A Stranger in a Strange Land

XIX

THE MARTIAN DIPLOMATIC DELEGATION amp; Inside Straight Sodality, Unlimited, as organized by Jubal Harshaw, landed on the flat of the Executive Palace shortly before ten o'clock the next morning. The unpretentious pretender to the Martian throne, Mike Smith, had not worried about the purpose of the trip; he had simply enjoyed every minute of the short flight south, with utter and innocent delight.

The trip was made in a chartered Flying Greyhound, and Mike sat up in the astrodome above the driver, with Jill on one side and Dorcas on his other, and stared and stared in awed wonderment as the girls pointed out sights to him and chattered in his ears. The seat, being intended for two people, was very crowded, but Mike did not mind, as a warming degree of growing closer necessarily 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, in fact, his first view of Terran civilization He had seen nothing at all in being removed from the Champion to suite K-12 at Bethesda Center; he had indeed spent a few minutes in a taxi ten days earlier going from the hospital to Ben's apartment but at the time he had grokked none of it. Since that time his world had been bounded by a house and a swimming pool, plus surrounding garden and grass and trees - he had not been as far as Jubal's gate.

But now he was enormously more sophisticated than he had been ten days ago. He understood windows, realized that the bubble surrounding him was a window and meant for looking out of and that the changing sights he saw were indeed the cities of these people. He understood maps and could pick out, with the help of the girls, where they were and what they were seeing on the map flowing across the lap board in front of them. But of course he had always known about maps; he simply 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. Sure, it was static and dead compared with the maps used by his people - but it was a map. Mike was not disposed by nature and certainly not by training to invidious comparisons even human maps were very Martian in essence - he liked them.

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

Careful questions to Jill and Dorcas, the answers of which he then related to what he had read, enabled him to grok in part enough to relieve his mind somewhat the city was very young; it had been founded only a little over two Earth centuries ago. Since Earth time units had no real flavor for him, he converted to Martian years and Martian numbers years (3^4 + 3^3 = 108 Martian years).

Terrifying and beautiful! Why, these people must even now be preparing to abandon the city to its thoughts before it shattered under the strain and became not. And 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. Then he firmly filed the thought away as he knew that 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 far east at one point in response to a temporary rerouting of unscheduled traffic (caused, unknown to Mike, by Mike's own presence), and Mike, for the first time, saw the sea.

Jill had to point it out to him and tell him that it was water, and Dorcas added that it was the Atlantic Ocean and traced the shore line on the map. Mike was not ignorant: he 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 lavish richness casually. He had even taken, unassisted, the much more difficult hurdle of grokking at last the Martian orthodoxy that the water ceremony did not require water, that water was merely symbol for the essence beautiful but not indispensable.

But, like many a human still virgin toward some major human experience, Mike discovered that knowing a fact in the abstract was not at all the same thing as experiencing its physical reality; the sight of the Atlantic Ocean filled him with such awe that Jill squeezed him and said sharply, "Stop it, Mike! Don't you dare!"

Mike chopped off his emotion and stored it away for later use. Then he stared at the ocean, stretching out to an unimaginably distant horizon, and tried to measure its size in his mind until his head was buzzing with threes and powers of threes and superpowers of powers.

As they landed Jubal called out, "Now remember, girls, form a square around him and don't be at all backward about planting a heel in an instep or jabbing an elbow into some oaf's solar plexus. Anne, I realize you'll be wearing your cloak 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 - but I'm wearing spike heels and I weigh more than you do."

"Okay. Duke, you know what to do - but get Larry back here with the bus as soon as possible. I don't know when I'll need it."

"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 at once. To Harshaw's mixed relief and apprehension the landing flat was not crowded with newsmen.

But it was far from empty. A man picked him out at once, stepped briskly forward and said heartily, "Dr. Harshaw? I'm Tom Bradley, senior executive assistant to the Secretary General. You are to go directly to Mr. Douglas' private office. He will see you for a few moments before the conference starts."

"No."

