Elixir

PROLOGUE

There's no good way to die. But this was as bad as it gets.

Christopher Bacon raised the pistol at a spot in the bush, not certain if anybody was there or if it was all in his mind. What Iwati called "bush bugaboo"-when the tangle of green closed in, and shadows pulsed and shifted like some stalking beast. When mosquitoes buzzed to the core of your brain. And fatigue crossed with claustrophobia. And some damn juju flower filled the air with a cloying stench.

But Chris could sense movement-some rustling behind that black curtain of vines, whispers hovering at the threshold of awareness. He could see nothing in the dark-just shadows in the firelight. And the only sound was the electric buzz of insects and tree frogs-as if something was about to happen.

The rain had stopped, but the air was gluey. And he was wet-his shirt plastered to his chest, his pants chafing his legs, his toes gummy in his boots. Wet as he had been for two weeks even when it wasn't raining. So wet that his face felt like an aspic and the soles of his feet were covered with dead white skin that he could scrape off with his fingernails. The ground was a ripe-rot mud. And everything dripped. The rainforest always dripped. A relentless green dripping. And it filled his head.

Maybe Iwati was right: Thirteen nights had unhinged him, reduced him to spikes of raw nerves, producing phantoms out of nothing.

Maybe.

But every instinct said he was not alone, that he was being watched-that just beyond those vines lurked a hungry presence that at any second would explode into the light and gut him.

For two days he had felt they were being stalked, ever since Iwati and five porters had led Chris into this remote region of the Sepik beyond the West Irian border-a tabu zone that even the Wanebabi tribe had warned them to avoid. But despite his porters' protests, Iwati had insisted on this side trip. So they hacked their way through jungle as dense as fur to this lake under the ancient cone of the Omafeki volcano-and all for that juju flower, the one that stank of apples and rotten flesh. And ever since, they had been on alert, certain that every errant sound was the Okamolu-the elusive highland tribe who stalked intruders with spears and arrows and a craving for "long pig."

But Iwati was unfazed, puffing his pipe and saying it was just tree kangaroos or bush rats. "Nothing to worry about, my friend. Nobody else here." Chris took refuge in the fact that his old schoolboy chum was shaman of the Tifalmin people and knew these parts. Tree kangaroos, Chris told himself-and an active imagination.

And where the hell was Iwati? While Chris had made a fire, Iwati led his men to a clearing to set up camp. But that was just down the trail. He had been gone for more than half an hour.

Chris crouched behind a fallen tree, the pistol gripped in both hands, ready to blast. Behind him the volcano brooded against the fiery sunset. It was nearly night.

"Iwati!"

No answer, but Chris's voice passed through the bush like a gunshot, exciting critters to a razor-edged chitter.

Invisible winged things were eating him alive. His eyes, ears, and lips were swollen, and some tiny boring beetles had gotten inside his boots and filled his feet with poison. During the day he had slathered himself with a repellent Iwati concocted of justica root and pigfat. But his face had been wiped clean, and the stuff was in Iwati's bag. Dozens of creatures in the Papuan bush were capable of killing a man-from black mambas to wild boars to eighteen-foot crocodiles. But it was the goddamn bugs that reduced you to lunacy. Unseen things that ate your blood and flesh. And that syrupy stench clogging his throat.

Suddenly a nasty thought rose up: What if Okamolus had killed Iwati? A sudden blitz of arrows, and Iwati and his men would be dead without commotion.

Or what if the porters had mutinied? They had been jumpy since leaving Wanebabi. What if they had put a knife in Iwati's back and fled for the river? Why not? The Okamolu's reputation for savagery was legendary. Chris remembered the war story of a Japanese patrol that had hacked its way out here to coerce locals into building an airstrip and had found themselves surrounded by Okamolu warriors. After a standoff of spears and automatic rifles, the Japanese commander in a gesture of truce dropped his rifle. Following cue, the Okamolu leader stuck his spear into the ground. The crisis was over, so it seemed. That night all but one of the nine men had their throats cut in their sleep and ended up the next day headless and laid out like pigs on mumu fires with yams and tubers. The final memory of the sole survivor was of children gnawing on a charred leg.

"Iwati!"

Still nothing.

Chris pressed himself against the tree, certain that if he survived the night he'd be feverish with malaria by dawn. Bastards! He wished they'd break the spell and get it over with. He had brought the gun for crocs, not a shootout with cannibals. Even if he could blast his way out, he'd never make it to the river on his own. Either he'd get lost or stumble into a pool of quick mud.

