A Stranger in a Strange Land

by Robert A. Heinlein

  The camera angle made a reverse cut, showing the congregation and centering on Brother and Sister Renwick. To wild applause and shouts of "Hallelujah!" Brother Renwick was responding with a boxer's handshake over his head, while his wife blushed and smiled and dabbed at her eyes beside him.

  The camera cut back as the Shepherd held up his hand for silence. He went on briskly, "The Bon Voyage party for the Renwicks will start promptly at midnight and the doors will be locked at that time - so get here early and let's make this the happiest revelry our flock has ever seen, for we're all proud of Art and Dottie. Funeral services will be held thirty minutes after dawn, with breakfast immediately following for the benefit of those who have to get to work early." The Shepherd suddenly looked very stern and the camera panned in until his head filled the tank. "After our last Bon Voyage, the Sexton found an empty pint bottle in one of the Happiness rooms... of a brand distilled by sinners. That's past and done, as the brother who slipped has confessed and paid penance sevenfold, even refusing the usual cash discount - I'm sure he won't backslide. But stop and think, My Children - is it worth risking eternal happiness to save a few pennies on an article of worldly merchandise? Always look for that happy, holy seal-of-approval with Bishop Digby's smiling face on it. Don't let a sinner palm off on you something 'just as good.' Our sponsors support us; they deserve your support. Brother Art, I'm sorry to have to bring up such a subject-"

  "That's okay, Shepherd! Pour it on!"

  "-at a time of such great happiness. But we must never forget that-" Jubal reached over and switched off the speaker circuit.

  "Mike, that's not anything you need to see."

  "Not?"

  "Uh-" Jubal thought about it. Shucks, the boy was going to have to learn about such things sooner or later. "All right, go ahead. But come talk to me about it later."

  "Yes, Jubal."

  Harshaw was about to add some advice intended to offset Mike's tendency to take literally anything he saw or heard. But the telephone's soothing "hold" music suddenly went down and out, and the screen filled with an image - a man in his forties whom Jubal at once labeled in his mind as "cop."

  Jubal said aggressively, "You aren't Gil Berquist."

  The man said, "What is your interest in Gilbert Berquist?"

  Jubal answered with pained patience, "I wish to speak to him. See here, my good man, are you a public employee?"

  The man barely hesitated. "Yes. You must-"

  "I 'must' nothing! I am a citizen in good standing and my taxes go to pay your wages. All morning I have been trying to make a simple phone call - and I have been passed from one butterfly-brained bovine to another, and every one of them feeding out of the public trough. I am sick of it and I do not intend to put up with it any longer. And now you. Give me your name, your job title, and your pay number. Then I'll speak to Mr. Berquist."

  "You didn't answer my question."

  "Come, come! I don't have to answer your questions; I am a private citizen. But you are not... and the question I asked you any citizen may demand of any public servant. O'Kelly versus State of California 1972. I demand that you identify yourself - name, job, number."

  The man answered tonelessly, "You are Doctor Jubal Harshaw. You are calling from-"

  "So that's what took so long? Stopping to have this call traced. That was stupid. I am at home and my address can be obtained from any public library, post office, or telephone information service. As to who I am, everyone knows who I am. Everyone who can read, that is. Can you read?"

  The man went on, "Dr. Harshaw, I am a police officer and I require your cooperation. What is your reason-"

  "Pooh to you, sir! I am a lawyer. A private citizen is required to cooperate with the police under certain specified conditions only. For example, during hot pursuit - in which case the police officer may still be required to show his credentials. Is this 'hot pursuit,' sir? Are you about to dive through this blasted instrument? Second, a private citizen may be required to cooperate within reasonable and lawful limits in the course of police investigation-"

  "This is an investigation."

  "Of what, sir? Before you may require my cooperation in an investigation, you must identify yourself, satisfy me as to your bona-fides, state your purpose, and - if I so require - cite the code and show that a 'reasonable necessity' exists. You have done none of these. I wish to speak to Mr. Berquist."

