Dhalgren

A fire escape, above a street lamp pulsing slow as a failing heart, looked like charred sticks, some still aglow.

'Just like this?'

On a store window their reflection slid like ripples over oil.

'There were a few more places the fire hadn't reached; a few more people who hadn't left yet — not all the newcomers had arrived.'

'You were here at the very beginning, then?'

'Oh, I didn't see it break out or anything. Like I say, when I got here, it looked more or less like it does now.'

'Where's your car?'

'Sitting on the street with the windshield busted, the tires gone — along with most of the motor. I let a lot of stupid things happen, at first. But I got the hang of it after a while.' Tak made a sweeping gesture with both hands — and disappeared before it was finished: they'd passed into complete blackness. 'A thousand people are supposed to be here now. Used to be almost two million.'

'How do you know, I mean the population?'

'That's what they publish in the paper.'

'Why do you stay?'

'Stay?' Loufer's voice neared that other, upsetting tone. 'Well, actually, I've thought about that one a lot. I think it has to do with — I got a theory now — freedom. You know, here—' ahead, something moved—'you're free. No laws: to break, or to follow. Do anything you want. Which does funny things to you. Very quickly, surprisingly quickly, you become—' they neared another half-lit lamp; what moved became smoke, lobling from a window sill set with glass teeth like an extinguished jack-o-lantern—'exactly who you are.' And Tak was visible again. 'If you're ready for that, this is where it's at.'

'It must be pretty dangerous. Looters and stuff.'

Tak nodded. 'Sure it's dangerous.'

'Is there a lot of street mugging?'

'Some.' Loufer made a face. 'Do you know about crime, Kid? Crime is funny. For instance, now, in most American cities — New York, Chicago, St. Louis — crimes, ninety-five per cent I read, are committed between six o'clock and midnight. That means you're safer walking around the street at three o'clock in the morning than you are going to the theater to catch a seven-thirty curtain. I wonder what time it is now. Sometime after two I'd gather. I don't think Bellona is much more dangerous than any other city. It's a very small city, now. That's a sort of protection.'

A forgotten blade scraped his jeans. 'Do you carry a weapon?'

'Months of detailed study on what is going on where, the movements and variations of our town. I look around a lot. This way.'

That wasn't buildings on the other side of the street: Trees rose above the park wall, black as shale. Loufer headed toward the entrance.

'Is it safe in there?'

'Looks pretty scary.' Tak nodded. 'Probably keep any criminal with a grain of sense at home. Anybody who wasn't a mugger would be out of his mind to go in there.' He glanced back, grinned. 'Which probably means all the muggers have gotten tired of waiting and gone home to bed a long time ago. Come on.'

Stone lions flanked the entrance.

'It's funny,' Tak said; they passed between. 'You show me a place where they tell women to stay out of at night because of all the nasty, evil men lurking there to do nasty, evil things; and you know what you'll find?'

'Queers.'

Tak glanced over, pulled his cap visor down. 'Yeah.'

The dark wrapped them up and buoyed them along the path.

There is nothing safe about the darkness of this city and its stink. Well, I have abrogated all claim to safety, coming here. It is better to discuss it as though I had chosen. That keeps the scrim of sanity before the awful set. What will lift it?

'What were you in prison for?'

'Morals charge,' Tak said.

He was steps behind Loufer now. The path, which had begun as concrete, was now dirt. Leaves hit at him. Three times his bare foot came down on rough roots; once his swinging arm scraped lightly against bark.

'Actually,' Tak tossed back into the black between them, 'I was acquitted. The situation, I guess. My lawyer figured it was better I stayed in jail without bail for ninety days, like a misdemeanor sentence. Something had got lost in the records. Then, at court, he brought that all out, got the charge changed to public indecency; I'd already served sentence.' Zipper-jinglings suggested a shrug. 'Everything considered, it worked out. Look!'

The carbon black of leaves shredded, letting through the ordinary color of urban night.

'Where?' They had stopped among trees and high brush.

'Be quiet! There…'

His wool shushed Tak's leather. He whispered: 'Where do you…?'

Out on the path, sudden, luminous, and artificial, a seven-foot dragon swayed around the corner, followed by an equally tall mantis and a griffin. Like elegant plastics, internally lit and misty, they wobbled forward. When dragon and mantis swayed into each other, they — meshed!

He thought of images, slightly unfocused, on a movie screen, lapping.

'Scorpions!' Tak whispered.

Tak's shoulder pushed his.

His hand was on a tree trunk. Twig shadows webbed his forearm, the back of his hand, the bark. The figure neared; the web slid. The figures passed; the web slid off. They were, he realized, as eye-unsettling as pictures on a three-dimensional postcard — with the same striations hanging, like a screen, just before, or was it just behind them.

The griffin, furthest back, flickered:

A scrawny youngster, with pimply shoulders, in the middle of a cautious, bow-legged stride — then griffin again. (A memory of spiky, yellow hair; hands held out from the freckled, pelvic blade.)

The mantis swung around to look back, went momentarily out:

This one, anyway, was wearing some clothes — a brown, brutal looking youngster; the chains he wore for necklaces growled under his palm, while he absently caressed his left breast. 'Come on, Baby! Get your ass in gear!' which came from a mantis again.

'Shit, you think they gonna be there?' from the griffin.

'Aw, sure. They gonna be there!' You could have easily mistaken the voice from the dragon for a man's; and she sounded black.

Suspended in wonder and confusion, he listened to the conversation of the amazing beasts.

'They better be!' Vanished chains went on growling.

The griffin flickered once more: pocked buttocks and duty heels disappeared behind blazing scales.

'Hey, Baby, suppose they're not there yet?'

'Oh, shit! Adam…?'

'Now, Adam, you know they're gonna be there,' the dragon assured.

'Yeah? How do I know? Oh, Dragon Lady! Dragon Lady, you're too much!'

'Come on. The two of you shut up, huh?'

Swaying together and apart, they rounded another corner.

He couldn't see his hand at all now, so he let it fall from the trunk. 'What… what are they?'

'Told you: scorpions. Sort of a gang. Maybe it's more than one gang. I don't really know. You get fond of them after a while, if you know how to stay out of their way. If you can't… well, you either join, I guess; or get messed up. Least, that's how I found it.'

'I mean the… the dragons and things?'

'Pretty, huh?'

'What are they?'