A Stranger in a Strange Land

by Robert Anson Heinlein

  "Well, for cripe's sake, Jubal�Would you put up with it, in your living room?"

  "Decidedly not - unless perhaps I have, it having taken place so clandestinely, at night perhaps, that no one noticed. In which case it would be - or has been, if such be the case - no skin off my nose. But the point is that it was not my living room� nor would I presume to lay down rules for another man's living room. It was Mike's house� and his wife - common law or otherwise, we need not inquire. So what business is it of mine? Or yours? You go into a man's house, you accept his household rules - that's a universal law of civilized behavior."

  "You mean to say you don't find it shocking?"

  "Ah, you've raised an entirely different issue. Public exhibition of lust I would find most distasteful, either as participant or spectator� but I grok this reflects my early indoctrination, nothing more. A very large minority of mankind - possibly a majority - do not share my taste in this matter. Decidedly not - for the orgy has a long and very widespread history. Nonetheless it is not to my taste. But shocking? My dear sir, I can be shocked only by that which offends me ethically. Ethical questions are subject to logic - but this is a matter of taste and the old saw is in point - "de gusribus non est disputandu."

  "You think that a public shagging is merely 'a matter of taste?'"

  "Precisely. In which respect I concede that my own taste, rooted in early training, reinforced by some three generations of habit, and now, I believe, calcified beyond possibility of change, is no more sacred than the very different taste of Nero. Less sacred - Nero was a god; I am not."

  "Well, I'll be damned."

  "In due course, possibly - if it is possible� a point on which I am 'neutral-against.' But, Ben, this wasn't public."

  "Huh?"

  "You yourself have said it. You described this group as a plural marriage - a group theogamy, to be precise. Not public but utterly private. Aint nobody here but just us gods' - so how could anyone be offended?"

  "I was offended!"

  "That was because your own apotheosis was less complete than theirs - I'm afraid they over-rated you� and you misled them. You invited it.''

  "Me? Jubal, I did nothing of the sort"

  "Tommy busted my dolly� I hitted him over the head with it.' The time to back out was the instant you got there, for you saw at once that their customs and manners were not yours. Instead you stayed, and enjoyed the favors of one goddess - and behaved yourself as a god toward her - in short, you learned the score, and they knew it. It seems to me that Mike's error lay only in accepting your hypocrisy as solid coin. But he does have the weakness - a godlike one - of never doubting his 'water brothers' - but even Jove nods - and his weakness - or is it a strength? - comes from his early training; he can't help it. No, Ben, Mike behaved with complete propriety; the offense against good manners lay in your behavior."

  "Damn it, Jubal, you've twisted things again. I did what I had to do - I was about to throw up on their rug!"

  "So you claim reflex. So stipulated; however, anyone over the emotional age of twelve could have clamped his jaws and made a slow march for the bathroom with at worst the hazard of clogged sinuses - instead of a panicked dash for the street door - then returned when the show was over with a euphemistic but acceptable excuse."

  "That wouldn't have been enough. I tell you I had to leave!"

  "I know. But not through reflex. Reflex will evacuate the stomach; it will not choose a course for the feet, recover chattels, take you through doors and cause you to jump down a hole without looking. Panic, Ben. Why did you panic?"

  Caxton was long in replying. He sighed and said, "I guess when you come right down to it, Jubal - I'm a prude."

  Jubal shook his head. "Your behavior was momentarily prudish, but not from prudish motivations. You are not a prude, Ben. A prude is a person who thinks that his own rules of propriety are natural laws. You are almost entirely free of this prevalent evil. You adjusted, at least with passable urbanity, to many things which did not fit your code of propriety whereas a true-blue, stiff-necked, incorrigible prude would promptly have affronted that delightful tattooed lady and stomped out. Dig deeper� Do you wish a hint?"

  "Uh, maybe you'd better. All I know is that I am mixed up and unhappy about the whole Situation - on Mike's account, too, Jubal! - which is why I took a day off to see you."

  "Very well. Hypothetical situation for you to evaluate: You mentioned a lady named Ruth whom you met in passing - a kiss of brotherhood and a few minutes conversation - nothing more."

  "Yeah?"

  "Suppose the actors had been Ruth and Mike? Gillian not even present? Would you have been shocked?"

  "Huh? Hell, yes, I would have been shocked!"

