Stranger in a Strange Land (30 page)

“You could sterilize them.”

“You would have me play God? But we're off the subject. Douglas didn't try to have you assassinated.”

“Says who?”

“Says the infallible Jubal Harshaw, speaking ex cathedra from his belly button. Son, if a deputy sheriff beats a prisoner to death, it's sweepstakes odds that the county commissioners wouldn't have permitted it had they known. At worst they shut their eyes—afterwards—rather than upset applecarts. Assassination has never been a policy in this country.”

“I'll show you backgrounds of a number of deaths I've looked into.”

Jubal waved it aside. “I said it wasn't a policy. We've always had assassination—from prominent ones like Huey Long to men beaten to death with hardly a page-eight story. But it's never been a policy and the reason you are alive is that it is not Joe Douglas's policy. They snatched you clean, they squeezed you dry and they could have disposed of you as quietly as flushing a dead mouse down a toilet. But their boss doesn't like them to play that rough and if he became convinced that they had, it would cost their jobs if not their necks.”

Jubal paused for a swig. “Those thugs are just a tool; they aren't a Praetorian Guard that picks the Caesar. So whom do you want for Caesar? Courthouse Joe whose indoctrination goes back to when this country was a nation and not a satrapy in a polyglot empire. . . Douglas, who can't stomach assassination? Or do you want to toss him out—we can, just by double-crossing him—toss him out and put in a Secretary General from a land where life is cheap and assassination a tradition? If you do, Ben—what happens to the next snoopy newsman who walks down a dark alley?”

Caxton didn't answer.

“As I said, the S.S. is just a tool. Men are always for hire who
like
dirty work. How dirty will that work become if you nudge Douglas out of his majority?”

“Jubal, are you saying I ought
not
to criticize the administration?”

“Nope. Gadflies are necessary. But it's well to look at the new rascals before you turn your present rascals out. Democracy is a poor system; the only thing that can be said for it is that it's eight times as good as any other method. Its worst fault is that its leaders reflect their constituents—a low level, but what can you expect? So look at Douglas and ponder that, in his ignorance, stupidity, and self-seeking, he resembles his fellow Americans but is a notch or two above average. Then look at the man who will replace him if his government topples.”

“There's little difference.”

“There's always a difference! This is between ‘bad' and ‘worse'—which is much sharper than between ‘good' and ‘better.' ”

“Well? What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing,” Harshaw answered. “I'll run this show myself. I expect you to refrain from chewing out Joe Douglas over this coming settlement—maybe praise him for ‘statesmanlike restraint—' ”

“You're making me vomit!”

“Use your hat. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. The first principle in riding a tiger is to hang on tight to its ears.”

“Quit being pompous. What's the deal?”

“Quit being obtuse and listen. Mike has the misfortune to be heir to more wealth than Croesus dreamed of . . . plus a claim to political power under a politico-judicial precedent unparalleled in jug-headedness since Secretary Fall was convicted of receiving a bribe that Doheny was acquitted of paying. I have no interest in ‘True Prince' nonsense. Nor do I regard that wealth as ‘his'; he didn't produce it. Even if he had earned it, ‘property' is not the natural and obvious concept that most people think it is.”

“Come again?”

“Ownership is a sophisticated abstraction, a mystical relationship. God knows our legal theorists make this mystery complicated—but I didn't dream how subtle it was until I got the Martian slant. Martians don't own
anything
. . . not even their bodies.”

“Wait a minute, Jubal. Even animals have property. And the Martians aren't animals; they're a civilization, with cities and all sorts of things.”

“Yes. ‘Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests.' Nobody understands ‘meus-et-tuus' better than a watch dog. But not Martians. Unless you regard joint ownership of everything by millions or billions of senior citizens—‘ghosts' to you, my friend—as ‘property.' ”

“Say, Jubal, how about these ‘Old Ones'?”

“You want the official version?”

“No. Your opinion.”

“I think it is pious poppycock, suitable for enriching lawns—superstition burned into the boy's brain so early that he stands no chance of breaking loose.”

