The Babylon Rite

by Tom Knox

  The MV Myona tooted as it passed another Amazon river ferry. The larger ferry tooted back, and burped a friendly puff of exhaust smoke. It was heaving with passengers, leaning over the rails, sleeping on the roof; screaming babies in slings and old women in rags.

  ‘Except it wasn’t teonanácatl. The way the priest reacted did not match the accounts. Ten days after the ceremony, back in Oaxaca, Schultes was preparing to leave. He had failed. So he went for a final resigned and defeated walk in the city streets – and there, at the last moment, a native shyly approached him. The Mazatec man pulled out a tiny package wrapped in newspaper and offered it gently to him. Inside the newspaper were three species of mushroom. The first was a kind of panaeolus, which Schultes immediately recognized; the second was smaller, brown-and-white, and unknown; but it was certainly not black. But then the Mazatec man pointed to the third black mushroom and said “Colores”. He meant he had taken the mushroom and seen colours, visions! Schultes, of course questioned the old guy a lot more – and the hallucinations matched, exactly, the ancient descriptions of teonanácatl intoxication. Richard Evans Schultes of Harvard University had finally identified and discovered the sacred mushroom of the imperial Aztec, the very flesh of the gods.’ Boris paused, as if on stage. ‘That afternoon he went for a walk in a nearby meadow and found hundreds of ’em. They’d been there all the damn time.’

  Adam gazed at Boris Valentine. ‘OK. Fascinating. But how the hell does that help us? We’re looking for ulluchu, which we presume is the same as ololiúqui. If Schultes identified ulluchu and he’s so good, what are we doing here?’

  For the first time Jess spoke; her voice was weak, scratchy. ‘Adam, it shows that ancient and very important drugs can disappear over the centuries, then be rediscovered. Second, Schultes was undeniably a great botanist, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t make a mistake. Quite the opposite.’

  ‘So he fucked up?’

  It was Nina. She’d approached and sat down on another empty propane keg.

  Jess nodded. And her voice was almost a whisper. ‘Schultes is such an authority everyone was, and is, scared to dispute him. But the fact is …’ She coughed. ‘The descriptions of ololiúqui intoxication extracted, with torture, by the Spaniards, from the Aztecs, just do not match the inebriation produced by … Turbina corymbosa.’

  Boris interjected, ‘Friar Clavigero said that Aztec priests went to make sacrifices on the tops of the mountains, or in dark caverns. They took a large quantity of ololiúqui, and the burned corpses of poisonous insects, and beat them together with ashes and tobacco, rubbed the resultant mixture on their bodies, and became fearless to every danger.’ He waved exuberantly at the entire passenger deck. ‘Fearless to every danger? Like berserkers? That doesn’t sound like our humdrum and quotidian morning glory, like Turbina corymbosa. Does it? It sounds like ulluchu. And that’s the effect it gives you when simply rubbed it as an ointment! Imagine what it would do if ingested as a snuff, or consumed as a distillation, a decoction, a liquid drunk from a Grail, like the Templars of Tomar!’ Boris’s medallion glittered in the hot slanting sun. ‘Meanwhile, other colonial sources talk of terrifying hallucinations induced by the plant: it was also known to deprive one of judgment and make one “act crazy and possessed”. Again this is not the effect of Turbina corymbosa. Not at all.’

  ‘Also,’ Jess said, her white face shining with sweat, ‘the Aztecs revered ololiúqui above all others, even more than teonanácatl. And they were even keener to protect its identity from the Spaniards.’

  ‘Very true,’ Boris confirmed. ‘Hernando de Alarcón wrote in 1629 that they venerate ololiúqui so much they do all in their power to prevent the plant coming to the attention of the church authorities. See the evasion? Desperate not to tell a damn word. And they never did. So we are definitely looking for something different, guys. A different morning glory. And if we find it, everything, all this, everything you have been through – will be worth it. Alternatively, and at the very least, I’ll get a Nobel.’

  It was late afternoon now, there was a heaviness to the air: the exhaled air of a billion trees. The world was reduced to mile after mile of green, and mile after mile of grey river-water. A silence possessed the boat as they all suffered in the furnace. That was all there was to do on this damn boat. Stare at the endless river, or think about death, or lie in your hammock and get bitten by mosquitoes the size of ravens, or look at the horizon and imagine a speedboat accelerating near, with men, with guns, and tattoos.