  The man's jaw muscles were jumping but he answered quietly, "Dr. Harshaw, I am Captain Heinrich of the Federation S.S. Bureau. The fact that you reached me by calling the Executive Palace should be ample proof that I am who I say I am. However-" He took out a wallet, flipped it open, and held it close to his own vision pickup. The picture blurred, then quickly refocused. Harshaw glanced at the I. D. thus displayed; it looked authentic enough, he decided - especially as he did not care whether it was authentic or not.

  "Very well, Captain," he growled. "Will you now explain to me why you are keeping me from speaking with Mr. Berquist?"

  "Mr. Berquist is not available."

  "Then why didn't you say so? In that case, transfer my call to someone of Berquist's rank. I mean one of the half-dozen people who work directly with the Secretary General, as Gil does. I don't propose again to be fobbed off on some junior assistant flunky with no authority to blow his own nose! If Gil isn't there and can't handle it, then for God's sake get me someone of equal rank who can!"

  "You have been trying to telephone the Secretary General."

  "Precisely."

  "Very well, you may explain to me what business you have with the Secretary General."

  "And I may not. Are you a confidential assistant to the Secretary General? Are you privy to his secrets?"

  "That's beside the point."

  "That's exactly the point. As a police officer, you should know better. I shall explain, to some person known to me to be cleared for sensitive material and in Mr. Douglas' confidence, just enough to make sure that the Secretary General speaks to me. Are you sure Mr. Berquist can't be reached?"

  "Quite sure."

  "That's too bad, he could have handled it quickly. Then it will have to be someone else of his rank."

  "If it's that secret, you shouldn't be calling over a public phone."

  "My good Captain! I was not born yesterday - and neither were you. Since you had this call traced, I am sure you are aware that my personal I phone is equipped to receive a maximum-security return call."

  The Special Service officer made no direct reply. Instead he answered, "Doctor, I'll be blunt and save time. Until you explain your business, you aren't going to get any where. If you switch off and call the Palace again, your call will be routed to this office. Call a hundred times... or a month from now. Same thing. Until you decide to cooperate."

  Jubal smiled happily. "It won't be necessary now, as you have let slip - unwittingly, or was it intentional? - the one datum needed before we act. If we do. I can hold them off the rest of the day... but the code word is no longer 'Berquist.'"

  "What the devil do you mean?"

  "My dear Captain, please! Not over an unscrambled circuit surely? But you know, or should know, that I am a senior philosophunculist on active duty."

  "Repeat?"

  "Haven't you studied amphigory? Gad, what they teach in schools these days! Go back to your pinochle game; I don't need you." Jubal switched off at once, set the phone for ten minutes refusal, said, "Come along, kids," and returned to his favorite loafing spot near the pool. There he cautioned Anne to keep her Witness robe at hand day and night until further notice, told Mike to stay in earshot, and gave Miriam instructions concerning the telephone. Then he relaxed.

  He was not displeased with his efforts. He had not expected to be able to reach the Secretary General at once, through official channels. He felt that his morning's reconnaissance had developed at least one weak spot in the wall surrounding the Secretary and he expected - or hoped - that his stormy session with Captain Heinrich would bring a return call..
. from a higher level.

  Or something.

  If not, the exchange of compliments with the S.S. cop had been rewarding in itself and had left him in a warm glow of artistic post-fructification. Harshaw held that certain feet were made for stepping on, in order to improve the breed, promote the general welfare, and minimize the ancient insolence of office; he had seen at once that Heinrich had such feet.

  But, if no action developed, Harshaw wondered how long he could afford to wait? In addition to the pending collapse of his "time bomb" and the fact that he had, in effect, promised Jill that he would take steps on behalf of Ben Caxton (why couldn't the child see that Ben probably could not be helped - indeed, was almost certainly beyond help - and that any direct or hasty action minimized Mike's chance of keeping his freedom?) - in addition to these two factors, something new was crowding him: Duke was gone.

