A Stranger in a Strange Land

XXXII

BEN CAXTON HAD AWAKENED not knowing where he was nor what time it was. It was dark around him, perfectly quiet, he was lying on something soft. Not a bed - where was he?

The night came back in a rush. The last he clearly remembered he had been lying on the soft floor of the Innermost Temple, talking quietly and intimately with Dawn. She had taken him there, they had immersed, shared water, grown closer - frantically he reached around him in the dark, found nothing.

"Dawn!"

Light swelled softly to a gentle dimness. "Here, Ben."

"Oh! I thought you had gone!"

"I didn't intend to wake you." She was wearing - to his sudden and intense disappointment - her robe of office. "I must go start the Sunrisers' Outer Service. Gillian isn't back yet. As you know, it was a fairly big class."

Her words brought back to him things she had told him last night things which, at the time, had upset him despite her gentle and quite logical explanations� and she had soothed his upset until he found himself agreeing with her. He still was not quite straight in his mind he didn't grok it all - but, yes, Jill was probably still busy with her rites as high priestess - a task, or perhaps a happy duty, that Dawn had offered to take for her. Ben felt a twinge that he really should have been sorry that Jill had refused, had insisted that Dawn get much needed rest.

But he did not feel sorry. "Dawn� do you have to leave?" He scrambled to his feet, put his arms around her.

"I must go, Ben dear� dear Ben." She melted up against him.

"Right now? In such a rush?"

"There is never," she said softly, "that much hurry." Suddenly the robe no longer kept them apart. He was too bemused to wonder what had become of it.

He woke up a second time, found that the "little nest" he was in lighted softly when he stood up. He stretched, discovered that he felt wonderful, then looked around the room for his shorts. They were not in sight and no way for them to be out of sight. He tried to recall where he had left them� and had no recollection of ever having taken them off. But he certainly had not worn them into the water. Probably beside the pool in the Innermost Temple - he made a mental note to stop back there and pick them up, then went out and found a bathroom.

Some minutes later, shaved, showered, and refreshed, he did remember to look into the Innermost Temple, failed to find his shorts and decided that somebody, Patty maybe, had noticed them and put them near the outer door where apparently everybody kept what they needed for street wear� said to hell with it and grinned at himself for having made such a jittery old-maid issue last night out of wearing them or not. He needed them, here in the Nest, the way he needed a second head.

Come to think of it, he didn't have the slightest trace of a head - a hangover head - although he recalled that he had had more than several drinks with Dawn. Hadn't got drunk, as he recalled, but certainly more than he ordinarily allowed himself - he couldn't sop up the stuff the way Jubal did without paying for it.

Dawn didn't seem to be affected by liquor at all - which was probably why he had gone over his usual quota. Dawn� what a gal, what a gal! She hadn't even seemed annoyed when, in a moment of emotional confusion, he had called her Jill - she had seemed pleased.

He found no one in the big room and wondered what time it was? Not that he gave a damn, except that his stomach told him that it was long past breakfast time. He went into the kitchen to see what he could scrounge.

A man in there looked up as he came in. "Ben!"

"Well! Hi, Duke!"

Duke gave him a bear hug and slapped him on the back. "Ben, you're a sight for sore eyes! Gosh, it's good to see you. Thou art God. How do you like your eggs?"

"Thou art God. Are you the cook?"

"Only when I can't find somebody else to do it for me - such as right now. Tony does most of it. We all do some. Even Mike unless Tony catches him and chases him out - Mike is the world's worst cook, bar none." Duke went on breaking eggs into a dish.

Ben moved in on the job. "You look after toast and coffee. Any Worcestershire sauce around here?"

"You name it, Pat's got it. Here." Duke added, "I looked in on you a half hour ago, but you were still sawing wood. I've been busy or you've been busy ever since you got here - until now."

"What do you do around here, Duke? Aside from cooking when you can't avoid it?"

"Well, I'm a deacon� and I'll be a priest someday. But I'm slow - not that it matters. I study Martian� everybody does that. And I'm the fix-it boy, same as I was for Jubal"

"Must take quite a gang to maintain a place this size."