  He thought of Alicia’s death. And Hannah, and Archibald McLintock. Is that really all it was? Death? Just like a candle, snuffing out?

  Jess joined him, leaning on her thin pale arms, gazing at the turbidity, the flash of a tern in the dying light of the Amazonian day. ‘It’s incredible isn’t it?’

  ‘The immensity.’

  She nodded. ‘You know, there’s a story, that when Francisco de Orellana sailed down the Napo in 1541, and became the first white man to reach the Amazon, he went temporarily insane – he was unable to conceive that God’s earth could be so fertile and so vast.’ She stopped, and stiffened, and turned, oddly, on one foot.

  Then, like a tree hacked with one swoop, she fell to the decking of the boat, convulsing. Her legs thrashed, her arms flailed. Spittle frothed at the corners of her mouth and then her eyes rolled white and then whiter.

  47

  MV Myona cargo ferry, Amazon River, Peru

  Jessica’s fit subsided within minutes; half an hour later she was sitting in her hammock, pale but conscious and apparently unharmed, as the captain gave her water from an old whisky bottle and the deckhands muttered.

  ‘Un poco de fiebre, señor?’

  ‘Borracho y sucio.’

  ‘No no, señor, Solamente un fiebre de dios …’

  Jessica insisted she was fine, that she had very occasional ‘epileptiform’ fits, and that she had pills to take for the problem. But Boris looked at her sceptically and insisted, in turn, that they stop at a jungle research station, the UNESCO Biodiversity Research Centre, UBRC, an outpost of First World science in this New World wilderness; there would be a doctor there, and mobile phone masts.

  ‘Guys, we have to turn there anyway,’ he said, ‘that’s where the Amazon meets the Ucayali, and the captain wants to navigate in daylight, it’s a very tricky operation, muy peligroso, and look,’ he gestured at the lowering glow of the sun. ‘It’s nearly dusk so we can sleep at the Centre then head on tomorrow. Yes?’

  By the time they docked at the little steel pier of the UNESCO Centre the sun had drowned itself in the sea of green and the twilight was purple and gauzy. Adam walked down the gangplank on to the pier and he paused, rapt: he could feel the welcome, indeed blissful, change, as the day swooned into evening. The cooled and sweetened air was filled with swifts and flycatchers, skimming the river with cavalier swoops, the trees yielded twinkles of colour and movement after the stasis of the day: jacanas and nunbirds, toucans and kingfishers.

  A pair of squirrel monkeys leapt between the palms, a sloth clung, like a baby, to the bough of a cecropia. Jessica and Nina walked quickly past him and climbed the stairs up the steep bank of the Amazon.

  The scientists were bespectacled, distracted, intense, moderately welcoming and busy erecting huge silvery nets to catch jungle moths. Elegant laptops were scattered incongruously on coarse wooden tables in rough and prefab metal rooms with no glass in the insect-screened windows. Radar dishes provided TV and phone access. A kitchen stood next to a generator: detailed maps of faunal and floral data adorned the walls.

  Jessica was guided to the Centre’s doctor, who turned out to be a vet, but it didn’t seem to matter. For an hour Nina and Adam and Boris sat in tense silence on a wooden terrace in the soft and humming and dim and insect-buzzed electric light, which petered out a few feet from the Centre perimeter. They were like a pitiful oasis of civilization in the Dark Ages, with guards on the battlements watching for Vikings, or dragons.

  Now
the sun had entirely gone the insects were calling from the blackness of the jungle: rasping and chirruping, clicking and buzzing, a great musical melodrama of angry insect calls. Nina was in shorts and T-shirt and flip-flops; she slapped an insect. She gazed at the large squashed mosquito on her hand. The deadness weighed heavy. Boris broke the terrible silence. ‘You ever wondered how much this drug could be worth if we sold it to armies?’ He grinned, mischievously. ‘Imagine if someone could get hold of ulluchu, and isolated the alkaloid, and gave it to soldiers. No wonder the drug cartels are keen. This is a seller’s market, guys, a seller’s market!’

  No one said anything.

