“What is that strange, sickly-sweet odor?” asked Ryana, sniffing the air.
“Bellaweed,” replied Valsavis with a grimace. Ryana glanced at him with surprise. “But I have seen bellaweed before,” she said. “It is a small, spreading desert vine with coarse, dark-green leaves and large, bell-shaped white blossoms. When dried, they have some healing properties, and yet they smell nothing like this.”
“The blossoms themselves do not,” Valsavis agreed. “But the plant has other uses of which the villichi sisterhood is doubtless well aware. However, you obviously had not been taught that yet.”
“What sort of uses?” she asked, curious. She had thought that, by now, she had learned all of the medicinal properties and other uses of most plants that grew on Athas.
“When dried and finely chopped, the coarse leaves of the bellaweed plant are mixed with the seeds the plant produces, which are pulverized into a powder,” Valsavis explained. “The mixture is then soaked in wine and stored in wooden casks. Pagafa wood is generally used, as it imparts a special flavor to the blend. It is allowed to marry for a period, and when the process is complete, the final product is a fragrant smoking mixture. It is packed in small amounts into clay pipes, and after it has been set alight, the smoke is drawn deeply into the lungs and held there for as long as possible before it is expelled. After a few such puffs, the smoker begins to experience a pleasant sense of euphoria. And after a while, one begins to have visions.”
“So it is a hallucinatory plant?” Sorak asked. “A particularly dangerous one,” replied Valsavis, “because its effects are so deceptive.”
“How so?” asked Ryana as they walked down the twisting street, the heavy scent wafting out of building doorways and windows.
“The euphoria you feel at first is extremely pleasant and soothing,” said Valsavis. “Your vision blurs slightly and everything takes on a sort of softness, as if you were staring at the world through a fine, sheer piece of gauzy fabric. You then experience a pleasant warmth that slowly suffuses the entire body and produces a comfortable lassitude. Most people feel a slight dizziness at first, but this sensation quickly passes. You become very relaxed, and feel detached from your surroundings, and you think that never before have you experienced such a quiet and peaceful feeling of contentment.”
“That does not sound particularly dangerous,” said Sorak.
“It is much more dangerous than you think,” Valsavis said, “precisely because it seems so harmless and so pleasant. If you smoke only one pipeful and stop there, never to touch the noxious stuff again, you will probably escape serious harm, but that is not so easily accomplished. All it really takes is just one pipeful-not even that, merely a deep puff or two is usually sufficient-and a strong craving for more is produced, a craving that is extremely difficult to resist. A second pipeful will only increase the level of pleasure and start to produce the visions. At first, they will be only mild, visual hallucinations. If you I are looking at someone seated across from you, for j instance, they might suddenly appear to be floating a few feet above the floor, and their features may appear to change. The effect varies with the individual. You might see your mother or your father, or the person may take on the aspect of a spouse or lover, someone who has always been foremost in your mind. You will see swirling colors in the air, and the dust motes will appear to dance and sparkle brilliantly. And the more you smoke, the more vivid these visions will become. After a third pipeful, unless your will is very strong, you will usually become completely disconnected from your immediate surroundings.”
“How so?” asked Sorak. “You mean, you fall into a trance?”
“In a manner of speaking,” said Valsavis. “You will remain awake, but you will enter a dreamscape peopled by the creations of your own mind, which has been greatly stimulated by the pernicious smoke. You will see fantastic things that defy reality. You may find, in this dreamscape, that you are capable of flight, and spend your time soaring like a razorwing through a world of indescribable wonder. Or you may find yourself capable of magic, like no wizard who has ever lived, and you will feel omnipotent in your imaginary surroundings. You will never Want the experience to end and, when it does, you will only want to repeat it again and again. Your ordinary life will suddenly seem dull and flat and lusterless by comparison. And by this time, the drug will have permeated your being, and resisting it will be next to impossible.
“The more you smoke the bellaweed,” Valsavis continued, “the more you become disconnected from the reality of your existence. The visions will become real to you, instead, and life without the bellaweed takes on the aspect of a nightmare, which you are driven to escape at any cost. You will sell all of your possessions, degrade yourself, perform any task at all that will bring you money so that you may buy more bellaweed and find sweet refuge in your visions. However, while bellaweed stimulates the mind to create these fabulous visions, it also dulls the wits. When not under its influence, you will often find all but the simplest tasks too difficult to perform. Your movements will become sluggish and stupid, and you will lack the wit even to steal in order to support your craving.
“And there are some,” Valsavis went on, “who enter their dreamscapes never to leave again. Those people are, in many ways, the more fortunate ones among the doomed victims of the dreadful drug because they never truly realize what has happened to them. To those who fall under the thrall of bellaweed, ignorance can, indeed, be bliss. The rest become so completely dependent on it that nothing else will seem to matter, and in time, when their fortunes are depleted and they have sold everything they owned, they will sell themselves and live out the remainder of their lives in slavery, inexpensive for their masters to keep because they are easily controlled and require very little in the way of food and lodging. So long as they have bellaweed to smoke, they will meekly go about their work, suffering any indignity, while they gradually waste away.”
“How horrible!” Ryana said, aghast. She glanced around with a new sense of foreboding. The buildings all around them were small emporiums dedicated to the pursuit of this deadly and virulently addictive euphoria. And now they realized why the few people they saw on the streets moved so listlessly.
“If we remain here long enough,” Valsavis said, “the odor of the smoke upon the air will begin to seem more and more pleasant, and it will start to affect us the way the smell of fresh-baked bread affects a starving man. We will start to feel a strong urge to enter one of these emporiums and sample some of this strangely compelling smoke. And if we were foolish enough to succumb to the temptation, we would be greeted warmly, and ushered to a comfortable sitting room where pipes would be provided for us, at a cost so very reasonable that no one would think to object, and that would be the beginning of the end. We would discover that the second pipeful would cost us more, and the third more still, and the price would always escalate. Before long, we would be taken from the luxurious comfort of the sitting room and led to tiny, cramped rooms in the back, lined with crude beds made of wooden slats and I stacked to the ceiling so that six people or more could lie on them as if they were trade goods stored upon shelves in a warehouse. But by this time, we would not object. Eventually, we would say anything, do i anything, sign any piece of paper that would bring us i just one more pipe. And before long, the slave traders | Would come and purchase us by lots.”