Stranger in a Strange Land

“Mmmm—” said Mahmoud, “I don’t think we need go into that. In Paradise, rather than a temporary physical condition, it would be a permanent spiritual attribute—more a state of mind. Yes?”

“In that case,” Jubal said emphatically, “I am certain that these are not houris.”

Mahmoud sighed. “In that case I’ll just have to convert one.”

“Why only one? There are still places left in the world where you can have the full quota.”

“No, my friend. In the wise words of the Prophet, while the Legislations permit four, it is impossible for a man to deal justly with more than one.”

“That’s some relief. Which one?”

“We’ll have to see. Maryam, are you feeling spiritual?”

“You go to hell! ‘Houris’ indeed!”

“Jill?”

“Give me a break,” Ben protested. “I’m still working on Jill.”

“Later, Jill. Anne?”

“Sorry. I’ve got a date.”

“Dorcas? You’re my last chance.”

“Stinky,” she said softly, “just how spiritual do you want me to feel?”

* * *

When Mike got inside the house, he went straight upstairs to his room, closed the door, got on the bed, assumed the foetal position, rolled up his eyes, swallowed his tongue, and slowed his heart almost to nothing. He knew that Jill did not like him to do this in the daytime, but she did not object as long as he did not do it publicly. There were so many things that he must not do publicly, but only this one really aroused her ire. He had been waiting to do this ever since he had left that room of terrible wrongness; he needed very badly to withdraw and try to grok all that had happened. For he had done something else that Jill had told him not to. He felt a very human urge to tell himself that it had been forced on him, that it was not his fault; but his Martian training did not permit him this easy escape. He had arrived at a cusp, right action had been required, the choice had been his. He grokked that he had chosen correctly. But his water brother Jill had forbidden this choice—but that would have left him no choice. This was contradiction; at a cusp, choice is. By choice, spirit grows.

He considered whether or not Jill would have approved had he taken other action, not wasting food?

No, he grokked that Jill’s injunction had covered that variant of action, too.

At this point the being sprung from human genes shaped by Martian thought, and who could never be either one, completed one stage of his growth, burst out and ceased to be a nestling. The solitary loneliness of predestined free will was then his and with it the Martian serenity to embrace it, cherish it, savour its bitterness, and accept its consequences. With tragic joy he knew that this cusp was his, not Jill’s. His water brother could teach, admonish, guide—but choice at a cusp was not shared. Here was “ownership” beyond any possible sale, gift, hypothecation; owner and owned grokked fully, inseparable. He eternally was the action he had taken at cusp.

Now that he knew himself to be self he was free to grok ever closer to his brothers, merge without let. Self’s integrity was and is and ever had been. Mike stopped to cherish all his brother selves, the many threesfulfilled on Mars, both corporate and discorporate, the precious few on Earth—the as-yet-unknown powers of three on Earth that would be his to merge with and cherish now that at last long waiting he grokked and cherished himself.

Mike remained in his trance; there was still much to grok, loose ends and bits and pieces to be puzzled over and fitted into his growing pattern—all that he had seen and heard and been at the Archangel Foster Tabernacle (not just the cusp he had encountered when he and Digby had come face to face alone), why Bishop Senator Boone had made him warily uneasy without frightening him, why Miss Dawn Ardent had tasted like a water brother when she was not, the texture and smell of the goodness he had incompletely grokked in the jumping up and down and the wailing—Jubal’s stored conversation both coming and going—Jubal’s words troubled him more than other details; he studied them with great care, compared them with what he had been taught as a nestling, making great effort to bridge between his two languages, the one he thought with and the one he now spoke and was gradually learning to think in, for some purposes. The human word “church” which turned up over and over again among Jubal’s words gave him most knotty difficulty; there was no Martian concept of any sort to match it—unless one took “church” and “worship” and “God” and “congregation” and many other words and equated them all to the totality of the only world he had known during most of his growing-waiting… then forced the concept back awkwardly into English in that phrase which had been rejected (but by each differently) by Jubal, by Mahmoud, by Digby.