On the Edge A Novel Read Free Page A

into the dimensions beyond his busy intellect. Psychedelics cut through the analytic tic which was currently wasting her time, and took her into the zone where meaning was immanent, tangible and numinous. Unfortunately the mescalin and the magic mushrooms seemed to have the opposite effect on Jean-Paul.
    The worst part was what had happened afterwards. Somewhere below the plane Jean-Paul was galloping across the wastes of a North Dakota reservation pretending to be a Lakoda brave, something even the Lakoda had trouble doing. He was living in one of those Third World rubbish dumps which the Federal government had offered the Native Americans, like a mugger tossing a subway token at his bleeding victim. He had even written to the passport authorities in France to say that he wanted to change his name to Little Elk. They had not complied.
    It was no use blaming their guide, Robert, he was just a suburban kid from Sausalito who thought he was the reincarnation of a Hopi elder. In any case he said that the Hopis came ‘originally’ from Tibet, so he had all the options covered.
    In the end she blamed herself for giving Jean-Paul the psychedelics. He had been enthusiastic, of course, as an anthropologist. He had read Huxley and Leary and so forth; he’d done a lot of reading in his life, he just hadn’t done much else.
    Jean-Paul had even started lecturing her on the value and function of psychedelics in primitive and developed societies, on their way from Moab to Canyonlands in their Cherokee four-wheel drive – no doubt Robert would have hired a Hopi four-wheel drive had there been one, although he had said that he ‘honoured the Cherokee Nation’ when she had made a mild joke to that effect.
    With her eyes still closed and her arms pressed to her sides, out of range of Caliban, Crystal reluctantly replayed the movie of her trip with Jean-Paul. She had gone over it before, but like a tongue nagging at a fragment of trapped food, her memory returned again and again to those events in the hope of dislodging the truth of what had happened.
    Almost immediately Crystal’s thoughts were interrupted by another violent nudge from her neighbour. Caliban had just had a particularly vigorous tug at his jeans. She opened her eyes angrily and scowled at his apparently unconcerned profile. Part of her was relieved to be interrupted. Perhaps she had made him nudge her.
    ‘I’m sorry to be so moving in my seat,’ said her neighbour in broken English.
    He wasn’t a hillbilly at all, he was a Swede or a German.
    ‘I have, um, problem with the skin. I come to California for doctors.’
    ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry,’ said Crystal, as much in apology as sympathy. ‘I hope you get the help you need.’
    ‘Thank you,’ he smiled. Really, he had very nice eyes, and she seemed to see in them a glint of pained intelligence, showing that he’d picked up what she’d been thinking about him.
    What a teaching, thought Crystal, as the plane landed at San Francisco airport. ‘What a teaching,’ she murmured in the baggage-claim area. What an incredible teaching, she mused contentedly in the taxi, nodding her head in gratitude, incredulity and embarrassment.
    *   *   *
    Brooke had relaxed a little about her dinner party. Moses was taking the herb tea around, and everyone was evidently having a marvellous time. They were mostly a little drunk or high and agreeing with each other about things they already knew they agreed about, and planning fresh opportunities to discuss saving the world at each other’s seminars, conferences, workshops and performances. Brooke was talking to Dave, the marine biologist. She had just delivered her list of plagues bursting from their ‘natural reservoirs’ – she was very proud of that phrase – on to the human scene. Unfortunately, with so many new names to remember, she had included the Irish environmentalist.
    ‘Isn’t it dreadful about Ebola, Marburg and O’Hara?’ she had said, shaking her head