"Ben, you'd be surprised how little it takes. Aside from keeping an eye on the plumbing - and sometime you must see Mike's unique way of dealing with a stopped toilet - I don't have to play plumber very much. Aside from plumbing, ninety percent of the gadgetry in this building is right here in the kitchen� and it's not as gadgeted as Jubal's kitchen."

"I had the impression that you have some very complicated gadgets for some of the temple ceremonies."

"Uuh uh, nary a gadget. Some lighting controls, that's all, and simple ones. Actually" Duke grinned. "-One of my most important jobs is no job at all. Fire warden"

"Huh?"

"I'm a licensed deputy fire warden, examined and everything, and same for sanitation and safety inspector - neither one takes any work. But it means that we never have to let an outsider go through the joint - and we don't. They attend outer services�but they never get any farther unless Mike gives an up check."

They transferred food to plates and sat down at a table. Duke said, "You're staying, aren't you, Ben?"

"I don't see how I can, Duke."

"Mmmm� I had hoped that you would have more sense than I had. I came for just a short visit, too� went back and moped around for nearly a month before I told Jubal I was leaving and wouldn't be back. But never mind; you'll be back. Don't make any final decisions before the water sharing tonight."

"Didn't Dawn tell you? Or Jill?"

"Uh� I don't think so."

"Then they didn't. Hmm, maybe i should let Mike explain it. No, no need to; people will be mentioning it to you all day long. Sharing water you grok, of course; you're one of the First Called."

"'First Called?' Dawn used that expression."

"That handful of us who became Mike's water brothers without learning Martian. The others ordinarily do not share water and grow closer until they pass from the Seventh Circle to the Eighth� and by that time they are beginning to think in Martian. Heck, some of them know more Martian by that stage than I do now, since I'm a 'First Called' myself and started my studies after I was already in the Nest. Oh, it's not actually forbidden to share water with someone who isn't ready for Eighth Circle. Hell, if I wanted to, I could pick up a babe in a bar, share water with her, then take her to bed - and then take her to the Temple and start her on her apprenticeship. But I wouldn't want to. That's the point; I wouldn't even want to. At the very most I might decide that it was worth while to bring her around to an outer service and let Mike look her over and find out whether any of it clicked with her. Ben, I'll make a flat-footed prediction. You've been around a lot - I'm sure you've been in some fancy beds with some fancy babes."

"Uh� some,"

"I know damn' well you have. But you will never again in your life crawl in with one who is not your water brother."

"Hmm."

"You'll see. Let's cheek it a year from now and you tell me. Now Mike may decide that someone is ready to share water before that person reaches even Seventh Circle. One couple we've got in the Nest, Mike picked, and offered them Water, when they had just entered Third Circle and now he's a priest and she's a priestess� Sam and Ruth."

"Haven't met 'em."

"You will. Tonight at the latest. But Mike is the only one who can be certain, that soon. Very occasionally Dawn, and sometimes Patty, will spot somebody for special promotion and special training� but never as far down as Third Circle and I'm pretty sure that they always consult Mike before going ahead. Not that they are required to. Anyhow, into the Eighth Circle� and sharing and growing closer starts. Then, sooner or later, into Ninth Circle, and the Nest itself - and that's the service we mean when we say 'Sharing Water' even though we share water all day long. The whole Nest attends and the new brothers - usually it's a couple - becomes forever part of the Nest. In your case you already are� but we've never held the service for you, so everything else is being pushed aside tonight while we welcome you. They did the same for me." Duke got a faraway look. "Ben, it's the most wonderful feeling in the world"

"But I still don't know what it is, Duke."

"Uh�it's a lot of things. Ever been on a real luau of a party, the kind the cops raid and usually ends up in a divorce or two?"

"Well� yes."

"Up to now, brother, you've only been on Sunday School picnics. That's one aspect of it. Have you ever been married?"

"No."

"You are married. You just don't know it yet. After tonight there will never again be any doubt in your mind about it." Duke again looked faraway, happily pensive. "Ben, I was married before� and for a short time it was pretty nice and then it was steady hell on wheels. This time I like it, all the time. Shucks, I love it! And look, Ben, I don't mean just that it's fun to be shacked up with a bunch of bouncy babes. I love them - all my brothers, both sexes. Take Patty - and you will! - Patty mothers all of us� and I don't think anybody, man or woman, gets over needing that, even if they think they've outgrown it. Patty� well, Patty is just swell! She reminds me of Jubal� and that old bastard had better get down here and get the word! My point is that it is not just that Patty is female. Oh, I'm not running down tail-"

"Who is running down tail?" The voice, a rich contralto, came from behind them.