Bradley blinked. "I don't think you understood me. 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. This party stays together, even to go to the washroom. Right now we're going to that conference room. Have somebody lead the way. And have all these people stand back; they're crowding us. In the meantime, I have an errand for you. Miriam, that letter."

"But, Dr. Harshaw-"

"I said, 'No!' Can't you understand plain English? But you are to deliver this letter to Mr. Douglas at once and to him personally, and fetch back his receipt to me." Harshaw paused to write his signature across the flap of the envelope Miriam had handed to him, pressed his thumb print over the signature, and handed it to Bradley. "Tell him that it is most urgent that he read this at once - before the meeting."

"But the Secretary General specifically desires-"

"The Secretary desires to see that letter. Young man, I am endowed with second sight� and I predict that you won't be working here later today if you waste any time getting it to him."

Bradley locked eyes with Jubal, then said, "Jim, take over," and left, with the letter. Jubal sighed inwardly. He had sweated over that letter; Anne and he had been up most of the night preparing draft after draft. Jubal had every intention of arriving at an open settlement, in full view of the world's news cameras and microphones - but he had no intention of letting Douglas be taken by surprise by any proposal.

Another man stepped forward in answer to Bradley's order; Jubal sized him up as a prime specimen of the clever, conscienceless young-men-on-the-way-up who gravitate to those in power and do their dirty work; he disliked him on sight. The man smiled heartily and said smoothly, "The name's Jim Sanforth, Doctor - I'm the Chief's press secretary. I'll be buffering for you from now on - arranging your press interviews and so forth. I'm sorry to say that the conference room is not quite ready; there have been last minute changes and we've had to move to a larger room. Now it's my thought that-"

"It's my thought that we'll go to that conference room right now. We'll stand up until chairs are fetched for us."

"Doctor, I'm sure you don't understand the situation. They are still stringing wires and things, and that room is swarming with reporters and commentators."

"Very well. We'll chat with 'em till you're ready."

"No, Doctor. I have instructions"

"Youngster, you can take your instructions, fold them until they are all corners and shove them in your oubliette. We are not at your beck and call. You will not arrange press interviews for us. We are here for just one purpose: a public conference. If the conference is not ready to meet, we'll see the press now - in the conference room."

"But-"

"And that's not all. You're keeping the Man from Mars standing on a windy roof" Harshaw raised his voice. "Is there anyone here smart enough to lead us straight to this conference room without getting lost?"

Sanforth swallowed and said, 'Follow me, Doctor."

The conference room was indeed crowded with newsmen and technicians but there was a big oval table, plenty of chairs, and several smaller tables. Mike was spotted at once and Sanforth's protests did not keep them from crowding in on him. But Mike's flying wedge of amateur Amazons got him as far as the big table; Jubal sat him against it with Dorcas and Jill in chairs flanking him and the Fair Witness and Miriam seated behind him. Once this was done, Jubal made no attempt to fend oft questions or pictures. Mike had been warned that he would meet lots of people and that many of them would do strange things and Jubal had most particularly warned him to take no sudden actions (such as causing persons or things to go away, or to stop) unless Jill told him to.

Mike took the confusion gravely, without apparent upset; Jill was holding his hand and her touch reassured him.

Jubal wanted news pictures taken, the more the better; as for questions put directly to Mike, Jubal did not fear them and made no attempt to field them. A week of trying to talk with Mike had convinced him that no reporter could possibly get anything of importance out of Mike in only a few minutes - without expert help. Mike's habit of answering a question as asked, answering it literally and stopping, would be enough to nullify most attempts to pump him.

And so it proved. Most questions Mike answered with a polite: "I do not know," or an even less committal; "Beg pardon?"

But one question backfired on the questioner. A Reuters correspondent, anticipating a monumental fight over Mike's status as an heir, tried to sneak in his own test of Mike's competence: "Mr. Smith? What do you know about the laws of inheritance here?"

Mike was aware that he was having trouble grokking in fullness the human concept of property and, in particular, the ideas of bequest and inheritance. So he most carefully avoided inserting his own ideas and stuck to the book - a book which Jubal recognized shortly as Ely on Inheritance and Bequest, chapter one.

