A Stranger in a Strange Land

by Robert Anson Heinlein

  "I was just telling Jill," she went on, "that you've got a good act, you two."

  Mike smiled gently. "Now, Pat, you don't have to kid us. It stinks. We know it."

  "No, it doesn't, dearie. Oh, maybe it needs a little something to give it some zing. A few jokes. Or, well, you could even cut down on Jill's costume a little. You've got an awful cute figure, hon."

  Jill shook her head. "That wouldn't do it."

  "Well, I saw a magician once that used to bring his assistant out dressed for the Gay 'Nineties - the eighteen-nineties, that is - not even her legs showing. Then he would disappear one garment after another. The marks loved it. But don't misunderstand me, dear - nothing unrefined. She finished� oh, in almost as much as you wear now."

  "Patty," Jill said frankly, "I'd do our act stark naked if the clowns wouldn't close the show." As she said it, she realized that she meant it - and wondered how Graduate Nurse Boardman, floor supervisor, had reached the point where she could mean it?

  Mike, of course- And she was quite happy about it.

  Mrs. Paiwonski shook her head. "You couldn't, honey. The marks would riot. Just a touch more ginger ale, dear. But if you've got a good figure, why not use it? How far do you think I would get as a tattooed lady ii I didn't peel off all they'll let me?"

  "Speaking of that," Mike said, "you don't look comfortable in all those clothes, Pat. I think the aircooling in this dump has gone sour again - it must be at least eighty." He himself was dressed in a light robe, his concession to the easy-going conventions of carney good manners. Extreme heat, he had learned, affected him slightly, enough so that he sometimes had to adjust consciously his metabolism-extreme cold affected him not at all. But he knew that their friend was used to the real comfort of almost nothing and affected the clothes she now wore to cover her tattoos when out among the marks; Jill had explained it to him. "Why don't you get comfortable? 'Ain't nobody here but just us chickens.'" The latter, he knew, was a joke, an appropriate one for emphasizing that friends were in private - Jubal had tried to explain it to him, but failed. But Mike had carefully noted when and how the idiom could be used.

  "Sure, Patty," Jill agreed. "If you're raw under that dress, I can get you something light and comfortable. Or we'll just make Mike close his eyes."

  "Uh� well, I did slip back into one of my costumes."

  "Then don't be stiff with friends. I'll get your zippers."

  "Let me get these stockings and shoes." She went on talking while trying to think how she could get the conversation around to religion, where she wanted it. Bless them, these kids were ready to be seekers, she was certain - and she had counted on the whole season to bring them around to the light� not just one hurried visit before they left. "The point about show business, Smitty, is that first you have to know what the marks want� and you have to know what it is you're giving them and how to make 'em like it. Now if you were a real magician - oh, I don't mean that you aren't skillful, dear, because you are." She tucked her carefully rolled hose in her shoes, loosened her garter belt and got out of it modestly, let Jill get her dress zippers. "I mean if your magic was real like you had made a pact with the Devil. That'd be one thing. But the marks know that it's clever sleight-of-hand. So you give 'em a light-hearted show to match. But did you ever see a fire eater with a pretty assistant? Heavens, a pretty girl would just clutter his act; the marks are standing around hoping he'll set fire to hisself - or blow up."

  She snaked the dress over her head; Jill took it and kissed her. "You look more natural, Aunt Patty. Sit back and enjoy your drink."

  "Just a second, dearie." Mrs. Paiwonski prayed mightily for guidance - wished that she were a preacher� or had even the gift of gab of a talker. Well, her pictures would just have to speak for themselves - and they would; that was why George had put them there. "Now this is what I've got to show the marks� this and my snakes, but this is more important. Have either one of you ever looked, really looked, at my pictures?"

  "No," Jill admitted, "I guess not. We didn't want to stare at you, like a couple of marks."

