Samuel R. Delaney - Dhalgren

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Prism, Mirror, Lens
to wound the autumnal city.
So howled out for the world to give him a name.
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 riots; know that dark women in bodegas shook their heads last week because in six months prices have
risen outlandishly; how coffee tastes after you've held it in your mouth, cold, a whole minute.
A whole minute he squatted, pebbles clutched with his left foot (the bare one), listening to his breath
sound tumble down the ledges.
Beyond a leafy arras, reflected moonlight flittered.
He rubbed his palms against denim. Where he was, was still. Somewhere else, wind whined.
The leaves winked.
What had been wind was a motion in brush below. His hand went to the rock behind.
She stood up, two dozen feet down and away, wearing only shadows the moon dropped from the viney
maple; moved, and the shadows moved on her.
Fear prickled one side where his shirt (two middle buttons gone) bellied with a breeze. Muscle made a
band down the back of his jaw. Black hair tried to paw off what fear scored on his forehead.
She whispered something that was all breath, and 1
the wind came for the words and dusted away the meaning:
"Ahhhhh... " from her.
He forced out air: it was nearly a cough.
"... Hhhhhh... " from her again. And laughter; which had a dozen edges in it, a bright snarl under the
moon. "... hhhHHhhhh... " which had more sound in it than that, perhaps was his name, even. But the wind,
wind...
She stepped.
Motion rearranged the shadows, baring one breast There was a lozenge of light over one eye. Calf, and
ankle were luminous before leaves.
Down her lower leg was a scratch.
His hair tugged back from his forehead. He watched hers flung forward. She moved with her hair,
stepping over leaves, toes spread on stone, in a tip-toe pause, to quit the darker shadows.
Crouched on rock, he pulled his hands up his thighs.
His hands were hideous.
She passed another, nearer tree. The moon flung gold coins at her breasts. Her brown aureoles were wide,
her nipples small. "You... ?" She said that, softly, three feet away, looking down; and he still could not make
out her expression for the leaf dappling; but her cheek bones were Orientally high. She was Oriental, he
realized and waited for another word, tuned for accent. (He could sort Chinese from Japanese. ) "You've
come!" It was a musical Midwestern Standard. "I didn't know if you'd come!" He voicing (a clear soprano,
whispering... ) said that some what he'd thought was shadow-movement might have fear: "You're here!" She
dropped to her knees in a roar of foliage. Her thighs, hard in front, softer (he could tell) on the sides-a column
of darkness between them--were inches from his raveled knees.
She reached, two fingers extended, pushed back plaid wool, and touched his chest; ran her fingers down.
He could hear his own crisp hair.
Laughter raised her face to the moon. He leaned forward; the odor of lemons filled the breezeless gap. Her
round face was compelling, her eyebrows un-Orientally heavy. He judged her over thirty, but the only lines
were two small ones about her mouth.
He turned his mouth, open, to hers, and raised his hands to the sides of her head till her hair covered them.
The cartilages of her ears were hot curves on his palms. Her knees slipped in leaves; that made her blink and
laugh again. Her breath was like noon and smelled of lemons . . .
He kissed her; she caught his wrists. The joined meat of their mouths came alive. The shape of her
breasts, her hand half on his chest and half on wool, was lost with her weight against him.
Their fingers met and meshed at his belt; a gasp bubbled in their kiss (his heart was stuttering loudly), was
blown away; then air on his thigh.
They lay down.
With her fingertips she moved his cock head roughly in her rough hair while a muscle in her leg shook
under his. Suddenly he slid into her heat. He held her tightly around the shoulders when her movements were
violent. One of her fists stayed like a small rock over her breast. And there was a roaring, roaring: at the long,
surprising come, leaves hailed his side.
Later, on their sides, they made a warm place with their mingled breath. She whispered, "You're beautiful,
I think." He laughed, without opening his lips. Closely, she looked at one of his eyes, looked at the other (he
blinked), looked at his chin (behind his lips he closed his teeth so that his jaw moved), then at his forehead.
(He liked her lemon smell.) ". .. beautiful!" she repeated.
Wondering was it true, he smiled.
She raised her hand into the warmth, with small white nails, moved one finger beside his nose, growled
against his cheek.
He reached to take her wrist.
She asked, "Your hand . . . ?"
So he put it behind her shoulder to pull her nearer.
She twisted. "Is there something wrong with your . . . ?"
He shook his head against her hair, damp, cool, licked it.
Behind him, the wind was cool. Below hair, her skin was hotter than his tongue. He brought his hands
around into the heated cave between them.
She pulled back. "Your hands-!"
Veins like earthworms wriggled in the hair. The skin was cement dry; his knuckles were thick with
scabbed callous. Blunt thumbs lay on the place between her breasts like toads.
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She frowned, raised her knuckles toward his, stopped.
Under the moon on the sea of her, his fingers were knobbed peninsulas. Sunk on the promontory of each
was a stripped-off, gnawed-back, chitinous wreck.
"You . . . ?" he began.
No, they were not deformed. But they were . . . ugly! She looked up. Blinking, her eyes glistened.