Duke swung around. "Not me, you limber Levantine whore! Come here, babe, and kiss your brother Ben."

"Never charged for it in my life," the woman denied as she glided toward them. "Started giving it away before anybody told me." She kissed Ben carefully and thoroughly. "Thou art God, brother."

"Thou art God. Share water."

"Never thirst. And don't ever pay any mind to what Duke says - from the way he behaves he must have been a bottle baby." She leaned over Duke and kissed him even more lingeringly while he patted her ample fundament. Ben noted that she was short, plump, brunette almost to swarthiness, and had a mane of heavy blue-black hair almost to her waist "Duke, did you see anything of a Ladies' Home Journal when you got up?" She reached past his shoulder, took his fork and started eating his scrambled eggs. "Mmm� good. You didn't cook these, Duke."

"Ben did. What in the world would I want with a Ladies' Home Journal?"

"Ben, stir up a couple of dozen more exactly the same way and I'll scramble 'em in relays. There was an article in it I wanted to show Patty, dear."

"Okay," agreed Ben and got up to do it.

"Don't you two get any ideas about redecorating this dump or I'm moving out. And leave some of those eggs for me! You think us men can do our work on mush?"

"Tut, tut, Dukie darling. Water divided is water multiplied. As I was saying, Ben, Duke's complaints never mean anything - as long as he has enough women for two men and enough food for three, he's a perfect little lamb." She shoved one forkful into Duke's mouth, went on eating the rest herself. "So quit making faces, brother; I'm about to cook you a second breakfast. Or will this be your third?"

"Not even the first, yet. You ate it. Ruth, I was telling Ben how you and Sam pole-vaulted from Third to Ninth. I think he's uneasy about whether he belongs in the Sharing-Water tonight."

She pursued the last bite on Duke's plate, then moved over and started preparations to cook. "Duke, you run along and I'll send you out something other than mush. Take your coffee cup and skedaddle. Ben, I was worried, too, when my time came - but don't you be worried, dear, because Michael does not make mistakes. You belong here or you wouldn't be here. You're going to stay?"

"Uh, I can't. Ready for the first installment?"

"Pour them in. Then you'll be back. And someday you'll stay. Duke is correct - Sam and I pole-vaulted� and it was almost too fast for a middle-aged, prim and proper housewife."

"Middle-aged?"

"Ben, one of the bonuses about the discipline is that as it straightens out your soul, your body straightens out, too. That's a matter in which the Christian Scientists are precisely right. Notice any medicine bottles in any of the bathrooms?"

"Uh, no."

"There aren't any. How many people have kissed you?"

"Several, at least."

"As a priestess I kiss a lot more than 'several,' believe me. But there's never so much as a sniffle in the Nest. I used to be the sort of whiny woman who is never quite well and given to 'female complaints.'" She smiled. "Now I'm more female than ever but I'm twenty pounds lighter and years younger and have nothing to complain about - I like being female. As Duke flattered me, 'a Levantine whore' and unquestionably much more limber than I was - I always sit in the lotus position when I'm teaching a class, whereas it used to be all I could do just to squat down and straighten up again� hot flashes and dizziness.

"But it did happen fast," Ruth went on. "Sam was a professor of Oriental languages at the University here - the city U., that is. Sam started coming to the Temple because it was a way, the only way, to learn the Martian language. Strictly professional motivation, he wasn't interested in it as a church. And I went along to keep an eye on him� I had heard rumors and I was a jealous wife, even more possessive than the average.

"So we worked up to the Third Circle, Sam learning the language rapidly, of course, and myself grimly hanging on and studying hard because I didn't want to let him out of my sight. Then boom! the miracle happened. We suddenly began to think in it, just a little� and Michael felt it and had us stay after service, a Third Circle service, one night and Michael and Gillian gave us water. Afterwards, I knew that I was all the things I had despised in other women and I knew that I should despise my husband for letting me do it and hate him for what he had done himself. All this in English, with the wont parts in Hebrew. So I wept all day and moaned and made myself a stinking nuisance to Sam� and couldn't wait to get back to share more water and grow closer again that night.

