Stranger in a Strange Land

She came back to their flat one day to find him sitting, not in trance but doing nothing, and surrounded by books—many books: The Talmud, the Kama Sutra, Bibles in various versions, the Book of the Dead, the Book of Mormon, Patty’s precious copy of the New Revelation, Apocrypha of various sorts, the Koran, the unabridged Golden Bough, The Way, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the sacred writings of a dozen other religions major and minor—even such deviant oddities as Crowley’s Book of the Law.

“Trouble, dear?”

“Jill, I don’t grok.” He waved his hand at the books.

(“Waiting, Michael. Waiting for fullness is—”)

“I don’t think waiting will ever fill it. Oh, I know what’s wrong; I’m not really a man, I’m a Martian—a Martian in a body of the wrong shape.”

“You’re plenty of man for me, dear—and I love the way your body is shaped.”

“Oh, you grok what I’m talking about. I don’t grok people. I don’t understand this multiplicity of religions. Now among my people—”

“Your people, Mike?”

“Sorry. I should have said that, among the Martians, there is only one religion—and that one is not a faith, it’s a certainty. You grok it. ‘Thou art God!’”

“Yes,” she agreed. “I do grok… in Martian. But you know, dearest, that it doesn’t say the same thing in English… or any other human speech. I don’t know why.”

“Mmmm… on Mars, when we needed to know anything—anything at all—we could consult the Old Ones and the answer was never wrong. Jill, is it possible that we humans don’t have any ‘Old Ones?’ No souls, that has to mean. When we discorporate—die!—do we die dead? die all over and nothing left? Do we live in ignorance because it doesn’t matter? Because we are gone and not a rack behind in a time so short that a Martian would use it for one long contemplation? Tell me, Jill. You’re human.”

She smiled with sober serenity. “You yourself have told me. You have taught me to know eternity and you can’t take it away from me, ever. You can’t die, Mike—you can only discorporate.” She gestured down at herself with both hands. “This body that you have taught me to see through your eyes… and that you have loved so well, someday it will be gone. But I shall not be gone… I am that I am! Thou art God and I am God and we are God, eternally. I am not sure where I will be, or whether I will remember that I was once Jill Boardman who was happy trotting bedpans and equally happy strutting her stuff in her buff under bright lights. I have liked this body—”

With a most uncustomary gesture of impatience Mike threw away her clothes.

“Thank you, dear,” she said quietly, not stirring from where she was seated. “It has been a nice body to me—and to you—to both of us who thought of it. But I don’t expect to miss it when I am through with it. I hope that you will eat it when I discorporate.”

“Oh, I’ll eat you, all right—unless I discorporate first.”

“I don’t suppose that you will. With your much greater control over your sweet body I suspect that you can live several centuries at least. If you wish it. Unless you choose to discorporate sooner.”

“I might. But not now. Jill, I’ve tried and tried. How many churches have we attended?”

“All the sorts there are in San Francisco, I think—except, possibly, for little, secret ones that don’t list their addresses. I don’t recall how many times we have been to seekers’ services.”

“That’s just to comfort Pat—I’d never go again if you weren’t sure that she needs to know that we haven’t given up.”

“She does need to. And we can’t lie about it—you don’t know how and I can’t, not to Patty. Nor any brother.”

“Actually,” he admitted, “the Fosterites do have quite a bit on the ball. All twisted, of course. They are clumsy, groping—the way I was as a carney. And they’ll never correct their mistakes, because this thing—” He caused Patty’s book to lift. “—is mostly crap!”

“Yes. But Patty doesn’t see those parts of it. She is wrapped in her own innocence. She is God and behaves accordingly… only she doesn’t know who She is.”