A, B, C

by Samuel R. Delany

She slid off the rock and started walking beside him, barefoot in the sand. “That boy…I wasn’t sure, he was all tied up; but—he had four arms, didn’t he?”

  “He did.”

  She shuddered again. “You know, I can’t just go around just saying it was awful. I think I’m going to write a poem. Or make something. Or both. I’ve got to get it out of my head.”

  “That wouldn’t be a bad idea,” he mumbled as they approached the trees in front of the river. “Not bad at all.”

  And several days later, several hundred miles away…

  chapter one

  Waves flung themselves at the blue evening. Low light burned on the hulks of wet ships that slipped by mossy pilings into the docks as water sloshed at the rotten stone embankments.

  Gangplanks, chained to wooden pulleys, scraped into place on concrete blocks; and the crew, after the slow Captain and the tall Mate, loped raffishly along the boards, which sagged with the pounding of bare feet. In bawling groups, pairs, or singly, they howled into the waterfront streets, by the yellow light from inn doors, the purple portals leading to rooms full of smoke and the stench of burnt poppies, laughter, and the sheen on red lips, to the houses of women.

  The Captain, with eyes the color of sea under fog, touched his sword hilt with his fist and said quietly, “Well, they’ve gone. We better start collecting new sailors for the ten we lost at Aptor. Ten good men, Jordde. I get ill when I think of the bone and broken meat they became.”

  “Ten for the dead,” sneered the Mate, “and twenty for the living we’ll never see again. Any sailor that would want to continue this trip with us is crazy. We’ll do well if we only lose twenty.” He was a wire-bound man, on whom any clothing looked baggy.

  “I’ll never forgive her for ordering us to that monstrous Island,” said the Captain.

  “I wouldn’t speak too loudly,” mumbled the Mate. “Yours isn’t to forgive her. Besides, she went with them and was in as much danger as they were. It’s only luck she came back.”

  Suddenly the Captain asked, “Do you believe the stories of magic they tell of her?”

  “Why, sir?” asked the Mate. “Do you?”

  “No, I don’t.” The Captain’s certainty came too quickly. “Still, with three survivors out of thirteen, that she should be among them, with hardly a robe torn…”

  “Perhaps they wouldn’t touch a woman,” suggested Jordde.

  “Perhaps,” said the Captain.

  “And she’s been strange ever since then. She walks at night. I’ve seen her going by the rails, looking from the seafire to the stars and back.”

  “Ten good men,” mused the Captain. “Hacked up, torn in bits. I wouldn’t have believed that much barbarity in the world if I hadn’t seen that arm, floating on the water. It even chills me now, the way the men ran to the rail, pointed at it. And it just raised itself up, like a sign, then sank in a wash of foam and green water.”

  “Well,” said the Mate, “we have men to get.”

  “I wonder if she’ll come ashore?”

  “She’ll come if she wants, Captain. Her doing is no concern of yours. Your job is the ship and to do what she asks.”

  “I have more of a job than that,” and he looked back at his still craft.

  The Mate touched the Captain’s shoulder. “If you’re going to speak things like that, speak them softly, and only to me.”

  “I have more of a job than that,” the Captain repeated. Then suddenly he started away; the Mate followed him down the darkening dockside.

  —

  The wharf was still a moment. Then a barrel toppled from a pile of barrels, and a figure moved like a bird’s shadow between two mounds of cargo.

  At the same time two men approached down a street filled with the day’s last light. The bigger one threw a great shadow that aped his gesticulating arms on the crowded buildings. His bare feet slapped the cobbles like halved hams. His shins were bound with thongs and pelts. He waved one hand in explanation and rubbed the back of the other on his short mahogany beard. “You’re going to ship out, eh, friend? You think they’ll take your rhymes and jingles instead of muscles and rope pulling?”

  The smaller, in a white tunic looped with a leather belt, laughed in spite of his friend’s ranting. “Fifteen minutes ago you thought it was a fine idea, Urson. You said it would make me a man.”

