Stranger in a Strange Land (51 page)

“Huh? How could that be? Mike, if one is true, then the others are wrong.”

“So? Point to the shortest direction around the universe. It doesn't matter where you point, it's the shortest . . . and you're pointing back at yourself.”

“Well, what does that prove? You taught me the true answer, Mike. ‘Thou art God.' ”

“And Thou art God, my lovely. But that prime fact which doesn't depend on faith may mean that
all
faiths are true.”

“Well . . . if they're all true, then right now I want to worship Siva.” Jill changed the subject with emphatic action.

“Little pagan,” he said softly. “They'll run you out of San Francisco.”

“But we're going to Los Angeles . . . where it won't be noticed.
Oh!
Thou are Siva!”

“Dance, Kali, dance!”

During the night she woke and saw him standing at the window, looking out over the city (
“Trouble, my brother?”
)

He turned. “There's no
need
for them to be so unhappy.”

“Darling, darling! I had better take you home. The city is not good for you.”

“But I would still know it. Pain and sickness and hunger and fighting—there's no need for
any
of it. It's as foolish as those little monkeys.”

“Yes, darling. But it's not your fault—”

“Ah, but it
is!”

“Well . . . that way—yes. But it's not just this one city; it's five billion people and more. You can't help five billion people.”

“I wonder.”

He came over and sat by her. “I grok them now, I can talk to them. Jill, I could set up our act and make the marks laugh every minute. I am certain.”

“Then why not do it? Patty would be pleased—and so would I. I liked being ‘with it'—and now that we've shared water with Patty, it would be like being home.”

He didn't answer. Jill felt his mind and knew that he was contemplating, trying to grok. She waited.

“Jill? What do I have to do to be ordained?”

THE FIRST MIXED LOAD of colonists reached Mars; six of seventeen survivors of twenty-three originals returned to Earth. Prospective colonists trained in Peru at sixteen thousand feet. The President of Argentina moved one night to Montevideo, taking two suitcases; the new Presidente started an extradition process before the High Court to yank him back, or at least the suitcases. Last rites for Alice Douglas were held privately in the National Cathedral with two thousand attending; commentators praised the fortitude with which the Secretary General took his bereavement. A three-year-old named Inflation, carrying 126 pounds, won the Kentucky Derby paying fifty-four for one; two guests of the Colony Airotel, Louisville, discorporated, one voluntarily, one by heart failure.

A bootleg edition of the unauthorized biography
The Devil and Reverend Foster
appeared throughout the United States; by nightfall every copy was burned and plates destroyed, along with damage to chattels and real estate, plus mayhem, maiming, and simple assault. The British Museum was rumored to possess a copy of the first edition (untrue), and also the Vatican Library (true, but available only to church scholars).

In the Tennessee legislature a bill was introduced to make pi equal to three; it was reported out by the committee on public education and morals, passed without objection by the lower house and died in the upper house. An interchurch fundamentalist group opened offices in Van Buren, Arkansas, to solicit funds to send missionaries to the Martians; Dr. Jubal Harshaw made a donation but sent it in the name (and with the address) of the editor of the
New Humanist
, rabid atheist and his close friend.

Otherwise Jubal had little to cheer him—too much news about Mike. He treasured the visits home of Jill and Mike and was most interested in Mike's progress, especially after Mike developed a sense of humor. But they seldom came home now and Jubal did not relish the latest developments.

It had not troubled Jubal when Mike was run out of Union Theological Seminary, pursued by a pack of enraged theologians, some of whom were angry because they believed in God and others because they did not—but unanimous in detesting the Man from Mars. Jubal reckoned anything that happened to a theologian short of breaking him on the wheel as no more than meet—and the experience was good for the boy; he'd know better next time.

Nor had he been troubled when Mike (with the help of Douglas) enlisted under an assumed name in the Federation armed forces. He had been sure that no sergeant could cause Mike permanent distress, and Jubal was not troubled by what might happen to Federation troops—an unreconciled old reactionary, Jubal had burned his honorable discharge and all that went with it the day the United States ceased having its own forces.

