Stranger in a Strange Land

The one man who was still seated had strapped to him a small gun.

The car itself had built into it two enormous guns—plus other things which Smith could not grok but which he felt had wrongness also.

He stopped and seriously considered twisting the car, its contents, and all—letting it topple away. But, in addition to his lifelong inhibition against wasting food, he knew that he did not fully grok what was happening. Better to move slowly, watch carefully, and help and share at the cusp by following Jubal’s lead … and if right action for him was to remain passive, then go back to his body when the cusp had passed and discuss it all with Jubal later.

He went back outside the car and watched and listened and waited.

The first man to get out talked with Jubal concerning many things which Smith could only file without grokking; they were beyond his experience. The other men got out and spread out; Smith spread his attention to watch all of them. The car raised, moved backwards, stopped again, which relieved the beings it had sat on; Smith grokked with them to the extent that he could spare attention, trying to soothe their hurtings.

The first man handed papers to Jubal; in turn they were passed to Anne. Smith read them along with her. He recognized their word shapings as being concerned with certain human rituals of healing and balance, but, since he had encountered these rituals only in Jubal’s law library, he did not try to grok the papers then, especially as Jubal seemed quite untroubled by them—the wrongness was elsewhere. He was delighted to recognize his own human name on two of the papers; he always got an odd thrill out of reading it, as if he were two places at once—impossible as that was for any but an Old One.

Jubal and the first man turned and walked toward the pool, with Anne close behind them. Smith relaxed his time sense a little to let them move faster, keeping it stretched just enough so that he could comfortably watch all the men at once. Two of the men closed in and flanked the little group.

The first man stopped near the group of his friends by the pool, looked at them, then took a picture from his pocket, looked at it, and looked at Jill. Smith felt her fear and trouble mount and he became very alert. Jubal had told him, “Protect Jill. Don’t worry about wasting food. Don’t worry about anything else. Protect Jill.”

Of course, he would protect Jill in any case, even at the risk of acting wrongly in some other fashion. But it was good to have Jubal’s blanket reassurance; it left his mind undivided and untroubled.

When the first man pointed at Jill and the two men flanking him hurried toward her with their guns of great wrongness. Smith reached out through his Doppelganger and gave them each that tiny twist which causes to topple away.

The first man stared at where they had been and reached for his gun—and he was gone, too.

The other four started to close in. Smith did not want to twist them. He felt that Jubal would be more pleased with him if he simply stopped them. But stopping a thing, even an ash tray, is work—and Smith did not have his body at hand. An Old One could have managed it, all four together, but Smith did what he could do, what he had to do.

Four feather touches—they were gone.

He felt more intense wrongness from the direction of the car on the ground and went at once to it—grokked to a quick decision, and car and pilot were gone.

He almost overlooked the car riding cover patrol in the air. Smith started to relax when he had disposed of the car on the ground—when suddenly he felt wrongness and trouble increase, and he looked up.

The second car was coming in for a landing right where he was.

Smith stretched his time sense to his personal limit and went to the car in the air, inspected it carefully, grokked that it was as choked with utter wrongness as the first had been… tilted it into neverness. Then he returned to the group by the pool.

All his friends seemed quite excited; Dorcas was sobbing and Jill was holding her and soothing her. Anne alone seemed untouched by the emotions Smith felt seething around him. But wrongness was gone, all of it, and with it the trouble that had disturbed his meditations earlier. Dorcas, he knew, would be healed faster and better by Jill than by anyone—Jill always grokked a hurting fully and at once. Disturbed by emotions around him, slightly apprehensive that he might not have acted in all ways rightly at the point of cusp—or that Jubal might to grok him—Smith decided that he was now free to leave. He slipped back into the pool, found his body, grokked that it was still as he had left it, unharmed—slipped it back on.