  "Then stare at me now, dears - because that's why George, bless his sweet soul safe in heaven, put them on me. To be stared at� and studied. Now right up here under my chin is the birth scene of our prophet, the holy Archangel Foster - just an innocent babe and maybe not knowing what Heaven had in store for him. But the angels knew - see 'em there around him? The next scene is his first miracle, when a young sinner in the country school he attended shot down a poor little birdie� and he picked it up and stroked it and it flew away unharmed. See the school house behind? Now it kind of jumps a little and I'll have to turn my back. But all of 'em are dated for each holy event in his life." She explained how George had not had a bare canvas to work with when first the great opus was started - since they had both been sinners and young Patricia already rather much tattooed� how with great effort and inspired genius George had been able to turn "The Attack on Pearl Harbor" into "Armageddon," and "Skyline of New York" into "The Holy City."

  "But," she admitted candidly, "even though every single one of them is a sacred picture now, it did kind of force him to skip around to find enough bare skin to record in living flesh a witness to each milestone in the earthly life of our prophet. Here you see him preaching on the steps of the ungodly theological seminary that turned him down - that was the first time he was arrested, the beginning of the Persecution. And on around, right on my spine, you see him smashing idolatrous images� and next you see him in jail, with the holy light streaming down on it. Then the Faithful Few bust into the jail-"

  The Reverend Foster had realized early that, when it came to upholding religious freedom, brass knucks, clubs, and a willingness to tangle with cops was worth far more than passive resistance. His had been a church militant from scratch. But he had been a tactician, too; pitched battles were fought only where the heavy artillery was on the side of the Lord.

  "-and they rescue him and tar amp; feather the idolatrous judge who put him there. Around in front here. Uh, you can't see it very well; my bra covers most of it, A shame."

  ("Michael, what does she want?")

  ("Thou knowest. Tell her. ")

  "Aunt Patty," Jill said gently, "you want us to look at all your pictures. Don't you?"

  "Well�it's just as Tim says in the bally, George used up all the skin I have in making the story complete."

  "If George went to all that work, I'm sure he meant for them to be seen. Take off your costume. I told you that I wouldn't mind working our own act stark naked if they'd let me - and ours is just entertainment. Yours has a purpose - a holy purpose."

  "Well� all right. If you really want me to." She sang a silent hallelujah and decided that Foster himself was sustaining her - with blessed luck and George's pictures she would yet have these dear kids seeking the light.

  "I'll unhook you-"

  ("Jill-")

  ("No, Michael?")

  ("Wait")

  To her utter surprise and some fear Mrs. Paiwonski found that her spangled briefies and bra were gone! But Jill was surprised to find that her almost - new negligee followed the little costume into wherever and nowhere. Jill was only mildly surprised when Mike's robe disappeared, too; she chalked it up, correctly but not completely, to his catlike good manners.

  Mrs. Paiwonski clutched at her mouth and gasped. Jill at once put her arms around her. "There, there, dear! It's all right, nobody's hurt." She turned her head and said, "Mike, you did it, you'll simply have to tell her."

  "Yes, Jill. Pat-"

  "Yes, Smitty?'

  "You said a while ago that I wasn't a real magician, that my tricks were just sleight-of-hand. You were going to take off your costume anyhow - so I took it off for you."

  "But how? And where is it?"

  "Same place Jill's wrapper is - and my robe. Gone."

  "But don't worry about it, Patty," put in Jill. "We'll replace it. Two more - and twice as pretty. Mike, you shouldn't have done it."
<
br />   "I'm sorry, Jill. I grokked it was all right."

  "Well� I suppose it is." Jill decided that Aunt Patty wasn't too upset - and certainly she would never tell; she was carney.

  Mrs. Paiwonski was not worried by the loss of two scraps of costume, nor by her own nudity. Nor by the nakedness of the other two. But she was greatly troubled by a theological problem that she felt was out of her depth. "Smitty? That was real magic?"

  "I guess you would call it that," he agreed, using the words most exactly.

  "I'd rather call it a miracle," she said bluntly.

  "You can call it that, too, if you want to. But it wasn't sleight-of-hand."

  "I know that. You weren't even near me." She, who daily handled live cobras and who had more than once handled obnoxious drunks with her bare hands (to their sorrow), was not afraid. Patricia Paiwonski was not afraid of the Devil himself; she was sustained by her faith that she was saved and therefore invulnerable to the Devil. But she was uneasy for the safety of her friends. "Smitty� look me in the eye. Have you made a pact with the Devil?"

  "No, Pat, I have not."