“Jill talks as if she believed it.”

“You will hear me talk as if I did, too. Ordinary politeness. One of my most valued friends believes in astrology; I would never offend her by telling her what
I
think. The capacity of humans to believe in what seems to me highly improbable—from table tapping to the superiority of their children—has never been plumbed. Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness but Mike's faith in his ‘Old Ones' is no more irrational than a conviction that the dynamics of the universe can be set aside through prayers for rain.”

“Mmm, Jubal, I confess to a suspicion that immortality is a fact—but I'm glad my grandfather's ghost doesn't boss me. He was a cranky old devil.”

“And so was mine. And so am I. But is there any reason why a citizen's franchise should be voided simply because he is dead? The precinct I was raised in had a large graveyard vote—almost Martian. As may be, our lad Mike
can't
own anything because the ‘Old Ones' already own everything. So I have trouble explaining to him that he owns over a million shares of Lunar Enterprises, plus the Lyle Drive, plus assorted chattels and securities. It doesn't help that the original owners are dead; that makes them ‘Old Ones'—Mike never would stick his nose into the business of ‘Old Ones.' ”

“Uh . . . damn it, he's incompetent.”

“Of course. He can't manage property because he doesn't believe in its mystique—any more than I believe in his ghosts. Ben, all that Mike owns is a toothbrush—and he doesn't know he owns that. If you took it, he would assume that the ‘Old Ones' had authorized the change.”

Jubal shrugged. “He is incompetent. So I shan't allow his competency to be tried—for what guardian would be appointed?”

“Huh! Douglas. Or one of his stooges.”

“Are you certain, Ben? Consider the makeup of the High Court. Might not the appointee be named Savvonavong? Or Nadi? Or Kee?”

“Uh . . . you could be right.”

“In which case the lad might not live long. Or he might live to a ripe age in some pleasant garden more difficult to escape from than Bethesda Hospital.”

“What do you plan to do?”

“The power the boy nominally owns is too dangerous. So we give it away.”

“How do you give away that much money?”

“You don't. Giving it away would change the balance of power—any attempt would cause the boy to be examined on his competence. So, instead, we let the tiger run like hell while hanging onto its ears for dear life. Ben, let me outline what I intend to do . . . then you do your damnedest to pick holes in it. Not the legality; Douglas's legal staff will write the double-talk and I'll check it. I want you to sniff it for political feasibility. Now here's what we are going to do—”

THE MARTIAN DIPLOMATIC DELEGATION went to the Executive Palace the next morning. The unpretentious pretender to the Martian throne, Mike Smith, did not worry about the purpose of the trip; he simply enjoyed it. They rode a chartered Flying Greyhound; Mike sat in the astrodome, Jill on one side and Dorcas on his other, and stared and stared as the girls pointed out sights and chattered. The seat was intended for two; a warming growing-closer resulted. He sat with an arm around each, and looked and listened and tried to grok and could not have been happier if he had been ten feet under water.

It was his first view of Terran civilization. He had seen nothing in being removed from the
Champion;
he had spent a few minutes in a taxi ten days earlier but had grokked none of it. Since then his world had been bounded by house and pool, garden and grass and trees—he had not been as far as Jubal's gate.

But now he was sophisticated; he understood windows, realized that the bubble surrounding him was for looking out of and that the sights he saw were cities. He picked out, with the help of the girls, where they were on the map flowing across the lap board. He had not known until recently that humans knew about maps. It had given him a twinge of happy homesickness the first time he had grokked a human map. It was static and dead compared with maps used by his people—but it was a map. Even human maps were Martian in essence—he liked them.

He saw almost two hundred miles of countryside, most of it sprawling world metropolis, and savored every inch, tried to grok it. He was startled by the size of human cities and their bustling activity, so different from the monastery-garden cities of his own people. It seemed to him that a human city must wear out almost at once, so choked with experience that only the strongest Old Ones could bear to visit its deserted streets and grok in contemplation events and emotions piled layer on endless layer in it. He had visited abandoned cities at home on a few wonderful and dreadful occasions, then his teachers had stopped it, grokking that he was not strong enough.

