“The Catholic game, Fitz,” Tim said, the wind ruffling his hair like an unseen hand, “the priest-haunted past letting go. You don’t think I went through the same thing, all that Sunday morning gibberish and my mother and my aunt May sitting rigid in the pew beside me, murmuring the old rote incantations, believing?” He juggled his hands, gestured at the sky. “It’s hard to let go, hard to evolve, but that’s what we’re doing here, that’s what the project is all about. We’re explorers, right? Going where nobody has gone before.”

“Except Crazy Juana. And the Greeks at Eleusis.”

Tim stopped so suddenly he almost collided with a bicyclist who’d swung out to pass them on the left. “Correct,” he said, giving him an appreciative look, a fraternal look, as if he were reassessing him moment by moment. “But they didn’t have Albert Hofmann and Sandoz Laboratories to provide for them. It’s a new world, Fitz, and you better believe we’re going to map it all out, right down to its core. And if that’s God, then so be it.”

Just as suddenly, he started off again and Fitz had to jog the first few steps to catch up with him. For a moment they were silent, matching each other stride for stride, before Tim swiveled his head round to search out his eyes. “Walter wanted to bring you back down with a shot of Thorazine, did I mention that?”

He felt as if he’d been slapped. “What do you mean?”

“It was an intense experience,” Tim said, never breaking stride. “Which is fine, which is okay, just what we want, really.”

“Was I that far gone? Did I, I mean, I didn’t—do anything, did I?”

“I nixed it. And Dick, Dick was there—did you see Dick? Dick agreed with me, one hundred percent.”