  Gone for the day, gone for good (or gone for bad), Jubal did not know. Duke had been present at dinner the night before, had not shown up for breakfast. Neither event was noteworthy in Harshaw's loosely coupled household and no one else appeared to have missed Duke. Jubal himself would not ordinarily have noticed unless he had had occasion to yell for Duke. But this morning Jubal had, of course, noticed... and he had refrained from shouting for Duke at least twice on occasions when he normally would have done so.

  Jubal looked glumly across the pool, watched Mike attempt to perform a dive exactly as Dorcas had just performed it, and admitted to himself that he had not shouted for Duke when he needed him, on purpose. The truth was that he simply did not want to ask the Bear what had happened to Algy. The Bear might answer.

  Well, there was only one way to cope with that sort of weakness. "Mike! Come here."

  "Yes, Jubal." The Man from Mars got out of the pool and trotted over like an eager puppy, waited. Harshaw looked him over, decided that he must weigh at least twenty pounds more than he had on arrival... and all of it appeared to be muscle. "Mike, do you know where Duke is?"

  "No, Jubal."

  Well, that settled it; the boy didn't know how to lie - wait, hold it! Jubal reminded himself of Mike's computer-like habit of answering exactly the question asked... and Mike had not known, or had not appeared to know, where that pesky box was, once it was gone. "Mike, when did you see him last?"

  "I saw Duke go upstairs when Jill and I came downstairs, this morning when time to cook breakfast." Mike added proudly, "I helped cooking."

  "That was the last time you saw Duke?"

  "I am not see Duke since, Jubal. I proudly burned toast."

  "I'll bet you did. You'll make some woman a fine husband yet, if you aren't careful."

  "Oh, I burned it most carefully."

  "Jubal-"

  "Huh? Yes, Anne?"

  "Duke grabbed an early breakfast and lit out for town. I thought you knew."

  "Well," Jubal temporized, "he did say something about it. I thought he intended to leave after lunch today. No matter, it'll keep." Jubal realized suddenly that a great load had been lifted from his mind. Not that Duke meant anything to him, other than as an efficient handyman - no, of course not! For many years he had avoided letting any human being be important to him - but, just the same, he had to admit that it would have troubled him. A little, anyhow.

  What statute was violated, if any, in turning a man exactly ninety degrees from everything else?

  Not murder, not as long as the lad used it only in self-defense or in the proper defense of another, such as Jill. Possibly the supposedly obsolete Pennsylvania laws against witchcraft would apply... but it would be interesting to see how a prosecutor would manage to word an indictment.

  A civil action might lie - could harboring the Man from Mars be construed as "maintaining an attractive nuisance?" Possibly. But it was more likely that radically new rules of law must evolve. Mike had already kicked the bottom out of both medicine and physics, even though the practitioners of such were still innocently unaware of the chaos facing them. Harshaw dug far back into his memory and recalled the personal tragedy that relativistic mechanics had proved to be for many distinguished scientists. Unable to digest it through long habit of mind, they had taken refuge in blind anger at Einstein himself and any who dared to take him seriously. But their refuge had been a dead end; all that inflexible old guard could do was to die and let younger minds, still limber, take over.

  Harshaw recalled that his grandfather had told him of much the same thing happening in the field of medicine when the germ theory came along; many older physicians had gone to their graves calling Pasteur a liar, a fool, or worse - and without examining evidence which their "common sense" told them was impossible.

  Well, he could see that Mike was going to cause more hooraw than Pasteur and Einstein combined - squared and cubed. Which reminded him - "Larry! Where's Larry?"

  "Here, Boss," the loudspeaker mounted under the eaves behind him announced. "Down in the shop."

  "Got the panic button?"

  "Sure thing. You said to sleep with it on me. I do. I did."

  "Bounce up here to the house and let me have it. No, give it to Anne. Anne, you keep it with your robe."

  She nodded. Larry's voice answered, "Right away, Boss. Count down coming up?"

  "Just do it." Jubal looked up and was startled to find that the Man from Mars was still standing in front of him, quiet as a sculptured figure. Sculpture? Yes, he did remind one of sculpture... uh - Jubal searched his memory. Michelangelo's "David," that was it! Yes, even to the puppyish hands and feet, the serenely sensual face, the tousled, too-long hair. "That was all I wanted, Mike."

