Samuel Delany - Dhalgren

over the charred grass stopped conversation. A climb across rocks and among green brush jarred it loose again. Cathedral told Priest the black stone building in the smoke was the Weather Tower.

I still don't see any vanes, aerials, or anemometers.

We came around a corner, left hips brushing head-sized stones, right hips (elbows up) scratched by bushes.

The man in the middle of the court was bent over a tripod. As we came toward him, he looked up: Captain Kamp.

Who still didn't recognize me until we were on top of him.

"…Kid?"

"Hello, Captain."

He laughed now. "Now you fellows looked pretty ominous coming across there." He debated whether to give his hand for shaking. Which Angel solved by giving his. They hooked thumbs.

"Angel," Angel said.

The pink and brown fists locked, shook. Kamp looked like he'd been expecting the biker shake; later he told me that was the first time he'd seen it.

"Michael Kamp," Kamp said.

"Cathedral," Cathedral said:

Shake.

"California," California said:

Shake.

"Priest… You're the astronaut, huh?"

Shake.

"That's right."

"Spain."

"That's Lady of Spain," Priest amended:

Shake. Kamp got a sort of funny smile but figured he best not say anything. Which was best.

"Tarzan."

Shake.

"Kid."

We shook.

And Kamp said, "Sure. I haven't forgotten you now," and everybody laughed. Because it had been so formal.

"What you gonna do with that?" Priest went to sit on the chipped steps. He'd been complaining about the sore on bis foot.

"That's a telescope," Lady of Spain said. "The kind with a mirror, right?"

"That's right." Kamp stepped to the other side.

"See," Lady of Spain said. (The telescope reminds me of a conversation with Lanya and a whole bunch at the nest I wanted to put down.)

"What are you gonna do with it?" Priest asked, leaning forward to bend the toe of his sneaker up and down. His chain swung against his brown sunken chest and out, clinking.

Kamp squinted at the clouds. "Probably not much of anything. Occasionally I've seen a few breaks in the overcast. It occurred to me, now perhaps I might get a look at your sky here. After all those stories about double moons and giant suns…"

In the quiet, I thought about all the times people had not said anything about them.

"After all—" you hear about voices breaking the silence? I learned how strong that silence had been from the way his After all snapped in my head—"I saw… some of it." How long, now, had that silence gone on? "I thought I'd bring the telescope down here to the park- they said the hill here was one of the highest points in the city — and perhaps see if I could just check whether any planets were where they're supposed to be. I found an Ephemeris in the library up at Roger's. Only my watch hasn't been working all week. None of you guys happen to know what the date is, now, do you?"'

When none of us answered, he sucked his teeth, turned back to the white aluminum cylinder (black rings around the middle) and looked down the open end. "Well, somebody'll come along who does, now."

I wondered if George or June knew.

"The paper said it was November ninth," California said, "this morning."

To which Kamp didn't even look up. "If the planets are where they're supposed to be, that more or less means the Earth's where it's supposed to be." He glanced aside long enough to grin. "In the face of all this cosmological confusion, finding that out should make everyone feel a little better."

"Suppose it's not?" I asked.

"I," Kamp said, "think it is. But knowing it will make us all happier."

"I guess that's a pretty good reason," Angel said. He stepped up and looked down into the tube. "Hey, I can see my face upside down in there!"

"I think it would be a good idea, politically, to be able to print in the paper, now, that we know that — much. It would calm things down — some people have gotten very upset. And I can see why." Kamp looked up the same time Angel did; their eyes caught. "Now you boys—" which he used as an excuse to look away at Lady of Spain and add an inclusive nod—"aren't interested in politics, I guess, but it seems to me…"

In the pause, Cathedral said: "You're into politics, huh?"

"I'm into… politics, I guess so now." His hands lay across the white tube. He moved the bones about inside his flesh as though it were a glove. "But I think your Mr Calkins is a pretty conservative politician. Now don't you?"

Cathedral, with dark thumb and forefinger, moiled his thick earlobe. A darker pucker where the gold ring went through meant he'd only had it a little while.

"I'm sure he thinks he's radical. But I think I'm the radical and he's the conservative." I thought he would laugh: he squinted at the clouds, at the telescope. "Now I guess that's what I've been thinking."

"You're so conservative," Lady of Spain suggested, "it comes out the other way and gets radical?"

"No." Captain Kamp laughed. "No. That's not it. Maybe I'm not really… into politics." He paused. "But it's just that this is such a big country now. Roger… well, I guess it's hard for anyone to know… that it's such a big country."

"Unless you've seen it," I asked, "from a space ship?"

"Rocket," he said. "No. No, that's not what I mean. The Megalithic Republic — now, the Megalithic Republics: the Republic of the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the People's Republic of China — they're very different kinds of political entities from, say, France, Borneo, Uruguay, or Nigeria. The people who live in small nations know it, but they don't know why. The people who live in the Megalithic Republics simply look at the little ones as alien, exotic, bewildering, but aren't even sure why the little ones' histories read the way they do. Two hundred million people, ninety percent literate, all of them speaking one language! Now hold that up beside a country like…" During his pause, I wondered how many examples he had. "Greece, now. Only eight million people — less people in the country than in New York City. Guy from Macedonia can't understand a guy from the Pelaponnesus. Hell, the guy from the north side of Crete can't understand a guy from the south side. My wife, she said we should go there. And we stayed for six weeks. That was my first wife now. But there's no place in Europe where you can go in a straight line more than eight hours by mechanical transportation without running into a different language, different currency, a different culture! How do they expect to teach three thousand years of European politics to American kids in American schools, or Russian kids in Russian schools, in a land where you can go three days by car in any direction and not cross a border? You have to have been there to understand. I mean, have any of you ever been to Europe?"

Cathedral nodded.

Angel said, "I was in Germany, in the army."

"I never been there," California said.

"I've never been," I echoed, remembering Japan, Australia, Uruguay.

Lady of Spain said: "I haven't."

But even two had undercut Kamp's point. "Yes, well I guess you know what I mean now. America… America's so big. And Bellona's one of the half-dozen biggest cities in America. Which makes it one of the biggest in the world." He frowned, mostly at Cathedral. "But you guys here, Calkins too, just have no idea how big that is, and how different that makes the people in it."

"You going to be able to see anything with that?" I asked. "When there is a break, it doesn't last very long."

Kamp mmmm ed in agreement. "You don't need much… information — like I was telling you once, back at the party? Mask out almost everything: still, even a little bit will tell you an awful lot." He looked at the sky again. The lines out from his eyes lengthened. His lips parted and thinned.