Stranger in a Strange Land

“It is impossible for Dawn to speak other than rightly about this. And—forgive me—we were there. In her mind but not in yours… and you were there with us, sharing.”

Jubal refrained from saying that the only times he had ever felt even faintly that he could read minds was precisely in that situation… and then not thoughts, but emotions. He simply regretted without bitterness that he was not half a century younger—in which case he knew that Dawn would have had that “Miss” taken off the front of her name and he would have boldly risked another marriage, in spite of his scars. Also that he would not trade the preceding night for all the years that might be left to him. In essence, Mike was dead right. “Go on, sir.”

“That’s what it should be. But that’s what I slowly grokked it rarely was. Instead it was indifference and acts mechanically performed and rape and seduction as a game no better than roulette but with poorer odds and prostitution and celibacy by choice and by no choice and fear and guilt and hatred and violence and children brought up to think that sex was ‘bad’ and ‘shameful’ and ‘animal’ and something to be hidden and always distrusted. This lovely perfect thing, male-femaleness, turned upside down and inside out and made horrible.

“And every one of those wrong things is a corollary of ‘jealousy.’ Jubal, I couldn’t believe it. I still don’t grok ‘jealousy’ in fullness, it seems an insanity to me, a terrible wrongness. When I first learned what this ecstasy was, my first thought was that I wanted to share it, share it at once with all my water brothers—directly with those female, indirectly by inviting more sharing with those male. The notion of trying to keep this never-failing fountain to myself would have horrified me, had I thought of it. But I was incapable of thinking of it. And in perfect corollary I had not the slightest wish to attempt this miracle with anyone I did not already love and trust—Jubal, I am physically unable even to attempt love with a female who has not already shared water with me. And this same thing runs all through the Nest. Psychic impotence unless our spirits blend as our flesh blends.”

Jubal had been listening and thinking mournfully that it was a fine system—for angels—when a sky car landed on the private landing flat diagonally in front of him. He turned his head to see and, as its skids touched, it disappeared, vanished.

“Trouble?” he said.

“No trouble,” Mike denied. “It’s just that they are beginning to suspect that we are here—that I am here, rather. They think the rest are dead. The Innermost Temple, I mean. The other circles aren’t being bothered especially… and many of them have left town until it blows over.” He grinned. “We could get a good price for these hotel rooms; the city is filling up ’way past capacity with Bishop Short’s shock troops.”

“Well? Isn’t it about time to get the family elsewhere?”

“Jubal, don’t worry about it. That car never had a chance to report, even by radio. I’m keeping a close watch. It’s no trouble, now that Jill is over her misconceptions about ‘wrongness’ in discorporating persons who have wrongness in them. I used to have to go to all sorts of complicated expedients to protect us. But now Jill knows that I do it only as fullness is grokked.” The Man from Mars grinned boyishly. “Last night she helped me with a hatchet job… nor was it the first time she has done so.”

“What sort of a job?”

“Oh, just a follow-up on the jail break. Some few of those in jail or prison I couldn’t release; they were vicious. So I got rid of them before I got rid of the bars and doors. But I have been slowly grokking this whole city for many months now… and quite a few of the worst were not in jail. Some of them were even in public office. I have been waiting, making a list, making sure of fullness in each case. So, now that we are leaving this city—they don’t live here anymore. Missing. They needed to be discorporated and sent back to the foot of the line to try again. Incidentally, that was the grokking that changed Jill’s attitude from squeamishness to hearty approval: when she finally grokked in fullness that it is utterly impossible to kill a man—that all we were doing was much like a referee removing a man from a game for ‘unnecessary roughness.’”

“Aren’t you afraid of playing God, lad?”

Mike grinned with unashamed cheerfulness. “I am God. Thou art God… and any jerk I remove is God, too. Jubal, it is said that God notes each sparrow that falls. And so He does. But the proper closest statement of it that can be made in English is that God cannot avoid noting the sparrow because the sparrow is God. And when a cat stalks a sparrow both of them are God, carrying out God’s thoughts.”

Another sky car started to land and vanished just before touching; Jubal hardly thought it worth comment. “How many did you find worthy of being tossed out of the game last night?”