"Let's say it's not a religion. It is a church, in every legal and moral senses - and I suppose our Nest is a monastery. But we're not trying to bring people to God; that's a contradiction in terms, you can't even say it in Martian. We're not trying to save souls, because souls can't be lost. We're not trying to get people to have faith, because what we offer is not faith but truth - truth they can check; we don't urge them to believe it. Truth for practical purposes, for here-and-now, truth as matter of fact as an ironing board and as useful as a loaf of bread� so practical that it can make war and hunger and violence and hate as unnecessary as� as - well, as clothes here in the Nest. But they have to learn Martian first. That's the only hitch-finding people who are honest enough to believe what they see, and then are willing to do the hard work - it is hard work - of learning the language it can be taught in. A composer couldn't possibly write down a symphony in English� and this sort of symphony can't be stated in English any more than Beethoven's Fifth can be." She smiled. "But Mike never hurries. Day after day he screens hundreds of people finds a few dozen� and out of those a very few trickle into the Nest and he trains them further. And someday Mike will have some of us so thoroughly trained that we can go out and start other nests, and then it can begin to snowball. But there's no hurry. None of us, even us in the Nest, are really trained. Are we, dear?"
Ben looked up, somewhat startled by Jill's last three words - then was really startled to find bending over him to offer him a plate a woman whom he belatedly recognized as the other high priestess - Dawn, yes, that was right. His surprise was not reduced by the fact that she was dressed in Patricia's fashion, minus tattoos.
But Dawn was not startled. She smiled and said, "Your supper, my brother Ben. Thou art God."
"Uh, thou art God. Thanks." He was beyond being surprised when she leaned down and kissed him, then got plates for herself and Jill, sat down on the other side of him and began to eat. He was willing to concede that, if not God, Dawn had the best attributes associated with goddesses; he was rather sorry she had not sat down across from him - he couldn't see her well without being obvious about it.
"No," Dawn agreed, between bites, "we aren't really trained yet, Jill. But waiting will fill."
"That's the size of it, Ben," Jill continued. "For example, I took a break to eat. But Mike hasn't had a bite for well over twenty-four hours and won't eat until he's not needed - you happened to bit a crowded day, because of that group making transition to Eighth Circle. Then when Mike is through, he'll eat like a pig and that will carry him as long as necessary. Besides that, Dawn and I get tired� don't we, sweet?"
"We surely do. But I'm not too tired, Gillian. Let me take this service and you can visit with Ben. Give me that robe."
"You're crazy in your little pointy head, my love - and Mama spank. Ben, she's been on duty almost as long as Mike has. We both can take that long a stretch - but we eat when we're hungry and sometimes we need sleep. Speaking of robes, Dawn, this was the last vanishing robe in the Seventh Temple. I meant to tell Patty she'd better order a gross or two."
"She has."
"I should have known. This one seems a little tight." Jill wiggled in it in a fashion that disturbed Ben more than Dawn's perfect and unrobed skin. "Are we putting on weight, Dawn?"
"I think we are, a little. No matter."
"Helps, you mean. We were too skinny. Ben, you noticed, didn't you, that Dawn and I have the same figure? Height, bust, waist, hips, weight, everything - not to mention coloration. We were almost the same when we met� and then, with Mike's help, we matched up exactly and are holding it that way. Even our faces are getting more alike - but we didn't plan that. That just comes from doing the same things and thinking about the same things. Stand up and let Ben look at us, dear."
Dawn put her plate aside and did so, in a pose that reminded Ben oddly of Jill, more so than the figure resemblance seemed to justify; then he realized it was the exact pose Jill had been in when she had first stood revealed as Mother Eve.
Invited to Stare, he did. Jill said, with her mouth full, "See, Ben? That's me."
Dawn smiled at her. "A razor's edge of difference, Gillian."
"Pooh. You're getting that control, too. I'm almost sorry we'll never have the same face. It's very handy, Ben, for Dawn and myself to look so much alike. We have to have two high priestesses; it's all two of us can do to keep up with Mike. We can trade places right in the middle of a service - and sometimes do. And besides," she added, swallowing, "Dawn can buy a fitted dress and it fits me, too. Saves me the nuisance of shopping for clothes. When we wear clothes."
