Stranger in a Strange Land

The question was of greater interest because it had not been abstract art, but religious (in the Terran sense) and strongly emotional—it described the contact between the Martian Race and the people of the fifth planet, an event that had happened long ago but which was alive and important to Martians in the sense in which one death by crucifixion remained alive and important to humans after two Terran millennia. The Martian Race had encountered the people of the fifth planet, grokked them completely, and in due course had taken action; the asteroid ruins were all that remained, save that the Martians continued to cherish and praise the people they had destroyed. This new work of art was one of many attempts to grok all parts of the whole beautiful experience in all its complexity in one opus. But before it could be judged it was necessary to grok how to judge it.

It was a very pretty problem.

* * *

On the third planet Valentine Michael Smith was not concerned with the burning issue on Mars; he had never heard of it. His Martian keeper and his keeper’s water brothers had not mocked him with things he could not grasp. Smith knew of the destruction of the fifth planet and its emotional importance—just as any human school boy learns of Troy and Plymouth Rock, but he had not been exposed to art that he could not grok. His education had been unique, enormously greater than that of his nestlings, enormously less than that of an adult; his keeper and his keeper’s advisers among the Old Ones had taken a large passing interest in seeing just how much and of what sort this nestling alien could learn. The results had taught them more about the potentialities of the human race than that race had yet learned about itself, for Smith had grokked very readily things that no other human being had ever learned.

But just at present Smith was simply enjoying himself with a lightheartedness he had not experienced in many years. He had won a new water brother in Jubal, he had acquired many new friends, he was enjoying delightful new experiences in such kaleidoscopic quantity that he had no time to grok them; he could only file them away to be relived at leisure.

His brother Jubal had assured him that be would grok this strange and beautiful place more quickly if he would learn to read, so he had taken a full day off to learn to read really well and quickly, with Jill pointing to words and pronouncing them for him. It had meant staying out of the swimming pool all that day, which had been a great sacrifice, as swimming (once he got it through his head that it was actually permitted) was not merely an exuberant, sensuous delight but almost unbearable religious ecstasy. If Jill and Jubal had not told him to do otherwise, he would never have come out of the pool at all.

Since he was not permitted to swim at night he read all night long. He was zipping through the Encyclopedia Britannica and was sampling Jubal’s medicine and law libraries as dessert. His brother Jubal had seen him leafing rapidly through one of the books, had stopped him and questioned him about what he had read. Smith had answered carefully, as it reminded him of the tests the Old Ones had occasionally given him. His brother had seemed a bit upset at his answers and Smith had found it necessary to go into an hour’s contemplation on that account, for he had been quite sure that he had answered with the words written in the book even though he did not grok them all.

But he preferred the pool to the books, especially when Jill and Miriam and Larry and Anne and the rest were all splashing each other. He had not learned at once to swim as they did, but had discovered the first time that he could do something they could not. He had simply gone down to the bottom and lain there, immersed in quiet bliss—where upon they had hauled him out with such excitement that he had almost been forced to withdraw himself, had it not been evident that they were concerned for his welfare.

Later that day he had demonstrated the matter to Jubal, remaining on the bottom for a delicious time, and he had tried to teach it to his brother Jill… but she had become disturbed and he had desisted. It was his first clear realization that there were things that he could do that these new friends could not. He thought about it a long time, trying to grok its fullness.

* * *

Smith was happy; Harshaw was not. He continued his usual routine of aimless loafing, varied only by casual and unplanned observation of his laboratory animal, the Man from Mars. He arranged no schedule for Smith, no programme of study, no regular physical examinations, but simply allowed Smith to do as he pleased, run wild, like a puppy growing up on a ranch. What supervision Smith received came from Jill: more than enough, in Jubal’s grumpy opinions as he took a dim view of males being reared by females.