  “Oh, it’s a life to make”—Urson’s hand went up—“and it’s a life to break men.” It fell.

  The slighter one pushed black hair back from his forehead, stopped, and looked at the boats. “You still haven’t told me why no ship has taken you on in the past three months.” Absently he followed the rigging, like black slashes in blue silk. “A year ago I’d never see you in for more than three days at once.”

  The gesticulating arm suddenly encircled the smaller man’s waist and lifted a leather pouch from the belt. “Are you sure, friend Geo,” began the giant, “that we couldn’t use up some of this silver on wine before we go? If you want to do this right, then right is how it should be done. When you sign up on a ship you’re supposed to be broke and tight. It shows you’re capable of getting along without the inconvenience of money and can hold your liquor.”

  “Urson, get your paw off!” Geo pulled the purse away.

  “Now, here,” countered Urson, reaching for it once more, “you don’t have to grab.”

  “Look, I’ve kept you drunk five nights now; it’s time to sober up. Suppose they don’t take us. Who’s going—” But Urson, laughing, made another swipe.

  Geo leaped back with the purse. “Now, cut that out—” In leaping, his feet struck the fallen barrel. He fell backward to the wet cobbles. The pouch splattered away, jingling.

  They scrambled—

  Then the bird’s shadow darted between the cargo piles; the slight figure bounded forward, swept the purse up with one hand, pushed himself away from the pile of crates with another; and there were two more pumping at his side as he ran.

  “What the devil…” began Urson, and then: “What the devil!”

  “Hey, you!” Geo lurched to his feet. “Come back!”

  Urson had already loped a couple of steps after the fleeing quadrabrad, now halfway down the dock.

  Then, like a wineglass stem snapping, a voice: “Stop, little thief. Stop.”

  He stopped as though he had hit a wall.

  “Come back, now. Come back.”

  He turned and docilely started back, his movements, so lithe a moment ago, mechanical now.

  “It’s just a kid,” Urson said.

  He was a dark-haired boy, naked except for a ragged breechclout. He was staring fixedly beyond them. And he had four arms.

  Now they turned and looked also.

  She stood on the ship’s gangplank, dark against what sun still washed the horizon. One hand held something close at her throat, and the wind, snagging a veil, held the purple gauze against the red swath at the world’s edge, then dropped it.

  The boy, automaton, approached her.

  “Give it to me, little thief.”

  He handed her the purse. She took it. Then she dropped her other hand from her neck. The moment she did so, the boy staggered backward, turned, and ran straight into Urson, who said, “Ooof,” and then, “Goddamned spider!”

  The boy struggled like a hydra in furious silence. Urson held. “You stick around…Owww!…to get yourself thrashed…there.” Urson locked one arm across the boy’s chest. With his other hand he caught all four wrists; he lifted up, hard. The thin body shook like wires jerked taut, but the boy was still silent.

  Now the woman came across the dock. “This belongs to you, gentlemen?” she asked, extending the purse.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” grunted Urson, reaching forward.

  “I’ll take that, ma’am,” said Geo, intercepting. Then he recited:

  “Shadows melt in light of sacred laughter.

  Hands and houses shall be one hereafter.

  “Thank you,” he added.
>
  Beneath the veil her eyebrows raised. “You have been schooled in courtly rites? Are you perhaps a student at the University?”

  Geo smiled. “I was, until a short time ago. But funds are low and I have to get through the summer somehow. I’m going to sea.”

  “Honorable, but perhaps foolish.”

  “I am a poet, ma’am; they say poets are fools. Besides, my friend here says the sea will make a man of me. To be a good poet, one must be a good man.”

  “More honorable, less foolish. What sort of man is your friend?”

  “My name is Urson.” The giant stepped up. “And I’ve been the best hand on any ship I’ve sailed on.”

  “Urson? The Bear? I thought bears did not like water. Except polar bears. It makes them mad. I believe there was an old spell, in antiquity, for taming angry bears.”

  “Calmly, brother bear,” Geo began to recite:

  “calm the winter sleep.