"After that things were steadily easier but not easy, as we were pushed through all the inner circles just as rapidly as we could take it; Michael knew that we needed help and wanted to get us into the safety and peace of the Nest. So when it came time for our Sharing-Water, I was still unable to discipline myself without constant help. I knew that I wanted to be received into the Nest - once you start, there's no turning back - but I wasn't sure I could merge myself with seven other people. I was scared silly; on the way over I almost begged Sam to turn around and go home."

She stopped talking and looked up, unsmiling but beatific, a plump angle with a big stirring spoon in one hand. "Then we walked into the Innermost Temple and a spotlight hit me and our robes were whisked away� and they were all in the pool and calling out to us in Martian to come, come and share the water of life - and I stumbled into that pool and submerged and I haven't come up since!

"Nor ever want to. Don't fret, Ben, you'll learn the language and acquire the discipline and you'll have loving help from all of us every step of the way. You stop worrying and jump in that pool tonight; I'll have my arms out to catch you. All of us will have our arms out, welcoming you home. Now take this plate in to Duke and tell him I said he was a pig but a charming one. And take this one in for yourself - oh, of course you can eat that much! - give me a kiss and run along; Ruthie has work to do."

Ben delivered the kiss and the message and the plate, then found that he did have some appetite left� but nevertheless did not concentrate on food as he found Jill stretched out, apparently asleep, on one of the wide, soft couches. He sat down opposite her, enjoying the sweet sight of her and thinking that Dawn and Jill were even more alike than he had realized the night before.

He looked up from a bite and saw that her eyes were open and she was smiling at him. "Thou art God, darling - and that smells good."

"And you look good. But I didn't mean to wake you." He got up and sat by her, put a bite in her mouth. "My own cooking, with Ruth's help."

"I know. And good, too. Duke told me to stay out of the kitchen because Ruthie was giving you a good-for-your-soul lecture. You didn't wake me; I was just lazing until you came out. I haven't been asleep all night."

"Not at all?"

"Not a wink. But I'm not tired, I feel grand. Just hungry. That's a hint." So he fed her. She let him do so, never stirring, not using her own hands. "But did you get any sleep?" she asked presently.

"Uh, some."

"Enough? No, you got enough. But how much sleep did Dawn get? As much as two hours?"

"Oh, more than that, I'm certain."

"Then she's all right. Two hours of sleep does us as much good as eight used to. I knew what a sweet night you were going to have - both of you - but I was a teeny bit worried that she might not rest."

"Well, it was a wonderful night," Ben admitted, "although I was, uh, surprised at the way you shoved her at me."

"Shocked, you mean. I know you, Ben, maybe better than you know yourself. You arrived here yesterday with jealousy sticking out in lumps. I think it's gone now. Yes?"

He looked back at her. "I think so."

"That's good. I had a wonderful and joyous night, too - made free from any worry by knowing you were in good hands. The best hands - better than mine."

"Oh, no!"

"Hmm. I grok a few lumps still - but tonight we'll wash them away in water." She sat up, reached toward the end of the couch - and it looked to Canon as if a pack of cigarettes on the end table jumped the last few inches into her hand.

"You seemed to have picked up some sleight-of-hand tricks, too."

She seemed momentarily puzzled, then she smiled. "Some. Nothing much. Parlor tricks. 'I am only an egg,' to quote my teacher."

"How did you do that trick?"

"Why, I just whistled to it in Martian. First you grok a thing, then you grok what you want it to - Mike!" She waved. "We're over here, dear!"

"Coming." The Man from Mars came straight to Ben, took his hands, pulled him to his feet. "Let me look at you, Ben! Golly, it's good to see you!"

"It's good to see you. And to be here."

"And we're going to twist your arm to keep you here. What's this about three days? Three days indeed!"

"I'm a working man, Mike."

"We'll see. The girls are all excited, getting ready for your party tonight. Might just as well shut down services and classes for the rest of the day - they won't be worth a damn."

"Patty has already done any necessary rescheduling," Jill told Mike. "She just didn't bother you with it. Dawn and Ruth and Sam are going to take care of what's necessary. Patty decided to slough the Outer matinee - so you're through for the day."