Mike related what he had read, with precision and careful lack of expression, like a boring but exact law professor, for page after tedious page, while the room gradually settled into stunned silence and his interrogator gulped.

Jubal let it go on until every newsman there knew more than he wanted to know about dower and curtesy, consanguinean and uterine, per stirpes and per capita, and related mysteries. At last Jubal touched his shoulder, "That's enough, Mike."

Mike looked puzzled. "There is much more."

"Yes, but later. Does someone have a question on some other subject?"

A reporter for a London Sunday paper of enormous circulation jumped in with a question closer to his employer's pocketbook: "Mr. Smith, we understand you like the girls here on Earth. But have you ever kissed a girl?"

"Yes."

"Did you like it?"

"Yes."

"How did you like it?"

Mike barely hesitated over his answer. "Kissing girls is a goodness," he explained very seriously. "It is a growing-closer. It beats the hell out of card games."

Their applause frightened him. But he could feel that Jill and Dorcas were not frightened, that indeed they were both trying to restrain that incomprehensible noisy expression of pleasure which he himself could not learn. So he calmed his fright and waited gravely for whatever might happen next.

By what did happen next he was saved from further questions, answerable or not, and was granted a great joy; he saw a familiar face and figure just entering by a side door, "My brother Dr. Mahmoud!" Mike went on talking in overpowering excitement - but in Martian.

The Champion's staff semanticist waved and smiled and answered in the same jarring language while hurrying to Mike's side. The two continued talking in unhuman symbols, Mike in an eager torrent, Mahmoud not quite as rapidly, with sound effects like a rhinoceros ramming an ironmonger's lorry.

The newsmen stood it for some time, those who operated by sound recording it and the writers noting it as local color. But at last one interrupted. "Dr. Mahmoud! What are you saying? Clue us!"

Mahmoud turned, smiled briefly and said in clipped Oxonian speech, "For the most part, I've been saying, 'Slow down, my dear boy - do, please.'

"And what does he say?"

"The rest of our conversation is personal, private, of no possible interest to others, I assure you. Greetings, y'know. Old friends." He turned back to Mike and continued to chat - in Martian.

In fact, Mike was telling his brother Mahmoud all that had happened to him in the fortnight since he had last seen him, so that they might grok closer - but Mike's abstraction of what to tell was purely Martian in concept, it being concerned primarily with new water brothers and the unique flavor of each� the gentle water that was Jill� the depth of Anne� the strange not-yet-fully-grokked fact that Jubal tasted now like an egg, then like an Old One, but was neither-the ungrokkable vastness of ocean-

Mahmoud had less to tell Mike since less had happened in the interim to him, by Martian standards - one Dionysian excess quite un-Martian and of which he was not proud, one long day spent lying face down in Washington's Suleiman Mosque, the results of which he had not yet grokked and was not ready to discuss. No new water brothers.

He stopped Mike presently and offered his hand to Jubal. "You're Dr. Harshaw, I know. Valentine Michael thinks he has introduced me to all of you - and he has, by his rules."

Harshaw looked him over as he shook hands with him. Chap looked and sounded like a huntin', shootin', sportin' Britisher, from his tweedy, expensively casual clothes to a clipped grey moustache� but his skin was naturally swarthy rather than ruddy tan and the genes for that nose came from somewhere close to the Levant. Harshaw did not like fake anything and would choose to eat cold compone over the most perfect syntho "sirloin."

But Mike treated him as a friend, so "friend" he was, until proved otherwise.

