A Stranger in a Strange Land

by Robert Anson Heinlein

  "Jubal, you're a cynical old man. I do feel grateful to you and I shall go on feeling grateful."

  "And you are a sentimental young girl. That makes us a perfect complementary pair. Hmm - let's run over to Atlantic City for a weekend of illicit debauchery, just us two."

  "Why, Jubal!"

  "You see how deep your gratitude goes when I attempt to draw on it?"

  "Oh. I'm ready. How soon do we leave?"

  "Hmmmphtt. We should have left forty years ago. Shut up. The second point I want to make is that you are right; the boy does indeed have to learn human customs. He must be taught to take off his shoes in a mosque and to wear his hat in a synagogue and to cover his nakedness when taboo requires it, or our tribal shamans will burn him for deviationism. But, child, by the myriad deceptive aspects of Ahrilflafl, don't brainwash him in the process. Make sure he is cynical about each part of it."

  "Uh, I'm not sure how to go about that, Jubal. Well, Mike just doesn't seem to have any cynicism in him."

  "So? Yes. Well, I'll take a hand in it. What's keeping him? Shouldn't he be dressed by now?"

  "I'll go see."

  "In a moment. Jill, I explained to you why I had not been anxious to accuse anyone of kidnapping Ben� and the reports I have had since serve to support the probability that that was a tactically correct decision. If Ben is being unlawfully detained (to put it at its sweetest), at least we have not crowded the opposition into getting rid of the evidence by getting rid of Ben. If he is alive he stands a chance of staying alive. But I took other steps the first night you were here. Do you know your Bible?"

  "Uh, not very well."

  "It merits study, it contains very practical advice for most emergencies. '-every one that doeth evil hateth the light-' John something or other, Jesus speaking to Nicodeus. I have been expecting at any moment an attempt to get Mike away from us, for it didn't seem likely that you had managed to cover your tracks perfectly. And if they do try? Well, this is a lonely place and we haven't any heavy artillery. But there is one weapon that might balk them. Light. The glaring spotlight of publicity. So I made some phone calls and arranged for any ruckus here to have publicity. Not just a little publicity that the administration might be able to hush up, but great gobs of publicity worldwide and all at once. The details do not matter - where and how the cameras are mounted and what line of sight linkages have been rigged, I mean. But if a fight breaks out here, it will be picked up by three networks and, at the same time, a number of hold for release messages will be delivered to a wide spread of V.I.P.s, all of whom would like very much to catch our Honorable Secretary General with his pants down."

  Harshaw frowned. "The weakness in this defense is that I can't maintain it indefinitely. Truthfully, when I set it up, my worry was to set up fast enough - I expected whatever popped' to pop inside of twenty four hours. Now my worry is reversed and I think we are going to have to force some action quickly while I can still keep a spotlight on us."

  "What sort of action, Jubal?"

  "I don't know. I've been fretting about it the past three days, to the point where I can't enjoy my food. But you gave me a glimmer of a new approach when you told me that remarkable story about what happened when they tried to grab you two in Ben's apartment."

  "I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner, Jubal. But I didn't think anybody would believe me and I must say that it makes me feel good that you do believe me."

  "I didn't say I believed you."

  "What? But you-"

  "I think you were telling the truth, Jill. But a dream IS a true experience of a sort and so is a hypnotic delusion. But what happens in this room during the next half hour will be seen by a Fair Witness and by cameras which are" he leaned forward and pressed a button. "rolling right now. I don't think Anne can be hypnotized when she's on duty and I'll lay long odds that cameras can't be. We should be able to find out what kind of truth we're dealing with - after which we should be able to decide how to go about forcing the powers-that-be to drop the other shoe� and maybe figure a way that will help Ben at the same time. Go get Mike."

  Mike's delay was not mysterious, merely worrisome to him. He had managed to tie his left shoestring to his right - then had stood up, tripped himself, fallen flat, and, in so doing, jerked the knots almost hopelessly tight. He had spent the rest of the time analysing his predicament, concluding correctly why he had failed, and slowly, slowly, slowly getting the snarl untied and the strings correctly tied, one bow to each shoe, unlinked. He had not been aware that his dressing had taken long; he had simply been troubled that he had failed to repeat correctly something which Jill had already taught him. He confessed his failure abjectly to her even though he had repaired it by the time she came to fetch him.

