Kid grinned, aped an over-polite bow—
"Much obliged to you, there," George said. "For all your trouble" — and laughed. Kid looked at the cactus in its wooden tub: for a moment he considered throwing himself against it to embrace the spiked, fleshy trunk; which was so ridiculous he merely turned and walked away. They will meet, he thought, by sun, by moons, by laughter or lightning. Why I sweat is because I do not know what will happen to me, then. What will happen to me…
Glass fell in beside him. After about six steps, Glass said: "What would you have done if he'd said, 'Why, sure, man! Go on up there and bring the motherfuckers down'?"
"Probably—" Kid dodged a drunk who was going to fall three steps beyond them—"pissed all over myself."
"Maybe." Glass laughed. "But then, you'd probably of tried to go up there and get 'em down, too."
"I don't think they'd have been much trouble." Kid said. "I hope."
The white man coming toward them, shouldering through the blacks and smiling, was Captain Michael Kamp. "Well, hello, there. Now I didn't think I was going to see you again. I mean, not this evening." His smile took in Glass.
"Hello, sir," Kid said. "Good to see you again. But I think the party's breaking up. They got some problem upstairs. Nothing serious. But there just might be some shooting. And it's awfully easy pickings from up there." Kamp's eyes followed Kid's up to the balcony and came back, confused and half again as wide. Kid said, "Oh. This is my friend Glass. Glass, this is Captain Kamp."
"Hello, sir." Glass put out his hand. "Glad to meet you."
Kamp had to remember to shake. "What is… I mean?"
"Come on," Kid said. "Let's move over this way."
"What's going on now?" Kamp followed them. "Now, well… Roger gave me a list of places to hit this evening. I'm afraid I'm one of those guys who likes to drink booze and chase women-the Navy's favorite kind. While that bar is all very interesting — a very interesting bunch—" he nodded—"really, I thought I might do better, at least on the second part of that, some place else. Like here." He looked up at the balcony again, while a sudden mass of people moved noisily toward the door and out. "They got some pretty women, too…" Another bunch followed them. "What is it?" Kamp asked.
"Some crazy white folks with guns," Kid said. "They aren't doing anything but making people nervous. But they shouldn't be up there, anyway."
"Didn't I hear somebody saying something about people getting shot in the street this afternoon?"
"Yeah," Glass said, and grimaced.
"Oh," Kamp said, because he could apparently think of nothing else. "Roger said they didn't even let white people in this place. What are they doing here?"
Kid frowned a moment at Kamp. "Well, some of us get by."
"Oh," Kamp said again. "Well, sure. I mean…"
"You from the moon, ain't you," Glass said. "That's pretty interesting."
Kamp started to say something, but a voice — it was the Reverend's — coming through the half-silence that followed the exodus:
"…of the crossing taken again is not the value of the crossing? Oh, my poor, inaccurate hands and eyes! Don't you know that once you have transgressed that boundary, every atom, the interior of every point of reality, has shifted its relation to every other you've left behind, shaken and jangled within the field of time, so that if you cross back, you return to a very different space than the one you left? You have crossed the river to come to this city? Do you really think you can cross back to a world where a blue sky goes violet in the evening, buttered over with the light of a single, silver moon? Or that after a breath of dark, presaged by a false, familiar dawn, a little disk of fire will spurt, spitting light, over trees and sparse clouds, women, men, and works of hand? But you do! Of course you do! How else are we to retain the inflationary coinage and cheap paper money of sanity and solipsism? Oh, it is common knowledge, the name of that so secondary moon that intruded itself upon our so ordinary night. But the arcane and unspoken name of what rose on this so extraordinary day, for which George is only consort, that alone will free you of this city! Pray with me! Pray! Pray that this city is the one, pure, logical space from which, without being a poet or a god, we can all actually leave if — what?" Someone reached up to her: the Reverend looked down. "What did…?" It was George. The Reverend bent. For a moment she started to look up, did not, and hastily climbed from her platform. Her small head was lost among the heads around her.
"Well, I guess it's about time for me to be getting up to Roger's then." Kamp looked around. "Though they have some pretty nice-looking ladies around, I must admit."
"Guess it's time for us all to get going," Kid said, and noticed Kamp did not move. He tried to glance in the direction Kamp looked, wondering which lady his eyes had come to rest on, found only the blank, barred window.
Kamp said: "Um… Getting up to Roger's in the dark…" He shifted his weight, put his one hand in his slacks pocket. "I don't really enjoy the idea." He shifted back. "Say, you guys want a job?"
"Huh?"
"Give you five bucks if you walk me up to the house — you know where it is?"
Kid nodded.
"I mean, you guys are in the protection business, aren't you? I'd just as soon have some, walking around this town at night."
"Yeah?"
"Walking around the streets in the dark, in a city with no police, you don't know what you're going to find… both of you: I'll give you five apiece."
"I'll go with you," Glass said.
"We'll go," Kid said.
"I really appreciate that, now, I really do. I don't want to rush you out. If you want to stay around and have a couple more drinks, fine. Just let me know when you're ready—"
Glass looked at Kid with a sort of Is-he-crazy? look.
So Kid said, "We'll go now," and thought: Is he that much more terrified of the dark than known danger?
"Good," Kamp said. "Okay. Fine, now." He grinned and started for the crowded door.
Glass's expression was still puzzled.
"Yeah," Kid said. "He's for real. He's been to the moon."
Glass laughed without opening his lips. "I'm for real too, man." And then he clapped his hands.
Kamp looked back at them.
Kid, followed by Glass, shouldered through the bunch milling loudly at the exit.
In the hallway, Kamp asked, "Do you fellows — you're scorpions, now, right? — do you fellows have much trouble around here?"
"Our share," Glass said.
Kid thought: Glass always waits before he speaks as if it were my place to speak first.
"I'm not the sort of man who usually runs from a fight," Kamp said, "But, now, you don't set yourself up. I'm not carrying a lot of money, but I want to get home with what I've got." (People before the door listened to a woman who, in the midst of her story, stopped to laugh torrentially.) "If I'm going to stay in Bellona for a while, maybe it would be a good idea to hire a bunch of you guys to hang around with me. Then again, maybe that would just be attracting attention. Now, I really do appreciate you coming with me."
"We won't let anything happen to you," Kid said and wondered why.
He contemplated telling Kamp his fear was silly; and realized his own nether consciousness had grown fearful.
Glass settled his shoulders, and his chin, and his thumbs in his frayed pockets, like a black, drugstore cowboy.
"You'll be okay," Kid reiterated.
The woman recovered enough for the story's punchline, which was "…the sun! He said it was the God-damn sun!" Black men and women rocked and howled.