Einstein Intersection

by Samuel R. Delany

  Up I went, and stayed on this time for a staggering run up and down the water’s edge. I mean it looks graceful enough from the ground. It feels like staggering. On stilts.

  “You’re getting the hang of it.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Say, where is the herd; and who are you?”

  He stood ankle deep in the lake’s lapping. Morning was bright enough now to gem his chest and shoulders with drops from my splashing. He smiled and wiped his face. “Spider,” he said. “And I didn’t catch your name . . . ?”

  “Lo Lobey.” I rocked happily behind the scaly hump.

  “Don’t say Lo to nobody herding,” said Spider. “No need for it.”

  “Wouldn’t even have thought of it if it weren’t for my village ways,” I said.

  “Herd’s off that way.” He swung up behind me on the dragon.

  Amber haired, four handed, and slightly hump-backed, Spider was seven feet of bone slipped into six feet of skin. Tightly. All tied in with long, narrow muscles. He was burned red, and the red burned brown but still glowing through. And he laughed like dry leaves crushed inside his chest. We circled the lake silently. And, oh man, the music!

  The herd, maybe two hundred and fifty dragons moaning about (I was to learn that this was a happy sound), milled in a dell beyond the lake. Youth had romanticized the herders in my memory. They were motley. I see why you don’t go around Lo-ing and La-ing and Le-ing herders. Two of them—I still don’t see how they managed to stay on their dragons. But I came on friendly.

  One kid with a real mind: you could tell by the way his green eye glittered at you, as well as his whip skill, and the sure way he handled dragons. Only he was mute. Was it this that upset me and made me think of Friza? You have a job to do. . . .

  There was another guy who would have made Whitey look like a total norm. He had some glandular business that made him smell bad too. And he wanted to tell me his life story (no motor control of the mouth so he sort of splattered when he got excited).

  I wish Green-eye could have talked instead of Stinky. I wanted to learn where he’d been, what he’d seen—he knew some good songs.

  Dragons get lost at night. So you round them up in the morning. I’d been rounded up along with the stray animals. At breakfast I gathered from Stinky that I was a replacement for somebody who had come to a bad, sad, and messy end the previous afternoon.

  “Oddest people survive out here,” Spider mused. “Oddest ones don’t. She looked a lot more ‘normal’ than you. But she ain’t here now. Just goes to show you.”

  Green-eye blinked at me from under all his black hair, caught me watching him, and went back to splicing his whip.

  “When are those dragon eggs gonna finish baking?” Knife asked, pawing at the fireplace stones with gray hands.

  Spider kicked at him and the herder scuttled away. “Wait till we all eat.” But in a few minutes he crawled back and was rubbing against the stones. “Warm,” he muttered apologetically, when Spider started to kick him again. “I like it warm.”

  “Just keep off the food.”

  “Where do you take these to?” I indicated the herd. “Where do you bring them from?”

  “They breed in the Hot Swamp, about two hundred kilometers west of here. We drive them down this way, across the Great City and on to Branning-at-sea. There the sterile ones are slaughtered; the eggs are removed from the females, inseminated, then we bring the eggs back and plant them in the swamp.”

  “Branning-at-sea?” I asked. “What do they do with them there?”

  “Eat most. Use others for work. It’s quite a fantastic place for someone born in the woods, I would imagine. I’ve been back and forth so many times it’s like home. I’ve got a house and a wife and three kids there, and another family back in the Swamp.”

  We ate eggs, fried lizard fat, and thick cereal, hot and filling, with plenty of salt and chopped peppers. When I finished I began to play my blade.

  That music!

  It was a whole lot of tunes at once, many the same, but starting at different times. I had to pick one strand out and play it. A few notes into it, I saw Spider staring at me, surprised. “Where did you hear that?” he asked.

  “Just made it up, I guess.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “It was just running around my head. All confused, though.”

  “Play it again, Sam—”

  I did. This time Spider began to whistle one of the other melodies that went along with it so that they glittered and jumped against each other.

  When we finished he said, “You’re different, aren’t you?”