To Mahmoud, Harshaw looked like a museum exhibit of what he thought of as a "Yank"-vulgar, dressed too informally for the occasion, loud, probably ignorant and almost certainly provincial. A professional man, too, which made it worse, as in Dr. Mahmoud's experience most American professional men were under-educated and narrow, mere technicians. He held a vast but carefully concealed distaste for all things American. Their incredible polytheistic babel of religions, of course, although they were hardly to be blamed for that� their cooking (cooking!), their manners, their bastard architecture and sickly arts� and their blind, pathetic, arrogant belief in their superiority long after their sun had set. Their women. Their women most of all, their immodest, assertive women, with their gaunt, starved bodies which nevertheless reminded him disturbingly of houris. Four of them here, crowded around Valentine Michael - at a meeting which certainly should be all male. But Valentine Michael had offered him all these people - including these ubiquitous female creatures - offered them proudly and eagerly as his water brothers, thereby laying on Mahmoud a family obligation closer and more binding than that owed to the sons of one's father's brother - since Mahmoud understood the Martian term for such accretive relationships from direct observation of what it meant to Martians and did not need to translate it clumsily and inadequately as "catenative assemblage," nor even as "things equal to the same thing are equal to each other." He had seen Martians at home; he knew their extreme poverty (by Earth standards); he had dipped into - and had guessed at far more - of their cultural extreme wealth; and had grokked quite accurately the supreme value that Martians place on interpersonal relationships.

Well, there was nothing else for it - he had shared water with Valentine Michael and now he must justify his friend's faith in him� he simply hoped that these Yanks were not complete bounders.

So he smiled warmly and shook hands firmly. "Yes. Valentine Michael has explained to me - most proudly - that you are all in-" (Mahmoud used one word of Martian.) "-to him."

"Eh?"

"Water brotherhood. You understand?"

"I grok it."

Mahmoud strongly doubted if Harshaw did, but he went on smoothly, "Since I myself am already in that relationship to him, I must ask to be considered a member of the family. I know your name, and I have guessed that this must be Mr. Caxton - in fact I have seen your face pictured at the head of your column, Mr. Caxton; I read it when I have opportunity - but let me see if I have the young ladies straight. This must be Anne."

"Yes. But she's cloaked at the moment."

"Yes, of course. I'll pay my respects to her when she is not busy professionally."

Harshaw introduced him to the other three� and Jill startled him by addressing him with the correct honorific for a water brother, pronouncing it about three octaves higher than any adult Martian would talk but with sore-throat purity of accent. It was one of the scant dozen Martian words she could speak out of the hundred-odd that she was beginning to understand - but this one she had down pat because it was used to her and by her many times each day.

Dr. Mahmoud's eyes widened slightly - perhaps these people would turn out not to be mere uncircumcised barbarians after all� and his young friend did have strong intuitions. Instantly he offered Jill the correct honorific in response and bowed over her hand.

Jill saw that Mike was obviously delighted; she managed, slurringly but passably, to croak the shortest of the nine forms by which a water brother may return the response - although she did not grok it fully and would not have considered suggesting (in English) the nearest human biological equivalent� certainly not to a man she had just met!

However, Mahmoud, who did understand it, took it in its symbolic meaning rather than its (humanly impossible) literal meaning, and spoke rightly in response. But Jill had passed the limit of her linguistic ability; she did not understand his answer at all and could not reply, even in pedestrian English.

But she got a sudden inspiration. At intervals around the huge table were placed the age-old furniture of human palavers-water pitchers each with its clump of glasses. She stretched and got a pitcher and a tumbler, filled the latter.

She looked Mahmoud in the eye, said earnestly, "Water. Our nest is yours." She touched it to her lips and handed it to Mahmoud.

He answered her in Martian, saw that she did not understand him and translated, "Who shares water shares all." He took a sip and started to hand the glass back to Jill - checked himself, looked at Harshaw and offered him the glass.

Jubal said, "I can't speak Martian, son - but thanks for water. May you never be thirsty." He took a sip, then drank about a third of it. "Ak!" He passed the glass to Ben.

Caxton looked at Mahmoud and said very soberly, "Grow closer. With the water of life we grow closer." He wet his lips with it and passed it to Dorcas.

In spite of the precedents already set, Dorcas hesitated. "Dr. Mahmoud? You do know how serious this is to Mike?"

"I do, Miss."

"Well�it's just as serious to us. You understand? You grok?"

"I grok its fullness� or I would have refused to drink."

