Dhalgren

'Are we going in the way you came out…?'

The smoke around the building tops was luminous with dawn.

'Don't worry,' Tak grinned. 'You'll get used to it.'

'I remembered you being on the other side of the…' He looked across, again, at the three-foot concrete platform that stretched beneath the awning along the building opposite.

'Come on.' Tak took another step. 'Oh— One thing. You'll have to park your weapon at the door.' He pointed vaguely at the orchid. 'Don't take offense. It's just a house rule.'

'Oh, sure. Yeah.' He followed Tak up the steps. 'Here, just a second.'

'Put it behind there.' Tak indicated two thick asbestos-covered pipes inside the doorway. 'It'll be there when you come back.'

He unsnapped the wrist band, slipped his fingers from the harness, bent to lay the contraption on the floor behind the pipes.

Tak, already at the head of a dim stairwell, started down.

He stood up and hurried after.

'Fifteen steps.' Tak was already invisible below him. 'It's pretty dark so you better count.'

There was no bannister so he kept one hand on the wall. His wrist prickled where the orchid's collar had been. Hairs, drying now, palled, tickling, from his skin. Every other step his bare foot hit the stair edge, heel on gritty marble, ball and toes hanging. Tak's boots thudded below… Thirteen… fourteen… The last step still surprised him.

'Back this way.'

He followed through the dark. The cement under his bare foot was very warm.

The steps ahead changed timbre. 'Steps up now…'

He slowed.

'…don't get lost.'

This time he found a rail.

He could anticipate landings from the variations in Loufer's gait. After the third flight, faint lines near head height indicated doors.

Rhythm is the only thing secure. In this darkness, rising, I recall the Pacific stars. This ritual ascendance goes on in a city that has erased them and blurred its sun out altogether. Iron Wolf has something. I want it without the bother of definitions. The dangerous illumination, the light in the exploding eye, is not for this other city.

'Last flight—'

They had come up nine landings.

'— and here we are.'

A metal door grated in its frame.

As Tak stepped before him onto the tarred roof, he turned his head away from the cloud-colored dawn. After darkness, it was still too bright. Face scrunched against the light, he stopped on the sill, one hand on the jamb, the other holding back the ribbed and riveted door.

Smoke lay waist-high on the air.

He relaxed his face, blinking a lot.

Beyond the brick balustrade, roofs and roofs checkered into the mist. The gap, there, must have been the park. Beyond it was a hill, scaly with housing. 'Jesus.' He squinted in the other direction. 'I didn't realize this place was so far from the bridge. I'd just come off it when you called to me down in the street.'

Tak chuckled. 'No, you'd wandered pretty far.'

'I can just get a glimpse—' he stood on tiptoe— 'of the river.' And lowered himself. 'I thought it was just two, three blocks away.'

Tak's chuckle became a full laugh. 'Hey, how'd you lose one sandal?'

'Huh?' He looked down. 'Oh… I was being chased. By dogs.' That sounded funny, too; so he laughed. 'Yeah, I really was.' He picked up his foot, rested it above his knee to examine the caked and calloused sole. The horny edge was cracked both sides. His ankle, knob and hollow, was grit-grey. Heel, ball, instep, and each dusty toe were gun- barrel black. He wiggled his toes: grit ground. 'I guess it was—' He looked up frowning—'maybe a couple of days ago—' and put his foot down. 'It was about three o'clock. In the morning. It was raining. No cars. So I took a nap on somebody's porch. About five, when it was getting light, I went back out on the road to hitch. But it was still raining. So I figured, hell, I'd go back and catch another hour or two, 'cause there weren't any cars. Only when I got back, there was this damn dog, who'd been sleeping under the porch all the time I'd been snoozing topside. He was awake now. And he started barking. Then he chased my ass down to the road. I ran. He ran. My sandal broke and went into a ditch somewhere — I just about didn't notice. While I was running, this old blue car pulled up — big, old lady driving, with her skinny husband, and the back seat full of children. I jumped in out of the rain, and we drove right across the border, into Louisiana! They were all off to spend the day with some other kid of hers who was at some army base.' He stepped from the sill. 'Bought me a good breakfast, too.' The door creaked closed behind him. 'But I guess that's when I first noticed I couldn't remember my name. She asked me for it and I couldn't tell her… But I don't think I've known it for a long, long time.' And he was almost used to the light. 'I mean, you don't go around thinking about yourself by your own name, do you? Nobody does — unless somebody calls to you by it, or asks you what it is. I haven't been around people who know me for… for a while now. It's just something I haven't thought of for a long time, and somehow it's… I guess just slipped my mind.' He looked at the tops of his feet again, both filthy, one crossed with straps, one bare. 'It doesn't bother me. Missing a sandal, I mean. I go barefoot a lot of the time.'

'Like a hippie?'

He shrugged. 'Yeah, when I'm in a hippie-type town.' Again he looked around the misty horizon. 'You sleep up here?'

'Come on.' Tak turned. A breeze swung one jacket flap from his belly, pressed the other against him, neck to hip. 'That's my house.'

It had probably been built as a maintenance shack, put on the roof for tool storage. Bamboo curtains backed recently puttied panes. The door — tar paper had ripped in one place from greyed pine — was ajar.

They walked around a skylight. Tak hit the door with his hand-heel. (Like he expected to surprise somebody…?) The door swung in. Tak stepped inside: click. Lights went on. 'Come on, make yourself at home.'

He followed the engineer across the sill. 'Hey, this is pretty nice!'

Tak stooped to peer into a crackling kerosene heater. 'It's comfortable… now I know I didn't walk out of here and leave this thing going. Someday I'm gonna come back home and find this whole place just a pile of ashes — of course, in Bellona that could happen whether I left it on or not.' He stood up, shaking his head. 'It gets a little chilly here in the morning. I might as well leave it go.'

'Christ, you've got a lot of books!'

Shelves covered the back wall, floor to ceiling, filled with paperbacks.

And: 'Is that a short wave setup?'

'Part of one. The rest is in the next room. I could just sit in bed and CQ all over the place — if I could get anything but static. The interference around this place is something terrible. Then, it may be something's wrong with my set. I've got my own power supply: a couple of dozen acid batteries in the back. And a gasoline charger.' He stepped to the desk in the corner, shrugged his jacket down the gold rug of his back, and hung it on a wall hook. (He still wore his cap.) Blurred in blond, his forearm bore a dragon, his bleep some naval insignia. On one shoulder, a swastika had been tattooed, then, not very efficiently, removed. 'Have a seat.' Tak pulled a swivel chair from the desk, turned it around, and sat. Knees wide, he slid his hand under his belt to arrange himself where his genitals bagged the denim. 'Take the bed… there.'

An incongruous fur throw lay on the board floor. An India print draped down over what he thought was a daybed. But when he sat on it, he realized it was just a very thin mattress on the top of some built-out cabinet: or at any rate, just plank. Still, the place looked comfortable. 'You're doing a little better than those kids in the park.'

Tak grinned, took off his cap, and dropped it on the desk blotter. 'I guess I am. But then, that's not too