"Ok!" Ben applauded. "He's a slimy bastard - and the only reason I haven't been taking his racket apart in my column is that the syndicate is afraid to print it. Stinky, keep talking that well and you'll have me studying Arabic and buying a rug."
"I hope so. But the rug is not necessary."
Jubal sighed. "I agree with both of you. I'd rather see Mike smoking marijuana than be converted by Digby. But I don't think there is the slightest chance of Mike's being taken in by that syncretic hodgepodge Digby peddles�and he's got to learn to stand up to bad influences. I consider you a good influence - but I don't really think you stand much more chance than Digby has - the boy has an amazingly strong mind of his own. Muhammad may have to make way for a new prophet."
"If God so wills it," Mahmoud answered calmly.
"That leaves no room for argument," Jubal agreed.
"We were discussing religion before you got home," Dorcas said softly "Boss, did you know that women have souls?"
"They do?"
"So Stinky says."
"Maryam," Mahmoud explained, "wanted to know why we 'Mohammedans' thought only men had souls. So I cited the Writings."
"Miriam, I'm surprised at you. That's as vulgar a misconception as the notion that Jews sacrifice Christian babies in secret, obscene rites. The Koran is explicit in half a dozen places that entire families enter into Paradise, men and Women together. For example, see 'Ornaments of Gold' -verse seventy, isn't it, Stinky?"
"'Enter the Garden, ye and your wives, to be made glad.' That's as well as it can be put, in English," agreed Mahmoud.
"Well," said Miriam, "I had heard about the beautiful houris that Mohammedan men have for playthings when they go to heaven and that didn't seem to leave much room for wives."
"Houris aren't women," said Jubal. "They are separate creations, like djinni and angels. They don't need human souls, they are spirits to start with, eternal and unchanging and beautiful. There are male houris, too, or the male equivalent of houris. Houris don't have to earn their way into Paradise; they're on the staff. They serve endless delicious foods and pass around drinks that never give hangovers and entertain in other ways as requested. But the souls of human wives don't have to do any housework, any more than the men. Correct, Stinky?"
"Close enough, aside from your flippant choice of words. The houris-" He stopped and sat up so suddenly that he dumped Miriam. "Say! It's just possible that you girls don't have souls!"
Miriam sat up and said bitterly, "Why, you ungrateful dog of an infidel! Take that back!" "Peace, Maryam. If you don't have a soul, then you're immortal anyhow and won't miss it. Jubal� is it possible for a man to die and not notice it?"
"Can't say. Never tried it."
"Could I have died on Mars and just dreamed that I came home? Look around you! A garden the Prophet himself would be pleased with. Four beautiful houris, passing around lovely food and delicious drinks at all hours. Even their male counterparts, if you want to be fussy. Is this Paradise?"
"I can guarantee that it isn't," Jubal assured him. "My taxes are due this week."
"Still, that doesn't affect me."
"And take these houris- Even if we stipulate for the sake of argument that they are of beauty adequate to meet the specifications - after all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder-"
"They pass."
"And you'll pay for that, Boss," Miriam added.
"-there still remains," Jubal pointed out, "one more requisite attribute of houris."
"Mmmm-" said Mahmoud, "I don't think we need go into that. In Paradise, rather than a temporary physical condition, it would be a permanent spiritual attribute - more a state of mind. Yes?"
"In that case," Jubal said emphatically, "I am certain that these are not houris."
Mahmoud sighed. "In that case I'll just have to convert one."
"Why only one? There are still places left in the world where you can have the full quota."
"No, my friend. In the wise words of the Prophet, while the Legislations permit four, it is impossible for a man to deal justly with more than one."
"That's some relief. Which one?"
"We'll have to see. Maryam, are you feeling spiritual?"
"You go to hell! 'Houris' indeed!"
"Jill?"
"Give me a break," Ben protested. "I'm still working on Jill."
"Later, Jill. Anne?"