"All right. May you always drink deep. May our eggs share a nest." Tears started down her cheeks: she drank and passed the glass hastily to Miriam.

Miriam whispered, "Pull yourself together, kid," then spoke to Mike, "With water we welcome our brother,"-then added to Mahmoud, "Nest, water, life." She drank. "Our brother." She offered him the glass.

Mahmoud finished what was left in it and spoke, neither in Martian nor English, but Arabic: "'And if ye mingle your affairs with theirs, then they are your brothers.'"

"Amen," Jubal agreed.

Dr. Mahmoud looked quickly at him, decided not to enquire just then whether Harshaw had understood him, or was simply being polite; this was neither the time nor the place to say anything which might lead to unbottling his own troubles, his own doubts. Nevertheless he felt warmed in his soul-as always-by water ritual� even though it smelled of heresy.

His thoughts were cut short by the assistant chief of protocol bustling up to them. "You're Dr. Mahmoud. You belong over on the far side of the table, Doctor. Follow me."

Mahmoud looked at him, then looked at Mike and smiled. "No, I belong here, with my friends. Dorcas, may I pull a chair in here and sit between you and Valentine Michael?"

"Certainly, Doctor. Here, I'll scrunch over."

The a.c. of p. was almost tapping his foot in impatience. "Dr. Mahmoud, please! The chart places you over on the other side of the room! The Secretary General will be here any moment - and the place is still simply swarming with reporters and goodness knows who else who doesn't belong here� and I don't know what I'm going to do!"

"Then go do it someplace else, bub," Jubal suggested.

"What? Who are you? Are you on the list?" He worriedly consulted the seating chart he carried.

"Who are you?" Jubal answered. "The head waiter? I'm Jubal Harshaw. If my name is not on that list, you can tear it up and start over. And look, buster, if the Man from Mars wants his friend Dr. Mahmoud to sit by him, that settles it."

"But he can't sit here! Seats at the main conference table are reserved for High Ministers, Chiefs of Delegations, High Court Justices, and equal ranks - and I don't know how I can squeeze them all in if any more show up - and the Man from Mars, of course."

"'Of course,'" Jubal agreed dryly.

"And of course Dr. Mahmoud has to be near the Secretary General - just back of him, so that he'll be ready to interpret as needed. I must say you're not being helpful."

"I'll help." Jubal plucked the paper out of the official's hand, sat down at the table and studied it. "Mmm� lemme see now. The Man from Mars will sit directly opposite the Secretary General, just about where he happens to be sitting. Then-" Jubal got out a heavy soft pencil and attacked the seating chart. "-this entire half of the main table, from here clear over to here, belongs to the Man from Mars." Jubal scratched two big black cross marks to show the limits and joined them with a thick black arc, then began scratching out names assigned to seats on that side of the table. "That takes care of half of your work� because I'll seat anybody who sits on our side of the table."

The protocol officer was too shocked to talk. His mouth worked but no meaningful noises came out. Jubal looked at him mildly. "Something the matter? Oh - I forgot to make it official." He scrawled under his amendments: "J. Harshaw for V At Smith." "Now trot back to your top sergeant, son, and show him that. Tell him to check his rule book on official visits from heads of friendly planets."

The man looked at it, opened his mouth - then left very rapidly without stopping to close it. But he was back very quickly on the heels of another, older man. The newcomer said in a firm, no-nonsense manner, "Dr. Harshaw, I'm LaRue, Chief of Protocol. Do you actually need half the main table? I understood that your delegation was quite small."

"That's beside the point."

LaRue smiled briefly. "I'm afraid it's not beside the point to me, sir. I'm at my wit's end for space. Almost every official of first rank in the Federation has elected to be present today. If you are expecting more people - though I do wish you had notified me - I'll have a table placed behind these two seats reserved for Mr. Smith and yourself."

"No."

"I'm afraid that's the way it must be. I'm sorry."

"So am I - for you. Because if half the main table is not reserved for the Mars delegation, we are leaving right now. Just tell the Secretary General that you busted up his conference by being rude to the Man from Mars."

