A Stranger in a Strange Land

by Robert A. Heinlein

  Kung answered blandly, "Doctor, if you are trying to frighten me, you have not succeeded."

  "I did not expect to. But, fortunately for the welfare of this planet, your opinion did not control." Jubal turned back to Douglas. "Mr. Secretary, this is the longest public appearance I have made in years... and I find that I am fatigued. Could we recess these talks? While we await your decision?"

  * * *

  XXI

  THE MEETING ADJOURNED. Jubal found his intention of getting his flock out of the Palace balked by the presence of the American President and of Senator Boone; both wanted to chat with Mike, both were practical politicians who realized fully the freshly enhanced value of being seen on intimate terms with the Man from Mars - and both were well aware that the eyes of the world, via stereovision, were still on them.

  And other hungry politicos were closing in.

  Jubal said quickly, "Mr. President, Senator - we're leaving at once to have lunch. Can you join us?" He reflected that two in private would be easier to handle than two dozen in public - and he had to get Mike out of there before anything came unstuck.

  To his relief both had other duties elsewhere. Jubal found himself promising not only to fetch Mike to that obscene Fosterite service but also to bring him to the White House - oh, well, the boy could always get sick, if necessary. "Places, girls."

  With his escort again around him Mike was convoyed to the roof, Anne leading the way since she would remember it - and creating quite a bow wave with her height, her Valkyrie blonde beauty, and her impressive cloak of a Fair Witness. Jubal, Ben, and the three officers from the Champion covered the rear. Larry and the Greyhound bus were waiting on the roof; a few minutes later the driver left them on the roof of the New Mayflower. Newsmen caught up with them there, of course, but the girls guarded Mike on down to the suite Duke had taken earlier. They were becoming quite good at it and were enjoying it; Miriam and Dorcas in particular displayed ferocity that reminded Jubal of a mother cat defending her young - only they made a game of it, keeping score against each other. A reporter that closed within three feet of either of them courted a spiked instep.

  They found their corridor patrolled by S.S. troopers and an officer outside the door of their suite.

  Jubal's back hair rose, but he realized (or "hoped," he corrected himself) that their presence meant that Douglas was carrying out his half of the bargain in full measure. The letter Jubal had sent to Douglas before the conference, explaining what he was going to do and say, and why, had included a plea to Douglas to use his power and influence to protect Mike's privacy from here on - so that the unfortunate lad could begin to lead a normal life. (If a "normal" life was possible for Mike, Jubal again corrected himself.)

  So Jubal merely called out, "Jill! Keep Mike under control. It's okay."

  "Right, Boss."

  And so it was. The officer at the door simply saluted. Jubal glanced at him, "Well! Howdy, Major. Busted down any doors lately?"

  Major Bloch turned red but kept his eyes forward and did not answer. Jubal wondered if the assignment was punishment? No, likely just coincidence; there probably wouldn't be more than a handful of S.S. officers of appropriate rank available for the chore in this area. Jubal considered rubbing it in by saying that a skunk had wandered in that door and ruined his living room furniture - and what was the major going to do about that? But he decided against it; it would not only be ungracious but untrue- Duke had rigged a temporary closure out of plywood before the party got too wet for such tasks.

  Duke was waiting inside. Jubal said, "Sit down, gentlemen. How about it, Duke?"

  Duke shrugged. "Who knows? Nobody has bugged this suite since I took it; I guarantee that. I turned down the first suite they offered me, just as you said to, and I picked this one because it's got a heavy ceiling - the ballroom is above us. And I've spent the time since searching the place. But, Boss, I've pushed enough electrons to know that any dump can be bugged, so that you can't find it without tearing the building down."

  "Fine, fine - but I didn't mean that. They can't keep a hotel this big bugged throughout just on the chance that we might take a room in it - at least, I don't think they can. I mean, 'How about the supplies?' I'm hungry, boy, and very thirsty - and we've three more for lunch."

  "Oh, that. That stuff was unloaded under my eyes, carried down the same way, placed just inside the door; I put it all in the pantry. You've got a suspicious nature, Boss."