". . . do you know my ... ?" His voice hoarsened. "Who I... am?"
Her face was not subtle; but her smile, regretful and mostly in the place between her brow and her folded
lids, confused.
"You," she said, full voice and formal (but the wind still blurred some overtone), "have a father." Her hip
was warm against his belly. The air which he had thought mild till now was a blade to pry back his loins.
"You have a mummer-!" That was his cheek against her mouth. But she turned her face away. "You are-" she
placed her pale hand over his great one (Such big hands for a little ape of a guy, someone had kindly said. He
remembered that) on her ribs-"beautiful. You've come from somewhere. You're going somewhere." She
sighed.
"But . . ." He swallowed the things in his throat (he wasn't that little). "I've lost. .. something."
"Things have made you what you are," she recited "What you are will make you what you will become."
"I want something back!"
She reached behind her to pull him closer. The cold well between his belly and the small of her back
collapsed. "What don't you have?" She looked over her shoulder at him: "How old are you?"
'Twenty-seven."
"You have the face of someone much younger." She giggled. "I thought you were . . . sixteen! You have
the hands of someone much older-"
"And meaner?"
"-crueler than I think you are. Where were you born?"
"Upstate New York. You wouldn't know the town, I didn't stay there long."
"I probably wouldn't. You're a long way away. "I've been to Japan. And Australia." "You're educated?"
He laughed. His chest shook her shoulder. "One year 4
at Columbia. Almost another at a community college in Delaware. No degree."
"What year were you bora?"
"Nineteen forty-eight. I've been in Central America too. Mexico. I just came from Mexico and I-"
"What do you want to change in the world?" she continued her recitation, looking away. "What do you
want to preserve? What is the thing you're searching for? What are you running away from?"
"Nothing," he said. "And nothing. And nothing. And ... nothing, at least that I know."
"You have no purpose?"
"I want to get to Bellona and-" He chuckled. "Mine's the same as everybody else's; in real life, anyway: to
get through the next second, consciousness intact."
The next second passed.
"Really?" she asked, real enough to make him realize the artificiality of what he'd said (thinking: It is in
danger with the passing of each one). "Then be glad you're not just a character scrawled in the margins of
somebody else's lost notebook: you'd be deadly dull. Don't you have any reason for going there?"
'To get to Bellona and ..."
When he said no more, she said, "You don't have to tell me. So, you don't know who you are? Finding
that out would be much too simple to bring you all the way from upper New York State, by way of Japan,
here. Ahhh ..." and she stopped.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"What?"
"Well, if you were born in nineteen forty-eight, you've got to be older than twenty-seven."
"How do you mean?"
"Oh, hell," she said. "It isn't important."
He began to shake her arm, slowly.
She said: "I was bora in nineteen forty-seven. And I'm a good deal older then twenty-eight." She blinked
at him again. "But that really isn't im-"
He rolled back in the loud leaves. "Do you know who I am?" Night was some color between clear and
cloud. "You came here, to find me. Can't you tell me what my name is?"
Cold spread down his side, where she had been, like butter.
He turned his head.
"Come!" As she sat, her hair writhed toward him. A handful of leaves struck his face.
He sat too.
But she was already running, legs passing and passing through moon-dapple.
He wondered where she'd got that scratch.
Grabbing his pants, he stuck foot and foot in them, grabbing his shirt and his single sandal, rolled to his
feet-She was rounding the rock's edge.
He paused for his fly and the twin belt hooks. Twigs and gravel chewed his feet. She ran so fast!
He came up as she glanced back, put his hand on the stone-and flinched: the rock-face was wet. He
looked at the crumbled dirt on the yellow ham and heel.
"There . . ." She pointed into the cave. "Can you see it?"
He started to touch her shoulder, but ho.
She said: "Go ahead. Go in."
He dropped his sandal: a lisp of brush. He dropped his shirt: that smothered the lisping.
She looked at him expectantly, stepped aside.
He stepped in: moss on his heel, wet rock on the ball of his foot. His other foot came down: wet rock.
Breath quivered about him. In the jellied darkness something dry brushed his cheek. He reached up: a
dead vine crisp with leaves. It swung: things rattled awfully far overhead. With visions of the mortal edge, he
slid his foot forward. His toes found: a twig with loose bark ... a clot of wet leaves ... the thrill of water . . .
Next step, water licked over his foot. He stepped again:
Only rock.
A flicker, left.
Stepped again, and the flicker was orange, around the edge of something; which was the wall of a rock
niche, with shadow for ceiling, next step.
Beyond a dead limb, a dish of brass wide as a car tire had nearly burned to embers. Something in the
remaining fire snapped, spilling sparks on wet stone.
Ahead, where the flicker leaked high up into the narrowing slash, something caught and flung back
flashings.
He climbed around one boulder, paused; the echo from breath and burning cast up intimations of the
cavern's size. He gauged a crevice, leaped the meter, and
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scrambled on the far slope. Things loosened under his feet. He heard pebbles in the gash complaining down
rocks, and stuttering, and whispering-and silence.