  She soothed and reassured him, combed his hair, and herded him in to see Jubal. Harshaw looked up. "Hi, son. Sit down."

  "Hi, Jubal," Valentine Michael Smith answered gravely, sat down - waited. Jill had to rid herself of the impression that Smith had bowed deeply, when in fact he had not even nodded.

  Harshaw put aside a hush-mike and said, "Well, boy what have you learned today?"

  Smith smiled happily, then answered - as always with a slight pause. "I have today learned to do a one-and-a-half gainer. That is a jumping, a dive, for entering our water by-"

  "I know, I saw you doing it. But you splashed. Keep your toes pointed, your knees straight, and your feet together."

  Smith looked unhappy. "I rightly did not it do?"

  "You did it very rightly, for a first time. Watch how Dorcas does it. Hardly a ripple in the water."

  Smith considered this slowly. "The water groks Dorcas. It cherishes him."

  "'Her.' Dorcas is a 'her,' not a 'him.'"

  "'Her,' " Smith corrected. "Then my speaking was false? I have read in Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, published in Springfield, Massachusetts, that the masculine gender includes the feminine gender in speaking. In Hagworth's Law of Contracts, Fifth Edition, Chicago, Illinois, 1978, on page 1012, it says-"

  "Hold it," Harshaw said hastily. "The trouble is with the English language, not with you. Masculine speech forms do include the feminine, when you are speaking in general - but not when you are talking about a particular person. Dorcas is always 'she' or 'her' - never 'he' or 'him.' Remember it."

  "I will remember it."

  "You had better remember it - or you may provoke Dorcas into proving just how female she is." Harshaw blinked thoughtfully. "Jill, is the lad sleeping with you? Or with one of you?"

  She barely hesitated, then answered flatly, "So far as I know, Mike doesn't sleep."

  "You evaded my question."

  "Then perhaps you had better assume that I intended to evade it. However, he is not sleeping with me."

  "Mmm� damn it, my interest is scientific. However, we'll pursue another line of inquiry. Mike, what else have you learned today?"

  "I have learned two ways to tie my shoes. One way is only good for lying down. The other way is good for walking. And I have learned conjugations. 'I am, thou art, he is, we are, you are, they are, I was, thou wast-' "

  "Okay, that's enough. What else?"

  Mike smiled delightedly. "To yesterday I am learning to drive the tractor, brightly, brightly, and with beauty."

  "Eh?" Jubal turned to Jill. 'When did this happen?"

  "Yesterday afternoon while you were napping, Jubal. It's all right - Duke was very careful not to let him get hurt."

  "Umm� well, obviously he did not get hurt. Mike, have you been reading?"

  "Yes, Jubal."

  "What?"

  "I have read," Mike recited carefully, "three more volumes of the Encyclopedia, Maryb to Mushe, Mushr to Ozon, P to Planti. You have told me not to read too much of the Encyclopedia at one reading, so I then stopped. I then read the Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by Master William Shakespeare of London. I then read the Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingait as translated into English by Arthur Mach
en. I then read The Art of Cross-Examination by Francis Weilman. I then tried to grok what I had read until Jill told me that I must come to breakfast."

  "And did you grok it?"

  Smith looked troubled. "Jubal, I do not know."

  "Is anything bothering you, Mike?"

  "I do not grok all fullness of what I read. In the history written by Master William Shakespeare I found myself full of happiness at the death of Romeo. Then I read on and learned that he had discorporated too soon - or so I thought I grokked. Why?"

  "He was a blithering young idiot."

  "Beg pardon?"

  "I don't know, Mike."

  Smith considered this. Then he muttered something in Martian and added, "I am only an egg."

  "Eh? You usually say that when you want to ask a favor, Mike. What is it this time? Speak up."

  Smith hesitated. Then he blurted out, "Jubal my brother, would please you ask Romeo why he discorporated? I cannot ask him; I am only an egg. But you can - and then you could teach me the grokking of it."

