Dhalgren Read Free

feet—
    She was rounding the rock's edge.
    He paused for his fly and the twin belt hooks. Twigs and gravel chewed his feet. She ran so fast!
    He came up as she glanced back, put his hand on the stone—and flinched: the rock-face was wet. He looked at the crumbled dirt on the yellow ham and heel.
    "There…" She pointed into the cave. "Can you see it?"
    He started to touch her shoulder, but no.
    She said: "Go ahead. Go in."
    He dropped his sandal: a lisp of brush. He dropped his shirt: that smothered the lisping.
    She looked at him expectantly, stepped aside.
    He stepped in: moss on his heel, wet rock on the ball of his foot. His other foot came down: wet rock.
    Breath quivered about him. In the jellied darkness something dry brushed his cheek. He reached up: a dead vine crisp with leaves. It swung: things rattled awfully far overhead. With visions of the mortal edge, he slid his foot forward. His toes found: a twig with loose bark… a clot of wet leaves… the thrill of water… Next step, water licked over his foot. He stepped again:
    Only rock.
    A flicker, left.
    Stepped again, and the flicker was orange, around the edge of something; which was the wall of a rock niche, with shadow for ceiling, next step.
    Beyond a dead limb, a dish of brass wide as a car tire had nearly burned to embers. Something in the remaining fire snapped, spilling sparks on wet stone.
    Ahead, where the flicker leaked high up into the narrowing slash, something caught and flung back flashings.
    He climbed around one boulder, paused; the echo from breath and burning cast up intimations of the cavern's size. He gauged a crevice, leaped the meter, and scrambled on the far slope. Things loosened under his feet. He heard pebbles in the gash complaining down rocks, and stuttering, and whispering—and silence.
    Then: a splash!
    He pulled in his shoulders; he had assumed it was only a yard or so deep.
    He had to climb a long time. One face, fifteen feet high, stopped him a while. He went to the side and clambered up the more uneven outcroppings. He found a thick ridge that, he realized as he pulled himself up it, was a root. He wondered what it was a root to, and gained the ledge.
    Something went Eeek! softly, six inches from his nose, and scurried off among old leaves.
    He swallowed, and the prickles tidaling along his shoulders subsided. He pulled himself the rest of the way, and stood:
    It lay in a crack that slanted into roofless shadow.
    One end looped a plume of ferns.
    He reached for it; his body blocked the light from the brazier below: glimmer ceased.
    He felt another apprehension than that of the unexpected seen before, or accidentally revealed behind. He searched himself for some physical sign that would make it real: quickening breath, slowing heart. But what he apprehended was insubstantial as a disjunction of the soul. He picked the chain up; one end chuckled and flickered down the stone. He turned with it to catch the orange glimmer.
    Prisms.
    Some of them, anyway.
    Others were round.
    He ran the chain across his hand. Some of the round ones were transparent. Where they crossed the spaces between his fingers, the light distorted. He lifted the chain to gaze through one of the lenses. But it was opaque. Tilting it, he saw pass, dim and inches distant in the circle, his own eye, quivering in the quivering glass.
    Everything was quiet.
    He pulled the chain across his hand. The random arrangement went almost nine feet. Actually, three lengths were attached. Each of the three ends looped on itself. On the largest loop was a small metal tag.
    He stooped for more light.
    The centimeter of brass (the links bradded into the 7 optical bits were brass) was inscribed: producto do Brazil.
    He thought: What the hell kind of Portuguese is that?
    He crouched a moment longer looking along the glittering lines.
    He tried to pull it all together for his jean pocket, but the three tangled yards spilled his palms. Standing, he found the largest loop and lowered