  She continued to look into his eyes, then said, "You aren't lying-"

  "He doesn't know how to lie, Aunt Patty."

  "-so it's a miracle. Smitty� you are a holy man!"

  "I don't know, Pat."

  "Archangel Foster didn't know that he was a holy man until he reached his teens� even though he performed many miracles before that time. But you are a holy man; I can feel it." She thought. "I think I felt it when I first met you."

  "I don't know, Pat."

  "I think he may be," admitted Jill. "But he really doesn't know, himself. Michael� I think we've told her too much not to tell her more."

  "'Michael!'" Patty repeated suddenly. "The Archangel Michael, send down to us in human form."

  "Aunt Patty, please! If he is, he doesn't know it-"

  "He wouldn't necessarily know it. God performs his wonders in his own way."

  "Aunt Patty, will you please wait and let me talk, just for a bit?"

  Some minutes later Mrs. Paiwonski had accepted that Mike was indeed the Man from Mars, she had agreed to accept him as a man and to treat him as a man� while stating explicitly that she still held to her own opinion as to his true nature and why he was on Earth - explaining (somewhat fuzzily, it seemed to Jill) that Foster had been really and truly a man while he was on Earth, but had been also and always had been, an archangel, even though he had not known it himself. If Jill and Michael insisted that they were not saved, she would treat them as they asked to be treated - God moves in mysterious ways.

  "I think you could properly call us 'seekers,'" Mike told her.

  "Then that's enough, my dears! I'm sure you're saved - but Foster himself was a seeker in his early years. I'll help."

  She had participated in another minor miracle. They had been seated in a circle on the rug. Jill lay back flat and suggested it to Mike in her mind. With no patter of any sort, with no sheet nor anything to conceal a non-existent steel rod, Mike lifted her. Patricia watched it with serene happiness, convinced that she was vouchsafed sight of a miracle. "Pat," Mike then said. "Lie flat."

  She did so without argument, as readily as if he had been Foster. Jill turned her head. "Hadn't you better put me down first, Mike?"

  "No, I can do it."

  Mrs. Paiwonski felt herself gently lifted. She was not frightened by it; she simply felt overpowering religious ecstasy like heat lightning in her loins, making tears come to her eyes, the power of which she had not felt since, as a young woman, Holy Foster himself had touched her. When Mike moved them closer together and Jill put her arms around her, her tears increased, but her cries were the gentle sobs of happiness.

  Presently he lowered them gently to the floor and found, as he expected, that he was not tired - he could not recall when last he had been tired.

  Jill said to him, "Mike� we need a glass of water."

  ("????")

  ("Yes, " her mind answered.)

  ("And?")

  ("Of elegant necessity. Why do you think she came here?")

  ("I knew. I was not sure that you knew� or would approve. My brother. My self")

  ("My brother.")

  Mike did not get up to fetch water. He sent a glass from the tray of drinks into the bathroom, had the tap fill it, returned it to Jill's hands. Mrs. Paiwonski watched this with almost absent-minded interest; she was beyond being astonished. Jill held the glass, said to her, "Aunt Patty, this is like being baptized� and like getting married. It's� a Martian thing. It means that you trust us and we trust you� and we can tell you anything and you can tell us anything� and that we are always partners, now and forever. It's very serious� and once done it can never be broken. If you broke it, we would have to die - at once. Saved or not. If we broke it - but we won't. But you don't have to share water with us if you don't want to - we'll still be friends. Now - if this in any way interferes with your faith, don't do it. We don't belong to your church even though you guessed that we did. We don't. We may never belong. 'Seekers' is the most you can call us now. Mike?"

  "We grok," he agreed. "Pat, Jill speaks rightly. I wish we could say it to you in Martian, it would be clearer. But this is everything that getting married is� and a great deal more. We are free to offer water to you but if there is any reason at all, in your religion or in your heart, not to accept - don't drink it!"

  Patricia Paiwonski took a deep breath. She had made such a decision once before - with her husband watching� and had not funked it. And who was she to refuse a holy man? And his blessed bride? "I want it," she said firmly.

  Jill took a sip. "We grow ever closer." She passed the glass to Mike.