Then it happened. The tangle of vines slowly parted.

Chris's finger hummed on the trigger. Somebody was moving toward him. No trick of light. No insulin low. No hallucination. The vines were parting. The standoff was about to break. Showdown.

At the last moment, the image of Wendy rocking their baby son Ricky filled Chris Bacon's mind. And the thought: This is my death.

It had begun thirteen days ago. They had trekked out from the Tifalmin village gathering flora samples to take back to the States. Chris was a medicinal chemist working for Darby Pharmaceuticals, a Boston laboratory pioneering the synthesis of folk medicines. With the discovery that alkaloids from Catharantus roseus shrunk tumors from Hodgkin's disease, Darby had entered a race with other commercial labs, convinced that miracle drugs grew on trees. Specifically, Chris was testing for plant steroids capable of conversion to animal steroids for contraceptive purposes. Darby's goal was to produce the world's first male birth-control pill-a goal that, once realized, would rocket company stock to high heaven.

Chris Bacon was the Darby point man because he was their premier researcher and because he knew the Papuan bush. The son of the American ambassador to Australia in the late 1950s, Chris had attended Boys' Royal Academy in Port Moresby where at age fourteen he met Iwati, one of the few highland youths to attend the Academy. In 1943, Iwati's village had helped Australian-American forces build the airstrip near Tifalmin village, giving the Allies an interior foothold and access to the chincona tree whose bark was used to produce quinine, the most effective treatment for malaria. It was the Tifalmin's first contact with men with white skin and steel-a contact that resulted in Iwati growing up speaking English. And because he was bright, an Australian missionary group sponsored his education. Both diabetics, they met at the school's infirmary to have their blood sugar monitored and to receive insulin. Over the four years Chris and Iwati became friends-a relationship cemented forever during their last summer when Chris saved Iwati's life. Ironically, the boy was raised on the banks of the Sepik River but had never learned to swim-a fact Chris discovered when another boy pushed him into the deep end of a pool. Iwati went down like a rock and would have drowned had it not been for Chris.

Like his father before him, Iwati was the Tifalmin medicine man. In spite of the juju trinkets and mumbo-jumbo, he was thoroughly westernized, wearing Bermuda shorts, a Harvard T-shirt, and a new Bulova watch Chris had brought, while his men trudged through the bush naked but for penis gourds. Like his father, Iwati had a genius for telling which plants healed and which killed-a genius that brought Chris halfway around the globe. Iwati had a plant for every ailment-fevers, toothaches, ulcers, snakebites, lesions, malaria, and syphilis. And they pointed to the future of western world medicine.

For the third time in two years, Darby had sent Chris packing. But this time he managed to bring company money to build a school in the Tifalmin village. A long-term investment in shaman magic. And now it was to end in spears and arrows.

Chris cocked the gun and held his breath.

No trick of the light. No paranoid delusion. A figure took form out of the clotted shadows in the vines.

"Come out, you son-of-a-bitch!" Chris said.

The figure stopped, and for a moment the jungle turned to still life.

Suddenly the silence shattered in shrieks from all directions as the figure came rushing down on Chris. On reflex he shot and didn't stop until all six chambers of the Colt were empty and he was clicking at a naked body tied at the feet by vines and twisting in the air.

From the shoulder scarification marks, he recognized Maku, one of the porters. His chest had been shot open by the bullets, but he was already dead. His head was missing.

In horror Chris watched the body swing until it came to rest just feet away. He tore bullets off his belt to reload when a dozen Okamolu warriors materialized from the shadows, forming a circle around him, and jabbing the air with spears. Before Chris could reload, a little wrinkled man came up to him. He was naked like the rest but for a long white plume through his nose, a neckband crescent, and a headdress of feathers. His face was striped with white paint. The juju man.

In his hand was a spear with Maku's head still dripping blood. He approached Chris, jabbering in a tongue he didn't recognize. Chris tried to concentrate on slipping rounds into the chambers, but the juju man pushed Maku's head into his face. Black flies swarmed around it. He could smell the blood. Dark warm fluids dripped onto his shoes, making his gorge rise.

The juju man's eyes were wild and his mouth was bright red from chewing betel nuts. Every few seconds he would spit thick wads of red, as if he'd removed the head with his teeth. With his free hand he touched Chris's face and arms as if testing for paint. He yelled something, and his men mumbled back like a chorus. One of them shouted something angry, and the others agreed. It sounded like a death warrant. At once they began to chant and jab the air with their weapons again. As the old man backed away for clear shots, a ululating howl stunned the spears in place.

