Stranger in a Strange Land (23 page)

“Jubal, I do not grok . . . that these are
‘questions.'
I am sorry.”

“Eh? I don't grok your answer.”

Mike hesitated. “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 is now and ever shall be, World without end—' ”

Mike smiled happily. “You grok it!”

“I don't grok it,” Jubal answered gruffly, “I am quoting something, uh, an ‘Old One' said.” He decided to try another approach; God the Creator was not the aspect of Deity to use as an opening—Mike did not grasp the idea of Creation. Well, Jubal wasn't sure that he did, either—long ago he had 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, whole paradoxical, avoided the paradoxes of the other—with a day off each leap year for sheer solipsist debauchery. Having tabled an unanswerable question he had given no thought to it for more than a generation.

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

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

Jubal dropped it and passed on to the multiplicity of human religions. He explained that humans had hundreds of ways by which “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. 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 reading. “In six weeks I could make a Witness of him.”

“Quiet, Anne. Things are tough enough. Mike, you spoke rightly; I have two hands. Your answer is 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; your answer would not be truth. But, Mike—listen carefully—each religion claims to be truth, claims to speak rightly. Yet their answers are as different as two hands and seven hands. Fosterites say one thing, Buddhists say another, Moslems still another—many answers, all different.”

Mike seemed to be making great effort. “All speak rightly? Jubal, I do not grok.”

“Nor I.”

The Man from Mars looked troubled, then suddenly 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 disgust, that he had promised Mike an interview with some Fosterite bigmouth. Nor had he been able to dent Mike's assumption that Fosterites were in touch with human “Old Ones.” Mike's difficulty was that he didn't know what a lie was—definitions of “lie” and “falsehood” had been filed in his mind with no trace of grokking. One could “speak wrongly” only by accident. So he had taken the Fosterite service at its face value.

Jubal tried to explain that
all
human religions claimed to be in touch with “Old Ones” 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, 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. Mike could, he was sure, quote the dictionary definitions. Yet the lad never asked a question to be annoying; he asked always for information—and expected 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 seen pictures—and in the goddamnoi—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 decided to resign from the Philosophical Society and take up tatting! What was “grokking”? He had been using the word for a week—and he didn't grok it. But what was “Man”? A featherless biped? God's image? Or a fortuitous result of “survival of the fittest” in a circular definition? The heir of death and taxes? The Martians seemed to have defeated death, and they seemed not to have money, property, nor government in any human sense—so how could they have taxes?

Yet the boy was right; shape was irrelevant in defining “Man,” as unimportant as the bottle containing the wine. You could even take a man out of his bottle, like that poor fellow whose life those Russians had “saved” by placing his 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 humor.

But
how,
from the viewpoint of a Martian, did Man differ from other animals? Would a race that could levitate (and God knows what else) be impressed by engineering? If so, would the Aswan Dam, or a thousand miles of coral reef, win first prize? Man's self-awareness? Sheer conceit, there was no way to prove that sperm whales or sequoias were not philosophers and poets 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. “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.

Jubal covered his ears.
“Stop!”

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

“Wait a minute, son. You simply haven't learned yet . . . and you'll never learn by trying. But you will, 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, 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 doubt that you are man. You are. Man born of woman and born to trouble . . . and some day you will grok its fullness and laugh—because man is the animal that laughs at himself. About your Martian friends, I do not know. But I grok that they may be ‘man.' ”

“Yes, Jubal.”

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

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

“So?”

“You told me, ‘God made the World.' ”

“No, no!” Harshaw said. “I told you that, while 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.”

“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 grasses under my feet grok in happy beauty. But I needed the word. The word is God.”

“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! You didn't understand me. I'm sorry. I'm very sorry! Just forget what I've said and we'll start over another day. But—”

“Thou are God,” Mike repeated serenely. “That which groks. Anne is God. I am God. The happy grasses 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 this?”

“You bet I have, Boss!”

“Make 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'—and for God's sake keep your thumb on it; they may not be coming here.” He glanced up again, at two air cars approaching from the south. “I'm afraid they are. Mike! Hide in the pool! Remember what I told you—down in the deepest part, stay there, hold still—don't come up until I send Jill.”

“Yes, Jubal.”

“Right now!
Move!”

“Yes, Jubal.” Mike ran the few steps, cut water and disappeared. He kept his knees straight, toes pointed, feet together.

“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. Dorcas! Climb out fast, child, and dive again. Anne—No, you've got the panic button.”

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

“Uh, thirty seconds. If they land, put on your Witness cloak and get your thumb back on the button. Then wait—and if I call you to me, let the balloon go up. I don't dare shout ‘Wolf!' unless—” He shielded his eyes. “One of them is going to land . . . and it's got that Paddy-wagon look. Oh, damn, I thought they would parley.”

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

Anne put down the radio relay link, got quickly into professional garb, picked up the link and put her thumb on the button. The door of the first car opened as it touched and Jubal charged towards it with the belligerence of a Pekingese. As a man stepped out, Jubal roared, “Get that God damned heap off my rose bushes!”

The man said, “Jubal Harshaw?”

“Tell that oaf to raise that bucket and move it
back!
Off the garden and onto the grass! Anne!”

“Coming, Boss.”

“Jubal Harshaw, I have a warrant for—”

“I don't care if you've got a warrant for the King of England; move that junk off my flowers! Then, so help me, I'll sue you for—” Jubal glanced at the man, 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? When did that uniformed jackass learn to fly?”

“Please examine this warrant,” Captain Heinrich said with careful patience. “Then—”

“Get your go-cart out of my flower beds or I'll make a civil-rights case that will cost you your pension!”

Heinrich hesitated.
“Now!”
Jubal screamed. “And tell those yokels getting out to pick up their feet! That idiot with the buck teeth is standing on a prize Elizabeth M. Hewitt!”

Heinrich turned his head. “You men—careful of those flowers. Paskin, you're standing on one.
Rogers!
Raise the car and move back clear of the garden.” He turned to Harshaw. “Does that satisfy you?”

“Once he moves it—but you'll still pay damages. Let's see your credentials . . . and show them to the Fair Witness and state loud and clear your name, rank, organization, and pay number.”

“You know who I am. I have a warrant to—”

“I have a warrant to part your hair with a shotgun unless you do things legally and in order!
I
don't know who you are. You look like a stuffed shirt I saw over the telephone—but I don't identify you.
You
must identify yourself, in specified fashion. World Code paragraph 1602, part II, before you may serve a warrant. And that goes for those other apes, too, and that pithecan parasite piloting for you.”

“They are police officers, acting under my orders.”

“
I
don't know that they are. They might have hired those ill-fitting clown suits at a costumer's. The letter of the law, sir! You've come barging into my castle. You
say
you are a police officer—and you allege that you have a warrant for this intrusion. But
I
say you are trespassers until you prove otherwise . . . which invokes my sovereign right to use force to eject you—which I shall start to do in about three seconds.”