Nate wiped his mouth. "Hypersalivation . . . an alkaloid hallucinogen:" "What did you see?" Kouwe asked.
Nate shook his head. A mistake. The headache flared worse. "How
long have I been out?"
"About ten minutes," the professor said.
"Ten minutes?" It had felt like hours, if not days.
"What happened?"
"I think I was just shown the cure to the disease," Nate said.
Kouwe's eyes widened. "What?"
Nate explained what he saw. "From the dream, it's clear that the nuts of this tree are vital to the health of the humans in the tribe. The animals don't need it, but people do:"
Kouwe nodded, his eyes narrowed as he digested what was said. "So it's the nut pods:" The professor pondered a bit longer, then spoke slowly. "From your father's research, we know the tree's sap is full of mutating proteins-prions with the ability to enhance each species it encounters, making them better protectors of the tree. But such a boon must come with a high cost. The tree doesn't want its children to abandon it, so it built a fail-safe into its enhancements. Animals are probably given some instinct to remain in the area, something to do with territoriality, something that can be manipulated as needed, like the powders used with the locusts and piranhas. But humans, with our intellect, need firmer bonds to bind us to the tree. The humans must eat from the fruit on a regular basis to keep the mutating prions in check. The milk of the nut must contain some form of an antiprion, something that suppresses the virulent form of the disease:"
Anna looked sick. "So the Ban-ali have not stayed here out of obligation, but enslavement"
Kouwe rubbed his temples. "Ban-yi. Slave. The term was not an exaggeration. Once exposed to the prions, you can't leave or you'll die. Without the fruit, the prion reverts to its virulent form and attacks the immune system, triggering deadly fevers or riotous cancers:"
"Jekyll and Hyde," Nate mumbled.
Kouwe and Anna glanced to him.
Nate explained, "It's like what Kelly reported about the nature of prions. In one form, they're benign, but they can also bend into a new shape and become virulent, like mad cow disease:"
Kouwe nodded. "The nut milk must keep the prion suppressed in the beneficial form . . . but once you stop using the milk, it attacks, killing the host and spreading to everyone the host encounters. This again would serve the tree's end. Clearly the tree wants to keep its privacy. If someone flees, anyone the escapee encounters would sicken and die, leaving a trail of death:"
"With no one left to tell the tale," Nate said.
"Exactly"
Nate felt well enough to try to stand. Kouwe helped him up. "But the bigger question is why I dreamed up the answer in the first place. Was it just my own subconscious working out the problem, unfettered by the hallucinogenic drug? Or did the shaman communicate it to me somehow..
some form of drug-induced telepathy?"
Kouwe's face tightened. "No," he said firmly and pointed to the ham mock. "It wasn't the shaman:"
The Indian lay in his hammock, staring up at the ceiling. Blood dripped from both his nostrils. He was not breathing. Dakii knelt beside his leader, head bowed.
"He died immediately. A massive stroke from the look of it." Kouwe glanced to Nate. "Whatever you experienced didn't come from the shaman:"
Nate found it hard to think. His brain felt two sizes too big for his skull. "Then it must have been my subconscious," he said. "When I first saw the pods, I remember thinking that the nuts looked like the fruiting bodies of Uncaria tomentosa. Better known as cat's claw. Indians use it against viruses, bacteria, and sometimes tumors. But I didn't make the correlation until now. Maybe the drug helped my subconscious make the intuitive leap:"
"You could be right," Kouwe said.
Nate heard the hesitation in the professor's voice. "What else could it be?"
Kouwe frowned. "I talked with Dakii while you were drugged out. The ali ne Yagga powder comes from the root of this tree. Desiccated and powdered root fiber."
So.
"So maybe what you dreamed wasn't your subconscious. Maybe it was some type of prerecorded message from the tree itself. An instruction manual, so to speak: Consume the fruit of the tree and you will stay healthy. A simple message:"
"You can't be serious."
"Considering the setup in this valley-mutated species, regenerating limbs, humans enslaved in service to a plant-I wouldn't put anything beyond this tree's abilities:'
Nate shook his head.
Anna frowned. "The professor may have a point. I can't even imagine how this tree is able to produce prions specific to the DNA of so many different species. That alone is miraculous. How did it learn? Where did the tree even get genetic material to learn from?"
Kouwe waved an arm around the room. "This tree traces its roots
back to the Paleozoic era, when the land was just plants. Its ancestors must have been around as land animals first evolved, and rather than competing, it incorporated these new species into its own life cycle, like the Amazon's ant tree does today."