Emery J. Borka

Steve Santa and the Alchemist Berrichonne Emery J. Borka Lrg edition

Ping and Steve are invited to a farm in the center of France. The farm run by Collette is a cattle farm next to Toulx-Saint-Croix just outside the limits of the old province of Berry. Collette learns that her brother Jules in a neighboring city is having problems, the village seems to be under the subversive control of a Sorcerer or wicked Alchemist. Collette, Steve and Ping visit Jules at his home and they observe parapsychological phenomena and discuss the strange events occurring n their village with their neighbors. Steve and Ping go to see the most famous Alchemist in Bourges to be informed about the history of the Berrichonne Alchemists, witches and sorcerer activities which still occur in the Berry. Steve obtains scientific evidence of the poisoning and hallucination activities which seem to stem from the actions of some drug extracted from the Passiflora coerulea flower. They return to the village and find a suspected physicist who lives in Bourges. Steve finds the owner?s wife Amelie has a Bachelors degree in Horticulture and she is growing the passionflower or Passiflora coerulea in their garden. Steve learns of recent geological studies and that there is a unique major stock of ununquadium Atomic weight 114 in Jules? village. Steve searches the Internet to find that ununquadium is an atom that can be used by the Cadarache project in France trying to make a cold fusion nuclear reactor and that ununquadium would be better to be used instead of the deuterium scientists are experimenting because it would leave no radioactive waste while the presently used deuterium does leave mountains of atomic waste. Steve meets with French Greenpeace members and gathers more information. Greenpeace activists help Steve to trap the Alchemist using plant drugs to scare the villagers into selling their property for peanuts and turns over the information about the ununquadium to the Cadarache authorities.