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they had been passing around or just the way people laughed hereabouts.
Several stood unsteadily. One unfolded himself to a greater height than the
rest. Annja could now see his narrow torso was noticeably paler than the other
men s. He took a shirt from a peg where it hung, pulled it on as he turned and
came unsteadily down the wooden stairs to the ground.
He had dark brown receding hair, sharply handsome features behind a neat
beard, blue eyes that under other circumstances might have pierced but were
now notably muddy. He swayed on reaching the level earth, packed hard by many
bare feet since the last rain. He noticed the Western women and walked toward
them with immense dignity.
 Ladies, he said. Then he turned aside, doubled over and vomited into the
black dirt.
 SO, ANNJA SAID, WALKING along the grassy bank beside a stream black with
tannin from decomposing plants,  fill me in a bit on your background, if you
will.
She kept a part of her consciousness cocked for some of Southeast Asia s many
noted species of venomous serpents. She d heard they could get pretty
aggressive.
For a man who d been barfing not fifteen minutes before, and still wore his
white shirt with tan vertical stripes open over a washboard chest, Dr. Philip
Kennedy walked beside her with great dignity. It spoke well for his presence
of mind, anyway, Annja thought.
 I was born in a whitebread suburb north of Boston, he said.  My father was a
dentist. My mother was a terribly socially conscious housewife.
For a man who wore his leftist political views on his sleeves, and not
infrequently let them fall off onto his academic publications, he didn t seem
respectful of his mother s liberal activism, or so it seemed to Annja. She had
researched him online in her hotel room before heading out before dawn on the
hair-raising bus ride. She wanted to hear his account in his own words, and
make sure it squared with his published bio. Also she had some questions.
Maybe his famed disdain for all things Western was coming out. Or maybe he was
working through some other issues, she thought.
 I got an academic scholarship to Harvard a terrible waste of resources, given
my upper-middle-class background. Typical. My undergrad was in Southeast Asian
social anthropology through the East Asia center. I received my Ph.D. from the
University of Hawaii.
 I understand you spent some time here in Southeast Asia as an undergrad, she
said. He must have known Patty Ruhle would have told Annja something about
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
him. They had left the red-haired woman snapping photos of the village. To
keep her hand in, she said and also because there was no telling what a
professional with her contacts could sell somewhere along the line. Annja was
not going to lie to him and pretend she hadn t looked him up. But she wasn t
going to volunteer it, either.
Philip nodded. His beard was streaked gray down both sides. His temples were
also silvered. The gray and even the way his hair was getting a little thin to
the sides of his forehead only made him look distinguished. Annja couldn t see
Kennedy coloring his hair or using any of those baldness cures they advertised
on television. She suspected the very fierceness of his disdain for such
vanities was part of an attitudinal package that helped him pull the whole
thing off.
He was actually a fairly handsome man in a weather-beaten way.
 I did, he said.  In fact I worked with tribes in the very area of Burma you
say you re interested in. I became fascinated with the region because of an
early interest in Hinduism and Buddhism.
What Annja had read indicated he had established a reputation as an utterly
intrepid field researcher with a gift for the difficult Thai family of
languages spoken throughout Thailand and Burma. He had also made a name for
himself for the ease with which he won the confidence of tribesfolk. Centuries
of threats and oppression by heavy-handed neighbors, European colonialists and
the Japanese, followed in many places by virtually continuous guerrilla
warfare at varying levels of intensity, had given little reason to trust
outsiders of any flavor.
 That s good, she said.  So, uh, what was going on back there with the
chanting and the puking?
 Oh, we were simply sharing a local entheogen.
 A what? Annja asked.
 It s a psychoactive compound used in shamanic rituals. This one s an alkaloid
derived from plants. Probably fly agaric.
That made her miss a step.  Fly agaric? You mean 
 Amanita muscaria, yes. The mushroom. It s the most common source for such
compounds. Unfortunately, various other herbs used in the decoction tend to
produce a marked emetic effect. That accounts for what you termed the puking.
As for the rest 
He shrugged.  In this case what you witnessed was nothing quite so formal as
shamanic ritual. Merely a means of bonding and socializing.
 I see, she said.  So, how did you get interested in ethnobotany?
He looked at her with a glint in his eyes.  You sound skeptical. I assure you
it s a highly legitimate field.
 All right, she said neutrally.
 I encountered entheogen use with some frequency during my undergraduate work
on the Shan Plateau in Burma, he said.
 And since then I ve both actively researched entheogenic compounds and their
uses, and employed them myself as an aid to harmonizing with and understanding
indigenous cultures.
 Great, Annja said.  But can you keep a lid on it?
He stopped with a low-hanging limb endangering an unruly cowlick.  What do you
mean?
 If you sign on with this expedition I need you focused and on track, she
said.  That means no getting stoned on duty.
She had little enough against recreational chemistry if you screened out the
dope smokers and the drinkers, you d pretty well screen out field
archaeologists and anthropologists.
He scowled at her in outrage.  I m not talking about recreation here. I engage
in serious research!
She nodded.  I m sure you do. I just can t have you engaged in research [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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