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.
Also By Samuel R Delany
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)
Starboard Wine (1984)
Dedication
For
Dennis Rickett
and with thanks to
Sam DeBenedetto,
Leonard Gibbs,
& Don Eric Levine.
Biography
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.