A Stranger in a Strange Land

by Robert A. Heinlein

  "Never mind. I wouldn't let you. It really is dangerous - and not just to your career. I was just softening you up for this." He showed her the little object. "Will you put a bug on him?"

  "Huh? What is it?"

  "The greatest boon to divorce lawyers and spies since the Mickey Finn. A microminiaturized wire recorder. The wire is spring driven so that it can't be spotted by a snooper circuit. The insides are transistors and resistors and capacitors and stuff, all packed in plastic - you could drop it out of a cab and not hurt it. The power is about as much radioactivity as you would find in a watch dial, but shielded, The wire is good for twenty-four hours. Then you slide out a spool and stick in another one - the spring is part of the spool, already wound."

  "Will it explode?" she asked nervously.

  "You could bake it in a cake."

  "But, Ben, you've got me scared to go back into his room now."

  "Unnecessary. You can go into the room next door, can't you?"

  "I suppose so."

  "This thing has donkey's ears. Fasten the concave side flat against a wall - surgical tape will do nicely - and it picks up every word spoken in the room beyond. Is there a closet or something?"

  She thought about it. "I'm bound to be noticed if I duck in and out of that adjoining room too much; it's really part of the suite he's in. Or they may start using it. Look, Ben, his room has a third wall in common with a room on another corridor. Will that do?"

  "Perfect. Then you'll do it?"

  "Umm... give it to me. I'll think it over and see how the land lies."

  Caxton stopped to polish it with his handkerchief. "Put on your gloves."

  "Why?"

  "Possession of it is slightly illegal, good for a short vacation behind bars. Always use gloves on it and the spare spools - and don't get caught with it."

  "You think of the nicest things!"

  "Want to back out?"

  Jill let out a long breath. "No. I've always wanted a life of crime. Will you teach me gangster lingo? I want to be a credit to you."

  "Good girl!" A light blinked over the door, he glanced up. "That must be your cab. I rang for it when I went to get this."

  "Oh. Find my shoes, will you? No, don't come up to the roof. The less I'm seen with you from here on the better."

  "As you wish."

  As he straightened up from putting her shoes on, she took his head in both hands and kissed him. "Dear Ben! No good can come of this and I hadn't realized you were a criminal type - but you're a good cook, as long as I set up the combination... and I just might marry you if I can trap you into proposing again."

  "The offer remains open."

  "Do gangsters marry their molls? Or is it 'frails'? We'll see" She left hurriedly.

  Jill Boardman placed the bug without difficulty. The patient in the adjacent room in the next corridor was bedfast; Jill often Stopped to gossip. She stuck it against the wall over a closet shelf while chattering about how the maids just never dusted high in the closets.

  Removing the spool the next day and inserting a fresh one was just as easy; the patient was asleep. She woke while Jill was still perched on a chair and seemed surprised; Jill diverted her with a spicy and imaginary ward rumor.

  Jill sent the exposed wire by mail, using the hospital's post office as the impersonal blindness of the postal system seemed safer than a cloak & dagger ruse. But her attempt to insert a third fresh spool she muffed. She had waited for a time when the patient was asleep but had just mounted the chair when the patient woke up. "Oh! Hello, Miss Boardman."

  Jill froze with one hand on the wire recorder. "Hello, Mrs. Fritschlie," she managed to answer. "Have a nice nap?"

  "Fair," the woman answered peevishly. "My back aches."

  "I'll rub it."

  "Doesn't help much. Why are you always fiddling around in my closet? Is something wrong?"

  Jill tried to reswallow her stomach. The woman wasn't really suspicious, she told herself. "Mice," she said vaguely.

  "'Mice?' Oh, I can't abide mice! I'll have to have another room, right away!"

  Jill tore the little instrument off the closet wall and stuffed it into her pocket, jumped down from the chair and spoke to the patient. "Now, now, Mrs. Fritschlie - I was just looking to see if there were any mouse holes in that closet. There aren't."

  "You're sure?"

  "Quite sure. Now let's rub the back, shall we? Easy over."

