Filthy stuff! It can give a man a hangover last him a lifetime. Never again! I really must pull myself together if I am going to transcribe correctly the next tape of the conversation between Freeky and Amos Africanus, the twins.
13. YOU (FEM.)
You yourself were the one who first pointed out to Mya, if not to Thay Himmer, that immortality was the one and only proposition worth pushing, weren’t you? Well, how do you feel about that since torture, Amos? Although, I suppose, an eternity of torture would be very much like an eternity of anything else, wouldn’t it; just a terrible bore in the end? And, as for hellfire, we have it all around us out here in the Sahara, whether the Muslims believe in the eternity of Gehenna or not. Funny, I was talking that over with Mohamed only the other evening before our terrible trouble came up. No, don’t try to talk! How that brute could have attached an electrode to your tongue and your penis! What villains they are! I mean, men.
You know what I mean about men, even if you are a man, too; or, are you entirely? Surely, half of you at least, must be me. I’m your sister, your twin, your other you in yourself whether you like it or not and, it’s true, Amos; you do! Your poor peeling penis can’t make all that much difference, can it? Is that reason enough to be other than I am and not think as I think? But, I suppose you’re a man for other reasons, too, besides this bit of festering flesh that you have and I don’t. Oh, don’t worry, we’re going to save it. Mohamed seems to have circumcised you a second time with fire but, apart from having to leave in the catheter, Francis says it looks good. The burns under your tongue aren’t so bad, either, that they’ll destroy your centers of speech. We’re not going to leave you tongue-tied like Thay. I do think it’s odd that two of Mya’s merry men should be speechless at a time like this. No, don’t try to talk!
I know what time it is: Present Time, indeed! I thought we were supposed to be on top of it and, here, Present Time is all over us like a great hairy blanket; the Sahara, itself. I never intended to play it like this and I still count on you to get us out of here. There, in the clinic, is my husband whom I love and respect, inside there trying to dig Olav’s bullet out of my lover’s arm: that murderous Mohamed, who would have killed me if you hadn’t flown to my defense. Francis was no use at alclass="underline" I owe you my very life, Amos, I really do. Mohamed’s a maniac, isn’t he? Imagine him killing poor Karl Barx but, then, all Arabs panic with dogs and dogs don’t like them, either. I don’t know that I like dogs all that much myself. I must say, I thought that very typical of our darling little sister, Ana Lyse, to bring such a big dog along with her and call him Karl Barx. Ana Lyse, to bring such a big dog along with her and call him Karl Barx. And that woman; that newspaperwoman! Do you want to know where she is right now? No?
She’s right in there alongside Dr. Fard in Mohamed’s quarters, playing nurse and knowing full well — Francis is famous for it — that the doctor can never resist taking the nearest nurse every time he sees blood. That’s how I first got Francis myself. We had a badly wounded guerrilla fighter in the surgery, dying on a slippery couch. As the man was apparently passing away, Dr. Fard got more and more visibly excited and I did, too, I must admit; it’s a very natural reaction to life coming and going, after all isn’t it? We were both breathing hard as Francis motioned me to help put the man on the floor and then ordered me to get up on the couch in his place. Francis was all over me in a second; that’s always his trouble the first time around. While he was washing his cock in the laboratory sink, I thought I heard the patient stirring under the couch; so I swung around, leaning over to see. Well, Francis, catching sight of my bare white bum in the air, I suppose, simply bounded back without wiping his hands of the soap and breached me brutally from behind for the first time in my life. It was, well, tremendous. The trouble was that when we got married it never happened again quite like that. Francis is getting on, you know, and he’s had a hard life. We don’t have seconds and thirds any more; that’s out! I caught him once giving himself a series of hormones but nothing much came of it. I wish Miss Media luck but if Mohamed came up on her, now, that would be another story, indeed! Mohamed has positively seismic orgasms: he comes like an earthquake. No, don’t even try to talk!
You didn’t see Mohamed at his best: or, maybe, you did! Aren’t you the least little bit masochistic, just like me? If you like being penetrated, you really must be. You must have been almost tickled to death when he turned his juice into you, Amos; confess! Ooh, I can feel it, almost. You know, Amos, it’s true; I really can feel what you feel. I’m you. It’s nice having you all naked here in my bed where I can soothe you and care for you and torture you just a little bit, too, to keep you alive until the next act of all this nonsense the Himmers have wrought. Mya’s been using you like a tool, Amos! I know what she wants. She wants the Sahara and the Sahara itself is Police! Oh. There; I’m so terribly sorry, did I hurt your poor tool? I’m changing this catheter; don’t try to talk!
You cannot imagine how boring it’s been out here in this stainless-steel fortress, waiting for all this to take place. Practically the only regular visitor we have is old Professor Feldzahler, who comes whizzing over here in his helicopter from his atomic center in Reggan, looking more and more, talking more and more and acting more and more like the prophet Elijah, coming in his fiery chariot when he comes. You remember what an absentminded professor he used to be; well, it’s all gone now. He can frighten the stuffings out of even Captain Mohamed with his apocalyptic atomic talk. While he was haranguing Francis, the two of us used to slip away into the flowering oleander bushes down by the oued. Mohamed’s very well built. Things got more complicated around here when the Queen of the Tuareg blew in one day in a sandstorm. The sentinel at the gate who first found her would have raped her and robbed her, naturally, if Captain Mohamed hadn’t just happened along on a tour of inspection: he’s a terrible snoop. He’s forever turning the poor political prisoners out for a bed-check after midnight, as if he thought any of us would be mad enough to throw ourselves away in the Sahara. The Sahara, itself, is our jail. We depend on this fortress for our lives, after all. What makes you think Mya can keep it running for even a single day more, tell me that! No. No, don’t try to talk!
Nobody loves Sister Cassandra, I know. That’s what Francis and I have been calling the queen, as a matter of fact. That poor queen! She has nothing at all but those tattered blue robes she’s wearing; while she was unconscious, I went through her things. We found her clutching a roll of red rawhide, which was all that was left of the right royal leather tent around which the Tuareg used to assemble from all over the Sahara to the sound of the royal drum. When we took her in here we had no place for her, really, but a corner of the kitchen which we divided by hanging up her redskin curtains on the clothesline to give her some privacy. However, we both have to do our cooking in there so it’s gotten to be more than a bit of a strain on the both of us. I thought Francis might have eyes for the queen but have you noticed the goat-smell of untanned leather in here? That’s it. It ought to be nice to keep a queen in the kitchen but not when her leatherwork stinks!
Then, we had this odd English couple, mother and son, who came through here on foot. We called them Senior and Junior because they both had exactly the same name: Windfred Something-Something, I think. Senior knows every last blasted plant in the Sahara by name in both Latin and Arabic: the British used to train their people really well, didn’t they? I feel sure she was sent to track down something like Mya’s Borbor, don’t you? Junior is a man in his middle fifties; so Senior must be getting on for eighty, at least, but she’s as spry as a cricket and keeps the accounts. Junior, with a medical certificate from Medina and Mecca and a very sharp straight razor, does antiseptic circumcisions for money in the villages along the way. They get to places where the circumciser hasn’t made his rounds in years. By the time they come along, so she tells me, there are often large groups to be circumcised, including boys grown so big they get an erection at the sight of the knife and ejaculate all over your hands; sperm and blood. Would you like a job like that? No, don’t try to talk!