Stranger in a Strange Land

  “Sure. You said to sleep with it. I do.”

  “Bounce up here and give it to Anne. Anne, keep it with your robe.”

  She nodded. Larry answered, “Right away, Boss. Count down coming up?”

  “Just do it,” Jubal found that the Man from Mars was still in front of him, quiet as a sculptured figure. Sculpture? Uh—Jubal searched his memory. Michelangelo’s “David”! Yes, even the puppyish hands and feet, the serenely sensual face, the tousled, too-long hair. “That was all, Mike.”

  “Yes, Jubal.”

  But Mike waited, Jubal said, “Something on your mind, son?”

  “About what I was seeing in that goddamn-noisy-box. You said, ‘But talk to me later.’ ”

  “Oh.” Harshaw recalled the Fosterite broadcast and winced. “Yes, but don’t call that thing a ‘goddam noisy box.’ It is a stereovision receiver.”

  Mike looked puzzled. “It is not a goddam-noisy-box? I heard you not rightly?”

  “It is indeed a goddam noisy box. But you must call it a stereovision receiver.”

  “I will call it a ‘stereovision-receiver.’ Why, Jubal? I do not grok.”

  Harshaw sighed; he had climbed these stairs too many times. Any conversation with Smith turned up human behavior which could not be justified logically, and attempts to do so were endlessly time-consuming. “I do not grok it myself, Mike,” he admitted, “but Jill wants you to say it that way.”

  “I will do it, Jubal. Jill wants it.”

  “Now tell me what you saw and heard—and what you grok of it.”

  Mike recalled every word and action in the babble tank, including all commercials. Since he had almost finished the encyclopedia, he had read articles on “Religion,” “Christianity,” “Islam,” “Judaism,” “Confucianism,” “Buddhism,” and related subjects. He had grokked none of this.

  Jubal learned that: (a) Mike did not know that the Fosterite service was religious; (b) Mike remembered what he had read about religions but had filed such for future meditation, not having understood them; (c) Mike had a most confused notion of what “religion” meant, although he could quote nine dictionary definitions; (d) the Martian language contained no word which Mike could equate with any of these definitions; (e) the customs which Jubal had described to Duke as Martian “religious ceremonies” were not; to Mike such matters were as matter-of-fact as grocery markets were to Jubal; (f) it was not possible to separate in the Martian tongue the human concepts: “religion,” “philosophy,” and “science”—and, since Mike thought in Martian, it was not possible for him to tell them apart. All such matters were “learnings” from the “Old Ones.” Doubt he had ever heard of, nor of research (no Martian word for either); the answers to any questions were available from the Old Ones, who were omniscient and infallible, whether on tomorrow’s weather or cosmic teleology. Mike had seen a weather forecast and had assumed that this was a message from human “Old Ones” for those still corporate. He held a similar assumption concerning the authors of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

  But last, and worst to Jubal, Mike had grokked the Fosterite service as announcing impending discorporation of two humans to join the human “Old Ones”—and Mike was tremendously excited. Had he grokked it rightly? Mike knew that his English was imperfect; he made mistakes through ignorance, being “only an egg.” But had he grokked this correctly? He had been waiting to meet the human “Old Ones,” he had many questions to ask. Was this an opportunity? Or did he require more learnings before he was ready?

  Jubal was saved by the bell; Dorcas arrived with sandwiches and coffee. Jubal ate silently, which suited Smith as his rearing had taught him that eating was a time of meditation. Jubal stretched his meal while he pondered—and cursed himself for letting Mike watch stereo. Oh, the boy had to come up against religions—couldn’t be helped if he was going to spend his life on this dizzy planet. But, damn it, it would have been better to wait until Mike was used to the cockeyed pattern of human behavior . . . and not Fosterites as his first experience!

  A devout agnostic, Jubal rated all religions, from the animism of Kalahari Bushmen to the most intellectualized faith, as equal. But emotionally he disliked some more than others and the Church of the New Revelation set his teeth on edge. The Fosterites’ flat-footed claim to gnosis through a direct line to Heaven, their arrogant intolerance, their football-rally and sales-convention services—these depressed him. If people must go to church, why the devil couldn’t they be dignified, like Catholics, Christian Scientists, or Quakers?

