The extensive, thoroughly researched and documented paper that was eventually submitted jointly by Coschocton Westcott and Kelli Alwydd resulted in both of them receiving their doctorates from disparate but equally admiring faculties. Moreover, the weeks of stolen early morning hours spent together in the close confines of the secret Chachapoyan ceremonial chamber (for such they had determined it to be) eventuated in a joint undertaking of another kind. Before leaving Peru, the two new Doctors of Science became engaged. Within a month of returning to the States, they were married. Eschewing any professional jealousy at their success, a proud Martin Harbos presented them with a double-spouted, unbroken Chimu pot in the shape of a llama.
Subsequent to the publication of their scholarly and influential paper, there followed a certain amount of spirited competition for their academic services. A delighted archaeology department at Arizona State University in Tempe accepted them jointly as instructors, with promises of tenure, professional approbation, and full professorships to follow. The newly appointed, diplomated, and happily married couple settled easily into a comfortable suburban home in east Scottsdale.
They had returned from Peru with quite a lot of baggage. Nearly a ton, to be exact, consisting of fragments of bas-relief, pottery, remarkably well-preserved weavings, and other material from the Apachetarimac site. Between teaching assignments, every bit of it had to be identified, photographed, dated, catalogued, and labeled. Though it occupied much of their spare time, the work gave rise to few complaints because each was doing what they loved, in the company of the one they loved. What more could one ask of life?
One bas-relief occupied Cody’s attention particularly, so much so that he devoted an inordinate amount of time in attempting to decipher its meaning. The majority of the Chachapoyan reliefs and pictographs they had found depicted scenes from everyday life, or were representations of myths and legends. This one was different. Deep in the secondary, sacrificial chamber he and Kelli had discovered, they had encountered an anomaly: a flat, carved panel set among all the traditional curved surfaces. It struck Cody as standing apart from its surroundings, not only because of its shape but its contents. Kelli was less enamored of the object, and when it had been shown to him, Harbos had in fact been mildly dismissive, but Cody had seen to it that the panel was among those pieces conscripted for shipment back to the States. Now, much to Kelli’s quiet amusement, he devoted all the time he could spare trying to comprehend a significance that seemed apparent only to him.
“You’re going to drive yourself crazy trying to extract specifics from that stone.” Across the lab tables, she smiled affectionately at her hard-working but sometimes obstinate new husband. Beneath her practiced fingers, a complex polychromed pot was slowly regaining its shape, like a bottle whose shattering was being filmed in reverse. “You know how generalized, and often abstract, the Chachapoyans were in their work.” She indicated the basement lab in which they were toiling. Behind her, ranks of neatly labeled shelves and boxes full of the human sediment of several dozen ancient Amerindian cultures rose all the way to the ceiling. Tools, dirt, dust, and specimens speckled the tables.
“Until you found the tunnel and the chambers, there was even less to go on.” Bending her head, she stared intently down through an oversized, illuminated magnifying lens, reaching out to change its supportive arm slightly to adjust the focus.
“That’s why I think this particular relief is so important,” he replied evenly.
Delicately, she slipped a dollar-sized piece of pottery into an open break in the pot she was restoring, holding it immobile to allow the glue she had smeared on one edge to set. One more piece of an endless puzzle done. “It’s a fine panel, a good piece of work,” she admitted, “but a Mayan stele it’s not. There may or may not be something like a Chachapoyan Rosetta stone—but that relief’s not it.”
“I know that.” His tone was sharper than he had intended.
His finger traced a small portion of the panel. This figure here, he thought doggedly—what did it mean? Was it supposed to represent a man, a god, a monkey, or a goat? The multiplicity of figures on the relief combined with the intricacy of the overlying abstract design made for maddeningly contradictory possible interpretations. All he could do was persevere.
The scrape of chair on concrete floor made him look up from his work. Kelli was slipping into her sweater. The Valley of the Sun could turn surprisingly cold in winter, especially at night—a fact the chamber of commerce did not trumpet in the glossy brochures it distributed nationally during the time of trolling for tourists.
“Leaving?” he asked.
She checked her watch. “It’s almost eleven-thirty, Cody. I’ve got a ten o’clock seminar tomorrow and a little sleep would be nice. You coming?”