"Surely you don't mean that?"

"Didn't you get my message?"

"Uh� well, I took it as a jest. A rather clever one, I admit."

"Son, I can't afford to joke at these prices. Smith is either top man from another planet paying an official visit to the top man of this planet - in which case he is entitled to all the side boys and dancing girls you can dig up - or he is just a simple tourist and gets no official courtesies of any sort. You can't have it both ways. But I suggest that you look around you, count the 'officials of first rank' as you called them, and make a quick guess as to whether they would have bothered to show up if, in their minds, Smith is just a tourist."

LaRue said slowly, "There's no precedent."

Jubal snorted. "I saw the Chief of Delegation from the Lunar Republic come in a moment ago - go tell him there's no precedent. Then duck! - I hear he's got a quick temper." He sighed. "But, son, I'm an old man and I had a short night and it's none of my business to teach you your job. Just tell Mr. Douglas that we'll see him another day� when he's ready to receive us properly. Come on, Mike." He started to roust himself painfully out of his chair.

LaRue said hastily, "No, no, Dr. Harshaw! We'll clear this side of the table. I'll- Well, I'll do something. It's yours."

"That's better." But Harshaw remained poised to get up. "But where's the flag of Mars? And how about honors?"

"I'm afraid I don't understand you."

"Never seen a day when I had so much trouble with plain English. Look- See that Federation Banner back of where the Secretary is going to sit? Where's the one like it over here, for Mars?"

LaRue blinked. "I must admit you've taken me by surprise. I didn't know the Martians used flags."

"They don't. But you couldn't possibly whop up what they use for high state occasions." (And neither could I, boy, but that's beside the point.) "So we'll let you off easy and take an attempt for the deed. Piece of paper, Miriam - now, like this." Harshaw drew a rectangle, sketched in it the traditional human symbol for Mars, a circle with an arrow leading out from it to the upper right "Make the field in white and the sigil of Mars in red - should be sewed in bunting of course, but with a clean sheet and a bucket of paint any Boy Scout could improvise one in ten minutes. Were you a Scout?"

"Uh, some time ago."

"Good. Then you know the Scout's motto. Now about honors - maybe you're caught unprepared there, too, eh? You expect to play 'Hail to Sovereign Peace' as the Secretary comes in?"

"Oh, we must. It's obligatory."

"Then you'll want to follow it with the anthem for Mars."

"I don't see how I can. Even if there were one� we don't have it. Dr. Harshaw, be reasonable!"

"Look, son, I am being reasonable. We came here for a quiet, small, informal meeting - strictly business. We find you've turned it into a circus. Well, if you're going to have a circus, you've got to have elephants and there's no two ways about it. Now we realize you can't play Martian music, any more than a boy with a tin whistle can play a symphony. But you can play a symphony - 'The Ten Planets Symphony.' Grok it? I mean, 'Do you catch on?' Have the tape cut in at the beginning of the Mars movement; play that� or enough bars to let the theme be recognized."

LaRue looked thoughtful. "Yes, I suppose we could - but, Dr. Harshaw, I promised you half the table� but I don't see how I can promise sovereign honors - the flag and the music - even on this improvised, merely symbolic scale. I- I don't think I have the authority."

"Nor the guts," Harshaw said bitterly. "Well, we didn't want a circus - so tell Mr. Douglas that we'll be back when he's not so busy� and not so many visitors. Been nice chatting with you, son. Be sure to stop by the Secretary's office and say hello when we come back - if you're still here." He again went through the slow, apparently painful act of being a man too old and feeble to get out of a chair easily.

LaRue said, "Dr. Harshaw, please don't leave! Uh� the Secretary won't come in until I send word that we are ready for him - so let me see what I can do. Yes?"

Harshaw relaxed with a grunt. "Suit yourself. But one more thing, while you're here. I heard a ruckus at the main door a moment ago - what I could catch, one of the crew members of the Champion wanted to come in. They're all friends of Smith, so let 'em in. We'll accommodate 'em. Help to fill up this side of the table." Harshaw sighed and rubbed a kidney.

