“I think not. No,” said Harper, waving the smoke away.

Storm pushed off the telamon. It watched him, bellowing in anguish, as he stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets, strolled over the delicate rose pattern of the rug. He paused before the fishbowl, absently considered the pickled claw. “I mean, nowadays, you try to believe in something—in anything—people think you’re some kind of idiot. You know? Everything’s got to have an explanation, nothing’s allowed to be spiritual or mysterious anymore. The scientists—they want to take everything away from you. That DNA guy, Crick. Carl Sagan. Richard Dawkins. All these scientists. They tell you you’re just some kind of machine, your body’s some kind of machine, even your mind … And love is just some kind of pheromone or something. And God turns out to be some kind of mathematical formula. Even if you have a near-death experience—nope, sorry, that’s just some mental defense mechanism or a hallucination or … I don’t know …”

Harper shifted her elbow thoughtfully on the chaise’s cylindrical pillow. The gray light pouring down on her through the fringes of the silken curtains seemed to age her even more, to burn the last luster from her lifeless cap of hair, deepen the black semicircles under her spectacles, etch the slack flesh of her sagging cheeks with lines. Yet she pointed her pipestem at Storm vigorously. “There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come, Richard—regardless of whether that idea is true or not. The notion that a scientific explanation somehow negates the mysterious core of a phenomenon—this is a prejudice of the age—no educated person can be free of it. To borrow a page from Lecky, if we believed in ghosts, a hundredth part of the evidence we possess would be enough to convince us. But since we do not believe, a hundred times the evidence would not suffice.”

“A gang of Argentinian cannibals were arrested after they sent out for a pizza delivery boy,” Bernard remarked. “Authorities discovered a large mushroom and anchovy pizza and a pair of running shoes at the scene.”

“Oh, all right, phone the Argies to confirm it,” said Harper. “Or E-mail them, or whatever it is you do.”