William S. Burroughs (32 page)

The percussion
principle was a basic improvement so radical that any
possibilities residual in the flintlock were immediately ignored. So
what constitutes a new concept as opposed to a radical
improvement? Generally in the case of a manufactured article
like the motor car, it is a concept that would constrain
manufacturers to junk their existing dies. For example the turbine
engine, a workable steam or electric car. We might say that the next
radically new concept biologically speaking will be the
transition from Time to Space. This transition consigns the entire
Time film, a whole prerecorded and prefilmed universe, to the scrap
heap, where we hope it will have the consideration to rot. Its
final monument may be great heaps of plastic, Pepsi-Cola hits the
spot and stays there forever...the pause that refreshes
...
a
long pause and nobody there to refresh...The film flickers out
...
only
the plastic containers remain...

So our local war
revolves around a basically simple situation: a conflict between
those who must go into space or die and those who will die if we go.
They need us for their film. They have no other existence. And as
soon as anyone goes into space the film is irreparably damaged.
One hole is all it takes. With the right kind of bullet, Kim thought,
with that little shiver
...

A strange pistol
in his hand
...
wild Pan music...screaming
crowds
...
Kim's pistol is cutting the
sky-like a torch. Chunks of sky are falling away. The music swells
and merges with the shrieking wind...

Yes we can lose any
number of times.
They
can only lose once. They say a silver
bullet can kill a ghost. Garlic could kill a vampire if it was strong
enough and he couldn't escape, trapped for example in an Italian
social club. So what bullet, what smell can rupture or damage or
immobilize or totally destroy the film? Quite simply, any action or
smell not prerecorded by the prerecorder, who stands outside the
film and does not include himself as data.

Castaneda would
describe it as a sudden eruption of the Nagual, the unknown and
unpredictable, into the Tonal, which is the totality of prerecorded
film. This violates the most basic laws of a predictable
control-oriented universe. Introduce one unforeseen and
therefore unforeseeable factor and the whole structure collapses like
a house of cards.

Judge Farris said I
stink like a polecat. And what is that smell? It's the
smell of
the film rotting.
And that is why the Farrises and the
Greenfields didn't want to see me. I had no right to be there in the
first place.

"WHO IN THE
FUCK IS THAT IN MY FILM?
"
the Director
bellows. "GIVE HIM THE TREATMENT.
"

So they did and
it backfired. Kim grins out between his legs and fires. His bullet
takes out the water tower, half a mesa, a piece of sky
...
a
gaping black hole
...
a
humming sound like a swarm of distant bees
...
getting
closer
...

It is
4:00
a.m. Kim smokes five pipes of opium and retires.

Kim dreams about a
young man he recognizes as his "benefactor," in the
Castaneda sense of the word.

The youth explains
to him that he has not yet achieved the (a word that Kim cannot
exactly understand) necessary for immortality.

After breakfast on
the terrace, Kim wrote a note to one of his contacts, to be delivered
by a boy from the hotel. The boy was back in two hours with an
invitation to dinner.

At
6:30
the carriage arrived. The horse was a strawberry roan. It
looked at Kim dubiously and laid back its ears. The driver was a boy
of twenty in army slacks and jodhpurs with a Colt
45
automatic at his hip. He had a Cockney accent and a
criminal face, acne-scarred but showing perfect teeth in his slimy
insinuating smile. Unusual for a Limey, Kim observed.

"I'm John
Atkins."

They shook hands and
Kim could feel the probe of appraisal, looking for signs of
weakness.

"The Pater was
a dairy farmer
...
saw you digging my teeth."

"I'm glad to
see it."

With a mocking bow,
Atkins motioned for Kim to get in the carriage. As Kim swung himself
up onto the seat he could feel the insolent eyes on his ass and hear
the words in his head clear as a bell.

"I want to
bottle you, mate."

Clearly Atkins was a
verbal telepathist. Mostly it's done in pictures. Cockneys are
especially good at sending words. It's the whole accent thing, which
is basic to the English system.

Atkins leaped into
the driver's seat with a lithe inhuman movement that was somehow ugly
and deformed. He took the reins in his thin red hands, which looked
very capable. Kim could see those hands with a broken beer bottle, a
razor, or a bicycle chain.

Kim was a man of the
world. He knew that many queens and especially the English adore
these slimy dangerous types, these listeners at keyholes, the flawed
products of the hierarchical social structure built by the
Tony's. John Atkins is their creature and would you believe it
my dear the English refer to their trade as "creatures."...
?

A serviceable little
demon, Kim decides, if properly handled.

They rattle off.
Atkins is sitting there with insolence reflected in every jolt
of the carriage.

"Now that
there's the Casbah...
"
He points to a
massive fort, two sloppy lackadaisical soldiers in front of it with
Lee-Enfield rifles.

"Now lots of
people think it's the whole native quarter is the Casbah but the
native quarter is the Medina and this here fort at the top of the
Medina is the Casbah...
"

Kim nods absently
with a snotty smile.

"I guess you
knew that. I guess your type of bloke reads up on a place before he
goes there."

