I became so impressed by the old woman’s knowledge of plants that I wrote this in my journal after the Windfreds left. May I read it to you?
Maybe I would get out of myself more if I knew something about botany. As it is, the Sahara is here at my throat. Sometimes I almost go crazy inside this place that wears as thin as a sheet of paper in the whine of the wind while that very real monster, Ghoul, growls around right outside, forbidding me to open up. He’s forever snuffling along the windowsill behind me or crawling along the crack under the door. I know, if I open up, he’ll be bounding around in the room like a fist. My refuge is here in this journal between whose pages I cower as though I were between the covers of a cardboard castle and I try to lie as flat as ink on the paper or, at most, bodied out no more than the dried desert flowers I press between these same pages.
There, isn’t that rather good? By the way, I think it a very bad magic for the Himmers to call their ruler Ghoul. That’s really tempting the desert itself, don’t you think? I say that’s going too far. Well, listen to this:
When I can get out of this starfish fortress, this hospital jail, this loony-bin which the clever Chinese anchored down to this rock of the Hoggar, I go botanizing. I don’t learn much, naturally, not knowing enough to begin. It’s as simple as that, but, at the same time, I feel sure that no botany book anywhere reproduces these ferociously ambitious plants I come across out in the Sahara. I observe them from a safe distance on some of my walks. These plants are at war, both with the Sahara, the sand and each other but, also, they are on the eternal lookout for any intruder who happens to put one foot out in front of the other through the desert.
There are plants out here with spined tendrils like elaborate steel traps and humanoid plants like silently screaming witches staked into the ground. I wouldn’t trust the plants out here with as little as one drop of water. It’s as plain as the Sahara itself that they don’t mean us any good; any more than Captain Mohamed does the last gazelles he guns down from his jeep. If the plants had their way, they would tear us to shreds and butcher every last one of us for casual manure if they could. If you take this ten-power reading glass of mine to get a closer look at these so-called plants, you will see that they are out there adding hook to handle; one saber joint to the next and all that on top of sawteeth, prickles, darts, barbs and every angle of thorn. The wind is their ally and is always behind them to give a push in order to slash at each other or you or any intruder; animal, human or plant. They would contend, I suppose, that they fight for water but I see their innate hostility as just one more example of the extreme nature of the Sahara; of the world.
You see what I’m getting at, don’t you? We are, all of us here, today and every day, in an extreme situation — between birth and death; you agree? Is there some still more extreme situation in which we can imagine ourselves? Yes; the extreme situation of leaving here willingly; do you follow me? Can you follow me if we go? Just nod your head: you don’t have to talk. I don’t mean just silly old Death, either; I mean sneaking past him. Oh, I don’t mean necessarily bodily but maybe so; maybe even physically; maybe as if we were just thinking-crystals in some other state, imagine. Well, it’s a lot less unthinkable since Space, isn’t it? Anyway, our Dr. Feldzahler says: “There is no Place in Space!” No hope of heaven or home out there, either, but, maybe, a hope of my I being You everywhere, do you see? Otherwise, a rather grim prospect for us space creatures, isn’t it; caught like astronauts dependent on their bodies like Thay inside his iron lung? No, don’t talk!
Francis and I were out in the jeep with the top down one day. We drove over to a place called Tit where there is what might be a Roman ruin and, on the way back, a sudden curtain of sand blew up and encircled us with the oddest green light. On the inside of this funnel, Francis and I saw huge but hardly distorted images of ourselves hanging there, hovering ahead of us, upside down. When we got back, the Queen told us the Tuareg say that is the last vision of those about to drown in the sand. Typical rubbish, isn’t it; how would she know? I do know, of course, as does anyone else whose name has been writ in sand, that the Sahara could breathe and cover us all forever like a book, closing on us, right now, but I wasn’t frightened when I saw my vision. I threw out my arms to throw them around myself but I faded in front of myself as I went. Wasn’t that sad? I’d like to walk into my own image as if it was you. Just imagine, you and I are on opposite sides of some shiny surface like a two-way mirror but thinner than paper; dividing two mirror-identical worlds, yours and mine. We stand as naked as you are now on my bed but without the bandages, of course. It’s so hot in here without the air-conditioning, I wish Thay would go back to his Imsak with Mya. So, I strip off all my clothes: like this! There, light flickers and ripples equally over my naked body and yours; shimmering between us. Light rushes up like a curtain or drops like a guillotine, pulsing between your side of the mirror and mine. Now, I am the bold one, of course, with nothing to lose and a penis to gain, so I leap to embrace the image of me which is, brother, you! And, brother, that’s what I really want; to be with the boys. I want to be able to turn over—Click! — the switch that made me a woman and you a man. I want to be both of us, Amos! No, don’t even try to talk back!
There, do you hear it? The air-conditioning is going again. That means Thay is at Imsak with Mya. Do you want to know, Amos; that makes my flesh creep! That woman’s an addict; no, don’t attempt to talk! I know she has been giving all of you her Borbor, for years. I know the whole lot of you have been borborized over and over again by her until all your value-judgments have been wiped out. I’ve had Borbor from Mya’s hands, too; don’t forget, she really sprinkles it around. Borbor has no effect on women except to make them a little lascivious; that’s the whole point. I’m not against vice, heaven forbid! and, besides, who am I to throw the first little stone? I used to make Mohamed take me “botanizing in his military jeep because it excited me so to think of what he might do to me when he machine-gunned down the gazelles. He’s a horrible racist, of course, but not as far as women are concerned.
He even stopped passing remarks about Professor Feldzahler when the old man showed up here with his new assistant over there in Reggan. She claims her name is Chungalorn Patticheki and she’s a Loatian who studied physics in France but I’d swear she was some sort of Chinese. No point in warning the professor, though. He calls her his “Pattycake,” and he’s a completely changed man. She comes on like a Dragon Lady in a black leather flying jacket and handles his helicopter like a man. I wonder where Thay Himmer would fit her into the game. That Thay Himmer, his games will be the death of all of us, yet. Well, that’s not entirely fair, I admit: the professor’s problems are equally apocalyptic, I suppose. He’s been having terrible troubles over there on his atomic pile, facing outright revolt on the part of his young crew of mercenary mathematicians with long bristly hair standing straight up all over their heads. They’re all in their twenties and pretty pent-up in the middle of nowhere, you bet! With nothing better to do, a gang of them have been feeding the computers with a calculation designed to predict when the next terrestrial magnetic-switch will take place; when the North Pole becomes the South Pole—click! — just like that!