Stranger in a Strange Land

He smiled gently. «I now grok naughty pictures.» Her clothes vanished. «Make naughty pictures.»

«Huh? Yes, dear, of course.» She ran through poses as she had earlier. With each one Mike let her use his eyes to see herself. She looked, and felt his emotions … and felt her own swell in mutually amplified re-echoing. At last she placed herself in a pose as randy as her imagination could devise.

«Naughty pictures are a great goodness,» Mike said gravely.

«Yes! And now I grok them, too! What are you waiting for?»

They quit their jobs and saw every revue on the Strip. Jill found that she «grokked naughty pictures» only through a man's eyes. If Mike watched, she shared his mood, from sensuous pleasure to full rut — but if Mike's attention wandered, the model, dancer, or peeler was just another woman. She decided that this was fortunate; to have discovered in herself Lesbian tendencies would have been too much.

But it was fun — «great goodness» — to see girls through his eyes — and ecstatic goodness to know that, at last, he looked at her the same way.

They moved on to Palo Alto, where Mike tried to swallow the Hoover Library. But scanners could not spin that fast, nor could Mike turn pages fast enough to read them all. At last he admitted that he was taking in data faster than he could grok it, even spending all hours the library was closed in contemplation. With relief Jill moved them to San Francisco and he embarked on systematic research.

She came back to their flat one day to find him doing nothing, surrounded by books — many books: The Talmud, the Kama-Sutra, Bibles in several versions, the Book of the Dead, the Book of Mormon, Patty's precious copy of the New Revelation, various Apocrypha, the Koran, the unabridged Golden Bough, The Way, Science and Health with key to the Scriptures, sacred writings of a dozen other religions major and minor — even such oddities as Crowley's Book of the Law.

«Trouble, dear?»

«Jill, I don't grok.»

(«Waiting, Michael. Waiting for fullness is.»)

«I don't think waiting will fill it. I know what's wrong; I'm not a man, I'm a Martian — a Martian in a body of the wrong shape.»

«You're plenty of man for me, dear — and I love the way your body is shaped.»

«Oh, you grok what I'm talking about. I don't grok people. I don't understand this multiplicity of religions. Now among my people — »

«Yourpeople, Mike?»

«Sorry. I should have said that, among Martians, there is only one religion — and it is not a faith, it's a certainty. You. grok it. “Thou art God!”»

«Yes,» she agreed. «I do grok… in Martian. But, dearest, it doesn't say the same thing in English. I don't know why.»

«Mmmm … on Mars, when we needed to know anything, we asked the Old Ones and the answer was never wrong. Jill, is it possible that we humans don't have “Old Ones”? No souls, I mean. When we discorporate — die — do we die dead … die all over and nothing left? Do we live in ignorance because it doesn't matter? Because we are gone and not a rack behind in time so short that a Martian would use it for one long contemplation? Tell me, Jill. You're human.»

She smiled with sober serenity. «You yourself have told me. You have taught me to know eternity and you can't take it away from me. You can't die, Mike — you can only discorporate.» She gestured at herself with both hands. «This body that you have taught me to see through your eyes … and that you have loved so well, someday it will be gone. But I shall not be gone …I am that I am! Thou art God and I am God and we are God, eternally. I am not sure where I will be, or whether I will remember that I was once Jill Boardman who was happy trotting bedpans and equally happy strutting her stuff in her buff under bright lights. I have liked this body — »

With a most uncustomary gesture of impatience Mike threw away her clothes.

«Thank you, dear,» she said. «It has been a nice body to me — and to you — to both of us who thought of it. But I don't expect to miss it when I am through with it. I hope that you will eat it when I discorporate.»

«Oh, I'll eat you, all right — unless I discorporate first.»

«I don't suppose you will. With your much greater control over your sweet body I suspect that you can live several centuries at least. Unless you choose to discorporate sooner.»

«I might. But not now. Jill, I've tried and tried. How many churches have we attended?»

«All the sorts in San Francisco, I think. I don't recall how many times we have been to seekers' services.»

«That's just to comfort Pat — I'd never go again if you weren't sure that she needs to know that we haven't given up.»

«She does need to. We can't lie — you don't know how and I can't, not to Patty.»

«Actually,» he admitted, «the Fosterites have quite a lot. All twisted, of course. They are groping — the way I did as a carnie. They'll never correct their mistakes, because this — » He caused Patty's book to lift. « — is mostly crap!»