The Western Lands by William S. Burroughs Read Free Book Online

is interesting to note that one of the few existing hybrids is the "tiglon," a cross between the lion and the tiger—creatures who live in different habitats and do not come into contact in nature, except by Man's interventions.
    Joe could come on buddy buddy good old boy with the other researchers and they accepted it. They had to accept it, because they were all afraid of Joe. His white eyes, his dead pale skin, his faint voice that nonetheless carried across the lab and into their heads . . . and his disquieting smile. When he wanted something done, they did it. He never saw any of them outside the lab.

    No one but Joe and his team knew that a basic aim of his research was to sabotage the proposed highway through the Amazon basin. Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Hiltons waiting offstage. He knows that if the highway goes through, it will mean the destruction of the last great rain forest left on the planet. Joe is a dedicated ecologist. It hurts him to see a tree cut down.
    "They shall not pass," he decides.
    He can see it already. The jungle Hiltons . . . "When Orchids Bloom in the Moonlight" on the Muzak . . . the bar, with orchids and a tank against one wall full of piranha fish. The management throws in live goldfish and pieces of raw meat.
    The motels and souvenir shops and hamburger joints, drunken Indians, polluted rivers, the gritty bite of diesel fumes. In front of the Manaos Opera House, tourists pose with a boa constrictor.
    Terrible scandal: a big pop star, in a jealous rage fueled by cocaine, grabbed his girlfriend's Yorkshire terrier and threw it into the piranha tank. As the piranhas attacked the floundering dog, the hysterical starlet threw a heavy bronze ashtray which shattered the tank, spilling snapping fish and bloody water across the patrons as the disemboweled, screaming dog dragged its intestines across the floor. Quite a scene it was, and of course there were plenty of cameras to freeze-dry this edifying spectacle for posterity and export. It's the little touches that make a future solid enough to be destroyed.
    They had passed through the town of Esperanza and stopped for a beer . . . three Policia Nacionale, jackets unbuttoned, a pock-marked, rat-faced local youth, probably the professional brother-in-law of a cop, their lives and outlook as cramped and limited as the valley was vast and open.
    Joe had seen the Rocky Mountains, the Alps, the Himalayas, but this was another dimension, a peephole through which he glimpsed a larger planet, much larger than the Saturn of his dreams. And the silence was proportionately heavier as he looked out across the vastness of that valley, very clearly seeing, as if through a telescope, the little town of crumbling stucco, the river and stone bridge, poplar trees, fields, grazing sheep and cattle, tiny patches in the wide canvas.
    The Hiltons unbuilt, the highway choked with brush and vines as Joe pulls out the time rug, spilling motels and gas stations, Mr. Steaks and McDonald's, jukeboxes and pizza parlors back to jungle and howler monkeys and bird calls. A malignant strain of yellow fever unaffected by standard inoculation, horrible skin diseases, an accelerated leprosy that kills in months, the clock turning back to the Panama Canal, every foot of highway paved with skulls. Pull back. Pull out. And they can't get workers. The Indians lurk in remote areas, waiting like the jungle to reclaim Invaded territory.

    Joe eases over into transplant surgery. He soon excels, after an apprenticeship with Doctor Steincross, best 'plant man in the business. Joe is able to hide his potentials and act like any idiot surgeon, addicted to his operations and the adulation of patients, nurses and colleagues.
    "Doctor Tod . . . Doctor Tod . . ." A respectful echo behind him in hospital corridors. He is written up in Life .
    "Like Cato, give his little Senate laws / And sit attentive to his own applause."
    It is, Joe decides, one of the most distasteful roles he has ever been called