Read Online The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany - Free Book Online
Authors: Samuel R. Delany
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think.
“Kid Death?”
“What?”
“Where are you?”
The sound snagged on ivory needles.
“Where are you from, Kid Death? Where are you going?”
The long fingers raveled like linen rope snaring gold coins. He pushed weeds away from the gutter grill with his foot. “I broiled away childhood in the sands of an equatorial desert kage with no keeper to love me. Like you, lively in your jungle, I was haunted by the memories of those who homed under this sun before our parents’ parents came, took on these bodies, loves and fears. Most of those around me in the kage died of thirst. At first I saved some of my fellows, bringing water to them the way Friza threw the stone-oh yes, I saw that too. I did that for a while. Then for a while I killed whoever was put in the kage with me, and took the water directly from their bodies. I would go to the fence and stare across the dunes to the palms at the oasis where our tribe worked. I never thought to leave the kage, back then, because like mirages on the glistering I saw through all the worlds’ eyes-I saw what you and Friza and Dorik saw, as I see what goes all over this arm of the galaxy. When what I saw frightened me, I closed the eyes seeing. That’s what happened to Friza and Dorik. When I am still curious about what’s going on through those eyes, more curious than frightened, I open them again. That’s what happened with Dorik.”
“You’re strong,” I said.
“That’s where I come from, the desert, where death shifts in the gritty bones of the Earth. And now? I am going further and further into the sea.” Raising his eyes now, his red hair floated back in the shivering green.
“Kid Death,” I called again; he was much further away. “Why were you in the kage? You look more functional than half the Lo and La of my village.”
Kid Death turned his head and looked at me from the corner of his eyes. He mocked. “Functional? To be born on a desert, a white-skinned redhead with gills?”
The spreading, drinking miniature mouth of the shark washed away. I blinked. I couldn’t think of anything else so I took papers out of the filing cabinet, spread them under the desk and lay down, tired and bewildered.
I remember I picked up one page and spelled my way through a paragraph. La Dire had taught me enough to read record labels, when for a while I had foraged about the village archives:
Evacuate upper levels with all due haste. Alarm system will indicate radiation at standard levels. Deeper detection devices are located...
Most of the words were beyond me. I halved the paper with toes and quartered it with fingers, let the pieces fall on my stomach before I picked up my machete to play myself to sleep.
What, then, is noble abstraction? It is taking first the essential elements of the thing to be represented, then the rest in the order of importance (so that wherever we pause we shall always have obtained more than we leave behind) and using any expedient to impress what we want upon the mind without caring about the mere literal accuracy of such expedient.
John Ruskin/ The Stones of Venice
A poem is a machine for making choices.
John Ciardi /How Does a Poem Mean
Hours after-I figure it could have been two , it could have been twelve-I rolled from under the desk and came up grunting, yawning, scratching . When I stepped into the hall the light faded.
I didn’t go back the way I’d come but headed forward again. There are lots of breakthroughs into the upper levels. I go till I see morning and climb out. About half an hour later I see a three foot stretch of it (morning) in the ceiling, behind black leaves, and leap for it. Good jumping power in those hams.
I scrambled out on crumbling ground and tame brambles, tripped on a vine, but all in all did pretty well. Which is to avoid saying “on the whole. ” Outside was cool, misty. Fifty yards by, the lapping edge of a lake flashed. I walked through the tangle to the clear beach. Chunked
“Kid Death?”
“What?”
“Where are you?”
The sound snagged on ivory needles.
“Where are you from, Kid Death? Where are you going?”
The long fingers raveled like linen rope snaring gold coins. He pushed weeds away from the gutter grill with his foot. “I broiled away childhood in the sands of an equatorial desert kage with no keeper to love me. Like you, lively in your jungle, I was haunted by the memories of those who homed under this sun before our parents’ parents came, took on these bodies, loves and fears. Most of those around me in the kage died of thirst. At first I saved some of my fellows, bringing water to them the way Friza threw the stone-oh yes, I saw that too. I did that for a while. Then for a while I killed whoever was put in the kage with me, and took the water directly from their bodies. I would go to the fence and stare across the dunes to the palms at the oasis where our tribe worked. I never thought to leave the kage, back then, because like mirages on the glistering I saw through all the worlds’ eyes-I saw what you and Friza and Dorik saw, as I see what goes all over this arm of the galaxy. When what I saw frightened me, I closed the eyes seeing. That’s what happened to Friza and Dorik. When I am still curious about what’s going on through those eyes, more curious than frightened, I open them again. That’s what happened with Dorik.”
“You’re strong,” I said.
“That’s where I come from, the desert, where death shifts in the gritty bones of the Earth. And now? I am going further and further into the sea.” Raising his eyes now, his red hair floated back in the shivering green.
“Kid Death,” I called again; he was much further away. “Why were you in the kage? You look more functional than half the Lo and La of my village.”
Kid Death turned his head and looked at me from the corner of his eyes. He mocked. “Functional? To be born on a desert, a white-skinned redhead with gills?”
The spreading, drinking miniature mouth of the shark washed away. I blinked. I couldn’t think of anything else so I took papers out of the filing cabinet, spread them under the desk and lay down, tired and bewildered.
I remember I picked up one page and spelled my way through a paragraph. La Dire had taught me enough to read record labels, when for a while I had foraged about the village archives:
Evacuate upper levels with all due haste. Alarm system will indicate radiation at standard levels. Deeper detection devices are located...
Most of the words were beyond me. I halved the paper with toes and quartered it with fingers, let the pieces fall on my stomach before I picked up my machete to play myself to sleep.
What, then, is noble abstraction? It is taking first the essential elements of the thing to be represented, then the rest in the order of importance (so that wherever we pause we shall always have obtained more than we leave behind) and using any expedient to impress what we want upon the mind without caring about the mere literal accuracy of such expedient.
John Ruskin/ The Stones of Venice
A poem is a machine for making choices.
John Ciardi /How Does a Poem Mean
Hours after-I figure it could have been two , it could have been twelve-I rolled from under the desk and came up grunting, yawning, scratching . When I stepped into the hall the light faded.
I didn’t go back the way I’d come but headed forward again. There are lots of breakthroughs into the upper levels. I go till I see morning and climb out. About half an hour later I see a three foot stretch of it (morning) in the ceiling, behind black leaves, and leap for it. Good jumping power in those hams.
I scrambled out on crumbling ground and tame brambles, tripped on a vine, but all in all did pretty well. Which is to avoid saying “on the whole. ” Outside was cool, misty. Fifty yards by, the lapping edge of a lake flashed. I walked through the tangle to the clear beach. Chunked
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