“All right, then,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the cascading trills and hard punctuative blats of Coltrane’s tenor, “let’s gather round for the main event. And don’t forget the questionnaires, which is the whole point of this, you all know that,” gesturing toward the sideboard where the drinks were arrayed. “Over there on the bar, one each, and I want your impressions now and then after. And please answer all the questions, even if they don’t apply.” He grinned, held it a moment. “I mean, even if you have to write Doesn’t apply, okay? Are you with me? Everybody?”

Officially, this was a session, one of an ongoing series in the study Professors Leary and Alpert were conducting to assess the potential of the drug for clinical use, but it was apparent that it was more than that too. All you had to do was glance round the room at the way people held themselves to see that. This was a ritual, a ceremony, and Tim was at the center of it, going round dispensing pills into upturned palms while the conversation died and the sub-zero vibe of the MJQ replaced Coltrane on the stereo, just as Charlie had predicted, and where was Charlie? There, off in a corner with his girlfriend, the redhead—what was her name?—swallowing pills, fifteen of them, because that was the standard dose, thirty milligrams.

Tim came to him and Joanie last, lingering a moment to reassure them that he’d be there to guide them throughout the entire trip (as everybody was calling the experience now, as if it were a journey to some distant place, which, if you believed Tim, it was), just as he’d be there to guide everyone else so there’d be no worries and no hang-ups. “Just let it go,” he said, handing him and Joanie each a glass of water and slipping a brown prescription bottle out of the inside pocket of his jacket. The bottle had a black screw-off cap, no different from any other prescription container, except for the Sandoz label affixed to the front of it.

“Could I see that?” he heard himself say, and Tim, grinning, handed it to him.

INDOCYBIN, it read, and beneath it, (PSILOCYBIN), 2 MG, 500 TABLETS. Then the Sandoz emblem, a triangle with a single S emblazoned in the center of it, and beneath that, RESEARCH MATERIAL. CAUTION, NEW DRUG LIMITED BY FEDERAL LAW TO INVESTIGATIONAL USE ONLY, followed by the usual warning, FEDERAL LAW PROHIBITS DISPENSING WITHOUT PRESCRIPTION.

“Well,” Tim said, looking first to Joanie, then to him, “satisfied?”