From the bush stepped a large man wearing a skirt of laplap grass and an elaborate bird-of-paradise headdress. What gave him a particularly fearsome appearance was the bright yellow face paint and red circled eyes. Instead of the shaman necklace of shells he wore a cord studded with crocodile teeth and weighted by a shrunken human head.

In perfect English he said, "They won't harm you."

Iwati.

He walked past Chris to the juju man and said something in a clear, even voice. Chris didn't understand a word, but the effect was immediate. The old man mumbled something, and the warriors lowered their weapons. Then, incredibly, they bobbed their heads in supplication.

Chris quickly loaded his gun. "You won't need that," Iwati said.

"Christ, man, look what they did." Maku's carcass dangled just feet away, blood still pouring from the neck hole.

Iwati nodded. "They won't harm you."

It wasn't just his appearance that held Chris. It was the Okamolu's reaction. They looked more like frightened schoolboys than notorious flesh-eaters.

"How come they're so scared? They've seen white men before."

Iwati did not answer.

"What do they want?"

"Just curious." Then Iwati said something in bush tongue.

The juju man muttered something to his men. He was dismissing them, and they looked grateful to leave. They turned around, then filed back into the black tangle the way they came. Before disappearing, each one looked back. And Chris could swear that what he saw in their faces was raw fear.

They buried the remains of Maku in a clearing and built a fire on the site to keep away scavengers. While the porters were back at camp, Iwati led Chris to the lake. The water looked like black glass. Silhouetted against the afterglow of the sun was the ancient Omafeki cone. A refreshing breeze had picked up, relieving the air of the nauseating sweetness. From under some mats of palms Iwati pushed out a small log canoe.

"Where're we going?"

Iwati pointed over the water. In the dim light, Chris could see a small island, maybe a quarter mile off shore. "What's out there?" he asked. Iwati didn't answer.

Chris squatted in front while Iwati paddled toward the island, guided by the moonlight. The closer they got, the more intense the sickening odor became. They pulled up at a small clearing surrounded by trees festooned with long vines. Chris made a move to get out when Iwati stopped him. From his sack he removed the carcass of a small tree kangaroo and hurled it high toward shore. In the moonlight Chris watched it arch to where the flowers hung. A split second before it splashed down, something huge exploded from the depths and caught it. Some violent thrashing and the rolling flash of underbelly; then it disappeared into the black. A massive crocodile.

"He waits for birds," Iwati said.

The animal surfaced in the distance, its tail etching a sinuous wake in the moonlight as it glided away like some ancient sentinel having collected his fee.

They pulled ashore, and sometime later they settled by a fire on a bluff above the water. Iwati put a bundle of banu sticks in the flames to keep mosquitoes away. To Chris's face he applied a poultice of piper leaves and the latex of mammea tree fruit which reduced the swelling and sting. Then he settled back and puffed his old briarwood pipe, acting strangely remote-probably from that weed he was smoking, Chris guessed.

The ride had calmed Chris, though he was still wondering why they were out here. Iwati had removed his headdress but not the shrunken head from his neck. The thing was repulsive, more so than a freshly severed one. This obscene parody was somebody's art. Iwati had sworn that his people had long ago given up cannibalism and headhunting-that only a few remote tribes like the Okamolu still maintained the practice in the belief that by consuming their enemy's flesh they absorbed his life forces.

Chris eyed the talisman, thinking how much he didn't know about Iwati. Yes, they'd been childhood pals, but twenty jungle years had separated them. Iwati could have been a physician practicing in Port Moresby or Sydney had he pursued his education, but he had chosen instead to return to the Stone Age-to the time-frozen ways of his ancestors, wearing grass skirts and shrunken heads instead of surgeon's white and stethoscope, and treating people with ground beetles and plant pastes instead of penicillin. No, much more than two decades had separated them: millennia. In his mind Chris saw Iwati hunched over the head, meticulously scooping out the eyes and picking brain matter from the sockets, crushing the skull and jawbones to be removed in pieces, stitching closed the eyelids and mouth with strips of wallaby gut, basting the skin sac with pigfat, and filling the sac with hot sand until it was cured and tanned and shrunk into that obscene little monkey face and shiny hair to be worn around his neck like a school ring.

