A Stranger in a Strange Land

by Robert Anson Heinlein

  But, having been invited to see her without her pictures. Mike did notice more sharply one thing about Patricia that he already knew: she had her own face, marked in beauty by her life. She bad, he saw with gentle wonder, her own face even more than Jill had, and it made him feel toward Pat even more of an emotion he did not as yet call love but for which be used a Martian concept more discriminating.

  She had her own odor, too, and her own voice, as all humans did. Her voice was husky and he liked to hear it even when he did not grok her meaning; her odor was mixed (he knew) with an unscrubbed trace of bitter muskiness from daily contact with snakes. It did not put him off; Pat's snakes were part of Pat as were her tattoos. Mike liked Pat's snakes and could handle the poisonous ones with perfect safety - and not alone by stretching time to anticipate and avoid their strikes. They grokked with him; he savored their innocent merciless thoughts - they reminded him of home. Other than Pat, Mike was the only person who could handle Honey Bun with pleasure to the boa constrictor. Her torpor was usually such that others could, if necessary, handle her - but Mike she accepted as a substitute for Pat.

  Mike let the pictures reappear.

  Jill looked at her and wondered why Aunt Patty had ever let herself be tattooed in the first place? She would really look rather nice - if she weren't a living comic strip. But she loved Aunt Patty for what she was, not the way she looked - and, of course, it did give her a steady living at least until she got so old and haggard that the marks wouldn't pay to look at her even if all those pictures had been signed by Rembrandt. She hoped that Patty was tucking away plenty in the grouch bag then she remembered that Aunt Patty was now one of Mike's water brothers (and her own, of course) and Mike's endless fortune gave Patty certain old-age insurance; Jill felt warmed by it.

  "Well?" repeated Mrs. Paiwonski. "What do you see? How old am I, Michael?"

  "I don't know," he said simply.

  "Guess."

  "I can't guess, Pat."

  "Oh, go ahead. You won't hurt my feelings."

  "Patty," Jill put in, "he really does mean that he can't guess. He hasn't had much chance to learn to judge ages - you know how short a time he's been on Earth. And besides that, Mike thinks of things in Martian years and Martian arithmetic. If it's time or figures, I keep track of it for him."

  "Well� you guess, hon. Be truthful."

  Jill looked Patty over again, noting her trim figure but also noting her hands and throat and the corners of her eyes - then discounted her guess by five years despite the Martian honesty she owed a water brother. "Mmm, thirtyish, give or take a year."

  Mrs. Paiwonski laughed triumphantly. "That's just one bonus from the True Faith, my dears! Jill hon, I'm 'way into my forties. Just how far in we won't say; I've quit counting."

  "You certainly don't look it."

  "I know I don't. That's what Happiness does for you, dear. Alter my first kid, I let my figure go to pot. I got quite a can on me - they invented the word 'broad' just to fit me. My belly always looked like four months gone, or worse. My busts hung down - and I've never had 'em lifted. You don't have to believe me; sure, I know a good plastic surgeon doesn't leave a scar� but on me it would show, dear; it would chop chunks out of two of my pictures.

  "Then I seen the light! I got converted. Nope, not exercise, not diet - I still eat like a pig and you know it. Happiness, dear. Perfect Happiness in the Lord through the help of Blessed Foster."

  "It's amazing," said Jill, and meant it. She knew women who had kept their looks quite as well (as she firmly intended to keep hers) but in every case only through great effort. She knew that Aunt Patty was telling the truth about diet and exercise, at least during the time she had known her� and as a surgical nurse Jill knew exactly what was excised and where in a breast-lifting job; those tattoos had certainly never known a knife.

