A Stranger in a Strange Land

XXIX

AS THE DOOR OF THEIR SUITE closed itself behind Patricia Paiwonski, Jill said, "What now, Mike?"

"We're leaving. Jill, you've read some abnormal psychology."

"Yes, of course. In training. Not as much as you have, I know."

"Do you know the symbolism of tattooing? And snakes?"

"Of course. I knew that about Patty as soon as I met her. I had been hoping that you would find a way."

"I couldn't, until we were water brothers. Sex is necessary, sex is a helpful goodness - but only if it is sharing and growing closer. I grok that if I did it without growing closer - well, I'm not sure."

"I grok that you would learn that you couldn't, Mike. That is one of the reasons - one of the many reasons - I love you."

He looked worried. "I still don't grok 'love.' Jill, I don't grok 'people.' Not even you. But I didn't want to send Pat away."

"Stop her. Keep her with us."

("Waiting is, Jill.")

("I know.")

He added aloud, "Besides, I doubt if I could give her all she needs. She wants to give herself all the time, to everybody. Even her Happiness meetings and her snakes and the marks aren't enough for Pat. She wants to offer herself on an altar to everybody in the world, always - and make them happy. This New Revelation� I grok that it is a lot of other things to other people. But that is what it is to Pat."

"Yes, Mike. Dear Mike."

"Time to leave. Pick the dress you want to wear and get your purse. I'll dispose of the rest of the trash."

Jill thought somewhat sadly that she would like, sometimes, to take along just one or two things. But Mike always moved on with just the clothes on his back - and seemed to grok that she preferred it that way, too. "I'll wear that pretty blue one."

It floated out to her, poised itself over her, wriggled down onto her as she held up her hands; the zipper closed. Shoes to suit it walked toward her, waited while she stepped into them. "I'm ready, Mike."

Mike had caught the wistful flavor of her thought, but not the concept; it was too alien to Martian ideas. "Jill? Do you want to stop and get married?"

She thought about it. "We couldn't, today, Mike. It's Sunday. We couldn't get a license."

"Tomorrow, then. I will remember. I grok that you would like it."

She thought about it. "No, Mike."

"Why not, Jill?"

"Two reasons. One, we couldn't be any closer through it, because we already share water. That's logic, both in English and in Martian. Yes?"

"Yes."

"And two, a reason valid just in English. I wouldn't have Dorcas and Anne and Miriam - and Patty - think that I was trying to crowd them out and one of them might think so."

"No, Jill, none of them would think so."

"Well, I won't chance it, because I don't need it. Because you married me in a hospital room ages and ages ago. Just because you were the way you are. Before I even guessed it." She hesitated. "But there is something you might do for me."

"What, Jill?"

"Well, you might call me pet names occasionally! The way I do you."

"Yes, Jill. What pet names?"

"Oh!" She kissed him quickly. "Mike, you're the sweetest, most lovable man I've ever met - and the most infuriating creature on two planets! Don't bother with pet names. Just call me 'little brother' occasionally�it makes me go all quivery inside."

"Yes, Little Brother."

"Oh, my! Now get decent fast and let's get out of here - before I take you back to bed. Come on. Meet me at the desk; I'll be paying the bill." She left very suddenly.

They went to the town's station flat and caught the first Greyhound going anywhere. A week or two later they stopped at home, shared water for a couple of days, left again without saying good-by - or, rather, Mike did not; saying good-by was one human custom Mike stubbornly resisted and never used with his own. He used it formally with strangers under circumstances in which Jill required him to.

Shortly they were in Las Vegas, stopping in an unfashionable hotel near but not on the Strip. Mike tried all the games in all the casinos while Jill filled in the time as a show girl-gambling bored her. Since she couldn't sing or dance and had no act, standing or parading slowly in a tall improbable hat, a smile, and a scrap of tinsel was the job best suited to her in the Babylon of the West. She preferred to work if Mike was busy and, somehow, Mike could always get her the job she picked out. Since the casinos never closed, Mike was busy almost all their time in Las Vegas.

Mike was careful not to win too much in any one casino, keeping to limits Jill set for him. After he had milked each one for a few thousand he carefully put it all back, never letting himself be the big-money player at any game, whether winning or losing. Then he took a job as a croupier, studying people, trying to grok why they gambled. He grokked unclearly a drive in many of the gamblers that seemed to be intensely sexual in nature - but he seemed to grok wrongness in this. He kept the job quite a while, letting always the little ball roll without interference.