  Jill decided she could not plant the bug in that room again and concluded that she would risk attempting to place it in the empty room which was part of K-12, the Suite of the Man from Mars. But it was almost time for her relief before she was free again. She got the pass key.

  Only to find that she did not need it; the door was unlocked and held two more marines; the guard had been doubled. One of them glanced up as she opened the door. "Looking for someone?"

  "No. Don't sit on the bed, boys," she said crisply. "If you need more chairs, we'll send for them." She kept her eye on the guard while he got reluctantly up; then she left, trying to conceal her trembling.

  The bug was still burning a hole in her pocket when she went off duty; she decided to return it to Caxton at once. She changed clothes, shifted it to her bag, and went to the roof. Once in the air and headed toward Ben's apartment she began to breathe easier. She phoned him in flight.

  "Caxton speaking."

  "Jill, Ben. I want to see you. Are you alone?"

  He answered slowly, "I don't think it's smart, kid. Not now."

  "Ben, I've got to see you. I'm on my way over."

  "Well, okay, if that's how it's got to be."

  "Such enthusiasm!"

  "Now look, hon, it isn't that I-"

  "'Bye!" She switched off calmed down and decided not to take it out on poor Ben - fact was they both were playing out of their league. At least she was - she should have stuck to nursing and left politics alone.

  She felt better when she saw Ben and better yet when she kissed him and snuggled into his arms. Ben was such a dear - maybe she really should marry him. But when she tried to speak he put a hand over her mouth, then whispered close against her ear, "Don't talk. No names and nothing but trivialities. I may be wired by now."

  She nodded and he led her into the living room. Without speaking she got out the wire recorder and handed it to him. His eyebrows went up when he saw that she was returning not just a spool but the whole works but he made no comment. Instead he handed her a copy of the afternoon Post.

  "Seen the paper?" he said in a natural voice. "You might like to glance at it while I wash up."

  "Thanks." As she took it he pointed to a column; he then left, taking with him the recorder. Jill saw that the column was Ben's own syndicated outlet.

  THE CROW'S NEST by Ben Caxton

  Everyone knows that jails and hospitals have one thing in common: they both can be very hard to get out of. In some ways a prisoner is less cut off than a patient; a prisoner can send for his lawyer, can demand a Fair Witness, he can invoke habeas corpus and require the jailor to show cause in open court.

  But it takes only a simple NO VISITORS sign, ordered by one of the medicine men of our peculiar tribe, to consign a hospital patient to oblivion more thoroughly than ever was the Man in the Iron Mask.

  To be sure, the patient's next of kin cannot be kept out by this device - but the Man from Mars seems to have no next of kin. The crew of the ill-fated Envoy had few ties on Earth; if the Man in the Iron Mask - pardon me I mean the "Man from Mars" - has any relative who is guarding his interests, a few thousand inquisitive reporters (such as your present scrivener) have been unable to verify it.

  Who speaks for the Man from Mars? Who ordered an armed guard placed around him? What is his dread disease that no one may catch a glimpse of him, nor ask him a question? I address you, Mr. Secretary General; the explanation about "physical weakness" and "gee-fatigue" won't wash; if that were the answer, a ninety-pound nurse would do as well as an armed guard.

  Could this dise
ase be financial in nature? Or (let's say it softly) is it political?

  There was more, all in the same vein; Jill could see that Ben was deliberately baiting the administration, trying to force them to bring Smith out into the open. What that would accomplish she did not know, her own horizon not encompassing high politics and high finance. She felt, rather than knew, that Caxton was taking serious risk in challenging the established authorities, but she had no notion of the size of the danger, nor of what form it might take.

  She thumbed through the rest of the paper. It was well loaded with follow-up stories on the return of the Champion. with pictures of Secretary General Douglas pinning medals on the crew, interviews with Captain van Tromp and other members of his brave company, pictures of Martians and Martian cities. There was very little about Smith, merely a medical bulletin that he was improving slowly but satisfactorily from the effects of his trip.

  Ben came out and dropped some sheets of onion skin in her lap. "Here's another newspaper you might like to see," he remarked and left again.

