Stranger in a Strange Land (62 page)

“All right. But I want to see him when he wakes up.”

“You will. Now relax and get the trip out of your system.” Ben urged him toward the group around the tank.

Anne looked up. “Hello, Boss.” She moved over. “Sit down.”

Jubal joined her. “May I ask what the devil
you
are doing here?”

“The same thing you're doing—nothing. Jubal, please don't get heavy-handed. We belong here as much as you do. But you were too upset to argue with. So relax and watch what they're saying about us. The sheriff has announced that he's going to run all us whores out of town.” She smiled. “I've never been run out of town before. Does a whore get ridden on a rail? Or will I have to walk?”

“I don't think there's protocol. You all came?”

“Yes, but don't fret. Larry and I made an arrangement with the McClintock boys a year ago—just in case. They know how the furnace works and where switches are and things; it's all right.”

“Hmm! I'm beginning to think I'm just a boarder there.”

“You expect us to run it without bothering you. But it's a shame you didn't let us all travel together. We got here hours ago—you must have had trouble.”

“I did. Anne, once I get home I don't intend to set foot off the place again in my life . . . and I'm going to yank out the telephone and take a sledgehammer to the babble box.”

“Yes, Boss.”

“This time I mean it.” He glanced at the giant babble box. “Do those commercials go on forever? Where's my god-daughter? Don't tell me you left her with McClintock's idiot sons!”

“Of course not. She's here. She even has her own nursemaid, thank God.”

“I want to see her.”

“Patty will show her to you. I'm bored with her—she was a little beast all the way down. Patty dear! Jubal wants to see Abby.”

The tattooed woman checked an unhurried dash through the room. “Certainly, Jubal. I'm not busy. Down this way.

“I've got the kids in my room,” she explained, while Jubal strove to keep up, “so that Honey Bun can watch them.”

Jubal was mildly startled to see what Patricia meant. The boa was arranged on a bed in squared-off loops that formed a nest—a twin nest, as one bight of the snake had been pulled across to bisect the square, making two crib-sized pockets, each padded with a baby blanket and each containing a baby.

The ophidian nursemaid raised her head inquiringly as they came in. Patty stroked it and said, “It's all right, dear. Father Jubal wants to see them. Pet her a little, and let her grok you, so she will know you next time.”

Jubal cootchy-cooed at his favorite girl friend when she gurgled at him and kicked, then petted the snake. It was the handsomest specimen of
Boidae
he had ever seen—longer, he estimated than any other boa constrictor in captivity. Its cross bars sharply marked and brighter colors of the tail quite showy. He envied Patty her blue-ribbon pet and regretted that he would not have time in which to get friendly with it.

The snake rubbed her head against his hand like a cat. Patty picked up Abby, said, “Honey Bun, why didn't you tell me? She tells me at once if one of them gets tangled up, or needs help, since she can't do much except nudge them back if they try to crawl out. But she just can't grok that a wet baby ought to be changed—Honey Bun doesn't see anything wrong about that. And neither does Abby.”

“I know. We call her ‘Old Faithful.' Who's the other cutie pie?”

“That's Fatima Michele. I thought you knew.”

“Are
they
here? I thought they were in Beirut!”

“Why, they did come from one of those foreign parts. Maryam told me but it wouldn't mean anything to me; I've never been anywhere. I grok all places are alike—just people. There, do you want to hold Abigail while I check Fatima?”

Jubal did and assured her that she was the most beautiful girl in the world, then assured Fatima of the same thing. He was sincere each time and the girls believed him—Jubal had said the same thing on countless occasions starting in the Harding administration, had always meant it and had always been believed.

Regretfully he left, after petting Honey Bun and telling her the same thing.

They ran into Fatima's mother. “Boss honey!” She kissed him and patted his tummy. “I see they've kept you fed.”

“Some. I've been smooching with your daughter. She's an angel doll, Miriam.”

“Pretty good baby, huh? We're going to sell her down to Rio.”

“I thought the market was better in Yemen?”

