The Complete Series

by Samuel R. Delany

  ‘Oh?’ She stretched her arms over her head. ‘And I did sleep wonderfully, too—until that … thing started to tear the forest down around us!’

  ‘It was just a dragon.’

  ‘It was ten dragons!’ she said. ‘All trying to kill each other. At once. I’m sure.’

  ‘You saw it?’

  ‘No’ she said, ‘thank all the nameless gods!’

  ‘Neither did I.’ He made a face. ‘But I smelled it. Probably wasn’t a big one.’

  ‘I’d always heard dragons weren’t even supposed to have nests. I mean, the kind of nest they mother. They’re just supposed to lay their eggs on a cliff somewhere, and—’ She flapped one hand—‘fly off and forget them. Leave them to the sun and the stars to hatch.’

  ‘Well’ Clodon said, ‘this one came back.’ He repeated: ‘I smelled it.’

  ‘I smelled it too’ she said. ‘At least when it woke us up.’

  They turned under the trees back down the path toward Narnis.

  Clodon said, again: ‘I had a dream …’

  She looked over at him.

  In the late afternoon, there was a copper cast to the light slanting among the branches.

  ‘It was about the Liberator,’ he said. ‘At least I think it was. Probably because we were talking about him, before …’ But what could he tell her of such a dream? ‘You say he doesn’t work with the barbarian any more—that he has a one-eyed man for a lieutenant, these days? Now I could tell them that, back at the inn some night. That would get them to listen. Only, of course, if it came from me, someone would say: “How do you know? You’ve always been a liar and fool!”’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you could say you got it straight from someone who knows a lot more about it than they do. And it would be true, too. I follow what the Liberator does pretty closely. A lot do, these days. Some say they’re only waiting to make him a minister.’

  ‘Now if I said that in the tavern—‘ Clodon spat—‘they’d only think it was more lies and rumors and gossip—and pay it no mind.’ He thumbed his mustache for spit.

  ‘Isn’t that odd about little towns,’ she said. ‘One person’s rumor they can take to heart and make a holy thing of it, while another’s they just toss off and never heed it at all. And neither one has to be any truer than the other—or any falser.’

  They walked a while.

  Clodon said: ‘There was a man, once—a long time back. During the year I lived in Kolhari.’

  ‘Did you really live in Kolhari?’ she asked. ‘Vinelet, I’d believe—but Kolhari?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Clodon said. ‘I certainly did. A whole year, too.’ And he did not even know he was lying. ‘He was an undertaker. Now he’d be one to wear the collar, like the Liberator does—if he dared. I met him on the Bridge of Lost Desire. I think he really wanted to show me something—something about myself. Said he wanted me to do a job.’ Clodon humphed again. ‘He talked about it as if it were learning a trade. Only I couldn’t see it. Nor was I much for working, back then. But I really think he wanted to take everything mean, and bad, and wicked about me and turn it to some good purpose—at least as he saw it—so that others might get some pleasure from it.’ Clodon laughed. ‘He said it never worked. I didn’t see it then, though it looks so clear to me now. I’m just not like them. That’s all it is. I’m not like they are. And they’re not like me—no matter how much he thought, perhaps, we were. Our basic natures, they’re just different.’ Did she understand, he wondered, at all? And why was he saying it? ‘What I want to do, it’s not much different from what we did. With maybe just a jug of beer along.’

  ‘It would have been nice to have a little something to drink.’ She nodded now. ‘But I wouldn’t have wanted to carry it up all those steps. Or run back down with it.’

  ‘The ones who see themselves clear; who can look in a mirror and see who they are. They’re lucky. And yet, when you do see what it is you want, it seems so …’

  ‘Simple?’ she asked.

  He laughed a little without opening his mouth. ‘Lucky … that’s all!’

  ‘Am I supposed to say at this point,’ she asked, a bit guardedly, ‘“You know, Clodon, you really are a good man?”’ She put her hands behind her now as they walked. ‘The thing is, I really have known a fair number of your sort. If it’s what you want to hear, and will make you happier for the day, I suppose I can say it.’

  ‘Me?’ Clodon said. ‘A good man? Ha!’ He walked a little slower. ‘Sometimes, though, I wonder what I’d have to do to become one.’

