A Stranger in a Strange Land

XXXVI

JUBAL WOKE UP ALERT, rested, and happy, realized that he felt better before breakfast than he had in years. For a long, long time he had been getting through that black period between waking and the first cup of coffee by comforting himself with the thought that tomorrow might be a little easier.

This morning he found himself whistling, which he did very badly. He noticed it, stopped himself, forgot it and started up again.

He saw himself in the mirror, smiled wryly, then grinned openly. "You incorrigible old goat. They'll be sending the wagon for you any minute now." He noticed a white hair on his chest, plucked it out, didn't bother with many others just as white, went on making himself ready to face the world.

When he went outside his door Jill was there. Accidentally? No, he no longer trusted any "coincidence" in this mnage; it was as organized as a computer. She came straight into his arms. "Jubal - Oh, we love you so! Thou art God."

He returned her kiss as warmly as it was given, grokking that it would be hypocritical not to - and discovering that kissing Jill differed from kissing Dawn only in some fashion unmistakable but utterly beyond instrument or description.

Presently he held her away from him without letting her go. "You baby Messalina� you framed me."

"Jubal darling� you were wonderful!"

"Uh� how the hell did you know I was able?"

She gave him back a gaze of clear-eyed innocence. "Why, Jubal, I've been certain of that ever since Mike and I first lived at home. You see, even then, when Mike was asleep - in trance - he could see around him quite a distance and sometimes he would look in on you - a question to ask you or something - to see if you were asleep."

"But I slept alone! Always."

"Yes, dear. But that wasn't quite what I meant. And I always had to explain things to Mike that he didn't understand."

"Hrrrmph!" He decided not to pursue the inquiry. "Just the same, you shouldn't have framed me."

"I grok you don't mean that in your heart, Jubal� and you grok that I speak rightly. We had to have you in the Nest. All the way in. We need you. Since you are shy and humble in your goodness, we did what was needful to welcome you without hurting you. And we did not hurt you, as you grok."

"What's this 'we' stuff?"

"It was a full Sharing-Water of all the Nest, as you grok - you were there. Mike stopped what he was doing and woke up for it� and grokked with you and kept us all together."

Jubal hastily abandoned this line of inquiry, too. "So Mike is awake at last. That's why your eyes are shining so."

"Only partly. Of course, we are always delighted when Mike isn't withdrawn, it's jolly� but he's never really away. Jubal, I grok that you have not grokked the fullness of our way of Sharing-Water. But waiting will fill. Nor did Mike grok it, at first - he thought it was only for quickening of eggs, as it is on Mars."

"Well� that's the primary purpose, the obvious purpose. Babies. Which makes it rather silly behavior on the part of a person, namely me, who has no intention and no wish, at my age, to cause such increase."

She shook her head. "Babies are the obvious result� but not the primary purpose at all. Babies give meaning to the future, and that is a great goodness. But only three or four or a dozen times in a woman's life is a baby quickened in her� out of the thousands of times she can share herself - and that is the primary use for what we can do so often but would need to do so seldom if it were only for reproduction. It is sharing and growing closer, forever and always. Jubal, Mike grokked this because on Mars the two things - quickening of eggs, and sharing-closer - are entirely separate� and he grokked, too, that our way is best. What a happy thing it is not to have been hatched a Martian� to be human and a woman!"

He looked at her closely. "Child, are you pregnant?"

"Yes, Jubal. I grokked at last that waiting had ended and I was free to be. Most of the Nest have not needed to wait - but Dawn and I have been quite busy. But when we grokked this cusp coming, I grokked that there would be a waiting after the cusp - and you can see that there will certainly be. Mike will not rebuild the Temple overnight - so this high priestess will be unhurried in building a baby. Waiting always fills."

