The Einstein Intersection

by Samuel R. Delany

  Until a little while ago, Lo Little Jon, Lo Easy, and Lo me herded goats together (which is what we were doing on the Beryl Face: looking for pasture). We made quite a trio. Little Jon, though a year older than me, will till death look like a small black fourteen-year-old with skin smooth as volcanic glass. He sweats through his palms, the soles of his feet, and his tongue. (No real sweat glands: piddles like a diabetic on the first day of winter, or a very nervous dog.) He’s got silver mesh for hair—not white, silver. The pigment’s based on the metal pure; the black skin comes from a protein formed around the oxide. None of that rusty iron brown of melanin that suntans you and me. He sings, being a little simple, running and jumping around the rocks and goats, flashing from head and groin and armpits, then stops to cock his leg (like a nervous dog, yeah) against a tree-trunk, glancing around with embarrassed black eyes. Smiling, those eyes fling as much light, on a different frequency, as his glittering head. He’s got claws—hard, sharp horny ones, where I have nubs. He’s not a good Lo to have mad at you.

  Easy, on the other hand, is large (about eight feet tall), furry (umber hair curls all down the small of his back, makes ringlets on his belly), strong (that three hundred and twenty-six pounds of Easy is really a lot of rock jammed jagged into his pelt: his muscles have corners), and gentle. Once I got angry at him when one of the fertile nannies fell down a rock chimney.

  I saw it coming. The ewe was the big blind one who had been giving us perfect norm triplets for eight years. I stood on one foot and threw rocks and sticks with the other three limbs. It takes a rock on the head to get Easy’s attention; he was much closer than I was.

  “Watch it, you non-functional, lost-Lo mongoloid! She’s gonna fall in the—” At which point she did.

  Easy stopped looking at me with his what-are-you-throwing-stones-at-me-for? face, saw her scrabbling at the edge, dove for her, missed, and both of them started bleating. I put my all behind the rock that caught him on the hip and almost cried. Easy did.

  He crouched at the chimney edge, tears wetting the fur on his cheeks. The ewe had broken her neck at the chimney’s bottom. Easy looked up and said, “Don’t hurt me no more, Lobey. That”—he knuckled his blue eyes, then pointed down—“hurts too much already.” What can you do with a Lo like that? Easy has claws too. All he ever uses them for is to climb the titan palms and tear down mangoes for the children.

  Generally we did a good job with the goats, though. Once Little Jon leaped from the branch of an oak to the back of a lion and tore out its throat before it got to the herd (and rose from the carcass, shook himself, and went behind a rock, glancing over his shoulder). And as gentle as he is, Easy crushed a blackbear’s head with a log. And I got my machete, all ambidextrous, left footed, right handed, or vice versa. Yeah, we did a good job.

  Not no more.

  What happened was Friza.

  “Friza” or “La Friza” was always a point of debate with the older folk-doctors and the elders who have to pass on titles. She looked normal: slim, brown, full mouth, wide nose, brass-colored eyes. I think she may have been born with six fingers on one hand, but the odd one was non-functional, so a travelling doctor amputated it. Her hair was tight, springy, and black. She kept it short, though once she found some red cord and wove it through. That day she wore bracelets and copper beads, strings and strings. She was beautiful.

  And silent. When she was a baby, she was put in the kage with the other non-functionals because she didn’t move. No La. Then a keeper discovered she didn’t move because she already knew how; she was agile as a squirrel’s shadow. She was taken out of the kage. Got back her La. But she never spoke. So at age eight, when it was obvious that the beautiful orphan was mute, away went her La. They couldn’t very well put her back in the kage. Functional she was, making baskets, plowing, an expert huntress with the bolas. That’s when there was all the debate.

  Lo Hawk upheld: “In my day, La and Lo were reserved for total norms. We’ve been very lax, giving this title of purity to any functional who happens to have the misfortune to be born in these confusing times.”

  To which La Dire replied: “Times change, and it has been an unspoken precedent for thirty years that La and Lo be bestowed on any functional creature born in this our new home. The question is merely how far to extend the definition of functionality. Is the ability to communicate verbally its sine qua non? She is intelligent and she learns quickly and thoroughly. I move for La Friza.”

