Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany Read Free Book Online

you can get along with people if you're just nice. Of course their idea of being nice back is a little odd. They used to volunteer to beat up people for us. They kept wanting John to find somebody for them to work over—somebody who was annoying us, of course. Only nobody was." She hunched her shoulders.
    "I guess," he offered from the faulted structure of his smile, "you have trouble with them sometimes?"
    "Sometimes." Her smile was perfect. "I just wish John had been here. John's very good with them. I think Nightmare is a little afraid of John, you know? We do a lot for them. Share our food with them. I think they get a lot from us. If they'd just acknowledge their need, though, they'd be so much easier to help."
    The harmonica was silent: the bare-breasted girl had gone from her blanket
    "How'd you get that scratch?"
    "Just an accident. With John." She shrugged. "From one of those, actually." She nodded toward his orchid. "It isn't anything."
    He leaned to touch it, looked at her: she hadn't moved. So he lay his forefinger on her shin, moved it down. The scab line ran under his callous like a tiny rasp.
    She frowned. "It really isn't anything." Framed in heavy red, it was a gentle frown. "What's that?" She pointed. "Around your wrist."
    His cuff had pulled up when he'd leaned.
    He shrugged. Confusion was like struggling to find the proper way to sit inside his skin. "Something I found." He wondered if she heard the question mark on his sentence, small as a period.
    Her eyebrow's movement said she had: which amused him.
    The optical glass flamed over his knobby wrist.
    "Where do you get it? I've seen several people wear that… kind of chain."
    He nodded. "I just found it."
    "Where?" Her gentle smile urged.
    "Where did you get your scratch?"
    Still smiling, she returned a bewildered look.
    He had expected it. And he mistrusted it. "I…" and the thought resolved some internal cadence: "want to know about you!" He was suddenly and astonishingly happy. "Have you been here long? Where are you from? Mildred? Mildred what? Why did you come here? How long are you going to stay? Do you like Japanese food? Poetry?" He laughed. "Silence? Water? Someone saying your name?"
    " Um …" He saw she was immensely pleased. "Mildred Fabian, and people do call me Milly, like Tak does. John just feels he has to be formal when new people come around. I was here at State University. But I come from Ohio… Euclid, Ohio?"
    He nodded again.
    "But State's got such a damned good Poly-sci department. Had, anyway. So I came here. And…" She dropped her eyes (brown, he realized with a half-second memory, as he looked at her lowered, corn-colored lashes—brown with a coppery backing, copper like her hair) "…I stayed."
    "You were here when it happened?"
    "…yes." He heard a question mark there bigger than any in the type-box.
    "What…" and when he said, "…happened?" he didn't want an answer.
    Her eyes widened, dropped again; her shoulders sank; her back rounded. She reached toward his hand in its cage, lying between them on the bench.
    As she took a shiny blade tip between two fingers, he was aware of his palm's suspension in its harness.
    "Does… I've always… well, could you make an…" She tugged the point to the side (he felt the pressure on his wrist and stiffened his hand), released it: A muffled Hmmmmm. "Oh."
    He was puzzled.
    "I was wondering," she explained, "if you could make it ring. Like an instrument. All the blades are different lengths. I thought if they made notes, perhaps you could… play them."
    "Blade steel? I don't think it's brittle enough. Bells and things are iron."
    She bent her head to the side.
    "Things have to be brittle if they're going to ring. Like glass. Knives are hard, sure; but they're too flexible."
    She looked up after a moment. "I like music. I was going to major in music. At State. But the Poly-sci department was so good. I don't think I've seen one Japanese restaurant in Bellona, since I've been in