So I went into the crazy old dream—the feeling that there's something better someplace, something you can take or leave alone, that doesn't leave you with that wrung-out, hopeless horror of junk sickness when you can't get the stuff.
I told him about the other addicts—how they feel this kinship that's not like any other relationship anywhere—how you have that exalted feeling of mingled hope and despair when another junkie is coming with a fix for you—and how by just drifting around in a strange city you find yourself drawn to the right district to score the stuff. How it's almost telepathic.
I told him what they said about yage, that some South American croaker had isolated from it a fix he called telepathine. How it was supposed to be some kind of miracle dope that you could take when you wanted it without actually needing it, and it would open up the world for you so you'd be close, really close, to others like you. So your mind would be their mind. A union more terrific than any other kind—as far beyond even the ideal sexual climax, for instance, as sex is beyond a bow or a handshake. So there'd be a togetherness you couldn't achieve any other way. So you wouldn't be so ... alone.
I felt embarrassed after talking like that, even though Jones listened as sympathetically as anybody could, so I got up to get another cup of coffee at the counter.
"Okay," I said defensively as I spooned in the sugar. "I've told you about me. Now what about that stuff of yours—what do you call it again?"
"Uru," he said. "It is what yage is said to be, but is not. You would like it. But you tell me you are 'off the stuff'."
"Off the old stuff. It's no good and I've licked it. Off with the old," I said, beginning to feel a little high already, "and on with the new. Uru, eh?"
This might be it. The most. The big fix. I had to have it.
"You shall try it," Jones said. "You shall judge for yourself. Then if you want more I will provide it for you. There will be no charge."
Right away I got suspicious. Nobody gives anything away. It could be a come-on. Jones might figure I'd like it so much I'd have to have more and then I'd pay and pay. But on the other hand maybe he figured wrong. Nothing is habit-forming once. I didn't know anything about this uru, but I knew all there was to know about everything else.