"Sorry. I've got a date."
"Dorcas? You're my last chance."
"Stinky," she said softly, "just how spiritual do you want me to feel?"
When Mike got inside the house, he went straight upstairs to his room, closed the door, got on the bed, assumed the foetal position, rolled up his eyes, swallowed his tongue, and slowed his heart almost to nothing. He knew that Jill did not like him to do this in the daytime, but she did not object as long as he did not do it publicly. There were so many things that he must not do publicly, but only this one really aroused her ire. He had been waiting to do this ever since he had left that room of terrible wrongness; he needed very badly to withdraw and try to grok all that had happened. For he had done something else that Jill had told him not to. He felt a very human urge to tell himself that it had been forced on him, that it was not his fault; but his Martian training did not permit him this easy escape. He had arrived at a cusp, right action had been required, the choice had been his. He grokked that he had chosen correctly. But his water brother Jill had forbidden this choice - but that would have left him no choice. This was contradiction; at a cusp, choice is. By choice, spirit grows.
He considered whether or not Jill would have approved had he taken other action, not wasting food?
No, he grokked that Jill's injunction had covered that variant of action, too.
At this point the being sprung from human genes shaped by Martian thought, and who could never be either one, completed one stage of his growth, burst out and ceased to be a nestling. The solitary loneliness of predestined free will was then his and with it the Martian serenity to embrace it, cherish it, savour its bitterness, and accept its consequences. With tragic joy he knew that this cusp was his, not Jill's. His water brother could teach, admonish, guide - but choice at a cusp was not shared. Here was "ownership" beyond any possible sale, gift, hypothecation; owner and owned grokked fully, inseparable. He eternally was the action he had taken at cusp.
Now that he knew himself to be self he was free to grok ever closer to his brothers, merge without let. Self's integrity was and is and ever had been. Mike stopped to cherish all his brother selves, the many threesfulfilled on Mars, both corporate and discorporate, the precious few on Earth - the as-yet-unknown powers of three on Earth that would be his to merge with and cherish now that at last long waiting he grokked and cherished himself.
Mike remained in his trance; there was still much to grok, loose ends and bits and pieces to be puzzled over and fitted into his growing pattern - all that he had seen and heard and been at the Archangel Foster Tabernacle (not just the cusp he had encountered when he and Digby had come face to face alone), why Bishop Senator Boone had made him warily uneasy without frightening him, why Miss Dawn Ardent had tasted like a water brother when she was not, the texture and smell of the goodness he had incompletely grokked in the jumping up and down and the wailing - Jubal's stored conversation both coming and going - Jubal's words troubled him more than other details; he studied them with great care, compared them with what he had been taught as a nestling, making great effort to bridge between his two languages, the one he thought with and the one he now spoke and was gradually learning to think in, for some purposes. The human word "church" which turned up over and over again among Jubal's words gave him most knotty difficulty; there was no Martian concept of any sort to match it - unless one took "church" and "worship" and "God" and "congregation" and many other words and equated them all to the totality of the only world he had known during most of his growing-waiting� then forced the concept back awkwardly into English in that phrase which had been
rejected (but by each differently) by Jubal, by Mahmoud, by Digby.
"Thou art God" He came closer to understanding it in English himself now, although it could never have the crystal inevitability of the Martian concept it stood for. In his mind he spoke simultaneously the English sentence and the Martian word and felt closer grokking. Repeating it like a student telling himself that the jewel is in the lotus he sank into nirvana untroubled.
Shortly before midnight he speeded up his heart, resumed normal breathing, ran down his engineering check list, found that all was in order, uncurled and sat up. He had been spiritually weary; now he felt light and gay and clear-headed, eager to get on with the many actions he saw spreading out before him.
He felt a puppyish need for company almost as strong as his earlier necessity for quiet. He stepped out into the upper hail, was delighted to encounter a water brother.
"!!!!"
