A Stranger in a Strange Land

by Robert A. Heinlein

  As a devout agnostic, Jubal consciously evalued all religions, from the animism of the Kalahari Bushmen to the most sober and intellectualized of the major western faiths, as being equal. But emotionally he disliked some more than others... and the Church of the New Revelation set his teeth on edge. The Fosterites' flat-footed claim to utter gnosis through a direct pipeline to Heaven, their arrogant intolerance implemented in open persecution of all other religions wherever they were strong enough to get away with it, the sweaty football-rally & sales-convention flavor of their services - all these ancillary aspects depressed him. If people must go to church, why the devil couldn't they be dignified about it, like Catholics, Christian Scientists, or Quakers?

  If God existed (a question concerning which Jubal maintained a meticulous intellectual neutrality) and if He desired to be worshipped (a proposition which Jubal found inherently improbable but conceivably possible in the dim light of his own ignorance), then (stipulating affirmatively both the above) it nevertheless seemed wildly unlikely to Jubal to the point of reductio ad absurdum that a God potent to shape galaxies would be titillated and swayed by the whoop-te-do nonsense the Fosterites offered Him as "worship."

  But with bleak honesty Jubal admitted to himself that the Universe (correction: that piece of the Universe he himself had seen) might very well be in toto an example of reduction to absurdity. In which case the Fosterites might be possessed of the Truth, the exact Truth, and nothing but the Truth. The Universe was a damned silly place at best... but the least likely explanation for its existence was the no-explanation of random chance, the conceit that some abstract somethings "just happened" to be some atoms that "just happened" to get together in configurations which "just happened" to look like consistent laws and then some of these configurations "just happened" to possess self-awareness and that two such "just happened" to be the Man from Mars and the other a bald-headed old coot with Jubal himself inside.

  No, Jubal would not buy the "just happened" theory, popular as it was with men who called themselves scientists. Random chance was not a sufficient explanation of the Universe - in fact, random chance was not sufficient to explain random chance; the pot could not hold itself.

  What then? "Least hypothesis" held no place of preference; Occam's razor could not slice the prime problem, the Nature of the Mind of God (might as well call it that to yourself, you old scoundrel; it's a short, simple, Anglo-Saxon monosyllable, not banned by having four letters - and as good a tag for what you don't understand as any).

  Was there any basis for preferring any one sufficient hypothesis over another? When you simply did not understand a thing: No! And Jubal readily admitted to himself that a long lifetime had left him completely. and totally not understanding the basic problems of the Universe.

  So the Fosterites might be right. Jubal could not even show that they were probably wrong.

  But, he reminded himself savagely, two things remained to him - his own taste and his own pride. If indeed the Fosterites held a monopoly on Truth (as they claimed), if Heaven were open only to Fosterites, then he, Jubal Harshaw, gentleman and free citizen, preferred that eternity of pain. filled damnation promised to all "sinners" who refused the New Revelation. He might not be able to see the naked Face of God... but his eyesight was good enough to pick out his social equals - and those Fosterites, by damn, did not measure up!

  But he could see how Mike had been misled; the Fosterite "going to Heaven" at a pre-selected time and place did sound like the voluntary and planned "discorporation" which, Jubal did not doubt, was the accepted practice on Mars. Jubal himself held a dark suspicion that a better term for the Fosterite practice was "murder" - but such had never been proved and had rarely been publicly hinted, much less charged, even when the cult was young and relatively small. Foster himself had been the first to "go to Heaven" on schedule, dying publicly at a self-prophesied instant. Since that first example, it had been a Fosterite mark of special grace... and it had been years since any coroner or district attorney had had the temerity to pry into such deaths.

  Not that Jubal cared whether they were spontaneous or induced. In his opinion a good Fosterite was a dead Fosterite. Let them be!

  But it was going to be hard to explain to Mike.

  No use stalling, another cup of coffee wouldn't make it any easier - "Mike, who made the world?"

  "Beg pardon?"

  "Look around you. All this. Mars, too. The stars. Everything. You and me and everybody. Did the Old Ones tell you who made it?"

  Mike looked puzzled. "No, Jubal."

