A Stranger in a Strange Land

by Robert A. Heinlein

  Unexpected discorporation was always rare on Mars; Martian taste in such matters called for life to be a rounded whole, with physical death taking place at the appropriate and selected instant. This artist, however, had become so preoccupied with his work that he had forgotten to come in out of the cold; by the time his absence was noticed his body was hardly fit to eat. He himself had not noticed his own discorporation and had gone right on composing his sequence.

  Martian art was divided sharply into two categories, that sort created by living adults, which was vigorous, often quite radical, and primitive, and that of the Old Ones, which was usually conservative, extremely complex, and was expected to show much higher standards of technique; the two sorts were judged separately.

  By what standards should this opus be judged? It bridged from the corporate to the discorporate; its final form had been set throughout by an Old One - yet on the other hand the artist, with the detachment of all artists everywhere, had not even noticed the change in his status and had continued to work as if he were corporate. Was it possibly a new sort of art? Could more such pieces be produced by surprise discorporation of artists while they were working? The Old Ones had been discussing the exciting possibilities in ruminative rapport for centuries and all corporate Martians were eagerly awaiting their verdict.

  The question was of greater interest because it had not been abstract art, but religious (in the Terran sense) and strongly emotional - it described the contact between the Martian Race and the people of the fifth planet, an event that had happened long ago but which was alive and important to Martians in the sense in which one death by crucifixion remained alive and important to humans after two Terran millennia. The Martian Race had encountered the people of the fifth planet, grokked them completely, and in due course had taken action; the asteroid ruins were all that remained, save that the Martians continued to cherish and praise the people they had destroyed. This new work of art was one of many attempts to grok all parts of the whole beautiful experience in all its complexity in one opus. But before it could be judged it was necessary to grok how to judge it.

  It was a very pretty problem.

  On the third planet Valentine Michael Smith was not concerned with the burning issue on Mars; he had never heard of it. His Martian keeper and his keeper's water brothers had not mocked him with things he could not grasp. Smith knew of the destruction of the fifth planet and its emotional importance - just as any human school boy learns of Troy and Plymouth Rock, but he had not been exposed to art that he could not grok. His education had been unique, enormously greater than that of his nestlings, enormously less than that of an adult; his keeper and his keeper's advisers among the Old Ones had taken a large passing interest in seeing just how much and of what sort this nestling alien could learn. The results had taught them more about the potentialities of the human race than that race had yet learned about itself, for Smith had grokked very readily things that no other human being had ever learned.

  But just at present Smith was simply enjoying himself with a lightheartedness he had not experienced in many years. He had won a new water brother in Jubal, he had acquired many new friends, he was enjoying delightful new experiences in such kaleidoscopic quantity that he had no time to grok them; he could only file them away to be relived at leisure.

  His brother Jubal had assured him that be would grok this strange and beautiful place more quickly if he would learn to read, so he had taken a full day off to learn to read really well and quickly, with Jill pointing to words and pronouncing them for him. It had meant staying out of the swimming pool all that day, which had been a great sacrifice, as swimming (once he got it through his head that it was actually permitted) was not merely an exuberant, sensuous delight but almost unbearable religious ecstasy. If Jill and Jubal had not told him to do otherwise, he would never have come out of the pool at all.

  Since he was not permitted to swim at night he read all night long. He was zipping through the Encyclopedia Britannica and was sampling Jubal's medicine and law libraries as dessert. His brother Jubal had seen him leafing rapidly through one of the books, had stopped him and questioned him about what he had read. Smith had answered carefully, as it reminded him of the tests the Old Ones had occasionally given him. His brother had seemed a bit upset at his answers and Smith had found it necessary to go into an hour's contemplation on that account, for he had been quite sure that he had answered with the words written in the book even though he did not grok them all.

  But he preferred the pool to the books, especially when Jill and Miriam and Larry and Anne and the rest were all splashing each other. He had not learned at once to swim as they did, but had discovered the first time that he could do something they could not. He had simply gone down to the bottom and lain there, immersed in quiet bliss - where upon they had hauled him out with such excitement that he had almost been forced to withdraw himself, had it not been evident that they were concerned for his welfare.

  Later that day he had demonstrated the matter to Jubal, remaining on the bottom for a delicious time, and he had tried to teach it to his brother Jill... but she had become disturbed and he had desisted. It was his first clear realization that there were things that he could do that these new friends could not. He thought about it a long time, trying to grok its fullness.

  Smith was happy; Harshaw was not. He continued his usual routine of aimless loafing, varied only by casual and unplanned observation of his laboratory animal, the Man from Mars. He arranged no schedule for Smith, no programme of study, no regular physical examinations, but simply allowed Smith to do as he pleased, run wild, like a puppy growing up on a ranch. What supervision Smith received came from Jill: more than enough, in Jubal's grumpy opinions as he took a dim view of males being reared by females.