Jill was amused to discover that the customers in the palatial theater restaurant where she worked were just marks� marks with more money but still marks. She discovered something about herself, too; she enjoyed displaying herself, as long as she was safe from hands that she did not want to grab her. With her steadily increasing Martian honesty she examined this newly uncovered facet in herself. In the past, while she had known that she enjoyed being admired, she had sincerely believed that she wanted it only from a select few and usually only from one - she had been irked at the discovery, now long past, that the sight of her physical being really didn't mean anything to Mike even though he had been and remained as aggressively and tenderly devoted to her physically as a woman could dream of - if he wasn't preoccupied.

And he was even generous about that, she reminded herself. If she wished, he would always let her call him out of his deepest withdrawal trances, shift gears without complaint and be smiling and eager and loving.

Nevertheless, there it was - one of his strangenesses, like his inability to laugh. Jill decided, after her initiation as a show girl, that she enjoyed being visually admired because that was the one thing Mike did not give her.

But her own perfecting self-honesty and steadily growing empathy did not allow that theory to stand. The male half of the audience always had that to-be-expected high percentage who were too old, too fat, too bald, and in general too far gone along the sad road of entropy to be likely to be attractive to a female of Jill's youth, beauty, and fastidiousness - she had always been scornful of "lecherous old wolves"-although not of old men per se, she reminded herself in her own defense; Jubal could look at her, even use crude language in deliberate indecencies, and not give her the slightest feeling that he was anxious to get her alone and grope her. She was so serenely sure of Jubal's love for her and its truly spiritual nature that she told herself that she could easily share a bed with him, go right to sleep - and be sure that be would also, with only the goodnight peck she always gave him.

But now she found that these unattractive males did not set her teeth on edge. When she felt their admiring stares or even their outright lust - and she found that she did feel it, could even identify the source - she did not resent it; it warmed her and made her feel smugly pleased.

"Exhibitionism" had been to her simply a word used in abnormal psychology - a neurotic weakness she had held in contempt. Now, in digging out her own and looking at it, she decided that either this form of narcissism was normal, or she was abnormal and had not known it. But she didn't feel abnormal; she felt healthy and happy - healthier than she had ever been. She had been always of better than average health-nurses need to be - but she hadn't had a sniffle nor even an upset stomach in she couldn't remember when� why, she thought wonderingly, not even cramps.

Okay, she was healthy - and if a healthy woman liked to be looked at - and not as a side of beef! - then it follows as the night from day that healthy men should like to look at them, else there was just no darn sense to it! At which point she finally understood, intellectually, Duke and his pictures� and begged his pardon in her mind.

She discussed it with Mike, tried to explain her changed viewpoint - not easy, since Mike could not understand why Jill had ever minded being looked at, at any time, by anyone. Not wishing to be touched he understood; Mike avoided shaking hands if he could do so without offense, he wanted to touch and be touched only by water brothers (Jill wasn't sure just how far this included male water brothers in Mike's mind; she had explained homosexuality to him, after he had read about it and failed to grok it - and had given him practical rules for avoiding even the appearance thereof and how to keep such passes from being made at him, since she assumed correctly that Mike, pretty as he was, would attract such passes. He had followed her advice and had set about making his face more masculine, instead of the androgynous beauty he had first had. Nevertheless Jill was not sure that Mike would refuse such an invitation from, say, Duke - but fortunately Mike's male water brothers were all decidedly masculine men, just as his others were very female women. Jill hoped that it would stay that way; she suspected that Mike would grok a "wrongness" in the poor in-betweeners anyhow - they would never be offered water.)

Nor could Mike understand why it now pleased her to be stared at. The only time when their two attitudes had been even roughly similar had been as they left the carnival, when Jill had discovered that she had become indifferent to stares - willing to do their act "stark naked," as she had told Patty, if it would help.

Jill saw that her present self-knowledge had been nascent at that point; she had never been truly indifferent to masculine stares. Under the unique necessities of adjusting to life with the Man from Mars she had been forced to shuck off part of her artificial, training-imposed persona, that degree of lady-like prissiness a nurse can retain despite the rigors of an unusually no-nonsense profession. But Jill hadn't known that she had any prissiness to lose until she lost it.

Of course, Jill was even more of a "lady" than ever - but she preferred to think of herself as a "gent." But she was no longer able to conceal from her conscious mind (nor had any wish to) that there was something inside her as happily shameless as a tabby in heat going into her belly dance for the enticement of the neighborhood toms.