Then: a splash!
He pulled in his shoulders; he had assumed it was only a yard or so deep.
He had to climb a long time. One face, fifteen feet high, stopped him a while. He went to the side and
clambered up the more uneven outcroppings. He found a thick ridge that, he realized as he pulled himself up
it, was a root. He wondered what it was a root to, and gained the ledge.
Something went Eeek! softly, six inches from his nose, and scurried off among old leaves.
He swallowed, and the prickles tidaling along his shoulders subsided. He pulled himself the rest of the
way, and stood:
It lay in a crack that slanted into roofless shadow.
One end looped a plume of ferns.
He reached for it; his body blocked the light from the brazier below: glimmer ceased.
He felt another apprehension than that of the unexpected seen before, or accidentally revealed behind. He
searched himself for some physical sign that would make it real: quickening breath, slowing heart. But what
he apprehended was insubstantial as a disjunction of the soul. He picked the chain up; one end chuckled and
flickered down the stone. He turned with it to catch the orange glimmer.
Prisms.
Some of them, anyway.
Others were round.
He ran the chain across his hand. Some of the round ones were transparent. Where they crossed the
spaces between his fingers, the light distorted. He lifted the chain to gaze through one of the lenses. But it was
opaque. Tilting it, he saw pass, dim and inches distant in the circle, his own eye, quivering in the quivering
glass.
Everything was quiet.
He pulled the chain across his hand. The random arrangement went almost nine feet. Actually, three
lengths were attached. Each of the three ends looped on itself. On the largest loop was a small metal tag.
He stooped for more light. *
The centimeter of brass (the links bradded into the 7
optical bits were brass) was inscribed: producto do Brazil. He thought: What the hell kind of Portuguese is
that?
He crouched a moment longer looking along the glittering lines.
He tried to pull it all together for his jean pocket, but the three tangled yards spilled his palms. Standing,
he found the largest loop and lowered his head. Points and edges nipped his neck. He got the tiny rings
together under his chin and fingered (Thinking: Like damned clubs) the catch closed.
He looked at the chain in loops of light between his feet. He picked up the shortest end from his thigh.
The loop there was smaller.
He waited, held his breath even-then wrapped the length twice around his upper arm, twice around his
lower, and fastened the catch at his wrist. He flattened his palm on the links and baubles hard as plastic or
metal. Chest hair tickled the creasing between joint and joint.
He passed the longest end around his back: the bits lay out cold kisses on his shoulder blades. Then
across his chest; his back once more; his belly. Holding the length in one hand (it still hung down on the
stone), he unfastened his belt with the other.
Pants around his ankles, he wound the final length once around his hips; and then around his right thigh;
again around; and again. He fastened the last catch at his ankle. Pulling up his trousers, he went to the ledge,
buckled them, and turned to climb down.
He was aware of the bindings. But, chest flat on the stone, they were merely lines and did not cut.
This time he went to where the crevice was only a foot wide and stepped far of the lip. The cave mouth
was a lambda of moon mist, edged with leaf-lace.
The rocks licked his soles. Once, when his mind wandered, it was brought back by his foot in cold water; and
the links were warm around his body. He halted to feel for more heat; but the chain was only neutral weight.
He stepped out onto moss.
His shirt lay across a bush, his sandal, sole up, beneath.
He slipped his arms into the wool sleeves: his right wrist glittered from the cuff. He buckled his sandal:
the ground moistened his knee.
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He stood, looked around, and narrowed his eyes on the shadows. "Hey . . . ?" He turned left, turned right,
and scratched his collar-bone with his wide thumb. "Hey, where . . . ?" Turning right, turning left, he wished
he could interpret scuffs and broken brush. She wouldn't have wandered down the way they'd come ...
He left the cave mouth and entered the shingled black. Could she have gone along here? he wondered
three steps in. But went forward.
He recognized the road for moonlight the same moment his sandaled foot jabbed into mud. His bare one
swung to the graveled shoulder. He staggered out on the asphalt, one foot sliding on flooded leather, took a
hissing breath, and gazed around.
Left, the road sloped up between the trees. He started right. Downward would take him toward the city.
On one side was forest. On the other, he realized after a dozen slippery jogs, it was only a hedge of trees.
Trees dropped away with another dozen. Behind, the grass whispered and shushed him.
She was standing at the meadow's center.
He brought his feet-one strapped and muddy, one bare and dusty-together; suddenly felt his heart beating;
heard his surprised breath shush the grass back. He stepped across the ditch to ill-mowed stubble.
She's too tall, he thought, nearing.
Hair lifted from her shoulders; grass whispered again.
She had been taller than he was, but not like . . . "Hey, I got the ... I" She was holding her arms over her
head. Was she standing on some stumpy pedestal? "Hey ...?"
She twisted from the waist: "What the hell are you doing here?"
At first he thought she was splattered with mud all up her thigh. "I thought you . . . ?" But it was brown as
dried blood.
She gazed down at him with batting eyes.
Mud? Blood? It was the wrong color for either.
"Go away!"
He took another, entranced step.