  “So I’ve been told,” I said. “Say, what’s the name of that song anyway? It’s not like most of the music I know.”

  “It’s the Kodaly ‘Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello.’ ”

  Morning wind shook the gorse. “The what?” I asked. Behind us dragons moaned.

  “You got it out of my head?” Spider said questioningly. “You couldn’t have heard it before unless I was going around humming. And I can’t hum a crescendo of triple stops.”

  “I got it from you?”

  “That music’s been going through my mind for weeks. Heard it at a concert last summer at Branning-at-sea, the night before I left to take the eggs back to the swamp. Then I discovered an LP of the piece in the music section of the ruins of the ancient library at Haifa.”

  “I learned it from you?” and suddenly all sorts of things cleared up, like how La Dire knew I was different, like how Nativia could tell I was different when I started playing Bill Bailey. “Music,” I said. “So that’s where I get my music from.” I put the blade’s tip on the ground and leaned on it.

  Spider shrugged.

  “I don’t think I get all of it from other people,” I said, frowning. “Different?” I ran my thumb along the blade’s edge and skipped my toes over the holes.

  “I’m different too,” Spider said.

  “How?”

  “Like this.” He closed his eyes and all his shoulders knotted.

  My machete jerked from my hand, pulled from the ground, and spun in the air. Then it fell point first to quiver in the shank of a log near the fire. Spider opened his eyes and took a breath.

  My mouth was open. So I closed it.

  Everybody else thought it was very funny.

  “And with animals,” Spider said.

  “How?”

  “The dragons. To a certain point I can keep them calm, keep them more or less together, and steer dangerous creatures away from us.”

  “Friza,” I said. “You’re like Friza.”

  “Who’s Friza?”

  I looked down at my knife. The melody which I had mourned her with was mine. “Nobody,” I said, “anymore.” That melody was mine! Then I asked, “Have you ever heard of Kid Death?”

  Spider put down his food, brought all his hands in front of him, and tilted his head. His long nostrils flared till they were round. I looked away from his fear. But the others were watching me so I had to look back.

  “What about Kid Death?” Spider asked.

  “I want to find him and—” I flung my blade in the air and twirled it as Spider had, but my hand had propelled it. I seized it from its fall with my foot. “—Well, I want to find him. Tell me about him.”

  They laughed. It started in Spider’s mouth, then was coming all sloppy from Stinky, a low hiss from Knife, grunts and cackles from the others, ending in Green-eye’s green eye, a light that went out as he looked away. “You’re going to have a hard time,” Spider said finally, “but”—he rose from the fire—“you’re headed in the right direction.”

  “Tell me about him,” I said again.

  “There’s a time to talk about the impossible, but it’s not when there’s work to do.” He got up, reached into a canvas sack, and tossed me a whip.

  I caught it mid-length.

  “Put your ax away,” Spider said. “This sings when it flies.” His lash lisped over my head.

 
Everyone went to his mount, and Spider reeled a bridle and stirrups from the gear sack that fitted those humps and scales neatly, buckling around the forelegs; I see why he’d made me get the feel of things bareback. The semi-saddle and leg-straps make dragon riding almost nice.

  “Head them on through that way,” he yelled, and I imitated the herders around me as they began the drive.

  Dragons swarmed in sunlight.

  Oiled whips snapped and glistened over the scales, and the whole world got caught up in the rhythmic rocking of the beast between my legs, trees and hills and gorse and boulders and brambles all taking up the tune and movement as a crowd will begin clapping and stomping to a beat; the jungle, my audience, applauded the beat of surging lizards.

  Moaning. Which meant they were happy.

  Hissing sometimes. Which meant watch it.

  Grunting and cussing and shouting. Which meant the herders were happy too.

  I learned an incredible amount of things that morning, lunging back and forth between the creatures: five or six of them were the leaders and the rest followed. Keep the leaders going in the right direction and you had no problem. Dragons tend to go right. You get more response if you slap them on the back haunches. I later learned, nerve clusters there control their rear-end transmissions that’re bigger than the brain.

