Dhalgren

Where the streets had been hopelessly black, the roof was dusted with nightlight.

Like two giant hieroglyphs, over-printed and out of register, the bridge's suspension cables rose to twin cusps, then dropped in smoke. No more than one row of buildings away, night water took up the glitter of both street lamps and redder quavering fires. 'Hey, it's so close…'

Before him, above the city, shapes unfurled out over the water. He could not see the far shore. It could even have been a sea he gazed at, save for the bridge… Above, sky-bits seemed to clear, their clarity, however, unconfirmed by stars.

'How come it's so close?' He turned from the wall, as the light came on in the shack.

Tak had already gone inside.

Kid looked at the warehouses, at the waters between. Joy, sudden and insistent, twisted the muscles of his mouth toward laughter. But he held the sound in with tiny pantings. What swelled inside was made of light. It burst — he blinked and the backs of his lids were blinding — and left a great wave of trust washing inside. Not that I trust that trust for a moment, he thought, grinning. But it was there, and pleasant. He went into the shack. 'It's … it's so clear tonight.'

A tiny solitaire of sadness gleamed in the velvet folds of good feeling.

'Last time I was up here, Lanya was with me.'

Tak just grunted and turned from his desk. 'Have some brandy.' But he smiled.

Kid took the glass and sat on the hard bed. Now Tak unrolled the poster:

George Harrison as the moon.

'You got all three now.' Kid sipped, with hunched shoulders.

George in cycle drag was still above the door.

George in the forest had replaced the Germanic youth.

Tak rolled his chair to the wall and climbed onto the green cushion. Corner by corner he tugged loose 'Spanish boy on the rocks'. 'Hand me the staple gun?'

The first poster swayed to the floor.

Ch-klack, ch-klack, ch-klack, ch-klack, the new moon replaced it.

Kid sat down again and regarded the three aspects of George over the rim of his glass while Tak got down from the chair. 'I…' Kid's voice sounded hollow and made something deep in his ear tickle so that he grinned. 'You know, I lost five days?' He slid his fingers around the glass till the nubs butted.

'Where—' Tak put down the stapler, took up the bottle and leaned back against the desk, hands locked on the green neck; the base put a crease in his stomach—'or would you be telling me if you knew — did you lose them?'

'I don't know.'

'You look pleased enough about it.'

Kid grunted. 'A day now. It takes about as long as an hour used to when I was thirteen or fourteen.'

'And a year takes about as long as a month. Oh yes, I'm familiar with the phenomenon.'

'Most of the time in my life is spent lying around getting ready to fall asleep.'

'That one has been mentioned to me before, but I'm not conscious of it myself.'

'Maybe, somehow, for the last few days, I've just missed out on the sleeping part. There's hardly any change in light around here from morning to evening anyway.'

'You mean the last five days are the ones you can't remember?'

'Yeah, what have I been up to, anyway? Lanya… said everybody was talking about it.'

'Not everybody. But enough, I suppose.'

'What were they saying?'

'If you lost those days, I can see why you'd be interested.'

'I'd just like to know what I've been doing.'

Brandy splashed inside the bottle to Tak's laughter. 'Maybe you've traded the last five days for your name. Quick, tell me: Who are you?'

'No.' Kid hunched his shoulders more. The feeling that he was being played with wobbled like an unsteady ball on some slanted rim, rolled into the velvet pouch. 'I don't know that either.'

'Oh.' Tak drank from the bottle, set it back on his belly. 'Well, I thought it was worth a try. I suspect it isn't something to be harped on.' The brandy swayed. 'What have you been doing for the last week? Let me see.'

'I know I was with the scorpions — I met this guy named Pepper. And he turned me on to this department store they were going to try and … rip off, I guess.'

'So far I'm with you. There was supposed to have been some shooting there? You were supposed to have saved one guy by fighting off somebody with a gun, barehanded. You were supposed to have busted a mirror over the head of another guy who acted up with you—'

'Under his chin.'

'That's it. Copperhead told me about that himself. And then when another cat named Siam got shot—'

'Was that his name?'

'— when Siam got shot, you pulled him off the street and got him into the bus.'

'And you saw me get out of this bus earlier this evening.'

'Copperhead told me about it a couple of days back.'

'Only it happened to me this afternoon, God damn it!' Ashamed, he blinked at his hands. 'That's all they said happened? I mean there wasn't anything else?'

'Sounds to me like enough.'

'What happened to Siam?'

Tak shrugged. Brandy splashed. 'Somebody went to see about him, I remember, from the bar.'

'Madame Brown?'

'I think that's who it was. But I haven't heard anything else. For somebody who doesn't remember where he's been, you seem to know as much about it as I do.' Tak reached over, dragged the chair to the desk, and sat. He started to put the bottle on the desk, but halted to take a final drink. 'You do remember all the things I just told you about actually happening?'

Kid nodded at his lap. 'I've just lost the time, then. I mean, I've lost days before — thought it was Thursday when it was Friday.'

'All we thought, really, was that you'd deserted us to become a full-fledged scorpion. It was cool with me. You sure look like that's what happened. You got your lights and everything.'

Kid focused on the lensed ball hanging against his stomach. 'It doesn't work. It needs a new battery.'

'Just a second.' Tak opened a desk drawer. 'Here you go.' He tossed.

Kidd caught it in both hands: bunched lightning on red and blue.

'Turn yourself on sometime.'

'Thanks.' Wanting to talk longer, he put the battery in his pocket, noting the cloth was frayed enough at the bottom seam to feel flesh through it with his fingers. 'Tak, you really think you got the city figured out?'

'Me?'

'You were telling me how it follows those conventions—'

Tak laughed, and wiped his mouth with his wrist. 'No, not me. I don't understand anything about it. I'm a God-damn engineer. I take a plug; I put it in one socket; and it works. I put it in another one; and it doesn't. I go into an office building and one elevator works, and only the lights on the top floor. That's impossible, by anything I know about. I go down a street: buildings are burning. I go down the same street the next day. They're still burning. Two weeks later, I go down the same street and nothing looks like it's been burned at all. Maybe time is just running backward here. Or sideways. But that's impossible too. I make my forage trips out to the warehouses, or some of the stores, and sometimes I can get in, and sometimes I can't, and sometimes I have trouble, and sometimes I don't; and sometimes I take my shopping bag into a store and clear off a shelf of canned goods, and come back to that same store again a week later — I mean I think it's the same damn store — and that shelf is just as full as the first time I saw it. To my mind, that's also impossible.'

'Sometimes the morning light starts over here,' Kid said. 'Sometimes it starts over there.'

'Who told you about that?'

'You did. First day I got here.'

'Oh.' Tak lifted the bottle. 'Oh, yeah. That's right. You got a pretty good memory for some things.'