"That's good news." Mike sat down, pulled Jill's head into his lap, pulled Ben down, put an arm around him, and sighed. He was dressed as Ben had seen him in the outer meeting, smart tropical business suit, lacking only shoes. "Ben, don't ever take up preaching. I spend my days and nights rushing from one job to another, telling people why they must never hurry. I owe you, along with Jill and Jubal, more than anyone else on this planet - yet you've been here since yesterday afternoon and this is the first time I've been able to say hello. How've you been? You're looking fit. In fact Dawn tells me you are fit."

Ben found himself blushing. "I'm okay."

"That's good. Because, believe me, the hill tribes will be restless tonight. But I'll grok close and sustain you. You'll be fresher at the end of the party than at the start - won't he, Little Brother?"

"Yes," agreed Jill. "Ben, you won't believe it until you've had it done for you, but Mike can lend you strength - physical strength, I mean, not just moral support. I can do it a little bit. Mike can really do it."

"Jill can do it quite a lot." Mike caressed her. "Little Brother is a tower of strength to everybody. Last night she certainly was." He smiled down at her, then sang:

"You'll never find a girl like Jill.

"No, not one in a billion."

"Of all the tarts who ever will "The willingest is our Gillian! - isn't that right, Little Brother?"

"Pooh," answered Jill, obviously pleased, covering his hand with her own and pressing it to her. "Dawn is exactly like me and you know it - and every bit as willing."

"Maybe. But you're here� and Dawn is downstairs interviewing the possibles out of the tip. She's busy - you ain't. That's an important difference - isn't it, Ben?"

"Could be." Caxton was finding that their unself-conscious behavior was beginning to embarrass him, even in this uniquely relaxed atmosphere - he wished that they would either knock off necking� or give him an excuse to leave.

Instead Mike went right on cuddling Jill with one hand while keeping his other arm snug around Ben's waist� and Ben was forced to admit that Jill encouraged him, rather than otherwise. Mike said very seriously, "Ben, a night like last night - helping a group to make the big jump to Eighth Circle - gets me terribly keyed up. Let me tell you something out of the lessons for Sixth, Ben. We humans have something that my former people don't even dream of. They can't. And I can tell you how precious it is� how especially precious I know it to be, because I have known what it is not to have it. The blessing of being male and female. Man and Woman created He them - the greatest treasure We-Who-Are-God ever invented. Right, Jill?"

"Beautifully right, Mike - and Ben knows it is Truth. But make a song for Dawn, too, darling."

"Okay - "Ardent is our lovely Dawn;" Ben grokked that in her glance - "She buys new dresses every morn. "But never shops for pants!" Jill giggled and squirmed. "Did you tune her in?"

"Yes, and she gave me a big Bronx cheer - with a kiss behind it for Ben. Say, isn't there anybody in the kitchen this morning? I just remembered I haven't eaten for a couple of days. Or years, maybe; I'm not sure."

"I think Ruth is," Ben said, untangling himself and standing up. "I'll go see."

"Duke can do it. Hey, Duke! See if you can find somebody who'll fix me a stack of wheat cakes as tall as you are and a gallon of maple syrup."

"Right, Mike!" Duke called back.

Ben Caxton hesitated, without an excuse to run an errand. He thought of a trumped-up excuse and glanced back over his shoulder.

"Jubal," Caxton said earnestly, "I wouldn't tell you this part at all if it weren't essential to explaining how I feel about the whole thing, why I'm worried about them - all of them, Duke and Mike as well as Jill and Mike's other victims, too. By that morning I was myself half conned into thinking everything was all right - weird as hell in spots - but jolly. Mike himself had me fascinated, too - his new personality is pretty powerful. Cocky and too much supersalesman� but very compelling. Then he - or both of them - got me rather embarrassed, so I took that chance to get up from the couch.

"Then I glanced back - and couldn't believe my eyes. I hadn't been turned away five seconds� and Mike had managed to get rid of every stitch of clothes� and so help me, they were going to it, with myself and three or four others in the room at the time - just as boldly as monkeys in a zoo!

"Jubal, I was so shocked I almost lost my breakfast."