Dhalgren

by Samuel R. Delany

  "No. But it's comforting to consider all this the result of something organized. On the other hand, it could just be another ecological catastrophe. Maybe somebody filled in our swamp by mistake."

  "What swamp?"

  "By every big city there's always some sort of large swamp nearby, usually of about the same area. It keeps the smog down, supplies most of the oxygen, and half a dozen other absolutely essential things. New York has the Jersey Flats, San Francisco, the whole mudded-out Oakland edge of the Bay. You fill the swamp in, the smog goes up, the sewage problem gets out of hand, and the city becomes unlivable. No way to avoid it. I think it's fair to say most people would find this unlivable."

  Kid sniffed. "We sure got enough smog." The blades at his belt tickled the hair on his inner forearm. The chain that wrapped him had worked down so that it rugged across the back of his left hip at every other step. He reached under his vest and moved it with his thumb. "Do you think that's what happened to Bellona?" Some day I'll die, turned irrelevantly through his mind: Death and artichokes. Heaviness filled his ribs; he rubbed his chest for the reassuring systolic and diastolic thumps. Not that I really think it might stop, he thought: only that it hasn't just yet. Sometimes (he thought), I wish I couldn't feel it. (Someday, it will stop.)

  "Actually," Tak was saying, "I suspect the whole thing is science fiction."

  "Huh? You mean a time-warp, or a parallel universe?"

  "No, just . . . well, science fiction. Only real. It follows all the conventions."

  "Spaceships, ray-guns, going faster than light? I used to read the stuff, but I haven't seen anything like that around here."

  "Bet you don't read the new, good stuff. Let's see: the Three Conventions of science fiction-" Tak wiped his forehead with his leather sleeve. (Kid thought, inanely: He's polishing his brain.) "First: A single man can change the course of a whole world: Look at Calkins, look at George, look at you! Second: The only measure of intelligence or genius is its linear and practical application: In a landscape like this, what other kind do we even allow to visit? Three: The Universe is an essentially hospitable place, full of earth-type planets where you can crash-land your spaceship and survive long enough to have an adventure. Here in Bellona-"

  "Maybe that's why I don't read more of the stuff than I do," Kid said. He had had his fill of criticism with Newboy; the noise was no longer comforting. "Wasn't there a street lamp working on this block?"

  Tak bulled out the end of his sentence: "-in Bellona you can have anything you want, as long as you can carry it by yourself, or get your friends to."

  "It's funny, not that many people have that much."

  "A comment on the paucity of our imaginations- none at all on the wonders here for the taking. No-it's a comment on the limits of the particular mind the city encourages. Who wants to be as lonely as the acquisition of all those objects would make them? Most people here have spent most of their time someplace else. You learn something from that."

  "You've got more than practically anybody else I know," Kid said.

  "Then you know very few people."

  "Except Mr Calkins." Kid thought about the Richards. "And I don't know him." But Tak had seen Mr Newboy earlier. Tak would know his book was set.

  "There's a whole range between," Tak said. "You've limited your acquaintances to the people who don't want very much. Essentially a religious choice, I suppose. All things considered, I'd say it was a wise one. There are a thousand people-perhaps-in this city."

  "I did meet one family who-"

  "There are many others. And most of them, as Paul Fenster keeps reminding us, are black."

  "George Harrison just told me I should come over and visit him in Jackson."

  Tak beat the darkness with his poster. "There! The whole thing. Paul will tell you, but George will show you, if you give him half a chance." Now Loufer sighed. "I'm afraid I'm still pretty much a verbal type. I'd just as soon be told."

  "And look at posters."

  "And read books. Preferably science fiction. But like I say, Bellona is terribly hospitable. You can have your fantasy and . . . well, besides eating it too, you can also feel just a bit less like you're depriving anyone else of theirs. Home again."

  Kid looked around with blunt thumbs of darkness on his eyes. "We are? Tak, didn't there used to be a street light working at the end of your block?"

  "Went out a few days ago. This way. Watch out for the steps. There's all sorts of junk around."

  Some of it rolled beneath Kid's flexible leather sole. Soft darkness turned hard. The echo from the sound of breath and footsteps changed timbre.

