Dhalgren

window) in webbed shadow. Nightmare's lieutenant… He tried to review the faces left at the hall's end; there were more than three women in the group. Prompted by the bus ride, he mused on Fenster's population percentages: What percentage were black? George? Waiting, chained and flowered (he'd seen half a dozen knives), I don't want to individualize them. Rather deal in their mass than texture. (Priest, Anthrax, Lady of Spain — these names had already been whispered around him: Devastation, Glass (the black in vinyl), California, Filament, Revelation (blond as Bunny but with brutally red skin), Angel, Dollar, D-t.) Fight that. Some two dozen strung down this grey in grey, waiting: there are probably more here who have killed by accident than by intent. That makes them dangerous. What do they become?

'That thing work?' Denny pointed to Kid's shield.

'No battery.'

Denny shook his head, aping Nightmare's disgust. 'You stay with me, then.'

Either the people or the situation is boring. But either the situation or the people are intriguing. I cannot fix the distinction. Nor, having chosen, would it be useful. Again, I am somewhere where the waiting is more instructive than initial or terminal action. Not thinking of Lanya entails: Her green blinking when something I do surprises her, her expression (it always seems sad) seconds before laughter when something I do amuses. Is this like forgetting a name? I want to be among these people. (Where would she have gone?) It is difficult, because it grosses so little, to consider that I don't want to be with her. But these, who chew their teeth and shuffle, and engage in interesting waiting: what is their plan? Not so much afraid of what I don't know about what they do; the cool, absorptive fear I used to feel before stealing books and comics from corner kiosks, shoplifting small compasses and ornamental bullets from army-navy surplus stores.

A long time later, a long way away, someone whistled.

While Denny said, 'Come on,' everybody moved.

The doors flapped.

They ran across the street; scorpions were running up the alley. 'In here!' was steps down and a metal door in the Emboriky's side. Kid thought: Grains struggling through the stricture of an hour-glass. He watched Denny three steps before him, paused when Denny paused (at the bottom of more steps) quickened after him (Worlds within worlds: I am in a different world.) At the first landing, Denny motioned the others ahead, glanced to make sure Kid was still behind him (Plans, completed and synchronized, sketched floor layouts, schedules for the changing guard — he hadn't seen anyone who looked that intelligent), then pulled a heavier chain from his neck and wound two lengths around his fist. 'This way.' The others' footsteps faded above them as they went from the army drab stairwell through a doorway.

Kid pulled his orchid from his belt loop (the loop, worn from the blade, snapped) and fitted his wrist into the harness. 'What's in here?'

'Nothin',' Denny said. 'I hope.'

The short hall ended on a room full of cardboard boxes. (The wrapping paper in Apartment 19-A. Why?) They had fallen from half-stacked shelves, they covered the floor; they had been pushed into piles and had fallen again.

'What are we doing, huh?' Kid asked.

'Keeping our asses out of trouble,' Denny said. 'They wanna run around and get shot at, you got more brains than that. The store's eight stories high. Covers the whole block. We figure there's maybe ten, fifteen people in here. I think we're on the mezzanine.' He glanced back again. 'I hope.'

They stepped out into darkness that became three-quarter dark. Kid sniffed. Something had burned in here too. His arm brushed hanging plastic. They snuck through racks of shower curtains, into bathmats and accessories.

'Sure this is the mezzanine?'

'The railing should be over there.'

'You been in here before?'

'Keep it down,' Denny said. 'No. But I talked to somebody who has.'

'What—' Kid whispered: 'What is Nightmare trying to do in here?'

Denny looked back again. 'You think he knows? This is a run!'

They reached towels. By an overturned counter, they walked across mounds of terrycloth. The cool, charred dark stopped at a glass balcony rail with a brass bar. There was light up from below; leaning out ('Hey, watch it,' Denny said, 'somebody might be down there.') Kidd could not see its source.

There're people in here, Kid thought. There're people in here, walking around with guns! He looked over the balcony, down at counters and the paths between where grey ribbons of light lay over riotous indistinguishables.

Some one, some two scorpions ran out among them.

Denny took Kid's shoulder.

Three more, like mazed mice, zagged through the aisles.

'Hey, what the hell do you people think you're—' shouted by somebody who sounded like he was in a stairwell.

Five heads, deployed among lingerie and watchbands, swiveled. Two of the scorpions went on like flash bulbs— a rooster and some sort of baby dinosaur.

Kid pulled back from the light. Denny was looking up, suddenly aware that they both now had shadows swinging across the ceiling.

'Douse your God-damn lights!' which was Nightmare.

The gun-clap filled the double story. The echo settled.

Some flat reflex that held neither fear nor excitement took him back from the rail (for a moment he saw Denny's excited, frightened face) among the dark displays. Then Denny was behind him.

'Hey, they got in! Hey, they God-damn got in—'

'Mark?' A woman. 'Mark? Mark, what's down there…'

'You get back! Did they get in? You didn't see—'

Echo botched all meaning in a fourth, fricative voice.

Someone nearer tried to interrupt: 'What are you—? Why don't you—? Hey, look…'

'I saw their lights! For God's sakes, I saw their lights! Somebody called out, too. I saw…'

Draped plastic dragged Kid's shoulder. And the woman standing behind it shook the rifle at them, said, 'Hhhhhhhhaa…' and started walking backward.

Mutually, Kid thought, paralyzed with terror.

But Denny wasn't paralyzed. He grabbed his shield projector and disappeared in light.

Neither was the woman. She staggered backward, in the sudden glare and fired somewhere between them. The rifle gave a breathy crack, and Kid recognized her green dress: it was the woman, Lynn, he'd sat next to, his last visit to the Richards'. Now, squinting, and screaming, she held up the rifle to block the light. On the handle, lit by Denny's shield, in four-color decalcomania, Red Rider smiled at Little Beaver, surrounded by a yellow lariat. The air-pump rattled. A bee-bee in the eye, he mused: And lunged.

He thought she would throw the gun at him.

But she held it, and when she didn't let go on the second jerk (the blades of the orchid clicked on the barrel he grasped), he turned it hard and kicked her. She jerked her twisted hands away, shook them, turned. He smacked her shoulder with the rifle butt, and she dodged in darkness.

He turned, mainly to see what Denny was:

A ten-foot blob of light, colorful and disfocused, ran into itself like an amoeba erupting.

It went out, and Denny's hand came down from his neck. Kid pushed the bee-bee gun at him. 'What the hell,' he whispered, 'are you supposed to be?' The fear made him laugh.

Waving the gun, they stalked through the mezzanine shadows.

'Huh?'

'Your shield.'

'Oh. About a month ago, something happened to it. I shorted something, I guess, and the projection grid — it's plastic — melted or something. So it comes out like that. I sort of like it.'

'What did it used to be?' They turned past bolts of fabric.