Jupiter's Travels

Well, we're all just acting out other people's fantasies, aren't we? Maybe we're not much good for anything else.

"I suppose I can always try," I say.His smile is the one reserved for troublesome idiots."Yes. You may try."

What happened on the way, who I met, all that was incidental. I had not quite realized that the interruptions were the journey.

I was becoming a carrier of the dreams of men. I gathered themlike pollen, fertilizing as I went. But I had not yet quite realized my power, nor its transforming effect on people, and I still thought they were as I saw them.

I had launched myself on a journey to circle the globe, but I seemed to be on another journey as well, a great voyage of discovery into my own subconscious. And I trembled a little at the thought of what monsters I might encounter there.

I have also had time to learn a confidence I never knew before, and surely my own confidence in the face of strangers must, in turn, increase their confidence in me. Then there is also the fact that I am proud of what I am doing. There is no denying it. I try to be modest, to say anyone could do it. But they don't, and I feel I have managed to pull

For three days and two nights I drift up the Nile along Lake Nasser. The sunrises and sunsets are so extraordinarily beautiful that my body turns inside out and empties my heart into the sky.

Really, those stars, when they come that close, you have to take them seriously.

The girls are rehearsing, hands linked in a line, singing a chant and making little runs across the sand. The men insist on posing for endless group shots, faces set in the sternest expressions, except for Minderbender, who fools about constantly in his khaki shorts, ruining the fake authenticity and making it real.