They Fly at Ciron (23 page)
I’d seen my friend take off and land, on the back of Handsman Vortcir. Who, so seeing, could not covet such flight!
Also, I suppose, I was afraid not to. For they were so strong—they’d just vanquished the whole of a Myetran brigade!
These particular three, you understand—well, I was not even sure if they were females; though, now, I assume so. But it was hard to tell. Certainly they were younger members of their tribe. And clearly they brought an enthusiasm, if not an avidity, to their play.
I bent to take the back of the one who squatted.
The wings pulled in,
rose, opened, and fell—and I was born up, grabbing at the great shoulders.
And what was the game?
Now—now, in the air, I was to transfer to the back of one of the others! But how in the world—?
Just do it!
First, one came close. I threw my arms around the neck of one flying so near their four wings beat each others’. And I was pulled away, to hang, till, at a certain maneuver, we flew upside down—and I lay with my carrier, belly to belly, looking at that strange smile, just under mine!
Then, again, when I was not really holding, I was rolled loose and actually fell, my heart blocking my throat with its beats, as if my head were back on the block, to land on the back of the third—and I scrambled over, to grasp and hold the shoulders, while we sagged down with my added weight and recovered, while the others, flying just above, mewed caressive reassurances: now I was urged to leap, myself, from the one I rode to one who flew just under us; and—rather than be thrown again—in a perfect panic I leaped; and was caught between those billowing leathers. They passed me among them, while, between the wings of one and the wings of another, the village lay hundreds of feet below. Next time I looked, the stubbled field passing back beneath was so near—not a full two feet under us, every daisy and grass blade and burnt twig speeding clearly—I was sure we’d wreck ourselves on the smallest rise. We lifted again. Somehow, I was tossed, again, for a last time—and caught, in the net, on my back.
They swarmed over me!
One pulled
loose my waist cinch, another the fastenings on my jerkin. They mewed into my ears such things as: “We play the game of desire, along the chain of desire, serving the Winged One’s Queen! We serve the beloved of the Queen, who is the Handsman. We serve the beloved of the Handsman, who is the brave groundling. We serve the beloved of the brave groundling, who is the groundling’s black clad friend… We tangle the chain in our play!” One piece and another, my clothes came away, till all that was under my naked back was the harsh uncured skin—and, folded over it, the wondrously soft fur—of the puma.
The three of them at me, there, shook me and pleasured me, bit at me—yes, in several places, my shoulder, my inner thigh, they sipped blood—while I rebounded in the web.
Do you understand? Moments before, I had been by a dying man, with whom I’d constantly felt I was not present to his words—a man who had urged me to exchange promises with him, as if we’d been a pair of lovers, yet, to whose urgings, my own perceptions had been so blighted I could not tell if he knew or not I was unable to respond, for he might as well have been addressing the lion skull, already dead, by mine.
But now, with these three lovers upon me, my bodily perceptions were cajoled, caressed, excited to a pitch, an altitude, where language could not follow, so that promises themselves were impossible. As I floated and flowed and soared above words, listening to their mewings and scrittings, I let a sound that was wholly animal, as inhuman as if the beast’s skull beside me had, for a moment, returned to life.
I slid, finally, down the web. On the burned earth, when, at last, I could stand, I looked about for my cloths, pulled on my leggings, my boots, my gloves.
The three Winged Ones
all perched on the branch, as indifferent to my fumblings below with belt hooks, boot laces, and button fastenings as lords of the air might be.
I threw the puma skin over my back and, fastening it, stumbled off into the trees—unable to look back, bereft of all my initial desire: to survey the damages among my troops.
I only remembered it when I was again walking between the shacks in some narrow alley. Reaching the end, I saw I was back at the common—with no progress at all in my project.
But perhaps you can understand why this is not an event I often tell. Really, I can’t think how it concerns your own researches. It might, if you have any sense of delicacy, be better left unmentioned. As I said, put yourself in my place . .
In
evening light, the Calvicon historian listened to the little stones which the waves raked away, then, returning, flung up the shingle. He sipped from his drink and nodded (for the historian was tired, and, as they’d sat in the small yard, his host had refilled both their glasses several times), not certain just what he’d been asked.
—Amherst
September 1991
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SF and Fantasy
The Jewels of Aptor
(1962)
Captives of the Flame
(1963) (revised and expanded as
Out of the Dead City
)
The Towers of Toron
(1964)
City of a Thousand Suns
(1965)
The Ballad of Beta-2
(1965)
Empire Star
(1966)
Babel-17
(1966)
The Einstein Intersection
(1967)
Nova
(1968)
Dhalgren
(1975)
Triton
(1976)
Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
(1984)
They Fly at Çiron
(1993)
Tales of Nevèrÿon
(1979)
Neveryóna
(1983)
Flight from Nevèrÿon
(1985)
The Bridge of Lost Desire
(1987) (revised as
Return to Nevèrÿon
, 1994)
Collections
Aye, and Gomorrah
(1993)
Non-Fiction
The Jewel-Hinged Jaw
(1977, revised 2009)
The American Shore
(1978)
DedicationStarboard Wine
(1984)
For
Dennis Rickett
and with thanks to
Sam DeBenedetto,
Leonard Gibbs,
& Don Eric Levine.
Samuel R Delany (1942 - )
Samuel Ray ‘Chip’ Delany, Jr was born in Harlem in 1942, and published his first novel at the age of just 20. As author, critic and academic, his influence on the modern genre has been profound and he remains one of science fiction’s most important and discussed writers. He has won the Hugo Award twice and the Nebula Award four times, including consecutive wins for
Babel-17
and
The Einstein Intersection
. Since January 2001 he has been a professor of English and Creative Writing at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he is Director of the Graduate Creative Writing Program.
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Samuel R Delany 1993
All rights reserved.
The right of Samuel R Delany to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by Gollancz
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 11922 2
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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