  "Just how shocked? Retching? Panic flight?"

  Caxton looked thoughtful, then sheepish. "I suppose not. I still would have been startled silly. But I guess I would've just gone out to the kitchen or something� then found an excuse to leave. I still feel like a fool for having made that mad dash to get out."

  "Would you actually have sought an excuse to leave? Or were you looking forward to your own 'welcome home' party that night?"

  "Well," Caxton mused. "I hadn't made up my mind about that when this happened. I was curious, I admit - but I wasn't quite sold."

  "Very well. You now have your motivation."

  "Do I?"

  "You name it, Ben. Haul it out and look at it - and find out how you want to deal with it."

  Caxton chewed his lip and looked unhappy. "All right. I would have been startled if it had been Ruth - but I wouldn't really have been shocked. Hell, in the newspaper racket you get over being shocked by anything but - well, you expressed it: something that cuts deep about right and wrong. Shucks, if it had been Ruth, I might even have sneaked a look - even though I still think I would have left the room; such things ought to be - or at least I feel that they ought to be - private." He paused. "It was because it was Jill. I was hurt� and jealous."

  "Stout fellow, Ben."

  "Jubal, I would have sworn that I wasn't jealous. I knew that I had lost out - I had accepted it. It was the circumstances, Jubal. Now don't get me wrong. I would still love Jill if she were a two-peso whore. Which she is not. This hands-around harem deal upsets the hell out of me. But by her lights Jill is moral."

  Jubal nodded. "I know. I feel sure that Gillian is incapable of being corrupted. She has an invincible innocence which makes it impossible for her to be immoral." lie frowned. "Ben we are close to the root of your trouble. I am afraid that you - and I, too, I admit - lack the angelic innocence to abide by the perfect morality those people live by."

  Ben looked surprised. "Jubal, you think what they are doing is moral? Monkeys in the zoo stuff and all? All I meant was that Jill really didn't know that what she was doing was wrong - Mike's got her hornswoggled - and Mike doesn't know he's doing wrong either. He's the Man front Mars; he didn't get off to a fair start. Everything about us was strange to him - he'll probably never get straightened out."

  Jubal looked troubled. "You've raised a hard question, Ben - but I'll give you a straight answer. Yes, I think what those people - the entire Nest, not just our own kids - are doing is moral. As you described it to me yes. I haven't had a chance to examine details - but yes: all of it. Group orgies, and open and unashamed swapping off at other times� their communal living and their anarchistic code, everything. And most especially their selfless dedication to giving their perfect morality to others."

  "Jubal, you utterly astonish me." Caxton scratched his head and frowned. "Since you feel that way, why don't you join them? You're welcome, they want you, they're expecting you. They'll hold a jubilee - and Dawn is waiting to kiss your feet and serve you in any way you will permit; I wasn't exaggerating."

  Jubal shook his head. "No. Had I been approached fifty years ago - But now? Ben my brother, the potential for such innocence is no longer in me - and I am not referring to sexual potency, so wipe that cynical smile off your face. I m
ean that I have been too long wedded to my own brand of evil and hopelessness to be cleansed in their water of life and become innocent again. If I ever was."

  "Mike thinks you have this innocence - he doesn't call it that - in full measure now. Dawn told me, speaking ex officio."

  "Then Mike does me great honor; I would not disillusion him. He sees his own reflection - I am, by profession a mirror."

  "Jubal, you're chicken."

  "Precisely, sir! The thing that troubles me most is whether those innocents can make their pattern fit into a naughty world. Oh, it's been tried before! - and every time the world etched them away like acid. Some of the early Christians - anarchy, communism, group marriage - why even that kiss of brotherhood has a strong primitive-Christian flavor to it. That might be where Mike picked it up, since all the forms he uses are openly syncretistic, especially that Earth-Mother ritual." Jubal frowned. "If he picked that up from primitive christianity - and not just from kissing girls, which he enjoys, I now - then I would expect men to kiss men, too."

  Ben snorted. "I held out on you - they do. But it's not a pansy gesture. I got caught once; after that I managed to duck."

  "So? It figures. The Oneida Colony was much like Mike's 'Nest'; it managed to last quite a while but in a low population density - not as an enclave in a resort city. There have been many others, all with the same sad story: a plan for perfect sharing and perfect love, glorious hopes and high idea - followed by persecution and eventual failure." Jubal sighed. "I was worried about Mike before - now I'm worried about all of them."

