A Stranger in a Strange Land

by Robert A. Heinlein

  Not that he cared much for virgins, other than with professional respect for any job well done. Foster sneaked a quick last look at Mrs. Paiwonski. There was a fellow worker he could appreciate. Darling little Patricia! What a blessed, lusty benison-

  * * *

  XXIX

  AS THE DOOR OF THEIR SUITE closed itself behind Patricia Paiwonski, Jill said, "What now, Mike?"

  "We're leaving. Jill, you've read some abnormal psychology."

  "Yes, of course. In training. Not as much as you have, I know."

  "Do you know the symbolism of tattooing? And snakes?"

  "Of course. I knew that about Patty as soon as I met her. I had been hoping that you would find a way."

  "I couldn't, until we were water brothers. Sex is necessary, sex is a helpful goodness - but only if it is sharing and growing closer. I grok that if I did it without growing closer - well, I'm not sure."

  "I grok that you would learn that you couldn't, Mike. That is one of the reasons - one of the many reasons - I love you."

  He looked worried. "I still don't grok 'love.' Jill, I don't grok 'people.' Not even you. But I didn't want to send Pat away."

  "Stop her. Keep her with us."

  ("Waiting is, Jill.")

  ("I know.")

  He added aloud, "Besides, I doubt if I could give her all she needs. She wants to give herself all the time, to everybody. Even her Happiness meetings and her snakes and the marks aren't enough for Pat. She wants to offer herself on an altar to everybody in the world, always - and make them happy. This New Revelation... I grok that it is a lot of other things to other people. But that is what it is to Pat."

  "Yes, Mike. Dear Mike."

  "Time to leave. Pick the dress you want to wear and get your purse. I'll dispose of the rest of the trash."

  Jill thought somewhat sadly that she would like, sometimes, to take along just one or two things. But Mike always moved on with just the clothes on his back - and seemed to grok that she preferred it that way, too. "I'll wear that pretty blue one."

  It floated out to her, poised itself over her, wriggled down onto her as she held up her hands; the zipper closed. Shoes to suit it walked toward her, waited while she stepped into them. "I'm ready, Mike."

  Mike had caught the wistful flavor of her thought, but not the concept; it was too alien to Martian ideas. "Jill? Do you want to stop and get married?"

  She thought about it. "We couldn't, today, Mike. It's Sunday. We couldn't get a license."

  "Tomorrow, then. I will remember. I grok that you would like it."

  She thought about it. "No, Mike."

  "Why not, Jill?"

  "Two reasons. One, we couldn't be any closer through it, because we already share water. That's logic, both in English and in Martian. Yes?"

  "Yes."

  "And two, a reason valid just in English. I wouldn't have Dorcas and Anne and Miriam - and Patty - think that I was trying to crowd them out and one of them might think so."

  "No, Jill, none of them would think so."

  "Well, I won't chance it, because I don't need it. Because you married me in a hospital room ages and ages ago. Just because you were the way you are. Before I even guessed it." She hesitated. "But there is something you might do for me."

  "What, Jill?"

  "Well, you might call me pet names occasionally! The way I do you."

  "Yes, Jill. What pet names?"

  "Oh!" She kissed him quickly. "Mike, you're the sweetest, most lovable man I've ever met - and the most infuriating creature on two planets! Don't bother with pet names. Just call me 'little brother' occasionally...it makes me go all quivery inside."

  "Yes, Little Brother."

  "Oh, my! Now get decent fast and let's get out of here - before I take you back to bed. Come on. Meet me at the desk; I'll be paying the bill." She left very suddenly.

  They went to the town's station flat and caught the first Greyhound going anywhere. A week or two later they stopped at home, shared water for a couple of days, left again without saying good-by - or, rather, Mike did not; saying good-by was one human custom Mike stubbornly resisted and never used with his own. He used it formally with strangers under circumstances in which Jill required him to.

