Stranger in a Strange Land

“Thou art God.” He came closer to understanding it in English himself now, although it could never have the crystal inevitability of the Martian concept it stood for. In his mind he spoke simultaneously the English sentence and the Martian word and felt closer grokking. Repeating it like a student telling himself that the jewel is in the lotus he sank into nirvana untroubled.

Shortly before midnight he speeded up his heart, resumed normal breathing, ran down his engineering check list, found that all was in order, uncurled and sat up. He had been spiritually weary; now he felt light and gay and clear-headed, eager to get on with the many actions he saw spreading out before him.

He felt a puppyish need for company almost as strong as his earlier necessity for quiet. He stepped out into the upper hail, was delighted to encounter a water brother.

“Hi!”

“Oh. Hello, Mike. My, you look chipper.”

“I feel fine! Where is everybody?”

“Everybody’s asleep but you and me—so keep your voice down. Ben and Stinky went home an hour ago and people started going to bed.”

“Oh.” Mike felt mildly disappointed that Mahmoud had left; he wanted to explain to him his new grokking. But he would do so, when next he saw him.

“I ought to be asleep, too, but I felt like a snack. Are you hungry?”

“Me? Sure, I’m hungry!”

“Good. You ought to be, you missed dinner. Come on, I know there’s some cold chicken and we’ll see what else.” They went downstairs, loaded a tray lavishly. “Let’s take it outside. It’s still plenty warm.”

“That’s a fine idea,” Mike agreed.

“Warm enough to swim if we wanted to—this is a real Indian summer. Just a second, I’ll switch on the floods.”

“Don’t bother,” Mike answered. “I’ll carry the tray, I can see.” He could see, as they all knew, in almost total darkness. Jubal said that his exceptional night-sight probably came from the conditions in which he had grown up, and Mike grokked that that was true but he grokked also that there was more to it than that; his foster parents had taught him to see. As for the night being warm enough, he would have been comfortable naked on Mount Everest, but he knew that his water brothers had very little tolerance for changes in temperature and pressure; he was always considerate of their weakness, once he had learned of it. But be was eagerly looking forward to snow—seeing for himself that each tiny crystal of the water of life was a unique individual, as he had read—walking barefoot in it, rolling in it.

In the meantime he was equally pleased with the unseasonably warm autumn night and the still more pleasing company of his water brother.

“Okay, you carry the tray. I’ll switch on just the underwater lights. That’ll be plenty to eat by.”

“Fine.” Mike liked having light coming up through the ripples; it was a goodness, a beauty, even though he did not need it. They picnicked by the pool, then lay back on the grass and looked at the stars.

“Mike, there’s Mars. It is Mars, isn’t it? Or is it Antares?”

“It is Mars.”

“Mike? What are they doing on Mars?”

He hesitated a long time; the question was too wide in scope to pin down to the sparse English language. “On the side toward the horizon—the southern hemisphere—it is spring; the plants are being taught to grow.”

“‘Taught to grow?’”

He hesitated only slightly. “Larry teaches plants to grow every day. I have helped him. But my people—the Martians, I mean; I grok now that you are my people—teach the plants another way. In the other hemisphere it is growing colder and the nymphs, those who have stayed alive through the summer, are being brought into the nests for quickening and more growing.” He thought. “Of the humans we left at the equator when I came here, one has discorporated and the others are sad.”

“Yes, I heard about it in the news.”

Mike had not heard about it in the news; he had not known it until he was asked. “They should not be sad. Mr. Booker T. W. Jones Food Technician First Class is not sad; the Old Ones have cherished him.”

“You knew him?”

“Yes. He had his own face, dark and beautiful. But he was homesick.”

“Oh, dear! Mike… do you ever get homesick? For Mars?”

“At first I was very homesick,” he answered truthfully. “I was lonely always.” He rolled toward her and took her in his arms. “But now I am not lonely. I grok I shall never be lonely again.”

“Mike darling—” They kissed, and went on kissing.

Presently his water brother said breathlessly. “Oh, my! That was almost worse than the first time.”

“You are all right, my brother?”

“Yes. Yes indeed. Kiss me again.”

Quite a long time later, by cosmic clock, she said, “Mike? Is that—I mean, ‘Do you know—’”

“I know. It is for growing-closer. Now we grow closer.”

“Well, I’ve been ready a long time—goodness, we all have, but never mind, dear; turn just a little. I’ll help.”

As they merged, grokking together, Mike said softly and triumphantly: “Thou art God.”