William S. Burroughs (36 page)

"What's so
fucking important to wake everybody up with a hard-on?"

"I am here to
show you the way to the larynx fuckers...
"

He made a noise in
his throat that set Kim's teeth on edge.

"Yeah? Well I'm
not sure I want to go
..."

"You forget
your mission, Meester Carsons? Maybe somebody come remind
you...
"

"All right all
right, give me time to get dressed for chris-sakes...
"

Kim collected his
gear and weapons, his
44
revolver, his
spring knife, a
38
snubby and his
wafer-thin
22
and a very light
semiautomatic carbine in 45-caliber with a 14-inch barrel and a
ten-shot clip, an ounce of morphine and an ounce of hash, first-aid
kit, canteen and mess kit... The three boys, when he told them they
were going very far to the east, decided not to go. Ten minutes later
he fell in beside the boy and they were walking silently into
the desert. They must have walked for three hours, both using the
sorcerer's gait, leaning slightly forward. Finally they were
challenged by a sentry
...
The boy gave the
password. Dawn was on the way and in the gray light he could see the
dirigible moored to a steel tower, bobbing in the rising wind...They
quickly climbed the ladder and entered the cabin, which seemed
to be roomy enough...

There were three
other men already there. The boy made the introductions.

"Doctor
Schindler, Kim Carsons."
...
The other
two names he didn't catch. Kim was hopeless with names and he had a
memory system of immediately turning a name into a picture or
concept: Carsons: A car spits a baby out of the exhaust pipe. It
didn't work with these two nameless assholes, but he knew the
type
...
secret agents, assassins
...
gray
neutral men with cold dead eyes.

The motor hums and
they take off with a wind behind them. They can walk around in the
cabin and look out the observation windows.

Three days later
they land in an ancient yellow landscape. A jackal trots by and looks
at them indifferently. They are somewhere in Arabia. They watch
soberly as the dirigible rises into the air and heads back west.

"Well what
now?" Kim asks.

One of the agents,
whose name Kim now knows is Ahearn (Ah
earn
...
for
hire), says without conviction:

"We're supposed
to rendezvous with the Brits."

And the other's name
is Williams. Williams says:

"Probably
mucking about with Arab boys."

"Ah, this must
be our contact...
"
Ahearn points to a
cloud of dust approaching from the east. Now they make out the car
with huge wheels and tires. The car comes to a stop in
front
of
them in a cloud of yellow dust.

"Hello, you
chaps." It's Tony Outwaite with shorts and sun helmet and
swagger stick.

"Major Outwaite
M-5, Ahearn and Williams CIA, and Doctor Schindler."

The CIA men are
clearly outraged by this introduction, as Kim intends.

"Well pile in.
Want to get there before the sun gets any higher."

Headquarters is a
cluster of Quonset huts on a bare hillside. Kim finds himself sharing
a hut with Tony and Doc Schindler.

"Those spooks
make me nervous with their bloody trade craft," Tony says.

"What's the
date?" Kim asks.

"December
23, 1984."

"I would have
sworn it was the twenty-second...So what exactly are we doing here?"

"Haven't the
haziest notion.
.
It's something about the
human voice as the ultimate weapon...Can't let the Yanks run

away with a thing
like that
...
Have us all-chewing gum, what,

and eating
Wheaties...Well the Larynx Rubbers are somewhere in the area,
it's our job to find them...After that it gets technical...
"

The doctor polishes
his glasses with liquid lens cleaner...

He indicates the
bottle
...
"It's quite hard to get, you
know
...

Cut into the tissue
monopoly and they didn't like it one bit...Put the whisper out. You
go into a drugstore and ask for spot lens cleaner and they look at
you like you asked for cocaine...My original training was as a
linguist. Then I did some fieldwork in South America and went on to
specialize in interspecies communication...
"

"I'd say all
communication was interspecies." Tony puts in.

"Of course. But
you don't get a navy appropriation saying things like that...The
theory is when flying saucers or whatever kind of spacecraft
land I'll be able to communicate with them through a breakdown of
communication units...
"

"Maybe they've
already landed in the human brain and nervous system," Kim says.

The doctor
nods..."Same problem...You've got an alien inside you, how do
you communicate? Find out what he wants
...
make
him leave
...
You have to find him first, and
you find him by inference units
...
study of
the larynx people could give us a vital clue
...
a
way to descend into our own minds and confront the intruder on what
he is trying to make his home ground."

"Well let's get
on with it
..."
Tony walks over to a
map.

"Now I think
we've spotted a settlement in here, there's a valley closed at both
ends
...
and water...We could get in by
parachute or helicopter."

"Out of the
question," says the doctor..."We have no way of knowing
what effect this might produce on these people...
"

"We could use
hang-gliders or balloons
...
Climbing is out
of the question."