  "You're worried? How do you think I feel? Jubal, I can't accept your sweetness and light theory. What they are doing is wrong."

  "So? Ben, it's that last incident that sticks in your craw."

  "Well� maybe. Not entirely."

  "Mostly. Ben. the ethics of sex is a thorny problem because each of us has to find a solution pragmatically compatible with a preposterous, utterly unworkable, and evil public code of so-called 'morals.' Most of us know, or suspect, that the public code is wrong, and we break it. Nevertheless we pay Danegeld by giving it lip service in public and feeling guilty about breaking it in private. Willy-nilly, that code rides us, dead and stinking, an albatross around the neck. You think of yourself as a free soul, I know, and you break that evil code yourself - but faced with a problem in sexual ethics new to you, you unconsciously tested it against that same Judeo-Christian code which you consciously refuse to obey. All so automatically that you retched� and believed thereby - and continue to believe - that your reflex proved that you were 'right' and they were 'wrong.' Faugh! I'd as like use trial by ordeal as use your stomach to test guilt. All your stomach can reflect are prejudices trained into you before you acquired reason."

  "What about your stomach?"

  "Mine is as stupid as yours - but I don't let it rule my brain. I can at least see the beauty of Mike's attempt to devise an ideal human ethic and applaud his recognition that such a code must be founded on ideal sexual behavior, even though it calls for changes in sexual mores so radical as to frighten most people - including you. For that I admire him - I should nominate him for the Philosophical Society. Most moral philosophers consciously or unconsciously assume the essential correctness of our cultural sexual code - family, monogamy, continence, the postulate of privacy that troubled you so, restriction of intercourse to the marriage bed, et cetera. Having stipulated our cultural code as a whole, they fiddle with details - even such piffle as solemnly discussing whether or not the female breast is an 'obscene' sight! But mostly they debate how the human animal can be induced or forced to obey this code, blandly ignoring the high probability that the heartaches and tragedies they see all around them originate in the code itself rather than failure to abide by the code.

  "Now comes the Man from Mars, looks at this sacrosanct code - and rejects it in toto. I do not grasp exactly what Mike's sexual code is, but it is clear from what little you told me that it violates the laws of every major nation on Earth and would outrage 'right-thinking' people of every major faith - and most agnostics and atheists, too. And yet this poor boy-"

  "Jubal, I repeat - he's not a boy, he's a man"

  "Is he a 'man?' I wonder. This poor ersatz Martian is saying, by your own report, that sex is a way to be happy together. I go along with Mike this far: sex should be a means of happiness. The worst thing about sex is that we use it to hurt each other. It ought never to hurt; it should bring happiness, or, at the very least, pleasure. There is no good reason why it should ever be anything less.

  "The code says, 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife' - and the result? Reluctant chastity, adultery, jealousy, bitter family fights, blows and sometimes murder, broken homes and twisted children� and furtive, dirty little passes at country club dances and the like, degrading to both man and woman whether consummated or not, Is this injunction ever obeyed? The Commandment not to 'covet' I mean; I'm not referring to any physical act. I wonder. If a man swore to me on a stack of his own Bibles that he had refrained from coveting another man's wife because the code forbade it, I would suspect either self-deception or subnormal sexuality. Any male virile enough to sire a child is almost certainly so virile that he has coveted many, many women - whether he takes action in the matter or not.

  "Now comes Mike and says: 'There's no need for you to covet my wife� love her! There's no limit to her love, we all have everything to gain - and nothing to lose but fear and guilt and hatred and jealousy.' The proposition is so naive that it's incredible. So far as I recall only precivilization Eskimos were ever this naive - and they were so remote from the rest of us that they almost qualified as 'Men from Mars' themselves. However, we soon gave them our virtues and instead of happy sharing they now have chastity and adultery just like the rest of us - those who survived the transition. I wonder if they gained by it? What do you think,

  "I wouldn't care to be an Eskimo. thank you."

  "Neither would I. Spoiled raw fish makes me bilious."

  "Well, yes - but, Jubal, I had in mind hot water and soap. I guess I'm effete."

