Atlantis: Three Tales

Atlantis: Three Tales Read Free Page A

Book: Atlantis: Three Tales Read Free
Author: Samuel R. Delany
Tags: Speculative Fiction
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swooping left, turning right, blood remembering some aeronautic invasion, crying Vrummmmmmmmmmmmm, while Sam and Lewy stood at the field’s edge, laughing, clapping, celebrating fantastic catastrophes.
    John borrowed a mule from the older boys down at the agi-barn and rode it up to the house, big boots flapping at its slate-colored flanks.
    Mama ran out to shake her apron at them. “Get him out of here! Get him out! Boy, what do you think you’re doing? He gets in my Swiss chard and I’ll skin you alive, so help me!”
    (Sam had heard her swear like that maybe twice in his life. That’s probably why he remembered it.)
    The mule jerked to the side—and John slipped right to the ground. Then Mama started laughing. Splayed on the grass, John was laughing too.
    â€œGet up . . . from there, John—” Mama called, between hysteric eruptions. “And get him . . . out of here!” while the mule wandered over to the porch steps and ate a hollyhock.
    The hands’ exact slant was repeated on the smaller, spherical clock’s four faces.
    Sam and Hubert made their way through waves of men and women. Again, Sam the Navigator gazed up at sky-tiles like an overturned sea.
    For a moment, not the distant lights of the Pegasus in their gilded starbursts—across from the balcony at the halls’ right side, across from Orion above squared pilasters practically without capitals—but the gold lines with which Pegasus was drawn, suggested a caricature of Callista Arkady’s broad, veiled face, but with an ecstatic smile, gazing down.
    With some gentleness, as people plunged in echo by, Hubert said: “Come on, Sam,” to bring his eyes down. “We have to get the train.”
    The train—
this
train—was a subway. They didn’t even step outsideto get to it. Going down the stairs, Hubert asked him: “You got a nickel?”
    At the steps’ bottom, again Sam put his suitcase down, pushed into his pants pocket—feeling scrape his wrist the ten dollar bill Lucius had told Mama should be safety-pinned there, because Sam was going to New York, where things could happen—to pull out his coins. On his palm, Sam forefingered aside the fifty-cent piece, two dimes, two nickels, and five, six, seven, eight pennies: change from the Coca-Cola he’d bought on the train platform yesterday, which, there, had cost two cents more than at the colored grocery—
    â€œCome on,” Hubert said. “I’ll pay for you. I got two—come
on
, Sam! This is New York; you can’t dawdle here!”
    â€œI’m
not
dawdling; I’m looking after my money.” Only he glanced up to see people cascading down the steps, breaking to left and right of him, like water at a rock. Jamming coins back in his pocket, Sam snatched up his suitcase to follow Hubert, who pushed one nickel into the slot ahead, then another into the one beside that. As they hefted the cases over, they were practically pounded through shadowless stiles by the wooden paddles swinging round behind them. “What does it do?” Sam looked back, frowning. “Whack you in the butt every time you go in?”
    â€œThat’s just to make sure people like you go and get on with it.” Hubert hurried ahead. “This way!” he called over his shoulder. “Let’s get the first car!”
    Hubert was twenty-three. Last year Hubert had gone to Europe and traveled there four months. When he’d got back, he’d worked in the tobacco fields in Connecticut. This eagerness for the first car—something he’d imagine from John or Lewy—was not what you expected from a big brother about to start his second year in law school—all of which Hubert could claim. But with a sister in between, Hubert was his brother nearest Sam in age; perhaps that enthusiasm was what had kept them so close, in spite of it all.
    They didn’t make the

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