"Iwati, what happened back there? Those men were spooked, and I think you know why."

Iwati puffed without response. Nor did he explain his shaman attire which, Chris understood, had been reserved for village rituals and intertribal sing-sings. But Iwati had brought it on the expedition.

"I asked you a question," Chris insisted. "You saved my life, but I'm not sure how."

Nothing.

"Then tell me why in God's name you dragged me all the way out here, man. I've got to leave the country in five days, and it's going to take us two just to reach the river, and two more to get to the coast." And then it was another four days of stop-and-go flights before he made it back to the clean well-lit world of Boston. "And while you're at it, why in hell are we out here and not back at camp? And by the way, what's that stink?"

From the fire Iwati relit his pipe. "Yes."

"Yes, what?"

"Yes, I'll explain to you. But you must promise not to tell anyone, my friend." Iwati kept his voice low even though his men were back at camp across the water, and none spoke English.

"Okay."

"Swear on your soul."

Chris began to smile at the silly old schoolboy ritual, but Iwati was dead serious. "I swear on my soul."

"Swear on your grandmother's soul."

"I swear on my grandmother's soul."

"Swear on the Queen's soul."

"I swear on the Queen's soul."

"Swear on the soul of Jesus."

"For godsakes, man, stop playing games."

"Swear it!" Iwati's eyes were intense.

"Okay, I swear on the soul of Jesus."

Iwati hadn't forgotten the order-the oath they had shared as kids sneaking cigarettes. But there was nothing in Iwati's face that said he was playing games.

When he was satisfied he uttered a single word: "Tabukari."

"Tabu what?"

"Tabukari."

Iwati walked over to a tree growing up from the water's edge. Hanging like pythons were thick vines clustered with small white flowers-the source of the sickeningly sweet air. He cut off a length of vine and gave it to Chris. "Tabukari. Special flower."

In the firelight the petals were thick and white, the interior funneling into a bloodspot. It was some kind of orchid, but unlike any other Chris had seen. The fleshy petals and bloodspot gave it a sensual, almost animal quality. But most unusual was the odor. From a distance it was a fruity perfume, but up close the sweetness yielded to a nauseating pungency-apples undercut by the stench of rotten flesh. What Eve passed on to Adam, Chris would later tell himself.

"The smell brings insects," Iwati said. "And the insects bring water birds."

"Which explains the croc."

"Yes. They come for the birds. This is the only place tabukari grows in the whole bush."

Chris was not a botanist, but he was certain its uniqueness had to do with the locale: the volcanic ash lacing the soil, the mineral-rich lake, the foggy elevation, and, of course, the rain forest. "What's so special about it?"

For the first time all evening Iwati smiled. "Everything." But he wouldn't elaborate.

"How do you use it?"

Iwati blew a cloud of smoke toward him. He'd been smoking the flower all along. "Sometimes I make tea. Sometimes put it in yam mash. But just for the medicine man. You want to try?"

"No."

A four-day side trip through a jungle full of mosquitoes, cannibals, and Godzilla crocs just to view Iwati's own private dope garden. Chris was tired and filthy and anxious to get back to camp and curl up in his cot. He couldn't wait to get back to Boston where the air was cool and dry, where he could eat a good steak and take a long hot bath without worrying about leeches and crocodiles. Where he could finally dry out. Where he could snuggle up against Wendy and Ricky and not fight off millipedes. Iwati had let him down.

"The name means 'forbidden flower of long day.'"

It struck Chris as a silly name, but he didn't say that. "And, I suppose, it makes you feel good."

"Yes."

"Well, so does scotch-and you don't have to cut through half the bloody bush."

"No, no, not like that." Then he added, "It's dangerous. Very addictive."

Probably a local species of coca, Chris guessed. "I see."

"No, you don't see. Addictive to the soul," he said and tapped his chest. "More dangerous than all your powders. Why it's called tabu." Iwati held up the vine and whispered, "Never grow old."

"Beg pardon?"

"Never grow old."

For a long moment the words hung in the air. Chris stared across the circle of embers at Iwati, whose eyes had deepened with shadows and looked like holes in his skull.

"I don't understand."

Iwati nodded. More silence.

But the ground seemed to shift slightly, as if a ripple of awareness had run through the earth and back. "You're saying this flower… prolongs life?"

"Yes."

"How long?"

"Long long."

"So, what has it done for you?"

He smiled. "I'm still here."