He hesitated. “You take the car. The last bus is at one. I really want to finish this section. I think I’m close.”
“Close to what?” She favored him with a wry but affectionate smile.
Hunched over the relief, he glanced up just long enough to reply. “Understanding.”
“Hey, I understand already.” She wagged a finger at him. “I understand that you’d better be on that last bus.” She gestured at the workbench, strewn with fine tools that would have looked equally at home in a surgery as they did in the lab. “You keep falling asleep in here and one night your head’s going to land on a pick instead of the table. And I’m not going to be the one to pull it out of your obsessed brain.”
“You mean, like here?” Reaching up and smiling, he tapped the top of his head.
Taking her cue, she came around the table and kissed him on the indicated spot. He drew her down and their lips met rather more firmly. When they finally parted, he whispered, “I won’t miss the bus. I promise.”
“I’ll hold you to that. I’m sure as hell not climbing out of a warm bed to come back here and fetch you at three A.M. or some other ungodly hour.” With a last kiss, she rose and exited the lab, heading for the elevator and leaving him with a clear view of a distinctly unprofessorial posterior twitch.
The calculated manner of her exit distracted him, as it was designed to, but only for a little while. Within minutes he was furiously entering notes on the laptop that rested, open and glowing insistently, on the workbench to his right.
If this was not a goat but simply a distorted man, and this was smoke instead of background cloud, then it followed that the center section, whose meaning had been eluding him for frustrating weeks, had to be . . .
Not being the demonstrative type, he did not shout “Eureka.” Besides, he was not yet positive of his interpretation of the small section of relief. When considering the meaning, the abstract overlay still had to be taken into account and could not contradict his latest reading of certain shapes and silhouettes. If it did, he would have to start anew, proceeding from yet another set of suppositions and assumptions. But for the first time in nearly a hundred tries, the preliminaries looked promising. Very promising. Wiping at aching eyes, he made sure to back up his computer notes before shuttering the lab and taking his leave.
He decided not to tell Kelli. Not right away. Not until he was absolutely sure of his findings. They would demand peer review, he knew, preferably carried out in tandem with experimental corroboration. As he rode home on the bus, alone except for two grad students locked in the throes of oblivious passion in the back seat, he wondered who he might inveigle into performing the latter. He needed not another archaeologist, nor an anthropologist, but a chemist. One with time enough to spare to do some pro bono lab work. He would also have to contact the zoology department. If he had finally succeeded in deciphering the relief correctly, ultimate authentication of his interpretation was going to be very much an interdisciplinary exercise.
A fey smile lightened his otherwise self-absorbed, solemn expression. Not that anyone on the bus noticed, or cared. Harry Keeler would be perfect. This was just the sort of sufficiently fanciful, off-the-wall procedure that would appeal to him. He knew Keeler only slightly, from a couple of university social functions. But his reputation was sound, and insofar as Cody knew, he was the only faculty member out of several hundred who had appeared on the evening news during the past three months—not as a consequence of his academic work, but for participating in a record-setting multiple sky-diving jump in California. As a senior chemist, his professional credentials were impeccable. The only question was, would he be interested in a diversionary bit of interdepartmental experimentation?
Not only was Keeler interested, to Cody’s relief and gratification the senior professor proved downright enthusiastic.
“I remember the announcement when you and your wife accepted your appointments here. As I recall, there was a bit of actual excitement among the old fossils in charge of your department.” Blue eyes twinkled mirthfully. “What kind of experiment, exactly, is it that you want me to run for you, Mr. Westcott?”
“I’ve been studying Chachapoyan bas-reliefs. The Chachapoyans were a mysterious, pre-Inca people who lived . . .”
The chemist put up a hand to forestall the rest of Cody’s explanation. “Some of us do read outside our fields, young fella. I feel confident that I know the minimum necessary about our extinct southern cousins. So you’ve been reading the elder books, have you?”
Cody smiled. “The elder stones, anyway. I’m taken with one in particular. Exceptional piece of work. Clear and unambiguous. At least,” he qualified himself, “it looks unambiguous to me. It was removed from a very important place in what we now believe to be the spiritual center of Chachapoyan civilization. I’ve been doing a lot of work with it these past couple of months. Too much, my wife would say. But I think I’ve found something interesting. I need somebody like yourself to see if it adds up to anything. And I’d like,” he concluded apologetically, “to do this as soon as possible.”
