The Testament of James (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens) (13 page)

“Ah.”

“Yes. Much quicker turnaround.” She led them into a kind of wooden shed. “These are a
Psilocybe
from the Pacific Northwest, they started forming fruiting bodies last week. And you’ll love these, in fact I think you’re already familiar with them. In Oaxaca they call them
derumbe
, which means landslide. First thing out of the disturbed earth, probably. They’re actually
Psilocybe caerulescens
, which the Mazatec consider the big brother of the
Psilocybe mexicana
, here I am telling you this, like you didn’t write the book.”

“Wasson wrote the book. Wasson and Schultes.”

“I follow the journals, Matthew. You’ve written enough for another book if you’d just let someone pull them together. Meantime, you could take a bunch of these if you’ll promise to eventually get me a written report: duration, potency, usefulness. They don’t last, as you know, so otherwise I’d be stringing them up to dry, which starts to make the place look a booth in the
mercado
in Oaxaca. Experienced researchers are so much more useful. Anecdotes are fine. Jaguar sightings, whatever.”

She and Matthew traded some kind of communication involving eyebrows and head tilts, and the freckled little redhead produced a small blade and started slicing off the long, spindly fresh mushrooms and forming them into a pile on a large piece of waxed paper.

“All those?” asked Chantal.

“The
cotacine
prescribe 13 pair. Thirteen is the mystical number, of course, but 13 apiece evidently doesn’t open the doors far enough, so 13 pair. Mind you, casual users talk about six or eight per person. Not pair, just six or eight fruiting bodies, so it’s possible the
curanderos
build up a tolerance, although I know Matthew disagrees. Thirteen pair would be 52, twenty-six each if you’re both aiming to cross over all the way and speak with the light creatures. If it’s just for Matthew, 26, and then a beginner might want to go easy and take six or eight the first time, call it 33?”

“Fifty-two sounds right,” Matthew smiled.

“We don’t pay her?” Chantal asked Matthew once they were out of earshot, toting their paper bag of fresh produce.

“University bureaucracies work with purchase orders, invoices, billing codes. There are no cash drawers; cash would cause a panic. We invite her to dinner occasionally, and we give her a break when she’s looking for a hard-to-find book. The foundation also helped fund her doctoral field work in South America with the Ayahuasca. So it all balances out.

“You two know each other well.”

“I gave her some help on her field work.”

“You’ve tripped together.”

“Yes.”

“Naked? You’ve had your hands on those little honkers?”

“Chantal: You’re jealous.”

“I am not. OK, of course I am. You want me to lie?”

“I find it charming.”

“The light creatures?”

“You’ll see.”

“She didn’t mention Ayahuasca.”

“It works differently. Not what we’re looking for right now, although it might be appropriate another time. There are books from the early conquest years, both in Peru and in the Yucatan, that need finding. Les was on the right track with
Blue Moon, Crystal Skull
. Maybe I’m a little prejudiced; all that brewing up, very soupy.”

* * *

They were back upstairs at Matthew’s, Marian having been cheerfully informed he and Chantal were incommunicado for the rest of the day. Matthew had nice thick geometric patterned rugs in front of the hearth in the second floor living room, which Chantal appreciated almost as much as the cats.

A true child of the sixties, Matthew had put some kind of music on the stereo — Jefferson Airplane, she was pretty sure — a set-up which consisted of multiple elements all hooked together with actual wires. Now he lit a bundle of sage in a brass tray, and then the loose spliff of tobacco, which was not inhaled directly but wafted to the four points of the compass. The smoke was supposed to be a purifier.

“I love the tobacco and the sage. Could you do without them if you had to?”

“A different ritual would be fine, but some ritual is advisable. You’re seeking the proper path, clearing your mind and opening yourself to allow free association in the hippocampus, probably, something close to the dream state, but a waking dream. You’re letting down the filters that trap us in a linear narrative. But those same filters are what keep us from wandering off into traffic. We have to remember how to re-erect them later. People talk about losing their inhibitions, but being able to recover some of our inhibitions is useful, if we don’t want to end up in some sheltered workshop stringing beads. Anyway, we need to be positive; think about Bob and Rashid and the book. Don’t expect to be in complete control, but we want to direct the vision, the journey, to some extent by focusing on our questions.”