From this high-flown mishmash Jubal abstracted the central fact or Jill's belief concerning such a possible fact. Well, she no doubt had had plenty of opportunity. He resolved to keep an eye on the matter and try to bring her home for it, if possible. Mike's superman methods were all very well, but it wouldn't hurt to have the best modern equipment and techniques at hand, too. Losing Jill to eclampsia or some other mishap was something he did not intend to let happen, even if he had to get tough with the kids.

He wondered about another such possibility, decided not to mention it. "Where's Dawn? And where's Mike? The place seems awfully quiet." No one had come through the hail they were in and he heard no voices and yet that odd feeling of happy expectancy was even stronger than it had been the night before. He would have expected a certain release from tension after the ceremony he had apparently joined in himself - unbeknownst - but the place was more charged up than ever. It suddenly reminded him of how he had felt, as a very small boy, when waiting for his first circus parade� and someone had called out: "There come the elephants!"

Jubal felt as if, were he just a little taller, he could see the elephants, past the excited crowd. Yet there was no crowd.

"Dawn told me to give you a kiss for her; she'll be busy for the next three hours, about. And Mike is busy, too - he went back into withdrawal."

"Oh."

"Don't sound so disappointed; he'll be free soon. He's making a special effort so that he will be free on your account� and to let all of us be free, too. Duke spent all night scouring the city for the high-speed tape recorders we use for the dictionary and now we've got everybody who can possibly do it being jammed full of Martian phonic symbols and then Mike will be through and can visit. Dawn has just started dictating; I finished one session, ducked out to say good-morning to you� and am about to go back and get poured full of my last part of the chore, so I'll be gone just a little longer than Dawn will be. And here's Dawn's kiss - the first one was just from me." She put her arms around his neck and again put her mouth greedily to his - at last said, "My goodness! Why did we wait so long? 'Bye for a little!"

Jubal found a sparse few in the big dining room. Duke looked up, smiled and waved, went back to hearty eating. He did not look as if he had been up all night - nor had he; he had been up two nights.

Becky Vesey looked around when Duke waved and said happily, "Hi, you old goat!" - grabbed his ear, pulled him down, and whispered into it:

"I've known it all along - but why weren't you around to console me when the Professor died?" She added aloud, "Sit down here beside me and we'll get some food into you while you tell me what devilment you've been plotting lately."

"Just a moment, Becky." Jubal went around the table. "Hi, Skipper. Good trip?"

"No trouble. It's becoming a milk run. I don't believe you've ever met Mrs. van Tromp. My dear, the founder of this feast, the one and only Jubal Harshaw - two of him would be too many."

The Captain's wife was a tall, plain woman with the calm eyes of one who has watched from the Widow's Walk. She stood up, kissed Jubal. "Thou art God."

"Uh, thou art God." Jubal decided that he might as well relax to the ritual - hell, if he said it often enough, he might lose the rest of his buttons and believe it� and it did have a friendly ring to it with the arms of the Skipper's wife firmly around him. He decided that she could even teach note 4 something about kissing. She - how was it Anne had once described it? - she gave it her whole attention; she wasn't going anywhere.

"I suppose, Van," he said, "that I really shouldn't be surprised to find you here."

"Well," answered the spaceman, "a man who commutes to Mars ought to be able to palaver with the natives, don't you think?"

"Just for powwow, huh?"

"There are other aspects." Van Tromp reached for a piece of toast; the toast cooperated. "Good food, good company."

"Um, yes."

"Jubal," Madame Vesant called out, "soup's on!"

Jubal returned to his place, found eggs-on-horseback, orange juice, and other choice comestibles waiting for him. Becky patted his thigh. "A fine prayer meeting, me bucko."

"Woman, back to your horoscopes!"

"Which reminds me, dearie, I want to know the exact instant of your birth."

"Uh, I was born on three successive days, at various hours. I was too big a boy - they had to handle me in sections."

Becky made a rude answer. "I'll find out."

"The courthouse burned down when I was three. You can't."

"There are ways. Want to make a small bet?"

"You go on heckling me and you'll find you're not too big to spank. How've you been, girl?"