  Shortly they were in Las Vegas, stopping in an unfashionable hotel near but not on the Strip. Mike tried all the games in all the casinos while Jill filled in the time as a show girl-gambling bored her. Since she couldn't sing or dance and had no act, standing or parading slowly in a tall improbable hat, a smile, and a scrap of tinsel was the job best suited to her in the Babylon of the West. She preferred to work if Mike was busy and, somehow, Mike could always get her the job she picked out. Since the casinos never closed, Mike was busy almost all their time in Las Vegas.

  Mike was careful not to win too much in any one casino, keeping to limits Jill set for him. After he had milked each one for a few thousand he carefully put it all back, never letting himself be the big-money player at any game, whether winning or losing. Then he took a job as a croupier, studying people, trying to grok why they gambled. He grokked unclearly a drive in many of the gamblers that seemed to be intensely sexual in nature - but he seemed to grok wrongness in this. He kept the job quite a while, letting always the little ball roll without interference.

  Jill was amused to discover that the customers in the palatial theater restaurant where she worked were just marks... marks with more money but still marks. She discovered something about herself, too; she enjoyed displaying herself, as long as she was safe from hands that she did not want to grab her. With her steadily increasing Martian honesty she examined this newly uncovered facet in herself. In the past, while she had known that she enjoyed being admired, she had sincerely believed that she wanted it only from a select few and usually only from one - she had been irked at the discovery, now long past, that the sight of her physical being really didn't mean anything to Mike even though he had been and remained as aggressively and tenderly devoted to her physically as a woman could dream of - if he wasn't preoccupied.

  And he was even generous about that, she reminded herself. If she wished, he would always let her call him out of his deepest withdrawal trances, shift gears without complaint and be smiling and eager and loving.

  Nevertheless, there it was - one of his strangenesses, like his inability to laugh. Jill decided, after her initiation as a show girl, that she enjoyed being visually admired because that was the one thing Mike did not give her.

  But her own perfecting self-honesty and steadily growing empathy did not allow that theory to stand. The male half of the audience always had that to-be-expected high percentage who were too old, too fat, too bald, and in general too far gone along the sad road of entropy to be likely to be attractive to a female of Jill's youth, beauty, and fastidiousness - she had always been scornful of "lecherous old wolves"-although not of old men per se, she reminded herself in her own defense; Jubal could look at her, even use crude language in deliberate indecencies, and not give her the slightest feeling that he was anxious to get her alone and grope her. She was so serenely sure of Jubal's love for her and its truly spiritual nature that she told herself that she could easily share a bed with him, go right to sleep - and be sure that be would also, with only the goodnight peck she always gave him.

  But now she found that these unattractive males did not set her teeth on edge. When she felt their admiring stares or even their outright lust - and she found that she did feel it, could even identify the source - she did not resent it; it warmed her and made her feel smugly pleased.

  "Exhibitionism" had been to her simply a word used in abnormal psychology - a neurotic weakness she had held in contempt. Now, in digging out her own and looking at it, she decided that either this form of narcissism was normal, or she was abnormal and had not known it. But she didn't feel abnormal; she felt healthy and happy - healthier than she had ever been. She had been always of better than average health-nurses need to be - but she hadn't had a sniffle nor even an u
pset stomach in she couldn't remember when... why, she thought wonderingly, not even cramps.

  Okay, she was healthy - and if a healthy woman liked to be looked at - and not as a side of beef! - then it follows as the night from day that healthy men should like to look at them, else there was just no darn sense to it! At which point she finally understood, intellectually, Duke and his pictures... and begged his pardon in her mind.

