Two young women carried in trays of food, set them on the table and removed the silver cloches. One tray held a large, steaming tureen of soup and bowls, and the other, plates of fish and a green vegetable.
“Ah, I hope you’re hungry,” Wright said standing to serve the soup and having to fight his helper for the ladle. “I’ve got it.” He smiled at the woman, who relented. “This is Sarawak Laksa…rice noodles, coconut milk, prawns, chicken and a slice of egg.”
“It smells delicious,” Maggie said.
After he had ladled a helping into each bowl, he turned to the other tray. “And this is salted terubok fish.” He pinched off a chunk of the dried fish. “It’s salty and crunchy…Borneo potato chips.” He laughed. “And the green vegetable is sayur manis, sautéed in garlic and soy.”
“You have quite the facility here,” Nick said. “I know a little about your new medication, Welltrex, and the one that is in development, the IGF-1. What would you say is the heart of Zelutex?”
Wright put down his soup spoon, crossed his arms, and leaned back in the leather chair. “Dr. Hart, I’m not sure I’ve ever been asked the question quite like that, and I’ve been on all the business shows. They only want to know about profits, margins and such.”
He spun his chair to face the jungle to think, and when he turned back, there was a tear in the corner of his eye.
“When I lost my parents, I was adrift. My whole world turned upside down. I didn’t know what to do, so for a while I turned to drugs, and I almost got kicked out of university.” He smirked. “They forced me into counseling. I guess it was helpful, but honestly, it seemed like all it did was identify the problem. They finally put me on an antidepressant, which was helpful, but I found the side effects intolerable.” He pushed his hair back and sighed. “I guess I could sum up the heart of my company by this: Life is rough, and we are trying to level the playing field for people.”
Maggie nodded. She knew how tough life could be and was grateful for Wright’s passion for helping people. She admired that quality in a man.
“Pain medication is the second-largest pharmaceutical class globally after cancer meds. It alone is a twenty-four-billion-dollar market. The US and Canada combined consume 95 percent of the product. You think there’s that much physical pain in North America?” he asked. “People are treating their emotional pain with opioids. But every medication has risks. For opioids, that risk is death. Over sixty thousand people died last year from overdose.”
“Yeah, opioids are prescribed for one out of four Medicaid patients,” Nick turned to Maggie and added.
Wright stood as his passion grew. “What if we can change that? What if we can treat pain, addiction, depression, and anxiety another way, with few side effects?” He repeated the company’s slogan: “Better living through science.”
“And how do you do that?” Maggie asked.
“We do it by manipulating the brain directly.” He paused and looked Maggie and then Nick in the eye. “But the brain is the most complex organ in the human body. It’s not easy. Two of the brain chemicals we research extensively are dopamine and oxytocin.”
“The feel-good hormones,” Nick said.
“Exactly,” Wright said. “Maggie, get this: dopamine is critical in the reward centers of the brain. When your friend sends you flowers, what they are giving you is a big dose of dopamine in the feel-good center. Dr. Amy can watch this on all her fancy brain scanners. But the brain holds a fine balance—too little dopamine, and you have Parkinson’s disease; too much, you become schizophrenic. We have to be very careful.”
“And again, we try to minimize the side effect profile while doing so,” Dr. Amy said.
Wright was about to add more when the door to the conference room opened, and an old man in an oversized butler suit came through the door pushing a tea cart. He looked frail and pale.
“Ah, Robert,” Wright said. “I was worried about you. You weren’t there to meet our helicopter.” He sounded a bit perturbed.
“I am sorry, sir. We had an incident at the longhouse last night.” The man said looking at the floor.
“Well, I’m glad you are well and here now. Everyone, this is my faithful friend, Robert. He is one of the last of the true Iban warriors. Robert, this is Dr. Hart and Ms. Russell.”
The man bowed as much as his arthritic back would allow and began pouring tea, starting with Maggie.
“Ms. Russell, would you like cream with your tea?”
His withered hands tremored as he poured and she reached up and touched his sleeve. “Thank you, Robert. Yes, I would love some cream, and please call me Maggie.”
Her touch and tone seemed to take the old man aback, but he smiled and looked into her eyes. In addition to gray rings of cataracts rimming his dark eyes, Maggie saw a great sadness. She squeezed his arm and whispered, “God be with you.”
A tear formed in his eye and he turned away to his tea cart. She was about to say more when Wright interrupted her.
“In the morning, we will venture upriver to visit the jungle. Rest well tonight as tomorrow you will have the adventure of a lifetime.”
CHAPTER 17
ANTU GERASI
“Yes, I saw him,” the young woman cried out to the elders in the longhouse. Robert sat with a manang, on a bamboo mat, their backs against the wall. Her eyes pleaded with them as she told her story. Five more men sat on the floor in a semicircle behind his granddaughter.
Robert’s wife supported their granddaughter from behind by her shoulders. The young woman was not yet twenty, and her whole body shook. “It was like a ghost…an animal,” she cried and sobbed into her hands.
“Just tell us what you saw,” Robert said gently.