  They went through the hall, went downstairs, went up.

  "First time you were up here," Tak laughed, "I made you park your weapons at the door. Boy, I don't know how some people put up with me."

  The roof door opened on distant, flesh-colored light.

  Where the streets had been hopelessly black, the roof was dusted with nightlight.

  Like two giant hieroglyphs, over-printed and out of register, the bridge's suspension cables rose to twin cusps, then dropped in smoke. No more than one row of buildings away, night water took up the glitter of both street lamps and redder quavering fires. "Hey, it's so close . . ."

  Before him, above the city, shapes unfurled out over the water. He could not see the far shore. It could even have been a sea he gazed at, save for the bridge . . . Above, sky-bits seemed to clear, their clarity, however, unconfirmed by stars.

  "How come it's so close?" He turned from the wall, as the light came on in the shack.

  Tak had already gone inside.

  Kid looked at the warehouses, at the waters between. Joy, sudden and insistent, twisted the muscles of his mouth toward laughter. But he held the sound in with tiny pantings. What swelled inside was made of light. It burst-he blinked and the backs of his lids were blinding -and left a great wave of trust washing inside. Not that I trust that trust for a moment, he thought, grinning. But it was there, and pleasant. He went into the shack. "It's ... it's so clear tonight."

  A tiny solitaire of sadness gleamed in the velvet folds of good feeling.

  "Last time I was up here, Lanya was with me."

  Tak just grunted and turned from his desk. "Have some brandy." But he smiled.

  Kid took the glass and sat on the hard bed. Now Tak unrolled the poster:

  George Harrison as the moon.

  "You got all three now." Kid sipped, with hunched shoulders.

  George in cycle drag was still above the door.

  George in the forest had replaced the Germanic youth.

  Tak rolled his chair to the wall and climbed onto the green cushion. Corner by corner he tugged loose "Spanish boy on the rocks". "Hand me the staple gun?"

  The first poster swayed to the floor.

  Ch-klack, ch-klack, ch-klack, ch-klack, the new moon replaced it.

  Kid sat down again and regarded the three aspects of George over the rim of his glass while Tak got down from the chair. "I . . ." Kid's voice sounded hollow and made something deep in his ear tickle so that he grinned. "You know, I lost five days?" He slid his fingers around the glass till the nubs butted.

  "Where-" Tak put down the stapler, took up the bottle and leaned back against the desk, hands locked on the green neck; the base put a crease in his stomach- "-or would you be telling me if you knew-did you lose them?"

  "I don't know."

  "You look pleased enough about it."

  Kid grunted. "A day now. It takes about as long as an hour used to when I was thirteen or fourteen."

  "And a year takes about as long as a month. Oh yes, I'm familiar with the phenomenon."

  "Most of the time in my life is spent lying around getting ready to fall asleep."

  "That one has been mentioned to me before, but I'm not conscious of it myself."

  "Maybe, somehow, for the last few days, I've just missed out on the sleeping part. There's hardly any change in light around here from morning to evening any
way."

  "You mean the last five days are the ones you can't remember?"

  "Yeah, what have I been up to, anyway? .Lanya . . . said everybody was talking about it."

  "Not everybody. But enough, I suppose."

  "What were they saying?"

  "If you lost those days, I can see why you'd be interested."

  "I'd just like to know what I've been doing."

  Brandy splashed inside the bottle to Tak's laughter. "Maybe you've traded the last five days for your name. Quick, tell me: Who are you?"

  "No." Kid hunched his shoulders more. The feeling that he was being played with wobbled like an unsteady ball on some slanted rim, rolled into the velvet pouch. "I don't know that either."

  "Oh." Tak drank from the bottle, set it back on his belly. "Well, I thought it was worth a try. I suspect it isn't something to be harped on." The brandy swayed. "What have you been doing for the last week? Let me see."

  "I know I was with the scorpions-I met this guy named Pepper. And he turned me on to this department store they were going to try and ... rip off, I guess."