  The girl sat and played with white pebbles by the fire while they discussed her social standing.

  “The beginning of the end, the beginning of the end,” muttered Lo Hawk. “We must preserve something.”

  “The end of the beginning,” sighed La Dire. “Everything must change.” Which had been their standing exchange as long as I remember.

  Once, before I was born, so goes the story, Lo Hawk grew disgruntled with village life and left. Rumors came back: he’d gone to a moon of Jupiter to dig out some metal that wormed in blue veins through the rock. Later: he’d left the Jovian satellite to sail a steaming sea on some world where three suns cast his shadows on the doffing deck of a ship bigger than our whole village. Still later: he was reported chopping away through a substance that melted to poisonous fumes someplace so far there were no stars at all during the year-long nights. When he had been away seven years, La Dire apparently decided it was time he came back. She left the village and returned a week later—with Lo Hawk. They say he hadn’t changed much, so nobody asked him about where he’d been. But from his return dated the quiet argument that joined La Dire and Lo Hawk faster than love.

  “. . . must preserve,” Lo Hawk.

  “. . . must change,” La Dire.

  Usually Lo Hawk gave in, for La Dire was a woman of wide reading, great culture, and wit; Lo Hawk had been a fine hunter in his youth and a fine warrior when there was need. And he was wise enough to admit in action, if not words, that such need had gone. But this time Lo Hawk was adamant:

  “Communication is vital, if we are ever to become human beings. I would sooner allow some short-faced dog who comes from the hills and can approximate forty of fifty of our words to make known his wishes, than a mute child. Oh, the battles my youth has seen! When we fought off the giant spiders, or when the wave of fungus swept from the jungle, or when we destroyed with lime and salt the twenty-foot slugs that pushed up from the ground, we won these battles because we could speak to one another, shout instructions, bellow a warning, whisper plans in the twilit darkness of the source-caves. Yes, I would sooner give La or Lo to a talking dog!”

  Somebody made a nasty comment: “Well, you couldn’t very well give her a Le!” People snickered. But the older folk are very good at ignoring that sort of irreverence. Everybody ignores a Le anyway. Anyway, the business never did get settled. Towards moondown people wandered off, when somebody suggested adjournment. Everyone creaked and groaned to his feet. Friza, dark and beautiful, was still playing with the pebbles.

  Friza didn’t move when a baby because she knew how already. Watching her in the flicker (I was only eight myself) I got the first hint why she didn’t talk: she picked up one of the pebbles and hurled it, viciously, at the head of the guy who’d made the remark about “Le.” Even at eight she was sensitive. She missed, and I alone saw. But I saw too the snarl that twisted her face, the effort in her shoulders, the way her toes curled—she was sitting crosslegged—as she threw it. Both fists were knotted in her lap. You see, she didn’t use her hands or feet. The pebble just rose from the dirt, shot through the air, missed its target, and chattered away through low leaves. But I saw: she threw it.

  Each night for a week I have lingered on the wild flags of the waterfront, palaces crowding to the left, brittle light crackling over the harbor in the warm autumn. TEI goes strangely. Tonight when I turned back into the great trapezoid of the Piazza, fog hid the tops of the red flagpoles. I sat on the base of one nearest the tower and made notes on Lobey’s hungers. Later I left the decayi
ng gold and indigo of the Basilica and wandered through the back alleys of the city till well after midnight. Once I stopped on a bridge to watch the small canal drift through the close walls beneath the night-lamps and clotheslines. At a sudden shrieking I whirled: half a dozen wailing cats hurled themselves about my feet and fled after a brown rat. Chills snarled the nerves along my vertebrae. I looked back at the water: six flowers—roses—floated from beneath the bridge, crawling over the oil. I watched them till a motorboat puttering on some larger waterway nearby sent water slapping the foundations. I made my way over the small bridges to the Grand Canal and caught the Vaporetto back to Ferovia. It turned windy as we floated beneath the black wood arch of the Ponte Academia; I was trying to assimilate the flowers, the vicious animals, with Lobey’s adventure—each applies, but as yet I don’t quite know how. Orion straddled the water. Lights from the shore shook in the canal as we passed beneath the dripping stones of the Rialto.