  Fire shall not harm

  water not alarm.

  While the current grows,

  amber honey flows,

  golden salmon leap.”

  “Hey,” said Urson. “I’m not a bear!”

  “Your name means bear,” Geo said. Then to the lady, “You see, I have been well trained.”

  “I’m afraid I have not,” she replied. “Poetry and rituals were a hobby of a year’s passing interest when I was younger. But that was all.” Now she looked down at the four-armed boy. “You two look alike. Dark eyes, dark hair.” She laughed. “Are there other things in common between poets and thieves?”

  “Well,” complained Urson with a jerk of his chin, “this one here won’t spare a few silvers for a drink of good wine to wet his best friend’s throat, and that’s a sort of thievery if you ask me.”

  “I did not ask,” said the woman.

  Urson huffed.

  “Little thief,” the woman said. “Little Four Arms. What is your name?”

  Silence, and the dark eyes narrowed.

  “I can make you tell me,” and she raised her hand to her throat again.

  Now the eyes opened wide and the boy pushed back against Urson’s belly.

  Geo reached toward the boy’s neck, where a ceramic disk hung from a leather thong. Glazed on the white enamel was a wriggle of black with a small dot of green for an eye at one end. “This will do for a name,” Geo said.

  “The Snake?” She dropped her threatening hand. “How good a thief are you?” She looked at Urson. “Let him go.”

  “And miss thrashing his little backside?”

  “He will not run away.”

  Urson released him.

  Four hands came down and began massaging one another’s wrists. The dark eyes watched her as she repeated: “How good a thief are you?”

  Suddenly he reached into his clout and drew out what seemed another thong similar to the one around his neck. He held up the fist, the fingers opened slowly to a cage.

  “What is it?” Urson peered over Snake’s shoulder.

  The woman leaned forward, then suddenly straightened. “You…” she began.

  Snake’s fist closed like a sea polyp.

  “You are a fine thief indeed.”

  “What is it?” Urson asked. “I didn’t see anything.”

  “Show them,” she said.

  Snake opened his hand. On the dirty palm, in coiled leather, held by a clumsy wire cage was a milky sphere the size of a man’s eye.

  “A very fine thief,” repeated the woman in a voice dulled strangely from its previous brittle clarity. She had pulled her veil aside now. Geo saw, where her hand had again risen to her throat, the tips of her slim fingers held an identical jewel; only this one, in a platinum claw, hung from a wrought gold chain.

  Her eyes, unveiled, rose to meet Geo’s. A slight smile lifted her lips. “No,” she said. “Not quite so clever as I thought. At first I believed he had taken mine. But clever enough. You, schooled in the antiquity of Leptar’s rituals, can you tell me what these baubles mean?”

  Geo shook his head.

  A breath suspired her pale mouth, and though her eyes still fixed his, she seemed to draw away, blown into some past shadow by the sigh. “No,” she said. “It has all been lost or destroyed by the old priests and priestesses, the old poets.

  “Freeze the drop in the hand

  and break the earth with singing.

  Hail the height of a man,

  also the height of a woman.

  The eyes have imprisoned a vision….”

  She spoke the lines reverently. “Do you recognize any of this? Can you tell me where they are from?”

  “Only one stanza of it,” said Geo. “And that in a slightly different form.” He recited:

  “Burn the grain speck in the hand

  and batter the stars with singing.

  Hail the height of a man,

  also the height of a woman.”

  “Well.” She looked surprised. “You have done better than all the priests and priestesses of Leptar. What about this fragment? Where is it from?”

  “It is a stanza of the discarded rituals of the Goddess Argo, the ones banned and destroyed five hundred years ago. The rest of the poem is completely lost,” explained Geo. “Your priests and priestesses would not be aware of it, very likely. I discovered that stanza when I peeled away the binding paper of an ancient tome that I found in the Antiquity Collection in the Temple Library at Acedia. Apparently a page from an even older book had been used in the binding of this one. That is the only way it survived. I assume these are fragments of the rituals before Leptar purged her litanies. I know at least my variant stanza belongs to that period. Perhaps you have received a misquoted rendition; I will vouch for the authenticity of mine.”