  Jill soon saw that the other "newspaper" was a transcription of what her first wire had picked up. As typed out, it was marked "First Voice," "Second Voice," and so on, but Ben had gone back and written in names wherever he had been able to make attributions later. He had written across the top: "All voices, identified or not, are masculine."

  Most of the items were of no interest. They simply showed that Smith had been fed, or washed, or massaged, and that each morning and afternoon he had been required to get up and exercise under the supervision of a voice identified as "Doctor Nelson" and a second voice marked "second doctor." Jill decided that this must be Dr. Thaddeus.

  But one longish passage had nothing to do with the physical care of the patient. Jill read it and reread it:

  Doctor Nelson: How are you feeling, boy? Are you strong enough to talk for a while?

  Smith: Yes.

  Doctor Nelson: A man wants to talk to you.

  Smith: (pause) Who? (Caxton had written in: All of Smith's speeches are preceded by long pauses, some longer than others.)

  Nelson: This man is our great (untranscribable guttural word - Martian?). He is our oldest Old One. Will you talk with him?

  Smith: (very long pause) I am great happy. The Old One will talk and I will listen and grow.

  Nelson: No, no! He wants to ask you questions.

  Smith: I cannot teach an Old One.

  Nelson: The Old One wishes it. Will you let him ask you questions?

  Smith: Yes.

  (Background noises, short delay.)

  Nelson: This way, sir. Uh, I have Doctor Mahmoud standing by, ready to translate for you.

  Jill read "New Voice." Caxton had scratched this out and had written in: "Secretary General Douglasilt"

  Secretary General: I won't need him. You say Smith understands English.

  Nelson: Well, yes and no, Your Excellency. He knows quite a number of words, but, as Mahmoud says, he doesn't have any cultural context to hang the words on. It can be rather confusing.

  Secretary General: Oh, we'll get along all right, I'm sure. When I was a youngster I hitchhiked all through Brazil, without knowing a word of Portuguese when I started. Now, if you will just introduce us - then leave us alone.

  Nelson: Sir? I think I had better stay with my patient.

  Secretary General: Really, Doctor? I'm afraid I must insist. Sorry.

  Nelson: And I am afraid that I must insist. Sorry, sir. Medical ethics-

  Secretary General: (interrupting) As a lawyer, I know a little something of medical jurisprudence - so don't give me that "medical ethics" mumbo-jumbo, really. Did this patient select you?

  Nelson: Not exactly, but-

  Secretary General: Just as I thought. Has he had any opportunity to make a choice of physicians? I doubt it. His present status is that of ward of the state. I am acting as his next of kin, defacto - and, you will find, de jure as well. I wish to interview him alone.

  Nelson: (long pause, then very stiffly) If you put it that way, Your Excellency, I withdraw from the case.

  Secretary General: Don't take it that way, Doctor; I didn't mean to get your back hair up. I'm not questioning your treatment. But you wouldn't try to keep a mother from seeing her son alone, now would you? Are you afraid that I might hurt him?

  Nelson: No, but - Secretary General: Then what is your objection? Come now, introduce us and let's get on with it. This fussing may be upsetting your patient.

  Nelson: Your Excellency, I will introduce you. Then you must select another doctor for your... ward.

  Secretary General: I'm sorry, Doctor, I really am. I can't take that as final - we'll discuss it later. Now, if you please?

  Nelson: Step over here, sir. Son, this is the man who wants to see you. Our great Old One.

  Smith: (untranscribable)

  Secretary General: What did he say?

  Nelson: Sort of a respectful greeting. Mahmoud says it translates: "I am only an egg." More or less that, anyway. He used to use it on me. It's friendly. Son, talk man - talk.

  Smith: Yes.

  Nelson: And you had better use simple one-syllable words, if I may offer a last advice.

  Secretary General: Oh, I will.

  Nelson: Good-by, Your Excellency. Good-by, son.

  Secretary General: Thanks, Doctor. See you later.

  Secretary General: (continued) How do you feel?

  Smith: Feel fine.

  Secretary General: Good. Anything you want, just ask for it. We want you to be happy. Now I have something I want you to do for me. Can you write?

  Smith: 'Write?' What is 'write?'