She tried to explain all this to Mike, giving him her theory of the complementary and functional nature of narcissist display and voyeurism, with herself and Duke as clinical examples. "The truth is, Mike, that I find I get a real kick out of having all those men stare at me� lots of men and almost any man. So now I grok why Duke likes to have lots of pictures of women, the sexier the better. Same thing, only in reverse. It doesn't mean that I want to go to bed with them, any more than Duke wants to go to bed with a photograph - shucks, dearest, I don't even want to say hello to them. But when they look at me and tell me - think at me - that I'm desirable, it gives me a tingle, a warm pleasant feeling right in my middle." She frowned slightly. "You know, I think I ought to get a real naughty picture taken of me and send it to Duke. Just to tell him that I'm sorry I snooted him and failed to grok what I thought was a weakness in him, If it's a weakness, I've got it, too - but girl style. If it is a weakness - but I grok it isn't."

"All right. We'll find a photographer in the morning."

She shook her head. "I'll simply apologize to Duke the next time we go home, I wouldn't actually send such a picture to Duke. He has never made a pass at me - and I don't want him getting ideas."

"Jill, you would not want Duke?"

She heard an echo of "water brother" in his mind. "Hmm truthfully I've never really thought about it. I guess I've been 'being faithful' to you - not that it has been an effort. But I grok you speak rightly; I wouldn't turn Duke down - and I would enjoy it, too. What do you think of that darling?"

"I grok a goodness," Mike said seriously.

"Hmm� my gallant Martian, there are times when we human females appreciate at least a semblance of jealousy - but I don't think there is the slightest chance that you will ever grok 'jealousy.' Darling, what would you grok if one of those marks - those men in the audience, not a water brother - made a pass at me?"

Mike barely smiled. "I grok he would be missing."

"Mmm� I grok he might be, too. But, Mike - listen to me carefully, dear. You promised me that you wouldn't do anything of that sort except in utter emergency. So don't be hasty. If you hear me scream and shout, and reach into my mind and know that I'm in real trouble, that's another matter. But I was coping with wolves when you were still on Mars. Nine times out often, if a girl gets raped, it's at least partly her own fault. That tenth time - well, all right. Give him your best heave-ho to the bottomless pit. But you aren't going to find it necessary."

"All right, I will remember. I wish you were sending that naughty picture to Duke."

"What, dear? I will if you want me to. It's just that if I ever make a pass at Duke - and I might, now that you've put the idea into my little pointy head - I'd rather grab his shoulders and look him in the eye and say, 'Duke, how about it? - I'm willing.' I don't want to do it by sending him a naughty picture through the mail, like those nasty women used to send to you. But if you want me to, okay. Uh, I needn't make it too naughty - I could make it obviously a show girl's professional picture and tell him what I'm doing and ask him if he has room for it in his scrap book. He might not take it as a pass."

Mike frowned. "I spoke incompletely. If you wish to send Duke a naughty picture, do so. If you do not wish, then do not. But I had hoped to see the naughty picture taken. Jill, what is a 'naughty' picture?"

Mike was baffled by the whole idea - Jill's reversal from an attitude that he had never understood but had learned to accept into exactly the opposite attitude of pleasure - sexual pleasure, he understood - at being stared at� plus a third and long-standing bafflement at Duke's "art" collection - it certainly was not art. But the pale, wan Martian thing which parallels tumultuous human sexuality gave him no foundation for grokking either narcissism or voyeurism, modesty or display.

He added, '"Naughty' means a wrongness, usually a small wrongness, but I grokked that you did not mean even a small wrongness, but a goodness." a naughty picture could be either one, I guess - depending on who it's for - now that I'm over some prejudice. But - Mike, I'll have to show you; I can't tell you. But first close those slats, will you?"

The Venetian blinds flipped themselves shut. "All right," she said. "Now this pose would be just a little bit naughty - any of the show girls would use it as a professional pic� and this one is just a little bit more so, some of the girls would use it. But this one is unmistakably naughty and this one is quite naughty� and this one is so extremely naughty that I wouldn't pose for it with my face wrapped in a towel - unless you wanted it."

"But if your face was covered, why would I want it?"

"Ask Duke. That's all I can say."

He continued to look puzzled. "I grok not wrongness, I grok not goodness. I grok-" He used a Martian word indicating a null state of all emotions.

But he was interested because he was so baffled; they went on discussing it, in Martian as much as possible because of its extremely fine discriminations for emotions and values - and in English, too, because Martian. rich as it is, simply couldn't cope with the concepts.

