Aaron Elkins - Little Tiny Teeth

“It’s not tea?” asked Duayne.

“Oh, yeah, I guess you could call it tea, but your mother’s orange pekoe it’s not. It’s made from coca leaves.”

“You mean mate?” said Phil.

“That’s what he says, but regular mate has the watchamacallit removed-”

“The cocaine alkaloids,” contributed Gideon, marginally awake.

“Right, whatever. Well, this stuff has something in it, I can tell you that. I had some after-dinner sessions with him at his house a couple of times while we were working on the book. And both times, come eight o’clock or so, he gets all wiggly and jumpy and then makes himself this tea – it’s supposed to be for some stomach problem or something, yada yada yada-”

“Actually,” Gideon said, “they do drink mate down here for stomach problems.”

“Well, all I know is, both times the guy’s completely out of it inside an hour. I had to let myself out. Once I came back the next morning at nine, and he shows up on the doorstep in the same clothes, all sleepy and dopey, with his hair all mussed and all. I mean, obviously, he’d been spaced out the whole time, probably never got out of his damn chair.”

This was the most wordy they’d heard Mel, and the most irate, and for a few moments there was silence. “You don’t get along very well with him, do you?” John asked.

Mel was indeed in a confiding mood, and there followed a list of grievances, foremost among which was that Scofield had assured him – had promised him – that his name would be on the title page of Potions, Poisons, and Piranhas, right up there with his own.

“So he gives us all the book, right? Big fanfare and everything. ‘Hot off the press, fine bookstores everywhere.’ So naturally, I’m excited, I look for my name and I don’t see it, and that sonofabitch tells me with a smile on his face, oh yes, sure my name’s there, see? Right on page Roman numeral three, down there with his faithful typist and the nice lady at the library. And he looks at me like I’m supposed to be grateful. I swear-” He folded his hands and sank back with a sigh. “Ah, what the hell. I don’t know why I’m getting so worked up. Don’t pay any attention to me. I shouldn’t have had that wine. I’m gonna hit the sack. Night, all.”

Duayne also heaved himself to his feet. “I’m off too,” he said. “I’m hoping for a better day tomorrow.”

“You didn’t have a good day today?” Phil asked. “I thought it was pretty cool, especially the shaman.”

“Oh, that was fine as far as it went, I suppose,” Duayne allowed. “Very interesting. But this is not the Amazon I’d expected. We’ve been here two whole days now, and I haven’t seen a single cockroach, not a one!” He shook his head. “Who would have thought?”

“Yeah, that is tough,” John said.

“I’m not talking about giant cockroaches, John, I’m talking about any cockroaches!”

“Well, cheer up, Duayne,” said Gideon, “tomorrow may bring another giant spider.”

Duayne’s expression lightened. “It is a beaut, isn’t it?”

“It sure is,” Gideon said warmly.

And Duayne went off to bed with a smile on his face.

The three men lay back enjoying the relative quiet for a while, and then Phil said, “So what do you think? Did Mel just give us a pretty good reason for playing nasty tricks on Scofield? He’s pretty upset.”

“You mean just because he didn’t get his name on the title page?” John asked doubtfully. “I mean, the spear and all? Isn’t it a little much? He got his money, didn’t he? And he got mentioned – acknowledged. What’s the big deal?”

“Don’t ask me,” Phil said, “I wouldn’t know about such things. Let’s ask the academic over there. Among the weird and wonderful types you associate with, Dr. Oliver, would a person go to such lengths to humiliate someone over a failure to provide proper attribution?”

Gideon smiled. “Humiliate, kill, maim, draw, and quarter.”

Not long afterward, Maggie came up and slipped into Duayne’s vacated chair. “Do you mind if I join you? The fellows” – with a tilt of her head she indicated Tim and Cisco, who were now vigorously snuffling something out of coffee cups, the visible effect of which was a lot of sneezing and hacking – “are getting a bit too empirical for my taste.”

“What are they snorting now?” John asked, disapproval etched in every line of his face.

“It’s cooked from something Cisco brought along. He gave me a sprig.” She held up a twig with three narrow green leaves attached. “He says the locals call it mampekerishi, not a familiar name to me. I’m guessing it’s one of the Gesneriaceae, but I don’t know the genus. I’ll check it later tonight. Possibly, it’s something new. Now wouldn’t that be nice?”

“What do they use it for?” Phil wanted to know.

“According to Cisco, the Nahua use it for headaches. And of course ceremonially, for visions. He says it gives you visions of eyeballs.”

“Eyeballs?” Phil echoed. “Why the hell would anyone want visions of eyeballs?”

“You’ve got me there,” Maggie said, laughing.

“What is it like?” Duayne asked. “Did you try it? Did you really see eyeballs?”

She shook her head forcefully. “Absolutely not. I’m not one of these ethnobotanists that goes around sampling all these things. Not anymore. I found out very early that they’re mostly quite unpleasant. Aside from the unsettling visions – and eyeballs would be among the least of them – there’s an awful lot of vomiting involved, you know. And defecating. And half the time, the drugs induce amnesia, so that you have no memory of the experience anyway, so what’s the point? No, I just want to classify them. And analyze them, of course, to see if there’s some valid medicinal use. Which there often is, I might add.”

After that they sprawled in their chairs, enjoying the cool, quiet night for a while until John suddenly coughed, said “Jesus!” and batted at the air in front of his face. “Now they’re smoking something again!”

“That’s just pot,” Phil said, sniffing. “That’s what you told them to smoke yesterday. They’re just taking your advice.”

“I know it’s pot,” John groused. “You think I don’t know what pot smells like? I’ll tell you what it is that gets me, though. Not Cisco, he’s a lost cause; he can’t help himself any more. But Tim – a nice kid, and he seems bright enough, good future in front of him-”

“He’s extremely bright,” Maggie said. “One of my favorite students.”

“And yet there he is, snorting or smoking or drinking every damn thing that comes his way. He shouldn’t be taking lessons from a guy like Cisco. He’s screwing up his life.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far, John,” Maggie said. “A lot of ethnobotanists have their fling with the hallucinogens they study. I did. It’s appealing to many young people. And then, you have to give Tim a bit of leeway. He’s under a lot of stress right now. Arden has been giving him a hard time.”

Arden was Tim’s major professor, she explained, and his signature on Tim’s dissertation was all that stood between Tim and a Ph. D. – and the postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard that he longed for. She herself thought the dissertation was more than good enough; she and the third member of Tim’s dissertation committee, a professor named Slivovitz, had already signed off on it, but Arden was driving Tim crazy with it, sending him back to the drawing board again and again. And again.

Gideon thoroughly sympathized. His own graduate years were not far enough behind him to make him forget what the ordeal of the dissertation had been like. “That’s tough, all right. Will Arden ever go along, or is it hopeless?”