Stranger in a Strange Land

“But our schedule has been disturbed now, and Mike groks that he is going to send Maryam and me away to some Shangri-la to finish the job—or, more correctly, he has grokked that we will grok such a necessity. So Mike is getting months and years of tape completed in order that I can take it away and unhurriedly break it into a phonetic script that humans can learn to read. Besides that, we have stacks of tapes of Mike’s lectures—in Martian—that need to be transcribed into print when the dictionary is finished… lectures that we understood at the time with his help but later will need to be printed, with the dictionary.

“Now I am forced to assume that Maryam and I will be leaving quite soon, because, busy as Mike is with a hundred other things, he’s changed the method. There are eight bedrooms here equipped with tape recorders. Those of us who can do it best—Patty, Jill, myself; Maryam, your friend Allie, some others—take turns in those rooms. Mike puts us into a short trance, pours language—definitions, idioms, concepts—into us for a few moments that feel like hours… then we dictate at once just what he has poured into us, exactly, while it’s still fresh. But it can’t be just anybody, even of the Innermost Temple. It requires a sharp accent and the ability to join the trance rapport and then spill out the results. Sam, for example, has everything but the clear accent—he manages, God knows how, to speak Martian with a Bronx accent. Can’t use him, it would cause endless errata in the dictionary. And that is what Allie is doing now—dictating. She’s still in the semi-trance needed for total recall and, if you interrupt her, she’ll lose what she still hasn’t recorded.”

“I grok,” Jubal agreed, “although the picture of Becky Vesey as a Martian adept shakes me a little. Still, she was once one of the best mentalists in show business; she could give a cold reading that would scare any mark right out of his shoes—and loosen his pocketbook. Say, Stinky, if you are going to be sent away for peace and quiet while you unwind all this data, why don’t you and Maryam come home? Plenty of room for a study & bedroom suite in the new wing.”

“Perhaps we shall. Waiting still is.”

“Sweetheart,” Miriam said earnestly, “that’s a solution I would just plain love if Mike pushes us out of the Nest.”

“If we grok to leave the Nest, you mean.”

“Same thing… you grok.”

“You speak rightly, my dear. But when do we eat around here? I feel a most un-Martian urgency inside. The service was better in the Nest.”

“You can’t expect Patty to work on your dratted old dictionary, see to it that everyone who arrives is comfortable, run errands for Mike, and still have food on the table the instant you get hungry, my love. Jubal, Stinky will never achieve priesthood—he’s a slave to his stomach.”

“Well, so am I.”

“And you girls might give Patty a hand,” her husband added.

“That sounds like a crude hint. You know we do, dear, all she will let us—and Tony will hardly allow anyone in his kitchen… even this kitchen.” She stood up. “Come on, Jubal, and let’s see what’s cooking. Tony will be very flattered if you visit his kitchen.”

Jubal went with her, was a bit bemused to see telekinesis used in preparing food, met Tony, who scowled until he saw who was with her, then was beamingly proud to show off his workshop, accompanied by a spate of invective in mixed English and Italian at the scoundrels who had destroyed “his” kitchen in the Nest. In the meantime a spoon, unassisted, continued to keel a big pot of spaghetti sauce.

Shortly thereafter Jubal declined to be jockeyed into a seat at the head of a long table, grabbed one elsewhere. Patty sat at one end; the head chair remained vacant… except for an eerie feeling which Jubal suppressed that the Man from Mars was sitting there and that everyone present but himself could see him which was true only in some cases.

Across the table from him was Dr. Nelson.

Jubal discovered that he would have been surprised only if Dr. Nelson had not been present. He nodded and said, “Hi, Sven.”

“Hi, Doc. Share water.”

“Never thirst. What are you around here? Staff physician?”

Nelson shook his bead. “Medical student.”

“So. Learn anything?”

“I’ve learned that medicine isn’t necessary.”

“If youda ast me, I coulda told yah. Seen Van?”

“He ought to be in sometime late tonight or early tomorrow. His ship grounded today.”

“Does he always come here?” inquired Jubal.

“Call him an extension student. He can’t spend much time here.”