“Why the rush?” Keeler smiled and waved at a group of students as he and his younger, taller colleague continued walking toward the Hayden Library.
“Because the panel has to go back to Peru next week. Everything we brought back with us is only on study loan and is destined to go into a new wing of the National Museum devoted to the Chachapoyan culture. I’ll still have excellent photographs, but I much prefer being able to check the original material. It’s a touchy-feely kind of thing, if that’s not too unscientific an explanation.”
Keeler stepped over a sprinkler head that was protruding slightly from the grass. On the cool winter morning, both men wore sweaters. “I quite understand. I much prefer dealing with actual chemicals instead of formulas. Wet versus dry, you might say. You still haven’t told me what you want me to do.”
Cody was gesturing continuously as he spoke. “I believe the panel shows various carefully configured ingredients being combined into a liquid that is intended to be swallowed. There’s no mistaking the importance the Chachapoyans attached to it. Everything on the panel is exquisitely rendered and colored, almost as fine as what you would find in an undisturbed Egyptian tomb.” He stopped waving his hands about. “It’s not another Lord of Sipán, but we know absolutely nothing about Chachapoyan medical techniques. As near as I’ve been able to decipher, this brew, or potion, or whatever it is, has something to do with vision.”
Keeler was suddenly uncertain. “You really want to play around with some five-century-old pharmaceutical? I expect that could be dangerous.”
Cody responded vigorously. “The reliefs clearly show that the potion is supposed to improve one’s vision, not damage it. I think the prescription is too elaborate to be some form of liquid punishment.”
“I see.” The chemist was still hesitant. “Improve your vision how?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet. It’s a little confusing. Not the relief itself: That’s clear enough. But there are several possible readings of the final interpretation.”
They rounded the corner of the Social Sciences building. The library loomed ahead, white concrete and dark glass intended to shield the precious contents against the brutal summer sun.
“You wouldn’t be reading me a riddle here, would you, Professor Westcott? Academic freedom notwithstanding, I could get into trouble if somebody thinks we’re playing around with ancient Peruvian hallucinogens.”
For an instant, Cody wasn’t sure if the senior chemist was being serious or not. When he decided that he was, he hastened to reassure him. “I promise you, Professor Keeler, this is serious science. I’m not interested in becoming another Carlos Castenada.”
“Coschocton Westcott, the Don Juan of Tempe?” Keeler chuckled at the thought. “Wasn’t he was supposed to be a Mexican shaman?”
Cody held the door aside so the senior professor could enter first. “The Peruvians say Castenada stole all of Don Juan’s teachings from their own shamanistic traditions, that much of what’s in the books is clearly Peruvian and not Mexican. I’ve participated in some casual debates on the matter myself. But we’re not dealing with quasi-contemporary Indian mysticism here. The reliefs on the panel are real. Real enough to interpret.”
“And you intend to try this potion yourself?” Comfortable inside the perfectly climate-controlled library, Keeler was doffing his sweater.
“I’ll sign any necessary releases. I’ll absolve you of any responsibility.” The archaeologist smiled encouragingly. “The potion may not do anything.”
Keeler was not smiling back. “Or it may induce hallucinations. I believe that is typical of South American shamanistic practices. Or convulsions, or worse.” He eyed his younger colleague sharply. “What does your lovely wife think about all this?”
Cody didn’t hesitate. “She thinks I’m slightly obsessed.”
Keeler nodded slowly as they headed for the elevators that would take them up to the stacks. “Does she also know you intend to personally sample some half-millennia-old mystic Amerindian distillation of unknown provenance and dubious taste?”
Cody looked away. “I haven’t told her yet.”
The older man clearly was not pleased. Cody was afraid that the senior academic was going to withdraw his expertise, but he had chosen the right chemist for the task. A thoughtful Keeler was too intrigued to back out. When he murmured on the elevator, “How complex is this ancient brew you want me to take a shot at concocting?”, Cody knew he had the partner he needed.