"Very well, sir," LaRue agreed stiffly and left.

Miriam said out of the corner of her mouth: "Boss - did you sprain your back doing hand stands night before last?"

"Quiet, girl, or I'll paddle you." With grim satisfaction Jubal surveyed the room, which was continuing to fill with high officials. He had told Douglas that he wanted a "small, informal" talk - no formality while knowing with utter certainty that the mere announcement of such talks would fetch all the powerful and power-hungry as surely as light attracts moths. And now (he felt sure) Mike was about to be treated as a sovereign by each and every one of those nabobs - with the whole world watching. Just let 'em try to roust the boy around after this!

Sanforth was still trying mightily to shoo out the remaining newsmen, and the unfortunate assistant chief of protocol, deserted by his boss, was jittering like a nervous baby-sitter in his attempt to play musical chairs with too few chairs and too many notables, They continued to come in and Jubal concluded that Douglas had never intended to convene this public meeting earlier than eleven o'clock, and that everyone else had been so informed - the earlier hour given Jubal was to permit the private preconference that Douglas had demanded and that Jubal had refused. Well, the delay suited Jubal's plans.

The leader of the Eastern Coalition came in. Since Mr. King was not, by his own choice, the nominal Chief of Delegation for his nation, his status under strict protocol was merely that of Assemblyman - but Jubal was not even mildly surprised to see the harried assistant chief of protocol drop what he was doing and rush to seat Douglas' chief political enemy at the main table and near the seat reserved for the Secretary General; it simply reinforced Jubal's opinion that Douglas was no fool.

Dr. Nelson, surgeon of the Champion, and Captain van Tromp, her skipper, came in together, and were greeted with delight by Mike. Jubal was pleased, too, as it gave the boy something to do, under the cameras, instead of just sitting still like a dummy. Jubal made use of the disturbance to rearrange the seating since there was now no longer any need to surround the Man from Mars with a bodyguard. He placed Mike precisely opposite the Secretary General's chair and himself took the chair on Mike's left - not only to be close to him as his counsel but to be where he could actually touch Mike inconspicuously. Since Mike had only the foggiest notions of human customary manners, Jubal had arranged with him signals as imperceptible as those used by a rider in putting a high-schooled horse through dressage maneuvers-"stand up," "sit down," "bow," "shake hands"-with the difference that Mike was not a horse and his training had required only five minutes to achieve utterly dependable perfection.

Mahmoud broke away from the reunion of shipmates, came around, and spoke to Jubal privately. "Doctor, I must explain that the Skipper and the Surgeon are also water brothers of our brother - and Michael Valentine wanted to confirm it at once by again using the ritual, all of us. I told him to wait. Do you approve?"

"Eh? Yes. Yes, certainly. Not in this mob." Jubal worried it for a moment. Damn it, how many water brothers did Mike have? How long was this daisy chain? "Maybe you three can come with us when we leave? And have a bite and a talk in private."

"I shall be honored. And I feel sure the other two will come also, if possible."

"Good. Dr. Mahmoud, do you know of any other brothers of our young brother who are likely to show up?"

"No. Not from the company of the Champion, at least; there are no more." Mahmoud hesitated, then decided not to ask the obvious complementary question, as it would hint at how disconcerted he had been - at first - to discover the extent of his own conjugational commitments. "I'll tell Sven and the Old Man." He went back to them.

Harshaw saw the Papal Nuncio come in, saw him seated at the main table, and smiled inwardly - if that long-eared debit, LaRue, had any lingering doubts about the official nature of this meeting, he would do well to forget them!

A man came up behind Harshaw, tapped him on the shoulder. "Is this where the Man from Mars hangs out?"

"Yes," agreed Jubal.

"Which one is he? I'm Tom Boone - Senator Boone, that is - and I've got a message for him from Supreme Bishop Digby."

