A Stranger in a Strange Land

by Robert Anson Heinlein

  She managed to answer, "I thank you for water, Fa- Jubal." That was almost the only word be got out of her. When the glass completed the circuit, reaching the vacant chair at the head of the table, there was perhaps a half inch of water in it. It raised itself, poured, and the water disappeared, then the tumbler placed itself on the cloth. Jubal decided, correctly, that he had taken part in a group Sharing Water of the Innermost Temple� and probably in his honour - although it certainly was not even slightly like the Bacchallalhan revels he had thought accompanied such formal welcome of a brother. Was it because they were in strange surroundings? Or had he read into unexplicit reports what his own id wanted to find in those reports?

  Or had they simply toned it down to an ascetic formality out of deference to his age and opinions?

  The last seemed the most likely theory - and he found that it vexed him. Of course, he told himself, he was glad to be spared the need to refuse an invitation that he certainly did not want - and would not have relished at any age, his tastes being what they were.

  But just the same, damn it - "Don't anybody mention ice skating because Grandmaw is too old and frail for ice skating and it wouldn't be polite. Hulda, you suggest that we play checkers and we'll all chime in - Grandmaw likes checkers. And we'll go ice skating some other time. Okay, kids?"

  Jubal resented the respectful consideration, if that was what it was - he would almost have preferred to have gone ice skating anyhow, even at the cost of a broken hip.

  But he decided to forget the matter, put it entirely out of mind, which he did with the help of the man on his right, who was as talkative as the girl on his left was not. His name, Jubal learned, was Sam, and presently he learned that Sam was a man of broad and deep scholarship, a trait Jubal valued in anyone when it was not mere parrot learning - and he grokked that in Sam it was not.

  "This setback is only apparent," Sam assured him. "The egg was ready to hatch and now we'll spread out. Of course we've had trouble; we'll go on having trouble - because no society, no matter how liberal its law may appear to be, will allow its basic concepts to be challenged with impunity. Which is exactly what we are doing. We are challenging everything from the sanctity of property to the sanctity of marriage."

  "Property, too?"

  "Property the way it rules today. So far Michael has merely antagonized a few crooked gamblers. But what happens when there are thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and more, of people who can't be stopped by bank vaults and who have only their self-discipline to restrain them from taking anything they want? To be sure, that discipline is stronger than any possible legal restraint - but no banker can grok that until he himself travels the thorny road to achieve that discipline� and he'll wind up no longer a banker. What happens to the stock market when the illuminati know which way a stock will move - and the brokers don't?"

  "Do you know?"

  Sam shook his head. "Not interested. But Saul over there - that other big Hebe; he's my cousin - gives it grokking, along with Allie. Michael has them be very cautious about it, no big killings, and they use a dozen-odd dummy accounts - but the fact remains that any of the disciplined can make any amount of money at anything - real estate, stocks, horse races, gambling, you name it - when competing with the half awake. No, I don't think that money and property will disappear - Michael says that both concepts are useful - but I do say that they're going to be turned upside down and inside out to the point where people will have to learn new rules (and that means learn the hard way, just as we have) or be hopelessly outclassed. What happens to Lunar Enterprises when the common carrier between here and Luna City is teleportation?"

  "Should I buy? Or sell?"

  "Ask Saul. He might use the present corporation, or he might bankrupt it. Or it might be left untouched for a century or two. But besides bankers and brokers, consider any other occupation. How can a school teacher teach a child who knows more than she does and won't hold still for mistaken teaching? What becomes of physicians and dentists when people are truly healthy? What happens to the cloak amp; suit industry and to the I.L.G.W.U. when clothing isn't really needed at all and women aren't so endlessly interested in dressing up (they'll never lose interest entirely) - and nobody gives a damn if he's caught with his arse bare? What shape does 'the Farm Problem' take when weeds can be told not to grow and crops can be harvested without benefit of International Harvester or John Deere? Just name it; it changes beyond recognition when the discipline is applied. Take just one change that will shake both the sanctity of marriage - in its present form - and the sanctity of property. Jubal, do you have any idea how much is spent each year in this country on Malthusian drugs and devices?"