  One of the lead dragons kept on wanting to go back and bother an overweight female (ovarian tumor that kept her loaded down with sterile eggs, Spider explained to me) and it was all we could do to keep them apart. I spent a lot of time (imitating Green-eye) scouting the edge of the herd to worry the creatures back together who kept getting curious about things in irrelevant directions.

  I began to learn what I was doing when about twenty dragons got stuck in a mintbog. (A slushy, slow quicksand bog covered with huge bushes of windy mint, right? Mintbog.) Spider, by himself drove the rest of the herd around in a circle, three whips popping, while the other five of us went sloshing back and forth through the mint to drive the dragons out before they drowned.

  “There shouldn’t be too many more of those,” Spider shouted when we were charging along again. “We’ll be crossing the City in a little while if we’re not too far off course. I’ve been swinging us westward.”

  My arm was sore.

  Once I got twenty seconds of calm riding time beside Green-eye: “Isn’t this a pretty stupid way to waste your life, fellow?”

  He grinned.

  Then two very friendly dragons came galumphing and moaning between us. Sweat slopped into my eyes and my armpits felt oiled. The harness made it a little easier on my inner thighs; they got raw slow ’stead of quick. I could hardly see and was playing it more by ear than eye when Spider called, “Back on course! City up ahead!”

  I looked up but fresh sweat flooded my eyes and the heat made everything waver. I drove dragons. The gorse lessened, and we started down.

  Earth crumbled under their claws. With no vegetation to blunt the temperature, the sun stuck gold needles in the backs of our necks. Reflected heat from the ground. At last, sand.

  The dragons had to slow. Spider paused beside me to thumb sweat from his eyes. “We usually take McClellan Avenue,” he told me as he looked across the dunes. “But I think we’re closer to Main Street. This hits McClellan a few miles out. We’ll stop at the intersection and rest until nightfall.” The dragons hissed out across the City sands. Swamp creatures, they were not used to this dryness. As we plowed the ancient place, silent and furious with hundreds of beasts, I remember crossing a moment of untimed horror, when through void buff I imagined myself surrounded of a sudden, crowded by millions, straited by walls, sooty, fuming, roaring with the dread, dead old race of the planet.

  I flailed my whip and beat away the notion. The sun ground its light into the sand.

  Two dragons began to annoy each other and I flicked them apart. They snatched at my lash indignantly, missed. My breath filed my throat. Yet, as the two moved away, I realized I was grinning. Alone, we toiled through the day, content and terrified.

  Slipped from the night waters of the Adriatic and now we skirt down the strait towards the Piraeus. At the horizon right and left monstrously beautiful mountains gnaw the sky. The ship is easy on the morning. The speakers give up French, English, and Greek pop music. Sun silvers the hosed deck, burns over the smokestack. Bought deck passage; big and bold last night I walked into a cabin and slept beautifully. Back outside this morning I wonder what effect Greece will have on TEI. The central subject of the book is myth. This music is so appropriate for the world I float on. I was aware how well it fitted the capsulated life of New York. Its torn harmonies are even more congruent with the rest of the world. How can I take Lobey into the center of this bright chaos propelling these sounds? Drank late with the Greek sailors last night; in bad Italian and worse Greek we talked about myths. Taiki learned the story of Orpheus not from school or reading but from his aunt in Eleusis. Where shall I go to learn it? The sailors my age wanted to hear pop English and French music on the portable radio. The older ones wanted to hear the traditional Greek songs. “Demotic songs!” exclaimed Demo. “All the young men in the words want to die as soon as possible because love has treated them badly!”

  “Not so with Orpheus,” Taiki said, a little mysteriously, a little high.

  Did Orpheus want to live after he lost Eurydice the second time? He had a very modern choice to make when he decided to look back. What is its musical essence?

  Writer’s Journal, Gulf of Corinth, November 1965

  I drive fine dragons

  for a fine dragon lord,

  a lord of fine dragons

  and his dragon horde

  Green-eye sang that silently as we dropped from our mounts. For the first time in my life I caught words as well as melody. It surprised me and I turned to stare. But he was loosening the harness on his beast.