"What are you doing here? Go away!"
Were the blotches under her breasts scabs? "Look, I got it! Now, can't you tell me my ... ?"
Leaves were clutched in her raised hands. Her hands 9
were raised so high! Leaves dropped about her shoulders. Her long, long fingers shook, and brittle darkness
covered one flank. Her pale belly jerked with a breath.
"No!" She bent away when he tried to touch her; and stayed bent. One arm, branched and branching ten
feet over him, pulled a web of shadow-across the grass.
"You ... !" was the word he tried; breath was all that came.
He looked up among the twigs of her ears. Leaves shucked from her eyebrows. Her mouth was a thick,
twisted bole, as though some footwide branch had been lopped off by lightning. Her eyes-his mouth opened
as he craned to see them-disappeared, first one, up there, then the other, way over there: scabby lids sealed.
He backed through stiff grass.
A leaf crashed his temple like a charred moth.
Rough fingers bludgeoning his lips, he stumbled, turned, ran to the road, glanced once more where the
twisted trunk raked five branches at the moon, loped until he had to walk, walked-gasping-until he could
think. Then he ran some more.
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It is not that I have no past. Rather, it continually fragments on the terrible and vivid ephemera of now. In
the long country, cut with rain, somehow there is nowhere to begin. Loping and limping in the ruts, it would be
easier not to think about what she did (was done to her, done to her, done), trying instead to reconstruct what it
is at a distance. Oh, but it would not be so terrible had one calf, not borne (if I'd looked close, it would have
been a chain of tiny wounds with moments of flesh between; I've done that myself with a swipe in a garden
past a rose) that scratch.
The asphalt spilled him onto the highway's shoulder. The paving's chipped edges filed visions off his eyes.
A roar came toward him he heard only as it passed. He glanced back: the truck's red, rear eyes sank together.
He walked for another hour, saw no other vehicle.
A Mac with a double van belched twenty feet behind him, sagged to a stop twenty feet ahead. He hadn't
even been thumbing. He sprinted toward the opening door, hauled himself up, slammed it. The driver, tall,
blond, and acned, looking blank, released the clutch.
He was going to say thanks, but coughed. Maybe the driver wanted somebody to rap at? Why else stop for
someone just walking the road!
He didn't feel like rapping. But you have to say something:
"What you loading?"
"Artichokes."
Approaching lights spilled pit to pit in the driver's face.
They shook on down the highway.
He could think of nothing more, except: I was just making love to this woman, see, and you'll never guess
... No, the Daphne bit would not pass-
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It was he who wanted to talk! The driver was content to dispense with phatic thanks and chatter. Western
independence? He had hitched this sector of country enough to decide it was all manic terror.
He leaned his head back. He wanted to talk and had nothing to say.
Fear past, the archness of it forced the architecture of a smile his lips fought.
He saw the ranked highway lights twenty minutes later and sat forward to see the turnoff. He glanced at
the driver who was just glancing away. The brakes wheezed and the cab slowed by lurches.
They stopped. The driver sucked in the sides of his mined cheeks, looked over, still blank.
He nodded, sort of smiled, fumbled the door, dropped to the road; the door slammed arid the truck started
while he was still preparing thanks; he had to duck the van corner.
The vehicle grumbled down the turnoff. We only spoke a line apiece.
What an odd ritual exchange to exhaust communication. (Is that terror?) What amazing and engaging
rituals are we practicing now? (He stood on the road side, laughing.) What torque and tension in the mouth to
laugh so in this windy, windy, windy . ..
Underpass and overpass knotted here. He walked . . . proudly? Yes, proudly by the low wall. Across the water
the city flickered. On its dockfront, down half a mile, flamed roiled smoke on the sky and reflections on the
river. Here, not one car came off the bridge. Not one went on.
This toll booth, like the rank of booths, was dark. He stepped inside: front pane shattered, stool
overturned, no drawer in the register-a third of the keys stuck down; a few bent. Some were missing their
heads. Smashed by a mace, a mallet, a fist? He dragged his fingers across them, listened to them click, then
stepped from the glass-flecked, rubber mat, over the sill to the pavement.
Metal steps led up to the pedestrian walkway. But since there was no traffic, he sauntered across two
empty lanes-a metal grid sunk in the blacktop gleamed where tires had polished it-to amble the broken white
line, sandaled foot one side, bare foot the other. Girders wheeled by him, left and right. Beyond, the burning
city squatted on weak, inverted images of its fires.
12
He gazed across the wale of night water, all wind-runneled, and sniffed for burning. A gust parted the hair
at the back of his neck; smoke was moving off the river.
"Hey, you!"
He looked up at the surprising flashlight. "Huh . . . ?" At the walkway rail, another and another punctured
the dark.
"You going into Bellona?"
"That's right." Squinting, he tried to smile. One, and another, the lights moved a few steps, stopped. He
said: "You're . . . leaving?"
"Yeah. You know it's restricted in there."
He nodded. "But I haven't seen any soldiers or police or anything. I just hitch-hiked down."
"How were the rides?"
