Stranger in a Strange Land

“Oh, no, no, no!” Miriam looked almost shocked. “That wouldn’t be difficult, that would be impossible. A Martian dictionary in Martian. There’s never been one before; the Martians don’t need such things. Uh, my part of it is just clerical; I type what they do. Mike and Stinky—mostly Stinky—worked out a phonetic script for Martian, eighty-one characters. So we had an I.B.M. typer worked over for those characters, using both upper and lower case—Boss darling, I’m ruined as a secretary; I type touch system in Martian now. Will you love me anyhow? When you shout ‘Front!’ and I’m not good for anything? I can still cook… and I’m told that I have other talents.”

“I’ll learn to dictate in Martian.”

“You will, before Mike and Stinky get through with you. I grok. Eh, Patty?”

“You speak rightly, my brother.”

They returned to the living room, Caxton joined them and suggested finding a quieter place, away from the giant babble box, led Jubal down a passage and into another living room. “You seem to have most of this floor.”

“All of it,” agreed Ben. “Four suites—the Secretarial; the Presidential, the Royal, and Owner’s Cabin, opened into one and not accessible other than by our own landing fiat, except through a foyer that is not very healthy without help. You were warned about that?”

“Yes.”

“We don’t need so much room right now… but we may: people are flocking in.”

“Ben, how can you hide from the cops as openly as this? The hotel staff alone will give you away.”

“Oh, there are ways—the staff doesn’t come up here. You see, Mike owns the hotel.”

“So much the worse, I would think—”

“So much the better… unless our doughty police chief has Mr. Douglas on his payroll, which I doubt. Mike bought it through about four links of dummies and Douglas doesn’t snoop into why Mike wants things done. Douglas doesn’t despise me quite as much since Os Kilgallen took over my column, I think, but nevertheless he doesn’t want to surrender control to me—he does what Mike wants. The hotel is a sound investment; it makes money but the owner of record is one of our clandestine Ninth Circle. So the owner decides he wants this floor for the season and the manager can’t and doesn’t and wouldn’t want to inquire into why, or how many guests of his own the owner has coming or going—he likes his job; Mike is paying him more than he’s worth. It’s a pretty good hide-out, for the time being. ’Till Mike groks where we will go next.”

“Sounds like Mike had anticipated a need for a hide-out.”

“Oh, I’m sure he did. Almost two weeks ago Mike cleared out the nestlings’ nest except for Maryam and her baby; Maryam is needed for the job she’s on. Mike sent the parents with children to other cities—places he means to open temples, I think—and when the time came, there were just about a dozen of us to move. No sweat.”

“As it was, you barely got out with your lives, I take it.” Jubal wondered how they had even managed to grab clothes in view of how they probably were not dressed. “You lost all the contents of the Nest? All your personal possessions?”

“Oh, no, not anything we really wanted. Stuff like Stinky’s language tapes and a trick typer that Maryam uses; even that horrible Madame Tussaud picture of you. And Mike grabbed our clothes and some cash that was on hand.”

Jubal objected, “You say Mike did this? But I thought Mike was in jail when the fire broke out.”

“Uh, he was and he wasn’t. His body was in jail… curled up in withdrawal. But he was actually with us. You understand?”

“Uh, I don’t grok.”

“Rapport. He was inside Jill’s head, mostly, but we were all pretty closely tied in together. Jubal, I can’t explain it; you have to do it. When the explosion hit, he moved us over here. Then he went back and saved the minor stuff worth saving.”

Jubal frowned. Caxton said impatiently, “Teleportation, of course. What’s so hard to grok about it, Jubal? You yourself told me to come down here and open my eyes and know a miracle when I saw one. So I did and they were. Only they aren’t miracles, any more than radio is a miracle. Do you grok radio? Or stereovision? Or electronic computers?”

“Me? No.”

“Nor do I, I’ve never studied electronics. But I’m sure I could if I took the time and the hard sweat to learn the language of electronics. I don’t think it’s miraculous—just complex. Teleportation is quite simple, once you learn the language—it’s the language that is so difficult.”

“Ben, you can teleport things?”