“At meal time?” Mr. Lee said faintly.

“You brought it up,” Joan said, and proceeded, despite the expression of acute misery on Mr. Lee’s face as he sat spooning up his bird’s nest soup.

At the Los Angeles studio of television station KKHF, Ray Meritan sat at his harp, waiting for his cue. How High the Moon, he had decided, would be his first number. He yawned, kept his eye on the control booth.

Beside him, at the blackboard, jazz commentator Glen Goldstream polished his rimless glasses with a fine linen handkerchief and said, “I think I’ll tie in with Gustav Mahler tonight.”

“Who the hell is he?”

“A great late nineteenth century composer. Very romantic. Wrote long peculiar symphonies and folk-type songs. I’m thinking, however, of the rhythmic patterns in The Drunkard in Springtime from Song of the Earth. You’ve never heard it?”

“Nope,” Meritan said restlessly.

“Very gray-green.”

Ray Meritan did not feel very gray-green tonight. His head still ached from the rock thrown at Wilbur Mercer. Meritan had tried to let go of the empathy box when he saw the rock coming, but he had not been quick enough. It had struck Mercer on the right temple, drawing blood.

“I’ve run into three Mercerites this evening,” Glen said. “And all of them looked terrible. What happened to Mercer today?”

“How would I know?”

“You’re carrying yourself the way they did today. It’s your head, isn’t it? I know you well enough, Ray. You’d be mixed up in anything new and odd—what do I care if you’re a Mercerite? I just thought maybe you’d like a pain pill.”

Brusquely, Ray Meritan said, “That would defeat the entire idea wouldn’t it? A pain pill. Here, Mr. Mercer, as you go up the hillside, how about a shot of morphine? You won’t feel a thing.” He rippled a few cadences on his harp, releasing his emotions.