“Stinky says not. Got to sell her to make room.” She put his hand on her belly. “Feel? Stinky and I are making a boy—got no time for daughters.”

“Maryam,” Patricia said chidingly, “That's no way to talk.”

“Sorry, Patty. I won't talk that way about your baby. Aunt Patty is a lady, and groks I'm not.”

“I grok you aren't, too, you little hellion. But if Fatima is for sale, I'll give you twice your best commercial offer.”

“Take it up with Aunt Patty; I'm merely allowed to see her occasionally.”

“And you don't bulge, so you may want to keep her yourself. Let me see your eyes. Mmm . . . could be.”

“Is. Mike grokked it most carefully and tells Stinky he's made a boy.”

“How can Mike grok that? I'm not even sure you're pregnant.”

“Oh, she is, Jubal,” Patricia confirmed.

Miriam looked at him serenely. “Still the skeptic, Boss? Mike grokked it while we were still in Beirut, before Stinky and I were sure we had caught. So Mike phoned us. So Stinky told the university that we were taking a sabbatical. So here we are.”

“Doing what?”

“Working. Harder than you made me work, Boss—my husband is a slave driver.”

“Doing what?”

“They're writing a Martian dictionary,” Patty told him.

“Martian to English? That must be difficult.”

“Oh, no!” Miriam looked almost shocked. “That would be impossible. A Martian dictionary in Martian. There's never been one; Martians don't need such things. My part is just clerical; I type what they do. Mike and Stinky—mostly Stinky—worked out a phonetic script for Martian, eighty-one characters. So we had an I.B.M. typer worked over, using both upper and lower case—Boss darling, I'm
ruined
as a secretary; I type touch system in Martian now. Will you love me anyhow? When you shout ‘Front!' and I'm not good for anything? I can still cook . . . and I'm told I have other talents.”

“I'll dictate in Martian.”

“You will, when Mike and Stinky get through with you. I grok. Eh, Patty?”

“You speak rightly, my brother.”

They returned to the living room, Caxton joined them and suggested finding a quieter place, led Jubal down a passage and into another living room. “You seem to have most of this floor.”

“All of it,” agreed Ben. “Four suites—the Secretarial, the Presidential, the Royal, and Owner's Cabin, opened into one and not accessible other than by our own landing flat . . . except through a foyer that is not very safe. You were warned about that?”

“Yes.”

“We don't need much room right now . . . but we may; people are trickling in.”

“Ben, how can you hide so openly? The hotel staff will give you away.”

“The staff doesn't come up here. You see, Mike owns this hotel.”

“So much the worse, I would think.”

“Not unless our doughty police chief has Mr. Douglas on his payroll. Mike has it through about four links of dummies—and Douglas doesn't snoop into why Mike orders a thing. Douglas doesn't hate me since Os Kilgallen took over my column, I think, but he doesn't want to surrender control. The owner of record is one of our clandestine Ninth-Circlers. So the owner takes this floor for the season and the manager doesn't ask why—he likes his job. It's a good hide-out. Till Mike groks where we will go.”

“Sounds like Mike had anticipated a need.”

“I'm sure he did. Two weeks ago Mike cleared out the nestlings' nest—except Maryam and her baby; Maryam is needed. Mike sent parents with children to other cities—places he means to open temples, I think—and when the time came, there were about a dozen of us to move. No sweat.”

“But you barely got out with your lives. You lost all your personal possessions?”

“Oh, everything important was saved. Stuff like Stinky's language tapes and a trick typer that Maryam uses—even that horrible Madame-Tussaud of you. And Mike grabbed some clothes and cash.”

Jubal objected, “You say
Mike
did this? I thought Mike was in jail then?”

“His body was in jail, curled up in withdrawal. But he was with us. You understand?”

“I don't grok.”

“Rapport. He was inside Jill's head, mostly, but we were all closely together. Jubal, I can't explain it; you have to
do
it. When the explosion hit, he moved us here. Then he went back and saved the minor stuff.”

Jubal frowned. Caxton said impatiently, “Teleportation, of course. What's so hard to grok, Jubal? You told me to open my eyes and know a miracle when I saw one. So I did and they were. Only they aren't miracles, any more than radio is. Do you grok radio? Or stereovision? Or electronic computers?”

