Stranger in a Strange Land (67 page)

“Well, that is some comfort.”

“I am ‘only an egg' in this art; the Old Ones are masters. They linked with me but left me on my own, ignored me—then triggered me, and all I had seen and heard and done and felt and grokked poured out and into their records. I don't mean that they wiped my mind of it; they simply played the tape, so to speak, made a copy. But the triggering I could feel—and it was over before I could stop it. Then they cut off the linkage; I couldn't even protest.”

“Well . . . it seems to me that they used you shabbily—”

“Not by their standards. Nor would I have objected—I would have been happy to volunteer—had I known it before I left Mars. But they didn't want me to know; they wanted me to grok without interference.”

“I was going to add,” Jubal said, “that if you are free of this damnable invasion of your privacy now, then what harm has been done? It seems to me that you could have had a Martian at your elbow all these past two and a half years, with no harm other than attracting stares.”

Mike looked very sober. “Jubal, listen to a story. Listen all the way through.” Mike told him of the destruction of the missing Fifth Planet of Sol, whose ruins are asteroids. “Well, Jubal?”

“It reminds me of the myths about the Flood.”

“No, Jubal. The Flood you aren't sure about. Are you sure about the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum?”

“Oh, yes. Those are established facts.”

“Jubal, the destruction of the Fifth Planet by the Old Ones is as certain as that eruption of Vesuvius—and is recorded in much greater detail. No myth. Fact.”

“Uh, stipulate it. Do I understand that you fear that the Old Ones of Mars will give this planet the same treatment? Will you forgive me if I say that is hard for me to swallow?”

“Why, Jubal, it wouldn't take the Old Ones to do it. It merely takes knowledge of physics, how matter is put together—and the same control you have seen me use time and again. Simply necessary first to grok what you want to manipulate. I can do it, right now. Say a piece near the core of Earth about a hundred miles in diameter—much bigger than necessary but we want to make this fast and painless, if only to please Jill. Feel out its size and place, grok carefully how it is put together—” His face lost all expression and his eyeballs started to turn up.

“Hey!” broke in Harshaw. “Stop it! I don't know whether you can or not but I don't want you to try!”

 

The face of the Man from Mars became normal. “Why, I would never
do
it. For me, it would be a wrongness—I am human.”

“But not for them?”

“Oh, no. The Old Ones might grok it as beauty. I don't know. Oh, I have the discipline to do it . . . but not the volition. Jill could do it—that is, she could contemplate the exact method. But she could never
will
to do it; she is human, too; this is her planet. The essence of the discipline is, first, self-awareness, and then, self control. By the time a human is able to destroy this planet by this method—instead of by clumsy things like cobalt bombs—it is not possible, I grok fully, for him to entertain the volition. He would discorporate. And that would end any threat; our Old Ones don't hang around the way they do on Mars.”

“Mmmm . . . son, as long as we are checking you for bats in your belfry, clear up something else. You've always spoken of these ‘Old Ones' as casually as I speak of the neighbor's dog—but I find ghosts hard to swallow. What does an ‘Old One' look like?”

“Why, just like any other Martian.”

“Then how do you know it's not just an adult Martian? Does he walk through walls, or such?”

“Any Martian can do that. I did, yesterday.”

“Uh... shimmers? Or anything?”

“No. You see, hear, feel them—everything. It's like an image in a stereo tank, only perfect and put right into your mind. But—Look, Jubal, the whole thing would be a silly question on Mars, but I realize it isn't, here. If you were present at the discorporation—death—of a friend, then helped eat his body . . . and
then
you saw his ghost, talked with it, touched it, anything—would you then believe in ghosts?”

“Well, either that, or I had slipped my leash.”

“All right. Here it could be hallucination . . . if I grok correctly that we don't hang around when we discorporate. But in the case of Mars, there is either an entire planet all run by mass hallucination—or the straightforward explanation is correct . . . the one I was taught and all my experience led me to believe. Because on Mars ‘ghosts' are the most powerful and the most numerous part of the population. The ones still alive, the corporate ones, are hewers of wood and drawers of water, servants to the Old Ones.”

