“I told you not to worry,” Preach said. “Now keep still, I’m talking to Billy.” His smile widened. “Now, Billy, tell me what’s happened to you.”

“I…” Billy glanced fearfully at White. His tongue ran around his dry and peeling lips. “I was taken off the streets. Things were done to me, but I don’t … I don’t remember. I don’t know.”

“Well, we’ll soon fix that.” Preach put one hand on the back of Billy’s head, the other at the small of his back. “Just relax,” he said in a soothing singsong. “Nothing bad will happen to you now. My promise to you.”

As Whitman had done with Flix, he felt for the trigeminal beneath his fingertips. He sensed the blockages the alkaloid had caused, scrambling the nerve messages between this man’s brain and his body. He sensed what the alkaloid was meant to do, and how it had partially failed. What science didn’t know contaminated the universe with its distortions, delusions, and outright ignorance, he thought with bitter contempt as he ran his delicate fingertips up the man’s spinal cord to the nape of his neck. In that sense it was no better than religion. There, he thought. There!

Billy gave a galvanic start beneath his hands. His eyes cleared and his breathing became deep and even, as if in a resting state or deep in a kind of powerful meditation.

Preach turned to White. “You have what you wished for.” No, it was what he wished for. “Now I need another stiff drink.”

*   *   *

“My journey,” Preach said, as if nothing had occurred between the time White had asked the question and his answer, “was like all journeys. Though, as in all physical matters, it depends on your point of view.”

They were sitting on the porch of the old hunting lodge in the same rocking chairs that White and Hartwell had occupied an hour before.

“Never two the same.” White nodded, pouring them a second helping of the moonshine. “I understand.”

Preach sucked down his drink, smacked his lips as he thought, You don’t understand a damn thing, as many years as you know me. We met when you were, what?, a teenager full of rage. Only your rage never abated. I could feel that and I fanned it every time it threatened to subside. You had a role to play, but you were just a man—ordinary, but fated to accomplish extraordinary things—with my help, always with my help. Not that you ever knew or even suspected. No, you’ll die an ignorant man, and I won’t be sorry. The Alchemists have outlived their usefulness.