  He looked at Jill, then at Patricia. "I thank you for water, my brother." He took a sip. "Pat, I give you the water of life. May you always drink deep." He passed the glass to her.

  Patricia took it. "Thank you. Thank you, oh my dears! The 'water of life' - oh, I love you both!" She drank thirstily.

  Jill took the glass from her, finished it. "Now we grow closer, my brothers."

  ("Jill?")

  ("Now!!!")

  Michael lifted his new water brother, wafted her in and placed her gently on the bed.

  Valentine Michael Smith had grokked, when first he had known it fully, that physical human love - very human and very physical - was not simply a necessary quickening of eggs, nor was it mere ritual through which one grew closer; the act itself was a growing-closer, a very great goodness - and (so far as he knew) unknown even to the Old Ones of his former people. He was still grokking it, trying at every opportunity to grok its fullness. But he had long since broken through any fear that heresy lay in his suspicion that even the Old Ones did not know this ecstasy - he grokked already that these his new people held spiritual depths unique. Happily he tried to sound them, with no inhibitions from his childhood to cause him guilt or reluctance of any sort.

  His human teachers had been unusually well qualified to instruct his innocence without bruising it. The result was as unique as he himself.

  Jill was very pleased but not really surprised to find that "Aunt Patty" accepted as inevitable and necessary, and with forthright fullness, the fact that sharing water in a very ancient Martian ceremony with Mike led at once to sharing Mike himself in a human rite ancient itself. Jill was somewhat surprised (although still pleased) at Pat's continued calm acceptance when it certainly had been demonstrated to their new water brother that Mike was capable of more miracles than he had disclosed up to then. However, Jill did not then know that Patricia Paiwonski had met a holy man before - Patricia expected more of holy men. Jill herself was simply serenely happy that a cusp had been reached and passed with right action and was ecstatically happy herself to grow closer as the cusp was determined - all of which she thought in Martian and quite differently.

  In time they rested and Jill had Mike treat Patty to a bath given by telekinesis, and herself sat on the e
dge of the tub and squealed and giggled when the older woman did. It was just play, very human and not at all Martian; Mike had done it for Jill on the initial occasion almost lazily rather than raise himself up out of the water - an accident, more or less. Now it had become a custom, one that Jill knew Patty would like. It tickled Jill to see Patty's face when she found herself being scrubbed all over by gentle. invisible hands� and then, presently dried in a whisk with neither towel nor blast of air.

  Patricia blinked. "After that I need a drink. A big one."

  "Certainly, darling."

  "And I still want to show you kids my pictures� all of them." Patricia followed Jill out into the living room, Mike in train, and stood in the middle of the rug. "But first look at me. Look at me, not at my pictures. What do you see?"

  With mild regret Mike stripped her tattoos off in his mind and looked at his new brother without her decorations. He liked her tattoos very much; they were peculiarly her own, they set her apart and made her a self. They seemed to him to give her a slightly Martian flavor, in that she did not have the bland sameness of most humans. He had already memorized them all and had thought pleasantly of having himself tattooed all over, once be grokked what should be pictured. The life of his father, water brother Jubal? He would have to ponder it. He would discuss it with Jill - and Jill might wish to be tattooed, too. What designs would make Jill more beautifully Jill? In the way in which perfume multiplied Jill's odor without changing it?

  What he saw when he looked at Pat without her tattoos pleased him but not as much; she looked as a woman necessarily must look to be woman. Mike still did not grok Duke's collection of pictures; the pictures were interesting and had taught Mike that there was more variety in the sizes, shapes, proportions and colors of women than he had known up to then and that there was some variety in the acrobatics involving physical love - but having learned these simple facts he seemed to grok that there was nothing more to be learned from Duke's prized pictures. Mike's early training had made of him a very exact observer, by eye (and other senses), but that same training had left him unresponsive to the subtle pleasures of voyeurism, it was not that be did not find women (including, most emphatically Patricia Paiwonski) sexually stimulating, but it lay not in seeing them. Of his senses, smell and touch counted much higher - in which he was quasi-human, quasi-Martian; the parallel Martian reflex (as unsubtle as a sneeze) was triggered by those two, but could activate only in season - what must be termed "sex" in a Martian is as romantic as intravenous feeding.