  ‘Now that’s such an easy question!’ she said. ‘At least for me. Stay here in this little town. Work. And keep on working. Don’t get drunk more than once a month. Get in the habit of speaking the truth—it’s no less a habit than lying. Be kind to children and small animals. When you get some woman pregnant—and, drunk or not, you will—don’t run off to another town the week you hear the news. Be as kind and considerate to her as you’ve been to me. And when the dragon beats her wings and honks, hold her, hold her in the dark, and tell her, “No, no, there’s nothing to be afraid of! It’ll be all right!”’

  Clodon said: ‘There really isn’t much to be afraid of with dragons. Up close, they’re all noise and bad smell. And there’re not that many left.’

  ‘Now you see?’ she said, ‘That’s something, somewhere in your travels, you’ve actually learned. It’s very valuable knowledge, too.’

  Clodon drew himself up. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘you’re asking a lot of a man like me.’

  ‘I wasn’t asking anything,’ she said. ‘I was answering. But an answer doesn’t mean much if you can’t hear your own question.’

  Clodon said: ‘You know, right up ahead is where I work. Just around that bend is where Teren’s building his new house. We’ll walk by, and there they’ll all be, digging away at his foundation. Now if he had any sense, he’d make me his foreman. I’d get the job done for him in half the time those lazy fools are taking. I’ve done that kind of work before, and I know what it’s about—a good bit better than he does. And what’ll they think of me in a minute, walking by with you?’

  After three steps, she stopped.

  ‘What …?’ he said.

  ‘It occurs to me,’ Alharid said, ‘maybe to make things easier for me and easier for you, that I should go on by myself. You wait here a bit, then come after me. They’re probably rumors enough already flying about the town. I’m sure at least two people saw us walking off. And that’s all it takes. But still, it might help things out just a little if lots of people didn’t see us together.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘That’s right …’

  ‘How do I get back to the inn from here?’

  ‘Follow this path right along. You’ll see where they’re working. A little while on, it swings around and goes by the tavern—only in the front. You won’t miss it. We just took the back way.’

  ‘Oh.’ She lifted her head. ‘Well, give me ten or fifteen minutes. Then you can come.’ She leaned over, giving him a kiss; then she walked quickly away.

  Standing, watching her, Clodon began to feel the ache of incompletion, of wanting, of anxiety—would she be staying at the inn that night? Would he have a chance to see her again, or even to say goodbye as she was leaving? Clodon, as we have written, had always lived with desire at a distance. But though he could be as proprietary, possessive, or jealous about a bed-mate as the next man, it would have taken a great deal more than one afternoon to make him feel he had any right to what had just happened up on the ridge above the gorge.

  He stood, under the trees, fifteen minutes or more. While he stood, he thought: Narnis wasn’t such a bad town. It had a gorge beside it—with dragons! And now and again interesting strangers, among them this astonishing woman, came through. He’d even saved her from the loud beast … He was getting older. Would it really be so bad to show up every day at Teren’s foundation till the stone house rose above it? No, he didn’t like work; but he wasn’t afraid of it
either.

  And she might someday come back. After all, she liked his sort. She had a fascination. Wouldn’t she be surprised if, when she returned, he had a hut of his own, where he could ask her in and pour her a mug of beer, or cider if that’s what she drank, or rum—

  Yes, it had been fully fifteen minutes. And he was mortally thirsty. Maybe Teren would be buying his men an after-work beer. And if Clodon just tagged along …

  He started up the road.

  In a minute, he rounded the bend.

  There they all were, digging like dung beetles.

  Teren stood off at the side, looking down, rubbing his fingers against his short, black beard.

  And there, with his bucket in his good hand, and starting up the ladder, was Funig. So, he’d come on up to be put to work after all!

  ‘Hey, Funig!’ Clodon called.

  The boy looked up, saw him, and nodded, grinning.

  Clodon walked between dug-up piles of earth to step over the handles of a wooden barrow, turned with its wheels in the air. ‘I see you finally got him to bend his back!’ he called to Teren. ‘I didn’t think he was going to get here at all today!’