Jubal was surprised at how little shambles Mike created as “Private Jones” and how long he lasted—almost three weeks. Mike crowned his military career by grabbing the question period following a lecture to preach the uselessness of force (with comments on the desirability of reducing surplus population through cannibalism), then offered himself as a test animal for any weapon of any nature to prove that force was not only unnecessary but
impossible
when attempted against a self-disciplined person.

They did not take his offer; they kicked him out.

Douglas allowed Jubal to see a super-secret eyes-only numbered-one-of-three report after cautioning Jubal that no one, not even the Supreme Chief of Staff, knew that “Private Jones” was the Man from Mars. Jubal scanned the exhibits, mostly conflicting reports as to what happened when “Jones” had been “trained” in the uses of weapons; the surprising thing to Jubal was that some witnesses had the courage to state under oath that they had seen weapons disappear.

The last paragraph Jubal read carefully; “Conclusion: Subject man is a natural hypnotist and could conceivably be useful in intelligence, but he is unfitted for any combat branch. However, his low intelligence quotient (moron), his extremely low general classification score, and his paranoid tendencies (delusions of grandeur) make it inadvisable to exploit his
idiot-savant
talent. Recommendation: Discharge, Inaptitude—no pension credit, no benefits.”

Mike had managed to have fun. At parade on his last day while Mike's platoon was passing in review, the commanding general and his staff were buried hip deep in a bucolic end-product symbolic to all soldiers but no longer common on parade grounds. This deposit vanished, leaving nothing but an odor and a belief in mass hypnosis. Jubal decided that Mike had atrocious taste in practical jokes. Then he recalled an incident in medical school involving a cadaver and the Dean—Jubal had worn rubber gloves and a good thing, too!

Jubal enjoyed Mike's inglorious military career because Jill spent the time at home. When Mike came home after it was over, he hadn't seemed hurt by it—he boasted to Jubal that he had obeyed Jill's wishes and hadn't disappeared
anybody,
merely a few dead things . . . although, as Mike grokked it, there had been times when Earth could have been made a better place if Jill didn't have this weakness. Jubal didn't argue; he had a lengthy “Better Dead” list himself.

Mike's unique ways of growing up were all right; Mike was unique. But this last thing—“The Reverend Doctor Valentine M. Smith, A.B., D.D., Ph.D., Founder and Pastor of the Church of All Worlds, Inc.”—gad! It was bad enough that the boy had decided to be a Holy Joe instead of leaving other people's souls alone as a gentleman should. But those diploma-mill degrees—Jubal wanted to throw up.

The worst was that Mike claimed that he had hatched the idea from something Jubal had said, about what a church was and what it could do. Jubal admitted that it was something he could have said, although he did not recall it.

Mike had been cagey about the operation—some months of residence at a very small, very poor sectarian college, a bachelor's degree awarded by examination, a “call” to their ministry followed by ordination in this recognized though flat-headed sect, a doctor's dissertation on comparative religion which was a marvel of scholarship while ducking any conclusions, the award of the “earned” doctorate coinciding with an endowment (anonymous) to this very hungry school, the second doctorate (honorary) for “contributions to interplanetary knowledge” from a university that should have known better, when Mike let it be known that such was his price for appearing at a conference on solar system studies. The Man from Mars had turned down everybody from Cal-Tech to Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in the past; Harvard could not resist the bait.

Well, they were as crimson as their banner now, Jubal thought cynically. Mike put in a few weeks as assistant chaplain at his churchmouse alma mater—then broke with the sect in a schism and founded his own church. Completely kosher, legally airtight, as venerable in precedent as Martin Luther—and as nauseating as last week's garbage.

Jubal was called out of his sour daydream by Miriam. “Boss! Company!”