"Oh. Hello, Mike. My, you look chipper."
"I feel fine! Where is everybody?"
"Everybody's asleep but you and me - so keep your voice down. Ben and Stinky went home an hour ago and people started going to bed."
"Oh." Mike felt mildly disappointed that Mahmoud had left; he wanted to explain to him his new grokking. But he would do so, when next he saw him.
"I ought to be asleep, too, but I felt like a snack. Are you hungry?"
"Me? Sure, I'm hungry!"
"Good. You ought to be, you missed dinner. Come on, I know there's some cold chicken and we'll see what else." They went downstairs, loaded a tray lavishly. "Let's take it outside. It's still plenty warm."
"That's a fine idea," Mike agreed.
"Warm enough to swim if we wanted to - this is a real Indian summer. Just a second, I'll switch on the floods."
"Don't bother," Mike answered. "I'll carry the tray, I can see." He could see, as they all knew, in almost total darkness. Jubal said that his exceptional night-sight probably came from the conditions in which he had grown up, and Mike grokked that that was true but he grokked also that there was more to it than that; his foster parents had taught him to see. As for the night being warm enough, he would have been comfortable naked on Mount Everest, but he knew that his water brothers had very little tolerance for changes in temperature and pressure; he was always considerate of their weakness, once he had learned of it. But be was eagerly looking forward to snow - seeing for himself that each tiny crystal of the water of life was a unique individual, as he had read - walking barefoot in it, rolling in it.
In the meantime he was equally pleased with the unseasonably warm autumn night and the still more pleasing company of his water brother.
"Okay, you carry the tray. I'll switch on just the underwater lights. That'll be plenty to eat by."
"Fine." Mike liked having light coming up through the ripples; it was a goodness, a beauty, even though he did not need it. They picnicked by the pool, then lay back on the grass and looked at the stars.
"Mike, there's Mars. It is Mars, isn't it? Or is it Antares?"
"It is Mars."
"Mike? What are they doing on Mars?"
He hesitated a long time; the question was too wide in scope to pin down to the sparse English language. "On the side toward the horizon - the southern hemisphere - it is spring; the plants are being taught to grow."
"'Taught to grow?'"
He hesitated only slightly. "Larry teaches plants to grow every day. I have helped him. But my people - the Martians, I mean; I grok now that you are my people - teach the plants another way. In the other hemisphere it is growing colder and the nymphs, those who have stayed alive through the summer, are being brought into the nests for quickening and more growing." He thought. "Of the humans we left at the equator when I came here, one has discorporated and the others are sad."
"Yes, I heard about it in the news."
Mike had not heard about it in the news; he had not known it until he was asked. "They should not be sad. Mr. Booker T. W. Jones Food Technician First Class is not sad; the Old Ones have cherished him."
"You knew him?"
"Yes. He had his own face, dark and beautiful. But he was homesick."
"Oh, dear! Mike� do you ever get homesick? For Mars?"
"At first I was very homesick," he answered truthfully. "I was lonely always." He rolled toward her and took her in his arms. "But now I am not lonely. I grok I shall never be lonely again."
"Mike darling-" They kissed, and went on kissing.
Presently his water brother said breathlessly. "Oh, my! That was almost worse than the first time."
"You are all right, my brother?"
"Yes. Yes indeed. Kiss me again."
Quite a long time later, by cosmic clock, she said, "Mike? Is that - I mean, 'Do you know-'"
"I know. It is for growing-closer. Now we grow closer."
"Well, I've been ready a long time-goodness, we all have, but never mind, dear; turn just a little. I'll help."
As they merged, grokking together, Mike said softly and triumphantly: "Thou art God."
Her answer was not in words. Then, as their grokking made them ever closer and Mike felt himself almost ready to discorporate, her voice called him back: "Oh?� Oh! Thou art God!"
"We grok God."