Even so, he was instinctively reluctant to surrender the material he had spent long weeks painstakingly assembling from a myriad of sources. Among other items, these included strips of Acacia spindida bark from the university’s botanical collection, choros beetle larvae from a professor of entomology at Florida State, sap from the gnarled omata tree that grew atop Apachetarimac itself, leaves from a handful of carefully delineated epiphytes, the flowers of two different kinds of wild orchid, and a droplet of epidermal venom from the skin of Dendrobates joanna, one of the most toxic of all the poison-arrow frogs. Ultimately, the only holdup came when he put in his request for the most common of all the necessary ingredients. Fortunately, Harry Keeler’s standing not only at the university but within his profession was sufficient to overcome the initial uncertainty of their eventual supplier. He was chortling softly as he related the tale to his younger colleague.
“You should’ve seen Dr. Vinaprath’s face when I spoke to him via video mail.” They were in the university’s organic chemistry lab. Outside, the sun was finally setting through the disgusting winter smog that tended to envelope the greater Phoenix basin on warm winter days. “‘You are not going to do anything funny with these coca leaves, are you, Harry?’” By way of punctuation, the chemist set a handful of unprepossessing green leaves down on the workbench, close to the compact blender and centrifuge. They looked like leaves from a common elm.
Cody nodded in their direction. “There aren’t enough leaves there to make more than a couple of cups of tea. I can recommend it myself. It’s particularly good for combating soroche.”
“Excuse me?” Keeler was busy preparing the leaves for the blender, carefully measuring out the necessary volume of water to accompany them.
“Altitude sickness.” Trying to restrain his excitement, the archaeologist scanned the length and breadth of the workbench. “Where are the other ingredients?”
Keeler looked up from his work just long enough to point. “See that small beaker over there? According to the instructions you supplied me, and very precise they were, too, the coca extract is the last component of your Chachapoyan oblation.” After adding the indicated number of leaves to the specified volume of water, he switched on the blender and checked his watch. Three minutes thirty should do it, he decided.
“None of this is difficult to make up, provided you’re not squeamish about puréeing bugs.”
Cody picked up the beaker. It contained maybe half a pint of dark, viscous fluid. Cautiously, he sniffed the contents, his nose wrinkling in response. The odor was pretty foul, but not intolerable. He doubted the addition of the coca leaf extract would alter the potion’s palatability very much one way or the other.
“You still haven’t told your wife, have you?” Keeler’s tone as he shut off the blender and transferred its contents to the centrifuge was mildly accusing.
“I didn’t want to worry her. In case anything should go wrong. Which I don’t think it will.” It was dark outside now, the lights of the campus starkly illuminating walkways and entrances. Occasionally, a hard-working student or two would materialize out of the blackness and pass through the light, only to be swallowed up by the next patch of gathering night. “Besides,” Cody finished, “if she knew, she’d kick my butt.”
“I’m not so sure that wouldn’t be the proper course of action.” His mouth set, Keeler switched off the centrifuge and removed the outer container.
As Cody looked on expectantly, the older man added its contents to the oily liquid in the beaker, then placed the Pyrex container over a burner and activated the flame beneath.
“I hope this doesn’t ruin everything,” he murmured. “You said you didn’t think it was necessary to use a wood fire, in the manner of the Chachapoyans.”
The archaeologist shook his head, his attention fastened on the soft roar of blue flame beneath the beaker. “I’m convinced it’s the heat that’s important, not the source.”
Keeler nodded once. “How will you be able to tell when it’s ‘done’?”
“Color. When it comes to a boil it should be a dark green.”
“How dark?” The chemist was nothing if not precise.
Cody studied one of the last photographs in the small album he held. “We’ll just have to guess. The age of the original paint on the relief makes it impossible to tell exactly. But then, the artists may not have had the necessary pigments to depict the colors exactly, either.”
He chose to let the odorous concoction boil for several minutes before directing Keeler to remove it from the flame. Refrigeration would have made it drinkable sooner, but Cody was anxious not to employ any processes unavailable to the Chachapoyans. The gas flame had been a necessary evil, but he felt that utilizing refrigeration simply to improve the taste would have been pushing matters too far. So he and Keeler sat and chatted and did their best to ignore the beaker of liquid that sat slowly cooling on a stone slab atop the workbench.
