Dhalgren

'Huh?'

'Nothing.'

'— him, then you again.' The two hooks came through the belt. 'Jesus!' He looked up.

Denny said: 'It sure is quiet. Maybe everybody went out.'

'That'd be nice,' Lanya said.

'Do you guys keep food in the house?' Kid asked.

'Not very long.' Denny tossed Kid his projector.

Lanya started down first. She held the laces of her tennis shoes in her teeth. 'I can't carry them and climb too,' she had to say three times before they understood.

While Denny dropped over the edge, Kid turned to get the orchid.

The light around the window shade was neon orange. As he picked up the clustered blades, red gleamings poured down the edges. Kid frowned and backed to the ladder.

In the hallway, Lanya asked, 'Has the smoke cleared up outside?' The window in the hall door was filled with light like bloody sunrise.

'I guess they all have gone out.' Denny looked in another room.

'Do you think maybe it is clearing off?' Lanya asked. 'Let's go outside and see.'

Kid followed them to the front door.

Lanya opened it and went down the steps. 'There're still clouds all over the sky.' She reached the sidewalk, turned around, looking up — and screamed.

While Kid and Denny hurried down, the scream lost voice and became just expelled air.

On the sidewalk, they turned to look up in the direction she stared:

From the edge of the sidewalk, three-quarters of the disk was visible above the houses. The clouds dulled it enough to squint at, but it went up, covering the roofs, and up, and up, and up. What they could see of it filled half the visible sky. And, Kid realized, half of the sky is huge! But that fell away into impossibility. Or unverifiability, anyway. The rim was a broil of gold. Everything was like burning metal.

Lanya pressed his shoulder, gasping.

Denny was saying, 'Huh…?' and taking a step backward, and saying, 'Huh…?' again. He backed into Kid. His head snapped around, and the expression (the sockets of his eyes were cups of molten brass spilling down his cheeks) was maniacal. 'Hey, that's really… something, ain't it?' The question was not rhetorical. 'Ain't it something?' He turned to squint again.

'What is it?' Lanya whispered.

'It's the sun,' Kid said. 'Don't you see, it's just the sun.'

'My God we're falling into it…' Lanya caught her breath, released it, then began to cry.

'Aw, come on!' Kid said. 'Cut it out, will you—'

'My God…' she whispered and looked again.

He watched her face, open and glistening and shaking.

'Is it dangerous?' Denny whispered. 'I'm scared as a motherfucker!'

'It's getting bigger!' Lanya shrieked, turned, and crouched with her hands against the side of her face.

'No, it's not,' Kid said. 'At least not fast enough to see! Hey, come on!' He hit at her shoulder.

The orchid swung from the chain on his chest, tickling and glittering. It isn't a dream, Kid thought. I was dreaming already. It isn't a dream; that would make it… Bands of muscle made his throat so tight it hurt. 'Hey!' He pounded his fist on Denny's back. 'Hey, are you okay?'

Eyes wide, and chest all filled up with air, Denny got out, 'Yeah!'

Lanya knuckled at her face, pulling creases into it, as she squinted at the great, great, great circle.

'Come on,' Kid reiterated. 'Let's go, huh?'

Denny followed, too quickly to tell why.

Lanya waited till they had gone three steps (Kid looked back), then ran after them, her face bewildered. She caught Kid's hand. Kid held his other one to Denny who took it tightly. Denny was sweating: 'That is something.' (Kid glanced up again.) 'I never seen anything like that before in my life.'

Kid looked at Lanya who was watching him oddly, and not where she was going. 'We're not falling into the sun or anything like that,' Kid said. 'Otherwise we'd be burned up already. It isn't even hot.' He looked at Denny, who dropped his eyes from the sky and looked back. 'Well, Jesus Christ,' Kid said. 'Don't you think it's pretty fucking funny?' They didn't laugh. 'I mean, there's nothing you can do about it.' He did, alone. It felt good.

'What in the world is it?' Lanya repeated. Her voice was calmer.

'I don't know,' Kid said. 'I don't know what the fuck it is!'

Copperhead, hair like hell-bright rust, sprinted around the corner, and stopped in the middle of the street, boots apart, elbows bent, fists swinging about his hips and belly.

The other scorpions caught up. Among them was Siam and Jack the Ripper and Denny's girl, but neither Dragon Lady nor Nightmare.

Kid let go their hands and pointed to the sky. 'Ain't that too fucking much!' He laughed, and the tight things in his throat loosened. He came out of the laughter, which had closed his eyes and jerked the small of his back almost into spasm, to find them watching. 'Hey, Copperhead! Where you going? You going to come with me?'

'What…' Copperhead began to bellow, then coughed, and there was nothing left in his voice to sustain. 'What is that?' His voice was tearfully inane. 'Is it some kind of heat lightning?'

Someone else said: 'Does that look like lightning to you?'

Kid blinked and wondered. 'You better come on with me,' he dared.

'You all right, Kid?' the black in the vinyl vest asked from behind Copperhead, drifting there as Lady of Spain drifted behind him.

'You,' Kid spoke carefully, explaining to them as though it were a lesson, 'come on with me!' He took a breath and started across the street. As he stepped up on the curb, a hand caught his shoulder. He looked back; it was Denny, and behind him, Lanya; black scorpions moved around them, passed in front of them.

And footsteps.

He didn't look back again.

Perhaps, he thought, we are all going to die in moments, obscured by flame and pain. That is why this. And then, perhaps we are not. That is why this in this way.

Scorpions milled and clustered, and he chuckled again.

That was as silly as the blades tickling his chest.

Laughter grasped the back of his tongue to shake it loose. Flesh lay too heavy in his mouth. So it retreated, and heaved itself against the spike of his spine. I am happy, he thought. And heard somebody else, a white girl (not Lanya; the scorpion, who wore a vest and was called Filament), laughing too.

So he let his own.

It doubled him up, staggering.

Somebody — that was Lanya, and that was, almost, enough to stop him — cried out.

But others laughed.

Somebody else — that was Denny, and when he saw it was, he kept laughing through his puzzlement — ran past, picked up the lid of a garbage can leaning against the curb, and hurled it up the street. It went clattering against a stoop. Denny danced back in the blood-colored light.

Gold nodes ground in the clouds.

Kid reached out, had to lean to catch Lanya's fingers; his fingers, between hers, pummeled the back of her hand. She came up against his side, and watched in wonder as others pushed ahead on the cobbled street.

'Pick a house,' he told her.

'Huh—?'

'Just pick a house on the street,' he whispered (she bent nearer to hear). 'Maybe one you don't like very