  "Well, you have wondered about it, haven't you? Where did the silt come from? Who put the stars in the sky? Who started it all? All of it, everything, the whole world, the Universe - so that you and I are I talking." Jubal paused, surprised at himself. He had intended to make the usual agnostic approach... and found himself compulsively following his legal training, being an honest advocate in spite of himself, attempting to support a religious belief he did not hold but which was believed most human beings. He found that, willy-nilly, he was attorney for the orthodoxies of his own race against - he wasn't sure what. An unhuman viewpoint. "How do your Old Ones answer such questions?"

  "Jubal, I do not grok... that these are questions. I am sorry."

  "Eh? I don't grok your answer."

  Mike hesitated a long time. "I will try. But words are... are not rightly. Not 'putting.' Not 'mading.' A nowing. World is. World was. World shall be. Now."

  "'As it was in the beginning, so it now and ever shall be, World without end-'"

  Mike smiled happily. "You grok it!"

  "I don't grok it," Jubal answered gruffly, "I was quoting something, uh, an 'Old One' said." He decided to back off and try a new approach; apparently God the Creator was not the easiest aspect of Deity to try to explain to Mike as an opening... since Mike did not seem to grasp the idea of Creation itself. Well, Jubal wasn't sure that he did, either - he had long ago made a pact with himself to postulate a Created Universe on even-numbered days, a tail-swallowing eternal-and-uncreated Universe on odd-numbered days - since each hypothesis, while equally paradoxical, neatly avoided the paradoxes of the other - with, of course, a day off each leap year for sheer solipsist debauchery. Having thus tabled an unanswerable question he had given no thought to it for more than a generation.

  Jubal decided to try to explain the whole idea of religion in its broadest sense and then tackle the notion of Deity and Its aspects later.

  Mike readily agreed that learnings came in various sizes, from little learnings that even a nestling could grok on up to great learnings which only an Old One could grok in perfect fullness. But Jubal's attempt to draw a line between small learnings and great learnings so that "great learnings" would have the human meaning of "religious questions" was not successful, as some religious questions did not seem to Mike to be questions with any meaning to them (such as "Creation") and others seemed to him to be "little" questions, with obvious answers known even to nestlings - such as life after death.

  Jubal was forced to let it go at that and passed on to the multiplicity of human religions. He explained (or tried to explain) that humans had hundreds of different ways by which these "great learnings" were taught, each with its own answers and each claiming to be the truth.

  "What is 'truth'?" Mike asked.

  ("What is Truth?" asked a Roman judge, and washed his hands of a troublesome question. Jubal wished that he could do likewise.) "An answer is truth when you speak rightly, Mike. How many hands do I have?"

  "Two hands. I see two hands," Mike amended.

  Anne glanced up from her knitting. "In six weeks I could make a Witness of him."

  "You keep out of this, Anne. Things are tough enough without your help. Mike, you spoke rightly; I have two hands. Your answer was truth. Suppose you said that I had seven hands?"

  Mike looked troubled. "I do not grok that I could say that."

  "No, I don't think you could. You would not speak rightly if you did; yo
ur answer would not be truth. But, Mike - now listen carefully - each religion claims to be truth, claims to speak rightly. Yet their answers to the same question are as different as two hands and seven hands. The Fosterites say one thing, the Buddhists say another, the Moslems say still another - many answers, all different."

  Mike seemed to be making a great effort to understand. "All speak rightly? Jubal, I do not grok it."

  "Nor do I."

  The Man from Mars looked greatly troubled, then suddenly he smiled. "I will ask the Fosterites to ask your Old Ones and then we will know, my brother. How will I do this?"

  A few minutes later Jubal found, to his great disgust, that he had promised Mike an interview with some Fosterite bigmouth - or Mike seemed to think that he had, which came to the same thing. Nor had he been able to do more than dent Mike's assumption that the Fosterites were in close touch with human "Old Ones." It appeared that Mike's difficulty in understanding the nature of truth was that he didn't know what a lie was - the dictionary definitions of "lie" and "falsehood" had been filed in his mind with no trace of grokking. One could "speak wrongly" only by accident or misunderstanding. So he necessarily had taken what he had heard of the Fosterite service at its bald, face value.