Mike showed up at a ringside table that night, Jill having coached him in how to bribe the matre d'htel to give him such a spot; he was determined to pursue this mystery. Jill was not averse. She came strutting out in the first production number, her smile for everyone but a quick wink for Mike as she turned and her eyes passed across his. She discovered that, with Mike present, the warm, pleased sensation she had been enjoying nightly was greatly amplified - she suspected that, if the lights were out, she would glow in the dark.

When the parade stopped and the girls formed a tableau, Mike was no more than ten feet from her - she had been promoted her first week to a front position. The director had looked her over on her fourth day with the show and had said, "I don't know what it is, kid. We've got girls around town begging for just any job with twice the shape you've got - but when the lights hit you, you've got what the customers look at. Okay, I'm moving you up where they can see better. The standard raise� and I still don't know why."

She posed and talked with Mike in her mind. ("Feel anything?")

("I grok but not in fullness.')

("Look where I am looking, my brother. The small one. He quivers. He thirsts for me.')

("I grok his thirst ")

("Can you see him?") Jill stared straight into the customer's eyes and gave him a warm smile� not alone to increase his interest in her but also to let Mike use her eyes, if possible. As her grokking of Martian thought had increased and as they had grown steadily closer in other ways they had begun to be able to use this common Martian convenience. Not fully as yet, but with increasing ease - Jill had no control over it; Mike could see through her eyes simply by calling to her, she could see through his only if he gave it his attention.

("We grok him together," Mike agreed. ("Great thirst for my little brother.")

("!!!!")

("Yes. Beautiful agony.")

A music cue told Jill to break her pose and resume her slow strut. She did so, moving with proud sensuousness and feeling lust boil up in herself in response to emotions she was getting both from Mike and from the stranger. The routine caused her to walk away from Mike and almost toward the rutty little stranger, approaching him during her first few steps. She continued to lock eyes with him.

At which point something happened which was totally unexpected to her because Mike had never explained that it was possible. She had been letting herself receive as much as possible of the stranger's emotions, intentionally teasing him with eyes and body, and relaying what she felt from him back to Mike - when suddenly the circuit was completed and she was looking at herself, seeing herself through strange eyes, much more lavish than she considered herself to be - and feeling the primitive need with which that stranger saw her.

Blindly she stumbled and would have fallen flat had not Mike instantly sensed her hazard, caught her, lifted her, straightened her up, and steadied her until she could walk unassisted, second-sight gone.

The parade of beauties continued on through exit. Once off stage the girl behind her said, "What the devil happened to you, Jill?"

"Caught my heel."

"Happens. But that was the wildest recovery I ever saw. For a second there you looked like a puppet on strings."

(-and so I was, dear, and so I was! But we won't go into that.) "I'm going to ask the stage manager to check that spot. I think there's a loose board. A gal could break her leg."

For the rest of the show whenever she was on stage Mike gave her quick glimpses of how she looked to various men while always making sure that she was not again taken by surprise. Jill was amazed to discover how varied were their images of her: one noticed only her legs, another seemed fascinated by the undulations of her torso, a third saw only her proud bosom. Then Mike, warning her first, let her look at other girls in the tableaux. She was relieved to find that Mike saw them as she saw them - but sharper.

But she was amazed to find that her own excitement did not diminish as she looked at, second hand, the girls around her; it increased.

Mike left promptly at the finale, ducking out ahead of the crowd as she had warned him to do, She did not expect to see him again that night since he had asked for relief from his job as croupier only long enough to see his wife in her show. But when she dressed and returned to their hotel room, she felt him inside before she reached the room.

The door opened for her, she stepped inside, it closed behind her. "Hello, darling!" she called out. "How nice you came home!"

He smiled gently. "I now grok naughty pictures." Her clothes vanished. "Make naughty pictures."

"Huh? Yes, dear, of course." She ran through much the same poses she had earlier in the day. With each one, as soon as she was in it, Mike let her use his eyes to see herself. She looked at herself and felt his emotions and felt her own swell in response in a closed and mutually amplified re-echoing. At last she placed herself in a pose as randily carefree as her imagination could devise.

"Naughty pictures are a great goodness," Mike said gravely.

"Yes! And now I grok them, too! What are you waiting for?"

They quit their jobs and for the next several days saw as many of the revues as possible, during which period Jill made still another discovery: she "grokked naughty pictures" only through a man's eyes. If Mike watched, she caught and shared his mood, from quiet sensuous pleasure in a beautiful woman to fully aroused excitement at times - but if Mike's attention was elsewhere, the model, dancer, or peeler was just another woman to Jill, possibly pleasant to look at but in no wise exciting. She was likely to get bored and wish mildly that Mike would take her home. But only mildly for she was now nearly as patient as he was.