“Me? No.”

“Nor I. But I could if I took the time and sweat to learn the language of electronics; it's not miraculous—just complex. Teleportation is simple, once you learn the language—it's the language that is difficult.”

“Ben, you can teleport things?”

“Me? They don't teach that in Kindergarten. I'm a deacon by courtesy, simply because I'm ‘First Called'—but my progress is about Fourth Circle. I'm just beginning to get control of my own body. Patty is the only one who uses teleportation regularly . . . and I'm not sure she ever does it without Mike's support. Oh, Mike says she's capable of it, but Patty is curiously naive and humble for the genius she is and feels dependent on Mike. Which she needn't be. Jubal, I grok this: we don't actually need Mike.
You
could have been the Man from Mars. Or me. Mike is like the first man to discover fire. Fire was there all along—after he showed them how, anybody could use it . . . anybody with sense enough not to get burned with it. Follow me?”

“I grok, somewhat.”

“Mike is our Prometheus—but that's all. Mike keeps emphasizing this. Thou art God, I am God, he is God—all that groks. Mike is a man like the rest of us. A superior man, admittedly—a lesser man, taught the things the Martians know, might have set himself up as a pipsqueak god. Mike is above that temptation. Prometheus . . . but that's all.”

Jubal said slowly, “Prometheus paid a high price for bringing fire to mankind.”

“Don't think that Mike doesn't! He pays with twenty-four hours of work every day, seven days a week, trying to teach us how to play with matches without getting burned. Jill and Patty lowered the boom on him, made him take one night a week off, long before I joined.” Caxton smiled. “But you can't stop Mike. This burg is loaded with gambling joints, mostly crooked since it's against the law here. So Mike spent his night off bucking crooked games—and winning. They tried to mug him, they tried to kill him, they tried knock-out drops and muscle boys—he simply ran up a reputation as the luckiest man in town . . . which brought more people into the Temple. So they tried to keep him out—a mistake. Cold decks froze solid, wheels wouldn't spin, dice rolled nothing but box cars. At last they put up with him . . . requesting him to move on after he had won a few grand. Mike would do so, if asked politely.”

Caxton added, “So that's one more power bloc against us. Not just the Fosterites and other churches—but now the syndicate and the city machine. I think that job on the Temple was done by professionals—I doubt if the Fosterite goon squads touched it.”

While they talked, people came in, went out, formed groups. Jubal found in them a most unusual feeling, an unhurried relaxation that was also dynamic tension. No one seemed excited, never in a hurry . . . yet everything they did seemed purposeful, even gestures as apparently unpremeditated as encountering one another and marking it with a kiss or a greeting. It felt to Jubal as if each move had been planned by a choreographer.

The quiet and the increasing tension—or ‘expectancy,' he decided; these people were not tense in any morbid fashion—reminded Jubal of something. Surgery? With a master at work, no noise, no lost motions?

Then he remembered. Many years earlier when chemically-powered rockets were used for the earliest human probing of space, he had watched a count-down in a blockhouse. He recalled the same low voices, the relaxed, very diverse but coordinated actions, the same rising exultant expectancy. They were “waiting for fullness,” that was certain. But for what? Why were they so happy? Their Temple and all they had built had been destroyed . . . yet they seemed like kids on a night before Christmas.

Jubal had noted when he arrived that the nudity Ben had been disturbed by on his first visit to the nest did not seem to be the practice here, although private enough for it. He failed to notice it when it did appear; he had become so much in the unique close-family mood that being dressed or not was irrelevant.

When he did notice, it was not skin but the thickest, most beautiful cascade of black hair he had ever seen, gracing a young woman who came in, spoke to someone, threw Ben a kiss, glanced gravely at Jubal, and left. Jubal followed her with his eyes, appreciating that flowing mass of midnight plumage. Only after she left did he realize that she had not been dressed other than in that queenly glory . . . and then realized that she was not the first of his brothers in that fashion.