  Writer’s Journal, Venice, October 1965

  In a few lines I shall establish how Maldoror was virtuous during his first years, virtuous and happy. Later he became aware he was born evil. Strange fatality!

  Isidore Ducasse (Comte de Lautreamont),

  The Songs of Maldoror

  All prologue to why Lo Easy, Lo Little John, and Lo me don’t herd goats no more.

  Friza started tagging along, dark and ambiguous, running and jumping with Little Jon in a double dance to his single song and my music, play-wrestling with Easy, and walking with me up the brambly meadow holding my hand—whoever heard of La-ing or Lo-ing somebody you’re herding goats with, or laughing with, or making love with. All of which I did with Friza. She would turn on a rock to stare at me with leaves shaking beside her face. Or come tearing towards me through the stones; between her graceful gait and her shadow in the rocks all suspended and real motion was. And was released when she was in my arms laughing—the one sound she did make, loving it in her mouth.

  She brought me beautiful things. And kept the dangerous away. I think she did it the same way she threw the pebble. One day I noticed that ugly and harmful things just weren’t happening: no lions, no condor bats. The goats stayed together; the kids didn’t get lost and kept from cliffs.

  “Little Jon, you don’t have to come up this morning.”

  “Well, Lobey, if you don’t think—”

  “Go on, stay home.”

  So Easy, Friza, and me went out with the goats.

  The beautiful things were like the flock of albino hawks that moved to the meadow. Or the mother woodchuck who brought her babies for us to see.

  “Easy, there isn’t enough work for all of us here. Why don’t you find something else to do?”

  “But I like coming up here, Lobey.”

  “Friza and me can take care of the herd.”

  “But I don’t mi—”

  “Get lost, Easy.”

  He said something else and I picked up a stone in my foot and hefted it. He looked confused, then lumbered away. Imagine, coming on like that with Easy.

  Friza and I had the field and the herd to ourselves alone. It stayed good and beautiful with unremembered flowers beyond rises when we ran. If there were poisonous snakes, they turned off in lengths of scarlet, never coiling. And, ah! did I make music.

  Something killed her.

  She was hiding under a grove of lazy willows, the trees that droop lower than weeping, and I was searching and calling and grinning—she shrieked. That’s the only sound I ever heard her make other than laughter. The goats began to bleat.

  I found her under the tree, face in the dirt.

  As the goats bleated, the meadow went to pieces on their rasping noise. I was silent, confused, amazed by my despair.

  I carried her back to the village. I remember La Dire’s face as I walked into the village square with the limber body in my arms.

  “Lobey, what in the world . . . How did she . . . Oh, no! Lobey, no!”

  So Easy and Little Jon took the herd again. I went and sat at the entrance to the source-cave, sharpened my blade, gnawed my nails, slept and thought alone on the flat rock. Which is where we began.

  Once Easy came to talk to me.

  “Hey, Lobey, help us with the goats. The lions are back. Not a lot of them, but we could still use you.” He squatted, still towering me by a foot, shook his head. “Poor Lobey.” He ran his hairy fingers over my neck. “We need you. You need us. Help us hunt for the two missing kids?”

  “Go away.”

  “Poor Lobey.” But he went.

  Later Little Jon came. He stood around for a minute thinking of something to say. But by the time he did, he had to go behind a bush, got embarrassed, and didn’t come back.

  Lo Hawk came too. “Come hunting, Lo Lobey. There’s a bull been seen a mile south. Horns as long as your arm, they say.”

  “I feel rather non-functional today,” I said. Which is not the sort of thing to joke about with Lo Hawk. He retired, humphing. But I just wasn’t up to his archaic manner.

  When La Dire came, though, it was different. As I said, she has great wit and learning. She came and sat with a book on the other side of the flat rock, and ignored me for an hour. Till I got mad. “What are you doing here?” I asked at last.

  “Probably the same thing you are.”

  “What’s that?”