She pondered this new fact from all sides and decided that she preferred not to be excited by women other than through his eyes. One man gave her all the problems she could handle and more - to have discovered in herself unsuspected latent lesbian tendencies would have been entirely too much.

But it certainly was a lot of fun - "a great goodness" - to see those girls through his eyes as he had now learned to see them - and a still greater, ecstatic goodness to know that, at last, he looked at her herself in the same way� only more so.

They stopped in Palo Alto long enough for Mike to try (and fail to) swallow all the Hoover Library in mammoth gulps. The task was mechanically impossible; the scanners could not spin that fast, nor could Mike turn pages of bound books fast enough to read them all. He gave up and admitted that he was taking in raw data much faster than he could grok it, even by spending all hours the library was closed in solitary contemplation. With relief Jill moved them to San Francisco and he embarked on a more systematic search.

She came back to their flat one day to find him sitting, not in trance but doing nothing, and surrounded by books - many books: The Talmud, the Kama Sutra, Bibles in various versions, the Book of the Dead, the Book of Mormon, Patty's precious copy of the New Revelation, Apocrypha of various sorts, the Koran, the unabridged Golden Bough, The Way, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the sacred writings of a dozen other religions major and minor - even such deviant oddities as Crowley's Book of the Law.

"Trouble, dear?"

"Jill, I don't grok." He waved his hand at the books. ("Waiting, Michael Waiting for fullness is- ")

"I don't think waiting will ever fill it. Oh, I know what's wrong; I'm not really a man, I'm a Martian - a Martian in a body of the wrong shape."

"You're plenty of man for me, dear - and I love the way your body is shaped."

"Oh, you grok what I'm talking about. I don't grok people. I don't understand this multiplicity of religions. Now among my people-"

"Your people, Mike?"

"Sorry. I should have said that, among the Martians, there is only one religion - and that one is not a faith, it's a certainty. You grok it. 'Thou art God!"

"Yes," she agreed. "I do grok� in Martian. But you know, dearest, that it doesn't say the same thing in English� or any other human speech. I don't know why."

"Mmmm� on Mars, when we needed to know anything - anything at all - we could consult the Old Ones and the answer was never wrong. Jill, is it possible that we humans don't have any 'Old Ones?' No souls, that has to mean. When we discorporate - die! - do we die dead? die all over and nothing left? Do we live in ignorance because it doesn't matter? Because we are gone and not a rack behind in a time so short that a Martian would use it for one long contemplation? Tell me, Jill. You're human."

She smiled with sober serenity. "You yourself have told me. You have taught me to know eternity and you can't take it away from me, ever. You can't die, Mike - you can only discorporate." She gestured down at herself with both hands. "This body that you have taught me to see through your eyes� and that you have loved so well, someday it will be gone. But I shall not be gone� I am that I am! Thou art God and I am God and we are God, eternally. I am not sure where I will be, or whether I will remember that I was once Jill Boardman who was happy trotting bedpans and equally happy strutting her stuff in her buff under bright lights. I have liked this body-"

With a most uncustomary gesture of impatience Mike threw away her clothes.

"Thank you, dear," she said quietly, not stirring from where she was seated. "It has been a nice body to me - and to you - to both of us who thought of it. But I don't expect to miss it when I am through with it. I hope that you will eat it when I discorporate."

"Oh, I'll eat you, all right - unless I discorporate first."

"I don't suppose that you will. With your much greater control over your sweet body I suspect that you can live several centuries at least. If you wish it. Unless you choose to discorporate sooner."

"I might. But not now. Jill, I've tried and tried. How many churches have we attended?"

"All the sorts there are in San Francisco, I think - except, possibly, for little, secret ones that don't list their addresses. I don't recall how many times we have been to seekers' services."

"That's just to comfort Pat - I'd never go again if you weren't sure that she needs to know that we haven't given up."

"She does need to. And we can't lie about it - you don't know how and I can't, not to Patty. Nor any brother."

"Actually," he admitted, "the Fosterites do have quite a bit on the ball. All twisted, of course. They are clumsy, groping - the way I was as a carney. And they'll never correct their mistakes, because this thing-" He caused Patty's book to lift. "-is mostly crap!"

