hand.
Who are you supposed to be? (the security guard asks him flatly, as if deKlend were in costume)
I’m faculty (deKlend lies) New faculty, actually.
The security guard looks very displeased.
Well I’m on the faculty myself, actually , and I’m not aware of our having the use or money for anyone else here just now. What are you doing here in the first place?
For someone as dismally real as the security guard, his questions, his voice, are like a prolongation of deKlend’s unrelated dreams.
That’s a good question (he says yawning and thrusting his head back deeper into the seat cushion)
Isn’t it, though? (the guard says, leaning forward irritated) How about an answer?
deKlend blinks at him innocently.
Well?
... I suppose it started with that dream I had ...
deKlend describes his dream, taking special pains to detail the characteristics of the strange figure he had seen, hoping perhaps that this guard might, if he knows anything on the subject, condescend to enlighten him. He knew that it was Friday, and yet he felt as though it were Sunday.
What are you talking about? Explain yourself.
I am explaining (deKlend says patiently) You asked me the cause of, or reason for, my being here, and I say that it was the veiled man who sent me, more or less.
The security guard recoils.
Veiled man? (he asks sharply) Describe him.
As he does so, the security guard begins shaking his head slowly, interrupting him to ask,
Did he ever change into a bird?
Oh yes. Funny sort of bird, too.
With long ears?
Yes that’s right! But it wasn’t an owl — (deKlend yawns)
When he reopens his eyes — and he can’t say for certain that his eyes had been open before — there’s nothing above him but air and ceiling. The room is vacant, except for him. The dawn within the window is brown, and deKlend sits up miserably, rubbing his head. His jaws ache; he’d slept with them clenched.
Ah, how stupid I was, (he thinks) to think I could get to Votu from here! All this while I’ve believed this was a part of — part of what?
He blunders into an ordinary room and finds there a sort of packaged meal with complicated instructions printed on it. Ignoring them, he begins manipulating and damaging the package, eventually mashing it completely out of shape. It bursts open, scattering dry, long-spoiled food on the floor. Not a crumb remains in the package, on inspection.
Two men pass the door.
They were just a buncha fakers (the first one says)
They always are (the other interjects)
That’s okay (the first replies)
Thinking duelling thoughts to and fro like jammed logs piling up against the rocks — pound, crash, the logs fly like thunderbolts, bars not of light but soundrod batonning the ground of the banks of the river, logs batonning the drumheaded earthbanks rockslimed bankrocks slimheaded fish bolt weave a little light in logbath morass or flip sunengaged in reeking mud soft as slime banks waterlogged earth tails of silver drum in final batonspasms alternating with the head against the logs, fish in slim bark grooves by banks all smiling with woven slime glistening in the sun, gills hard on grooved bark and fins grappling among blonde splinters silver dappled in beaded plaits of water rill down log flanks to the flickering stream’s groin where the batonbrooks defile rocks, the log sleeps in creamy slime mired in silver from splintered clouds, a blonde halo of white bark suffuses the bank, where the logs rot, crumbling in phosphorescent decay that decals the fish scales, logs soften on the banks and become witty gleaming fish, escape me like girls into the curling glass of the stream.
Overcome by the feeling that I don’t want to do anything, only lie back and dissolve into the homeless clouds and rain I came from. I was put out (he thinks). Out of sorts. Everything I had to do seemed to be an inexplicable formality, although I can’t say who expected it of me or why. I wracked my brains and couldn’t imagine,
Who are you supposed to be? (the security guard asks him flatly, as if deKlend were in costume)
I’m faculty (deKlend lies) New faculty, actually.
The security guard looks very displeased.
Well I’m on the faculty myself, actually , and I’m not aware of our having the use or money for anyone else here just now. What are you doing here in the first place?
For someone as dismally real as the security guard, his questions, his voice, are like a prolongation of deKlend’s unrelated dreams.
That’s a good question (he says yawning and thrusting his head back deeper into the seat cushion)
Isn’t it, though? (the guard says, leaning forward irritated) How about an answer?
deKlend blinks at him innocently.
Well?
... I suppose it started with that dream I had ...
deKlend describes his dream, taking special pains to detail the characteristics of the strange figure he had seen, hoping perhaps that this guard might, if he knows anything on the subject, condescend to enlighten him. He knew that it was Friday, and yet he felt as though it were Sunday.
What are you talking about? Explain yourself.
I am explaining (deKlend says patiently) You asked me the cause of, or reason for, my being here, and I say that it was the veiled man who sent me, more or less.
The security guard recoils.
Veiled man? (he asks sharply) Describe him.
As he does so, the security guard begins shaking his head slowly, interrupting him to ask,
Did he ever change into a bird?
Oh yes. Funny sort of bird, too.
With long ears?
Yes that’s right! But it wasn’t an owl — (deKlend yawns)
When he reopens his eyes — and he can’t say for certain that his eyes had been open before — there’s nothing above him but air and ceiling. The room is vacant, except for him. The dawn within the window is brown, and deKlend sits up miserably, rubbing his head. His jaws ache; he’d slept with them clenched.
Ah, how stupid I was, (he thinks) to think I could get to Votu from here! All this while I’ve believed this was a part of — part of what?
He blunders into an ordinary room and finds there a sort of packaged meal with complicated instructions printed on it. Ignoring them, he begins manipulating and damaging the package, eventually mashing it completely out of shape. It bursts open, scattering dry, long-spoiled food on the floor. Not a crumb remains in the package, on inspection.
Two men pass the door.
They were just a buncha fakers (the first one says)
They always are (the other interjects)
That’s okay (the first replies)
Thinking duelling thoughts to and fro like jammed logs piling up against the rocks — pound, crash, the logs fly like thunderbolts, bars not of light but soundrod batonning the ground of the banks of the river, logs batonning the drumheaded earthbanks rockslimed bankrocks slimheaded fish bolt weave a little light in logbath morass or flip sunengaged in reeking mud soft as slime banks waterlogged earth tails of silver drum in final batonspasms alternating with the head against the logs, fish in slim bark grooves by banks all smiling with woven slime glistening in the sun, gills hard on grooved bark and fins grappling among blonde splinters silver dappled in beaded plaits of water rill down log flanks to the flickering stream’s groin where the batonbrooks defile rocks, the log sleeps in creamy slime mired in silver from splintered clouds, a blonde halo of white bark suffuses the bank, where the logs rot, crumbling in phosphorescent decay that decals the fish scales, logs soften on the banks and become witty gleaming fish, escape me like girls into the curling glass of the stream.
Overcome by the feeling that I don’t want to do anything, only lie back and dissolve into the homeless clouds and rain I came from. I was put out (he thinks). Out of sorts. Everything I had to do seemed to be an inexplicable formality, although I can’t say who expected it of me or why. I wracked my brains and couldn’t imagine,
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