Jubal looked up to see a car about to land. “Larry, fetch my shotgun—I swore I would shoot the next dolt who landed on the rose bushes.”

“He's landing on the grass, Boss.”

“Tell him to try again. We'll get him on the next pass.”

“Looks like Ben Caxton.”

“So it is. Hi, Ben! What'll you drink?”

“Nothing, you professional bad influence. Need to talk to you, Jubal.”

“You're doing it. Dorcas, fetch Ben a glass of warm milk; he's sick.”

“Without much soda,” amended Ben, “and milk the bottle with the three dimples. Private talk, Jubal.”

“All right, up to my study—although if you can keep anything from the kids around here, let me in on your method.” After Ben finished greeting properly (and unsanitarily, in three cases) members of the family, they moseyed upstairs.

Ben said, “What the deuce? Am I lost?”

“Oh. You haven't seen the new wing. Two bedrooms and another bath downstairs—and up here, my gallery.”

“Enough statues to fill a graveyard!”

“Please, Ben. ‘Statues' are dead politicians. This is ‘sculpture.' Please speak in a reverent tone lest I become violent. Here are replicas of some of the greatest sculpture this naughty globe has produced.”

“Well,
that
hideous thing I've seen before . . . but when did you acquire the rest of this ballast?”

Jubal spoke to the replica La Belle Heaulmière. “Do not listen, ma petite chère—he is a barbarian and knows no better.” He put his hand to her beautiful ravaged cheek, then gently touched one empty, shrunken dug. “I know how you feel . . . it can't be much longer. Patience, my lovely.”

He turned to Caxton and said briskly, “Ben, you will have to wait while I give you a lesson in how to look at sculpture. You've been rude to a lady. I don't tolerate that.”

“Huh? Don't be silly, Jubal; you're rude to ladies—
live ones
—a dozen times a day.”

Jubal shouted, “
Anne!
Upstairs! Wear your cloak!”

“You know I wouldn't be rude to the old woman who posed for that. What I can't understand is a so-called artist having the gall to pose somebody's great grandmother in her skin . . . and you having the bad taste to want it around.”

Anne came in, cloaked. Jubal said, “Anne, have I ever been rude to you? Or to any of the girls?”

“That calls for opinion.”

“That's what I'm asking for. You're not in court.”

“You have never been rude to any of us, Jubal.”

“Have you ever known me to be rude to a lady?”

“I have seen you be intentionally rude to a woman. I have never seen you be rude to a lady.”

“One more opinion. What do you think of this bronze?”

Anne looked at Rodin's masterpiece, said slowly, “When I first saw it, I thought it was horrible. But I have come to the conclusion that it may be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”

“Thanks. That's all.” She left. “Want to argue, Ben?”

“Huh? When I argue with Anne, that day I turn in my suit. But I don't grok it.”

“Attend me, Ben. Anybody can see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl she used to be. A
great
artist can look at an old woman, portray her
exactly
as she is . . . and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be . . . more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo see that this lovely young girl is still alive, prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart . . . no matter what the merciless hours have done. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn't matter to you and me—but it
does
to them.
Look at her!”

Ben looked a her. Presently Jubal said gruffly, “All right, blow your nose. Come sit down.”

“No,” Caxton answered. “How about this one? I see it's a girl. But why tie her up like a pretzel?”

Jubal looked at the replica “Caryatid Who Has Fallen under Her Stone.” “I won't expect you to appreciate the masses which make that figure much more than a ‘pretzel'—but you can appreciate what Rodin was saying. What do people get out of looking at a crucifix?”

“You know I don't go to church.”

“Still, you must know that representations of the Crucifixion are usually atrocious—and ones in churches are the worst . . . blood like catsup and that ex-carpenter portrayed as if He were a pansy . . . which He certainly was
not.
He was a hearty man, muscular and healthy. But a poor portrayal is as effective as a good one for most people. They don't see defects; they see a symbol which inspires their deepest emotions; it recalls to them the Agony and Sacrifice of God.”