Stranger in a Strange Land

“I think you were telling the truth, Jill. But a dream IS a true experience of a sort and so is a hypnotic delusion. But what happens in this room during the next half hour will be seen by a Fair Witness and by cameras which are,” he leaned forward and pressed a button, “rolling right now. I don’t think Anne can be hypnotized when she’s on duty and I’ll lay long odds that cameras can’t be. We should be able to find out what kind of truth we’re dealing with—after which we should be able to decide how to go about forcing the powers-that-be to drop the other shoe… and maybe figure a way that will help Ben at the same time. Go get Mike.”

* * *

Mike’s delay was not mysterious, merely worrisome to him. He had managed to tie his left shoestring to his right—then had stood up, tripped himself, fallen flat, and, in so doing, jerked the knots almost hopelessly tight. He had spent the rest of the time analysing his predicament, concluding correctly why he had failed, and slowly, slowly, slowly getting the snarl untied and the strings correctly tied, one bow to each shoe, unlinked. He had not been aware that his dressing had taken long; he had simply been troubled that he had failed to repeat correctly something which Jill had already taught him. He confessed his failure abjectly to her even though he had repaired it by the time she came to fetch him.

She soothed and reassured him, combed his hair, and herded him in to see Jubal. Harshaw looked up. “Hi, son. Sit down.”

“Hi, Jubal,” Valentine Michael Smith answered gravely, sat down—waited. Jill had to rid herself of the impression that Smith had bowed deeply, when in fact he had not even nodded.

Harshaw put aside a hush-mike and said, “Well, boy, what have you learned today?”

Smith smiled happily, then answered—as always with a slight pause. “I have today learned to do a one-and-a-half gainer. That is a jumping, a dive, for entering our water by—”

“I know, I saw you doing it. But you splashed. Keep your toes pointed, your knees straight, and your feet together.”

Smith looked unhappy. “I rightly did not it do?”

“You did it very rightly, for a first time. Watch how Dorcas does it. Hardly a ripple in the water.”

Smith considered this slowly. “The water groks Dorcas. It cherishes him.”

“‘Her.’ Dorcas is a ‘her,’ not a ‘him.’”

“‘Her,’” Smith corrected. “Then my speaking was false? I have read in Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, published in Springfield, Massachusetts, that the masculine gender includes the feminine gender in speaking. In Hagworth’s Law of Contracts, Fifth Edition, Chicago, Illinois, 1978, on page 1012, it says—”

“Hold it,” Harshaw said hastily. “The trouble is with the English language, not with you. Masculine speech forms do include the feminine, when you are speaking in general—but not when you are talking about a particular person. Dorcas is always ‘she’ or ‘her’—never ‘he’ or ‘him.’ Remember it.”

“I will remember it.”

“You had better remember it—or you may provoke Dorcas into proving just how female she is.” Harshaw blinked thoughtfully. “Jill, is the lad sleeping with you? Or with one of you?”

She barely hesitated, then answered flatly, “So far as I know, Mike doesn’t sleep.”

“You evaded my question.”

“Then perhaps you had better assume that I intended to evade it. However, he is not sleeping with me.”

“Mmm… damn it, my interest is scientific. However, we’ll pursue another line of inquiry. Mike, what else have you learned today?”

“I have learned two ways to tie my shoes. One way is only good for lying down. The other way is good for walking. And I have learned conjugations. ‘I am, thou art, he is, we are, you are, they are, I was, thou wast—’”

“Okay, that’s enough. What else?”

Mike smiled delightedly. “To yesterday I am learning to drive the tractor, brightly, brightly, and with beauty.”

“Eh?” Jubal turned to Jill. ‘When did this happen?”

“Yesterday afternoon while you were napping, Jubal. It’s all right—Duke was very careful not to let him get hurt.”

“Umm… well, obviously he did not get hurt. Mike, have you been reading?”

“Yes, Jubal.”

“What?”

“I have read,” Mike recited carefully, “three more volumes of the Encyclopedia, Maryb to Mushe, Mushr to Ozon, P to Planti. You have told me not to read too much of the Encyclopedia at one reading, so I then stopped. I then read the Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by Master William Shakespeare of London. I then read the Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingait as translated into English by Arthur Machen. I then read The Art of Cross-Examination by Francis Weilman. I then tried to grok what I had read until Jill told me that I must come to breakfast.”

“And did you grok it?”

Smith looked troubled. “Jubal, I do not know.”

“Is anything bothering you, Mike?”

“I do not grok all fullness of what I read. In the history written by Master William Shakespeare I found myself full of happiness at the death of Romeo. Then I read on and learned that he had discorporated too soon—or so I thought I grokked. Why?”