Farris exclaimed, “Berreau, why do you do it? Why this unholy business of going hunati, of living a hundred times slower? What can you gain by it?”
The other man looked at him with haggard eyes. “By doing it, I’ve entered an alien world. A world that exists around us all our lives, but that we never live in or understand at all.”
“What world?”
“The world of green leaf and root and branch,” Berreau answered. “The world of plant life, which we can never comprehend because of the difference between its life-tempo and our life-tempo.”
* * *
Farris began dimly to understand. “You mean, this hunati change makes you live at the same tempo as plants?”
Berreau nodded. “Yes. And that simple difference in life-tempo is the doorway into an unknown, incredible world.”
“But how?”
The Frenchman pointed to the half-healed incision on his bare arm. “The drug does it. A native drug, that slows down metabolism, heart-action, respiration, nerve-messages, everything.
“Chlorophyll is its basis. The green blood of plant-life, the complex chemical that enables plants to take their energy direct from sunlight. The natives prepare it directly from grasses, by some method of their own.”