  "I sure have - and you'd better acquire one if you want to live as long as I have." Jubal had just trusted Douglas with a fortune equivalent to a medium-sized national debt - but he had not assumed that Douglas' overeager lieutenants would not tamper with food and drink. So to avoid the services of a food taster he had fetched all the way from the Poconos plenty of food, more than a plenty of liquor - and a little water. And, of course, ice cubes. He wondered how Caesar had licked the Gauls without ice cubes.

  "I don't hanker to," Duke answered.

  "Matter of taste. I've had a pretty good time, on the whole. Get crackin', girls. Anne, douse your cloak and get useful. First girl back in here with a drink for me skips her next turn at 'Front.' After our guests, I mean. Do please sit down, gentlemen. Sven, what's your favorite poison? Akvavit, I suppose - Larry, tear down, find a liquor store and fetch back a couple of bottles of akvavit. Fetch Bols gin for the captain, too."

  "Hold it, Jubal," Nelson said firmly. "I won't touch akvavit unless it's chilled overnight - and I'd rather have Scotch."

  "Me, too," agreed van Tromp.

  "All right. Got enough of that to drown a horse. Dr. Mahmoud? If you prefer soft drinks, I'm pretty sure the girls tucked some in."

  Mahmoud looked wistful. "I should not allow myself to be tempted by strong drink."

  "No need to be. Let me prescribe for you, as a physician." Jubal looked him over. "Son, you look as if you had been under considerable nervous strain. Now we could alleviate that with meprobamate but since we don't have that at hand, I'm forced to substitute two ounces of ninety proof ethanol, repeat as needed. Any particular flavor you prefer to kill the medicinal taste? And with or without bubbles?"

  Mahmoud smiled and suddenly did not look at all English. "Thank you, Doctor - but I'll sin my own sins, with my eyes open. Gin, please, with water on the side. Or vodka. Or whatever is available."

  "Or medicinal alcohol," Nelson added. "Don't let him pull your leg, Jubal. Stinky drinks anything - and always regrets it."

  "I do regret it," Mahmoud said earnestly, "because I know it is sinful."

  "Then don't needle him about it, Sven," Jubal said brusquely. "If Stinky gets more mileage out of his sins by regretting them, that's his business. My own regretter burned out from overload during the market crash in '29 and I've never replaced it - and that's my business. To each his own. How about victuals, Stinky? Anne probably stuffed a ham into one of those hampers - and there might be other unclean items not as clearly recognizable. Shall I check?"

  Mahmoud shook his head. "I'm not a traditionalist, Jubal. That legislation was given a long time ago, according to the needs of the time. The times are different now."

  Jubal suddenly looked sad. "Yes. But for the better? Never mind, this too shall pass and leave not a rack of mutton behind. Eat what you will, my brother - God forgives necessity."

  "Thank you. But, truthfully, I often do not eat in the middle of the day."

  "Better eat, or the prescribed ethanol will do more than relax you. Besides, these kids who work for me may sometimes misspell words but they are all superb cooks."

  Miriam had come up behind Jubal with a tray bearing four drinks, orders having been filled at once while Jubal ranted. "Boss," she broke in, "I heard that. Will you put it in writing?"

  "What?" He whirled around and glared at her. "Snooping! You stay in after school and write one thousand times, 'I will not flap my ears at private conversations.' Stay until you finish it."

  "Yes, Boss. This is for you, Captain... and for you, Dr. Nelson an
d this is yours, Dr. Mahmoud. Water on the side, you said?"

  "Yes, Miriam. Thank you."

  "Usual Harshaw service - sloppy but fast. Here's yours, Boss." "You put water in it!"

  "Anne's orders. She says you're too tired to have it on the rocks."

  Jubal looked long-suffering. "You see what I have to put up with, gentlemen? We should never have put shoes on 'em. Miriam, make that 'one thousand times' in Sanskrit."

  "Yes, Boss. Just as soon as I find time to learn it." She patted him on the head. "You go right ahead and have your tizzy, dear; you've earned it. We're all proud of you."

  "Back to the kitchen, woman. Hold it - has everybody else got a drink? Where's Ben's drink? Where's Ben?"