“You learned the tobacco and the sage from your own road man?”

“I did.”

“In the jungles of the Yucatan?”

“Tikal has your better developed jungle, and Palenque. The northern Yucatan is more arid, miserable soil, except maybe Uxmal. But no, in Arizona, actually. The Apache.”

“Aren’t the Apache, like . . . violent?”

“No, no. A fun-loving people. Love to laugh. Though they often do go armed, like some others I won’t name. But motorcycle people get a bad rap, everywhere.”

“Your first spirit guides were an Apache motorcycle gang?”

“Chantal, of all people, do I have to tell you not to pre-judge based on appearances?”

“I think that’s why I fell in love with you, Matthew. You are what you appear to be.”

“I don’t see what’s so hard about that.”

“Of course you don’t. We’re really going to eat all these things?” The mushrooms made quite a heap on the coffee table.

“This would be a good time to speak up, if you’re having second thoughts.” Matthew looked so serious.

“Oh, relax. I’ve done some synthetics, you know.”

“Some are fine. Synthesizing DMT or MDA makes sense. But the natural compounds have a much wider range of alkaloids, they self-regulate your dosage. No one quite knows how they modify or enhance one another. This endless desire to purify into one compound, we call it the FDA effect. There are synthetics that seem like short-cuts but they can actually burn out some circuitry; read Dick.”

“Dick . . . Nixon?”

“Philip K. Dick. None of this should be done lightly.”

“Will I barf?”

“Probably not, if we’ve been fasting since yesterday. That’s so there’s less for your stomach to worry about purging, as well as to cut down on conflicting drugs.”

“I’m disappointingly straight, as you know.”

“You pay close attention to what you eat. You know how each thing affects you; that’s huge. Leaving your body in its natural state makes you more aware of your surroundings, already. You’re not dulled. But caffeine, the sugars, they can all have a tug-of-war effect. You’ll need to eat at least eight or 10 of these. If you want to slow down after that, it’s OK. But you asked if it’s important which ritual you use. Not as long as you understand what we’re doing, which is asking for help setting our feet on the proper path. It’s a narrow road to climb, narrow and steep, and we’ll be busy gazing at clouds and mountains and the light-people, not paying attention to where we put our feet. A long way to fall for those who use these plants for the wrong purpose.”

“So there’s danger.”

“These plants are powerful. Anywhere there’s power, there’s danger. Not for those who enter in a good spirit. If instead of fighting you’re surrendering to the power and seeking true guidance, then you’re OK, you know it will all come out OK in the end. Even if what you see is a little frightening, that’s to teach you that death is part of life, that you have to come to terms with all the aspects of life so they’ll no longer have the power of fear over you. You trust these plants and they give you warmth and comfort.

“There’s no fatal dose of these plants that we know of, no cardiac or respiratory danger in any quantity you can hold down. There is a slightly elevated risk of seizure if you’ve got a history of epilepsy or if it runs in your family, not a serious concern as long as you don’t go driving a car or starting up a chainsaw, which is contraindicated anyway.

“But those who look here for the secrets of a power to wield over other men, they’re the ones who tend to find only darkness and fear. To be a little cautious, to feel a little trepidation, to have to seek the courage to face true answers, that’s fine. That’s why we fast and meditate and prepare ourselves. But those who say the god of these plants is frightening, they’re only reporting what they see inside themselves. What terrifies them is nothing but a dark mirror.”

They’d started eating the
Psilocybe
, tender little things.

“These are a little earthy,” she said, “but they actually taste fine.”

“Yes, it’s the peyote that are bitter. Mushrooms are nice, especially when they’re so fresh. Moses said always to eat them the same morning they’re picked.”

“Moses as in . . . Moses?”

“Right.”

“I can eat the number I feel is right.”

“That’s exactly right.” The pile was already reduced by more than half.

“Can I drink water?”

