Professor Kellard was the first to take the floor. He was in his thirties, a lecturer in social psychology, and while Fitz had yet to study with him, he was currently taking Foundations in Clinical Psychology from the man seated to the right of him, Professor Lewiston. Lewiston was older—old, actually—and so soft-spoken his lectures were all but inaudible unless you were in one of the front two rows, where Fitz always made a point of sitting. As he watched him now, Fanchon murmuring, “Look at that vieillard, how do say, that graybeard, and who does he think he’s fooling?,” he was recalling the meeting he’d had with him a month or so back, at the professor’s invitation. “Mr. Loney,” he’d said, coming up to him after class one day, “why not drop by my office for a cup of tea? Let’s say, Tuesday afternoon? So we can become better acquainted?”

It was a kindness on his professor’s part, one he extended to all his new students, and Fitz had been touched by it. The tea was lukewarm, the cream turning and the sugar bowl so fissured and encrusted with residue it wouldn’t have been out of place in a museum, but they wound up talking for nearly an hour, which essentially involved Fitz telling the older man his life story, or at least the salient points—Joanie, Corey, working as a school psychologist to pay the bills, earning his master’s at night and finally coming here to fulfill his ambition of completing a Ph.D. and teaching at the college level. At some point Lewiston had asked how he was getting on with his other professors and he’d said, “Fine,” and then, after a moment of silence, Lewiston—softly, so softly—asked, “And Professor Leary? You’re getting on well with him?”

“Well, yes,” he’d said, “but I haven’t—I mean, he’s my adviser, but I haven’t actually taken a course with him yet, though in the fall I intend to, or hope to.”

“But”—and Lewiston’s gaze never left his face—“you are part of the Psilocybin Project, or so I hear?”

“Well, not officially, but I, well, I suppose so—”

“Tell me,” the professor said, folding his hands under his chin and leaning into the desk on both elbows, “because I’m curious about the new techniques—just what do these ‘sessions’ entail?”