  "Yes, Jubal."

  But Mike continued to stand there. Jubal said, "Something on your mind?"

  "About what I was seeing in that goddam-noisy-box. You said, 'All right, go ahead. But come talk to me about it later.'"

  "Oh." Harshaw recalled the broadcast services of the Church of the New Revelation and winced. "Yes, we will talk. But first - Don't call that thing a goddam noisy box. It is a stereovision receiver. Call it that."

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

  "You heard me rightly and it is indeed a goddam noisy box. You'll hear me call it that again. And other things. But you must call it a stereovision receiver."

  "I will call it a 'stereovision receiver.' Why, Jubal? I do not grok."

  Harshaw sighed, with a tired feeling that he had climbed these same stairs too many times. Any conversation with Smith turned up at least one bit of human behavior which could not be justified logically, at least in terms that Smith could understand, 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 in that stereovision receiver - and what you grok of it."

  The conversation that followed was even more lengthy, confused, and rambling than a usual talk with Smith. Mike recalled accurately every word and action he had heard and seen in the babble tank, including all commercials. Since he had almost completed reading the encyclopedia, he had read its article on "Religion," as well as ones on "Christianity," "Islam," "Judaism," "Confucianism," "Buddhism," and many others concerning religion and related subjects. But he had grokked none of this.

  Jubal at last got certain ideas clear in his own mind: (a) Mike did not know that the Fosterite service was a religious one; (b) Mike remembered what he had read about religions but had filed such data for future contemplation, having recognized that he did not understand them; (c) in fact, Mike had only the most confused notion of what the word "religion" meant, even though he could quote all nine definitions for same as given in the unabridged dictionary; (d) the Martian language contained no word (and no concept) which Mike was able to equate with any of these nine definitions; (e) the customs which Jubal had described to Duke as Martian "religious ceremonies" were nothing of the sort to Mike; to Mike such matters were
as matter-of-fact as grocery markets were to Jubal; (f) it was not possible to express as separate ideas in the Martian tongue the human concepts: "religion," "philosophy," and "science" - and, since Mike still thought in Martian even though he now spoke English fluently, it was not yet possible for him to distinguish any one such concept from the other two. All such matters were simply "learnings" which came from the "Old Ones." Doubt he had never heard of and research was unnecessary (no Martian word for either); the answer to any question should be obtained from the Old Ones, who were omniscient (at least within Mike's scope) and infallible, whether the subject be tomorrow's weather or cosmic teleology. (Mike had seen a weather forecast in the babble box and had assumed without question that this was a message from human "Old Ones" being passed around for the benefit of those still corporate. Further inquiry disclosed that he held a similar assumption concerning the authors of the Encyclopedia Britannica.)

  But last, and worst to Jubal, causing him baffled consternation, Mike had grokked the Fosterite service as including (among things he had not grokked) an announcement of an impending discorporation of two humans who were about to join the human "Old Ones" - and Mike was tremendously excited at this news. Had he grokked it rightly? Mike knew that his comprehension of English was less than perfect; he continued to make mistakes through his ignorance, being "only an egg." But had he grokked this correctly? He had been waiting to meet the human "Old Ones," for he had many questions to ask. Was this an opportunity? Or did he require more learnings from his water brothers before he was ready?

  Jubal was saved by the bell. Dorcas arrived with sandwiches and coffee, the household's usual fair-weather picnic lunch. Jubal ate silently, which suited Smith as his rearing had taught him that eating was a time for contemplation - he had found rather upsetting the chatter that usually took place at the table.

  Jubal stretched out his meal while he pondered what to tell Mike - and cursed himself for the folly of having permitted Mike to watch stereo in the first place. Oh, he supposed the boy had to come up against human religions at some point - couldn't be helped if he was going to spend the rest of his life on this dizzy planet. But, damn it, it would have been better to wait until Mike was more used to the overall cockeyed pattern of human behavior... and, in any case, certainly not Fosterites as his first experience!