  But Mike was not amazed. He assumed conclusively that Pat had learned how to think her body as she wished it, whether she attributed it to Foster or not. He was still trying to teach this control to Jill, but knew that she would have to perfect her knowledge of Martian before it could be perfect. No hurry, waiting would accomplish it. Pat went on talking:

  "I wanted you to see what the Faith has done for me. But that's just outside; the real change is inside. Happiness. I've got to try to tell you about it. The good Lord knows that I'm not ordained and I'm not gifted with tongues� but I've got to try. And then I'll answer your questions if I can. The first thing that you've got to accept is that all the other so-called churches are traps of the Devil. Our dear Jesus preached the True Faith, so Foster said and I truly believe. But, in the Dark Ages his words were deliberately twisted and added to and changed until Jesus wouldn't recognize 'em. And that is why Foster was sent down to Earth, to proclaim a New Revelation and straighten it out and make it clear again."

  Patricia Paiwonski pointed her finger and suddenly looked very impressive, a priestess clothed in holy dignity and mystic symbols. "God wants us to be Happy. He filled the world with things to make us Happy if only we see the light. Would God let grape juice turn into wine if He didn't want us to drink and be joyful? He could just as easily let is stay grape juice� or turn it straight into vinegar that nobody could get a happy giggle out of. Ain't that true? Of course He don't mean you should get roaring drunk and beat your wife and neglect your kids� but He gave us good things to use, not abuse� and not to ignore. But if you feel like a drink or six, among friends who have seen the light, too, and it makes you want to jump up and dance and give thanks to the Lord on high for his goodness - why not? God made alcohol and he made feet - and he made 'em so you could put 'em together and be happy!"

  She paused and said, "Fill 'er up again, honey; preaching is thirsty work - and not too strong on the ginger ale this time; that's good rye. And that ain't all. If God didn't want women to be looked at, he would have made 'em ugly - that's reasonable, isn't it? God isn't a cheat; He set up the game Himself - He wouldn't rig it so that the marks can't win, like a flat joint wheel in a town with the fix on. He wouldn't send anybody to Hell for losing in a crooked game.

  "All right! God wants us to be Happy and he told us how: 'Love one another!' Love a snake if the poor thing needs love. Love thy neighbor if he's seen the light and has love in his heart� and the back of your hand only to sinners and Satan's corruptors who want to lead you away from the appointed path and down into the pit. And by 'love' he didn't mean namby-pamby old-maid-aunt love that's scared to look up from a hymn book for fear of seeing a temptation of the flesh. If God hated flesh, why did lie make so much of it? God is no sissy. He made the Grand Canyon and comets coursing through the sky and cyclones and stallions and earthquakes - can a God who can do all that turn around and practically wet his pants just because some little sheila leans over a mite and a man catches sight of a tit? You know better, hon - and so do I! When God told us to love, He wasn't holding out a card on us; He meant it. Love little babies that always need changing and love strong, smelly men so that there will be more little babies to love - and in between go on loving because it's so good to love!

  "Of course that don't mean to peddle it any more than a bottle of rye whiskey means I gotta get fighting drunk and clobber a cop. You can't sell love and you can't buy Happiness, no price tags on either one and if you think there is, the way to Hell lies open to you. But if you give with an open heart and receive what God has an unlimited supply of, the Devil can't touch you. Money?" She looked at Jill. "Hon, would you do that water-sharing thing with somebody, say for a million dollars? Make it ten million, tax free."

  "Of course not." ("Michael, do you grok this?")

  ("Almost in fullness, Jill. Waiting is. ")

  "You see, dearie? I knew what it meant, I knew love was in that water. You're seekers, very near the light. But since you two, from the love that is in you, did 'share water and grow closer,' as Michael says, I can tell you things I couldn't ordinarily tell a seeker-"

  The Reverend Foster, self-ordained - o
r directly ordained by God, depending on authority cited - had an intuitive instinct for the pulse of his culture and his times at least as strong as that of a skilled carney sizing up a mark. The country and culture commonly known as "America" had had a badly split personality all through its history. Its overt laws were almost always puritanical for a people whose covert behavior tended to be Rabelaisian; its major religions were all Apollonian in varying degree - its religious revivals were often hysterical in fashion almost Dionysian. In the twentieth century (Terran Christian Era) nowhere on Earth was sex so vigorously suppressed as in America - and nowhere else was there such a deep interest in it.