  If God existed (concerning which Jubal maintained neutrality) and if He wanted to be worshipped (a proposition which Jubal found improbable but nevertheless possible in the light of his own ignorance), then it seemed wildly unlikely that a God potent to shape galaxies would be swayed by the whoop-te-do nonsense the Fosterites offered as “worship.”

  But with bleak honesty Jubal admitted that the Fosterites might own the Truth, the exact Truth, nothing but the Truth. The Universe was a silly place at best . . . but the least likely explanation for it was the no-explanation of random chance, the conceit that abstract somethings “just happened” to be atoms that “just happened” to get together in ways which “just happened” to look like consistent laws and some configurations “just happened” to possess self-awareness and that two “just happened” to be the Man from Mars and a bald-headed old coot with Jubal inside.

  No, he could not swallow the “just-happened” theory, popular as it was with men who called themselves scientists. Random chance was not a sufficient explanation of the Universe—random chance was not sufficient to explain random chance; the pot could not hold itself.

  What then? “Least hypothesis” deserved no preference; Occam’s Razor could not slice the prime problem, the Nature of the Mind of God (might as well call it that, you old scoundrel; it’s an Anglo-Saxon monosyllable not banned by four letters—and as good a tag for what you don’t understand as any).

  Was there any basis for preferring any sufficient hypothesis over another? When you did not understand a thing: No! Jubal admitted that a long life had left him not understanding the basic problems of the Universe.

  The Fosterites might be right.

  But, he reminded himself savagely, two things remained: his taste and his pride. If the Fosterites held a monopoly on Truth, if Heaven were open only to Fosterites, then he, Jubal Harshaw, gentleman, preferred that eternity of painfilled damnation promised to “sinners” who refused the New Revelation. He could not see the naked Face of God . . . but his eyesight was good enough to pick out his social equals—and those Fosterites did not measure up!

  But he could see how Mike had been misled; the Fosterite “going to Heaven” at a selected time did sound like the voluntary “discorporation” which, Jubal did not doubt, was the practice on Mars. Jubal suspected that a better term for the Fosterite practice was “murder”—but such had never been proved and rarely hinted. Foster had been the first to “go to Heaven” on schedule, dying at a prophesied instant; since then, it had been a Fosterite mark of special grace . . . it had been years since any coroner had had the temerity to pry into such deaths.

  Not that Jubal cared—a good Fosterite was a dead Fosterite.

  But it was going to be hard to explain.

  No use stalling, another cup of coffee wouldn’t make it easier—“Mike, who made the world?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Look around you. All this. Mars, too. The stars. Everything. You and me and everybody. Did the Old Ones tell you who made it?”

  Mike looked puzzled. “No, Jubal.”

  “Well, have you wondered? Where did the Sun come from? Who put the stars in the sky? Who started it? All, everything, the whole world, the Universe . . . so that you and I are here talking.” Jubal paused, surprised at himself. He had intended to take the usual agnostic approach . . . and found himself compulsively following his legal training, being an honest advocate in spite of himself, attempting to support a religious bel
ief he did not hold but which was believed by most human beings. He found that, willy-nilly, he was attorney for the orthodoxies of his own race against—he wasn’t sure what. An unhuman viewpoint. “How do your Old Ones answer such questions?”

  “Jubal, I do not grok . . . that these are ‘questions.’ I am sorry.”

  “Eh? I don’t grok your answer.”

  Mike hesitated. “I will try. But words are . . . are not . . . rightly. Not ‘putting.’ Not ‘mading.’ A nowing, World is. World was. World shall be. Now.”

  “ ‘As it was in the beginning, so it is now and ever shall be, World without end—’ ”

  Mike smiled happily. “You grok it!”

