“You said you weren’t a threat to escape,” Bones said, “are they keeping you here?”
“I’m sure if they let you go, they’ll let me go, too.” Thomas sighed. “Once they understand their secret is out, there’s not much reason for them to keep us here.”
“I’d like to see them try.” Bones grimaced, and his gaze turned flinty as he looked down on the settlement.
“The truth is, unless Salvatore Scano has told the world, which I can almost guarantee you he hasn’t, the only people from the outside world who know about this place are sitting right here.” Tam frowned. “And what’s left of the ScanoGen men, if they survived those zombie people.”
“The Mot’jabbur, they call them.” Thomas looked up at the sky. “The Dead Warriors.”
“Who are they? What are they?” Dane asked.
“I suppose you could call them experiments that went wrong, but that wouldn’t be entirely accurate.”
“What I want to know is how you came to have any dealings with ScanoGen in the first place.” Kaylin’s voice was white hot rage. “You never told me a single thing. Then you disappear, with nothing but a picture as a clue, and leave killers after us. What happened?”
Thomas hung his head for a moment, as if gathering his thoughts, and then stood. “For you to understand that, you’ll have to see the tree.”
He led them around to the back side of the pyramid and pointed down to a clearing, in the center of which stood the strangest tree Dane had ever seen. It resembled a baobab tree in miniature, with a thick trunk and a few root-like branches spreading out at the very top. But the similarities ended there. The bark was silver and gleamed in the orange sunset. The round leaves were concave and glossy like those of a magnolia, but they were dark on one side, nearly black in color, and a creamy white on the other. A single piece of fruit was visible through a gap in the bizarre foliage. It was the size of a cantaloupe, and it, like the leaves, was dark on one side and light on the other.
“Percy Fawcett was on to something even crazier than anyone ever suspected. Much of what he professed to believe was a smokescreen designed to throw people off the trail of what he knew would be an earth-shattering discovery. It took half a lifetime, but I pieced together, and kept for myself, enough evidence to realize what he was truly after.”
Down below, a woman was watering the tree. She glanced up at them, but paid them no particular mind, and went back to her work.
“This tree is the secret the Punics traveled her to protect. It has passed through many hands: Athenian Greeks, Spartans, Persians, all the way back to ancient Israel and beyond.”
Dane turned a quizzical glance at Thomas, but did not interrupt.
“The leaves, when divided, have powerful properties if made into a tea and drunk regularly.”
“What sorts of properties?” Dane asked.
Thomas gazed into the setting sun, as if uncertain how to explain. “The human propensity for violence exists on a spectrum. Some people have such a tremendous aversion to violence that they cannot abide the thought of it, and will only raise a hand to another human being in the final, most desperate defense of their life, or that of a loved one, if then. On the other end of the spectrum are those who will pull a trigger with no compunction whatsoever. Most of us lie somewhere in between.”
“That’s one of the things military training does.” Dane thought about his own experiences. “From the beginning, you are never told to kill the ‘other man;’ everything is referred to as a target, even human targets. There are a lot of other techniques they use as well to try to get you past thinking of the other side as human, because most of us have at least some aversion to killing others.”
“When I was doing some research about an ancestor who fought in the Civil War,” Bones said, “I read that a good many soldiers couldn’t even bring themselves to fire their gun. As soon as the shooting started, they’d hunker down and wait it out.”
“Very true.” The professor in Thomas was emerging. “Those who can kill without thought make our deadliest soldiers, because they don’t flinch in the face of danger, and they never hesitate when it’s time to pull the trigger.”
“They also make for serial killers,” Dane added, “because they have no empathy.”
“Precisely. Imagine a fighting force in which every man is completely without fear, yet preserves his intellect, and is thus able to follow orders and make appropriate decisions without fear getting in the way. It would make a difference today on the battlefield, but think of the effect it had in the ancient world, where all the fighting was hand-to-hand, face-to-face, hacking apart another human being. It was vicious and very, very personal.”
“But an army, even one that was outnumbered, that drank this tea would make for a better fighting force than a larger force filled with frightened men.” The pieces were falling into place for Dane. “Hannibal gave this tea to his troops during the Punic Wars, didn’t he?” Thomas nodded. “And the Spartans must have drunk it before the battle of Thermopylae.”
“Spies stole it right out from under the noses of Xerxes and his so-called Immortals. Took all the leaves and the sole remaining seed. Xerxes apparently intended to plant a new tree in the western half of his new empire. It didn’t work out for him.” Thomas grinned. “It passed from Sparta to Athens, which had the most success in cultivating it. They managed to build up a stockpile of seeds, which eventually fell into Punic hands.”
“So how did Carthage not win the war if they had the greatest general of his day, plus this tea?” Bones asked.
“The supply is always limited. The tree is slow-growing and produces a limited number of leaves every year. The priesthood that tended to the trees could not produce enough to keep up with the army’s demands. Only certain, special units were given the tea in any case.”
“So, when Carthage fell, they took what remained of the seeds and escaped?” Dane tried to imagine the courage or desperation required to cross the Atlantic Ocean in an ancient sailing vessel.
“Their Phoenician ancestors had visited what is now the Americas and the priesthood held on to that knowledge. When it became clear that Carthage was going to fall, they sent a remnant to the New World. Hasdrubal and his followers found this place, settled down, and planted a new tree.”
“What does the white side of the leaf do? Mellow people out?” Bones grinned.
“Yes. White tea will pacify the drinker for a short period of time. They will temporarily forsake all thoughts of violence. In a way, it’s more deadly than the black tea. Slip your enemy some white tea and you can slaughter them. I imagine you could do just about anything you want to someone who drinks enough of it.”
A cloud of suspicion passed through Dane’s mind. “Do you think that’s how they pacified the natives? Maybe it wasn’t that they thought the Punics were gods.”
“If that’s not how they initially gained their allegiance, they definitely have used it since then as a way of developing a servant class that won’t be quick to fight back. They even give it to the animals to make them more docile.”