  For the next several minutes the conversation became very tangled. Jubal saw at once that Mike believed that Romeo of Montague had been a living, breathing person, and Jubal managed with no special shock to his own concepts to realize that Mike expected him to be able, somehow, to conjure up Romeo's ghost and demand of him explanations for his conduct when in the flesh.

  But to get over to Mike the idea that none of the Capulets and Montagues had ever had any sort of corporate existence was another matter. The concept of fiction was nowhere in Mike's experience; there was nothing on which it could rest, and Jubal's attempts to explain the idea were so emotionally upsetting to Mike that Jill was afraid that he was about to roll up into a ball and withdraw himself.

  But Mike himself saw how perilously close he was coming to that necessity and he had already learned that he must not resort to this refuge in the presence of his friends, because (with the exception of his brother Doctor Nelson) it always caused them emotional disturbance. So he made a mighty effort, slowed down his heart, calmed his emotions, and smiled. "I will waiting till a grokking comes of itself."

  "That's better," agreed Jubal. "But hereafter, before you read anything, ask me or ask Jill, or somebody, whether or not it is fiction. I don't want you to get mixed up."

  "I will ask, Jubal." Mike decided that, when he did grok this strange idea, that he must report the fullness to the Old Ones� and suddenly found himself wondering if the Old Ones knew about "fiction." The completely incredible idea that there might be something which was as strange to the Old Ones as it was to himself was so much more revolutionary (indeed heretically so) than the sufficiently weird concept of fiction that he hastily put it aside to cool, saved it for future deep contemplation.

  "-but I didn't," his brother Jubal was saying, "call you in here to discuss literary forms. Mike, you remember the day that Jill took you away from the hospital?"

  "'Hospital'?" Mike repeated.

  "I'm not sure, Jubal," Jill interrupted, "that Mike ever knew that it was a hospital - at least I never told him it was one. Let me try it."

  "Go ahead."

  "Mike, you remember the place where you were, where you lived alone in a room, before I dressed you and took you away."

  "Yes, Jill.''

  "Then we went to another place and I undressed you and gave you a bath."

  Smith smiled in pleased recollection. "Yes. It was a great happiness."

  "Then I dried you off - and then two men came."

  Smith's smile wiped away. He relived that critical cusp of decision and the horror of his discovery that, somehow, he had chosen wrong action and hurt his water brother. He began to tremble and huddle into himself.

  Jill said loudly, "Mike! Stop it! Stop it at once! Don't you dare go away!"

  Mike took control of his being and did what his water brother required of him. "Yes, Jill," he agreed.

  "Listen to me, Mike. I want you to think about that time - but you mustn't get upset or go away. Just remember it. There were two men there. One of them pulled you out into the living room."

  "The room with the joyful grasses on the floor," he agreed.

  "That's right. He pulled you out into the room with the grass on the floor and I tried to stop him. He hit me. Then he was gone. You remember?"

  "You are not angry?"

  "What? No, no, not at all. But I was frightened. One man disappeared, then the other one pointed a gun at me - and then he was gone, too. I was very frightened - but I was not angry."

  "You are not angry with me now?"

  "Mike, dear - I have never been angry with you. But sometimes I have been frightened. I was frightened that time - but I am not afraid now. Jubal and I want to know what happened. Those two men were there, in that room with us. And then you did something� and they were gone. You did it twice. What was it you did? Can you tell us?"

  "Yes, I will tell you. The man - the big man - hit you� and I was frightened, too. So I-" He croaked a phrase in Martian, then looked puzzled. "I do not know words."

  Jubal said, "Mike, can you use a lot of words and explain it a little at a time?"

  "I will try, Jubal. Something is there, in front of me. It is a wrong thing and it must not be there. It must go. So I reach out and-" He stopped again and looked perplexed. "It is such a simple thing, such an easy thing. Anyone can do it. Tying shoe laces is much more hard. But the words not are. I am very sorry. I will learn more words." He considered it. "Perhaps the words are in Plants to Raym, or Rayn to Sarr, or Sars to Sorc. I will read them tonight and tell you at breakfast."

