Stranger in a Strange Land

Jill took a sip. “We grow ever closer.” She passed the glass to Mike.

He looked at Jill, then at Patricia. “I thank you for water, my brother.” He took a sip. “Pat, I give you the water of life. May you always drink deep.” He passed the glass to her.

Patricia took it. “Thank you. Thank you, oh my dears! The ‘water of life’—oh, I love you both!” She drank thirstily.

Jill took the glass from her, finished it. “Now we grow closer, my brothers.”

(“Jill?”)

(“Now!!!”)

Michael lifted his new water brother, wafted her in and placed her gently on the bed.

Valentine Michael Smith had grokked, when first he had known it fully, that physical human love—very human and very physical—was not simply a necessary quickening of eggs, nor was it mere ritual through which one grew closer; the act itself was a growing-closer, a very great goodness—and (so far as he knew) unknown even to the Old Ones of his former people. He was still grokking it, trying at every opportunity to grok its fullness. But he had long since broken through any fear that heresy lay in his suspicion that even the Old Ones did not know this ecstasy—he grokked already that these his new people held spiritual depths unique. Happily he tried to sound them, with no inhibitions from his childhood to cause him guilt or reluctance of any sort.

His human teachers had been unusually well qualified to instruct his innocence without bruising it. The result was as unique as he himself.

Jill was very pleased but not really surprised to find that “Aunt Patty” accepted as inevitable and necessary, and with forthright fullness, the fact that sharing water in a very ancient Martian ceremony with Mike led at once to sharing Mike himself in a human rite ancient itself. Jill was somewhat surprised (although still pleased) at Pat’s continued calm acceptance when it certainly had been demonstrated to their new water brother that Mike was capable of more miracles than he had disclosed up to then. However, Jill did not then know that Patricia Paiwonski had met a holy man before—Patricia expected more of holy men. Jill herself was simply serenely happy that a cusp had been reached and passed with right action and was ecstatically happy herself to grow closer as the cusp was determined—all of which she thought in Martian and quite differently.

In time they rested and Jill had Mike treat Patty to a bath given by telekinesis, and herself sat on the edge of the tub and squealed and giggled when the older woman did. It was just play, very human and not at all Martian; Mike had done it for Jill on the initial occasion almost lazily rather than raise himself up out of the water—an accident, more or less. Now it had become a custom, one that Jill knew Patty would like. It tickled Jill to see Patty’s face when she found herself being scrubbed all over by gentle, invisible hands… and then, presently dried in a whisk with neither towel nor blast of air.

Patricia blinked. “After that I need a drink. A big one.”

“Certainly, darling.”

“And I still want to show you kids my pictures… all of them.” Patricia followed Jill out into the living room, Mike in train, and stood in the middle of the rug. “But first look at me. Look at me, not at my pictures. What do you see?”

With mild regret Mike stripped her tattoos off in his mind and looked at his new brother without her decorations. He liked her tattoos very much; they were peculiarly her own, they set her apart and made her a self. They seemed to him to give her a slightly Martian flavor, in that she did not have the bland sameness of most humans. He had already memorized them all and had thought pleasantly of having himself tattooed all over, once be grokked what should be pictured. The life of his father, water brother Jubal? He would have to ponder it. He would discuss it with Jill—and Jill might wish to be tattooed, too. What designs would make Jill more beautifully Jill? In the way in which perfume multiplied Jill’s odor without changing it?