“Absolutely; all you need.” Matthew stopped to smile at her. That was nice. Reassuring. “The weather seems to be holding,” he added. “Before too long we should go out. Outside would be better.”

“Is it safe to move?”

“Slowly.”

“I don’t think I should drive.”

“Absolutely not. The side yard. Take the Navajo blanket; I’ll bring water.”

“Down the stairs, then.”

“Slowly. Use the handrail. Don’t step directly on any cats.”

“Right.”

Several eager fur-persons did accompany them out the side door. The cats loved any activity that involved a visit to the side yard. They positioned themselves as centurions, in between investigating anything that moved. Serafina cautiously approached and began licking Chantal’s hand, which felt wonderful and . . . complex.

Matthew spread the blanket. He’d brought a couple plastic bottles of drinking water. They sat on the grass, then Chantal lay back to watch the sky.

The world was a garden. It provided everything they needed. The flowering plants nodded their heads in the gentle breeze, enjoying the dappled sunshine beneath scattered clouds. The clouds had never opened up in such depths and colors before. Could anyone really call that range of pastel colors “gray”? The flight of birds, which previously had appeared random, now seemed enormously more organized and purposeful, having much more to do with mating patterns and territorial defense than the search for food, which became a mere backdrop. The birds all seemed to work in pairs. Bees worked the flowers industriously, felt curiously non-threatening. The world was joyfully busy, yet seemed to require no immediate supervision.

“Strange to call—” Her own voice sounded strange, especially since she was suddenly so much more conscious of how complicated the nerve commands were to get the throat muscles to generate speech.

“What?”

“The plants that open up the world this way.”

“Entheogens.”

“Strange to call them hallucinogens, as though they make you see imaginary things.”

“Some even called them narcotics, complained the natives got drunk on them,” Matthew nodded. “The definition of
nanacatl
in
The Florentine Codex
— they didn’t even give it its proper name,
teonanacatl
— was ‘It makes one besotted; he who eats many of them sees many things that make him afraid. He flees; he hangs himself, he hurls himself from a cliff.’”

“What we just ate.”

“Yes.”

“Was that written by a Catholic priest?”

“Very good.”

“They have eyes, but do not see.”

“It’s a less-filtered way of seeing the world, bypassing all that early training we get in our first six or seven years to just concentrate on what’s necessary for our culture — red lights, warning buzzers, cars come from the left, our created environment.”

“Except in England.”

“Where they come from the right.”

“Right.”

“But how can the plants help us acquire any knowledge we don’t already have? About the book, I mean, or what happened to Bob?”

“There’s never any shortage of information, Chantal. It almost overwhelms us. But sensory input is worthless until it’s interpreted. These plants simply allow the mind to make links, the kind of thing that happens when you get a sudden intuition. The answers are within us because the Kingdom of God is within us, as Jesus always insisted, and also the Buddha, if you want to be ecumenical about it.” Matthew passed her the water bottle and then lay back beside her. Butterflies joined them, actually landing on their bodies, beating their wings very slowly. Something different in their sweat, probably, in addition to a feeling of . . . calm.

“There’s no need to look there or there or somewhere else for the kingdom, it’s right here within us. We can realize and experience it on our own, without the intervention of any priestly class. That’s what Jesus taught that upset the Sanhedrin so much, he wanted to put the priests out of a job. All we have to do is awaken out of this sleepwalk.”

“But . . .”

“Yes?”

“Doesn’t the evidence have to come from outside? You interviewed Clarence, you sent Skeezix out to look for the spent brass . . .”

“The outside world exists to give us the questions, Chantal. You do have to understand what you’re looking for. But you don’t want to get trapped in a temporal linearity.”

“That sounds like something I almost understand.”

“Where we’re going, babe, time is almost meaningless. The past, the future, association chains that seem to take hours can speed by in seconds. Just as science is figuring out that our intentions can affect our results, quantum theory also tells us our results today can be affected by things that aren’t going to happen till tomorrow. So why shouldn’t it be possible to also solve a problem in part thanks to clues we haven’t discovered yet, clues that we’ll find tomorrow?”