"All I saw was two trucks for the last twenty miles. The second one gave me a lift."
"What about the traffic going out?"
He shrugged. "But I guess girls shouldn't have too hard a time, though. I mean, if a car passes, you'll
probably get a ride. Where you heading?"
"Two of us want to get to New York. Judy wants to go to San Francisco."
"I just want to get some place," a whiny voice came down. "I've got a fever! I should be in bed. I was in
bed for the last three days."
He said: "You've got a ways to go, either direction."
"Nothing's happened to San Francisco-?"
"--or New York?"
"No." He tried to see behind the lights. "The papers don't even talk about what's happening here, any
more."
"But, Jesus! What about the television? Or the radio-"
"Stupid, none of it works out here. So how are they
gonna know?"
"But- Oh, wow . .. !"He said: "The nearer you get, it's just less and less people. And the ones you meet are
... funnier. What's it like inside?"
One laughed.
Another said: "It's pretty rough."
The one who'd spoken first said: "But like you say, girls have an easier time."
They laughed.
13
He did too. "Is there anything you can tell me? I mean that might be helpful? Since I'm going in?"
"Yeah. Some men came by, shot up the house we were living in, tore up the place, then burned us out."
"She was making this sculpture," the whiny voice explained; "this big sculpture. Of a lion. Out of junk metal
and stuff. It was beautiful ... ! But she had to leave it." "Wow," he said. "Is it like that?" One short, hard
laugh: "Yeah. We got it real easy." 'Tell him about Calkins? Or the scorpions?" "He'll learn about them."
Another laugh. "What can you say?"
"You want a weapon to take in with you?" That made him afraid again. "Do I need one?" But they
were talking among themselves: "You're gonna give him that?"
"Yeah, why not? I don't want it with me any more." "Well, okay. It's yours."
Metal sounded on chain, while one asked: "Where you from?" The flashlights turned away, ghosting the
group. One in profile near the rail was momentarily lighted enough to see she was very young, very black,
and very pregnant.
"Up from the south."
"You don't sound like you're from the south," one said who did.
"I'm not from the south. But I was just in Mexico." "Oh, hey!" That was the pregnant one. "Where were you? I
know Mexico."
The exchange of half a dozen towns ended in disappointed
silence.
"Here's your weapon."
Flashlights followed the flicker in the air, the clatter on the gridded blacktop.
With the beams on the ground (and not in his eyes), he could make out half a dozen women on the catwalk.
"What-" A car motor thrummed at the end of the bridge; but there were no headlights when he glanced. The
sound died on some turnoff-"is it?" "What'd they call it?" "An orchid." "Yeah, that's what it is." He walked
over, squatted in the triple beam. "You wear it around your wrist. With the blades sticking out front. Like a
bracelet"
14
From an adjustable metal wrist-band, seven blades, from eight to twelve inches, curved sharply forward.
There was a chain-and-leather harness inside to hold it steady on the fingers. The blades were sharpened along
the outside.
He picked it up.
"Put it on."
"Are you right or left handed?"
"Ambidextrous . . ." which, in his case, meant clumsy with both. He turned the "flower". "But I write with
my left. Usually."
"Oh."
He fitted it around his right wrist, snapped it. "Suppose you were wearing this on a crowded bus. You
could hurt somebody," and felt the witticism fail. He made a fist within the blades, opened it slowly and,
behind curved steel, rubbed two blunt and horny crowns on the underside of his great thumb.
"There aren't too many buses in Bellona."
Thinking: Dangerous, bright petals bent about some knobbed, half-rotted root. "Ugly thing," he told it,
not them. "Hope I don't need you."
"Hope you don't either," one said above. "I guess you can give it to somebody else when you leave."
"Yeah." He stood up. "Sure."
"If he leaves," another said, gave another laugh.
"Hey, we better get going."
"I heard a car. We're probably gonna have to wait long enough anyway. We might as well start."
South: "He didn't make it sound like we were gonna get any rides."
"Let's just get going. Hey, so long!"
"So long." Their beams swept by. "And thanks." Artichokes? But he could not remember where the word
had come from to ring so brightly. He raised the orchid after them. His gnarled hand, caged in blades, was
silhouetted with river glitter stretching between the bridge struts. Watching them go, he felt the vaguest flutter
of desire. Only one of their flashlights was on. Then one of them blocked that. They were footsteps on metal
plates; some laughter drifting back; rustlings . . .
He walked again, holding his hand from his side.
This parched evening seasons the night with remembrances of rain. Very few suspect the existence of this
city. It is as if not only the media but the laws of perception themselves have redesigned knowledge and per-
15
ception to pass it. Rumor says there is
practically no power here. Neither
television cameras nor on-the-spot
broadcasts function: that such a catastrophe
as this should be opaque, and therefore
dull, to the electric nation! It is a city of
inner discordances and retinal distortions.
16
Beyond the bridge-mouth, the pavement shattered.
One live street lamp lit five dead ones-two with broken globes. Climbing a ten-foot, tilted, asphalt slab
that jerked once under him, rumbling like a live thing, he saw pebbles roll off the edge, heard them clink on
fugitive plumbing, then splash somewhere in darkness ... He recalled the cave and vaulted to a more solid
stretch, whose cracks were mortared with nubby grass.