  "I'm decadent in that respect, too, Ben; I was born in a house with no more plumbing than an igloo - and I've no wish to repeat my childhood. But I assume that noses hardened to the stink of rotting blubber would not be upset by unwashed human bodies. But nevertheless, despite curious cuisine and pitiful possessions, the Eskimos were invariably reported to have been the happiest people on Earth. We can never be sure why they were happy, but we can be utterly certain that any unhappiness they did suffer was not caused by sexual jealousy. They borrowed and lent spouses, both ways, both for convenience and purely for fun - and it did not make them unhappy.

  "One is tempted to ask: Who's looney? Mike and the Eskimos? Or the rest of us? We can't judge by the fact that you and I have no stomach for such group sports - our canalized tastes are irrelevant. But take a look at this glum world around you - then tell me this: Did Mike's disciples seem happier, or unhappier, than other people?"

  "I talked to only about a third of them, Jubal� but - yes, they're happy. So happy they seem slap-happy to me. I don't trust it. There's some catch in it."

  "Mmm� maybe you yourself were the catch in it."

  "How?"

  "I was thinking that it was regrettable that your tastes have grown canalized so young. There it was, raining soup - and you were caught without a spoon. Even three days of what you were offered - urged on you! - would have been something to treasure when you reach my age. And you, you young idiot, let jealousy chase you away! Believe me, at your age I would have gone Eskimo in a big way, thankful that I had been given a free pass instead of having to attend church and study Martian to qualify. I'm so vicariously vexed that my only consolation is the sour one that I know you will live to regret it. Age does not bring wisdom, Ben, but it does give perspective� and the saddest perspective of all is to see far, far behind you, the temptations you've passed up. I have such regrets myself but all of them are as nothing to th
e whopper of a regret I am happily certain you will suffer."

  "Oh, for Pete's sake, quit rubbing it in!"

  "Heavens, man! - or are you a mouse? I'm not rubbing it in, I am trying to goad you into the obvious. Why are you sitting here moaning to an old man? - when you should be heading for the Nest like a homing pigeon? Before the cops raid the joint! Hell, if I were even twenty years younger, I'd join Mike's church myself."

  "Let up on me, Jubal. What do you really think of Mike's church?"

  "You told me it wasn't a church - just a discipline."

  "Well� yes and no, It is supposed to be based on the 'Truth' with a capital "T" as Mike got it from the Martian 'Old Ones.'"

  "The 'Old Ones,' eli? To me, they're still hogwash."

  "Mike certainly believes in them."

  "Ben, I once knew a manufacturer who believed that he consulted the ghost of Alexander Hamilton on all his business decisions. All that proves is that he believed it. However - Damn it, why must I always be the Devil's advocate?"

  "What's biting you now?"

  "Ben, the foulest sinner of all is the hypocrite who makes a racket of religion. But we must give the Devil his due. Mike does believe in those 'Old Ones' and he is not pulling a racket. He's teaching the truth as he sees it even though he has seen fit to borrow from other religions to illustrate his meaning. That 'All Mother' rite - little as I like it, he seems merely to have been illustrating the versatility of the Female Principle, regardless of name and form. Fair enough. As for his 'Old Ones,' of course I don't know that they don't exist - I simply find hard to swallow the idea that any planet is ruled by a hierarchy of ghosts. As for his Thou-art-God creed, to me it is neither more nor less credible than any other. Come Judgment Day, if they hold it, we may find that Mumbo Jumbo the God of the Congo was the Big Boss all along.

  "All the names are still in the hat, Ben. Self-aware man is so built that he cannot believe in his own extinction� and this automatically leads to endless invention of religions. While this involuntary conviction of immortality by no means proves immortality to be a fact, the questions generated by this conviction are overwhelmingly important� whether we can answer them or not, or prove what answers we suspect. The nature of life, how the ego hooks into the physical body, the problem of the ego itself and why each ego seems to be the center of the universe, the purpose of life, the purpose of the universe - these are paramount questions Ben; they can never be trivial. Science can't, or hasn't, coped with any of them - and who am I to sneer at religions for trying to answer them, no matter how unconvincingly to me? Old Mumbo Jumbo may eat me yet; I can't rule Him out because He owns no fancy cathedrals. Nor can I rule out one godstruck boy leading a sex cult in an upholstered attic; he might be the Messiah. The only religious opinion that I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping together!"