Dhalgren

Also,' and he smiled, 'I've occasionally been known to pick up a guitar at a party and a sing a folk song or two. Nothing political, mind you. But they still frown on that sort of thing.'

Everyone laughed. Kid thought: Is he for real?

And a second thought, like a stutter: My reaction is as fixed as his action. And Kid laughed, though later than the others. Two or three glanced at him.

'No,' Kamp went on, 'I suppose I saw myself as something of an adventurer… as much as a navy test pilot can be. Apollo for me was an adventure — practically an eight-year adventure, with all the preparation. But when it was over, I was ready to go on to something else.'

'So you've come to Bellona,' Madame Brown said, as Fenster said: 'After the moon, where else is there?'

'Now, you're right…'

Kid wondered which question Kamp was answering.

'…but I'm just beginning to see that myself.'

'Are you here in any official connection?' asked another woman.

'I'd imagine,' Fenster said, 'you're never officially disconnected.'

'No. I'm here unofficially.'

'What does that mean?' someone challenged.

Fenster scowled, offended for Kamp, who merely said, 'They know I'm here. But they gave me no instructions before I came. They won't ask me anything about what I did or saw after I come back.'

'Why don't we break up this Star Chamber?' Fenster stood. 'Come on, the Captain is nice enough to talk to us all at once, but we've got to give the man a chance to circulate.'

'Now this is quite informal,' Kamp countered, 'compared to what I'm used to. I would like a chance to walk around though.'

'Come on, come on.' Fenster made shooing motions.

Some rose.

The bartender rolled his cuffs above the blurry blue beasts and strolled to the counter.

Tak's chair scraped.

'Come on, now, let's let the Captain get himself a drink. Madame Brown, you look like you could use one too.'

Kid shook his hands below the chair edge to stop the tingling.

Tak stood, stretched to tiptoe, looked around. 'Wonder where George got off to. He was all curious when he discovered we had a genuine man in the moon with us.'

They walked to the bar.

Teddy was returning chairs.

Once the dozen clustered at the Captain's booth dispersed, the place looked empty.

'I thought Lanya was here, maybe.'

Tak's hands locked. 'I haven't seen her. Madame B. might know where she is.' And unlocked. 'Hey, I saw the big advertisement in the Times, all over page three. Congratulations.' Tak frowned. 'By the way, what did you do at the coming of the great white light? Orange, I guess it was, really. You got any opinions to pass the time with while we wait to see if there's going to be a tomorrow?'

Kid leaned on meshed fingers. 'I don't know. I didn't do anything much. I had some people with me. I think they were more upset than I was. You know, Tak, for a while I thought…' The bartender set down a beer bottle. '…no, that's silly.' Kid pulled the bottle to him, leaving a sweat ribbon. 'Isn't it?' The candles glittered in it.

'What?'

'I was going to say, for a while I thought it was a dream.'

'If I woke up right now, I'd feel a lot better.'

'No. Not that.' Kid lifted his bottle once, twice, a third, a fourth, a fifth time from lapping rings. 'When it was rising, I remember I went out to take a look from the back porch; and thinking maybe I was dreaming. Suddenly I woke up. In bed. Only, when I got up, later, it was still there. Finally, after it went down, I went to sleep again. You know, right now—' he smiled, to himself till it overcame the strictures of his facial muscles and burst stupidly onto his face—'I still don't know what I dreamed and what I didn't. Maybe I didn't really see any more than the Captain.'

'You went to sleep?'

'I was tired.' Saying that annoyed Kid. 'What about you?'

'Christ, I—' The bartender brought Tak's bottle. 'What did I do?' Tak snorted. 'I saw the light coming through those bamboo blinds I have, and I went out on the roof to take a look. I watched it rising for about three minutes. Then I freaked.'

'What'd you do?'

'I went down into the stairwell and sat in the dark for about an hour or so… I guess. I'd got this whole paranoid thing about radiation — no, don't laugh. We might all start losing our hair in the next six hours while our capillaries fall apart. Finally I got scared of just sitting in the dark and went up to look again…' He stopped moving his bottle around the wet circle. 'I'm just glad I don't have a heart condition. It stretched over so much of the horizon I couldn't look at one edge and see the other. I couldn't look at where the bottom was cut off by the roofs and see the top.' Tak's bottle rumbled about. 'I went back down into the stairwell, closed the door, and just cried. For a couple of hours. I couldn't stop. While I was crying, I thought about lots of things. One of them, by the way, was you.'

'What?'

'I remember sitting there and asking myself if this was what the inside of insanity felt like — Ah, there: you've taken offense.'

He hadn't. But now wondered if he should.

'Well, I'm sorry. That's what I thought, anyway.'

'You were really that scared?'

'You weren't?'

'I guess a lot of people around me were. I thought about all the terrible things it could have been — like everybody else. But if it was any of them, there wasn't anything I could do.'

'You really are almost as weird as people keep trying to make us think you are. Look, when you come up short against the edge like that, when you discover the earth really is round, when you find out you've killed your father and married your mother after all, or when you look at the horizon and see something, like that, rising — man, you have to have some sort of human reaction: laugh, cry, sing, something! You can't just lie down and take a nap.'

Kid lingered in the ruins of his confusion. 'I… did a lot of laughing.'

Tak snorted again. 'Okay, so you're not that flippy. I'd just hate to think you were as brave as everybody keeps going on you are.'

'Me?' This couldn't, Kid thought, be what the inside of courage felt like.

'Excuse me,' the southwestern voice said from Kid's other side. 'You were pointed out to me as… the Kid?'

Kid turned, with his confusion. 'Yeah…?'

Kamp looked at it, and laughed. Kid decided he liked him. Kamp said, 'I'm supposed to deliver a message to you, from Roger.'

'Huh?'

'He told me if I came here I would probably meet you. He'd like — if it's all right with you — if you'd come up to the house three Sundays from now. He says that he'll be squeezing more time together, so it will be in slightly less than two weeks — now I don't know how you guys put up with that—' He laughed again. 'Roger wants to have a party for you. For your book.' The Captain paused with a considered nod. 'Saw it. Looks good. Good luck on it, now.'

Kid wondered what to say. He tried: 'Thank you.'

'Roger said to come in the evening. And bring twenty or thirty friends, if you want. He says it's your party. It starts at sunset; in three Sundays.'

'Presumptuous bastard,' Tak said. 'Sunset? He might at least wait and see if there's a tomorrow morning.'