SIX

Gina hadn't actually finished giving all her examples of "places that might be part of this pattern" when Ray arrived at the building, but she had gone on for a half hour or more. So, I was kind of relieved by the buzz for the door - it gave me an excuse to pause the avalanche, go down and meet him.

"Hey, Ray, what's new?"

"Your stuff.  It's a lot of things, but I'd bet money that the important one is an alkaloid."

"Alkaloid - like, morphine, codine?"

"Also like atropine, caffiene, quinine, lots of lovely things.  But I'm not sure which one this is, yet.  Most come from plant; opium poppies have a load of...  Hell, man, what happened?" This last, because I'd opened the door to my apartment, and the mess was visible.  Files, boxes, pizza, coffee cups; all the residue of our week-long research bender.

"Hello, Joe!  Whaddaya know?" Gina called from inside.

"I know plenty.  You part of all this?" Ray returned, gesturing with a swepping arm as he kicked off his shoes.

"I am.  This is me, pretty much.  Coffee?" She held up the pot.

"Hit me." he replied, moving to the middle of the room, and turning to survey the damages.

Stepping past his to the table, I gestured to a chair for him - "Tell her about the alkaloid"

Apparently happy to be of service, Ray laid out the basics.  Alkaloids as a chemical family, some basic stuff about them, and on just how many different drugs are ultimately alkaloids at base - quite a few, and not all of them narcotic.  All the usual drug dangers generally applied to them; addiction, overdose, impurities, incompatibilities and overlapping effects with other medications, the works.

Gina was grinning by the end. "So, poppies.  Specifically - papaver aculeatum."  Shuffling papers on the table, she opened up a big flower reference guide.  In it, she'd tucked one of the sheets from the ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS baggie, which pictured a flower.  Facing that was a picture of an orange flower, with all the same details, labelled as papaver aculeatum, the South African Poppy.

Gina leaned back from it.  "There's a whole bunch of distillation processes and plants in the originals - Uh, the stuff that was being researched; what all these files here are about.  I couldn't match up which plant went with which drug number.  But if a poppy fits the bill on B-3...   On the stuff Ben gave you?  Then this is the one."

"So.  You figure you can make more of whatever it is?  Come to mention, what the hell is it?  I mean, this is government stuff, right?." Ray asked.

Now it was Gina's turn to unload.  She didn't pull the punch.  Government trials, ancient drug, shared dreams, her trip the night before; she laid it all out.  Later, she told me that her impression had been that Ray had already done the big thing we actually needed most.  No reason not to scare him off - and if he didn't scare, then he could stick. She finished off by telling us that she'd already ordered seeds for the poppies, which were in the mail.  There was also a greenhouse on the other side of town that might have a few.

He didn't scare.  He pulled out his car keys, and dangled them "So, road trip?  Today, flowers, a little cooking, tonight, sleepytime with crazy incense?"

Gina let out a little pffft at his keys.  "We'll take the Jeep."

I had to jump in "Whoa.  Hold on.  Nobody's smoking anything, tonight.  Tonight, Gina sees if she can dream her way into your head, or mine, or both, without anything to help.  Plus, we need to get one of those that actually works, and some other stuff; if we're gonna do it, we're gonna do it right.", gesturing to the EEG/EKG meter.

Ray nodded, sharply.