No lights in any near buildings; but down those waterfront streets, beyond the veils of smoke-was that
fire? Already used to the smell, he had to breathe deeply to notice it. The sky was all haze. Buildings jabbed
up into it and disappeared.
Light?
At the corner of a four-foot alley, he spent ten minutes exploring-just because the lamp worked. Across
the street he could make out concrete steps, a loading porch under an awning, doors. A truck had overturned at
the block's end. Nearer, three cars, windows rimmed with smashed glass, squatted on skewed hubs, like frogs
gone marvelously blind.
His bare foot was calloused enough for gravel and glass. But ash kept working between his foot and his
remaining sandal to grind like finest sand, work its way under, and silt itself with his sweat. His heel was
almost sore.
By the gate at the alley's end, he found a pile of empty cans, a stack of newspaper still wire-bound, bricks
set up as a fireplace with an arrangement of pipes over it. Beside it was an army messpan, insides caked with
dead mold. Something by his moving foot crinkled.
He reached down. One of the orchid's petals snagged; he picked up a package of ... bread? The wrapper
was twisted closed. Back under the street lamp, he balanced it
17
on his fingers, through the blades, and opened the cellophane.
He had wondered about food.
He had wondered about sleep.
But he knew the paralysis of wonder.
The first slice had a tenpenny nailhead of muzzy green in the corner; the second and third, the same. The
nail, he thought, was through the loaf. The top slice was dry on one side. Nothing else was wrong-except the
green vein; and it was only that penicillium stuff. He could eat around it
I'm not hungry.
He replaced the slices, folded the cellophane, carried it back, and wedged it behind the stacked papers.
As he returned to the lamp, a can clattered from his sandal, defining the silence. He wandered away
through it, gazing up for some hint of the hazed-out moon-
Breaking glass brought his eyes to street level.
He was afraid, and he was curious; but fear had been so constant, it was a dull and lazy emotion, now; the
curiosity was alive:
He sprinted to the nearest wall, moved along it rehearsing his apprehensions of all terrible that might
happen. He passed a doorway, noted it for ducking, and kept on to the corner. Voices now. And more glass.
He peered around the building edge.
Three people vaulted from a shattered display window to join two waiting. Barking, a dog followed them
to the sidewalk. One man wanted to climb back in; did. Two others took off down the block.
The dog circled, loped his way-
He pulled back, free hand grinding on the brick.
The dog, crouched and dancing ten feet off, barked, barked, barked again.
Dim light slathered canine tongue and teeth. Its eyes (he swallowed, hard) were glistening red, without
white or pupil, smooth as crimson glass.
The man came back out the window. One in the group turned and shouted: "Muriel!" (It could have been
a woman.) The dog wheeled and fled after.
Another street lamp, blocks down, gave them momentary silhouette.
As he stepped from the wall, his breath unraveled the silence, shocked him as much as if someone had
called his ... name? Pondering, he crossed the street toward
18
the corner of the loading porch. On tracks under the awning, four- and six-foot butcher hooks swung gently-
though there was no wind. In fact, he reflected, it would take a pretty hefty wind to start them swinging-
"Hey!"
Hands, free and flowered, jumped to protect his face. He whirled, crouching.
"You down there!"
He looked up, with hunched shoulders.
Smoke rolled about the building top, eight stories above.
"What you doing, huh?"
He lowered his hands.
The voice was rasp rough, sounded near drunk.
He called: "Nothing!" and wished his heart would still. "Just walking around."
Behind scarves of smoke, someone stood at the cornice. "What you been up to this evening?"
"Nothing, I said." He took a breath: "I just got here, over the bridge. About a half hour ago."
"Where'd you get the orchid?"
"Huh?" He raised his hand again. The street lamp dribbled light down a blade. "This?"
"Yeah."
"Some women gave it to me. When I was crossing the bridge."
"I saw you looking around the corner at the hubbub. I couldn't tell from up here-was it scorpions?"
"Huh?"
"I said, was it scorpions?"
"It was a bunch of people trying to break into a store, I think. They had a dog with them."
After silence, gravelly laughter grew. "You really haven't been here long, kid?"
"I-" and realized the repetition-"just got here."
"You out to go exploring by yourself? Or you want company for a bit."
The guy's eyes, he reflected, must be awfully good. "Company . , . I guess."
"I'll be there in a minute."
He didn't see the figure go; there was too much smoke. And after he'd watched several doorways for
several minutes, he figured the man had changed his mind.
"Here you go," from the one he'd set aside for ducking.
19
"Name is Loufer. Tak Loufer. You know what that means, Loufer? Red Wolf; or Fire Wolf."
"Or Iron Wolf." He squinted. "Hello."
"Iron Wolf? Well, yeah . . ." The man emerged, dim on the top step. "Don't know if I like that one so
much. Red Wolf. That's my favorite." He was a very big man.