  "I have a fairly exact idea, Sam. Almost a billion dollars on oral contraceptives alone this last fiscal year� more than half of which was for patent nostrums about as useful as corn starch."

  "Oh, yes, you're a medical man."

  "Only in passing. A pack rat mind."

  "Either way. What happens to that big industry - and to the shrill threats of moralists - when a female can conceive only when she elects to as an act of volition, when also she is immune to disease, cares only for the approval of her own sort� and has her orientation so changed that she desires intercourse with a whole-heartedness that Cleopatra never dreamed of - but any male who tried to rape her would die so quickly, if she so grokked, that he wouldn't know what hit him? When women are free of guilt and fear - but invulnerable other than by decision of self? Hell, the pharmaceutical industry will be just a passing casualty - what other industries, laws, institutions, attitudes, prejudices, and nonsense must give way?"

  "I don't grok its fullness," admitted Jubal. "It concerns a subject that has been of little direct interest to me in quite a while."

  "One institution won't be damaged by it. Marriage."

  "So?"

  "Very much so. Instead it will be purged, strengthened, and made endurable. Endurable? Ecstatic! See that wench down there with the long black hair?"

  "Yes. I was delighting in its beauty earlier."

  "She knows it's beautiful and it's grown a foot and a half longer since we joined the church. That's my wife. Not much over a year ago we lived together about like bad-tempered dogs. She was jealous� and I was inattentive. Bored. Hell, we were both bored and only our kids kept us together - that and her possessiveness; I knew she would never let me go without a fight and a scandal� and I didn't have any stomach for trying to put together a new marriage at my age, anyhow. So I got a little on the side, when I could get away with it - a college professor has many temptations, few safe opportunities - and Ruth was quietly bitter. Or sometimes not so quiet. And then we joined up." Sam grinned happily. "And I fell in love with my own wife. Number-one gal friend."

  Sam's words had been very quiet, an intimate conversation walled by noise of eating and cheerful company. His wife was far down the table. She looked up and said clearly, "That's an exaggeration, Jubal. I think I'm about number six."

  Her husband called out, "Stay out of my mind, beautiful! - we're talking men talk. Give Larry your undivided attention." He picked up a hard roll, threw it at her.

  She stopped it in mid-trajectory, threw it back at him while continuing to talk; Sam caught it and buttered it. "I'm giving Larry all the attention he wants� until later, maybe. Jubal, that brute didn't let me finish. Number-six place is wonderful! Because my name wasn't even on the list till we joined the church. I hadn't rated as high as six with Sam in the past twenty years." She did then turn her attention back to Larry.

  "The real point," Sam said quietly, "is that we two are now partners, much more than we ever were even at the best period in our outside marriage - and we got that way through the training, culminating in sharing and growing closer with others who had the same training. We all wind up in twosome partnerships inside the larger group - usually, but not necessarily, with our own spouses-of-record. Sometimes not� and if not, the readjustment takes place with no heartache a
nd a warmer, closer, better relationship between the soidisant 'divorced' couple than ever, both in bed and out. No loss and all gain. Shucks, this pairing as partners needn't even be between man and woman. Dawn and Jill for example - they work together like an acrobatic team."

  "Hmm� I suppose," Jubal said thoughtfully, "that I had thought of those two as being Mike's wives."

  "No more so than they are to any of us. Or than Mike is to all the rest. Mike is too busy, has been, I should say, until the Temple burned - to do more than make sure that he shared himself all the way around." Sam added, "If anybody is Mike's wife, it's Patty, although she keeps so busy herself that the relation is more spiritual than physical. Actually, you could say that both Mike and Patty are short-changed when it comes to mauling the mattress."

  Patty was not quite as far away as Ruth, but far enough. She looked up and said, "Sam dear, I don't feel short-changed."

  "Huh?" Sam then announced, loudly and bitterly, "The only thing wrong with this church is that a man has absolutely no privacy!"