  "They have by now. Ben is phoning in his column, His drink is at his elbow."

  "Very well. You may back out quietly, without formality - and send Mike in. Gentlemen! Me ke aloha pau ole! - for there are fewer of us every year." He drank, they joined him.

  "Mike's helping. He loves to help - I think he's going to be a butler when he grows up."

  "I thought you had left. Send him in anyhow; Dr. Nelson wants to give him a physical examination."

  "No hurry," put in the ship's surgeon. "Jubal, this is excellent Scotch - but what was the toast?"

  "Sorry. Polynesian. 'May our friendship be everlasting.' Call it a footnote to the water ceremony this morning. By the way, gentlemen, both Larry and Duke are water brothers to Mike, too, but don't let it fret you. They can't cook... but they're the sort to have at your back in a dark alley."

  "If you vouch for them, Jubal," van Tromp assured him, "admit them and tyle the door. But let's drink to the girls while we're alone. Sven, what's that toast of yours to the flickas?"

  "You mean the one to all pretty girls everywhere? Let's drink just to the four who are here. Skim!!" They drank to their female water brothers and Nelson continued, "Jubal, where do you find them?"

  "Raise 'em in my own cellar. Then just when I've got 'em trained and some use to me, some city slicker always comes along and marries them. It's a losing game."

  "I can see how you suffer," Nelson said sympathetically.

  "I do. I trust all of you gentlemen are married?"

  Two were. Mahmoud was not. Jubal looked at him bleakly. "Would you have the grace to discorporate yourself? After lunch, of course - I wouldn't want you to do it on an empty stomach."

  "I'm no threat, I'm a permanent bachelor."

  "Come, come, sir! I saw Dorcas making eyes at you... and you were purring."

  "I'm safe, I assure you." Mahmoud thought of telling Jubal that he would never marry out of his faith, decided that a gentile would take it amiss - even a rare exception like Jubal. He changed the subject. "But, Jubal, don't make a suggestion like that to Mike. He wouldn't grok that you were joking - and you might have a corpse on your hands. I don't know... I don't know that Mike can actually think himself dead. But he would try... and if he were truly a Martian, it would work."

  "I'm sure he can," Nelson said firmly. "Doctor - 'Jubal,' I mean - have you noticed anything odd about Mike's metabolism?"

  "Uh, let me put it this way. There isn't anything about his metabolism which I have noticed that is not odd. Very."

  "Exactly."

  Jubal turned to Mahmoud. "But don't worry that I might invite Mike to suicide. I've learned not to joke with him, not ever. I grok that he doesn't grok joking." Jubal blinked thoughtfully. "But I don't grok 'grok' - not really. Stinky, you speak Martian."

  "A little."

  "You speak it fluently, I heard you. Do you grok 'grok'?"

  Mahmoud looked very thoughtful. "No. Not really. 'Grok' is the most important word in the Martian language - and I expect to spend the next forty years trying to understand it and perhaps use some millions of printed words trying to explain it. But I don't expect to be successful. You need to think in Martian to grok the word 'grok.' Which Mike does and I don't. Perhaps you have noticed that Mike takes a rather veering approach to some of the simplest human ideas?"

  "Have I! My throbbing head!"

  "Mine, too."

  "Food," announced Jubal. "Lunch, and about time, too. Girls, put it down where we can reach it and maintain a respectful silence. Go on talking, Doctor, if you will. Or does Mike's presence make it better to postpone it?"

  "Not at all." Mahmoud spoke briefly in Martian to Mike. Mike answered him, smiled sunnily; his expression became blank again and he applied himself to food, quite content to be allowed to eat in silence. "I told him what I was trying to do and he told me that I would speak rightly; this was not his opinion but a simple statement of fact, a necessity. I hope that if I fail to, he will notice and tell me. But I doubt if he will. You see, Mike thinks in Martian - and this gives him an entirely different 'map' of the universe from that which you and I use. You follow me?"

  "I grok it," agreed Jubal. "Language itself shapes a man's basic ideas."

  "Yes, but - Doctor, you speak Arabic, do you not?"

