Stranger in a Strange Land

He added, «I doubt if we could give her all she needs. She wants to give herself all the time, to everybody. Happiness meetings and snakes and marks aren't enough for Pat. She wants to offer herself on an altar to everybody in the world, always — and make them happy. This New Revelation… I grok it is other things to other people. But that is what it is to Pat.»

«Yes, Mike. Dear Mike.»

«Time to leave. Pick a dress and get your purse. I'll dispose of the trash.»

Jill thought wistfully that she would like to take one or two things. Mike always moved on with just the clothes on his back — and seemed to grok that she preferred it that way. «I'll wear that pretty blue one.»

It floated out, posed over her, wriggled onto her as she held up her hands; the zipper closed. Shoes walked toward her, she stepped into them. «I'm ready.»

Mike had caught the flavor of her thought but not the concept; it was too alien to Martian ideas. «Jill? Do you want to stop and get married?»

She thought about it. «It's Sunday, we couldn't get a license.»

«Tomorrow, then. I grok you would like it.»

«No, Mike.»

«Why not, Jill?»

«We wouldn't be any closer, we already share water. That's true both in English and Martian.»

«Yes.»

«And a reason just in English. I wouldn't have Dorcas and Anne and Miriam — and Patty — think that I was trying to crowd them out.»

«Jill, none of them would think so.»

«I won't chance it, because I don't need it. Because you married me in a hospital room ages and ages ago.» She hesitated. «But there is something you might do for me.»

«What, Jill?»

«Well, you might call me pet names! The way I do you.»

«Yes, Jill. What pet names?»

«Oh!»She kissed him quickly. «Mike, you're the sweetest, most lovable man I've ever met — and the most infuriating creature on two planets! Don't bother. Just call me “little brother” occasionally … it makes me all quivery inside.»

«Yes, Little Brother.»

«Oh, my! Let's get out of here — before I take you back to bed. Meet me downstairs; I'll be paying the bill.» She left suddenly.

They caught the first Greyhound going anywhere. A week later they stopped at home, shared water for a few days, left without saying good-by-good-by was one human custom Mike resisted; he used it only with strangers.

Shortly they were in Las Vegas, stopping in a hotel off the Strip. Mike tried the games while Jill killed time as a show girl. She couldn't sing or dance; parading in a tall improbable hat, a smile, and a scrap of tinsel was the job suited to her in the Babylon of the West. She preferred to work if Mike was busy and, somehow, Mike always got her the job she picked. Since casinos never closed, Mike was busy almost all the time.

Mike was careful not to win much, keeping to limits Jill set. After he had milked each casino for a few thousand he put it all back, never letting himself be the big-money player. Then he took a job as a croupier, letting the little ball roll without interference and studying people, trying to grok why they gambled. He grokked a drive that felt intensely sexual — but he seemed to grok wrongness in this.

Jill assumed that the customers in the palatial theater-restaurant where she worked were just marks — and, as such, did not count. But to her surprise she actively enjoyed displaying herself in front of them. With increasing Martian honesty she examined this feeling. She had always enjoyed being looked at with admiration by men whom she found attractive enough to want to touch — she had been irked that the sight of her body meant nothing to Mike even though he was as devoted to her body as a woman could dream of-

-if he wasn't preoccupied. But he was generous even then; he would let her call him out of trance, shift gears without complaint and be smiling and eager and loving.

Nevertheless, there it was — one of his strangenesses, like his inability to laugh. Jill decided, after her initiation as a show girl, that she enjoyed being visually admired by strangers because this was the one thing Mike did not give her.

Her perfecting self-honesty soon washed out that theory. The men in the audience were mostly too old, too fat, too bald for Jill to find them attractive — and Jill had always been scornful of «lecherous old wolves» — although not of old men, she reminded herself; Jubal could look at her, even use crude language, and not give her any feeling that he wanted to get her alone and grope her.

But now she found that these «lecherous old wolves» did not set her teeth on edge. When she felt their admiring stares or outright lust — and she did feel it, could identify the sources — she did not resent it; it warmed her and made her smugly pleased.