  "Maybe," Jubal admitted. "Just a minute, Mike." He got up from his desk, went to a corner and returned with a large carton which had lately contained twelve fifths of brandy. "Can you make this go away?"

  "This is a wrong thing and it must not be here?"

  "Well, assume that it is."

  "But - Jubal, I must know that it is a wrong thing. This is a box. I do not grok that it exists wrongly."

  "Mmm- I see. I think I see. Suppose I picked up this box and threw it at Jill's head? Threw it hard, so that it would hurt her?"

  Smith said with gentle sadness, "Jubal, you would not do that to Jill."

  "Uh� damn it. I guess I wouldn't. Jill, will you throw the box at me? Good and hard - a scalp wound at least, if Mike can't protect me."

  "Jubal, I don't like the idea much better than you do."

  "Oh, come on! In the interest of science� and Ben Caxton."

  "But-" Jill jumped up suddenly, grabbed the box, threw it right at Jubal's head. Jubal intended to stand and take it - but instinct and habit won out; he ducked.

  "Missed me," he said. "But where is it?" He looked around. "Confound it, I wasn't watching. I meant to keep my eyes right on it." He looked at Smith. "Mike, is that the way - what's the matter, boy?"

  The Man from Mars was trembling and looking unhappy. Jill hurried to him and put her arms around his shoulders. "There, there, it's all right, dear! You did it beautifully - whatever it is. It never touched Jubal. It simply vanished."

  "I guess it did," Jubal admitted, looking all around the room and chewing his thumb. "Anne, were you watching?"

  "Yes."

  "What did you see?"

  "The box did not simply vanish. The process was not quite instantaneous but lasted some measurable fraction of a second. From where I am sitting it appeared to shrink very, very rapidly, as if it were disappearing into the far distance. But it did not go outside the room, for I could see it right up to the instant it disappeared."

  "But where did it go?"

  "That is all I can report."

  "Mmm� we'll run off the films later - but I'm convinced. Mike-"

  "Yes, Jubal?"

  "Where is that box now?"

  "The box is-" Smith paused. "Again I have not words. I am sorry."

  "I'm not sorry, but I'm certainly confused. Look, son, can you reach in again and haul it out? Bring the box back here?"
r />   "Beg pardon?"

  "You made it go away; now make it come back."

  "How can I do that? The box is nor."

  Jubal looked very thoughtful. "If this method ever becomes popular, we'll have to revise the rules concerning corpus delecti. 'I've got a little list they never will be missed.' Jill, let's find something else that will make a not-quite-lethal weapon; this time I'm going to keep my eyes open. Mike, how close do you have to be to do this trick?"

  "Beg pardon?"

  "What's your range? If you had been standing out there in the hallway and I had been clear back by the window - oh, say thirty feet - could you have stopped that box from hitting me?"

  Smith appeared mildly surprised. "Yes."

  "Hmm� come over here by the window. Now look down there at the swimming poo1. Suppose that Jill and I had been over on the far side of the pool and you had been standing right where you are. Could you have stopped the box from here?"

  "Yes, Jubal."

  "Well� suppose Jill and I were clear down the road there at the gate, a quarter of a mile away. Suppose we were standing just this side of those bushes that shield the gate, where you could see us clearly. Is that too far?"

  Smith hesitated a long time, then spoke slowly. "Jubal, it is not the distance. It is not the seeing. It is the knowing."

  "Hmm� let's see if I grok it. Or grok part of it. It doesn't matter how far or how close a thing is. You don't even have to see it happening. But if you know that a bad thing is happening, you can reach out and stop it. Right?"

  Smith looked slightly troubled. "Almost it is right. But I am not long out of the nest. For knowing I must see. But an Old One does not need eyes to know. He knows. He groks. He acts. I am sorry."

  "I don't know what you are sorry about, son," Jubal said gruffly. "The High Minister for Peace would have declared you Top Secret ten minutes ago."

  "Beg pardon?"

  "Never mind. What you do is quite good enough in this vicinity." Jubal returned to his desk, looked around thoughtfully and picked up a ponderous metal ash tray. "Jill, don't aim at my face this time; this thing has sharp corners. Okay, Mike, you stand clear out in the hallway."