Stranger in a Strange Land

“Jill means,” Patricia put in, “the end of the service where she is All Mother, Mater Deum Magna. Kids, I must rush.”

“Never hurry, Pattycake.”

“I gotta rush so I won’t have to hurry. Ben, I must put Honey Bun to bed and go down and take my class—so kiss me good-night now. Please?”

Ben found himself kissing good-night a woman still wrapped most thoroughly by a giant snake—and decided that he could think of better ways… say wearing full armor. But he tried to ignore Honey Bun and treat Patty as she deserved to be treated.

Jill kissed her and said, “Stop by and tell Mike to stall until I get there, pretty please.”

“He will anyhow. ’Night, dears.” She left unhurriedly.

“Ben, isn’t she a lamb?”

“She certainly is. Although she had me baffled at first.”

“I grok. But it’s not because she’s tattooed nor because of her snakes, I know. She baffled you—she baffles everybody—because Patty never has any doubts; she just automatically always does the right thing. She’s very much like Mike. She’s the most advanced of any of us—she ought to be high priestess. But she won’t take it because her tattoos would make some of the duties difficult—be a distraction at least—and she doesn’t want them taken off.”

“How could you possibly take off that much tattooing? With a flensing knife? It would kill her.”

“Not at all, dear. Mike could take them off completely, not leave a trace, and not even hurt her. Believe me, dear, he could, But he groks that she does not think of them as belonging to her; she’s just their custodian—and he groks with her about it. Come sit down. Dawn will be in with supper for all three of us in a moment—I must eat while we visit or I won’t have a chance until tomorrow. That’s poor management with all eternity to draw from… but I didn’t know when you would get here and you happen to arrive on a very full day. But tell me what you think of what you’ve seen? Dawn tells me you saw an outsiders’ service, too.”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“Mike,” Caxton said slowly, “has certainly blossomed out. I think he could sell shoes to snakes.”

“I’m quite sure he could. But he never would because it would be wrong—snakes don’t need them. What’s the matter, Ben? I grok there’s something bothering you.”

“No,” he answered. “Certainly not anything I can put my finger on. Oh, I’m not much for churches… but I’m not against them exactly—certainly not against this one. I guess I just don’t grok it.”

“I’ll ask you again in a week or two. There’s no hurry.”

“I won’t be here even a week.”

“You have some columns on the spike”—it was not a question.

“Three fresh ones. But I shouldn’t stay even that long.”

“I think you will… then you’ll phone in a few… probably about the Church. By then I think you will grok to stay much longer.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Waiting is, until fullness. You know it’s not a church?”

“Well, Patty did say something of the sort.”

“Let’s say it’s not a religion. It is a church, in every legal and moral senses—and I suppose our Nest is a monastery. But we’re not trying to bring people to God; that’s a contradiction in terms, you can’t even say it in Martian. We’re not trying to save souls, because souls can’t be lost. We’re not trying to get people to have faith, because what we offer is not faith but truth—truth they can check; we don’t urge them to believe it. Truth for practical purposes, for here-and-now, truth as matter of fact as an ironing board and as useful as a loaf of bread… so practical that it can make war and hunger and violence and hate as unnecessary as… as—well, as clothes here in the Nest. But they have to learn Martian first. That’s the only hitch-finding people who are honest enough to believe what they see, and then are willing to do the hard work—it is hard work—of learning the language it can be taught in. A composer couldn’t possibly write down a symphony in English… and this sort of symphony can’t be stated in English any more than Beethoven’s Fifth can be.” She smiled. “But Mike never hurries. Day after day he screens hundreds of people, finds a few dozen… and out of those a very few trickle into the Nest and he trains them further. And someday Mike will have some of us so thoroughly trained that we can go out and start other nests, and then it can begin to snowball. But there’s no hurry. None of us, even us in the Nest, are really trained. Are we, dear?”

Ben looked up, somewhat startled by Jill’s last three words—then was really startled to find bending over him to offer him a plate a woman whom he belatedly recognized as the other high priestess—Dawn, yes, that was right. His surprise was not reduced by the fact that she was dressed in Patricia’s fashion, minus tattoos.

But Dawn was not startled. She smiled and said, “Your supper, my brother Ben. Thou art God.”