In Basel, they had questioned him closely, during early withdrawal, about hallucinations. Had he been having any? No, he’d said. No ... bugs? No bugs, he’d assured them. They’d explained that a possible symptom of his withdrawal might be what they called "hallucinations in a setting of clear reality," though he’d wondered how they could assume that his reality, at that point, was clear. The bugs, whatever those might have been, had never come, to his considerable relief, but now he saw, however briefly but with peculiar clarity, an aerial penguin cross the intersection ahead of him.