At the Havana airfield Joan Hiashi looked around her as the other passengers walked rapidly from the ship to the entrance of the number twenty concourse.

Relatives and friends had surged cautiously out onto the field, as they always did, in defiance of field rulings. She saw among them a tall, lean young Chinese man with a smile of greeting on his face.

Walking toward him she called, “Mr. Lee?”

“Yes.” He hurried toward her. “It’s dinner time. Would you care to eat? I’ll take you to the Hang Far Lo restaurant. They have pressed duck and bird’s nest soup, all Canton-style… very sweet but good once in a long while.”

Soon they were at the restaurant, in a red-leather and imitation teak booth. Cubans and Chinese chattered on all sides of them; the air smelled of frying pork and cigar smoke.

“You are President of the Havana Institute for Asian Studies?” she asked, just to be certain there had been no slip-ups.

“Correct. It is frowned on by the Cuban Communist Party because of the religious aspect. But many of the Chinese here on the island attend lectures or are on our mailing list. And as you know we’ve had many distinguished scholars from Europe and Southern Asia come and address us… By the way. There is a Zen parable which I do not understand. The monk who cut the kitten in half—I have studied it and thought about it, but I do not see how the Buddha could be present when cruelty was done to an animal.” He hastened to add, “I’m not disputing with you. I am merely seeking information.”

Joan said, “Of all the Zen parables that has caused the most difficulty. The question to ask is, Where is the kitten now?”

“That recalls the opening of the Bhagavad-Gita,” Mr. Lee said, with a quick nod.

“Correct,” Joan said, “And of course you remember Krishna’s answer. It is the most profound statement in all pre-Buddhistic religion of the issue of death and of action.”

The waiter came for their order. He was a Cuban, in khaki and a beret.

“Try the fried won ton,” Mr. Lee advised. “And the chow yuk, and of course the egg roll. You have egg roll today?” he asked the waiter.

“Si, Senor Lee.” The waiter picked at his teeth with a toothpick.

Mr. Lee ordered for both of them, and the waiter departed.

“You know,” Joan said, “when you’ve been around a telepath as much as I have, you become conscious of intensive scanning going on… I could always tell when Ray was trying to dig at something in me. You’re a telepath. And you’re very intensively scanning me right now.”

Smiling, Mr. Lee said, “I wish I was, Miss Hiashi.”

“I have nothing to hide,” Joan said. “But I wonder why you are so interested in what I’m thinking. You know I’m an employee of the United States Department of State; there’s nothing secret about that. Are you afraid I’ve come to Cuba as a spy? To study military installations? Is it something like that?” She felt depressed. “This is not a good beginning,” she said. “You haven’t been honest with me.”

“You are a very attractive woman, Miss Hiashi,” Mr. Lee said, losing none of his poise. “I was merely curious to see—shall I be blunt? Your attitude toward sex.”

“You’re lying,” Joan said quietly.

Now the bland smile departed; he stared at her.

“Bird’s nest soup, senor.” The waiter had returned; he set the hot steaming bowl in the center of the table. “Tea.” He laid out a teapot and two small white handleless cups. “Senorita, you want chopsticks?”

“No,” she said absently.

From outside the booth came a cry of anguish. Both Joan and Mr. Lee leaped up. Mr. Lee pulled the curtain aside; the waiter was staring, too, and laughing.

At a table in the opposite corner of the restaurant sat an elderly Cuban gentleman with his hands gripping the handles of an empathy box.

“Here, too,” Joan said.

“They are pests,” Mr. Lee said. “Disturbing our meal.”

The waiter said, “Loco.” He shook his head, still chuckling.

“Yes,” Joan said. “Mr. Lee, I will continue here, trying to do my job, despite what’s occurred between us. I don’t know why they deliberately sent a telepath to meet me—possibly it’s Communist paranoid suspicions of outsiders—but in any case I have a job to do here and I mean to do it. So shall we discuss the dismembered kitten?”

“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.

“You’re on,” the producer said from the control room.

Their theme, That’s a Plenty, swelled from the tape deck in the control room, and the number two camera facing Goldstream lit up its red light. Arms folded, Goldstream said, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. What is jazz?”

That’s what I say, Meritan thought. What is jazz? What is life? He rubbed his splintered, pain-racked forehead and wondered how he could endure the next week. Wilbur Mercer was getting close to it now. Each day it would become worse…

“And after a brief pause for an important message,” Goldstream was saying, “we’ll be back to tell you more about the world of gray-green men and women, those peculiar people, and the world of the artistry of the one and only Ray Meritan.”

The tape of the commercial appeared on the TV monitor facing Meritan.

Meritan said to Goldstream, “I’ll take the pain pill.”

A yellow, flat, notched tablet was held out to him. “Paracodein,” Goldstream said. “Highly illegal, but effective. An addictive drug… I’m surprised you, of all people, don’t carry some.”

“I used to,” Ray said, as he got a dixie cup of water and swallowed the pill.

“And now you’re on Mercerism.”

“Now I’m—” He glanced at Goldstream; they had known each other, in their professional capacities, for years. “I’m not a Mercerite,” he said, “so forget it, Glen. It’s just coincidence I got a headache the night Mercer was hit on the temple by a sharp rock thrown by some moronic sadist who ought to be the one dragging his way up that hillside.” He scowled at Goldstream.