“To see if he’s a wrong’un?” Icarus pushed open the door to the saloon bar. Johnny Boy followed him in.

The Three Gables was a proper drinking man’s pub. No theme nights or foppish fancies here. It was your honest to goodness, down to Earth, spit and gob, drinking man’s pub. And you don’t see many of those around any more. It served proper flat ale in proper dirty glasses. Had proper full ashtrays and a proper foul-mouthed barmaid with an enormous bosom and a taste for group sex with Jehovah’s witnesses (well, they do keep knocking at your door when you’re taking a bath). There was proper unswept lino on the floor and proper unmopped vomit in the gents. There was a proper one man band called Johnny G, who performed there on a Tuesday night. And proper drunken louts who threw proper light ale bottles at him when he did.

The atmosphere was fugged throughout with proper cigarette smoke.

It was all right and proper and the way a pub should be.

“I hate it here,” said Johnny Boy. “It smells.”

“What can I buy you?” asked Icarus Smith, making his way through the proper crowd of early evening drinkers to the bar.

“Hold on, don’t lose me.”

Icarus returned to assist the small man to a quiet corner table.

“Look after all this stuff,” said Icarus, placing the boxes of tablets and the papers and the spectremeter down on the bench seat next to Johnny Boy. “I’ll get us in the drinks.”

“A short for me,” said Johnny Boy. “But make it a large short, a triple. Vodka, no ice, off you go.”

And so off Icarus went. Presently he returned in the company of a vodka bottle and two glasses.

“Blimey, I’ll bet that cost you a few bob,” said Johnny Boy.

“An understanding exists between myself and the big-bosomed barmaid,” said Icarus.

Presently still, the bottle was uncorked, glasses filled and glasses drained away. Icarus opened one of the boxes of tablets.

He placed a tablet on his palm and rolled it all about. It didn’t look all that much. Just a little white pill. There was nothing about it that said BEWARE.

“What will I see, when I take it?” he asked Johnny Boy.

“The truth,” said the small man. “And you won’t like it one little bit.”

“And are you seeing the truth? Now, at this moment?”

Johnny Boy glanced all around and about. “Yeah,” he said. “And it’s all pretty safe in here. There’s nothing that should rattle you too much. But out there,” Johnny Boy gestured to out there in general, “out there is a whole different matter. What you’ll see out there will shake you up. You’ll never be the same man again once you’ve taken the drug. The effects don’t wear off.”

Icarus lifted the tablet to his mouth.

But then he paused. Did he really truly want to know this truth, whatever it was? Did he really want to take some strange drug, whose unknown effects would be with him for ever? Did he, Icarus Smith, really really truly truly want to change the world? Yes, he’d had the dream. Yes, he was the relocator. Yes, he felt that he was on some mission that seemed almost divine.

But he was a lad of eighteen. His whole life stretched before him. He had already got himself into something rather dangerous. Would it not perhaps be better just to cut and run while he still had the chance?

“It’s a lot to think about, isn’t it?” said Johnny Boy.

“Far too much,” said Icarus Smith. “And that is not the way that I do business. So let’s leave it to fate. It either goes in, or it doesn’t.”

“Eh?”

Icarus tilted back his head, closed his eyes and opened his mouth. And then he flipped the tablet high into the air.

The tablet spun into the fug of cigarette smoke, caught a fleeting beam of sunlight when it reached its apogee, became a tiny star hung in a foul-smelling Heaven and then fell back to Earth.

To vanish down the throat of Icarus Smith.

“Fate has it then,” said Johnny Boy.

Icarus gagged and reached for his glass and swallowed down some vodka.

“There’s no going back now, lad,” said Johnny Boy. “Let’s just hope that you’re up to it. I think you are. In fact, I’m sure you are.”

Icarus wiped at his mouth. Sweat was already coming to his brow. The thought “Oh God, what have I done?” was crying very loudly in his head.

“Don’t panic,” said Johnny Boy, patting the arm of Icarus. “You won’t actually feel anything. You’ll experience a bit of double vision at first, but when that clears … well, when that clears, we’ll talk about things.”

Icarus clutched at his head. There was something going on in there. Something decidedly odd. There was a rushing noise in his ears now. And a queer sensation, as if parts of his brain were being tightened, or bolted up, or realigned in some way.

“Tuned in,” said Johnny Boy. “Your brain’s just being tuned in. It’s all to do with frequencies, you see. Like the ghosts. We’re all attuned to only a limited range of frequencies, which is why we can only hear and see and smell a limited number of things. We can’t see everything that’s really going on around us. And that’s the way the wrong’uns would like to keep it. That’s why they’ll stop at nothing to make sure the professor’s drug doesn’t fall into the right hands. Except it already has. It’s fallen into yours.”

The double vision was really kicking in now. Icarus pinched at his eyes. “I can’t see.” He shook his head from side to side. “I’m going blind.”

“It will clear, lad. It will clear.”

Icarus suddenly jerked bolt upright, his eyes widened and he stared at Johnny Boy. And then his jaw dropped open and then it slowly closed again.

“My God,” said Icarus Smith. “Johnny Boy, you’re beautiful.”

“Well, thank you very much.”

“But you are. You’re beautiful. You glow. You’ve got a golden aura all around you.”

Icarus glanced at the bar. And just as it is when you do some really good acid, it was as if he was now seeing everything the way it really was, for the first time ever.

The only difference was, that Icarus really was seeing it.

He gawped at the people standing at the bar. Talking, drinking, smoking, swearing. Just ordinary people. Normal people. But Icarus could really see them. Really see them. He could see, not just the people, but what they really were. The very essence of the people. What made the people people.

Some were evidently good people. They veritably shone. Like Johnny Boy, who sparkled. Some, however, were not at all good. These exuded a grimness about them. A dark foreboding.

And it wasn’t just the people. The bar itself looked different too. The colours were heightened. Cleaner. Crisper. Everything was more defined. More clarified.

“Wow,” went Icarus Smith. “And I do mean, Wow.”

“Like it?” said Johnny Boy. “Like what you see?”

“It’s incredible. See that big bloke over in the corner? He’s lying to that chap with the moustache. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but I can actually see that he’s lying. I can, I don’t know, perceive it somehow.”

“Doors of perception,” said Johnny Boy. “Aldous Huxley wrote about that.”

Icarus took up his glass for a swig. “Urgh,” he said, gaping at the vodka. “This stuff’s been watered down. You can actually see, my God, you can actually see the water in it.”

“I was too polite to mention that,” said Johnny Boy. “Seeing as you were buying.”

Icarus looked the midget up and down. “You’re a really good person, man,” he said.

“No, please,” said Johnny Boy. “Don’t start calling everybody man. Break the habit now, while you still can.”

“Yeah, but man oh man oh man.” Icarus whistled. “This is some trip.”

“It is for now,” said Johnny Boy. “But sadly it won’t be for long.”

“You mean this effect will wear off?”

“No, but you’ve only seen the good side of it so far. And no, hold on, now you’re going to see the other side. I don’t want you to look just yet, but someone has just come into the bar.”