"What do you think? How do I look?"

"Healthy. A bit spread in the butt. You've touched up your hair."

"I have not. I quit using henna months ago. Get with it, pal, and we'll get rid of that white fringe you've got. Replace it with a real lawn."

"Becky, I refuse to grow any younger for any reason. I came by my decrepitude the hard way and I propose to enjoy it. Quit prattling and let a man eat."

"Yes, sir. You old goat."

Jubal was just leaving the table as the Man from Mars came in. "Father! Oh, Jubal!" Mike hugged and kissed him.

Jubal gently unwound himself from the embrace. "Be your age, son. Sit down and enjoy your breakfast. I'll sit with you."

"I didn't come here looking for breakfast, I came looking for you. We'll find a place and talk."

"All right."

They went to the living room of one of the suites, Mike pulling Jubal by the hand like an excited small boy welcoming his favorite grandparent. Mike picked a big comfortable chair for Jubal and sprawled himself on a couch opposite and close to him. This room was on the side of the wing having the private landing flat; there were high French windows opening to it. Jubal got up and shifted his chair slightly so that he would not be facing so directly into the light in looking at his foster son; not to his surprise but mildly to his annoyance the heavy chair shifted as if it had been no more massive than a child's balloon, his hand merely guided it.

Two men and a woman were in the room when they arrived. These left shortly, leisurely, severally, and unostentatiously. After that they were alone, except that they were both served with Jubal's favorite brandy - by hand, to Jubal's pleasure; he was quite ready to agree that the remote control these people had over objects around them was a labor-saver and probably a money-saver (certainly on laundry! - his spaghetti-splashed shirt had been so fresh that he had put it on again today), and obviously a method much to be preferred for household convenience to the blind balkiness of mechanical gadgets. Nevertheless he was not used to telecontrol done without wires or waves; it startled Jubal the way horseless carriages had disturbed decent, respectable horses about the time Jubal was born.

Duke served the brandy. Mike said, "Hi, Cannibal. Thanks. Are you the new butler?"

"De nada, Monster. Somebody has to do it and you've got every brain in the place slaving away over a hot microphone."

"Well, they'll all be through in a couple of hours and you can revert to your useless, lecherous existence. The job is done, Cannibal. Pau. Thirty. Ended."

"The whole damn Martian language all in one lump? Monster, I had better check you for burned-out capacitors."

"Oh, no, no! Only the primer knowledge that I have of it - had of it, my brain's an empty sack. But highbrows like Stinky will be going back to Mars for a century to fill in what I never learned. But I did turn out quite a job - about six weeks of subjective time since around five this morning or whenever it was we adjourned the meeting - and now the stalwart steady types can finish it and I'm free to visit with Jubal with nothing on my mind." Mike stretched and yawned. "Feels good. Finishing a job always feels good."

"You'll be slaving away at something else before the day is out. Boss, this Martian monster can't take it or leave it alone. I know for a fact that this is the first time he has simply relaxed and done nothing for over two months. He ought to sign up with 'Workers Anonymous.' Or you ought to visit us more often. You're a good influence on him."

"God forbid that I should ever be a good influence on anybody."

"And you get out of here, Cannibal, and quit telling lies about me."

"Lies, hell. You turned me into a compulsive truth-teller� and it's a great handicap in some of the joints where I hang out." Duke left them.

Mike lifted his glass. "Share water, my brother Father Jubal"

"Drink deep, son."

"Thou art God."

"Take it easy, Mike. I'll put up with that from the others and answer it politely. But don't you come godding at me. I knew you when you were 'only an egg'."

"Okay, Jubal."

"That's better. When did you start drinking in the morning? Do that at your age and you'll ruin your stomach. You'll never live to be a happy old soak, like me."