Jubal suppressed his personal feelings and let his cortex go into emergency high speed. "I'm Jubal Harshaw, Senator-" He signalled Mike to stand up and offer to shake hands. "-and this is Mr. Smith. Mike, this is Senator Boone."

"How do you do, Senator Boone," Mike said in perfect dancing school form. He looked at Boone with interest. He had already had it straightened out for him that "Senator" did not mean "Old One" as the words seemed to shape; nevertheless he was interested in seeing just what a "Senator" was. He decided that he did not yet grok it.

"Pretty well, thank you, Mr. Smith. But I won't take up your time; they seem to be about to get this shindig started. Mr. Smith, Supreme Bishop Digby sent me to give you a personal invite to attend services at the Archangel Foster Tabernacle of the New Revelation."

"Beg pardon?"

Jubal moved in on it. "Senator, as you know, many things here - everything - is new to the Man from Mars. But it so happens that Mr. Smith has already seen one of your church services by stereovision-"

"Not the same thing."

"I know. But he expressed great interest in it and asked many questions about it - many of which I could not answer."

Boone looked keenly at him. "You're not one of the faithful?"

"I must admit that I am not."

"Come along yourself. Always hope for a sinner."

"Thank you, I will." (You're right, I will, friend! - for I certainly won't let Mike go into your trap alone!)

"Next Sunday then - I'll tell Bishop Digby."

"Next Sunday if possible," Jubal corrected. "We might be in jail by then."

Boone grinned. "There's always that, ain't th'r? But send word around to me or the Supreme Bishop and you won't stay in long." He looked around the crowded room. "Seem to be kind o' short on chairs in here. Not much chance for a plain senator with all those muckamucks elbowing each other."

"Perhaps you would honor us by joining us, Senator," Jubal answered smoothly, "at this table?"

"Eh? Why, thank you, sir! Don't mind if I do - ringside seat."

"That is," Harshaw added, "if you don't mind the political implications of being seen seated with the official Mars delegation. We aren't trying to crowd you into an embarrassing situation."

Boone barely hesitated. "Not at all! Who cares what people think? Matter of fact, between you and I, the Bishop is very, very interested in this young man."

"Fine. There's a vacant chair there by Captain van Tromp - that man there� but probably you know him."

"Van Tromp? Sure, sure, old friends, know him well - met him at the reception." Senator Boone nodded at Smith, swaggered down and seated himself.

Most of those present were seated now and fewer were getting past the guards at the doors. Jubal watched one argument over seating and the longer he watched it the more it made him fidget. At last he felt that he simply could not stand it; he could not sit still and watch this indecency go on. So he leaned over and spoke very privately with Mike, made sure that, if Mike did not understand why, at least he understood what Jubal wanted him to do.

Mike listened. "Jubal, I will do."

"Thanks, son." Jubal got up and approached a group of three: the assistant chief of protocol, the Chief of the Uruguayan Delegation, and a third man who seemed angry but baffled. The Uruguayan was saying forcefully: "-seat him, then you must find seats for any and all other local chiefs of state - eighty or more. You've admitted that you can't do that. This is Federation soil we stand on� and no chief of state has precedence over any other chief of state. If any exceptions are made-"

Jubal interrupted by addressing the third man, "Sir-" He waited just long enough to gain his attention, plunged on. "-the Man from Mars has instructed me to ask you to do him the great honor of sitting with him if your presence is not required elsewhere."

The man looked startled, then smiled broadly. "Why, yes, that would be satisfactory."

The other two, both the palace official and the Uruguayan dignitary, started to object. Jubal turned his back on them. "Let's hurry, sir - I think we have very little time." He had seen two men coming in with what appeared to be a stand for a Christmas tree and a bloody sheet - but what was almost certainly the "Martian Flag." As they hurried to where he was, Mike got up and was standing, waiting for them.

Jubal said, "Sir, permit me to present Valentine Michael Smith. Michael - the President of the United States!"

Mike bowed very low.

There was barely time to seat him on Mike's right, as the improvised flag was even then being set up behind them. Music started to play, everyone stood, and a voice proclaimed:

"The Secretary General!"