In
my dreams I am again in the desert, plodding through endless space towards an
obscure goal. I sigh and wet my lips. “What is that noise?” I ask when the
guard brings my food. They are tearing down the houses built against the south
wall of the barracks, he tells me: they are going to extend the barracks and
build proper cells. “Ah yes,” I say: “time for the black flower of civilization
to bloom.” He does not understand.
*
I
cannot save the prisoners, therefore let me save myself. Let it at the very
least be said, if it ever comes to be said, if there is ever anyone in some
remote future interested to know the way we lived, that in this farthest
outpost of the Empire of light there existed one man who in his heart was not a
barbarian.
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