"Yes. But Patty doesn't see those parts of it. She is wrapped in her own innocence. She is God and behaves accordingly� only she doesn't know who She is."

"Uh huh," he agreed. "That's our Pat. She believes it only when I tell her - with proper emphasis. But, Jill, there are only three places to look. Science - and I was taught more about how the physical universe is put together while I was still in the nest than human scientists can yet handle. So much that I can't even talk to them� even about as elementary a gimmick as levitation. I'm not disparaging human scientists� what they do and how they go about it is just as it should be; I grok that fully. But what they are after is not what I am looking for - you don't grok a desert by counting its grains of sand. Then there's philosophy - supposed to tackle everything. Does it? All any philosopher ever comes out with is exactly what be walked in with - except for those self-deluders who prove their assumptions by their conclusions, in a circle. Like Kant. Like many other tail-chasers. So the answer, if it's anywhere, ought to be here." He waved at the pile of religious books. "Only it's not. Bits and pieces that grok true, but never a pattern - or if there is a pattern, every time, without fail, they ask you to take the hard part on faith. Faith! What a dirty Anglo-Saxon monosyllable - Jill, how does it happen that you didn't mention that one when you were teaching me the words that mustn't be used in polite company?"

She smiled. "Mike, you just made a joke."

"I didn't mean it as a joke� and I can't see that it's funny. Jill, I haven't even been good for you - you used to laugh. You used to laugh and giggle until I worried about you. I haven't learned to laugh; instead you've forgotten how. Instead of my becoming human� you're becoming Martian."

"I'm happy, dear. You probably just haven't noticed me laughing."

"If you laughed clear down on Market Street, I would hear it. I grok. Once I quit being frightened by it I always noticed it - you, especially. If I grokked it, then I would grok people - I think. Then I could help somebody like Pat� either teach her what I know, or learn from her what she knows. Or both. We could talk and understand each other."

"Mike, all you need to do for Patty is to see her occasionally. Why don't we, dear? Let's get out of this dreary fog. She's home now; the carnie is closed for the season. Drop south and see her� and I've always wanted to see Baja California; we could go on south into warmer weather - and take her with us, that would be fun!"

"All right."

She stood up. "Let me get a dress on. Do you want to save any of those books? Instead of one of your usual quick housecleanings I could ship them to Jubal."

He flipped his fingers at them and all were gone but Patricia's gift. "Just this one and we'll take it with us; Pat would notice. But, Jill, right now I need to go out to the zoo."

"All right."

"I want to spit back at a camel and ask him what he's so sour about. Maybe camels are the real 'Old Ones' on this planet� and that's what is wrong with the place."

"Two jokes in one day, Mike."

"I ain't laughing. And neither are you. Nor is the camel. Maybe he groks why. Come on. is this dress all right? Do you want underclothes? I noticed you were wearing some when i moved those other clothes."

"Please, dear. It's windy and chilly outdoors."

"Up easy." He levitated her a couple of feet. "Pants. Stockings. Garter belt. Shoes. Down you go and lift your arms. Bra? You don't need a bra. And now the dress - and you're decent again. And you're pretty, whatever that is. You look good. Maybe I can get a job as a lady's maid if I'm not good for anything else. Baths, shampoos, massages, hair styling, make-up, dressing for all occasions - I've even learned to do your nails in a fashion that suits you. Will that be all, Madam?"

"You're a perfect lady's maid, dear. But I'm going to keep you myself."

"Yes, I grok I am. You look so good I think I'll toss it all away again and give you a massage. The growing closer kind."

"Yes, Michael!"

"I thought you had learned waiting? First you have to take me to the zoo and buy me peanuts."

"Yes, Mike. Jill will buy you peanuts."

It was cold and windy out at Golden Gate Park but Mike did not notice it and Jill had learned that she didn't have to be cold or uncomfortable if she did not wish it. Nevertheless it was pleasant to relax her control by going into the warm monkey house. Aside from its heat Jill did not like the monkey house too well - monkeys and apes were too much like people, too depressingly human. She was, she thought, finished forever with any sort of prissiness; she had grown to cherish an ascetic, almost Martian joy in all things physical The public copulations and evacuations of these simian prisoners did not trouble her as they once had; these poor penned people possessed no privacy, they were not at fault. She could now watch such without repugnance; her own impregnable fastidiousness untouched. No, it was that they were "Human, All Too Human", every action, every expression, every puzzled troubled look reminded her of what she liked least about her own race.