  “No,” she said regretfully. “Mine is the authentic version. So you too are not that clever.” She turned back to the boy. “But I have need of a good thief. Will you come with me? And you, Poet. I have need of one who thinks so meticulously and who delves into places where even my priests and priestesses cannot go. Will you come with me also?”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Aboard that ship.” She smiled evasively toward the vessel.

  “That’s a good boat,” said Urson. “I’d be proud to sail on her, Geo.”

  “The Captain is in my service,” she told Geo. “He will take you on. Perhaps you will get a chance to see the world and become the man you wish to be.”

  Geo saw Urson looking uneasy. “My friend goes on whatever ship I do. This we’ve promised each other. Besides, he is a good sailor, while I have no knowledge of the sea.”

  “On our last journey,” the woman explained, “we lost men. I do not think your friend will have trouble getting a berth.”

  “Then we’ll be honored to come,” said Geo. “Under whose service shall we be, then, for we still don’t know who you are?”

  The veil fell across her face again. “I am a high priestess of the Goddess Argo. Now, who are you?”

  “My name is Geo,” Geo told her.

  “I welcome you aboard our ship.”

  Just then, from down the street, came the Captain and Jordde. They walked slowly and heavily from the shadow that angled over the cobbles. The Captain squinted past the ships toward the horizon. Copper light filled the wrinkles and burnished the planes around his gray eyes. The Priestess turned to them. “Captain, I have three men as a token replacement for the ones my folly helped to lose.”

  Urson, Geo, and Snake frowned at one another and then looked at the Captain.

  Jordde shrugged. “You did almost as well as we did, ma’am.”

  “And the ones we did get…” The Captain shook his head. “Not the caliber of sailor I’d want for this sort of journey. Not at all.”

  “I’m a good sailor for any man’s journey,” Urson said, “though it be to the earth’s end and back.”

  “You seem strong, a sea-bred man. But this one”—the Captain looked at Snake—“one of the Strange Ones…�
��

  “They’re bad luck on a ship,” said the Mate. “Most ships won’t take them at all, ma’am. This one’s just a boy and, for all his spindles there, couldn’t haul rope or reef sails. He’d be no good to us at all. And we’ve had too much bad luck already.”

  “He’s not for rope pulling,” explained the Priestess. “The little Snake is my guest. The others you can put to ship’s work. I know you are short of men. But I have my own plans for this one.”

  “As you say, ma’am,” said the Captain.

  “But, Priestess—” began Jordde.

  “As you say,” repeated the Captain, and the Mate stepped back, quieted. The Captain turned to Geo now. “And who are you?”

  “I’m Geo, before and still a poet. But I’ll do what work you set me, sir.”

  “Today, young man, that’s all I can ask of any sailor. You will find berths below. There are many vacant.”

  “And you?” Jordde asked Urson.

  “I’m a good sea-son of the waves, can stand triple watch without flagging, and I believe I’m already hired.” He looked to the Captain.

  “What do they call you?” Jordde asked. “You have a familiar look, like one I’ve had under me before.”

  “They call me the handsome sailor, the fastest rope reeler, the quickest line hauler, the speediest reefer—”

  “Your name, man, your name!”

  “Some call me Urson.”

  “That’s the name I knew you by before! But you had no beard then. Do you think I’d sail with you again when I myself wrote out your banning in black and white and sent it to every captain and mate in the dock? What sort of a crazy hawk would I be to pour poison like you into my forecastle? For three months now you’ve had no berth, and if you had none for three hundred years it would be too soon.” Jordde turned to the Captain now. “He’s a troublemaker, sir; he fights. Though he’s wild as waves and with the strength of a mizzen spar; spirit in a man is one thing, and a tussle or two the same; but good sailor though he is, I’ve sworn not to have him on ship with me, sir. He’s nearly murdered half a dozen men and probably murdered half a dozen more. No mate who knows the men of this harbor will take him on.”