Mike looked at his partly emptied glass. "I drink when it's a sharing to do so. It doesn't have any effect on me, nor on most of the others, unless we want it to. Once I let it have its effect without stopping it, until I passed out. It's an odd sensation. Not a goodness, I grok. Just a way to discorporate for a while without discorporating. I can get a similar effect, only much better and with no damage to be repaired afterwards, by withdrawing."

"Economical, at least."

"Uh huh, our liquor bill isn't anything. Matter of fact, running that whole Temple hasn't cost what it costs you to keep up our home. Except for the initial investment and replacing some of the props, coffee and cakes was about all - we made our own fun. We were happy. We needed so little that I used to wonder what to do with all the money that came in."

"Then why did you take collections?"

"Huh? Oh, you have to charge 'em, Jubal. The marks won't pay serious attention to anything that's free."

"I knew that, I just wondered if you did."

"Oh, yes, I grok marks, Jubal. At first I did try to preach free - just give it away. I had plenty of money, I thought it was all right. It didn't work. We humans have to make considerable progress before we can accept a free gift, and value it. Usually I never let them have anything free until about Sixth Circle. By then they can accept� and accepting is much harder than giving."

"Hmm� son, I think maybe you should write a book on human psychology."

"I have. But it's in Martian. Stinky has the tapes." Mike looked again at his glass, took a slow sybaritic sip. "We do use some liquor. A few of us - Saul, myself, Sven, some others - like it. And I've learned that I can let it have just a little effect, then hold it right at that point, and gain a euphoric growing-closer much like trance without having to withdraw. The minor damage is easy to repair." He sipped again. "That's what I'm doing this morning - letting myself get just the mildest glow and be happy with you."

Jubal studied him closely. "Son, you aren't drinking entirely to be sociable; you've got something on your mind."

"Yes, I have."

"Do you want to talk it out?"

"Yes. Father, it's always a great goodness to be with you, even if nothing is troubling me. But you are the only human I can always talk to and know that you will grok and that you yourself won't be overwhelmed by it, too. Jill� Jill always groks - but if it hurts me, it hurts her still more. Dawn the same. Patty� well, Patty can always take my hurt away, but she does it by keeping it herself. All three of them are too easily hurt for me to risk sharing in full with them anything I can't grok and cherish before I share it." Mike looked very thoughtful. "Confession is needful. The Catholics know that, they have it - and they have a corps of strong men to take it. The Fosterites have group confession and pass it around among themselves and thin it out. I need to introduce confession into this church, as part of the early purging - oh, we have it now, but spontaneously, after the pilgrim no longer really needs it. We need strong men for that - 'sin' is hardly ever concerned with a real wrongness but sin is what the sinner groks as sin - and when you grok it with him, it can be very disturbing. I know."

Mike went on earnestly, "Goodness is not enough, goodness is never enough. That was one of my first mistakes, because among Martians goodness and wisdom are the same thing, identical. But not with us. Take Jill. Her goodness was perfect when I met her. Nevertheless she was all mixed up inside - and I almost destroyed her, and myself too - for I was just as mixed up - before we got squared away. Her endless patience (not very common on this planet) was all that saved us� while I was learning to be a human and she was learning what I knew.

"But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required, too, for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom invariably accomplishes evil." He smiled and his face lit up. "And that's why I need you, Father, as well as loving you. I need to make confession to you.,'

Jubal squirmed. "Oh, for Pete's sake, Mike, don't make a production out of it. Just tell me what's eating you. We'll find a way out."

"Yes, Father."

But Mike did not go on. Finally Jubal said, "Do you feel busted up by the destruction of your Temple? I wouldn't blame you. But you aren't broke, you can build again."

"Oh, no, that doesn't matter in the slightest!"

"Eh?"

"That temple was a diary with all its pages filled. Time for a new one, rather than write over and deface the filled pages. Fire can't destroy the experience in it� and strictly from a standpoint of publicity and practical church politics, being run out of it in so spectacular a fashion will be helpful, in the long run. No, Jubal, the last couple of days have simply been an enjoyable break in a busy routine. No harm done." His expression changed. "Father� lately I learned that I was a spy."