  ‘Personally, I think we should try and sell it to the Germans. Because they are the masters at this caper. You ever thought how weird it is: just how many serious recreational drugs were invented or refined by German scientists, often as part of their general war effort? Take heroin. Heroin was named by a German scientist in 1897, who synthesized it for use by soldiers, so they could be more heroic! That’s why it’s called heroin. And ecstasy? That was invented to help soldiers in the German trenches. True story. And cocaine was perfected specifically to serve as a stimulant for German troops in WW2. My God, even methadone, the heroin substitute, is German. They called it dolophine after one of its users: Adolf Hitler. Because they were running out of morphine to give the Führer so they invented a substitute. Incredible. Ergo, I suggest we should ring the Germans when we’re done, ask for a few million euros for the Bundeswehr and the Luftwaffe, for just a few little seeds – why not make a few bucks to go with the fame?’

  Boris gazed at the listening faces. ‘Guys, I’m kidding. This is too depressing, lighten the hell up.’

  Adam said nothing; he wondered how he had ended up trusting his fate to this strange and mercurial man. A noise from the rear of the terrace disturbed the insecty silence. They all turned: Jessica was back, with the vet who was also a doctor, a laconic Australian. The vet allayed their questions: ‘Your friend is fine …’

  Jessica stepped down on to the terrace, and gazed at them with a slightly faked triumphalism. ‘I told you I’m OK. Really.’

  Boris squinted. ‘You are sure, bonita?’

  The exchange was pointless. Jess was evidently determined to continue. Besides, as she said, what else could she do? Go back on her own?

  Boris nodded. ‘OK, guys, I suggest we call it a very early night. Bob says we can sleep in the dorm, and then we leave first light.’

  ‘Wait.’ Nina lifted a hand. ‘I’ve been thinking. Something we gotta do.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We should burn the receipts. We know everything now. We know exactly where my dad went, we have no need for them: if we burn them now no one could ever follow our path?’

  Jessica nodded. ‘Yes. Very good idea.’

  ‘Because,’ Nina said, ‘the Zetas and Catrina are still out there. Who knows what details were in my dad’s notebook, and who knows what was missing? They could be riding the river right now. Burn the evidence so no one else can ever follow our trail.’

  No one disagreed. Nina found her rucksack and she pulled out the receipts; Adam sourced a metal trashcan, Nina threw the chits and slips into the can, Boris flicked a Zippo, ignited one large invoice, and threw it in with the others.

  The flames licked and thrived, and then they died. Then Nina made a glove with a T-shirt, and carried the hot metal pail of charred papers to the top of the stairs that led down to the river. She seemed so alone, standing there, silhouetted by her sadness and her grief, that Adam joined her. Together they shook the bucket and the ashes scattered in the evening breeze, fluttering tiny scraps of blackness scattering into deeper starlit blackness.

  Nina murmured, ‘All life death doth end and each day dies with sleep.’ She put a hand to her saddening face. ‘Ach … I’m exhausted.’

  They found the dorm, with its sextuplet of little beds. The instant he slipped twixt the clean scratchy sheets Adam slept, he was so tired.

  When he woke he was so groggy he couldn’t work out why he had woken. It was still dark: why was he awake? Then he heard the horrible screeching. Everyone else was asleep in the little soldierly cots. Couldn’t they hear this? What was this horrible noise?

  A noise rustled on his right; he saw in profile a figure, sitting up. It was Jessica. He could only see her eyes, wet and shining in the light. The rest of her was a phantom blur.

  ‘God, Adam what was that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’

  The screeching repeated. Human but alien. Horrifying.

  It was as if he was a kid again, with his sister; two kids afraid of the dark, scaring each other with ghost stories. Except that this was real: there really were monsters out there.

  ‘Christ!’

  A flash of scarlet in the dark afforded a second of relief. It was just macaws, squabbling in the trees. They sat there, saying nothing. The dark minutes dragged themselves along, and nothing else happened, and at last they slept once more.

  The next time Adam awoke he realized at once what he was hearing: silence. The incessant rasping jungle insects had stopped, because it was dawn. The morning was already embroidering, with tints of blue, the pantherine blackness of the sky. Mist rose from the damp, chilly earth.

  ‘Buenas dias.’ It was Boris. ‘Wake the others. Let’s get going right away!’