  This brought a barrage of food in his direction, all from distaff members. He handled it all and tossed it back without lifting a hand� until the complexity of it apparently got to be too much and a plateful of spaghetti caught him full in the face-thrown, Jubal noticed, by Dorcas.

  For a moment Sam looked like a particularly ghastly crash victim. Then suddenly his face was clean and even the sauce that had spattered on Jubal's shirt was gone. "Don't give her any more, Tony. She wasted it; let her go hungry."

  "Plenty more in the kitchen," Tony answered. "Sam, you look good in spaghetti. Pretty good sauce, huh?" Dorcas's plate sailed out to the kitchen, returned, loaded. Jubal decided that Dorcas had not been concealing talents from him - the plate was much more heavily filled than she would have chosen herself; he knew her appetite.

  "Very good sauce," agreed Sam. "I salvaged some that hit me in the mouth. What is it? Or shouldn't I ask?"

  "Chopped policeman," Tony answered.

  Nobody laughed. For a queasy instant Jubal wondered if the joke was a joke. Then he recalled that these his water brothers smiled a lot but rarely laughed - and besides, policeman should be good healthy food. But the sauce couldn't be "long pig" in any case, or it would taste like pork. This sauce had a distinct beef flavor to it.

  He changed the subject. "The thing I like best about this religion-"

  "Is it a religion?" Sam inquired.

  "Well, church. Call it a church. You did."

  "It is a church," agreed Sam. "It fills every function of a church, and its quasi-theology does, I admit, match up fairly well with some real religions. Faiths. I jumped in because I used to be a stalwart atheist - and now I'm a high priest and I don't know what I aim"

  "I understood you to say you were Jewish."

  "I am. From a long line of rabbis. So I wound up atheist. Now look at me. But my cousin Saul and my wife Ruth are both Jews in the religious sense - and talk to Saul; you'll find it's no handicap to this discipline. A help, probably� as Ruth, once she broke past the first barrier, progressed faster than I did; she was a priestess quite a while before I became a priest. But she's the spiritual sort; she thinks with her gonads. Me, I have to do it the hard way, between my ears."

  "The discipline," repeated Jubal. "That's what I like best about it. The faith I was reared in didn't require anybody to know anything. Just confess your sins and be saved, and there you were, safe in the arms of Jesus. A man could be too stupid to hit the floor with his hat� and yet he could be conclusively presumed to be one of God's elect, guaranteed au eternity of bliss, because he had been 'converted.' He might or might not become a Bible student; even that wasn't necessary� and he certainly didn't have to know, or even try to know, anything else. This church doesn't accept 'conversion' as I grok it-"

  "You grok correctly."

  "A person must start with a willingness to learn and follow it with some long, hard study. I grok that is salutary, in itself."

  "More than salutary," agreed Sam. "Indispensable. The concepts can't be thought about without the language, and the discipline that results in this horn-of-plenty of benefits - from how to live without fighting to how to please your wife - all derive from the conceptual logic� understanding who you are, why you're here, how you tick - and behaving accordingly. Happiness is a matter of functioning the way a human being is organized to function� but the words in English are a mere tautology, empty. In Martian they are a complete set of working instructions. Did I mention that I had a cancer when I came here?"

  "Eh? No, you didn't."

  "Didn't know it myself. Michael grokked it, sent me out for the usual X rays and so forth so that I would be sure. Then we got to work on it together. 'Faith' healing. A miracle. The clinic called it 'spontaneous remission' which I grok means 'I got well.'"

  Jubal nodded. "Professional double-talk. Some cancers go away, we don't know why."

  "I know why this one went away. By then I was beginning to control my own body. With Mike's help I repaired the damage. Now I can do it without his help. Want to feel a heart stop beating?"

  "Thanks, I have observed it in Mike, many times. My esteemed colleague, Croaker Nelson, would not be sitting across from us if what you are talking about was 'faith healing.' It's voluntary control of the body. I grok."

  "Sorry. We all know that you do. We know."

  "Mmm� I dislike to call Mike a liar because he isn't. But the lad happens to be prejudiced in my case."