  Teren kept looking down. Then he said, ‘There, that’s enough,’ to someone else, like something important was going on, down in the pit. He glanced at Clodon, then stepped away.

  ‘Hey, Teren!’ Clodon said. ‘I just stopped by to tell you I think I’ll be back here tomorrow.’

  Teren’s ragged vest didn’t come all the way below his shoulder blades. ‘Who says I want you?’ Without turning back, Teren bent to pick up a hoe lying dangerously with its blade up; his kilt showed the crevice between his buttocks.

  Clodon stuck a thumb beneath his own leather clout to tug it up a bit. ‘Well, you need all the men you can get. Especially those who know this kind of work. You said that, yourself. This is quite a job—you’re coming along well, too!’

  Standing, Teren turned. ‘Don’t come here tomorrow, Clodon.’ He let the hoe fall against a mound.

  ‘You put the boy on, and he didn’t come in till half the day was done.’

  Funig was lurching over, the treachery of breakfast forgotten.

  ‘But I’m not putting you on!’

  ‘You’re acting like this, just because I missed a day? Well, I drink too much, sometimes. It’s hard for me, then, to get out and about. What man here can’t you say that of? That’s no news!’

  What rumors, Clodon wondered, could have possibly started in so little time about him and a woman even less a part of Narnis than he? If it had been Jara he’d gone off with, he could see it.

  ‘Hey, Clodon!’ Funig said. ‘You coming down to the inn after work? We can go off and—’

  ‘You’re not going anywhere with Clodon,’ Teren said. ‘If I see you with him, boy, I’ll beat you. With my own fist. And you won’t work for me or anyone else any more. And you’ll get your first flogging for it. I’m not fooling.’

  Funig protested: ‘We’re just going to talk—’

  ‘You don’t have anything to say to Clodon. And he doesn’t have anything to say to you.’ Teren looked like he was about to strike Funig. ‘You hear me, now?’

  Funig flinched. He glanced at Clodon, at Teren, then turned and lurched off between the piles.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ Clodon’s voice hung between mock openness and mock belligerence; he felt a growing anxiousness.

  Teren’s hard hand fell on Clodon’s shoulder. ‘I’m going to have a talk with you,’ he said. ‘And then I’m not going to talk to you any more!’ He walked Clodon across the site.

  Some of the others looked up.

  Teren didn’t stop until he was at the very edge, standing just at the big path’s scooped out shoulder. ‘When were you in Minogra?’

  Clodon felt a kind of coldness at the small of his back. ‘Minogra?’ He shook his head. ‘What is it? Where is it? I don’t know anything about Minogra.’

  ‘There’s a man here, from Minogra, who stayed at the inn last night. He’s traveling with the lady who just came by. Did you see her up the road?’

  ‘What lady?’ Clodon said. ‘What man?’

  That was stupid, Clodon thought. The boy he’d asked the directions from will tell him we were together. For all his bad ways, he was still Teren’s cousin. Oh, he’d tell, all right!

  ‘The man came by. He spent some time here at the site today. He was talking with me, you see. He said about six weeks back, there was a fellow at Minogra—had a gut on him. He’d been whipped, too. Had twelve welts across his back. I think it was twelve—you want to turn around and let me count them, one at a time?’

  ‘So …?’ Clodon said. ‘So there was a man there. So what?’

  ‘He’d only been there a while. But they caught him thieving—the same kinds of things you and Funig have been pulling here.’

  ‘Now you know Funig talks a lot of noise. But he’s a fool, not a thief!’

  ‘I’m talking about you, man!’

  Clodon narrowed his eyes.

  ‘They caught you. At Minogra. The bailiff had you for a whole day, but you broke loose and fled the place—before you could get your next whipping.’

  ‘Now that’s a rumor!’ Clodon declared. ‘That’s all! It’s just something somebody said. How’s he supposed to know it was me?’ A whole day? The bailiff hadn’t been able to keep him an hour, before he’d got himself loose and gone! Oh, those old Minogra farmers could be liars! ‘A stranger from another town comes by, and you’re going to take a bit of gossip and throw it up to me like that, after I’ve worked for you here on your dirty dig? That’s not right, Teren! That’s not right! I wasn’t anywhere near Minogra. I’ve never even heard of it! You’re going to take his word over mine, just because I’m a marked man? Well, my marks say that I’ve paid up what I owe. That’s what they say. You don’t have to know much to read that from a flogged man’s hide!’

