Dhalgren

by Samuel R. Delany

  "I mean the 1995?"

  "Oh. That's just Calkins." On the picnic table sat a If Tak had an expression you couldn't see it.

  He thought it was charming, though; though something else about it unsettled.

  She rared her shoulders back, blinking. "How are you, Kidd? Are you new? Or have you been hiding out in the shadows for months and months?" To Tak: "Isn't it amazing how we're always turning up people like that? You think you've met everybody in the city there is to meet. Then, suddenly, somebody who's been here all along, watching you from the bushes, sticks his nose out-"

  "That's how we met Tak," John said. To Tak: "Isn't it, Tak?"

  Tak said: "He's new."

  "Oh. Well," John said, "we've got this thing going here. Do you want to explain it to him, Mildred?"

  "Well, we figure-" Mildred's shoulders came, officially, forward. "We figure we have to survive together some way. I mean we can't be at each other's throats like animals. And it would be so easy for a situation like this-" He was sure her gesture, at 'this', included nothing beyond the firelight-"to degenerate into something . . . well, awful! So we've set up I guess you'd call it a commune. Here, in the park. People get food, work together, know they have some sort of protection. We try to be as organic as possible, but that's getting harder and harder. When new people come into Bellona, they can get a chance to learn how things operate here. We don't take in everybody. But when we do, we're very accepting." There was a tic somewhere (in him or her, he wasn't sure, and started worrying about it) like a nick in a wire pulled over an edge. "You are new? We're always glad when we get somebody new."

  He nodded, while his mind accelerated, trying to decide: him? her?

  Tak said: "Show him around, Milly."

  John said: "Good idea, Mildred. Tak, I want to talk to you about something," tapping his newspaper again. "Oh, here. Maybe you want to take a look at this?"

  "What? Oh ..." You couldn't worry so much about things like that! Often, though, he had to remind himself. "Thanks." He took the folded paper.

  "All right, Tak." John, with Tak, turned away. "Now when are you going to start those foundations for us? I can give you-"

  "Look, John." Tak put his hand on John's shoulder as they wandered off. "All you need is the plans, and you can-"

  Then they were out of earshot.

  "Are you hungry?"

  "No." She was pretty.

  "Well, if you are-come, let's go over here-we start cooking breakfast soon as it gets light. That's not too far off."

  "You been up all night?" he asked.

  "No. But when you go to bed at sundown, you wake up pretty early."

  "I have."

  "We do a lot of work here-" she slipped her hands into her back pockets; her jeans, torn short, were bunched high on her thighs-"during the day. We don't just sit around. John has a dozen projects going. It's pretty hard to sleep with people hammering and building and what all." She smiled.

  "I've been up; but I'm not tired. When I am, I can sleep through anything." He looked down at her legs.

  As she walked, light along them closed and crossed. "Oh, we wouldn't mind if you really wanted to sleep. We don't want to force anybody. But we have to maintain some kind of pattern, you understand."

  "Yeah, I understand that." He'd been flipping the newspaper against his own thigh. Now he raised it.

  "Why do you go around wearing an orchid?" she asked. "Of course, with the city in the state it's in, I guess it makes sense. And really, we do accept many life styles here. But..."

  "Some people gave it to me." He turned the rolled newspaper around.

  SERIOUS WATER

  He let the tabloid fall loose.

  SHORTAGE THREATENS

  The date said Tuesday, February 12, 1995. "What the hell is that?"

  She looked concerned. "Well, there's not very many people around who know how to keep things running. And we've all been expecting the water to become a real problem any day. You have no idea how much they used when they were trying to put out the fires."

  "I mean the 1995?"

  "Oh. That's just Calkins." On the picnic table sat a carton of canned goods. "I think it's amazing we have a newspaper at all." She sat on the bench and looked at him expectantly. "The dates are just his little joke."

  "Oh." He sat beside her. "Do you have tents here? Anything for shelter?" still thinking: 1995?

