) He reversed his hand, to look at his own palm: the yellowed callous was lined and lined again, deep enough for scars. Between his fingers he saw the backs of fingers with only the slightest hair, only the faintest scar above the middle knuckle and a darkening at the left of the first joint. The reflection's nails, though without moons save the thumbs, were long as his adolescent dreams, and only slightly dirty. He glanced down at the other hand. Where his was caged in blades, the reflection held-his notebook? But the correspondence (he re-Called the church clock with its broken hands) was too banal for relief. Wanting to cry, he gazed full at the face, which, mirroring him twitch to twitch, for all its beard and glasses (and a small brass ring in one ear!) gazed back, with confusion, desperation, and sadness.

  The combination was terrifying.

  "Hey," somebody said, "what you staring at?" grabbed the top of the mirror from the back, and yanked it down. It swiveled between its posts. The lower rim Struck kid's shins.

  Kid reeled.

  "You pickin' your pimples?" Copperhead grinned across the glass, flat now like a table.

  Astonished and angry, Kid lunged forward and brought his free fist down against the mirror's near edge. The far rim tore from Copperhead's loose fingers, scraped his chest, cracked his chin. The mirror drifted down again.

  Roaring and clutching his jaw, Copperhead danced between the clothing racks. "Now what the fuck did you . . . Arggg! Oh, my fuckin' tongue, I think I bit ... Ahhhh! . . ." The third time he looked up, he just blinked.