He came down two more steps; his engineer's boots, hitting the boards, sounded like dropped sandbags.
Wrinkled black-jeans were half stuffed into the boot tops. The worn cycle jacket was scarred with zippers.
Gold stubble on chin and jaw snagged the street light. Chest and belly, bare between flapping zipper teeth,
were a tangle of brass hair. The fingers were massive, matted-"What's your name?"-but clean, with neat and
cared-for nails.
"Urn . . . well, I'll tell you: I don't know." It sounded funny, so he laughed. "I don't know."
Loufer stopped, a step above the sidewalk, and laughed too. "Why the hell don't you?" The visor of his
leather cap blocked his upper face with shadow.
He shrugged. "I just don't. I haven't for ... a while now."
Loufer came down the last step, to the pavement "Well, Tak Loufer's met people here with stranger
stories than that. You some kind of nut, or something? You been in a mental hospital, maybe?"
"Yes . . ." He saw that Loufer had expected a No.
Tak's head cocked. The shadow raised to show the rims of Negro-wide nostrils above an extremely
Caucasian mouth. The jaw looked like rocks in hay-stubble.
"Just for a year. About six or seven years ago."
Loufer shrugged. "I was in jail for three months . . . about six or seven years ago. But that's as close as I
come. So you're a no-name kid? What are you, seventeen? Eighteen? No, I bet you're even-"
"Twenty-seven."
Tak's head cocked the other way. Light topped his cheek bones. "Neurotic fatigue, do it every time. You
notice that about people with serious depression, the kind that sleep all day? Hospital type cases, I mean. They
always look ten years younger than they are."
He nodded.
"I'm going to call you Kid, then. That'll do you for a name. You can be-The Kid, hey?"
Three gifts, he thought: armor, weapon, title (like the prisms, lenses, mirrors on the chain itself). "Okay
..."
20
with the sudden conviction this third would cost, by far, the most. Reject it, something warned: "Only I'm not a
kid. Really; I'm twenty-seven. People always think I'm younger than I am. I just got a baby face, that's all. I've
even got some white hair, if you want to see-"
"Look, Kid-" with his middle fingers, Tak pushed up his visor-"we're the same age." His eyes were large,
deep, and blue. The hair above his ears, no longer than the week's beard, suggested a severe crew under the
cap. "Any sights you particularly want to see around here? Anything you heard about? I like to play guide.
What do you hear about us, outside, anyway? What do people say about us here in the city?"
"Not much."
"Guess they wouldn't." Tak looked away. "You just wander in by accident, or did you come on purpose?"
"Purpose."
"Good Kid! Like a man with a purpose. Come on up here. This street turns into Broadway soon as it
leaves the waterfront."
"What is there to see?"
Loufer gave a grunt that did for a laugh. "Depends on what sights are out." Though he had the beginning
of a gut, the ridges under the belly hair were muscle deep. "If we're really lucky, maybe-" the ashy leather,
swinging as Loufer turned, winked over a circular brass buckle that held together a two-inch-wide garrison-
"we won't run into anything at all! Come on." They walked.
". .. kid. The Kid ..."
"Huh?" asked Loufer.
"I'm thinking about that name."
"Will it do?"
"I don't know."
Loufer laughed. "I'm not going to press for it, Kid. But I think it's yours."
His own chuckle was part denial, part friendly.
Loufer's grunt in answer echoed the friendly.
They walked beneath low smoke.
There is something delicate about this Iron Wolf, with his face like a pug-nosed, Germanic gorilla. It is
neither his speech nor his carriage, which have their roughness, but the way in which he assumes them, as
though the surface where speech and carriage are flush were somehow inflamed.
"Hey, Tak?"
21
"Yeah?"
"How long have you been here?" "If you told me today's date, I could figure it out. But I've let it go. It's been
a while." After a moment, Loufer asked, in a strange, less blustery voice: "Do you know what day it is?"
"No, I ..." The strangeness scared him. "I don't." He shook his head while his mind rushed away toward
some other subject. "What do you do? I mean, what did you work at?"
Tak snorted. "Industrial engineering."
"Were you working here, before ... all this?"
"Near here. About twelve miles down, at Helmsford. There used to be a plant that jarred peanut butter.
We were converting it into a vitamin C factory. What do you do-? Naw, you don't look like you do too much
in the line of work." Loufer grinned. "Right?"
He nodded. It was reassuring to be judged by appearances, when the judge was both accurate and
friendly. And, anyway, the rush had stopped.
"I was staying down in Helmsford," Loufer went on. "But I used to drive up to the city a lot. Bellona
used to be a pretty good town." Tak glanced at a doorway too dark to see if it was open or shut.
"Maybe it still is, you know? But one day I drove up here. And it was like this."
A fire escape, above a street lamp pulsing slow as a failing heart, looked like charred sticks, some still
aglow.
"Just like this?"
On a store window their reflection slid like ripples over oil.
"There were a few more places the fire hadn't reached; a few more people who hadn't left yet-not all the
newcomers had arrived."
"You were here at the very beginning, then?"
"Oh, I didn't see it break out or anything. Like I say, when I got here, it looked more or less like it does
now."