  Jubal tried to explain that all human religions claimed to be in touch with "Old Ones" in one way or another; nevertheless their answers were all different.

  Mike looked patiently troubled. "Jubal my brother, I try... but I do not grok how this can be right speaking. With my people, the Old Ones speak always rightly. Your people-"

  "Hold it, Mike."

  "Beg pardon?"

  "When you said, 'my people' you were talking about Martians. Mike, you are not a Martian; you are a man."

  "What is 'Man'?"

  Jubal groaned inwardly. Mike could, he was sure, quote the full list of dictionary definitions. Yet the lad never asked a question simply to be annoying; he asked always for information - and he expected his water brother Jubal to be able to tell him. "I am a man, you are a man, Larry is a man."

  "But Anne is not a man?"

  "Uh... Anne is a man, a female man. A woman."

  ("Thanks, Jubal."-"Shut up, Anne.")

  "A baby is a man? I have not seen babies, but I have seen pictures - and in the goddam-noi-in stereovision. A baby is not shaped like Anne and Anne is not shaped like you... and you are not shaped like I. But a baby is a nestling man?"

  "Uh... yes, a baby is a man."

  "Jubal... I think I grok that my people - 'Martians' - are man. Not shape, shape is not man. Man is grokking. I speak rightly?"

  Jubal made a fierce resolve to resign from the Philosophical Society and take up tatting. What was "grokking"? He had been using the word himself for a week now - and he still didn't grok it. But what was "Man"? A featherless biped? God's image? Or simply a fortuitous result of the "survival of the fittest" in a completely circular and tautological definition? The heir of death and taxes? The Martians seemed to have defeated death, and he had already learned that they seemed to have neither money, property, nor government in any human sense - so how could they have taxes?

  And yet the boy was right; shape was an irrelevancy in defining "Man," as unimportant as the bottle containing the wine. You could even take a man out of his bottle, like the poor fellow whose life those Russians had persisted in "saving" by placing his living brain in a vitreous envelope and wiring him like a telephone exchange. Gad, what a horrible joke! He wondered if the poor devil appreciated the grisly humor of what had been

  But how, in essence, from the unprejudiced viewpoint of a Martian, did Man differ from other earthly animals? Would a race that could levitate (and God knows what else) be impressed by engineering? And, if so, would the Aswan Dam, or a thousand miles of coral reef, win first prize? Man's self-awareness? Sheer local conceit; the upstate counties had not reported, for there was no way to prove that sperm whales or giant sequoias were not philosophers and poets far exceeding any human merit.

  There was one field in which man was unsurpassed; he showed unlimited ingenuity in devising bigger and more efficient ways to kill off, enslave, harass, and in all ways make an unbearable nuisance of himself to himself. Man was his own grimmest joke on himself. The very bedrock of humor was-

  "Man is the animal who laughs," Jubal answered.

  Mike considered this seriously. "Then I am not a man."

  "Huh?"

  "I do not laugh. I have heard laughing and it frighted me. Then I grokked that it did not hurt. I have tried to learn-" Mike threw his head back and gave out a raucous cackle, more nerve-racking than the idiot call of a kookaburra.

  Jubal covered his ears. "Stop! Stop!"

  "You heard," Mike agreed sadly. "I cannot rightly do it. So I am not man."

  "Wait a minute, son. Don't give up so quickly. You simply haven't learned to laugh yet... and you'll never learn just by trying. But you will learn, I promise you. If you live among us long enough, one day you will see how funny we are - and you will laugh."

  "I will?"

  "You will. Don't worry about it and don't try to grok it; just let it come. Why, son, even a Martian would laugh once he grokked us."

  "I will wait," Smith agreed placidly.

  "And while you are waiting, don't ever doubt that you are a man. You are. Man born of woman and born to trouble... and some day you will grok its fullness and you will laugh - because man is the animal that laughs at himself. About your Martian friends, I do not know. I have never met them, I do not grok them. But I grok that they may be 'man.'"

  "Yes, Jubal."