  Sam shook his head. "I've been talking with you all through dinner. I wanted to check it myself, despite what Mike said. You grok. I'm wondering what new things you could disclose to us if you troubled to learn the language?"

  "Nothing. I'm an old man with little to contribute to anything."

  "I insist on reserving my opinion. All the rest of the First Called have had to tackle the language to make any real progress. Even the three you've kept with you have had some powerful coaching, being kept in trance during most of the short days and the few occasions we've had them with us. All but you� and you don't really need it. Unless you want to wipe spaghetti from your face without a towel, which I grok you aren't interested in anyhow."

  "Only to observe it."

  Most of the others had left the table, leaving quietly and without formality when they wished. Ruth came over and stood by them. "Are you two going to sit here all night? Or shall we move you out with the dishes?"

  "I'm henpecked. Come on, Jubal." Sam stopped to kiss his wife.

  They stopped only momentarily in the room with the stereo tank. "Anything new?" asked Sam.

  "The county attorney," someone said, "has been orating in an attempt to prove that all of today's disasters are our doing� without admitting that he doesn't have the slightest notion how any of it was done."

  "Poor fellow. He's bitten a wooden leg and his teeth hurt." They went on through and found a quieter living room; Sam said, "I had been saying that these troubles can be expected - and they will get much worse before we can expect to control enough public opinion to be tolerated. But Mike is in no hurry. So we close down the Church of All Worlds - it is closed down. So we move and open the congregation of the One Faith - and we get kicked out again. Then we reopen elsewhere as the Temple of the Great Pyramid - that one will bring flocking the foolish fat and fatuous females, and some of them will end up neither fat nor foolish - and when we have the Medical Association and the local bar and the newspapers and the boss politicos snapping at our heels there - why, we open the Brotherhood of Baptism somewhere else. Each one means solid progress, a hard core of disciplined who can't be hurt - Mike started here hardly over a year ago, uncertain himself, and with only the help of three untrained priestesses-by-courtesy. Now we've got a solid Nest� plus a lot of fairly advanced pilgrims we can get in touch with later and let rejoin us. And someday, someday, we'll be too strong to persecute."

  "Well," agreed Jubal, "it could work. Jesus made quite a splash with only twelve disciple
s. In due course."

  Sam grinned happily. "A Jew boy. Thanks for mentioning Him. He's the outstanding success story of my tribe - and we all know it, even though many of us don't talk about Him. But He was a Jew boy that made good and I'm proud of Him, being a Jew boy myself. Please to note that Jesus didn't try to get it all done by next Wednesday. He was patient. He set up a sound organization and let it grow. Mike is patient, too. Patience is so much part of the discipline that it isn't even patience; it's automatic. No sweat. Never any sweat."

  "A sound attitude at any time."

  "Not an attitude. The functioning of the discipline. Jubal? I grok you are tired. Would you wish to become untired? Or would you rather go to bed? If you don't, our brothers will keep you up all night, talking. Most of us don't sleep much, you know."

  Jubal yawned. "I think I'll choose a long, hot soak and about eight hours of sleep. I'll visit with our brothers tomorrow� and other days."

  "And many other days," agreed Sam.

  Jubal found his own room, was immediately joined by Patty, who again insisted on drawing his tub, then turned back his bed, neatly, without touching it, placed his setup for drinks (fresh ice cubes) by his bed, and fixed one and placed it on the shelf of the tub. Jubal did not try to hurry her out; she had arrived displaying all her pictures. He knew enough about the syndrome which can lead to full tattooing to be quite sure that if he did not now remark on them and ask to be allowed to examine them, she would be very hurt even though she might conceal it.

  Nor did he display or feel any of the fret that Ben had felt on an earlier, similar occasion; he went right ahead and undressed, making nothing of it - and discovered with wryly bitter pride that it did not matter to him in the least even though it had been many years since the last time he had allowed anyone, man or woman, to see him naked. It seemed to matter not at all to Patty and even less to him. She simply made sure that the tub was just right before allowing him to step into it.

  Then she remained and told him what each picture was and in what sequence to view them.