That was when Tim crossed the room to the television—This is a tragic day for America, the announcer was intoning, for the whole—and flicked it off. “I guess this is as bad as it gets,” he said, bowing his head. “We’ve lost a president—and I’ve just learned that Aldous passed away this afternoon out in Los Angeles. Two gone in one day,” he said, shaking his head. “But what we’re going to do is hold a vigil, a candlelight vigil, for both their souls.” He nodded to Dick, who was standing in the corner beside Lori, stone-faced. “We’ll gather by the fire in ten minutes for meditation, and for those who want to commune with them, Dick will be passing round the sacrament.”

People began pushing themselves up from the floor, patting down their pockets and looking around them absently as if they’d forgotten something. Still nobody said anything, not even the kids, not even Bobby.

“By the way,” Tim went on, “if it will make any of you feel any better, Aldous at least went peacefully. Laura gave him two intramuscular injections of LSD-25 in his final hours, just as he’d requested when I last saw him. His body might have failed him, as all our bodies will fail in time, but his mind soared—and if we focus, really focus as a group, I don’t have the slightest doubt we’ll feel those emanations tonight.”

He paused. The dog, which had been lying on the floor beside Jackie, got up and stretched himself, then gave his head and shoulders a good shake so that his collar rattled and chimed in a way that seemed to bring the whole room out of its trance. “And Kennedy’s too,” Tim added. “Maybe even Kennedy’s too.”

They held the first of the consciousness-raising seminars three weeks later, which gave everyone a little breathing room after the national tragedy (and here Tim was thinking of the paying guests especially). Forty participants, mostly couples and mostly middle-aged, signed up and sent in their registration fees in advance. They began arriving on Friday afternoon in the face of a cold northerly wind and intermittent snow showers, and the first problem, which no one, incredibly, had anticipated, was where they were going to park. She was in the kitchen, working furiously over the dinner preparations—forty more mouths to feed, above and beyond the daily demands of the household—when Tommy Eggers burst in the back door, shouting, “They’re here! They’re here!”

Susannah and Paulette were with her, tucking the roasts in the oven and putting the finishing touches to the relish trays, and at the moment she was bent over the biggest pot in the kitchen, mashing potatoes. “Who?” she asked, looking up irritably. The guests weren’t due till five—the instructions had been explicit on that score—and it was hardly past four yet.