XXV
ON MARS THE LITTLE HUMAN ADVANCE GUARD were building half-buried pressure domes for the larger male amp; female party that would arrive by next ship. This work went much faster than originally scheduled as the Martians were uncritically helpful. Part of the time saved was spent in preparing a preliminary estimate on a very long-distance plan to free the bound oxygen in the sands of Mars to make the planet more friendly to future human generations.
The Old Ones neither helped nor hindered these long-distance human plans; time was not yet. Their own meditations were approaching a violent cusp that would control the shape of Martian art for many millennia. On Earth elections continued as usual and a very advanced poet published a limited edition of verse consisting entirely of punctuation marks and spaces; Time magazine reviewed it and suggested that the Federation Assembly Daily Record could profitably be translated into the same medium. The poet was invited to lecture at the University of Chicago, which he did, clad in full formal evening dress lacking only trousers and shoes.
A colossal advertising campaign opened to sell more sexual organs of plants for human use and Mrs. Joseph ("Shadow of Greatness") Douglas was quoted as saying: "I would no more think of sitting down to eat without flowers on my table than without serviettes." A Tibetan swami from Palermo, Sicily, announced in Beverly Hills a newly discovered, ancient yoga discipline for ripple breathing which greatly increased both pranha and the cosmic attraction between the sexes. His chelas were required to assume the matsyendra posture dressed in hand-woven diapers while he read aloud from the Rig-Veda and an assistant guru checked through their purses in another room - nothing was ever stolen from the purses; the purpose was less immediate.
The President of the United States, by proclamation, named the first Sunday in November as "National Grandmothers' Day" and urged the grandchildren of America to say it with flowers. A funeral parlor chain was indicted for price-cutting. The Fosterite bishops, after secret conclave, announced the Church's second Major Miracle: Supreme Bishop Digby had been translated bodily to Heaven and spot-promoted to Archangel, ranking with but after Archangel Foster. The glorious news had been held up pending Heavenly confirmation of the elevation of a new Supreme Bishop, Huey Short - a compromise candidate accepted by the Boone faction after the lots had been cast repeatedly.
L'Unita and Hoy published identical doctrinaire denunciations of Short's elevation, L'Osservatore Romano and the Christian Science Monitor ignored it, Times of India snickered at it editorially, and the Manchester Guardian reported it without comment - the Fosterite congregation in England was small but extremely militant.
Digby was not pleased with his promotion. The Man from Mars had interrupted him with his work half finished - and that stupid jackass Sh
ort was certain to louse it up. Foster listened to him with angelic patience until Digby ran down, then said, "Listen, junior, you're an angel now - so forget it. Eternity is no time for recriminations. You too were a stupid jackass until you poisoned me. Afterwards you did well enough. Now that Short is Supreme Bishop he'll do all right, too; he can't help it. Same as with the Popes. Some of them were warts until they got promoted. Check with one of them, go ahead - there's no professional jealousy here."
Digby calmed down a little, but made one request.
Foster shook his halo in negation. "You can't touch him. You shouldn't have tried to touch him in the first place. Oh, you can submit a requisition for a miracle if you want to make a bloody fool of yourself. But, I'm telling you, it'll be turned down - you simply don't understand the system yet. The Martians have their own setup, different from ours, and as long as they need him, we can't touch him. They run their own show their own way - the Universe has variety, something for everybody - a fact you field workers often miss."
"You mean this punk can brush me aside and I've got to hold still for it?"
"I held still for the same thing, didn't I? I'm helping you now, am I not? Now look, there's work to be done and lots of it - before you can expect to be promoted again. The Boss wants performance, not gripes - if you need a Day off to get your nerve back, duck over to the Muslim Paradise and take it. Otherwise, straighten your halo, square your wings, and dig in. The sooner you start acting like an angel the quicker you'll start feeling angelic. Get Happy, junior!"
Digby heaved a deep ethereal sigh. "Okay, I'm Happy. Where do I start?"
A Stranger in a Strange Land Page 39