  She discussed it with Mike, tried to explain her changed viewpoint - not easy, since Mike could not understand why Jill had ever minded being looked at, at any time, by anyone. Not wishing to be touched he understood; Mike avoided shaking hands if he could do so without offense, he wanted to touch and be touched only by water brothers (Jill wasn't sure just how far this included male water brothers in Mike's mind; she had explained homosexuality to him, after he had read about it and failed to grok it - and had given him practical rules for avoiding even the appearance thereof and how to keep such passes from being made at him, since she assumed correctly that Mike, pretty as he was, would attract such passes. He had followed her advice and had set about making his face more masculine, instead of the androgynous beauty he had first had. Nevertheless Jill was not sure that Mike would refuse such an invitation from, say, Duke - but fortunately Mike's male water brothers were all decidedly masculine men, just as his others were very female women. Jill hoped that it would stay that way; she suspected that Mike would grok a "wrongness" in the poor in-betweeners anyhow - they would never be offered water.)

  Nor could Mike understand why it now pleased her to be stared at. The only time when their two attitudes had been even roughly similar had been as they left the carnival, when Jill had discovered that she had become indifferent to stares - willing to do their act "stark naked," as she had told Patty, if it would help.

  Jill saw that her present self-knowledge had been nascent at that point; she had never been truly indifferent to masculine stares. Under the unique necessities of adjusting to life with the Man from Mars she had been forced to shuck off part of her artificial, training-imposed persona, that degree of lady-like prissiness a nurse can retain despite the rigors of an unusually no-nonsense profession. But Jill hadn't known that she had any prissiness to lose until she lost it.

  Of course, Jill was even more of a "lady" than ever - but she preferred to think of herself as a "gent." But she was no longer able to conceal from her conscious mind (nor had any wish to) that there was something inside her as happily shameless as a tabby in heat going into her belly dance for the enticement of the neighborhood toms.

  She tried to explain all this to Mike, giving him her theory of the complementary and functional nature of narcissist display and voyeurism, with herself and Duke as clinical examples. "The truth is, Mike, that I find I get a real kick out of having all those men stare at me... lots of men and almost any man. So now I grok why Duke likes to have lots of pictures of women, the sexier the better. Same thing, only in reverse. It doesn't mean that I want to go to bed with them, any more than Duke wants to go to bed with a photograph - shucks, dearest, I don't even want to say hello to them. But when they look at me and tell me - think at me - that I'm desirable, it gives me a tingle, a warm pleasant feeling right in my middle." She frowned slightly. "You know, I think I ought to get a real naughty picture taken of me and send it to Duke. Just to tell him that I'm sorry I snooted him and failed to grok what I thought was a weakness in him, If it's a weakness, I've got it, too - but girl style. If it is a weakness - but I grok it isn't."

  "All right. We'll find a photographer in the morning."

  She shook her head. "I'll simply apologize to Duke the next time we go home, I wouldn't actually send such a picture to Duke. He has never made a pass at me - and I don't want him getting ideas."

  "Jill, you would not want Duke?"

  She heard an echo of "water brother" in his mind. "Hmm truthfully I've never really thought about it. I guess I've been 'being faithful' to you - not that it has been an effort. But I grok you speak rightly; I wouldn't turn Duke down - and I would enjoy it, too. What do you think of that darling?"

  "I grok a goodness," Mike said seriously.

  "Hmm... my gallant Martian, there are times when we human females appreciate at least a semblance of jealousy - but I don't think there is the slightest chance that you will ever grok 'jealousy.' Darling, what would you grok if one of those marks - those men in the audience, not a water brother - made a pass at me?"

  Mike barely smiled. "I grok he would be missing."

  "Mmm... I grok he might be, too. But, Mike - listen to me carefully, dear. You promised me that you wouldn't do anything of that sort except in utter emergency. So don't be hasty. If you hear me scream and shout, and reach into my mind and know that I'm in real trouble, that's another matter. But I was coping with wolves when you were still on Mars. Nine times out often, if a girl gets raped, it's at least partly her own fault. That tenth time - well, all right. Give him your best heave-ho to the bottomless pit. But you aren't going to find it necessary."

  "All right, I will remember. I wish you were sending that naughty picture to Duke."