  She looked serious. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  I went back to my knife. “Sharpening my machete.”

  “I’m sharpening my mind,” she said. “There is something to be done that will require an edge on both.”

  “Huh?”

  “Is that an inarticulate way of asking what it is?”

  “Huh?” I said again. “Yeah. What is it?”

  “To kill whatever killed Friza.” She closed her book. “Will you help?”

  I leaned forward, feet and hands knotting, opened my mouth—then La Dire wavered behind tears. I cried. After all that time it surprised me. I put my forehead on the rock and bawled.

  “Lo Lobey,” she said, the way Lo Hawk had, only it was different. Then she stroked my hair, like Easy. Only different. As I gained control again I sensed both her compassion and embarrassment. Like Little Jon’s; different.

  I lay on my side, feet and hands clutching each other, sobbing towards the cavity of me. La Dire rubbed my shoulder, my bunched, distended hip, opening me with gentleness and words:

  “Let’s talk about mythology, Lobey. Or let’s you listen. We’ve had quite a time assuming the rationale of this world. The irrational presents just as much of a problem. You remember the legend of the Beatles? You remember the Beatle Ringo left his love Maureen even though she treated him tender. He was the one Beatle who did not sing, so the earliest forms of the legend go. After a hard day’s night he and the rest of the Beatles were torn apart by screaming girls, and he and the other Beatles returned, finally at one, with the great rock and the great roll.” I put my head in La Dire’s lap. She went on. “Well, that myth is a version of a much older story that is not so well known. There are no 45’s or 33’s from the time of this older story. There are only a few written versions, and reading is rapidly losing its interest for the young. In the older story Ringo was called Orpheus. He too was torn apart by screaming girls. But the details are different. He lost his love—in this version Eurydice—and she went straight to the great rock and the great roll, where Orpheus had to go to get her back. He went singing, for in this version Orpheus was the greatest singer, instead of the silent one. In myths things always turn into their opposites as one version supersedes the next.”

  I said, “How could he go into the great rock and the great roll? That’s all death and all life.”

  “He did.”

  “Did he bring her back?”

  “No.”

  I looked from La Dire’s old face and turned my head in her lap to the trees. “He lied, then. He didn’t really go. He probably went off into the woods for a while and just made up some story when he came
back.”

  “Perhaps,” La Dire said.

  I looked up again. “He wanted her back,” I said. “I know he wanted her back. But if he had gone any place where there was even a chance of getting her, he wouldn’t have come back unless she was with him. That’s how I know he must have been lying. About going to the great rock and the great roll, I mean.”

  “All life is a rhythm,” she said as I sat up. “All death is a rhythm suspended, a syncopation before life resumes.” She picked up my machete. “Play something.” She held the handle out. “Make music.”

  I put the blade to my mouth, rolled over on my back, curled around the bright, dangerous length, and licked the sounds. I didn’t want to but it formed in the hollow of my tongue, and breathing carried it into the knife.

  Low; first slow; I closed my eyes, feeling each note in the quadrangle of shoulder blades and buttocks pressed on the rock. Notes came with only the meter of my own breathing, and from beneath that, there was the quickening of the muscles of my fingers and toes that began to cramp for the faster, closer dance of the heart’s time. The mourning hymn began to quake.

  “Lobey, when you were a boy, you used to beat the rock with your feet, making a rhythm, a dance, a drum. Drum, Lobey!”

  I let the melody speed, then flailed it up an octave so I could handle it. That means only fingers.

  “Drum, Lobey!”

  I rocked to my feet and began to slap my soles against the stone.

  “Drum!”

  I opened my eyes long enough to see the blood spider scurry. The music laughed. Pound and pound, trill and warble, and La Dire laughed for me too, to play, hunched down while sweat quivered on my nape, threw up my head and it dribbled into the small of my back, while I, immobile above the waist, flung my hips, beating cross rhythms with toes and heels, blade up to prick the sun, new sweat trickling behind my ears, rolling the crevices of my corded neck.

  “Drum, my Lo Ringo; play, my Lo Orpheus,” La Dire cried. “Oh, Lobey!” She clapped and clapped.