Jill preferred the Lion House - the great males arrogant and sure of themselves even in captivity - the placid motherliness of the big females, the lordly beauty of Bengal tigers with jungle staring out of their eyes, the little leopards - swift and deadly, the reek of musk that airconditioners could not purge. Mike usually shared her tastes for other exhibits, too; he would spend hours in the Aviary, or the Reptile House, or in watching seals - once he had told her that, if one had to be hatched on this planet to be a sea lion would be of greatest goodness.

When he had first seen a zoo, Mike had been much upset; Jill had been forced to order him to wait and grok, as be had been about to take immediate action to free all the animals. He had conceded presently, under her arguments - that most of these animals could not stay alive free in the climate and environment where he proposed to turn them loose, that a zoo was a nest� of a sort. He had followed this first experience with many hours of withdrawal, after which he never again threatened to remove all the bars and glass and grills. He explained to Jill that the bars were to keep people out at least as much as to keep the animals in, which he had failed to grok at first. After that Mike never missed a zoo wherever they went.

But today even the unmitigated misanthropy of the camels could not shake Mike's moodiness; he looked at them without smiling. Nor did the monkeys and apes cheer him up. They stood for quite a while in front of a cage containing a large family of capuchins, watching them eat, sleep, court, nurse, grooms and swarm aimlessly around the cage, while Jill surreptitiously tossed them peanuts despite "No Feeding" signs.

She tossed one to a medium sized monk; before he could eat it a much larger male was on him and not only stole his peanut but gave him a beating, then left. The little fellow made no attempt to pursue his tormentor; be squatted at the scene of the crime, pounded his knucks against the concrete floor, and chattered his helpless rage. Mike watched it solemnly. Suddenly the mistreated monkey rushed to the side of the cage, picked a monkey still smaller, bowled it over and gave it a drubbing worse than the one he had suffered - after which he seemed quite relaxed. The third monk crawled away, still whimpering, and found shelter in the arm of a female who had a still smaller one, a baby, on her back. The other monkeys paid no attention to any of it.

Mike threw back his head and laughed - went on laughing, loudly and uncontrollably. He gasped for breath, tears came from his eyes; he started to tremble and sink to the floor, still laughing.

"Stop it, Mike!"

He did cease folding himself up but his guffaws and tears went on. An attendant hurried over. "Lady, do you need help?"

"No. Yes, I do. Can you call us a cab? Ground car, air cab, anything - I've got to get him out of here." She added, "He's not well."

"Ambulance? Looks like he's having a fit."

"Anything!" A few minutes later she was leading Mike into a piloted air cab. She gave the address, then said urgently. "Mike, you've got to listen to me. Quiet down."

He became somewhat more quiet but continued to chuckle, laugh aloud, chuckle again, while she wiped his eyes, for all the few minutes it took to get back to their flat. She got him inside, got his clothes off, made him lie down on the bed. "All right, dear. Withdraw now if you need to."

"I'm all right. At last I'm all right."

"I hope so." She sighed. "You certainly scared me, Mike."

"I'm sorry, Little Brother. I know. I was scared, too, the first time I heard laughing."

"Mike, what happened?"

"Jill� I grok people!"

"Huh?" ("!!??")

("I speak rightly, Little Brother. I grok.")

"I grok people now, Jill Little Brother� precious darling, little imp with lively legs and lovely lewd lascivious lecherous licentious libido� beautiful bumps and pert posterior� with soft voice and gentle hands. My baby darling."

"Why, Michael!"

"Oh, I knew all the words; I simply didn't know when or why to say them� nor why you wanted me to. I love you, sweetheart - I grok 'love' now, too."

"You always have. I knew. And I love you� you smooth ape. My darling."

"'Ape,' yes. Come here, she ape, and put your head on my shoulder and tell me a joke."

"Just tell you a joke?"

"Well, nothing more than snuggling. Tell me a joke I've never heard and see if I laugh at the right place. I will, I'm sure of it - and I'll be able to tell you why it's funny. Jill� I grok people!"

"But how, darling? Can you tell me? Does it need Martian? Or mindtalk?"

"No, that's the point. I grok people. I am people� so now I can say it in people talk. I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much� because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting."

Jill looked puzzled. "Maybe I'm the one who isn't people. I don't understand."

"Ah, but you are people, little she ape. You grok it so automatically that you don't have to think about it. Because you grew up with people. But I didn't. I've been like a puppy raised apart from other dogs - Who couldn't be like his masters and had never learned how to be a dog. So I had to be taught. Brother Mahmoud taught me, Jubal taught me, lots of people taught me� and you taught me most of all. Today I got my diploma - and I laughed. That poor little monk."

