Dhalgren

Michael Roberts        Virginia Colson

Jerry Shank       Hank Kaiser

Frank Yoshikami        Gary Disch

Harold Redwing        Alvin Fischer

Madeleine Terry        Susan Morgan

Priscilla Meyer        William Dhalgren

George Newman        Peter Weldon

Ann Harrison        Linda Evers

Thomas Sask        Preston Smith

At her desk, he read the list for the sixth time. The sky beyond the bay window, dense and low, darkened toward evening. Roberts or Rudolph, Rivers or Evers: Fantasize a persona for any. Which, he pondered, would I pick myself? Some permutation… Gary Morgan, Terry Rivers, Thomas Weldon? None was his. Was one perhaps nearer than the other? No… if they are all. real people, he reflected, then each is just as important. Hey, Kamp, isn't this what that democracy's about that put you up on… a moon? (But I don't want one. I need one about as much as I need a handful of dollars.) Lips tight, he picked up the papers: Three sheets from the phone pad, two pieces of newsprint, the back, blank pages of a paperback, some sheets of Lanya's paper — all he had written since Brass Orchids. I promised not to write any more; Newboy promised I would. Kid smiled, putting one paper behind the other. He slipped Brass Orchids from beneath the notebook, opened it, closed it, opened it again. Holding it on his palm too long made his stomach ache. Such a strange, marvelous, and marvelously inadequate object! He was still unable to read it through. He still tried. And tried again, and tried till his throat was constricted, his forearms wet, and his heart hammered down where he'd always thought his liver was. Neither dislike nor discomfort with the work explained that. Rather the book itself was lodged in some equatioa where it did not belong, setting off hyperradicals and differentials through all the chambers of his consciousness. He looked over at the notebook, read what was on the page behind the list:

Lingual synthesis: Wittgenstein, Levi-Straus, Chomsky — I suspect it is what they were getting at: Attempts to reduce vast fields of Philosophy, Anthropology, and Linguistics to sets of parameters that not so much define as mirror the way in which philosophical, anthropological, and linguistic information respectively fit into, upon, and around the mind itself. Those particularly parametric works (the Tractatus. La Geste d'Asdiwal, Syntatic Structures—though all three men have written much longer works, work of this type must be very short; none of these is above 30 thousand words) do not discuss fields of study; they drop careful, crystalline catalysts, which, on any logical mind (as opposed to trained minds familiar with galleries of evidence and evaluations) perforce generate complicated and logical discussions of the subject using whatever evidence is at hand, limited only by the desire or ability to retain interest in the dialogue propagating in the inner ear.

In an age glutted with information, this 'storage method' is, necessarily, popular. But these primitive

was the end of the page. He did not turn to the next Wittgenstein, Levi-Straus, Chomsky: He mulled their sounds. A year, a year and a half ago, he had read everything he could find by one.

He had never heard of the other two.

'Lingual synthesis…' That was nice on the tongue. '…particularly parametric works…' He picked up Brass Orchids, balanced it on blunt fingers. '…careful, crystalline catalysts…' He nodded. A particularly parametric work of careful, crystalline catalysts in lingual synthesis. That, at any rate, was the type of object it ought to be. Well, it was short.

One of them turned in the bed.

One of them turned again.

He looked across the room:

The tent of a knee. An arm over an arm.

The chair back was cool against his. Caning prickled the bottom of one thigh. The plants leaned from their pots.

He pinched the bright chain across his belly.

Dark ones coiled the clothing on the floor.

Suppose, he thought, she wants me to stay and him to go. Well, I get rid of the bastard. Suppose she wants me to go? I get rid of all the bastards.

But she won't. She likes privacy too much. Why else would she go along with this? Along? Something in me would like to have it that she is doing this for me. But all joy in it comes from those moments when it is obviously real as her music, and personally otherwise.

I am restless.

She turns restlessly.

His arm, limp, moves with her moving shoulder.

Lanya blinked, raised her head. Kid watched her eyes close and her head lay down. He was smiling. He turned Brass Orchids in his hands, turned the loose pages, as though he might heft, through some quality other than weight, the difference.

The notebook was open again at the list. Puzzling, he read the names once more (it was almost too dark), this time right to left, bottom to top:

Preston Smith       Thomas Sask

Linda Evers       Ann Harrison

Peter Weldon       George Newman

William Dhalgren       Priscilla Meyer

Susan Morgan…        Madeleine Terry…

3

'Why'd she kick us out?'

'She didn't kick us out. She had things to do. She'll be down to see us. Don't worry.'

'I ain't worrying.' Denny balanced along the curb edge. 'Shit, I could have stayed up there for the rest of my life and been happy. You on one end and her on the other.'

'How'd you manage to eat?'

'Present company excepted—' Denny rugged at his vest—'I'd just send out for it. You sure she wasn't mad at us?'

'Yeah.'

'Okay… you really think she's gonna come down and visit the nest?'

'If she doesn't, we'll go up and see her. She'll come.'

'She's a nice person!' Denny emphasized each stress with a beat of his chin. 'And I really like that song. Diffraction, huh?'

Kid nodded.

'I hope she comes down. I mean I know she likes you, 'cause you wrote a book and everything, and you known her a long time. But I'm just a fuck-up. She ain't got no reason to like me.'

'She does anyway.'

Denny frowned. 'Sure acts like it, don't she?'

The street light above them pulsed… at half strength; then died. The sky sheeted over with one more film of darkness. The only other light to come on was two blocks away; it pulsed, pulsed, pulsed again.

Someone moved into it and shouted, 'Hey! Hey, Kid! Denny!' Others trooped into the wavering circle.

'What the hell are they doing here?'