  "Well, we're pretty outdoors oriented." She looked around, while he tried to feel the city beyond the leafy, fire-lit grotto. "Of course, Tak-he's promised to give John some simple blueprints. For cabins. John wants Tak to head the whole project. He feels it would be good for him. You know, Tak is so strange. He feels, somehow, we won't accept him. At least I think he does. He has this very important image of himself as a loner. He wants to give us the plans-he's an engineer, you know-and let us carry them out. But the value of something like that isn't just the house-or shack-that results. It should be a creative, internal thing for the builder. Don't you think?"

  For something to do, he held his teeth together, hard.

  "You're sure you're not hungry?"

  "Oh. No."

  "You're not tired? You can get in a few hours if you want. Work doesn't start till after breakfast. I can get you a blanket, if you'd like."

  "No."

  In the firelight, he thought he might count twenty-five years in her firm, clear face. "I'm not hungry. I'm not sleepy. I didn't even know Tak was bringing me here."

  "It's a very nice place. It really is. The community of feeling is so warm, if nothing else." Probably only twenty.

  The harmonica player played again.

  Someone in an olive-drab cocoon twisted beyond the fire.

  Mildred's tennis sneaker was a foot from the nearest sleeper's canvas covered head.

  "I wish you wouldn't wear that." She laughed.

  He opened his big fingers under metal.

  "I mean, if you want to stay here. Maybe then you wouldn't have to wear it."

  "I don't have to wear it," and decided to keep it on.

  The harmonica squawked.

  He looked up.

  From the trees, light brighter than the fire and green lay leafy shadows over sleeping bags and blanket rolls. Then ballooning claws and barbed, translucent tail collapsed:

  "Hey, you got that shit ready for us?"

  A lot of chains hung around his neck. He had a wide scab (with smaller ones below it) on the bowl of his shoulder, like a bad fall on cement. Chains wound around one boot: he jingled when he walked. "Come on, come on. Bring me the fuckin' junk!" He stopped by the fireplace. Flames burnished his large arms, his small face. A front tooth was broken. "Is that it?" He gestured bluntly toward the picnic table, brushed tangled, black hair, half braided, from his shoulder, and came on.

  "Hello!" Mildred said, with the most amazing smile. "Nightmare! How have you been?"

  The scorpion looked down at her, wet lip high off his broken tooth, and said, slowly, "Shit," which could have meant a lot of things. He wedged between them- "Get out of the-" saw the orchid-"fucking way, huh?" and lugged the carton of canned goods off the table edge against his belly, where ripe, wrinkled jeans had sagged so low you could see stomach hair thicken toward pubic. He looked down over his thick arm at the weapon, closed his mouth, shook his head. "Shit," again, and: "What the fuck you staring at?" Between the flaps of Nightmare's cut-down vest, prisms, mirrors, and lenses glittered among dark cycle chain, bright stainless links, and hardware-store brass.

  "Nothing."

  Nightmare sucked his teeth in disgust, turned, and stumbled on a sleeping bag. "Move, damn it!"

  A head shook loose from canvas; it was an older man, who started digging under the glasses he'd probably worn to sleep, then gazed after the scorpion lumbering off among the trees.

  He saw things move behind Milly's face, was momentarily sure she was going to call good-bye. Her tennis shoe dragged the ground.

  Down her lower leg was a scratch.

>   He frowned.

  She said: "That was Nightmare. Do you know about the scorpions?"

  "Tak told me some."

  "It's amazing how well you can get along with people if you're just nice. Of course their idea of being nice back is a little odd. They used to volunteer to beat up people for us. They kept wanting John to find somebody for them to work over-somebody who was annoying us, of course. Only nobody was." She hunched her shoulders. "I guess," he offered from the faulted structure of his smile, "you have trouble with them sometimes?"

  "Sometimes." Her smile was perfect. "I just wish John had been here. John's very good with them. I think Nightmare is a little afraid of John, you know? We do a lot for them. Share our food with them. I think they get a lot from us. If they'd just acknowledge their need, though, they'd be so much easier to help."

  The harmonica was silent: the bare-breasted girl had gone from her blanket

  "How'd you get that scratch?"

  "Just an accident. With John." She shrugged. "From one of those, actually." She nodded toward his orchid. "It isn't anything."