When the fluid had been reduced to the temperature and consistency of warm cocoa, Cody hefted the beaker. Keeler stood nearby, cell phone in hand. His younger associate eyed the device uncertainly.
“Who are you going to call?”
“Nobody, I hope.” Keeler was all business now, his expression dead serious. “Emergency medical if I have to. You’re sure you don’t want to try this potion on a lab rat first?”
Having had weeks to think the matter through, Cody shook his head sharply. “The results would not necessarily be applicable to a human. I decided a long time ago that I’d have to be the lab rat.” He raised the mouth of the beaker to his lips. “Besides, why inflict something that smells like this on some poor, unsuspecting rodent.” He laughed nervously. Now that the experiment had proceeded beyond speculation to actual execution, he found himself hesitating. The longer he pondered what he was about to do, the stronger the urge became to set it aside for further study.
“You don’t look in the least Frankensteinish.” Despite the seriousness of the moment, Keeler was ultimately unable to suppress his natural good humor for more than a few moments.
It was the slight boost to his confidence Cody needed. Tipping back the beaker, he drank, swallowing hard and fast lest the taste linger too long in his mouth. It was less vile than he anticipated, but he didn’t think he’d be seeing the concoction on supermarket shelves anytime soon, squinched in between six-packs of Pepsi and Seven-Up—or even next to bright yellow bottles of citrus-flavored Inca Cola.
The bitter liquid settled in his stomach. After forcing himself to drain the contents of the beaker to the last, acrid drop, he set it carefully aside and sat down. Holding his cell phone tightly, Keeler stared across at his tall colleague, searching the younger man’s face for signs of distress.
“How do you feel?”
“Fine,” Cody replied after a moment’s deliberation.
“What do you feel?”
The archaeologist paused for another long moment before replying. “Not a damn thing.” It was too soon to tell if he was more relieved than disappointed. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
Five minutes passed in comparative silence, interrupted only by the chemist’s occasional soft-voiced inquiries as to his associate’s state of health. Other than acknowledging a slight queasiness, an obvious and unavoidable consequence of ingesting so unsavory a libation, Cody felt nothing whatsoever. The longer he went without experiencing some sort of harmful reaction, the angrier the archaeologist became.
Finally, he’d had enough. He rose from his seat. “Kelli was right. I’ve been wasting my time.” Quietly furious at himself, he searched the room. “Where’s my sweater? I’m out of here.”
“Not a proper scientific summation,” Keeler admonished him.
Though he appreciated the older man’s attempt to cheer him, Cody was in no mood to engage in strained, uplifting banter. Locating his neatly folded sweater where he had left it in a corner, he pulled it angrily down over his head, thrusting his arms through the sleeves as though taking a couple of punches at an unseen opponent.
“I appreciate your help, Harry. I really do. It’s just a damn shame it didn’t lead to anything.”
“You’re sure?” Keeler followed him to the door. “Your vision has not changed in any way? You don’t see clearly now that the rain is gone?”
In spite of the sour mood into which he was rapidly sinking, Cody had to grin. “I see clearly that I’ve spent the equivalent of more than three solid weeks of lab time obsessing on a blind alley. Maybe you have to be a Chachapoyan shaman to get the full effect of the potion. Unfortunately, the last one died about five hundred years ago, and I don’t think my pharmacist at Walgreen’s is going to be able to help me much with this.” Turning in the doorway, he shook the senior chemist’s hand. “Thank you, Professor, for your help. Not to mention your tolerance of an overeager younger colleague’s fevered imaginings.”
Keeler responded understandingly. “Hey, it might have led to something. You never know. You don’t carry out the experiment, you never find out if you can blow something up. Or cure a disease, or vulcanize rubber, or whatever else it might be that you’re after. You and your lady—Kelli, right?—must come to dinner at my house some evening. Marlis is one helluva good cook, and I know she’d like to meet you both. Call me.”
“I will.” Feeling a little better, Cody gripped the older man’s hand firmly one more time before letting go. No great discoveries had been made, no revelations had been forthcoming as the result of his hard work, but he had made a friend—no small achievement in the tempestuous world of academic social life. Kelli would like Harry Keeler too, he felt.