"What do you mean, son? Explain yourself."

"For the Old Ones. They sent me here to spy on our people."

Jubal thought about it. Finally he said, "Mike, I know that you are brilliant. You obviously possess powers that I don't have and that I have never seen before. But a man can be a genius and still fall ill with delusions."

"I know. Let me explain and you can decide whether or not I'm crazy. You know how the surveillance satellites used by the Security Forces operate."

"No."

"I don't mean the details that would interest Duke; I mean the general scheme. They orbit around the globe, picking up data and storing it. At a particular point, the Sky-Eye is keyed and it pours out in a spate all that it has seen. That is what was done with me. You know that we of the Nest use what is called telepathy."

"I've been forced to believe it."

"We do. By the way, this conversation is completely private - and besides that, no one of us would ever attempt to read you; I'm not sure we could. Even last night the link was through Dawn's mind, not yours."

"Well, that is some slight comfort."

"Uh, I want to get to that later. I am 'only an egg' in this art; the Old Ones are past masters. They stayed linked with me but left me on my own, ignored me - then they triggered me and all that I had seen and heard and done and felt and grokked poured out of me and became part of their permanent records. I don't mean that they wiped my mind of my experiences; they simply played the tape, so to speak, made a copy. But the triggering I was aware of - and it was over before I could possibly do anything to stop it. Then they dropped me, cut off the linkage; I couldn't even protest."

"Well� it seems to me that they used you pretty shabbily-"

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

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

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

"It reminds me a little of the myths about the Flood."

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

"Oh, yes. Those are established historical facts."

"Jubal, the destruction of the Fifth Planet by the Old Ones is as historically certain as that eruption of Vesuvius - and it is recorded in much greater detail. No myth. Fact."

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

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

"Hey!" broke in Harshaw. "Cut it out! I don't know whether you can or you can't but I'm certain I don't want you to try!"

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

"But not for them?"

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

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

"Why, just like any other Martian� except that there is more variety in the appearance of adult Martians than there is in us."

"Then how do you know it's not just an adult Martian? Doesn't he walk through walls, or some such?"

"Any Martian can do that. I did, just yesterday."

"Uh� shimmers? Or anything?"

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

"Well, either ghosts, or I myself had slipped my leash."

"All right. Here it would be an hallucination� if I grok correctly that we don't stay here when we discorporate. But in the case of Mars, there is either an entire planet with a very rich and complex civilization all run by mass hallucination - or the straightforward explanation is correct the one I was taught and the one all my experience led me to believe. Because on Mars the 'ghosts' are by far the most important and most powerful and much the most numerous part of the population. The ones still alive, the corporate ones, are the hewers of wood and drawers of water, servants to the Old Ones."

Jubal nodded. "Okay. I'll never boggle at slicing with Occam's razor. While it runs contrary to my own experience, my experience is limited to this planet - provincial. All right, son, you're scared that they might destroy us?"

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

"But you're not fretted that they might blow us up? That's a pretty detached viewpoint, even for me."

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

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

"Jubal, the most different thing about the two races is that Martians never hurry - and humans always do. They would much rather think about it an extra century or half a dozen, just to be sure that they have grokked all the fullness."

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

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

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

Mike looked unhappy. "Yes and no. It was what I started out to do. It is not what I am trying to do now. Father, I know that you were disappointed in me when I started this."

"Your business, son."

"Yes. Self. I must grok and decide at each cusp myself alone. And so must you� and so must each self. Thou art God."

"I don't accept the nomination."