Through his grin shone teeth brown from years of smoking the stuff. But how many years? Twenty years ago in school Chris was sixteen, and he had assumed Iwati was about the same. The interim hadn't changed him much, though it was hard to tell with Papuans. Their skin was oily and they smeared themselves with vegetable pastes and mud for protection against the sun and insects. And being slender, Iwati could pass for a teenager.

"So, how old are you supposed to be?"

Iwati shook his head.

"You're not going to tell me that either?"

"I don't know how old."

Bush people lived by the movement of the sun; they took note of the years. Besides, Iwati loved watches. "How can you not know how old you are, man?"

"I was born before the missionaries come."

That made sense. "The Red Cross missionaries were here during the war." Which meant he was born sometime in the early forties.

"Not Red Cross missionaries," Iwati said. "The Marists."

A cold rash ran up Chris's back. "Marists? That was 1857."

"Yes."

"That's impossible! That would make you at least… a hundred and twenty-three." He started to laugh but the intensity in Iwati's eyes stopped him. "That's impossible. You can't be more than forty."

Iwati smiled indulgently. "I am. Much much more."

"You can't be that old, Iwati. Our biology doesn't allow it."

"Your biology."

"Iwati, that's ridiculous." He wanted to say he was just trying to spook him, that for four years they had shared the same rational world of science-but suddenly that seemed so remote. So did Iwati.

"I was fifteen when I learned the tabukari power from my father."

"And when was he born?"

"Nobody knows. Sometime before the Contact."

"The Contact? Jesus, man, what kind of fool do you take me for? You're talking the seventeenth century."

Iwati nodded.

"And what happened to him?"

"The Portuguese killed him. The expedition led by Antonio d'Orbo."

Antonio d'Orbo was the first recorded white man to voyage up the Sepik in the middle of the last century, Chris recalled. Only a handful of his men made it back to tell.

"You don't believe me," Iwati said.

"Frankly, not a word."

Iwati stared at him for a moment, turning something over in his head. Then he removed the shrunken head from his neck and held it out to him. "Look. Look at it."

Repulsive as it was, Chris studied it in the firelight. The face was small and shriveled, its skin a darkened leather, the lips and eyelids stitched shut. He had seen several others in museums, but there was something distinctly different about this one. And for a moment he couldn't place it. Then it struck him: the hair… Unlike all the others, this was not black but a light brown, and not kinky but silky straight. Caucasian. The head had belonged to a westerner. Iwati lifted the plait, exposing one ear. It looked like a black apricot except for the lobe which was looped with metal and miked through a hole to a gold coin. The inscriptions were worn down some, but he could make out the Roman letters-the word Anno Dei and the Arabic numbers.

"It says 1866," Chris said. "What does that prove?"

"It's him."

"Who?"

"Antonio d'Orbo."

"Iwati, what the hell are you telling me?" But he did not answer. Just stared. "You're saying you did this-you killed Antonio d'Orbo and shrunk his head?"

"He killed my father."

Chris threw his hands into the air, shaking his head. "Sorry, my friend, but I don't believe you. None of it." He stood up and made a move to go. "Thanks for the bedtime story, but now I'd like to get some sleep."

Iwati rose. "Christopher, listen to me. I am telling you the truth. I swear it." Nothing in Iwati's manner betrayed his words. "I owe you for saving my life."

Chris stared into Iwati's eyes, but they held no guile. Suddenly the image of the Okamolu warriors flashed across Chris's mind. And the little juju man. They believed it.

They believed it!

Like his ears suddenly clearing, things began to make weird, terrifying sense. It wasn't Chris's skin that had reduced the Okamolu to frightened boys. They had seen white men before, probably had even eaten a few. Nor was it the gun. It was Iwati who had spooked them. Iwati! They weren't sure it was he in T-shirt, shorts, and sunglasses-not until he had changed into his ceremonial headdress and face paint and shrunken head. The declaration of his juju identity. Not just another tribal shaman, but Iwati of the secret tabukari magic. Maybe, too, it was the reason the porters regarded him as a god. The reason they had trudged for two weeks even into tabu land of flesh-eaters. The reason their own heads were still on their shoulders and not on Okamolu spears.

To their minds Iwati was deathless.

Iwati nodded as if reading Chris's mind. Then he shrugged and slipped the head back around his neck. "Maybe it's best, my friend," he said and tossed the flowered vine onto the fire.

The flames sputtered. But before they could claim the braid of small white blossoms, Chris's hand flew into the fire and snatched it away.