  “I don’t grok it,” Jubal answered gruffly, “I am quoting something, uh, an ‘Old One’ said.” He decided to try another approach; God the Creator was not the aspect of Deity to use as an opening—Mike did not grasp the idea of Creation. Well, Jubal wasn’t sure that he did, either—long ago he had made a pact with himself to postulate a created Universe on even-numbered days, a tail-swallowing eternal-and-uncreated Universe on odd-numbered days—since each hypothesis, whole paradoxical, avoided the paradoxes of the other—with a day off each leap year for sheer solipsist debauchery. Having tabled an unanswerable question he had given no thought to it for more than a generation.

  Jubal decided to explain religion in its broadest sense and tackle the notion of Deity and Its aspects later.

  Mike agreed that learnings came in various sizes, from little learnings that a nestling could grok on up to great learnings which only an Old One could grok in fullness. But Jubal’s attempt to draw a line between small learnings and great so that “great learnings” would have the meanings of “religious questions” was not successful; some religious questions did not seem to Mike to be questions (such as “Creation”) and others seemed to him to be “little” questions, with answers obvious to nestlings—such as life after death.

  Jubal dropped it and passed on to the multiplicity of human religions. He explained that humans had hundreds of ways by which “great learnings” were taught, each with its own answers and each claiming to be the truth.

  “What is ‘truth’?” Mike asked.

  (“What is Truth?” asked a Roman judge, and washed his hands. Jubal wished that he could do likewise.) “An answer is truth when you speak rightly, Mike. How many hands do I have?”

  “Two hands. I see two hands,” Mike amended.

  Anne glanced up from reading. “In six weeks I could make a Witness of him.”

  “Quiet, Anne. Things are tough enough. Mike, you spoke rightly; I have two hands. Your answer is truth. Suppose you said that I had seven hands?”

  Mike looked troubled. “I do not grok that I could say that.”

  “No, I don’t think you could. You would not speak rightly if you did; your answer would not be truth. But, Mike—listen carefully—each religion claims to be truth, claims to speak rightly. Yet their answers are as different as two hands and seven hands. Fosterites say one thing, Buddhists say another, Moslems still another—many answers, all different.”

  Mike seemed to be making great effort. “All speak rightly? Jubal, I do not grok.”

  “Nor I.”

  The Man from Mars looked troubled, then suddenly smiled. “I will ask the Fosterites to ask your Old Ones and then we will know, my brother. How will I do this?”

  A few minutes later Jubal found, to his disgust, that he had promised Mike an interview with some Fosterite bigmouth. Nor had he been able to dent Mike’s assumption that Fosterites were in touch with human “Old Ones.” Mike’s difficulty was that he didn’t know what a lie was—definitions of “lie” and “falsehood” had been filed in his mind with no trace of grokking. One could “speak wrongly” only by accident. So he had taken the Fosterite service at its face value.

  Jubal tried to explain that all human religions claimed to be in touch with “Old Ones” one way or another; nevertheless their answers were all different.

  Mike looked patiently troubled. “Jubal my brother, I try . . . but I do not grok how this can be right speaking. With my people, Old Ones speak always rightly. Your people—”

  “Hold it, Mike.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “When you said, ‘my people’ you were talking about Martians. Mike, you are not a Martian; you are a man.”

  “What is ‘Man’?”

  Jubal groaned. Mike could, he was sure, quote the dictionary definitions. Yet the lad never asked a question to be annoying; he asked always for information—and expected Jubal to be able to tell him. “I am a man, you are a man, Larry is a man.”

  “But Anne is not a man?”

  “Uh . . . Anne is a man, a female man. A woman.”

  (“Thanks, Jubal.”—“Shut up, Anne.”)

  “A baby is a man? I have seen pictures—and in the goddamnoi—in stereovision. A baby is not shaped like Anne . . . and Anne is not shaped like you . . . and you are not shaped like I. But a baby is a nestling man?”

  “Uh . . . yes, a baby is a man.”

  “Jubal . . . I think I grok that my people—‘Martians’—are man. Not shape. Shape is not man. Man is grokking. I speak rightly?”

  Jubal decided to resign from the Philosophical Society and take up tatting! What was “grokking”? He had been using the word for a week—and he didn’t grok it. But what was “Man”? A featherless biped? God’s image? Or a fortuitous result of “survival of the fittest” in a circular definition? The heir of death and taxes? The Martians seemed to have defeated death, and they seemed not to have money, property, nor government in any human sense—so how could they have taxes?