  This didn’t give them time to wash, let alone shower. But Boris was adamant. He wanted to get out of here right away. Nina and Jessica and Adam thanked the yawning scientists; then they shinned down the ladder and climbed on the boat and the stubbled captain turned the engine even as he drank a plastic cup of Jim Beam, and they chugged away, knifing through the dull brown silk of the waters.

  The Ucayali jungle was, if anything, even thicker than the Amazon forests. The sun burned down on occasional and abandoned plantings of manioc; all else was seamless wilderness. Only the animal life enlivened the numbing monotony. Hoatzin birds in the trees; the odd pod of pink dolphins. Otherwise the jungle, for all its supposed life and biodiversity, evinced a paralysing and menacing sameness. There weren’t even any flowers. Just an intensity of green and repetitive trees, like the bars of an endless cage.

  After six hours the captain pulled up at another pier. They apparently now had to walk. No one spoke. The anxiety and tension was making everyone silent. They were in headhunter territory.

  The captain sent one of his noticeably unwilling deckhands along, to help. He was called Jose. He was so scared his teeth actually chattered; or maybe he was ill.

  They trekked. The jungle here was pristine, and purely hostile. Every tree concealed something that stung, or pricked, or hissed, or bit. Lianas snagged the path. Adam grasped one liana to vault a fallen bough and immediately he felt the screaming pain of his error.

  ‘Jesus, Jesus fucking Christ!’ The liana carried a stream of army ants who attacked him, as one, racing on to his body, making him yell, and writhe, as they bit. ‘Get them off me! Please!’ It was a miraculous agony. He’d only touched the liana for a mere second and there were hundreds of them all over him, stinging and biting: he ripped off his T-shirt and flailed at them helplessly. ‘Shit!’

  Boris took one big ant between thumb and forefinger and ripped the torso away from the head, which remained pincered to the flesh. Slowly and capably, he pulled several fiercely biting ants from Adam’s arm. Nina and Jessica helped.

  ‘Natives use the ants for sewing up wounds,’ Boris told them as they worked. ‘They get the ants to bite and the ant heads stay attached, closing the wound, very clever, very clever. Nature’s suture. Hurts like all hell though, doesn’t it?’

  It took twenty minutes for all the ants to be plucked from Adam’s bleeding skin. He put his T-shirt back on; his back stung ferociously. Then the hike continued: endless and hot and painful. A sloth glared at them, half-dead, in the trees. Sweat-bees hovered, seeking the moistness of the human eye. Tarantulas reared up, absurdly demonic. Daring them to
go further.

  Nina said what they were all thinking. ‘This place is a nightmare.’

  Boris chuckled. ‘Imagine what it was like for the conquistadors, eh? Hacking through here in full body armour, for months, for years, over thousands of miles. Those damn bastards were crazy. Some of them went real crazy, there was one totally loco conquistador called Perez Quesada: he was a real nice guy; he would slice breasts off the women, and chop off the noses and ears of children, for amusement. He killed babies so their moms could walk faster. As the expedition went on he started impaling the men – mainly because they weren’t scared of being hanged. He went further and further into the unknown, going crazier with every mile, him and his psycho friends, Juan Pedro de Grau – he went on to Mexico, married some wild queen – and Rodrigo de Cuellar: he was even more brutal … You know sometimes I wonder if the conquistadors found ulluchu? Mn? That might explain their extreme cruelty, no? Maybe – hey, look, look!’ He was pointing. ‘See that? It’s flor de quinde, the hummingbird’s flower. Bright red tubular flowers – Bastante bonita – probably psychedelic, but everyone’s too scared to try, and there: that’s the tree of the evil eagle. Borrachero, Brugmansia sanguinea, subspecies vulcanicola.’

  They all stopped to look. Adam was glad to hear Boris talk, to have him pointing out the trees and flowers, because it distracted him from the strange noises behind them. He was sure they were being followed. But the noises could be anything. A tapir. A monkey. A fallen sloth. A drug-running gangster with a big machete. The jungle was oddly dark, the canopy above thick. You couldn’t see far, even by day.

  ‘Borrachero contains scopolamine, y’know that? That’s a goddamn tropane alkaloid, same as belladonna. Take a big whack, you get total delirium, they used to give it to women in very painful labour; they called it “twilight sleep”. And there, that one there, that’s chibcha, that was the one psychedelic plant you turn to when all else fails, except of course for our sacred ulluchu.’