Jubal nodded. “Okay. I'll never boggle at slicing with Occam's Razor. While it runs contrary to my experience, mine is limited to this planet—provincial. All right, son, you're scared they might destroy us?”

Mike shook his head. “Not especially. I think—this is not a grokking but a guess—that they might do one of two things; either destroy us . . . or attempt to conquer us culturally, make us over into their own image.”

“But you're not fretted about us being blown up? That's a pretty detached viewpoint.”

“No. Oh, they might decide to. You see, by their standards, we are diseased and crippled—the things we do to each other, the way we fail to understand each other, our almost complete failure to grok with one another, our wars and diseases and famines and cruelties—these will be insanity to them. I
know
. So I think they will decide on a mercy killing. But that's a guess, I'm not an Old One. But, Jubal, if they decide to, it will be—” Mike thought a long time. “—a minimum of five hundred years, more likely five thousand, before anything would be done.”

“That's a long time for a jury to be out.”

“Jubal, the greatest difference between the two races is that Martians never hurry—and humans always do. They would much rather think about it an extra century or half dozen, to be sure that they grok all the fullness.”

“In that case, son, don't worry about it. If, in another five hundred or a thousand years, the human race can't handle its neighbors, you and I can't help it. However, I suspect that they will be able to.”

“So I grok, but not in fullness. I said I wasn't worried about
that
. The other possibility troubled me more, that they might move in and try to make us over. Jubal, they
can't
. An attempt to make us behave like Martians would kill us as certainly but not painlessly. It would be a great wrongness.”

Jubal took time to answer. “But, son, isn't that what
you
have been trying to do?”

Mike looked unhappy. “It was what I started out to do. It is
not
what I am trying to do now. Father, I know that you were disappointed in me when I started this.”

“Your business, son.”

“Yes. Self. I must grok each cusp myself alone. And so must you . . . and so must each self. Thou art God.”

“I don't accept the nomination.”

“You can't refuse it. Thou art God and I am God and all that groks is God, and I am all that I have ever been or seen or felt or experienced. I am all that I grok. Father, I saw the horrible shape this planet is in and I grokked, though not in fullness, that I could change it. What I had to teach couldn't be taught in schools; I was forced to smuggle it in as a religion—which it is not—and con the marks into tasting it by appealing to their curiosity. In part it worked as I knew it would; the discipline was just as available to others as it was to me, who was raised in a Martian nest. Our brothers get along together—you've seen, you've shared—live in peace and happiness with no bitterness, no jealousy.

“That alone was a triumph. Male-femaleness is the greatest gift we have—romantic physical love may be unique to this planet. If it is, the universe is a poorer place than it could be . . . and I grok dimly that we-who-are-God will save this precious invention and spread it. The joining of bodies with merging of souls in shared ecstasy, giving, receiving, delighting in each other—well, there's nothing on Mars to touch it, and it's the source, I grok in fullness, of all that makes this planet so rich and wonderful. And, Jubal, until a person, man or woman, has enjoyed this treasure bathed in the mutual bliss of minds linked as closely as bodies, that person is still as virginal and alone as if he had never copulated. But I grok that you have; your very reluctance to risk a lesser thing proves it . . . and, anyhow, I know it directly. You grok. You always have. Without needing the language of grokking. Dawn told us that you were as deep into her mind as you were into her body.”

“Unh . . . the lady exaggerates.”

“It is impossible for Dawn to speak other than rightly about this. And—forgive me—we were there. In her mind but not in yours . . . and you were there with us, sharing.”

Jubal refrained from saying that the only times he had ever felt that he could read minds was precisely in that situation . . . and then not thoughts, but emotions. He simply regretted without bitterness that he was not half a century younger—in which case Dawn would have had that “Miss” taken off her name and he would have boldly risked another marriage, despite his scars. Also that he would not trade the preceding night for all the years that might be left him. In essence, Mike was right. “Go on, sir.”

