Dhalgren

'I keep that there,' Tak said, 'for inspiration. I sort of like it. Glad to see, after all this, the papers says you're having another book.'

'Yeah,' I said. 'Sure. Thanks.' I really didn't want to talk about it. It got across, because he was looking at me a little sideways. But Tak is good at picking up on things like that.

Around us, the sky was close as crumpled lead. The first stanchion of the bridge was just visible through it, like a single wing of some dim bird that might, in a moment, fly anywhere.

Tak pulled the cork out of the open bottle. 'Come on. Let's have a drink.' He squatted, his back against the shack wall. We sat next to him. Denny took a swallow, screwed up his face, and from then on just passed it between Lanya and me.

'Tak,' I said, 'could you tell me something?' I asked him about the bubbles around the inside of the glasses. 'I thought it might have something to do with the water pressure for the city. Maybe it's going down and that causes the ring to start higher?'

'I think,' Tak said to the green-glass neck, 'it has more to do with who washes your dishes. You're washing out a glass, see, and you run your finger around the inside to get off the crud, and it leaves this thin coating. But your finger doesn't reach the bottom. Later you put water in the glass, and the air comes out of solution to form bubbles. But the bubbles need something to nucleate on. So the imperfections in the glass and the crud left above

here any longer. 

Curiosity took me, alone. 

A bed had been overturned against the door but fell back clattering as soon as I pushed it in. They'd put bars up on the ground floor windows, but the panes were mostly smashed, and in the one remaining, I found three of those tiny, multi-haloed holes you get from bullets. There were a couple of sleeping bags still around. Some nice stuff was up on the walls from where they had the place decorated: and a big, almost life-size lion wedged together out of scrap car-parts and junked iron. An ascetalline bomb and nozzle leaned in the corner. ('I wonder what happened to the woman who was making that. She was Eurasian,' Lanya said when I told her about it, later. 'She was a pretty incredible person; I mean even besides building that thing.') The walls of two rooms were charred black. I saw a place where a poster had been burned away. And another place, where a quarter of one was left: George In the night wilderness. Upstairs I guess most of the rooms had never had doors. It was a wreck. Great pieces of plaster had been tugged off the walls. Once I heard what I thought was moaning, but when I rushed into the smashed up room — tools were scattered all over the floor, screwdrivers, nails, pliers, wrenches — it wasn't a

the grease line are easier to nucleate on; so you get this definite cutoff—'

'You mean,' I said, 'the dishwasher sticks his finger less and less far down the glass every day?'

Tak laughed and nodded 'Aren't you glad you know some one with some idea of technology? Rising water tables, lowering pressure. You could get paranoid over stuff like that if you don't know what you're doing.'

'Yeah,' and I took the bottle and drank.

And over the next fifteen seconds, the afternoon sky, dull as an aluminum pot bottom, darkened to full night.

creaking shutter or anything. I don't know what it was. Bolted to the wall was a plank on which they had carved their initials, names, phrases, some written in fancy combinations of collored magic markers, others scrawled in plack pentel. Near the bottom, cut clearly with some small blade: June R. Lanya says she'll have to find some abandoned drugstore or someplace to get birth control pills now, in the next three months. Denny is worried about his little girlfriend. He says she was sick the last time he was over there,'… with a fever, man. And every thing. She wouldn't hardly move, under the blankets.' No one at the commune, or the bar, or the church — neither George nor Reverend Amy — know where they all went or even what really happened. But if someone would do that to the House, I just wonder about the nest. Was the blond girl they described June? I guess I hope so.

Five seconds into the darkening, Denny said, 'Jesus, what—?' and stood up.

There was a noise like a plane coming. It kept coming too, while I watched Denny's features go night blue.

Lanya grabbed my arm, and I turned to see her blue face, and all around it, go black.

If it was a plane, it was going to crash into us.

I jerked my head around left and right and up (hit the back of my head on the wall) and down, trying to see.

Another sound, under the roar, beside me: Tak standing?

Something wet my hand on the tar-paper beside me. He must have kicked over the brandy.

White light suddenly blotched the horizon, cut by the silhouette of a water tower.

I didn't feel scared, but my heart was beating so slow and hard my chin jerked, each thump.

Light wound up the sky.

I could just see Tak standing now, beside me. His shadow sharpened on the tar-paper wall.

The sound… curdled!

The light split. Each arm zigged and zagged, separate, ragged-edged and magnesium bright. The right arm split again. The left one was almost directly above us.

And Tak had no shadow at all. I stood up, helped Lanya to…

Some of the light flickered out. More came. And more.

But what is…?' she whispered right at my ear, pointing. From the horizon, another light ribboned, ragged, across the sky.

'Is it… lightning?' Denny shouted.

'It looks light lightning!' Tak shouted hack.

Someone else said: ' 'Cause George don't shine that bright!'

Tak's bleached face twisted as if beat by rain. The air was dry. Then I noticed how cool it was.

Nodes in the discharge were too bright to look at. Clouds — sable, lead, or steel — mounded about the sky, making canyons, cliffs, ravines, for lightning it was too slow, too wide, too big!

Was that thunder? It roared like a jet squadron buzzing the city, and sometimes one would crash or something, and Lanya's face would

Here one page, possibly two, is missing.

as loud as I could: 'Lanya! Denny!' If they answered, I couldn't hear; and I was hoarse from shouting. The street sign chattered in its holder — the wind had grown that strong.

I took another half dozen steps, my bare foot on the curb, my boot in the gutter. Dust fits

Don't remember who had the idea, but during the altercation, for a while I argued: 'But what about Madame Brown? Besides, I like it here. What are we going to do when you're at school? Your bed's okay for a night, but we can't all sleep there that long.' 

Lanya, after answering these sanely, said: 'Look, try it. Denny wants to come. The nest can get along without you for a few days. Maybe it'll do your writing some good.' Then she picked up the paper that had fallen behind the Harly, climbed over it, came out from under the loft, tip-toed with her head up and kissed me. And put the paper in her blouse pocket — bending over, it had pulled out all around her jeans. 

I pushed myself to the loft edge, swung my legs over, and dropped. 'Okay.' 

So Denny and I spent what I call three

hit my face. My shadow staggered around me on the pavement, sharpening, blurring, tripling.

People were coming down the street, while the darkness flared behind them.

That slow, crazy lightning rolled under the sky.