Tom Knox - The Babylon rite

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.’

‘Boris. Shut up.’ Jess sounded tense.

Everyone turned. In the middle of the clearing ahead stood at least a dozen native warriors. They were bare-chested, and exuberantly tattooed, and carrying knives and spears. Several of them wore Adidas sneakers. Three had noses pierced by macaw feathers; and two had small, leathery, grapefruit-sized objects dangling from their belts.

Shrunken human heads.

Pankarama Settlement, Ucayali River, Peru

Jessica knew she was dying, now; or rather she knew that she had turned the final curve in the river, that led to the inevitable and unavoidable waterfall. Huntington’s. The fit had been the clinching diagnostic symptom. She had her father’s disease. But when she searched inside herself for tears, or rage, or anger, or grief, they were not there.

Instead, she felt oddly calm, unexpectedly at peace: saddened yet soothed. There was no disputing what she had to do now. She was glad she had made those phone call and emails in Lima: she had prepared the ground well.

But something was wrong. She could sense it. The headhunters were too friendly. They recognized the captain’s mate, Jose, and eagerly embraced him. The Adidas sneakers were all-too-new. And the shrunken heads were old: they had the prognathous quality — the protruding lips and tongue, the wildly bulging eyes — of heads severed and shrunken many years ago.

Jess had encountered authentic hunter-gatherer tribes before: communities almost sealed from the outside world. They had been self-sufficient and therefore hostile; or at the very least indifferent. These guys were far too amiable, and needy, and supplicant.

The Pankarama warriors led them through the forest to their settlement. As Jessica had anticipated, it was not a pristine Neolithic forest hamlet: the scruffy huts and shacks were built from metal sheets and Toyota car parts as much as from palm fronds and river-mud bricks. There was new garbage strewn in old pools that looked suspiciously rainbowed and oily. Fuel oil?

Which meant these rather degraded people had cars or motorbikes or trucks. Maybe even a generator for a television hidden behind some shack…

On an instinct she checked her cellphone. And there it was. A signal. She actually had a reasonable signal in the depths of the supposedly pristine Peruvian Amazon!

Quietly she showed her phone to Adam, as the others walked on. He gazed at it, then at her, perplexed.

They rejoined Boris and Nina. The Pankarama man led them to the chief’s hut. Jessica flashed a dark, urgent glance at Boris. He shrugged. ‘ Believe me. It’s all changed,’ he said very quietly. ‘Came here four years ago and they were the real McCoy. Untouched. Someone’s got to them in the meantime. Drug-dealers? But the climate’s really no good for growing cocaine…’

‘I got a signal on the cell.’

‘Then it’s definitely loggers. Illegal loggers. Fuckers. Putting up a mast. Don’t know which is worse. Gilipolas! I hate this, Jess, it’s tragic. Bet they’ve killed all the caimans too, shot all the tapirs.’

She looked at him, and the suspicions flared. ‘I know how it works, Boris. They pay off the tribesmen. Here, have a plasma TV in return for us raping and plundering all your ancestral lands. Question is: what are we doing here now? What’s the point?’

He hushed her with a finger, and whispered, as they ducked inside the chief’s hovel, ‘They may still have ulluchu!’

Jessica doubted their chances of success. The loggers — armed, violent, Peruvians or Brazilians no doubt — would have pressed the Pankarama to reveal all the natural resources hereabouts. An incredible wonder drug? The Pankarama would have offered it up immediately. In return for some liquor, and maybe a two-stroke Suzuki motorcycle.

Jess wondered whether it was time to make a call, to use this precious signal. How long did she have left? It was a fine judgment. She looked at her colleagues. Had Boris deliberately led them down a cul-de-sac? Why would he do that? Did she really trust him? Perhaps it had been a mistake to involve this famously greedy and ambitious man.

One by one they ducked under a wooden lintel. The chief’s shack was dark and aromatic, and it was decorated with caiman skulls and orchids. The skin of a jaguarundi hung from one wall. Several tiny, mouldering human heads hung from an elaborate bone hook on the opposite wall, obscene and sinister, yet speaking honestly of the culture. But the Sony TV in the corner detracted from this impression.

Pleasantries were exchanged. The chief was a tired-looking, bare-chested man in his fifties, with stingray spines through his ears and a piranha-tooth necklace. Jess wondered if he had quickly taken off his Chinese shorts and Barcelona soccer shirt when he heard they were coming.

‘ Buenas… ’

‘ Ola, gran jefe… ’

He spoke good Spanish. Another sign of inauthenticity.

One by one they bowed before the chief, seated on his throne of bones and wood and clumsy nails.

Boris asked straight out, ‘Do you have ulluchu, the drug of the flower, the drug of the ancients, the drug of the dead?’

That was what the woman at Belen market had called it. The drug of the dead.

The chief smiled a weary smile, and said nothing, prolonging the moment. Despite her doubts, Jessica felt a helpless surge of excitement. Say yes. Please say yes. Maybe they did have it, maybe it would be here, why not? Would the loggers care about a strange and dangerous hallucinogen?

‘Si, tenemos la droga. Ulluchu.’

They had it. She experienced a foolish but giddy relief.

The chief clapped his hands — ceremoniously — and a younger man rushed in. The two Pankarama men talked quickly in their own language. Then the man stepped out and moments later returned with a small, hollowed-out gourd. Jessica recognized the type: a lime gourd called yoburu — or in Spanish a mujercita. The little vagina.

That was definitely the real deal. The locals certainly honoured this drug, whatever it was.

The chief bade them squat on the floor. The younger Pankarama warrior also had a snorting pipe, made apparently from the windpipe of a toucan, and an elegant, ancient, intricately carved walnut snuffing dish. The man poured some fine powder on to the rectangular dish — the powdered seeds of the ulluchu?

Jess hissed at Boris. ‘Tell them we want to see the flower, and the seeds, before they are ground up.’

Boris gravely nodded, and turned to the chief.

‘ Gran jefe…’

Two minutes later the young Pankarama warrior was back in the chief’s shack with a plastic shopping bag. He opened it and several golden-yellow petals fell on to the floor. Jessica eyed them, excitedly. They were morning glories, without question; they were a beautiful pale sun-gold — the gold of the Aztecs? Next, the young man took a leather pouch, and poured the seeds on to the matting. The seeds were shaped like commas. But then nearly all morning glory seeds looked like commas. They were so very close; but were they close enough? Was this it? Was this, finally, the terrible drug of the Moche? The ur-drug of all ancient America?