Stranger in a Strange Land

It was a moderately large room, luxuriously appointed in a style that reminded Jill of undertakers’ parlors, but it was filled with cheerful music. The basic theme seemed to be “Jingle Bells” but a Congo beat had been added and the arrangement so embroidered that its ancestry was not certain. Jill found that she liked it and that it made her want to dance.

The far wall of the room was clear glass and appeared to be not even that. Boone said briskly, “Here we are, folks—in the Presence.” He knelt quickly, facing the empty wall. “You don’t have to kneel, you’re pilgrims—but do so if it makes you feel better. Most pilgrims do. And there he is just as he was when he was called up to Heaven.”

Boone gestured with his cigar. “Don’t he look natural? Preserved by a miracle, his flesh incorruptible. That’s the very chair he used to sit in when he wrote his messages… and that’s just the pose he was in when he went to Heaven. He never moved and he’s never been moved—we just built the Tabernacle right around him… removing the old church, naturally, and preserving its sacred stones.” Opposite them about twenty feet away, facing them, seated in a big arm chair remarkably like a throne, was an old man. He looked as if he were alive—and he reminded Jill strongly of an old goat that had been on the farm where she had spent her childhood summers. Yes, even to the out-thrust lower lip, the cut of the whiskers, and the fierce, brooding eyes. Jill felt her skin prickle; the Archangel Foster made her uneasy. Mike said to her in Martian, “My brother, this is an Old One?”

“I don’t know, Mike. They say he is.”

He answered in Martian, “I do not grok an Old One here.”

“I don’t know, I tell you.”

“I grok wrongness.”

“Mike! Remember!”

“Yes, Jill.”

Boone said, “What was he saying, little lady? What was your question, Mr. Smith?”

Jill said quickly, “It wasn’t anything. Senator, can I get out of here? I feel faint.” She glanced back at the corpse. There were billowing clouds above it and one shaft of light always cut through and sought out the face. The light changed enough so that the face seemed to change and the eyes seemed bright and alive.

Boone said soothingly, “It sometimes has that effect, the first time. But you ought to look at him from the seekers’ gallery below us—looking up at him and with entirely different music. Entirely. Heavy music, with subsonics in it, I believe it is—reminds ‘em of their sins. Now this room is a Happy Thoughts meditation chamber for high officials of the Church—I often come here and sit and smoke a cigar for an hour if I’m feeling the least bit low.”

“Please, Senator!”

“Oh, certainly. You just wait outside, m’dear. Mr. Smith, you stay as long as you like.”

Jubal said, “Senator, hadn’t we best get on into the services?”

They all left. Jill was shaking and squeezed Mike’s hand—she had been scared silly that Mike might do something to that grisly exhibit—and get them all lynched, or worse.

Two guards, dressed in uniforms much like the Cherubim but more ornate, thrust crossed spears in their path when they reached the portal of the Sanctuary. Boone said reprovingly, “Come, come! These pilgrims are the Supreme Bishop’s personal guests. Where are their badges?”

The confusion was straightened out, the badges produced and with them their door prize numbers. A respectful usher said, “This way, Bishop,” and led them up wide stairs and to a center box directly facing the stage.

Boone stood back for them to go in. “You first, little lady.” There followed a tussle of wills; Boone wanted to sit next to Mike in order to answer his questions. Harshaw won and Mike sat between Jill and Jubal, with Boone on the aisle.

The box was roomy and luxurious, with very comfortable, self-adjusting seats, ash trays for each seat and drop tables for refreshments folded against the rail in front of them. Their balcony position placed them about fifteen feet over the heads of the congregation and not more than a hundred feet from the altar. In front of it a young priest was warming up the crowd, shuffling to the music and shoving his heavily muscled arms back and forth, fists clenched, like pistons. His strong bass voice joined the choir from time to time, then he would lift it in exhortation:

“Up off your behinds! What are you waiting for? Gonna let the Devil catch you napping’?”

The aisles were very wide and a snake dance was moving down the right aisle, across in front of the altar, and weaving back up the center aisle, feet stomping in time with the priest’s piston-like jabs and with the syncopated chant of the choir. Clumps clump, moan!… clump, clump, moan! Jill felt the beat of it and realized sheepishly that it would be fun to get into that snake dance—as more and more people were doing under the brawny young priest’s taunts.