  "So far I'm with you. There was supposed to have been some shooting there? You were supposed to have saved one guy by fighting off somebody with a gun, barehanded. You were supposed to have busted a mirror over the head of another guy who acted up with you-"

  "Under his chin."

  "That's it. Copperhead told me about that himself. And then when another cat named Siam got shot-"

  "Was that his name?"

  "-when Siam got shot, you pulled him off the street and got him into the bus."

  "And you saw me get out of this bus earlier this evening."

  "Copperhead told me about it a couple of days back."

  "Only it happened to me this afternoon, God damn it!" Ashamed, he blinked at his hands. "That's all they said happened? I mean there wasn't anything else?"

  "Sounds to me like enough."

  "What happened to Siam?"

  Tak shrugged. Brandy splashed. "Somebody went to see about him, I remember, from the bar."

  "Madame Brown?"

  "I think that's who it was. But I Haven't heard anything else. For somebody who doesn't remember where he's been, you seem to know as much about it as I do." Tak reached over, dragged the chair to the desk, and sat. He started to put the bottle on the desk, but halted to take a final drink. "You do remember all the things I just told you about actually happening?"

  Kid nodded at his lap. "I've just lost the time, then. I mean, I've lost days before-thought it was Thursday when it was Friday."

  "All we thought, really, was that you'd deserted us to become a full-fledged scorpion. It was cool with me. You sure look like that's what happened. You got your lights and everything."

  Kid focused on the lensed ball hanging against his stomach. "It doesn't work. It needs a new battery."

  "Just a second." Tak opened a desk drawer. "Here you go." He tossed.

  Kidd caught it in both hands: bunched lightning on red and blue.

  "Turn yourself on sometime."

  "Thanks." Wanting to talk longer, he put the battery in his pocket, noting the cloth was frayed enough at the bottom seam to feel flesh through it with his fingers. "Tak, you really think you got the city figured out?"

  "Me?"

  "You were telling me how it follows those conventions-"

  Tak laughed, and wiped his mouth with his wrist. "No, not me. I don't understand anything about it. I'm a God-damn engineer. I take a plug; I put it in one socket; and it works. I put it in another one; and it doesn't. I go into an office building and one elevator works, and only the lights on the top floor. That's impossible, by anything I know about. I go down a street: buildings are burning. I go down the same street the next day. They're still burning. Two weeks later, I go down the same street and nothing looks like it's been burned at all. Maybe time is just running backward here. Or sideways. But that's impossible too. I make my forage trips out to the warehouses, or some of the stores, and sometimes I can get in, and sometimes I can't, and sometimes I have trouble, and sometimes I don't; and sometimes I take my shopping bag into a store and clear off a shelf of canned goods, and come back to that same store again a week later-I mean I think it's the same damn store-and that shelf is just as full as the first time I saw it. To my mind, that's also impossible."

  "Sometimes the morning light starts over here," Kid said. "Sometimes it starts over there."

  "Who told you about that?"

  "You did. First day I got here."

  "Oh." Tak lifted the bottle. "Oh, yeah. That's right. You got a pretty good memory for some things."

  "I remember lots of things: Some of it, so sharp it ... hurts sometimes. All this fog, all this smoke-sometimes it'll be sharper and clearer than what you see in front of you. And the rest of it-" he looked up again and noticed Loufer's discomfort-"just isn't there." Kid laughed, which made Loufer chew harder on what was in the back of his mouth. "Why do you stay in Bellona, Tak?"

  "I gather your friend Ernest Newboy is leaving tomorrow. I don't know. Why do you?"

  "I don't know."

  "I mean, considering what you've been going through, maybe Bellona isn't the best place for you." Tak leaned forward, stretching the bottle out.

  "Oh," Kid said. "Here." He held out his glass; Tak refilled it.

  "You were talking about the first night I met you. Remember back then, I asked you why you'd come here, and you said you had a purpose for coming?"

  "That's right."

  "Tell me what it is."