"Which one, dear? I thought that big one was just mean� and the one I flipped the peanut to turned out to be just as mean. There certainly wasn't anything funny."

"Jill, Jill my darling! Too much Martian has rubbed off on YOU. Of course it wasn't funny - it was tragic. That's why I had to laugh. I looked at a cageful of monkeys and suddenly I saw all the mean and cruel and utterly unexplainable things I've seen and heard and read about in the time I've been with my own people and suddenly it hurt so much I found myself laughing."

"But- Mike dear, laughing is something you do when something is nice� not when it's horrid."

"Is it? Think back to Las Vegas - When all you pretty girls came out on the stage, did people laugh?"

"Well� no."

"But you girls were the nicest part of the show. I grok now, that if they had laughed, you would have been hurt. No, they laughed when a comic tripped over his feet and fell down� or something else that is not a goodness."

"But that's not all people laugh at."

"Isn't it? Perhaps I don't grok all its fullness yet. But find me something that really makes you laugh, sweetheart� a joke, or anything else - but something that gave you a real belly laugh, not a smile. Then we'll see if there isn't a wrongness in it somewhere and whether you would laugh if the wrongness wasn't there." He thought. "I grok when apes learn to laugh, they'll be people."

"Maybe." Doubtfully but earnestly Jill started digging into her memory for jokes that had struck her as irresistibly funny, ones which had jerked a laugh out of her� incidents she had seen or heard of which had made her helpless with laughter:

"-her entire bridge club."

"Should I bow?"

"Neither one, you idiot - instead!"

"-the Chinaman objects."

"-broke her leg."

"-make trouble for me!"

"-but it'll spoil the ride for me."

"-and his mother-in-law fainted."

"Stop you? Why, I bet three to one you could do it!"

"-something has happened to Ole."

"-and so are you, you clumsy ox!"

She gave up on "funny" stories, pointing out to Mike that such were just fantasies, not real, and tried to recall real incidents. Practical jokes? All practical jokes supported Mike's thesis, even ones as mild as a dribble glass - and when it came to an interne's notion of a practical joke - well, internes and medical students should be kept in cages. What else? The time Elsa Mae had lost her monogrammed panties? It hadn't been funny to Elsa Mae. Or the- She said grimly, "Apparently the pratfall is the peak of all humor. It's not a pretty picture of the human race, Mike."

"Oh, but it is!"

"Huh?"

"I had thought - I had been told - that a 'funny' thing is a thing of a goodness. It isn't. Not ever is it funny to the person it happens to. Like that sheriff without his pants. The goodness is in the laughing itself. I grok it is a bravery� and a sharing� against pain and sorrow and defeat."

"But - Mike, it is not a goodness to laugh at people."

"No. But I was not laughing at the little monkey. I was laughing at you people. And I suddenly knew that I was people and could not stop laughing." He paused. "This is hard to explain, because you have never lived as a Martian, for all that I've told you about it. On Mars there is never anything to laugh at. All the things that are funny to us humans either physically cannot happen on Mars or are not permitted to happen - sweetheart, what you call 'freedom' doesn't exist on Mars; everything is planned by the Old Ones - or the things that do happen on Mars which we laugh at here on Earth aren't funny because there is no wrongness about them. Death, for example."

"Death isn't funny."

"Then why are there so many jokes about death? Jill, with us - us humans - death is so sad that we must laugh at it. All those religions - they contradict each other on every other point but every one of them is filled with ways to help people be brave enough to laugh even though they know they are dying." He stopped and Jill could feel that he had almost gone into his trance state. "Jill? Is it possible that I was searching them the wrong way? Could it be that every one of all those religions is true?"

"Huh? How could that possibly be? Mike, if one of them is true, then the others are wrong. Logic."

"So? Point to the shortest direction around the universe. It doesn't matter which way you point, it's the shortest� and you're pointing right back at yourself."

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

"And Thou art God, my lovely. I wasn't disputing that� but that one prime fact which doesn't depend at all 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 direct 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 art Siva!"

"Dance, Kali, dance!"

Some time during the night she woke and saw him standing at the window, looking out over the city. ("Trouble, my brother?")

He turned and spoke. "There's no need for them to be so unhappy."

"Darling, darling! I think 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 down by her. "I grok with them now, I can talk to them. Jill, I could set up our act again� and make the marks laugh every minute. I am certain."

"Then why not do it? Patty would certainly 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?"