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dummy?” I hissed in Quench’s ear.
    “Be careful what you say!” he hissed back. “That’s the top dog round ’ere you’re talkin’ abaht.”
    “With the lame nail-through-the-finger trick?”
    “Well it fools everyone else.”
    “Did it fool you?” I snorted.
    He changed the subject. “’Ow did you spot the dummy?”
    “What, you mean his son made of wood?”
    “Wood, yeah.”
    “Wearing a monocle, top hat and three-piece suit?”
    “That’s right.”
    “You did know it was a dummy?”
    “Course! After a little while.”
    We debated very hastily the point of continuing with the plan, while the Shaman sat mumbling with his son in tongues, clearly put out. I was all for
leaving, until Quench pointed out that if we quit now we only had Dextrose to fall back on. It was a deal clincher.
    Bar my dignity, I had nothing to lose. And how many times during my travels had that remained unscathed and intact? I was reminded mercifully briefly of my abduction on Emo Island, by the madman
Borhed and his minions, when to win my freedom I had been obliged to choose the winner of an ‘Insect Race to Death’. And I had actively cheered on a dung beetle.
    I returned to the Shaman and knelt (playing along). “Great Shaman, I wish for your wisdom.”
    His son spoke: “You hath angered great Shaman. Thery dangerous. Cun closer. Oo-otch!”
    The Shaman beckoned me forward with a bony finger until I was within a metre of his face. His lips were terribly chapped and the madness resulting from power danced in his eyes.
    He held out the palm of his hand – the one that wasn’t up his son’s bum – between our two faces. On it was laid a small pile of brown powder. He looked at it, looked at
me, and leered, all fucked teeth and gum disease. Then he blew it in my face.
    Immediately I sniffed, sniffed again, then could not hold it back. As I sneezed violently, I ducked just in time to avoid covering the Shaman in snot.
    Sneezing powder.
    “Klowerthul nagic!” declared the son.
    At that range I could see his daddy’s lips move.
    I showed the Shaman Harrison Dextrose’s sketch, which had become rather limp in my sweat-drenched back pocket. He studied it closely, turning it this way and that, as
Quench and I had done previously.
    Eventually he said something in that didgeridoo language of his.
    I addressed the dummy. “What’s he saying?”
    “He say there is klace where the cattle klay thootgall.”
    The Shaman and wooden boy both stared at me.
    I stared back. “There is a place where the cattle play football?”
    The Shaman laughed, a deep, rumbling, laugh – “Hrr-hrr-hrr-hrr-hrr” – while his son’s mouth clattered woodenly up and down, red tongue flashing on and off.
    The Shaman reached forward and patted me on the shoulder, now wheezing at his own wit.
    “Shanan idea oth joke,” said the dummy. “Gut he does know neaning oth your riddle. Thirst oo-ee nake deal. Yes?”

 

    We had cut a deal, the Shaman and I.
    He needed to travel deep into the jungle to pick up some “nagic sucklies” – “magic supplies” – from a “lost tribe”, as the Shaman called them. I
happened to be in possession of a motorbike and sidecar.
    The Shaman claimed to understand Dextrose’s sketch, and would explain it to me once I had chauffeured him into the interior of the jungle. Though I was convinced he had by far the better
end of the deal, I was too polite to say so.
    Then we were back out in the sunshine, among the non-talking heads. Immediately, a wooziness hit me.
    “Wow!” I said, as sky became orange and purple. “I feel unusual.”
    “Me too,” said Quench. “Did you notice the smell in there?”
    I nodded, which only made me feel dizzier.
    “Psychoactives. The Shaman brews ’em. From roots an’ leaves an’ suchlike. ’E uses ’em to visit uver spiritual planes. Least that’s what ’e says. I
reckon ’e jus’ loves gettin’ wasted! But dahn’t you worry, son, you’ve only breaved in a