  The sky was blue glass. West, clouds smudged the evening with dirty yellow. The dragons threw long shadows on the sand. Coals glowed in the makeshift fireplace. Batt was cooking already.

  “McClellan and Main,” Spider said. “Here we are.”

  “How can you tell?” I asked.

  “I’ve been here before.”

  “Oh.”

  The dragons had more or less decided we were really stopping. Many lay down.

  My mount (whom I had inadvertently named something unprintable; a day’s repetition had stabilized the monicker. Therefore we must call him: My Mount) nuzzled my neck affectionately, nearly knocked me down, then dropped his chin to the sand, folded his forelegs, and let his hinder parts fall where they might. That’s how dragons do it. Sit down I mean.

  Ten steps and I didn’t think I would walk again. I tied my whip around my waist, went as close to the food as I could without stepping on anybody, and sat. The exhausted muscles of my legs sagged like water bags. Supplies and equipment were piled to one side. Spider lay down on top of them with one hand hanging down over the edge. I stared at his hand across the fire: because it was in front of me, that’s all. And I learned a few things about Spider.

  It was large, hung from a knobbly wrist. The skin between thumb and forefinger was cracked like stone, and the ridges of his knuckles were filled with sweat dampened dirt. A bar of callous banded the front of his palm before the abruptness of his fingers—that was all hard dragon work. But also, on the middle finger at the first knuckle was a callous facing the forefinger. That comes from holding a writing tool. La Dire has such a callous and I asked her about it once. Third, on the tips of his fingers (but not his thumb. It was a left hand) there were smooth shiny spots: those you get from playing a stringed instrument, guitar, violin . . . maybe cello? Sometimes when I play with other people I notice them. So Spider herds dragons. And he writes. And he plays music . . .

  While I sat there, it occurred to me how hard breathing was.

  I began to think about trees.

  I had a momentary nightmare that Batt was going to give us something as di
fficult to eat as hardshell crabs and steamed artichokes.

  I leaned on Green-eye’s shoulder and slept.

  I think he slept too.

  I woke when Batt lifted the cover from the stew pot. The odor pried my mouth open, reached down my throat, took hold of my stomach and twisted. I wasn’t sure if it was pleasurable or painful. I just sat, working my jaws, my throat aching. I leaned forward over my knees and clutched sand.

  Batt ladled stew into pans, stopping now and then to shake hair out of his eyes. I wondered how much hair was in the stew. I didn’t care, mind you. Just curious. He passed the steaming tins and I rested mine in the hollow of my crossed legs. A charred loaf of bread came around. Knife broke open a piece and the fluffy innards popped through a gold streak on the crust. When I twisted some off, I realized the fatigue in my arms and shoulders and almost started laughing. I was too tired to eat, too hungry to sleep. With the paradox both sleeping and eating left the category of pleasure, where I’d always put them, and became duties on this crazy job I’d somehow got into. I sopped gravy on my bread, put it into my mouth, bit, and trembled.

  I shoved down half my meal before I realized it was too hot. Hungry like I was hungry, hungry beyond need—it’s frightening to be that hungry.

  Green-eye was shoving something into his mouth with his thumb.

  That was the only other human thing I was aware of during the meal till Stinky spluttered, “Gimme some more!”

  When I got my seconds, I managed to slow down enough to look around. You can tell about people from the way they eat. I remember the dinner Nativia had cooked us. Oh, eating were something else back then—a day ago, two days?

  “You know,” Batt grunted, watching his food go, “you got dessert coming.”

  “Where?” Knife answered, finishing his second helping and reaching out of the darkness for the bread.

  “You have some more food-food first,” Batt said, “ ’cause I’m damned if you’re gonna eat up my dessert that fast.” He leaned over, swiped Knife’s pan from him, filled it, and those gray hands closed on the tin edge and withdrew into the shadow again. The sound of dogged chewing.