“We were sleeping, and the creature attacked us before I knew what was happening,” she sobbed. “I don’t know what we did. The creature’s eyes were as big as saucers and red like dragon’s blood. It had to be antu gerasi. It had huge glittering teeth and growled like a rabid dog.” The woman collapsed onto the floor. “It was awful. I’m so sorry.”
Robert nodded to his wife to take her back to their apartment. As she did, he could hear his granddaughter weep the entire length of the long corridor.
All the men in the circle of elders were dressed in typical Iban fashion with only shorts. Each was heavily tattooed with the dark, handcrafted ink of their ancestors. Robert wore his characteristic long pearl necklace. The witch doctor chain smoked under his ornate headpiece decorated with bird feathers. The men sipped tuak.
Robert silently searched each man, all lost in their thoughts. A thick gloom settled onto the council. The elders were upset with him. They had been offended since he had sold some of his land to the white man and possibly as far back to the day he decided to follow Jesus. They were mad because he left that morning to go to work at the white man’s medicine lodge and hadn’t returned until the moon was high in the sky. They didn’t understand why he would work at all. “Being chief of the longhouse should command your total attention,” they had told him.
He had explained, “It is important to show the young people the value of work and how to get along with the whites.”
Life in the jungle was challenging. It had been that way from the beginning of time for the Iban. The last forty years had brought changes, many unwelcomed, including a year when a flu epidemic swept through with a 30 percent mortality rate. There was a recent increase in late-term miscarriages and a continual drip of young people who lost faith in the old ways and moved to the city. Robert understood these had nothing to do with his family accepting Jesus into their hearts but knew others didn’t have the same sympathies.
The manang blew a large smoke ring and then began chanting quietly under his breath the mengap, a long incantation to ward off evil that had been passed down orally from generations of long ago.
Robert swatted a fly from his bare foot and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. The evil had ushered in a stifling heat with no evening breeze. None of th
em, including Robert, could erase the image of the decapitated man, which resurrected memories of ancient times.
Robert was only two when World War II started. The last known headhunting in their area occurred when the Japanese occupied their land. At the time, headhunting was a treasured part of Iban culture. They believed if a man owned another person’s skull, his victim would protect his family from the dark spirit world and serve him as a slave for eternity in the afterlife. The elders had grown up with the heads given to them by their fathers, and these were stored safely as a valued commodity.
When Robert had become a Christian, he gave his family’s heads to the witch doctor as a show of goodwill. Robert heard rumors that the people said it was a sign of weakness even though the manang had gladly accepted the heads.
“The only head I can remember being taken was twenty years ago on the southern Indonesia side of Borneo during a land conflict,” Robert said to the men. “Why has the horrific practice returned?”
“I think you have brought this on our people,” the manang said and blew another smoke ring. “You have ignored the omens and turned your back on the ways of augury. Your life is mali, bad, especially your belief in a foreign god. Maybe bringing this Christian god has angered antu gerasi and the evil spirit is attacking us. Maybe we have angered petara, the god of gods.” He spoke without anger or malice.
Robert sat patiently and silently, letting the rest of the council process the witch doctor’s words. When he thought they were done, he asked, “Do the rest of you agree?”
The elders sat stone-faced, sipping at their rice wine.
“Rentap,” the manang said, using his given name. “You are the great-great-great-grandson of the warrior Rentap. The great Rentap refused to submit to the white man. He fought the first White Rajah, James Brooke, and saved our land and our people. You have betrayed your great-great-great-grandfather by befriending the whiteman...especially the White Rajah.”
Robert let the man vent. After all, the young man that was beheaded was the manang’s own great-grandson. Not everyone in the Iban people felt the same affection for Master Paul. They always showed respect face-to-face, but the hatred for James Brooke was a thick poisonous root that ran deep through their history.
“And what would you have us do?” Robert asked.
“Renounce this other god. Return to the ways of our ancestors.” The witch doctor stared at him and the muscles of his jaw tightened. “We must ask each of the homes to provide the sacrifice of piring. Each home must prepare the sticky rice cakes and whatever else they can spare for food and prepare it for the spirits. I myself will furnish a genselan. I will slaughter a pig tonight and sprinkle the blood on the doorposts of our homes. If antu gerasi returns, he will see the offering, be satisfied, and his evil will pass by our homes.”
Only half of the families in the longhouse had converted to the way of Jesus. The murder was not helping. Robert knew the pull of the old ways. When he first accepted Christ, he often thought about falling back or combining the two faiths. But he had seen and experienced God the Father too much to turn his back on Jesus.
Robert turned to face the manang and said, “You are a good man, my brother. You have served our people faithfully. I do not know why this evil has come to our village. You and I will agree that there is evil in this world and we must fight against it. You and I will also agree that the Great Father is always on the side of justice and what is right. But I now believe that the Great Father has sent his son, Jesus, to be the sacrifice for us. We no longer need the blood of animals. Jesus shed his blood for us, and he went to the evil place and defeated the devil. I cannot stop you from piring and genselan, but for me and my household, we will follow God the Almighty. I believe the ancient scripture that God in me is greater than the evil that is in the world.”