  Secretary General: Well, your thumb print will do. I want to read a paper to you. This paper has a lot of lawyer talk, but stated simply it says that you agree that in leaving Mars you have abandoned - I mean, given up - any claims that you may have there. Understand me? You assign them in trust to the government.

  Smith: (no answer)

  Secretary General: Well, let's put it this way. You don't own Mars, do you?

  Smith: (longish pause) I do not understand.

  Secretary General: Mmm... let's try it this way. You want to stay here, don't you?

  Smith: I do not know. I was sent by the Old Ones. (Long untranscribable speech, sounds like a bullfrog fighting a cat.)

  Secretary General: Damn it, they should have taught him more English by now. See here, son, you don't have to worry about these things. Just let me have your thumb print here at the bottom of this page. Let me have your right hand. No, don't twist around that way. Hold still! I'm not going to hurt you... Doctor! Doctor Nelson!

  Second Doctor: Yes, sir?

  Secretary General: Get Doctor Nelson.

  Second Doctor: Doctor Nelson? But he has left, sir. He said you took him off the case.

  Secretary General: Nelson said that? Damn him! Well, do something. Give him artificial respiration. Give him a shot. Don't just stand there - can't you see the man is dying?

  Second Doctor: I don't believe there is anything to be done, sir. Just let him alone until he comes out of it. That's what Doctor Nelson always did.

  Secretary General: Blast Doctor Nelson!

  The Secretary General's voice did not appear again, nor that of Doctor Nelson. Jill could guess, from gossip she had picked up around the hospital, that Smith had gone into one of his cataleptic withdrawals. There were only two more entries, neither of them attributed. One read: No need to whisper. He Can't hear you. The other read: Take that tray away. We'll feed him when he comes out of it.

  Jill was giving the transcription a third reading when Ben reappeared. He was carrying more onionskin sheets but he did not offer them to her; instead he said, "Hungry?"

  She glanced inquiringly at the papers in his hand but answered, "Starved."

  "Let's get out of here and shoot a cow."

  He said nothing more while they went to the roof and took a taxi, and he still kept quiet during a flight to the Alexandria pla
tform, where they switched to another cab. Ben selected one with a Baltimore serial number. Once in the air he set it for Hagerstown, Maryland, then settled back and relaxed. "Now we can talk."

  "Ben, why all the mystery?"

  "Sorry, pretty foots. Probably just nerves and my bad conscience. I don't know that there is a bug in my apartment - but if I can do it to them, they can do it to me... and I've been showing an unhealthy interest in things the administration wants kept doggo. Likewise, while it isn't likely that a cab signaled from my flat would have a recorder hidden in the cushions, still it might have; the Special Service squads are thorough. But this cab-" He patted its seat cushions. "They can't gimmick thousands of cabs. One picked at random should be safe."

  Jill shivered. "Ben, you don't really think they would..." She let it trail off.

  "Don't I, now! You saw my column. I filed that copy nine hours ago. Do you think the administration will let me kick it in the stomach without doing something about it?"

  "But you have always opposed this administration."

  "That's okay. The duty of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition is to oppose. They expect that. But this is different; I have practically accused them of holding a political prisoner... one the public is very much interested in. Jill, a government is a living organism. Like every living thing its prime characteristic is a blind, unreasoned instinct to survive. You hit it, it will fight back. This time I've really hit it." He gave her a sidelong look. "I shouldn't have involved you in this."

  "Me? I'm not afraid. At least not since I turned that gadget back over to you."

  "You're associated with me. If things get rough, that could be enough."

  Jill shut up. She had never in her life experienced the giant ruthlessness of giant power. Outside of her knowledge of nursing and of the joyous guerilla warfare between the sexes, Jill was almost as innocent as the Man from Mars. The notion that she, Jill Boardman, who had never experienced anything worse than a spanking as a child and an occasional harsh word as an adult, could be in physical danger was almost impossible for her to believe. As a nurse, she had seen the consequences of ruthlessness, violence, brutality - but it could not happen to her.

  Their cab was circling for a landing in Hagerstown before she broke the moody silence. "Ben? Suppose this patient does die. What happens?"