  Yet the boy was right; shape was irrelevant in defining “Man,” as unimportant as the bottle containing the wine. You could even take a man out of his bottle, like that poor fellow whose life those Russians had “saved” by placing his brain in a vitreous envelope and wiring him like a telephone exchange. Gad, what a horrible joke! He wondered if the poor devil appreciated the humor.

  But how, from the viewpoint of a Martian, did Man differ from other animals? Would a race that could levitate (and God knows what else) be impressed by engineering? If so, would the Aswan Dam, or a thousand miles of coral reef, win first prize? Man’s self-awareness? Sheer conceit, there was no way to prove that sperm whales or sequoias were not philosophers and poets exceeding any human merit.

  There was one field in which man was unsurpassed; he showed unlimited ingenuity in devising bigger and more efficient ways to kill off, enslave, harass, and in all ways make an unbearable nuisance of himself to himself. Man was his own grimmest joke on himself. The very bedrock of humor was—

  “Man is the animal who laughs,” Jubal answered.

  Mike considered this. “Then I am not a man.”

  “Huh?”

  “I do not laugh. I have heard laughing and it frighted me. Then I grokked that it did not hurt. I have tried to learn—” Mike threw his head back and gave out a raucous cackle.

  Jubal covered his ears. “Stop!”

  “You heard,” Mike agreed sadly. “I cannot rightly do it. So I am not man.”

  “Wait a minute, son. You simply haven’t learned yet . . . and you’ll never learn by trying. But you will, I promise you. If you live among us long enough, one day you will see how funny we are—and you will laugh.”

  “I will?”

  “You will. Don’t worry, just let it come. Why, son, even a Martian would laugh once he grokked us.”

  “I will wait,” Smith agreed placidly.

  “And while you are waiting, don’t doubt that you are man. You are. Man born of woman and born to trouble . . . and some day you will grok its fullness and laugh—because man is the animal that laughs at himself. About your Martian friends, I do not know. But I grok that they may be ‘man.’ ”

  “Yes, Jubal.”

  Harshaw thought that the interview was over and felt relieved. He had not been so embarrassed since a day long gone whe
n his father had explained the birds and the bees and the flowers-much too late.

  But the Man from Mars was not yet done. “Jubal my brother, you were ask me, ‘Who made the World?’ and I did not have words why I did not grok it rightly to be a question. I have been thinking words.”

  “So?”

  “You told me, ‘God made the World.’ ”

  “No, no!” Harshaw said. “I told you that, while religions said many things, most of them said, ‘God made the World.’ I told you that I did not grok the fullness, but that ‘God’ was the word that was used.”

  “Yes, Jubal,” Mike agreed. “Word is ‘God.’ ” He added, “You grok.”

  “I must admit I don’t grok.”

  “You grok,” Smith repeated firmly. “I am explain. I did not have the word. You grok. Anne groks. I grok. The grasses under my feet grok in happy beauty. But I needed the word. The word is God.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Mike pointed triumphantly at Jubal. “Thou art God!”

  Jubal slapped a hand to his face. “Oh, Jesus H.—What have I done? Look, Mike, take it easy! You didn’t understand me. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry! Just forget what I’ve said and we’ll start over another day. But—”

  “Thou are God,” Mike repeated serenely. “That which groks. Anne is God. I am God. The happy grasses are God. Jill groks in beauty always. Jill is God. All shaping and making and creating together—” He croaked something in Martian and smiled.

  “All right, Mike. But let it wait. Anne! Have you been getting this?”

  “You bet I have, Boss!”

  “Make a tape. I’ll have to work on it. I can’t let it stand. I must—” Jubal glanced up, said, “Oh, my God! General Quarters, everybody! Anne! Set the panic button on ‘dead man’—and for God’s sake keep your thumb on it; they may not be coming here.” He glanced up again, at two air cars approaching from the south. “I’m afraid they are. Mike! Hide in the pool! Remember what I told you—down in the deepest part, stay there, hold still—don’t come up until I send Jill.”

  “Yes, Jubal.”

  “Right now! Move!”