  However, Gillian Boardman did little more than coach Valentine Smith in the rudiments of human social behavior - and he needed very little coaching. He ate at the table with the others now, dressed himself (at least Jubal thought he did; he made a mental note to ask Jill if she still had to assist him); he conformed acceptably to the household's very informal customs and appeared able to cope with most new experiences on a "monkey-see-monkey" basis. Smith started his first meal at the table using only a spoon and Jill had cut up his meat for him. By the end of the meal he was attempting to eat as the others ate. At the next meal his table manners were a precise imitation of Jill's, including superfluous mannerisms.

  Even the twin discovery that Smith had taught himself to read with the speed of electronic scanning and appeared to have total recall of all that he read did not tempt Jubal Harshaw to make a "project" of Smith, one with controls, measurements, and curves of progress. Harshaw had the arrogant humility of the man who has learned so much that he is aware of his own ignorance and he saw no point in "measurements" when he did not know what he was measuring. Instead he limited himself to notes made privately, without even any intention of publishing his observations.

  But, while Harshaw enjoyed watching this unique animal develop into a mimicry copy of a human being, his pleasure afforded him no happiness.

  Like Secretary General Douglas, Harshaw was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  Waiting with increasing tenseness. Having found himself coerced into action by the expectation of action against him on the part of the government, it annoyed and exasperated him that nothing as yet had happened. Damn it, were the Federation cops so stupid that they couldn't track an unsophisticated girl dragging an unconscious man all across the countryside? Or (as seemed more likely) had they been on her heels the whole way? - and even now were keeping a stake-out on his place? The latter thought was infuriating; to Harshaw the notion that the government might be spying on his home, his castle, with anything from binoculars to radar, was as repulsive as the idea of having his mail opened.

  And they might be doing that too, he reminded himself morosely. Government! Three fourths parasitic and the other fourth stupid fumbling - oh, he conceded that ma
n, a social animal, could not avoid having government, any more than an individual man could escape his lifelong bondage to his bowels. But Harshaw did not have to like it. Simply because an evil was inescapable was no reason to term it a "good." He wished that government would wander off and get lost?

  But it was certainly possible, or even probable, that the administration knew exactly where the Man from Mars was hiding... and for reasons of their own preferred to leave it that way, while they prepared - what?

  If so, how long would it go on? And how long could he keep his defensive "time bomb" armed and ready?

  And where the devil was that reckless young idiot Ben Caxton?

  Jill Boardman forced him out of his spiritual thumb-twiddling. "Jubal?"

  "Eh? Oh, it's you, bright eyes. Sorry, I was preoccupied. Sit down. Have a drink?"

  "Uh, no, thank you. Jubal, I'm worried."

  "Normal. Who isn't? That was a mighty pretty swan dive you did. Let's see another one just like it."

  Jill bit her lip and looked about twelve years old. "Jubal? Please listen! I'm terribly worried."

  He sighed. "In that case, dry yourself off. The breeze is getting chilly."

  "I'm warm enough. Uh, Jubal? Would it be all right if I left Mike here? Would you take care of him?"

  Harshaw blinked. "Of course he can stay here. You know that. The girls will look out for him - and I'll keep an eye on him from time to time. He's no trouble. I take it you're leaving?"

  She didn't meet his eye. "Yes."

  "Mmmm... you're welcome here. But you're welcome to leave, too, if that's what you want."

  "Huh? But, Jubal - I don't want to leave!"

  "Then don't."

  "But I must!"

  "Better play that back. I didn't scan it."

  "Don't you see, Jubal? I like it here - you've been wonderful to us! But I can't stay any longer. Not with Ben missing. I've got to go look for him."

  Harshaw said one word, emotive, earthy, and vulgar, then added, "How do you propose to look for him?"

  She frowned. "I don't know. But I can't just lie around here any longer, loafing and swimming - with Ben missing."

  "Gillian, as I pointed out to you before, Ben is a big boy now. You're not his mother - and you're not his wife. And I'm not his keeper. Neither of us is responsible for him... and you haven't any call to go looking for him. Have you?"

  Jill looked down and twisted one toe in the grass. "No," she admitted. "I haven't any claim on Ben. I just know... that if I turned up missing Ben would look for me - until he found me. So I've got to look for him!"

  Jubal breathed a silent malediction against all elder gods in any way involved in contriving the follies of the human race, then said aloud, "All right, all right, if you must, then let's try to get some logic into it. Do you plan to hire professionals? Say a private detective firm that specializes in missing persons?"

  She looked unhappy. "I suppose that's the way to go about it. Uh, I've never hired a detective. Are they expensive?"

  "Quite."

  Jill gulped. "Do you suppose they would let me arrange to pay, uh, in monthly installments? Or something?"

  "Cash at the stairs is their usual way. Quit looking so grim, child; I brought that up to dispose of it. I've already hired the best in the business to try to find Ben - so there is no need for you to hock your future to hire the second best."

  "You didn't tell me!"

  "No need to tell you."

  "But- Jubal, what did they find out?"

  "Nothing," he said shortly. "Nothing worth reporting, so there was no need to put you any further down in the dumps by telling you." Jubal scowled. "When you showed up here, I thought you were unnecessarily nervy about Ben - I figured the same as his assistant, that fellow Kilgallen, that Ben had gone yipping off on some new trail... and would check in when he had the story wrapped up. Ben does that sort of stunt - it's his profession." He sighed. "But now I don't think so. That knothead Kilgallen - he really does have a statprint message on file, apparently from Ben, telling Kilgallen that Ben would be away a few days; my man not only saw it but sneaked a photograph and checked. No fake - the message was sent."