"I wasn't sure," Ben said slowly, "that you still wore clothes at all. Except these priestess things."
Jill looked surprised. "Do you think we would go out dancing in these? We wear evening dresses, same as everybody else. That's our favorite way of not getting our beauty sleep, isn't it, dear? Sit back down and finish your supper; Ben has stared at us long enough for the moment. Ben, there's a man in that transition group you were just with who's a perfectly dreamy dancer and this town is loaded with good night clubs - and Dawn and I have kept the poor fellow so busy, alternated keeping him up so many nights in a row, that we've had to help him stay awake in language classes. But he'll be all right; once you reach Eighth Circle you don't need nearly so much sleep. Whatever made you think we never dressed, dear?"
"Uh-" Ben finally blurted out the embarrassing predicament he had been in.
Jill looked wide-eyed, then barely giggled - and stopped it at once, at which Ben realized that he had heard none of these people laugh only the "marks" in the outer service. "I see. But, darling, I just never got around to taking this robe off. I am wearing it because I have to gobble and git. But had I grokked that that was troubling you, I certainly would have chucked it before I said hello even though I wasn't sure there was another one handy. We're so used to dressing or not dressing according to what we need to do that I just plain forgot that I might not be behaving politely. Sweetheart, take those shorts off - or leave them on, exactly as suits you."
"Uh-"
"Just don't fret about it, either way." Jill smiled and dimpled. "Reminds me of the first time Mike tried a public beach, but in reverse. 'Member, Dawn?"
"I'll never forget it!"
"Ben, you know how Mike is about clothes. He just doesn't understand them. Or didn't. I had to teach him everything. He couldn't see any point to them as protection, until he grokked - to his great surprise - that we aren't as invulnerable as he is. Modesty - that sort of 'modesty'; he's so modest in its true sense that it hurts - body-modesty isn't a Martian concept, it couldn't be. And only lately has Mike grokked clothes as ornaments, after we started experimenting with various ways to costume our acts.
"But, Ben, while Mike was always willing to do what I told him to, whether he grokked it or not, you can't imagine how many million little things there are to being a human being. We take twenty or thirty years to learn them; Mike had to learn them almost overnight. There are gaps, even now. He does things not knowing that isn't how a human does them. We all teach him - Dawn and I especially. All but Patty, who is sure that anything that Michael does must be perfect. But he's still grokking the nature of clothes. He's groks mostly that they're a wrongness that keeps people apart - and get in the way of letting love cause them to grow closer. Lately he's come to realize that part of the time you want and need, such a barrier - with outsiders. But for a long time Mike wore clothes only because I told him to and when I told him he must.
"And I missed a gap."
"We were down in Baja California; it was just at the time we met - or remet, actually - Dawn. Mike and I checked in at night at one of those big fancy beach hotels and he was so anxious to grok the ocean, get wet all over, that he let me sleep the next morning and went down by himself for his first encounter with the ocean. And I didn't realize that Mike didn't know about swim suits. Oh, he may have seen them� but he didn't know what they were for or had some mixed-up id
ea. He certainly didn't know that you were supposed to wear them in the water - the idea was almost sacrilege. And you know Jubal's rigid rules about keeping his pool clean - I'm sure it's never seen a suit. I do remember one night a lot of people got tossed in with all their clothes on, but it was when Jubal was going to have it drained right away anyhow.
"Poor Mike! He got down to the beach and threw off his robe and headed for the water� looking like a Greek god and just as unaware of local conventions - and then the riot Started and I came awake fast and grabbed some clothes myself and got down there just in time to keep him out of jail� and fetched him back to the room and he spent the rest of the day in a trance."
Jill got a momentary faraway look. "And he needs me now, too, so I must run along. Kiss me good-night, Ben; I'll see you in the morning."
"You'll be gone all night?"