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

"That last alone was a triumph that proved I was right. Male-femaleness is the greatest gift we have - romantic physical love may be unique to this planet. I don't know. If it is, the universe is a much poorer place than it could be� and I grok dimly that we-who-are-God will save this precious invention and spread it. The actual joining and blending of two physical bodies with simultaneous merging of souls in shared ecstasy of love, giving and receiving and delighting in each other - well, there's nothing on Mars to touch it, and it's the source, I grok in fullness, of all that makes this planet so rich and wonderful. And, Jubal, until a person, man or woman, has enjoyed this treasure bathed in the mutual bliss of having minds linked as closely as bodies, that person is still as virginal and alone as if he had never copulated. But I grok that you have; your very reluctance to risk a lesser thing proves it� and, anyhow, I know it directly. You grok. You always have. Without even needing the aid of the language of grokking. Dawn told us that you were as deep into her mind as you were into her body."

"Unh� the lady exaggerates."

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

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

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

"And every one of those wrong things is a corollary of 'jealousy.' Jubal, I couldn't believe it. I still don't grok 'jealousy' in fullness, it seems an insanity to me, a terrible wrongness. When I first learned what this ecstasy was, my first thought was that I wanted to share it, share it at once with all my water brothers - directly with those female, indirectly by inviting more sharing with those male. The notion of trying to keep this never-failing fountain to myself would have horrified me, had I thought of it. But I was incapable of thinking of it. And in perfect corollary I had not the slightest wish to attempt this miracle with anyone I did not already love and trust - Jubal, I am physically unable even to attempt love with a female who has not already shared water with me. And this same thing runs all through the Nest. Psychic impotence unless our spirits blend as our flesh blends."

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

"Trouble?" he said.

"No trouble," Mike denied. "It's just that they are beginning to suspect that we are here - that I am here, rather. They think the rest are dead. The Innermost Temple, I mean. The other circles aren't being bothered especially� and many of them have left town until it blows over." He grinned. "We could get a good price for these hotel rooms; the city is filling up 'way past capacity with Bishop Short's shock troops."

"Well? Isn't it about time to get the family elsewhere?"

"Jubal, don't worry about it. That car never had a chance to report, even by radio. I'm keeping a close watch. It's no trouble, now that Jill is over her misconceptions about 'wrongness' in discorporating persons who have wrongness in them. I used to have to go to all sorts of complicated expedients to protect us. But now Jill knows that I do it only as fullness is grokked." The Man from Mars grinned boyishly. "Last night she helped me with a hatchet job� nor was it the first time she has done so."

"What sort of a job?"

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

"Aren't you afraid of playing God, lad?"

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

Another sky car started to land and vanished just before touching; Jubal hardly thought it worth comment. "How many did you find worthy of being tossed out of the game last night?"

"Oh, quite a number. About a hundred and fifty. I guess - I didn't count. This is a large city, you know. But for a while it is going to be an unusually decent one. No cure, of course - there is no cure, short of acquiring a hard discipline." Mike looked unhappy. "And that is what I must ask you about, Father. I'm afraid I have misled the people who have followed me. All our brothers."

"How, Mike?"

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

"And I thought so, too, at first. I led them to think so. But, Jubal, I had missed a key point: Humans are not Martians. I made this mistake again and again - corrected myself� and still made it. What works perfectly for Martians does not necessarily work for humans. Oh, the conceptual logic which can be stated only in Martian does work for both races. The logic is invariant� but the data are different. So the results are different."

"I couldn't see why, if people were hungry, some of them didn't volunteer to be butchered so that the rest could eat� on Mars this is obvious - and an honor. I couldn't understand why babies were so prized. On Mars our two little girls in there would simply be dumped outdoors, to live or to die - and on Mars nine out of ten nymphs die their first season. My logic was right but I had misread the data: here babies do not compete but adults do; on Mars adults don't compete at all, they've been weeded out as babies. But one way or another, competing and weeding has to take place� or a race goes down hill.

"But whether or not I was wrong in trying to take the competition out at both ends, I have lately begun to grok that the human race won't let me, no matter what."

Duke stuck his head into the room. "Mike? Have you been watching outside? There is quite a crowd gathering around the hotel."

