Everyone had agreed to meet at ten A.M. at the Andover Seminary in Newton Center, not far from Tim’s, where the ten guides and twenty theology students would be given identical envelopes containing a powder that was either a 30-milligram dose of psilocybin or a like dose of nicotinic acid. Each envelope was stamped with a code number, and no one, not even Pahnke himself, knew which contained the drug and which the placebo. Just before noon, once the drug had had a chance to come on, they would all be driven to Marsh Chapel on the B.U. campus for the Good Friday mass featuring a sermon by Reverend Howard Thurman, the thesis being that those under the influence of the psychotropic drug would be more likely to have a religious experience than would the control group, with the further implication that divine states—religious ecstasy—could be achieved chemically, just as Tim theorized and a number of the inner circle had begun to discover for themselves.

Though it was Walter’s experiment, it was Tim who greeted him at the door (and Tim who’d obtained the drugs, sidestepping the department’s new strictures and churning through his ever-widening circle of acquaintances till finally a psychiatrist in Worcester supplied him at the last minute). Fitz greeted Ken, Charlie, Dick, Hollingshead and the other guides, then went round to each of the Andover students, most of whom were younger than he and understandably a bit ambivalent as to what to expect, and said a word or two of encouragement, feeling very much the veteran. Which in itself was odd. He’d had all of six trips while Tim had had well over two hundred and Hollingshead—who knew how many he’d taken? Still, he was experienced, on a whole other plane of consciousness from these students, who were, after all, to borrow a phrase from Tim, squares.