"Let me in, please! I am freezing."

Lao-Tze opened the door, and Cheng Song rushed to the tiny heater by the window and held his hands over the glowing coals.

"Thank you, Master. You have no idea the way I have come!"

Lao-Tze sat on the mat and gestured for Chen Song to do the same.

"Tea?" the old man asked.

"Please."

Some minutes later the steaming cup had revived the young man spirits. "I have come to--"

Lao-Tzu gestured gently. "Please. If you want to know about gravity, whom do you seek out?"

"Gravity?"

Lao-Tze looked a bit put out. "Newton, my son," he said somberly. "You go to Newton."

"Isn't he dead?"

"Oh, he's around somewhere, I'm sure. Please. Don't interrupt again. Now. If you want to know about the mind, whom do you seek out?"

"Freud?"

"Very good." Lao-Tze let his gaze slip into the middle distance. "Or perhaps Jung, but we won't get into that now... And poetry?"

"Why Bin Tao of course."

"Excellent choice. Now. Why have you come to me, and please think carefully before you answer or I shall have to toss you out on your still-frozen ear."

Cheng Song was truly perplexed. Everyone knew why everyone came up here. "Why, it's--" he started precipitously, then remembering not so much the old man's warning as the look in his eye when he gave it. "Why--why..." He fell into a deep silence. Something entered his mind and filled his face with a momentary light. "Ah. I have come because my heart is broken."

"An unhappy affair, then? A bit of unrequited love."

"You might say that."

Lao-Tze, recalling his own youthful follies, felt his own heart soften. "Tell me about her, or him. Whoever."

"Not whoever. What."

"What? A 'what' has broken your heart." Lao-Tze's interest was truly piqued. "What has broken your heart?"

"The world, Old Father. The world has broken my heart. It is so beautiful, and so treacherous, lovelier and uglier, more fickle and unpredictable than any lover."

Lao-Tze smiled, happy at the first real student he had had in several years. "You like the tea?"

Cheng Song was suddenly furious. He had felt a real bond developing, and now the old man had broken the spell with meaningless words of politeness. "Uh, yes, yes."

"It is grown here, on my little mountain top."

Cheng Song added confusion to his anger. "Really?"

"Each morning I look down on the world, or most of it anyway, and toast the sun with my excellent mountain-top tea. Is that not a splendid way to spend one's old age?"

"I suppose." Shocking even himself, and hoping that none of his revered ancestors were eavesdropping, he added, "To each his own!"