  He leaned to touch it, looked at her: she hadn't moved. So he lay his forefinger on her shin, moved it down. The scab line ran under his callous like a tiny rasp.

  She frowned. "It really isn't anything." Framed in heavy red, it was a gentle frown. "What's that?" She pointed. "Around your wrist."

  His cuff had pulled up when he'd leaned.

  He shrugged. Confusion was like struggling to find the proper way to sit inside his skin. "Something I found." He wondered if she heard the question mark on his sentence, small as a period.

  Her eyebrow's movement said she had: which amused him.

  The optical glass flamed over his knobby wrist.

  "Where do you get it? I've seen several people wear that.. . kind of chain."

  He nodded. "I just found it."

  "Where?" Her gentle smile urged.

  "Where did you get your scratch?"

  Still smiling, she returned a bewildered look.

  He had expected it. And he mistrusted it. "I . . ." and the thought resolved some internal cadence: "want to know about you!" He was suddenly and astonishingly happy. "Have you been here long? Where are you from? Mildred? Mildred what? Why did you come here? How long are you going to stay? Do you like Japanese food? Poetry?" He laughed. "Silence? Water? Someone saying your name?"

  "Urn . . ." He saw she was immensely pleased. "Mildred Fabian, and people do call me Milly, like Tak does. John just feels he has to be formal when new people come around. I was here at State University. But I come from Ohio . . . Euclid, Ohio?"

  He nodded again.

  "But State's got such a damned good Poly-sci department. Had, anyway. So I came here. And . . ." She dropped her eyes (brown, he realized with a half-second memory, as he looked at her lowered, corn-colored lashes -brown with a coppery backing, copper like her hair) "... I stayed."

  "You were here when it happened?"

  ". . . yes." He heard a question mark there bigger than any in the type-box.

  "What ..." and when he said, ". . . happened?" he didn't want an answer.

  Her eyes widened, dropped again; her shoulders sank; her back rounded. She reached toward his hand in its cage, lying between them on the bench.

  As she took a shiny blade tip between two fingers, he was aware of his palm's suspension in its harness.

  "Does . . . I've always . . . well, could you make an . . ." She tugged the point to the side (he felt the pressure on his wrist and stiffened his hand), released it: A muffled Dmmmmm. "Oh."

  He was puzzled.

  "I was wondering," she explained, "if you could make it ring. Like an instrument. All the blades are different lengths. I thought if they made notes, perhaps you could . . . play them."

  "Blade steel? I don't think it's brittle enough. Bells and things are iron."

  She bent her head to the side.

  "Things have to be brittle if they're going to ring. Like glass. Knives are hard, sure; but they're too flexible."

  She looked up after a moment. "I like music. I was going to major in music. At State. But the Poly-sci department was so good. I don't think I've seen one Japanese restaurant in Bellona, since I've been in school here. But there used to be several good Chinese ones . . ." Something happened in her face, a loosening, part exhaustion, part despair. "We're doing the best we can, you know ... ?"

  "What?"

  "We're doing the best we can. Here."

  He nodded a small nod.

  "When it happened," she said softly, "it was terrible." 'Terrible" was perfectly flat, the way he remembered a man in a brown suit once say "elevator." It's that tone, he thought, remembering when it had denuded Tak's speech. She said: "We stayed. I stayed. I guess I felt I had to stay. I don't know how long ... I mean, I'm going to stay for. But we have to do something. Since we're here, we have to." She took a breath. A muscle leaped in her jaw. "You . .. ?"

  "Me what?"

  "What do you like, Kidd? Someone saying your name?"

  He knew it was innocent; and was annoyed anyway. His lips began a Well, but only breath came.

  "Silence?"

  Breath became a hiss; the hiss became, ". . . sometimes."

  "Who are you? Where are you from?"

  He hesitated, and watched her eyes pick something from it:

  "You're afraid because you're new here ... I think. I'm afraid, I think, because I've been here ... an awfully long time!" She looked around the campsite.

  Two long-haired youngsters stood by the cinder-blocks. One held up his hands, either to warm them, or just to feel heat.