"Oh yes, and
the people I will meet...John Atkins also uses the names James
Armitage and Denton Westerbury. Convicted of atrocious assault
for blinding a man in one eye with a broken beer bottle in the Blind
Beggar Inn
...
Did six months in
Brixton...Worked with a smash-and-grab mob...Five arrests, no
convictions...Wanted for questioning in connection with a warehouse
robbery in the course of which a watchman was killed...Interesting
reading, what? Passed along to me by an obliging French police
inspector...
"

"Coo ain't you
the one? Ain't it a bit unhealthy to know as much as you know?"

"Not when it's
on deposit with one's solicitor, my dear."

"I know a thing
or so myself, Mr. Carsons...Could be useful to you."

"Let's start
with a rundown on the dinner guests for this evening...
"

"Well there's
old George Hargrave the Aussie, and a rottener man never drew breath.
He takes a broad general view of things
...
nothing
too low or too dirty for old George."

The road wound
steeply up the mountain
...
heavily wooded
with chestnut, oak, cypress and cedar
...
villas
on both sides well back from the road behind walls and gates
...
the
muted redolence of ease and wealth
...
servant
children playing in the street
...
Kim turns
to watch a barefoot boy run down the street, slapping his bare soles
with each step...

"Got his fat
greasy fingers into all the pies and puddings...Not much on the
heavy. He's a right coward and doesn't care who knows it...Two
lizzies run the bookstore and the tearoom
—
French
Intelligence...They do business with the Russians and the English as
well...The Americans don't seem to have much in this sector...
"

That's what you
think, Kim thought. Heavy concentration of Johnson Intelligence in
the area.

"They are into
smuggling and they own the best cathouse in town...
"

"That would be
the Black Cat."

"Right...
First-class prime cut...Then there's the Comte des Champs...He's head
of French Intelligence for the northern sector...A doper...Special
heroin comes from further east...
"

"Pinkish brown
crystals?"

"Right."

"It's special."

"And two
American queens, Greg and Brad, run an antique store and do
decorating jobs...Not exactly what they seem to be...I heard one of
them talking Arabic, which he doesn't know a word of."

"You overheard
him."

"That's right.
Listening at his door like. Chatting away with his dish boy like a
good one he was."

Posing as two style
queens, they are Johnson Agents, better trained than any secret
service in the world, with the exception of the Japanese Ninja, in
the use of small arms, knives, staffs, chains and nunchakus, blowguns
and improvised weapons, codes, and all the arts of concealment...

He has them in
stitches with his kitchen Arabic...

"Oh really?
That means 'fuck' in Arabic...
"

"No wonder he
looked at me so funny."

Greg was brought up
in Cairo. Arabic is his first language. It's the agent's kick to
conceal things, to be so much more than people think you are and once
you sniff the agent kick you need it and you need it steady...The
danger, the constant alertness, the
purpose
and one day you
throw off your beggar rags and stand revealed as British Intelligence
as you snap out orders in English, German, French, Arabic and a
number of obscure dialects...

They turn in at a
gate. In a little gatehouse a magnificent old Arab in a fez is
smoking his kief pipe, shotgun propped in a corner...

The driveway winds
through willows and cypress.

"The American
Consul and his wife will be there. They did a mentalist act in
vaudeville...Got cured with an oilwell
—
that's Texan for 'get rich'
—
and
contributed to the right campaign fund."

The carriage pulled
up at a portico and the horse was led away by a stableboy. The house
looked Spanish, with a red tiled roof, small barred windows in
front...John led the way into a large room with oak beams and a
fireplace.

"Mr. Kim
Carsons, the renowned shootist."

A tall thin young
man with a pencil ginger mustache, in slacks and jodhpurs stood up
languidly.

"I'm Tony
Outwaite." He held out a cool firm hand.

Kim immediately
recognized the young man he had seen in his dream of last night. A
bit showy, he thought, these English always have to
underline
everything.

Tony had cool gray
eyes, impeccable poise and assurance. About seven hundred years of
it. He got it the easy way. Kim had to work for his.

"Didn't care
for London, did you?" Tony gestured to a table on which
there was a bowl of blackish pudding.

"Like some
majoun before the others get here?"

Kim dipped out a
tablespoonful of the candy, which tasted like Christmas pudding.

"Ah just
right," he said. If it's right it should be like soft rich gummy
fruitcake with no residual bitter taste of cannabis.

"There's a spot
of something extra in that...Shall we take a stroll before dinner?"

"Capital."

Behind the house,
which was much larger than the fagade indicated, a wooded slope led
down to a cliff over the sea
...
paths,
wells, pools of water and little streams with stone bridges. They sat
down on a cypress bench at Tony's direction.

Ah very comfortable,
Kim's ass told him...The bench, the pools, the stone bridges, the
trees all carefully contrived. Such stage managers the English.

"Don't think
too much of us." It was a statement, not a question. "Like
South America, isn't it?"

"Yes. High
jungle."

"You've been
there?"

"In a manner of
speaking, yes...Could you grow
Banis-teria caapi
here?"