Stranger in a Strange Land

«Rapport. He was inside Jill's head, mostly, but we were all closely together. Jubal, I can't explain it; you have to do it. When the explosion hit. he moved us here. Then he went back and saved the minor stuff.»

Jubal frowned. Caxton said impatiently, «Teleportation, of course. What's so hard to grok, Jubal? You told me to open my eyes and know a miracle when I saw one. So I did and they were. Only they aren't miracles, any more than radio is. Do you grok radio? Or stereovision? Or electronic computers?»

«Me? No.»

«Nor I. But I could if I took the time and sweat to learn the language of electronics; it's not miraculous — just complex. Teleportation is simple, once you learn the language — it's the language that is difficult.»

«Ben, you can teleport things?»

«Me? They don't teach that in Kindergarten. I'm a deacon by courtesy, simply because I'm “First Called” — but my progress is about Fourth Circle. I'm just beginning to get control of my own body. Patty is the only one who uses teleportation regularly … and I'm not sure she ever does it without Mike's support. Oh, Mike says she's capable of it, but Patty is curiously naive and humble for the genius she is and feels dependent on Mike. Which she needn't be. Jubal, I grok this: we don't actually need Mike.You could have been the Man from Mars. Or me. Mike is like the first man to discover fire. Fire was there all along — after he showed them how, anybody could use it … anybody with sense enough not to get burned with it. Follow me?»

«I grok, somewhat.»

«Mike is our Prometheus — but that's all. Mike keeps emphasizing this. Thou art God, I am God, he is God — all that groks. Mike is a man like the rest of us. A superior man, admittedly — a lesser man, taught the things the Martians know, might have set himself up as a pipsqueak god. Mike is above that temptation. Prometheus … but that's all.»

Jubal said slowly, «Prometheus paid a high price for bringing fire to mankind.»

«Don't think that Mike doesn't! He pays with twenty-four hours of work every day, seven days a week, trying to teach us how to play with matches without getting burned. Jill and Patty lowered the boom on him, made him take one night a week off, long before I joined.» Caxton smiled. «But you can't stop Mike. This burg is loaded with gambling joints, mostly crooked since it's against the law here. So Mike spent his night off bucking crooked games — and winning. They tried to mug him, they tried to kill him, they tried knock-out drops and muscle boys — he simply ran up a reputation as the luckiest man in town … which brought more people into the Temple. So they tried to keep him out — a mistake. Cold decks froze solid, wheels wouldn't spin, dice rolled nothing but box cars. At last they put up with him … requesting him to move on after he had won a few grand. Mike would do so, if asked politely.»

Caxton added, «So that's one more power bloc against us. Not just the Fosterites and other churches — but now the syndicate and the city machine. I think that job on the Temple was done by professionals — I doubt if the Fosterite goon squads touched it.»

While they talked, people came in, went out, formed groups. Jubal found in them a most unusual feeling, an unhurried relaxation that was also dynamic tension. No one seemed excited, never in a hurry … yet everything they did seemed purposeful, even gestures as apparently unpremeditated as encountering one another and marking it with a kiss or a greeting. It felt to Jubal as if each move had been planned by a choreographer.

The quiet and the increasing tension — or “expectancy”, he decided; these people were not tense in any morbid fashion — reminded Jubal of something. Surgery? With a master at work, no noise, no lost motions?

Then he remembered. Many years earlier when chemically-powered rockets were used for the earliest human probing of space, he had watched a count-down in a blockhouse. He recalled the same low voices, the relaxed, very diverse but coordinated actions, the same rising exultant expectancy. They were «waiting for fullness,» that was certain. But for what? Why were they so happy? Their Temple and all they had built had been destroyed … yet they seemed like kids on a night before Christmas.

Jubal had noted when he arrived that the nudity Ben had been disturbed by on his first visit to the nest did not seem to be the practice here, although private enough for it. He failed to notice it when it did appear; he had become so much in the unique close-family mood that being dressed or not was irrelevant.