"The Yanks plan
to go in with a chopper
—
"

"They must be
stopped!"

"They've been
stopped for the moment"
—
Tony
holds up a piece of metal
—
"but
we'd best get started before they start jetting in parts and
spook the area...Find our Larynxes all dead of fright like so many
minks...
"

They climb into the
Sand Bug
...
"Balloons and gas tanks,"
Tony said, indicating crates of equipment..."That's how we get
in and hopefully get out."

The Sand Bug took
off in a splatter of stones. They were climbing precipitous mountain
roads, little more than trails in some places, cut into red sandstone
that gives the area its name: the Red Lands. Several times the buggy
skidded inches from a sheer overhang drop of a thousand feet, the
tires spattering stones into the abyss. But Tony was an expert driver
with a feel for the car like his own skin.

THUMP. A stone
clanked against the bottom of the car.

"Just hope
those gas cylinders don't go up on us."

Tony grumbled. "It's
a hell of a thing to reassemble oneself after an explosion."

The road ended in
scrub and cactus. Twenty yards away they could see the edge of a
crater. Tony consulted his map.

"This must be
it."

They got out. Kim
noted bright red cactus blossoms like blood against the red stone,
which suddenly writhed in front of his eyes.

"Back,
"
Tony snapped. Kim
saw a tiny snake the exact color of the red stone. It was a foot
long and thin as a pencil. "Kill it."

"If you say
so." Kim drew his smoothbore shot pistol and blew the snake to
bloody writhing fragments.

"It's
Kwakiutl," Tony explained
...
"Horrible
death
...
Erotic convulsions
...
die
spurting blood out of your prick."

"How
folkloric."

They walk over to
the crater and Kim stops about six feet from the edge (he is very
squeamish about heights) and peers down. The crater is about three
hundred yards across and roughly egg-shaped. Two thousand feet
down Kim can see a silver ribbon of water and a smudge of
green...

"Well we might
as well get on with it before we have the afternoon wind to cope
with...
"
Tony's voice trails off. He
is walking along the edge of the crater, much closer than Kim will
venture. Kim follows with a wider margin.

"I'm looking
for an overhang...Can't have the balloons bumping against the
cliff
...
sharp spine of quartz...Ah, here we
are...Run the Bug over here...
"

"I can't
drive."

"Oh uh
quite...Should have given you the pill...Well...
"
He signals to Schindler, who is examining a cactus blossom with a
magnifying glass...Schindler drives the Bug within fifteen feet of
the edge. They unload the balloons and gas cylinders and a parachute
for the extra cylinders, which are designed to lift them back
out of the crater.

"First things
first...We have to be sure the cylinders are down there...Lend a
hand, you chaps... One
...
Two
...
Three
...

The cylinders weigh
several hundred pounds but they manage to swing them out over
the edge. The parachute opens. Tony looks down through
binoculars..."There it is, right by the stream...Now for the
balloons."

The balloons are
pink, presumably for camouflage against the red rock of the cliff...

Tony was reading the
directions on the cylinder...

"Let's see...It
screws on just here...Be sure gasket is firmly attached before
opening gas valve...
"

There is a hiss of
gas and the balloon starts to inflate...And now it floats free like a
great pink erection...

Kim says,
"Bravo.
"

Kim puts on the
harness and Tony attaches it as the balloon floats above him. He
can feel the tug pulling him up and a lightness in his limbs. This
must be like walking on the moon...

"You weigh
about seven pounds now...Get the feel of it...
"

Kim heads away from
the crater and jumps rather cautiously. He is catapulted thirty
feet in the air and drifts down...He stands poised on his toes like a
ballet dancer...

"What an
entrechat
I could do with this on me...
"

Tony and Schindler
are now ready...

"All right
chaps, I'll go first
..."
Tony picks up
a collapsible aluminum pole seven feet long...

"In case you
get too close to the cliff...Now watch...
"

He steps to the edge
and braces his feet...

"Jump up and
OUT." He pushes his feet like a high dive except he goes up
forty feet in the air then slowly settles into the crater.

Kim jumps last. At
first he is exhilarated, balancing himself in the air like a
tightrope walker and nodding graciously to an imaginary audience. He
can almost smell the peanuts and the elephants. Below him he can see
the other balloons floating down like the Goya picture...

He is going down
slower and slower. The air is getting thicker and thicker, like
water. He remembers that pressure will crush a diving bell, it's one
of the limitations to exploring the ocean floor where these special
fish live.

He is settling into
some heavy viscid medium untouched for millions of years. It clings
to his body, suffocating him. He takes a deep breath...Something is
lacking in this air
...
not oxygen but
something almost as essential, some life-sustaining element that
this gummy stagnant air doesn't have...No one can
live
here,
he decides.

At last his feet
touch the ground. Tony is driving an aluminum mooring peg into
the ground with a light sledgehammer...