  Jill looked puzzled. "I wonder why Ben didn't send me a statprint at the same time? It isn't like him - Ben's very thoughtful."

  Jubal repressed a groan. "Use your head, Gillian. Just because a package says 'Cigarettes' on the outside does not prove that the package contains cigarettes. You got here last Friday; the code groups on that statprint message show that it was filed from Philadelphia-Paoli Station Landing Flat, to be exact - just after ten thirty the morning before - 10.34 AM. Thursday. It was transmitted a couple of minutes after it was filed and was received at once, because Ben's office has its own statprinter. All right, now you tell me why Ben sent a printed message to his own office - during working hours - instead of telephoning?"

  "Why, I don't think he would, ordinarily. At least I wouldn't. The telephone is the normal-"

  "But you aren't Ben. I can think of half a dozen reasons, for a man in Ben's business. To avoid garbles. To insure a printed record in the files of I.T.&T. for legal purposes. To send a delayed message. All sorts of reasons. Kilgallen saw nothing odd about it - and the simple fact that Ben, or the syndicate he sells to, goes to the expense of maintaining a private statprinter in his office shows that Ben uses it regularly.

  "However," Jubal went on, "the snoops I hired are a suspicious lot; that message placed Ben at Paoli flat at ten thirty-four on Thursday - so one of them went there. Jill, that message was not sent from there."

  "But-"

  "One moment. The message was filed from there but did not originate there. Messages are either handed over the counter or telephoned. If one is handed over the counter, the customer can have it typed or he can ask for facsimile transmission of his handwriting and signature... but if it is filed by telephone, it has to be typed by the filing office before it can be photographed."

  "Yes, of course."

  "Doesn't that suggest anything, Jill?"

  "Uh... Jubal, I'm so worried that I'm not thinking straight. What should it suggest?"

  "Quit the breast-beating; it wouldn't have suggested anything to me, either. But the pro who was working for me is a very sneaky character; he arrived at Paoli with a convincing statprint made from the photograph that was taken under Kilgallen's nose - and with business cards and credentials that made it appear that he himself was 'Osbert Kilgallen,' the addressee. Then, with his fatherly manner and sincere face, he hornswoggled a young lady employee of I.T.&T. into telling him things which, under the privacy amendment to the Constitution, she should have divulged only under court order - very sad. Anyhow, she did remember receiving that message for file and processing. Ordinarily she wouldn't remember one message out of hundreds - they go in her ears and out her fingertips and are gone, save for the filed microprint. But, luckily, this young lady is one of Ben's faithful fans; she reads his 'Crow's Nest' column every night - a hideous vice." Jubal blinked his eyes thoughtfully at the horizon. "Front!"

  Anne appeared, dripping. "Remind me," Jubal said to her, "to write a popular article on the compulsive reading of news. The theme will be that most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers. The title is 'Gossip Unlimited' - no, make that 'Gossip Gone Wild.'"

  "Boss, you're getting morbid."

  "Not me. But everybody else is. See that I write it some time next week. Now vanish; I'm busy." He turned back to Gillian. "She noticed Ben's name, so she remembered the message - quite thrilled about it, because it let her speak to one of her heroes... and was irked, I gather, because Ben hadn't paid for vision as well as voice. Oh, she remembers it and she remembers, too, that the service was paid for by cash from a public booth - in Washington."

  "'In Washington'?" repeated Jill. "But why would Ben call from-"

  "Of course, of course!" Jubal agreed pettishly. "If he'
s at a public phone booth anywhere in Washington, he can have both voice and vision direct to his office, face to face with his assistant, cheaper, easier, and. quicker than he could phone a stat message to be sent back to Washington from a point nearly two hundred miles away. It doesn't make sense. Or, rather, it makes just one kind of sense. Hanky-panky. Ben is as used to hanky-panky as a bride is to kisses. He didn't get to be one of the best winchells in the business through playing his cards face up."

  "Ben is not a winchell! He's a Lippmann!"

  "Sorry, I'm color-blind in that range. Keep quiet. He might have believed that his phone was tapped but his statprinter was not. Or he might have suspected that both were tapped - and I've no doubt they are, by now, if not then - and that he could use this round-about relay to convince whoever was tapping him that he really was away from Washington and would not be back for several days." Jubal frowned. "In the latter case we would be doing him no favor by finding him. We might be endangering his life."

  "Jubal! No!"

  "Jubal, yes," he answered wearily. "That boy skates close to the edge, he always has. He's utterly fearless and that's how he's made his reputation. But the rabbit is never more than two jumps ahead of the coyote and this time maybe one jump. Or none, Jill, Ben has never tackled a more dangerous assignment than this. If he has disappeared voluntarily - and he may have - do you want to risk stirring things up by bumbling around in your amateur way, calling attention to the fact that he has dropped out of sight? Kilgallen still has him covered, as Ben's column has appeared every day. I don't ordinarily read it - but I've made it my business to know, this time."