  And once, in South Dakota, he had dropped a quarter into a pool that turned out to be much deeper than he'd thought. He had watched the coin spin and dull and vanish beyond the edging of leaves. Now a thought vanished from his mind, and the memory of the lost quarter was all he had to describe the vanishing. "I ... I don't know!" Kid laughed and pondered all the other things he might do; laughing seemed best. "I don't . . , remember! Yeah, I know I had a reason for coming here. But I'll be God damned if I can tell you what it was!" He leaned back, then forward, caught the brandy that was about to spill his glass in his mouth, and gulped it. "I really can't. It must have been . . ." He looked at the ceiling, suspending his breath for recollection. "I can't remember . .. remember that, either!"

  Tak was smiling.

  "You know, I had it with me; I mean, the reason." Kid swung out his hands. "I was carrying it around, in the back of my head, you know? Like on a back shelf? And then I just reached for it, to take it down, only I guess I knocked it over. I saw it fall off and disappear. I'm hunting around in my mind, but I can't . . . find it." He stopped laughing long enough to feel the annoyance that had begun to grow. "Bellona's not a bad place for me." Stated reasonably and smilingly, it was still annoyance. "I mean, I got a girl friend; I've met all sorts of people, some pretty nice-"

  "Some not so nice?"

  "Well, you learn. And I got a book. Brass Orchids, you know, my poems; it's all finished! They got galleys on it."

  Tak still smiled, nodding.

  "And you say people are talking about me like I'd done something great. Leave? You think I'm not going to go mad in some other city? There I might not have all these extras." Kid put the glass down, punched the air, and leaned back on the wall. "I ... like it here? No. I want to see some sun. Sometimes I want to reach up and peel off all that sky. It looks like the cardboard they make egg crates out of, you know? Just peel it, in great, flapping strips. I wonder where Lanya went." He frowned. "You know, maybe I don't have a girl friend any more. And the book is finished with; I mean it's all written and in type; and I don't want to do any more." He turned his fist on his forefinger. "And even if they say I'm a hero, I didn't really dp anything." He looked at the posters: just pictures, yet thinking that opened both their mocking and their harrowing resonances; he looked away. "Something isn't . . . finished here. No." The denial made him smile. "It's me. At least part has to do with me. Or maybe George. Or June ... It would almost look like everyt
hing was finished, wouldn't it? And maybe it's time to leave? But that's what lets me know I shouldn't. Because there're no distractions. I can look in and see. There's so much I don't know." The laughter filled his mouth, but when he let it out, it was only breath from a smile. "Hey, you want to blow me? I mean ... if you'd like to, I'd like it."

  Tak frowned, put his head to the side. But before he spoke, his own rough laugh exploded: "You are a nervy bastard!"

  "I don't mean just suck my dick. I'd make love with you. I've done it before, with guys."

  "I never doubted it a minute." Tak laughed again. "And no, I don't want to suck your dick, pussy or no. Where do you come off with that idea?"

  But something inside had released. Kid yawned hugely and explained, with the end of it muddling his words, "Lanya said I should go to bed with you again; she thought you'd like it."

  "Did she, now?"

  "But I said you were only interested in first tastes." Looking at Loufer, he suddenly realized behind the blond jocularity there was embarrassment, so looked at his lap again. "I guess I was . . ." right was mauled by another yawn.

  "Oh, look. Why don't you just lie down and go to sleep. What I want to do is drink about three more shots of brandy and read a God-damn book or something."

  "Sure." Kid lay belly down on the pallet, and jiggled around so the chains and prisms and projector did not bite his chest.

  Tak shook his head, turned around in his chair, and stretched for the second shelf over the desk. A book fell. Tak sighed.

  Kid grinned and moved his mouth down into the crook of his arm.

  Tak drank some more brandy, folded his arms on the desk and began to read.

  Kid looked for the sadness again, but it was now neatly invisible among dark folds. Hasn't turned a page for ten minutes, was his last amused thought before he closed his eyes and-

  "Hey."

  Kid, lying on his back, grunted, "Huh?"

  Tak scratched his naked shoulder and looked perturbed. Kid thought: Now he's going to-?

  "I'm afraid I gotta kick you out."

  "Oh . . ." Kid squinted and stretched, in muffled and mechanical protest. "Yeah, sure." Behind the bamboo curtains were streaks of light.