Symbiography by William Hjortsberg Read Free Book Online

heels from the crossbeam. The heads, along with a dozen others, bloated sun-blackened crow-bait, stood impaled on sharpened stakes that bristled like spines on a lizard’s back along the sinuous mud wall surrounding the village.
    To Buick, who had spent most of his life in tents, the low angular flat-roofed buildings seemed dark and uninviting. Like the wall, they were built of dried mud and stones. In every doorway, small naked children stood, watching them pass. Occasionally, one of the bolder ones risked a somber smile.
    In the center of the village rose the steep stone ramparts of the Grand Dragon’s fortress, where numbers of squat ugly houses pressed together against the great wall like piglets squirming among the protective teats of a sleeping sow. The arched entranceway, built high above the ground, could be reached only by a narrow wooden chute, designed to be winched safely up and into place in time of siege. As they rode single-file up this gangplank, Buick observed the snub muzzles of several bronze cannon protruding from between the saw-toothed crenelations above. And from the highest tower streamed the long, white, fork-tailed banner of the Orthodoxy, the blood-red cross furling and undulant in the wind.
    In the open courtyard, grooms hurried to stable their horses. Esso departed with a formal bow, leaving Buick in the hands of three fawning servants, who led the way inside, carrying his saddlebags and musket. They brought him through vaulted corridors and winding stairs to a suite of well-lit, high-ceilinged rooms. The arched windows commanded a view of the entire valley. The floors were tiled and covered with bold carpets, woven in the traditional pattern of red-and-white stripes and five-pointed stars. Sacred relics were set in niches along the walls. (Far away, the Dreamer identified the radiator grill and steering-wheel of an automobile, a coin-operated telephone, and the pearly-pink ovals of four plastic toilet-seats.) In the center of the room stood a large, battered, red-metal box with the word oca-Col embossed on the dented facade. (This remained a mystery even to the somnolent Sondak.)
    In one room, a sunken bath steamed; in another, a festive meal waited on a low table; a third, with its hanging canopies and cushion-covered mats, held the promise of much-needed sleep. Buick was ushered through each of these chambers by the obsequious trio and finally, bathed, massaged and fed, he was left alone with a slim dark-eyed girl who slipped out of her simple gown and stepped under the tent-like canopy, where she introduced the wild Nomad boy (and the enthusiastic Sondak), to pleasures more refined than those he was accustomed to grapple for on the cold nighttime desert sand.
    The white robe hung several sizes too large, but the length corrected by adjusting the sash and the ample sleeves nicely concealed the silver shape of the light-that-never-dies, dangling from Buick’s wrist by a leather thong. His companion, Xerox, wore the hoodless, blue-and-gold robe of a Knight in the Order. They walked side-by-side without talking, down passageways bright with morning sunshine. At the far end of a courtyard enclosed by overhanging galleries, a gate was opened by two sentries. Above their heads, the mysterious wrought iron characters, B&O R.R., bloomed among the filigree.
    Inside a vast windowless chamber rows of torches hung aslant from the walls and the coffered ceiling was blackened with smoke. On tiers of benches along either side, the Holy Brotherhood sat in their robes like a ghostly choir, the shadows of the tall, peaked hoods shifting and dancing in the uneven light. At the far end of the room, carved stone cruciforme flanked the upraised throne of the Grand Dragon. Kodak’s robe was scarlet. In his right hand he held a golden statuette of the Sun-hurler poised on one foot, head thrust forward, the precious life-giving orb lifted behind his back by an outstretched arm. (The Dreamer remembered the crash of