“That's what sexual union should be. But that's what I slowly grokked it rarely was. Instead it was indifference and acts mechanically performed and rape and seduction as a game no better than roulette but less honest and prostitution and celibacy by choice and by no choice and fear and guilt and hatred and violence and children brought up to think that sex was ‘bad' and ‘shameful' and ‘animal' and something to be hidden and always distrusted. This lovely perfect thing, male-femaleness, turned upside down and inside out and made horrible.

“And every one of those wrong things is a corollary of ‘jealousy.' Jubal, I couldn't believe it. I still don't grok ‘jealousy' in fullness, it seems insanity to me. When I first learned what this ecstasy was, my first thought was that I wanted to share it, share it at once with all my water brothers—directly with those female, indirectly by inviting more sharing with those male. The notion of trying to keep this never-failing fountain to myself would have horrified me, had I thought of it. But I was incapable of thinking it. And in perfect corollary I had no slightest wish to attempt this miracle with anyone I did not already cherish and trust—Jubal, I am physically unable even to attempt love with a female who has not shared water with me. And this runs all through the Nest. Psychic impotence—unless spirits blend as flesh blends.”

Jubal was thinking mournfully that it was a fine system—for angels—when a sky car landed on the private flat diagonally in front of him. He turned his head to see and, as its skids touched, it vanished.

“Trouble?” he asked.

“No,” Mike denied. “They are beginning to suspect that we are here—that I am, rather; they think the rest are dead. The Innermost Temple, I mean. The other circles aren't being bothered . . .” He grinned. “We could get a good price for these rooms; the city is filling up with Bishop Short's shock troops.”

“Isn't it about time to get the family elsewhere?”

“Jubal, don't worry. That car never had a chance to report, even by radio. I'm guarding us. It's no trouble, now that Jill is over her misconceptions about ‘wrongness' in discorporating persons who have wrongness in them. I used to have to use complicated expedients to protect us. But now Jill knows that I do it only as fullness is grokked.” The Man from Mars grinned boyishly. “Last night she helped me with a hatchet job . . . nor was it her first time.”

“What sort of a job?”

“Oh, just a follow-up on the jail break. Some few I couldn't release; they were vicious. So I got rid of them before I got rid of bars and doors. But I have been slowly grokking this whole city for months . . . and quite a few of the worst were not in jail. I have been waiting, making a list, making sure of fullness in each case. So, now that we are leaving this city—they don't live here any more. They were discorporated and sent back to the foot of the line to try again. Incidentally, that was the grokking that changed Jill's attitude from squeamishness to hearty approval: when she finally grokked in fullness that it is
impossible
to kill a man—that all we were doing was much like a referee removing a player for ‘unnecessary roughness.' ”

“Aren't you afraid of playing God, lad?”

Mike grinned with unashamed cheerfulness. “I
am
God. Thou art God . . . and any jerk I remove is God, too. Jubal, it is said that God notes each sparrow that falls. And so He does. But the closest it can be said in English is that God cannot avoid noting the sparrow because the Sparrow
is
God. And when a cat stalks a sparrow both of them are God, carrying out God's thoughts.”

Another sky car started to land and vanished; Jubal did not comment. “How many did you toss out of the game last night?”

“Oh, about four hundred and fifty—I didn't count. This is a largish city. But for a while it is going to be an unusually decent one. No cure, of course—there is no cure, short of the discipline.” Mike looked unhappy. “And that is what I must ask you about, Father. I'm afraid I have misled our brothers.”

“How, Mike?”

“They're too optimistic. They see how well it works for us, they know how happy they are, how strong and healthy and aware—how deeply they love each other. And now they think they grok that it is just a matter of time until the whole human race will reach the same beatitude. Oh, not tomorrow—some of them grok that two thousand years is but a moment for such a mission. But eventually.