  "Eh? I used to, badly, many years ago," admitted Jubal. "Put in a while as a surgeon with the American Field Service, in Palestine. But I don't now. I still read it a little... because I prefer to read the words of the Prophet in the original."

  "Proper. Since the Koran cannot be translated - the 'map' changes on translation no matter how carefully one tries. You will understand, then, how difficult I found English. It was not alone that my native language has much simpler inflections and more limited tenses; the whole 'map' changed. English is the largest of the human tongues, with several times the vocabulary of the second largest language - this alone made it inevitable that English would eventually become, as it did, the lingua franca of this planet, for it is thereby the richest and the most flexible - despite its barbaric accretions... or, I should say, because of its barbaric accretions. English swallows up anything that comes its way, makes English out of it. Nobody tried to stop this process, the way some languages are policed and have official limits... probably because there never has been, truly, such a thing as 'the King's English' - for 'the King's English' was French. English was in truth a bastard tongue and nobody cared how it grew... and it did! - enormously. Until no one could hope to be an educated man unless he did his best to embrace this monster.

  "Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply cannot be said in any other language. It almost drove me crazy... until I learned to think in it - and that put a new 'map' of the world on top of the one I grew up with. A better one, in many ways - certainly a more detailed one.

  "But nevertheless there are things which can be said in the simple Arabic tongue that cannot be said in English."

  Jubal nodded agreement. "Quite true. That's why I've kept up my reading of it, a little."

  "Yes. But the Martian language is so much more complex than is English - and so wildly different in the fashion in which it abstracts its picture of the universe - that English and Arabic might as well be considered one and the same language, by comparison. An Englishman and an Arab can learn to think each other's thoughts, in the other's language. But I'm not certain that it will ever be possible for us to think in Martian (other than by the unique fashion Mike learned it) - oh, we can learn a sort of a 'pidgin' Martian, yes - that is what I speak.

  "Now take this one word: 'grok.' Its literal meaning, one which I suspect goes back to the origin of the Martian race as thinking, speaking creatures - and which throws light on their whole 'map' - is quite easy. 'Grok' means 'to drink.'"

  "Huh?" said Jubal. "But Mike never says 'grok' when he's just talking about drinking. He-"

  "Just a moment." Mahmoud spoke to Mike in Martian.

  Mike looked faintly surprised and said, "'Grok' is drink," and dropped the matter.

  "But Mike would also have agreed," Mahmoud went on, "if I had named a hundred other English words, words which represent what we think of as different concepts, even pairs of antithetical concepts. And
'grok' means all of these, depending on how you use it. It means 'fear,' it means 'love,' it means 'hate' - proper hate, for by the Martian 'map' you cannot possibly hate anything unless you grok it completely, understand it so thoroughly that you merge with it and it merges with you - then and only then can you hate it. By hating yourself. But this also implies, by necessity, that you love it, too, and cherish it and would not have it otherwise. Then you can hate - and (I think) that Martian hate is an emotion so black that the nearest human equivalent could only be called a mild distaste."

  Mahmoud screwed up his face. "It means 'identically equal' in the mathematical sense. The human cliché, 'This hurts me worse than it does you' has a Martian flavor to it, if only a trace. The Martians seem to know instinctively what we learned painfully from modern physics, that the observer interacts with the observed simply through the process of observation. 'Grok' means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the process being observed - to merge, to blend, to intermarry, to lose personal identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science - and it means as little to us as color means to a blind man." Mahmoud paused. "Jubal, if I chopped you up and made a stew of you, you and the stew, whatever else was in it, would grok - and when I ate you, we would grok together and nothing would be lost and it would not matter which one of us did the chopping up and eating."

  "It would to me!" Jubal said firmly.

  "You aren't a Martian." Mahmoud stopped again to talk to Mike in Martian.

  Mike nodded. "You spoke rightly, my brother Dr. Mahmoud. I am been saying so. Thou art God."

  Mahmoud shrugged helplessly. "You see how hopeless it is? All I got was a blasphemy. We don't think in Martian. We can't"

  "Thou art God," Mike said agreeably. "God groks."