Questions to Jill and Dorcas enabled him to grok the city's age; it had been founded a little over two Earth centuries ago. Since Earth time units had no favor for him, he converted to Martian years and numbers-three-filled-plus-three-waiting years (3
⁴
+ 3
³
= 08 Martian years).

Terrifying and beautiful! Why, these people must be preparing to abandon the city to its thoughts before it shattered under the strain and became
not . . .
yet, by mere time, the city was only-an-egg.

Mike looked forward to returning to Washington in a century or two to walk its empty streets and try to grow close to its endless pain and beauty, grokking thirstily until he was Washington and the city was himself—if he were strong enough by then. He filed the thought as he must grow and grow and grow before he would be able to praise and cherish the city's mighty anguish.

The Greyhound driver swung east in response to rerouting of unscheduled traffic (caused, unknown to Mike, by Mike's presence), and Mike saw the sea.

Jill had to tell him that it was water; Dorcas added that it was the Atlantic Ocean and traced the shore line on the map. Mike had known since he was a nestling that the planet next nearer the Sun was almost covered with the water of life and lately he had learned that these people accepted this richness casually. He had taken the more difficult hurdle of grokking the Martian orthodoxy that water ceremony did not require water; water was symbol for essence—beautiful but not indispensable.

But Mike discovered that knowing in abstract was not the same as physical reality; the Atlantic filled him with such awe that Jill said sharply, “Mike! Don't you dare!”

Mike chopped off his emotion and stored it. Then he stared at water stretching to horizon, and tried to measure it until his head was buzzing with threes and powers of threes and superpowers of powers.

As they landed on the Palace Jubal called out, “Remember, girls, form a square around him and don't be backward about planting a heel or jabbing an elbow. Anne, you'll be cloaked but that's no reason not to step on a foot if you're crowded. Or is it?”

“Quit fretting, Boss; nobody crowds a Witness—and I'm wearing spike heels and weigh more than you do.”

“Okay. Duke, send Larry back with the bus as soon as possible.”

“I grok it, Boss. Quit jittering.”

“I'll jitter as I please. Let's go.” Harshaw, the four girls with Mike, and Caxton got out; the bus took off. The landing flat was not crowded but it was far from empty. A man stepped forward and said heartily, “Dr. Harshaw? I'm Tom Bradley, senior executive assistant to the Secretary General. You are to go to Mr. Douglas's office. He will see you before the conference starts.”

“No.”

Bradley blinked. “I don't think you understood. These are instructions from the Secretary General. Oh, he said that it was all right for Mr. Smith to come with you—the Man from Mars, I mean.”

“No. We're going to the conference room. Have somebody lead the way. In the meantime, I have an errand for you. Miriam, that letter.”

“But. Dr. Harshaw—”

“I said,
‘No!'
You are to deliver this to Mr. Douglas
at once
—and fetch his receipt to me.” Harshaw signed across the flap of an envelope Miriam handed to him, pressed his thumb print over the signature, handed it to Bradley. “Tell him that he must read this at once—before the meeting.”

“But the Secretary General desires—”

“The Secretary desires to see that letter. Young man, I am endowed with second sight. I prophesy that you won't be here tomorrow if you waste time getting it to him.”

Bradley said, “Jim, take over,” and left, with the letter. Jubal sighed. He had sweated over that letter; Anne and he had been up most of the night preparing draft after draft. Jubal intended to arrive at an open settlement—but he had no intention of taking Douglas by surprise.

A man stepped forward in answer to Bradley's order; Jubal sized him up as one of the clever young-men-on-the-make who gravitate to those in power and do their dirty work. The man smiled and said, “The name's Jim Sanforth, Doctor—I'm the Chief's press secretary. I'll be buffering for you from now on—arranging press interviews and so forth. I'm sorry to say that the conference is not ready; at the last minute we've had to move to a larger room. It's my thought that—”