Free The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany Page A

from the ground, and spun in the air. Then it fell point first to quiver in the shank of a log near the fire. Spider opened his eyes and took a breath.
    My mouth was open. So I closed it.
    Everybody else thought it was very funny.
    “And with animals,” Spider said.
    “How?”
    “The dragons. To a certain point I can keep them calm, keep them more or less together, and steer dangerous creatures away from us.”
    “Friza,” I said. “You’re like Friza.”
    “Who’s Friza?”
    I looked down at my knife. The melody which I had mourned her with was mine. “Nobody,” I said, “anymore.”
    That melody was mine! Then I asked, “Have you ever heard of Kid Death?”
    Spider put down his food, brought all his hands in front of him, and tilted his head. His long nostrils flared till they were round. I looked away from his fear. But the others were watching me so I had to look back.
    “What about Kid Death?” Spider asked.
    “I want to find him and- “ I flung my blade in the air and twirled it as Spider had, but my hand propelled. I seized it from its fall with my foot. “-Well, I want to find him. Tell me about him.”
    They laughed. It started in Spider’s mouth, then was coming all sloppy from Stinky, a low hiss from Knife, grunts and cackles from the others, ending in Green-eye’s green eye, a light that went out as he looked away. “You’re going to have a hard time,” Spider said finally, “but”-he rose from the fire-“you’re headed in the right direction.”
    “Tell me about him,” I said again.
    “There’s a time to talk about the impossible, but it’s not when there’s work to do.” He got up, reached into a canvas sack and tossed me a whip.
    I caught it mid-length.
    “Put your ax away,” Spider said. “This sings when it flies.” His lash lisped over my head.
    Everyone went to his mount, and Spider reeled a bridle and stirrups from the gear sack that fitted those humps and scales neatly, buckling around the forelegs; I see why he’d made me get the feel of things bareback. The semi-saddle and leg-straps make dragon riding almost nice.
    “Head them on through that way,” he yelled, and I imitated the herders around me as they began the drive.
    Dragons swarmed in sunlight.
    Oiled whips snapped and glistened over the scales, and the whole world got caught up in the rhythmic rocking of the beast between my legs, trees and hills and gorse and boulders and brambles all taking up the tune and movement as a crowd will begin clapping and stomping to a beat; the jungle, my audience, applauded the beat of surging lizards.
    Moaning. Which meant they were happy.
    Hissing sometimes. Which meant watch it.
    Grunting and cussing and shouting. Which meant the herders were happy too.
    I learned an incredible amount of things that morning, lunging back and forth between the creatures: five or six of them were the leaders and the rest followed. Keep the leaders going in the right direction and you had no problem. Dragons tend to go right. You get more response if you slap them on the back haunches. I later learned, nerve clusters there control their rear-end transmissions that’re bigger than the brain.

    One of the lead dragons kept on wanting to go back and bother an overweight female (ovarian tumor that kept her loaded down with sterile eggs, Spider explained to me) and it was all we could do to keep them apart. I spent a lot of time (imitating Green-eye) scouting the edge of the herd to worry the creatures back together who kept getting curious about things in irrelevant directions.
    I began to learn what I was doing when about twenty dragons got stuck in a mintbog (a slushy quicksand bog covered with huge bushes of windy mint, right? Mintbog ). Spider, by himself drove the rest of the herd around in a circle, three whips popping, while the other five of us went sloshing back and forth through the mint to drive the dragons out before they got stuck.
    “There shouldn’t be too many more of