The rest of the elders nodded but added no further comment. Each would have to decide for themselves.
“Have there been any other reports from up or downriver of this happening?” Robert asked. “Do we have any clue who could have done this?”
The men shook their heads.
Robert laid his head against the wooden wall and prayed silently. Father, help us. He knew an ancient evil had risen.
CHAPTER 18
ADAM AND EVE
Nick told Wright and Maggie that he would skip breakfast and meet them here on the dock. Even though the morning spread looked delicious, he had things to process, including the dream from last night.
Sitting on the waterfront below the research center, Nick watched the sun rising over the horizon, casting pink hues across the water. He was thankful he could see it. The morning was the perfect temperature, the sun warmed his face, and the air was brisk enough to require a light jacket. The hills of the jungle around the lake didn’t hold a candle to the mountains of Montana. But they displayed themselves in a perfect image reflected in the lake. Never in his life would he have imagined sitting here in this place. Thank you, God.
It was the first time since losing his sight that he could be thankful for his life. If the North Korean incident had never happened, if Turkey’s earthquake had never taken place, if losing his best friend or his eyesight had never occurred…he would not be sitting here. His mind tried to wrap itself around this truth. Was he catching a glimpse of God’s goodness, His providence over Nick’s life? Your will Father, not mine.
A small wooden longboat, similar to the one tied to the center’s dock, sliced through the liquid mirror, sending a simple wake rippling across the lake. Nick compared the boat to the one tied to the dock. They were almost identical, except the one cutting across the lake was red. This one was bright blue. Its flat bottom was ribbed and, curiously, had no seats. A small outboard motor hung from the pointed end and the other, flattened out like a duck’s bill, gave a backward appearance to the boat. It didn’t matter; he couldn’t imagine that they would take the small boat across the expansive lake. Wright told Nick and Maggie that the real adventure starts after the two-hour journey across the lake. He figured Wright would be zipping around the corner at any moment with a high-tech speedboat.
Nick stretched his back and yawned. At least he’d slept well.
The small apartments of the research center were elegant and comfortable—paneled floor to ceiling with exotic wood. A massive skylight in each room expanded the night sky and stars overhead. Although, at one point, he woke up to the full moon and thought he was at the operating table with a surgical light shining brightly in his eyes. During the last six months, he often had surgical dreams that were typically unsettling—looking down and realizing that he had forgotten to put on gloves, or finding himself halfway through a difficult operation only to forget the rest of the steps. Last night’s dream was different; it was a happy scene, almost festive, as though the staff was celebrating. There were even balloons. Ha! Balloons in the operating room. Nick smiled remembering the dream. The operating table was gone and in its place was a buffet table full of party food, including an ornately decorated cake. It reminded Nick of when he’d graduated from medical school, and his family and friends celebrated his future—full of hope and promise.
Nick’s memories were interrupted by amiable voices. He turned to see Wright and Maggie walking down the winding stairs from the complex to the dock. They were laughing, and Nick noted a twinge of jealousy as they made their way down, their arms full of supplies.
He had not found time to connect with Maggie since arriving on Borneo. It was confusing for him that Maggie had finally revealed her heart only to withdraw it again. Maybe he was making too much out of it and would trust Maggie’s love for him. He heard Chang’s words in his heart: “I believe you now have two journeys: the physical one with Maggie and your spiritual one of seeing yourself like the Father sees you.”
Lord, let it be so.
“Good morning,” Wright called to him as they stepped onto the dock.
Nick stood and went to them to help Maggie with her load. “Good morning.
”
“You enjoying the sunrise?” Maggie asked.
“Yes, it’s something,” Nick said relieving her of her bags. “You sleep well?”
“Oh, my gosh, those beds are like feather cradles.” Maggie hugged her shoulders. “I had incredible dreams of home, sleeping under the stars on my parents’ lawn.” Maggie leaned in and kissed Nick on the cheek. “How about you?”
“I had pleasant dreams as well.”
“Here,” Wright said, “the chef made you this breakfast burrito, Sarawak style. It’s local fish instead of beef.” He handed Nick the foil-wrapped treat. “It’s quite a journey upriver, so I wanted you to have something to eat.”
Wright inhaled the refreshing lake air and stretched out his arms. “What a beautiful morning to go upriver.” He walked to the end of the dock and surprised Nick when he set the supplies in the wooden boat. When he looked around for someone to bring a bigger boat, Wright read his expression.
“We’re on our own from here,” he said. “Those stairs are where I draw the line between my two worlds. That world”—he extended his hand toward the modern complex—“and that one.” He turned and pointed to the lake and the jungle beyond.
Wright opened a supply box at the edge of the dock. He pulled out three wooden seats, designed like stadium chairs, and spaced them out on the bottom of the boat. He then took an old metal gas can that reminded Nick of the one his grandfather used to fill his lawn mower and placed it near the front.
“Life jackets?” Maggie asked.
Wright smiled and shook his head. “Sorry, not standard operating equipment in the jungle. Sometimes you just have to let go.”
Maggie turned to Nick and shrugged.
“You guys ready?” Wright asked, stepping into the back of the boat by the small outboard motor.
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