  Harshaw thought that the interview was over and felt relieved. He decided that he had not been so embarrassed since a day long gone when his father had undertaken to explain to him the birds and the bees and the flowers - much too late.

  But the Man from Mars was not quite done. "Jubal my brother, you were ask me, 'Who made the World?' and I did not have words to say why I did not rightly grok it to be a question. I have been thinking words."

  "So?"

  "You told me, 'God made the World.'"

  "No, no!" Harshaw said hastily. "I told you that, while all these many religions said many things, most of them said, 'God made the World.' I told you that I did not grok the fullness, but that 'God' was the word that was used."

  "Yes, Jubal," Mike agreed. "Word is 'God'" He added. "You grok."

  "No, I must admit I don't grok."

  "You grok," Smith repeated firmly. "I am explain. I did not have the word. You grok. Anne groks. I grok. The grass under my feet groks in happy beauty. But I needed the word. The word is God."

  Jubal shook his head to clear it. "Go ahead."

  Mike pointed triumphantly at Jubal. "Thou art God!"

  Jubal slapped a hand to his face. "Oh, Jesus H. - What have I done? Look, Mike, take it easy! Simmer down! You didn't understand me. I'm sorry. I'm very sorry! Just forget what I've been saying and we'll start over again on another day. But-"

  "Thou art God," Mike repeated serenely. "That which groks. Anne is God. I am God. The happy grass are God, Jill groks in beauty always. Jill is God. All shaping and making and creating together-." He croaked something in Martian and smiled.

  "All right, Mike. But let it wait. Anne, have you been getting all this?"

  "You bet I have, Boss!"

  "Make me a tape. I'll have to work on it. I can't let it stand. I must-" Jubal glanced up, said, "Oh, my God! General Quarters, everybody! Anne! Set the panic button on 'dead-man' setting - and for God's sake keep your thumb on it; they may not be coming here." He glanced up again, at two large air cars approaching from the south. "But I'm afraid they are. Mike! Hide in the pool! Remember what I told you - down in the deepest part, stay there, hold still - and don't come up until I send Jill to get you."

  "Yes, Jubal."

  "Right now! Move!"

  "Yes, Jubal." Mike ran the few steps, cut the water and disappeared. He remembered to keep his knees straight, his toes pointed and his feet togethe
r.

  "Jill!" Jubal called out. "Dive in and climb out. You too, Larry. If anybody saw that, I want 'em confused as to how many are using the pool. Dorcast climb out fast, child, and dive in again. Anne- No, you've got the panic button; you can't."

  "I can take my cloak and go to the edge of the pool. Boss, do you want some delay on this 'dead-man' setting?"

  "Uh, yes, thirty seconds. If they land here, put on your Witness cloak at once and get your thumb back on the button. Then wait - and if I call you over to me, let the balloon go up. But I don't dare shout 'Wolf!' on this unless-" He shielded his eyes. "One of them is certainly going to land and it's got that Paddy-wagon look to it, all right. Oh, damn, I had thought they would parley first."

  The first car hovered, then dropped vertically for a landing in the garden area around the pool; the second started slowly circling the house at low altitude. The cars were black, squad carriers in size, and showed only a small, inconspicuous insignia: the stylized globe of the Federation.

  Anne put down the radio relay link that would let "the balloon go up," got quickly into her professional garb, picked the link up again and put her thumb back on the button. The door of the first car started to open as it touched and Jubal charged toward it with the cocky belligerence of a Pekingese. As a man stepped out, Jubal roared, "Get that God damned heap off my rose hushes!"

  The man said, "Jubal Harshaw?"

  "You heard me! Tell that oaf you've got driving for you to raise that bucket and move it back! Off the garden entirely and onto the grass! Anne!"

  "Coming, Boss."

  "Jubal Harshaw, I have a warrant here for-"

  "I don't care if you've got a warrant for the King of England; first you'll move that junk heap off my flowers! Then, so help me, I'll sue you for - " Jubal glanced at the man who had landed, appeared to see him for the first time. "Oh, so it's you," he said with bitter contempt. "Were you born stupid, Heinrich, or did you have to study for it? And when did that uniformed jackass working for you learn to fly? Earlier today? Since I talked to you?"