I stagger through the door, down the pestilential hallway, light-headed, overwhelmed, bursting into the open, boundlessly unconfined. For a moment my retina is ruddled and scorched by the brilliance of the earth, the pungency of life.

The blindness recedes. The world is splendidly, astonishingly beautiful, grassy-green, sunlit.

But only for a moment; now the wind thrashes, settles down, thrashes again, carrying a whiff of sulfur. Suddenly it gusts, snarls, and an uncertain darkness shadows the sun.

It is a tenuous freedom at best, not to be achieved within the confines of the fief. To be seen by just about anybody is to be apprehended and returned to the brig. I wobble down the steep, vertiginous ramp of the prison. Salim has evaporated, as if in his own acidic juices. The streets are empty, abandoned to the dogs baying fearfully at the shrouded sun. Not a bird peeps or screeches or caws. They too have disappeared, taking their voices with them.

I have to find Valerie, and with her make tracks for the nuclear compound, to commandeer a copter and a pilot, at gunpoint if necessary, and wing out of Assama. But the compound lies miles away, through enemy country. I need a weapon. There’s only one place where I might possibly find one. But first things first: I have to conquer the shakes and the reelings. With great effort I manage to subdue the nuns, the silverfish…

There are none of the usual guards at the entrance of General Qazwini’s House of the Martial Spirit. No one is within, not even a flunky, not the General himself. I breathe a little easier as I drift from room to room, rummaging for a gun, or even a knife. I find nothing—presumably he’s armed with every weapon he owns. But there in a corner of his trophy room is a squat green chest with a Hebrew stencil. Grenades. I scoop up a half dozen.

I limp over to my old hut. Empty. I know the most likely place I’ll find Val is the one I least want to find her in.

I enter the royal grounds. A clutch of people sit silently under a palaver tree. Among them and the dogs and the dust devils is the old woman with her aphrodisiacs. To the east, near the power plant, the sky is lustrous, bloodshot, black-bruised, coining a color that has no name.

As soon as I slip into the palace I hear the tense voices. I creep down the hall to the presence chamber and peek into the throne room. Qazwini stands, posturing, hands on his guns. Zun stands in the shadow of a mad, vast tectonic penis, head bowed. Abdul is pacing back and forth stiffly, like a troubled old man with too much on his mind. A .38 is holstered on his belt.