  ‘If you ran out on a flogging still owing, you can’t talk about debts paid!’

  Clodon pulled back, but Teren yanked him forward again by the shoulder.

  ‘The man who escaped at Minogra,’ Teren said, ‘had a peg in his ear from the Menyat. He had a finger off his right hand. And he had a scar on his lower lip, and another through his eyebrow. I’m not a vicious man, Clodon. But if you show up tomorrow, the bailiff will be here ten minutes later. And if you go to the tavern tonight, bothering Funig or Jara, he’ll be there. And if you stand around here for more than another three minutes, I’ll send someone for him now!’

  Clodon started.

  But Teren pulled him forward once more. ‘Do you hear what I’m saying? There’s the path down to the highway. You keep on it. There’s nobody in this town you need to say another word to. And maybe, if you leave tonight, I won’t send anyone after you. Do you hear!’

  Clodon stepped back again, yanking from Teren’s grip.

  He looked around at the dig.

  He blinked at Teren, who was standing there, breathing quickly, with his eyes kind of slit.

  Then Clodon turned and started down the road.

  Perhaps, he thought, he could stop at the inn for a minute, and see Alharid, and tell her what had happened. But then, she was with the man from Minogra. And hadn’t she said it? Her fascination didn’t go that far.

  Suddenly, Clodon turned off into the woods.

  You just couldn’t trust small-town folk like Teren, once they got righteous.

  After only five weeks, too—oh, it wasn’t fair to drive him out from such a town as Narnis!

  Still, it was a better exit than he’d taken from Minogra.

  But he’d only had an apple that morning. And not even a pitcher of beer to warm him on his way. (Funig would have managed to do that for him, he knew—if Teren had given him a chance!) ‘Now, Funig,’ Clodon muttered, ducking around one trunk and in between two others, ‘you won’t have to listen any more to my dangerous tales. Every night now you can hear them at the inn tell fine, upstanding stories of the
Liberator—a year out of date! That’s the sort you need! Tales you’re too thick to understand anyway …’ He swung up an arm for the underbrush, lifted his leg for a log. Who did Teren think he was? If Clodon had been younger—or drunk—he might have thrown a punch at him. Now that would have been a proper goodbye! Oh, someday, Teren, you’ll be driving your cart on a back road at evening between villages. And I’ll be there. Then we’ll have a very different little talk—before I push a blade up under your chin so hard it goes through your brain pan and out the top of your skull! Where will you and your fine stone house be, then? Still, for now, when village folk got on you like that, it was best to be shut of them, fast as you could, while their ears were hungry for the lies any stranger might tell. (A whole day—!) And through the woods it was shorter down to the north-south highway: he’d best be on it soon as he could, if he wanted to … You know what to read in the pause.

  New York,

  February 1987

  The Tale of Gorgik

  Because we must deal with the unknown, whose nature is by definition speculative and outside the flowing chain of language, whatever we make of it will be no more than probability and no less than error. The awareness of possible error in speculation and of a continued speculation regardless of error is an event in the history of modern rationalism whose importance, I think, cannot be overemphasized … Nevertheless, the subject of how and when we become certain that what we are doing is quite possibly wrong but at least a beginning has to be studied in its full historical and intellectual richness.

  —EDWARD SAID

  Beginnings, Intention and Method

  1

  HIS MOTHER FROM TIME to time claimed eastern connections with one of the great families of fisherwomen in the Ulvayn Islands: she had the eyes, but not the hair. His father was a sailor who, after a hip injury at sea, had fixed himself to the port of Kolhari, where he worked as a waterfront dispatcher for a wealthier importer. So Gorgik grew up in the greatest of Nevèrÿon ports, his youth along the docks substantially rougher than his parents would have liked and peppered with more trouble than they thought they could bear—though not so rough or troubled as some of his friends’: he was neither killed by accidental deviltry nor arrested.