"Probably. It's a fairly big transition class and, truthfully, Mike has just been keeping them busy the past half hour and more while we visited. But that's all right." She stood up, pulled him gently to his feet and went into his arms.
Presently she broke from the kiss but not from his arms and murmured, "Ben darling, you've been taking lessons. Whew!"
"Me? I've been utterly faithful to you - in my own way."
"In the same way I've been to you� the nicest way. I wasn't complaining� I just think Dorcas has been helping you to practice kissing."
"Some, maybe. Nosy."
"Uh huh, I'm always nosy. The class can wait while you kiss me once more. I'll try to be Dorcas."
"You be yourself."
"I would be, anyway. Self. But Mike says that Dorcas kisses more thoroughly - 'groks a kiss more' - than anyone."
"Quit chattering."
She did, for a while, then sighed. "Transition class, here I come - glowing like a lightning bug. Take good care of him, Dawn."
"I will."
"And better kiss him right away and see what I mean!"
"I intend to."
"'Bye, darlings! Ben, you be a good boy and do what Dawn tells You." She left, not hurrying - but running.
Dawn stood up, flowed up against him, put up her arms.
Jubal cocked an eyebrow. "And now I suppose you are going to tell me that at that point, you went chicken."
"Uh, not exactly. A near miss, call it. To tell the truth I didn't have too much to say about it. I, uh, 'cooperated with the inevitable.'"
Jubal nodded. "No other possible course. You were trapped and couldn't run. Whereupon the best a man can do is try for a negotiated peace." He added, "But I'm sorry that the civilized habits of my household caused the boy to fall afoul the law of the jungles of Baja California."
"I don't think he's a boy any longer, Jubal."
XXXII
BEN CAXTON HAD AWAKENED not knowing where he was nor what time it was. It was dark around him, perfectly quiet, he was lying on something soft. Not a bed - where was he?
The night came back in a rush. The last he clearly remembered he had been lying on the soft floor of the Innermost Temple, talking quietly and intimately with Dawn. She had taken him there, they had immersed, shared water, grown closer - frantically he reached around him in the dark, found nothing.
"Dawn!"
Light swelled softly to a gentle dimness. "Here, Ben."
"Oh! I thought you had gone!"
"I didn't intend to wake you." She was wearing - to his sudden and intense disappointment - her robe of office. "I must go start the Sunrisers' Outer Service. Gillian isn't back yet. As you know, it was a fairly big class."
Her words brought back to him things she had told him last night things which, at the time, had upset him despite her gentle and quite logical explanations� and she had soothed his upset until he found himself agreeing with her. He still was not quite straight in his mind he didn't grok it all - but, yes, Jill was probably still busy with her rites as high priestess - a task, or perhaps a happy duty, that Dawn had offered to take for her. Ben felt a twinge that he really should have been sorry that Jill had refused, had insisted that Dawn get much needed rest.
But he did not feel sorry. "Dawn� do you have to leave?" He scrambled to his feet, put his arms around her.
"I must go, Ben dear� dear Ben." She melted up against him.
"Right now? In such a rush?"
"There is never," she said softly, "that much hurry." Suddenly the robe no longer kept them apart. He was too bemused to wonder what had become of it.
He woke up a second time, found that the "little nest" he was in lighted softly when he stood up. He stretched, discovered that he felt wonderful, then looked around the room for his shorts. They were not in sight and no way for them to be out of sight. He tried to recall where he had left them� and had no recollection of ever having taken them off. But he certainly had not worn them into the water. Probably beside the pool in the Innermost Temple - he made a mental note to stop back there and pick them up, then went out and found a bathroom.
Some minutes later, shaved, showered, and refreshed, he did remember to look into the Innermost Temple, failed to find his shorts and decided that somebody, Patty maybe, had noticed them and put them near the outer door where apparently everybody kept what they needed for street wear� said to hell with it and grinned at himself for having made such a jittery old-maid issue last night out of wearing them or not. He needed them, here in the Nest, the way he needed a second head.
