SONG OF KALI by Dan Simmons

For HARLAN ELLISON, who has heard the song,

And for KAREN and JANE,

who are my other voices.

". . . there is a darkness. It

is for everyone . . . Only some Greeks

and admirers of theirs, in their

liquid noon, where the friendship

of beauty to human things was perfect,

thought they were clearly divided

from this darkness. And these

Greeks too were in it. But still

they are the admiration of the

rest of the mud-sprung, famine-

knifed, street-pounding, war-

rattled, difficult, painstaking,

kicked in the belly, grief and

cartilage mankind, the multitude,

some under a coal-sucking Vesuvius

of chaos smoke, some inside a

heaving Calcutta midnight, who

very well know where they are."

— Saul Bellow

"Why, this is Hell; nor am I

out of it."

— Christopher Marlowe

Some places are too evil to be allowed to exist. Some cities are too wicked to be suffered. Calcutta is such a place. Before Calcutta I would have laughed at such an idea. Before Calcutta I did not believe in evil — certainly not as a force separate from the actions of men. Before Calcutta I was a fool.

After the Romans had conquered the city of Carthage, they killed the men, sold the women and children into slavery, pulled down the great buildings, broke up the stones, burned the rubble, and salted the earth so that nothing would ever grow there again. That is not enough for Calcutta. Calcutta should be expunged.

Before Calcutta I took part in marches against nuclear weapons. Now I dream of nuclear mushroom clouds rising above a city. I see buildings melting into lakes of glass. I see paved streets flowing like rivers of lava and real rivers boiling away in great gouts of steam. I see human figures dancing like burning insects, like obscene praying mantises sputtering and bursting against a fiery red background of total destruction.

The city is Calcutta. The dreams are not unpleasant.

Some places are too evil to be allowed to exist.