Stranger in a Strange Land

JUBAL HAD A MISERABLE TRIP. The taxi was automatic and it did just what he expected of machinery, developed trouble in the air and homed for maintenance instead of carrying out its orders. Jubal wound up in New York, farther from where he wanted to be than when he started. There he found that he could make better time by commercial schedule than he could by any charter available. So he arrived hours later than he expected to, having spent the time cooped up with strangers (which he detested) and watching a stereo tank (which he detested only slightly less).

But it did inform him somewhat. He saw an insert of Supreme Bishop Short proclaiming a holy war against the Antichrist, i.e. Mike, and he saw too many shots of what was obviously an utterly ruined building—he failed to see how any of them had escaped alive. Augustus Greaves, in his most solemn lippmann tones, viewed with alarm everything about it but pointed out that, in every spite-fence quarrel, one neighbor supplies the original incitement—and made it plain that, in his weasel-worded opinion, the so-called Man from Mars was at fault.

At last Jubal stood on a municipal landing flat sweltering in winter clothes unsuited to the blazing sun overhead, noted that palm trees still looked like a poor grade of feather duster, regarded bleakly the ocean beyond them, thinking that it was a dirty unstable mass of water, certainly contaminated with grape fruit shells and human excrement even though he couldn’t see such at this distance—and wondered what to do next.

A man wearing a uniform cap approached him. “Taxi, sir?”

“Uh, yes, I think so.” At worst he could go to a hotel, call in the press, and give out an interview that would publicize his whereabouts—there was occasionally some advantage to being newsworthy.

“Over this way, sir.” The cabby led him out of the crowd and to a battered Yellow Cab. As he put his bag in after Jubal, the pilot said quietly, “I offer you Water.”

“Eh? Never thirst.”

“Thou art God.” The hack driver sealed the door and got into his own compartment.

They wound up on a private landing flat on one wing of a big beach hotel—a four-car space, the hotel’s own landing flat being on another wing. The pilot set the cab to home-in alone, took Jubal’s bag and escorted him inside. “You couldn’t have come in too easily via the lobby,” he said conversationally, “as the foyer on this floor is filled with some very badtempered cobras. So if you decide you want to go down to the street, be sure to ask somebody first. Me, or anybody—I’m Tim.”

“I’m Jubal Harshaw.”

“I know, brother Jubal. In this way. Mind your step.” They entered the hotel suite of the large, extreme luxury sort, and Jubal was led on into a bedroom with bath; Tim said, “This is yours,” put Jubal’s bag down and left. On the side table Jubal found water, glasses, ice cubes, and a bottle of brandy, opened but untouched. He was unsurprised to find that it was his preferred brand. He mixed himself a quick one, sipped it and sighed, then took off his heavy winter jacket.

A woman came in bearing a tray of sandwiches. She was wearing a plain dress which Jubal took to be the uniform of a hotel chambermaid since it was quite unlike the shorts, scarves, pediskirts, halters, sarongs and other bright-colored ways to display rather than conceal that characterized most females in this resort. But she smiled at him, said, “Drink deep and never thirst, our brother,” put the tray down, went into his bath and started a tub for him, then checked around by eye in bath and in bedroom. “Is there anything you need, Jubal?”

“Me? Oh, no, everything is just fine. I’ll make a quick cleanup and—is Ben Caxton around?”

“Yes. But he said you would want a bath and get comfortable first. If you want anything, just say so. Ask anyone. Or ask for me. I’m Patty.”

“Oh! The Life of Archangel Foster.”

She dimpled and suddenly was not plain but pretty, and much younger than the thirtyish Jubal had guessed her to be. “Yes.”

“I’d like very much to see it some time. I’m interested in religious art.”

“Now? No, I grok you want your bath. Unless you’d like help with your bath?”

Jubal recalled that his Japanese friend of the many tattoos had been a bath girl in her teens and would have made—had, many times—the same offer. But Patty was not Japanese and he simply wanted to wash away the sweat and stink and get into clothes suited to the climate. “No, thank you, Patty. But I do want to see them, at your convenience.”

“Any time. There’s no hurry.” She left, unhurried but moving silently and very quickly.