Come to think of it, he didn't have the slightest trace of a head - a hangover head - although he recalled that he had had more than several drinks with Dawn. Hadn't got drunk, as he recalled, but certainly more than he ordinarily allowed himself - he couldn't sop up the stuff the way Jubal did without paying for it.
Dawn didn't seem to be affected by liquor at all - which was probably why he had gone over his usual quota. Dawn� what a gal, what a gal! She hadn't even seemed annoyed when, in a moment of emotional confusion, he had called her Jill - she had seemed pleased.
He found no one in the big room and wondered what time it was? Not that he gave a damn, except that his stomach told him that it was long past breakfast time. He went into the kitchen to see what he could scrounge.
A man in there looked up as he came in. "Ben!"
"Well! Hi, Duke!"
Duke gave him a bear hug and slapped him on the back. "Ben, you're a sight for sore eyes! Gosh, it's good to see you. Thou art God. How do you like your eggs?"
"Thou art God. Are you the cook?"
"Only when I can't find somebody else to do it for me - such as right now. Tony does most of it. We all do some. Even Mike unless Tony catches him and chases him out - Mike is the world's worst cook, bar none." Duke went on breaking eggs into a dish.
Ben moved in on the job. "You look after toast and coffee. Any Worcestershire sauce around here?"
"You name it, Pat's got it. Here." Duke added, "I looked in on you a half hour ago, but you were still sawing wood. I've been busy or you've been busy ever since you got here - until now."
"What do you do around here, Duke? Aside from cooking when you can't avoid it?"
"Well, I'm a deacon� and I'll be a priest someday. But I'm slow - not that it matters. I study Martian� everybody does that. And I'm the fix-it boy, same as I was for Jubal"
"Must take quite a gang to maintain a place this size."
"Ben, you'd be surprised how little it takes. Aside from keeping an eye on the plumbing - and sometime you must see Mike's unique way of dealing with a stopped toilet - I don't have to play plumber very much. Aside from plumbing, ninety percent of the gadgetry in this building is right here in the kitchen� and it's not as gadgeted as Jubal's kitchen."
"I had the impression that you have some very complicated gadgets for some of the temple ceremonies."
"Uuh uh, nary a gadget. Some lighting controls, that's all, and simple ones. Actually" Duke grinned. "-One of my most important jobs is no job at all. Fire warden"
"Huh?"
"I'm a licensed deputy
fire warden, examined and everything, and same for sanitation and safety inspector - neither one takes any work. But it means that we never have to let an outsider go through the joint - and we don't. They attend outer services�but they never get any farther unless Mike gives an up check."
They transferred food to plates and sat down at a table. Duke said, "You're staying, aren't you, Ben?"
"I don't see how I can, Duke."
"Mmmm� I had hoped that you would have more sense than I had. I came for just a short visit, too� went back and moped around for nearly a month before I told Jubal I was leaving and wouldn't be back. But never mind; you'll be back. Don't make any final decisions before the water sharing tonight."
"Didn't Dawn tell you? Or Jill?"
"Uh� I don't think so."
"Then they didn't. Hmm, maybe i should let Mike explain it. No, no need to; people will be mentioning it to you all day long. Sharing water you grok, of course; you're one of the First Called."
"'First Called?' Dawn used that expression."
"That handful of us who became Mike's water brothers without learning Martian. The others ordinarily do not share water and grow closer until they pass from the Seventh Circle to the Eighth� and by that time they are beginning to think in Martian. Heck, some of them know more Martian by that stage than I do now, since I'm a 'First Called' myself and started my studies after I was already in the Nest. Oh, it's not actually forbidden to share water with someone who isn't ready for Eighth Circle. Hell, if I wanted to, I could pick up a babe in a bar, share water with her, then take her to bed - and then take her to the Temple and start her on her apprenticeship. But I wouldn't want to. That's the point; I wouldn't even want to. At the very most I might decide that it was worth while to bring her around to an outer service and let Mike look her over and find out whether any of it clicked with her. Ben, I'll make a flat-footed prediction. You've been around a lot - I'm sure you've been in some fancy beds with some fancy babes."
"Uh� some,"
A Stranger in a Strange Land Page 52
