He was his normal self, that was what she’d been thinking a moment ago, but now she wasn’t so certain—could he still be under the influence of the drug? Was he delirious? What was he talking about? She raised the cup to her lips, blew briefly across the surface to cool it, and looked into his eyes. “Yes,” she said, “I think so. It does have psychoactive properties, just as you predicted, is that what you’re saying?”

His eyes were strange—not dilated now, not black, and back to their normal color—but infused with something like, like . . . mania. Or no, enthusiasm, extreme enthusiasm for this new product and what its possibilities were for the company, for the world, because it was his creation, his alone, and he couldn’t contain the excitement of it. “I won’t say it was all bliss and I don’t know what I said or did”—a long look for her now, deep into her eyes, so deep she had to turn away—“and forgive me for any . . . indiscretions, but if I saw the devil, if I thought I was losing my mind when in fact I was only prying loose the grip of my ego, I saw God too, shining until His face engulfed the sun and a second sun and all the suns beyond it and I was left with a peace I’ve never felt in all my days—or even dreamed of.”

He straightened up in the chair, threw back his head and drained his cup. “This is a revolution, Susi, and make no mistake about it. We have something here more powerful than any bomb, any reagent, any synthesis anyone has ever come across—I’m sure of it, as sure as I’ve ever been about anything, but of course we need more experimentation, more human subjects, and my experience alone is woefully insufficient, I know that . . . but I feel it in my bones, in my heart, my brain, in the neurons, Susi, the neurons.”