"Where's your car?"
"Sitting on the street with the windshield busted, the tires gone-along with most of the motor. I let a lot
of stupid things happen, at first. But I got the hang of it after a while." Tak made a sweeping gesture with
both hands-and disappeared before it was finished: they'd passed into complete blackness. "A thousand
people are
22
supposed to be here now. Used to be almost two million."
"How do you know, I mean the population?"
"That's what they publish in the paper."
"Why do you stay?"
"Stay?" Loufer's voice neared that other, upsetting tone. "Well, actually, I've thought about that one a lot. I
think it has to do with-I got a theory now-freedom. You know, here-" ahead, something moved-"you're free.
No laws: to break, or to follow. Do anything you want. Which does funny things to you. Very quickly,
surprisingly quickly, you become-" they neared another half-lit lamp; what moved became smoke, lobling from
a window sill set with glass teeth like an extinguished jack-o-lantern-"exactly who you are." And Tak was
visible again. "If you're ready for that, this is where it's at."
"It must be pretty dangerous. Looters and stuff."
Tak nodded. "Sure it's dangerous."
"Is there a lot of street mugging?"
"Some." Loufer made a face. "Do you know about crime, Kid? Crime is funny. For instance, now, in most
American cities-New York, Chicago, St. Louis-crimes, ninety-five per cent I read, are committed between six
o'clock and midnight. That means you're safer walking around the street at three o'clock in the morning than
you are going to the theater to catch a seven-thirty curtain. I wonder what time it is now. Sometime after two
I'd gather. I don't think Bellona is much more dangerous than any other city. It's a very small city, now. That's
a sort of protection."
A forgotten blade scraped his jeans. "Do you carry a weapon?"
"Months of detailed study on what is going on where, the movements and variations of our town. I look
around a lot. This way."
That wasn't buildings on the other side of the street: Trees rose above the park wall, black as shale. Loufer
headed toward the entrance.
"Is it safe in there?"
"Looks pretty scary." Tak nodded. "Probably keep any criminal with a grain of sense at home. Anybody
who wasn't a mugger would be out of his mind to go in there." He glanced back, grinned. "Which probably
means all the muggers have gotten tired of waiting and gone home to bed a long time ago. Come on."
Stone lions flanked the entrance. 23
"It's funny," Tak said; they passed between. "You show me a place where they tell women to stay out of
at night because of all the nasty, evil men lurking there to do nasty, evil things; and you know what you'll
find?"
"Queers."
Tak glanced over, pulled his cap visor down. "Yeah."
The dark wrapped them up and buoyed them along the path.
There is nothing safe about the darkness of this city and its stink. Well, I have abrogated all claim to
safety, coming here. It is better to discuss it as though I had chosen. That keeps the scrim of sanity before the
awful set. What will lift it?
"What were you in prison for?"
"Morals charge," Tak said.
He was steps behind Loufer now. The path, which had begun as concrete, was now dirt. Leaves hit at
him. Three times his bare foot came down on rough roots; once his swinging arm scraped lightly against bark.
"Actually," Tak tossed back into the black between them, "I was acquitted. The situation, I guess. My
lawyer figured it was better I stayed in jail without bail for ninety days, like a misdemeanor sentence.
Something had got lost in the records. Then, at court, he brought that all out, got the charge changed to public
indecency; I'd already served sentence." Zipper-jinglings suggested a shrug. "Everything considered, it
worked out. Look!"
The carbon black of leaves shredded, letting through the ordinary color of urban night.
"Where?" They had stopped among trees and high brush.
"Be quiet! There . . ."
His wool shushed Tak's leather. He whispered: "Where do you ... ?"
Out on the path, sudden, luminous, and artificial, a seven-foot dragon swayed around the corner, followed
by an equally tall mantis and a griffin. Like elegant plastics, internally lit and misty, they wobbled forward.
When dragon and mantis swayed into each other, they-meshed!
He thought of images, slightly unfocused, on a movie screen, lapping.
"Scorpions!" Tak whispered.
Tak's shoulder pushed his.
His hand was on a tree trunk. Twig shadows webbed his forearm, the back of his hand, the bark. The
figure
24
neared; the web slid. The figures passed; the web slid off. They were, he realized, as eye-unsettling as pictures
on a three-dimensional postcard-with the same striations hanging, like a screen, just before, or was it just
behind them.
The griffin, furthest back, flickered:
A scrawny youngster, with pimply shoulders, in the middle of a cautious, bow-legged stride-then griffin
again. (A memory of spiky, yellow hair; hands held out from the freckled, pelvic blade.)
The mantis swung around to look back, went momentarily out:
摘要：

Thisdocumentisunfinished.andneedsformattingPrism,Mirror,Lenstowoundtheautumnalcity.Sohowledoutfortheworldtogivehimaname.Thein-darkansweredwithwind.AllyouknowIknow:careeningastronautsandbankclerksglancingattheclockbeforelunch;actressescowlingatlight-ringedmirrorsandfreightelevatoroperatorsgrindingath...

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