There was no one in the elevator, no one in the hallway, and no one loitering outside the chemistry building when he let himself out. A short walk would take him to his car, parked on one of the interior campus streets. When he told her everything that had transpired, Kelli would share his disappointment. Privately, he knew she would be relieved to hear that his preoccupation with the single panel of reliefs was at an end, and they could resume a normal life with normal office hours. He tugged at the hem of his sweater, the cool night air invigorating his stride. Even if nothing had come of his work and the resulting experiment, the procedure had been instructive. In good science, nothing was ever wasted, including a lack of results.
He was halfway to the car, striding nimbly through the west-side sculpture garden, when his traitorous stomach mercilessly and viciously ambushed him.
The sharp pain did more than snap him double: It short-circuited his legs and brought him to his knees. Eyes wide, he clutched ineffectually at his stomach with both hands. Breathing hard, he looked around, staring through shocked eyes that were rapidly blurring with tears. The pain was intense, as if he had swallowed a bucket of acupuncture needles that suddenly hit bottom. Weak as a kitten, he fell over on his side, his legs drawing up into a fetal position, his arms locked against his belly. His guts were on fire. No students, no groundskeepers, no patrolling security personnel saw him lying there among the mostly abstract and overpriced sculptures, a long drink of professor writhing spasmodically on the neatly clipped grass.
The timer-controlled sprinklers came on without warning. Lying in the damp turf, soaked through, he did battle with his own insides, uncertain as to the ultimate outcome. After what felt like hours but in reality was no more than ten minutes, the pain began to subside. He found he could breathe normally again. The irrigating water, falling like rain, aided his attitude if not his digestion.
Coca leaves, arrow frog toxin, and bug guts, he told himself as he struggled to his knees. Serves you right. Serves you damn well right. He hacked up the residue at the back of his lungs, and something black and thick spewed from his mouth. Rising slowly, he wiped his lips with the back of his wrist, not caring if he stained the sweater. Keeler would be delighted to hear that their little clandestine experiment had produced some results after all, even if their nature was such that Cody could have done without them. He felt that the same consequences could have been induced much more simply and cheaply by drinking from the carton of milk that had been sitting in the back of the small refrigerator in his office for two weeks too long.
As shaky as if he had been puking for hours, he straightened and took a hesitant step. Encouragingly, the movement did not induce the pain to return. Advancing carefully, one step at a time, he resumed walking toward the car, ready to collapse anew if his belly should try to waylay him again. It did not, but the queasiness remained, as if the ground itself had suddenly become infirm. He had never been seasick in his life, but from first-hand experiences described by others, he supposed the sensations must be very much akin to what he was presently feeling. Glancing furtively around the gently rolling, grassy sculpture garden, he was relieved there had been no one around to witness his embarrassing little nocturnal episode. As he staggered toward the street where his car was parked, his thoughts focused on home, on Kelli’s waiting embrace, on bed, but truth be told, not more than a very little on the supper that she would have waiting for him.
Food! Azahoht sensed its approach. He had come close to feeding and reproducing several times in the past month, only to be thwarted on each occasion by last-minute changes in the paths of his intended quarry. But this one was very near, and moving unsteadily. It might well need to rest against something solid for support, to steady itself, and Azahoht’s dwelling was as solid as any object in the vicinity. Let the food make but casual contact, and feeding could begin immediately. Azaholt waited expectantly as he monitored the erratic course of the food. Come closer, he thought hungrily. That’s right. This way, not that. Just a little closer. There, that left hand! Stretch it out, reach for my abode, touch it. Make contact. Eagerly, he extended a portion of himself in the direction of the food.
Something happened then that was so extraordinary, Azahoht could scarce believe it. It was unprecedented in his experience, in the entire long course of his existence. He knew that such a thing was possible from contact with others of his kind, but he had never actually observed the phenomenon himself. Now that it happened, involving him directly, he was too stunned to know how to react. He could only draw back into his dwelling in shock. It was impossible, it was astounding, it defied anything and everything in his far-ranging experience. It was as if the very fabric of existence had been suddenly turned inside out. Inconceivable though it might be, there was no mistaking what happened. None whatsoever.
The food saw him.