"I know," agreed Mike. "Tell the others that waiting has not filled." He went on to Jubal, "'Thou art God.' It's not a message of cheer and hope, Jubal. It's a defiance - and an unafraid unabashed assumption of personal responsibility." He looked sad. "But I rarely put it over. A very few, so far just these few here with us today, our brothers, understood me and accepted the bitter half along with the sweet, stood up and drank it - grokked it. The others, the hundreds and thousands of others, either insisted on treating it as a prize without a contest - a 'conversion'� or ignored it entirely. No matter what I said they insisted on thinking of God as something outside themselves. Something that yearns to take every indolent moron to His breast and comfort him. The notion that the effort has to be their own� and that all the trouble they are in is of their own doing� is one that they can't or won't entertain."

The Man from Mars shook his head. "And my failures are so much more numerous than my successes that I am beginning to wonder if full grokking will show that I am on the wrong track entirely - that this race must be split up, hating each other, fighting each other, constantly unhappy and at war even with their own individual selves� simply to have that weeding out that every race must have. Tell me, Father? You must tell me."

"Mike, what in hell ever led you to believe that I was infallible?"

"Perhaps you are not. But every time I have needed to know something, you have always been able to tell me - and fullness always showed that you spoke rightly."

"Damn it, I refuse this apotheosis! But I do see one thing, son. You are the one who has urged everyone else never to be in a hurry - 'waiting will fill,' you say."

"That is right."

"And now you are violating your own prime rule. You have waited only a little while - a very short while by Martian standards, I take it - and already you want to throw in the towel. You've proved that your system can work for a small group - and I'm glad to confirm it; I've never seen such happy, healthy, cheerful people. That ought to be enough to suit you for the short time you've put in. Come back when you have a thousand times this number, all working and happy and unjealous, and we'll talk it over again. Fair enough?"

"You speak rightly, Father."

"But I ain't through. You've been fretting that maybe the fact that you failed to hook more than ninety-nine out of a hundred was because the race couldn't get along without its present evils, had to have them for weeding out. But damn it, lad, you've been doing the weeding out - or rather, the failures have been doing it to themselves by not listening to you. Had you planned to eliminate money and property?"

"Oh, no! Inside the Nest we don't need it, but-"

"Nor does any family that's working well. Yours is just bigger. But outside you need it in dealing with other people. Sam tells me that our brothers, instead of getting unworldly, are slicker with money than ever. Is that right?"

"Oh, yes. Making money is a simple trick, once you grok."

"You've just added a new beatitude: 'Blessed is the rich in spirit, for he shall make dough.' How do our people stack up in other fields? Better or worse than average?"

"Oh, better, of course - if it's anything worth grokking at all. You see, Jubal, it's not a faith; the discipline is simply a method of efficient functioning at any activity you try."

"That's your whole answer, son. If what you say is true - and I'm not judging; I'm asking, you're answering - then that's all the competition you need� and a fairly one-sided race, too. If one tenth of one percent of the population is capable of getting the news, then all you have to do is show them - and in a matter of some generations all the stupid ones will die out and those with your discipline will inherit the Earth. Whenever that is - a thousand years from now, or ten thousand - will be plenty soon enough to worry about whether some new hurdle is necessary to make them jump higher. But don't go getting faint-hearted because only a handful have turned into angels overnight. Personally, I never expected any of them to manage it. I simply thought you were making a damn fool of yourself by pretending to be a preacher."

Mike sighed and smiled. "I was beginning to be afraid I was - worrying that I had let my brothers down."

"I still wish you had called it 'Cosmic Halitosis' or some such. But the name doesn't matter. If you've got the truth, you can demonstrate it. Show people. Talking about it doesn't prove it."

The Man from Mars stood up. "You've got me all squared away, Father. I'm ready now. I grok the fullness." He looked toward the doorway. "Yes, Patty. I heard you. The waiting is ended."

"Yes, Michael."