“What is it?” she asked, in anxiety.

“N-nothing.” Ray continued to grip the handles. On the screen, Wilbur Mercer walked slowly over the barren, jagged surface of a desolate hillside, his face lifted, an expression of serenity—or vacuity—on his thin, middle-aged features. Gasping, Ray released the handles. “I could only hold them for forty-five seconds this time.” To Joan, he explained, “This is the empathy box, my dear. I can’t tell you how I got it—to be truthful I don’t really know. They brought it by, the organization that distributes it—Wilcer, Incorporated. But I can tell you that when you take hold of these handles you’re no longer watching Wilbur Mercer. You’re actually participating in his apotheosis. Why, you’re feeling what he feels.”

Joan said, “It looks like it hurts.”

Quietly, Ray Meritan said, “Yes. Because Wilbur Mercer is being killed. He’s walking to the place where he’s going to die.”

In horror, Joan moved away from the box.

“You said that was what we needed,” Ray said. “Remember, I’m a rather adequate telepath; I don’t have to bestir myself very much to read your thoughts. ‘If only we could suffer.’ That’s what you were thinking, just a little while ago. Well, here’s your chance, Joan.”

“It’s—morbid!”

“Was your thought morbid?”

“Yes!” she said.

Ray Meritan said, “Twenty million people are followers of Wilbur Mercer now. All over the world. And they’re suffering with him, as he walks along toward Pueblo, Colorado. At least that’s where they’re told he’s going. Personally I have my doubts. Anyhow, Mercerism is now what Zen Buddhism was once; you’re going to Cuba to teach the wealthy Chinese bankers a form of asceticism that’s already obsolete, already seen its day.”