  The Reverend Foster had in common with almost every great religious leader of that planet two traits: he had an extremely magnetic personality ("hypnotist" was a word widely used by his detractors, along with others less mild) and, sexually, he did not fall anywhere near the human norm. Great religious leaders on Earth were always either celibate, or the antithesis. (Great leaders, the innovators - not necessarily the major administrators and consolidators.) Foster was not celibate.

  Nor were any of his wives and high priestesses - the clincher for complete conversion and rebirth under the New Revelation usually included a ritual which Valentine Michael Smith at a later time was to grok as especially suited for growing-closer.

  This, of course, was nothing new; in Terran history sects, cults, and major religions too numerous to list had used essentially the same technique - but not on a major scale in America before Foster's times. Foster was run out of town more than once before he "perfected" a method and organization that permitted him to expand his capric cult. In organization he borrowed as liberally from freemasonry, from Catholicism, from the Communist Party, and from Madison Avenue as he had borrowed from any and all earlier scriptures in composing his New Revelation� and he sugar-coated it all as a return to primitive Christianity to suit his customers. He set up an outer church which anybody could attend - and a person could remain a "seeker" with many benefits of the church for years. Then there was a middle church, which to all outward appearance was "The Church of the New Revelation," the happy saved, who paid their tithes, enjoyed all economic benefits of the church's ever-widening business tie-ins, and whooped it up in the endless carnival amp; revival atmosphere of Happiness, Happiness, Happiness! Their sins were forgiven - and henceforth very little was sinful as long as they supported their church, dealt honestly with their fellow Fosterites, condemned sinners, and stayed Happy. The New Revelation does not specifically encourage adultery; it simply gets rather mystical in discussing sexual conduct.

  The saved of the middle church supplied the ranks of the shock troops when direct action was needed. Foster borrowed a trick from the early twentieth-century Wobblies; if a community tried to suppress a budding Fosterite movement, Fosterites from elsewhere converged on that town until there were neither jails nor cops enough to cope with them - and the cops usually had had their ribs kicked in and the jails were smashed.

  If some prosecutor were brave enough to push an indictment thereafter, it was almost impossible to make it stick. Foster (after learning his lesson under fire) saw to it that such prosecutions were indeed persecution under the letter of the law; not one conviction of a Fosterite qua Fosterite ever was upheld by the national Supreme Court - nor, later, by the High Court.

  But, in addition to the overt church, there was the Inner Church, never named as such - a hard core of the utterly dedicated who made up the priesthood, all the church lay leaders, all keepers of keys and records and makers of policy. They were the "reborn," beyond sin, certain of their place in heaven, and sole participants of the inner mysteries - and the only candidates for direct admission to Heaven.

  Foster selected these with great care, doing so personally until the operation got too big. He looked for men as much like himself as possible and for women like his priestess - wives - dynamic, utterly convinced (as he was himself convinced), stubborn, and free (or able to be freed, once their guilt and insecurity was purged) of jealousy in its simplest, most human meaning - and all of them potential satyrs and nymphs, as the secret inner church was that utterly Dionysian cult that America had never had and for which there was an enormous potential market.

  But he was most cautious - if candidates were married, it had to be both spouses. An unmarried candidate had to be sexually attractive as well as sexually aggressive - and he impressed on his priests that the males must always equal or exceed in number the females. Nowhere is it admitted that Foster had studied the histories of earlier, somewhat parallel cults in America but he either knew (or sensed) that most of such had foundered because the possessive concupiscence of their priests led to male jealousy and violence. Foster never made this error; not once did he keep a woman entirely to himself, not even the women he married legally.

  Nor did he try too eagerly to expand his core group; the middle church, the one known to the public, offered plenty to slake the milder needs of the great masses of guilt-ridden and unhappy. If a local revival produced even two couples who were capable of "Heavenly Marriage" Foster was content - if it produced none, he let the other seeds grow and sent in a salted priest and priestess to nurture them.