  It is a warm morning. I do not recognize any protection in this leafy blister. There is no articulation in the juncture of object and shadow, no fixed angle between fuel and flame. Where would they put their shelters, foundations sunk on ash; doors and windows sinking in cinders? There is nothing else to trust but what warms.

  Mildred's lips parted, her eyes narrowed. "You know what John did? I think it was brave, too. We had just finished building that fireplace; there were only a few of us here, then. Somebody was going to light it with a cigarette lighter. But John said, wait; then went off all the way to Holland Lake. That was when the burning was much worse than it is now. And he brought back a brand old, dried, burning stick. In fact he had to transfer the fire to several other sticks on the way back. And with that fire-" she nodded where one of the youngsters was now poking at the logs with a broken broom-handle- "he lit ours." The other waited with a chunk of wood in his arms. "I think that was very brave. Don't you?" The chunk fell. Sparks geysered through the grate, higher than the lowest branches.

  "Hey, Milly!"

  Sparks whirled, and he wondered why they all spoke so loud with so many sleeping.

  "Milly! Look what I found."

  She had put on a blue work shirt, still unbuttoned. In one hand was her harmonica, in the other a spiral notebook.

  "What is it?" Milly called back.

  As she passed the furnace, she swung the notebook through the sparks; they whipped into Catherine wheels, and sank. "Does it belong to anybody around here? It's burned. On the cover."

  She sat with it, between them, shoulders hunched, face in a concentrated scowl. "It's somebody's exercise book." The cardboard was flaky black at one corner. Heat had stained half the back.

  "What's in it?" Milly asked.

  She shrugged. Her shoulder and her hip moved on his. He slid down the bench to give her room, considered sliding back, but, instead, picked up the newspaper and opened it-blades tore one side-to the second page.

  "Who ripped out the first pages?" Milly asked.

  "That's the way I found it."

  "But you can see the torn edges, still inside the wire."

  "Neat handwriting."

  "Can you make out what it says?"

  "Not in this light. I read some down by the park lamp. Let's take it over by the fire."

  The page he stared at flickered with bac
klight, the print on both sides visible. All he could make out was the Gothic masthead:

  BELLONA TIMES

  And below it:

  Roger Calkins, Editor and Publisher.

  He closed the paper.

  The girls had gone to the fireplace.

  He stood, left the paper on the bench, stepped, one after another, over three sleeping bags and a blanket roll. "What does it say?"

  Her harmonica was still in one fist. Her hair was short and thick. Her eyes, when she looked at him directly, were Kelly green. Propping the book on the crook of her arm, with her free hand she turned back the cardboard cover for him to see the first page. Remnants of green polish flecked her nails.

  In Palmer-perfect script, an interrupted sentence took up on the top line:

  to wound the autumnal city.

  So howled out for the world to give him a name. That made goose bumps on his flanks . .. The in-dark answered with wind. All you know I know: careening astronauts and bank clerks glancing at the clock before lunch; actresses cowling at light-ringed mirrors and freight-elevator operators grinding a thumbful of grease on a steel handle; student

  She lowered the notebook to stare at him, blinked green eyes. Hair wisps shook shadow splinters on her cheek. "What's the matter with you?"

  His face tensed toward a smile. "That's just some . . . well, pretty weird stuff."

  "What's weird about it?" She closed the cover. "You got the strangest look."

  "I don't . . . But . . ." His smile did not feel right. What was there to dislodge it lay at the third point of a triangle whose base vertices were recognition and incomprehension. "Only it was so . . ." No, start again. "But it was so ... I know a lot about astronauts, I mean. I used to look up the satellite schedules and go out at night and watch for them. And I used to have a friend who was a bank clerk."

  "I knew somebody who used to work in a bank," Milly said. Then, to the other girl: "Didn't you ever?"

  He said: "And I used to have a job in a theater. It was on the second floor and we always had to carry things up in the freight elevator . . ." These memories were so simple to retrieve ... "I was thinking about him-the elevator operator-earlier tonight." They still looked puzzled. "It was just very familiar."

  "Well, yeah . . ." She moved her thumb over the bright harmonica. "I must have been on a freight elevator, at least once. Hell, I was in a school play and there were lights around the dressing room mirror. That doesn't make it weird."