  "What, dear? I will if you want me to. It's just that if I ever make a pass at Duke - and I might, now that you've put the idea into my little pointy head - I'd rather grab his shoulders and look him in the eye and say, 'Duke, how about it? - I'm willing.' I don't want to do it by sending him a naughty picture through the mail, like those nasty women used to send to you. But if you want me to, okay. Uh, I needn't make it too naughty - I could make it obviously a show girl's professional picture and tell him what I'm doing and ask him if he has room for it in his scrap book. He might not take it as a pass."

  Mike frowned. "I spoke incompletely. If you wish to send Duke a naughty picture, do so. If you do not wish, then do not. But I had hoped to see the naughty picture taken. Jill, what is a 'naughty' picture?"

  Mike was baffled by the whole idea - Jill's reversal from an attitude that he had never understood but had learned to accept into exactly the opposite attitude of pleasure - sexual pleasure, he understood - at being stared at... plus a third and long-standing bafflement at Duke's "art" collection - it certainly was not art. But the pale, wan Martian thing which parallels tumultuous human sexuality gave him no foundation for grokking either narcissism or voyeurism, modesty or display.

  He added, '"Naughty' means a wrongness, usually a small wrongness, but I grokked that you did not mean even a small wrongness, but a goodness." a naughty picture could be either one, I guess - depending on who it's for - now that I'm over some prejudice. But - Mike, I'll have to show you; I can't tell you. But first close those slats, will you?"

  The Venetian blinds flipped themselves shut. "All right," she said. "Now this pose would be just a little bit naughty - any of the show girls would use it as a professional pic... and this one is just a little bit more so, some of the girls would use it. But this one is unmistakably naughty and this one is quite naughty... and this one is so extremely naughty that I wouldn't pose for it with my face wrapped in a towel - unless you wanted it."

  "But if your face was covered, why would I want it?"

  "Ask Duke. That's all I can say."

  He continued to look puzzled. "I grok not wrongness, I grok not goodness. I grok-" He used a Martian word indicating a null state of all emotions.

  But he was interested because he was so baffled; they went on discussing it, in Martian as much as possible because of its extremely fine discriminations for emotions and values - and in English, too, because Martian. rich as it is, simply couldn't cope with the concepts.

  Mike showed up at a ringside table that night, Jill having coached him in how to bribe the maître d'hôtel to give him such a spot; he was determined to pursue this mystery. Jill was not averse. She came strutting out in the first production number, her smile for everyone but a quick wink for Mike as she turned and her eyes passed across his. She discovered that, with Mike present, the warm, pleased sensation she had been enjoying ni
ghtly was greatly amplified - she suspected that, if the lights were out, she would glow in the dark.

  When the parade stopped and the girls formed a tableau, Mike was no more than ten feet from her - she had been promoted her first week to a front position. The director had looked her over on her fourth day with the show and had said, "I don't know what it is, kid. We've got girls around town begging for just any job with twice the shape you've got - but when the lights hit you, you've got what the customers look at. Okay, I'm moving you up where they can see better. The standard raise... and I still don't know why."

  She posed and talked with Mike in her mind. ("Feel anything?")

  ("I grok but not in fullness.')

  ("Look where I am looking, my brother. The small one. He quivers. He thirsts for me.')

  ("I grok his thirst ")

  ("Can you see him?") Jill stared straight into the customer's eyes and gave him a warm smile... not alone to increase his interest in her but also to let Mike use her eyes, if possible. As her grokking of Martian thought had increased and as they had grown steadily closer in other ways they had begun to be able to use this common Martian convenience. Not fully as yet, but with increasing ease - Jill had no control over it; Mike could see through her eyes simply by calling to her, she could see through his only if he gave it his attention.

  ("We grok him together," Mike agreed. ("Great thirst for my little brother.")

  ("!!!!")

  ("Yes. Beautiful agony.")

  A music cue told Jill to break her pose and resume her slow strut. She did so, moving with proud sensuousness and feeling lust boil up in herself in response to emotions she was getting both from Mike and from the stranger. The routine caused her to walk away from Mike and almost toward the rutty little stranger, approaching him during her first few steps. She continued to lock eyes with him.