  But, so far as possible, he always tested candidate couples himself, in company with some devoted priestess. Since such a couple was already "saved" insofar as the middle church was concerned, he ran little risk - none, really, with the woman candidate and he always sized up the man himself before letting his priestess go ahead.

  At the time she was saved, Patricia Paiwonski was still young, married, and "very happy, very happy." She had her first child, she looked up to and admired her much older husband. George Paiwonski was a generous, very affectionate man. He did have one weakness, which often left him too drunk to show his affection after a long day� but his tattooing needle was still steady and his eye sharp. Patty counted herself a faithful wife and, on the whole, a lucky one - true, George occasionally got affectionate with a female client� quite affectionate if it was early in the day - and, of course, some tattooing required privacy, especially with ladies. Patty was tolerant� besides, she sometimes herself made a date with a male client, especially after George got to hitting the bottle more and more.

  Nevertheless there was a lack in her life, one which was not filled even when an especially grateful client made her the odd gift of a bull snake - shipping out on a freighter, he said, and couldn't keep it any longer. She had always liked pets and had none of the vulgar phobia about snakes; she made a home for it in their show window facing the street, and George made a beautiful four-color picture to back it up: "Don't Tread on Me!" His new design turned out to be very popular.

  Presently she had more snakes and they were quite a comfort to her. But she was the daughter of an Ulster Protestant and a girl from Cork; the armed truce between her parents had left her with no religion.

  She was already a "seeker" when Foster preached in San Pedro; she had managed to get George to go a few Sundays but he had not yet seen the light.

  Foster brought them the light, they made their confessions the same day. When Foster returned six months later for a quick check on how his branch was doing, the Paiwonskis were so dedicated that he gave them personal attention.

  "I never had a minute's trouble with George from the day he saw the holy light," she told Mike and Jill - "Of course, he still drank� but he drank in church and never too much. When our holy leader returned, George had already started his Great Project. Naturally we wanted to show it to Foster, if he could find time-" Mrs. Paiwonski hesitated. "Kids, I really ought not to be telling you any of this."

  "Then don't," sill said emphatically "Patty darling, neither of us want you ever to do or say anything you don't feel easy about. 'Sharing water' has to be easy and natural� and waiting until it comes easy for you is easy for us."

  "Uh� but I do want to share it. Look, darlings, I trust you both utterly. But I just want you to remember that this is Church
things I'm telling you, so you mustn't ever tell anyone� just as I wouldn't tell anything about you."

  Mike nodded. "Here on Earth we sometimes call it 'water brother' business. On Mars there's no problem� but here I grok that there sometimes is. 'Water brother' business you don't repeat."

  "I�I,'Grok.' That's a funny word, but I'm learning it, All right, darlings, this is 'water brother' business. Did you know that all Fosterites are tattooed? Real Church members I mean, the ones who are eternally saved forever and ever and a day - like me? Oh, I don't mean tattooed all over, the way I am, but - look, see that? Right over my heart� see? That's Foster's holy kiss. George worked it into the design so that it looks like part of the picture it's in� so that nobody could guess unless I told 'em. But it's his kiss - and Foster put it there hisself!" She looked ecstatically proud.

  They both examined it. "It is a kiss mark," Jill said wonderingly. "Just like somebody had kissed you there wearing lipstick. But, until you showed us, I thought it was part of that sunset."

  "Yes, indeedy, that's why George did it. Because you don't go showing Foster's kiss to anyone who doesn't wear Foster's kiss - and I never have, up to now. But," she insisted, "I'm sure you're going to wear one, both of you, someday - and when you do, I want to be the one to tattoo 'em on."

  Jill said, "I don't quite understand, Patty. I can see that it's wonderful for you to have been kissed by Foster - but how can he ever kiss us? After all, he's up in Heaven."