A Stranger in a Strange Land

by Robert A. Heinlein

  "Hell, let's change the subject! Jubal, could I impose on my fraternal status for some more gin?"

  "I'll get it," said Dorcas, and jumped up.

  It was a pleasant family picnic, made easy by Jubal's gift for warm informality, a gift shared by his staff, plus the fact that the three newcomers were themselves the same easy sort of people - each learned, acclaimed, and with no need to strive. And all four men shared a foster-father interest in Mike. Even Dr. Mahmoud, rarely truly off guard with those who did not share with him the one true faith in submission to the Will of God, always beneficent, merciful, found himself relaxed and happy. It had pleased him very much to learn that Jubal read the words of the Prophet and, now that he stopped to notice it, the women of Jubal's household were really much plumper than he had thought at first glance. That dark one- But he put the thought out of his mind; he was a guest.

  But it pleased him very much that these women did not chatter, did not intrude themselves into the sober talk of men, but were very quick with food and drink in warm hospitality. He had been shocked at Miriam's casual disrespect toward her master - then recognized it for what it was: liberty permitted cats and favorite children in the privacy of the home.

  Jubal explained early that they were doing nothing but waiting on word from the Secretary General. "If he means business - and I think he's ready to deal - we may hear from him yet today. If not, we'll go home this evening... and come back if we have to. But if we had stayed in the Palace, he might have been tempted to dicker. Here, dug into our own hole, we can refuse to dicker."

  "Dicker for what?" asked Captain van Tromp. "You gave him what he wanted."

  "Not all that he wanted. Douglas would rather have that power of attorney be utterly irrevocable... instead of on his good behavior, with the power reverting to a man he despises and is afraid of - namely that scoundrel there with the innocent smile, our brother Ben, But there are others besides Douglas who are certain to want to dicker, too. That bland buddha Kung - hates my guts, I've just snatched the rug out from under him. But if he could figure a deal that might tempt us - before Douglas nails this down - he would offer it. So we stay out of his way, too. Kung is one reason why we are eating and drinking nothing that we did not fetch with us."

  "You really feel that's something to worry about?" asked Nelson. "Truthfully, Jubal, I had assumed that you were a gourmet who insisted on his own cuisine even away from home. I can't imagine being poisoned, in a major hotel such as this."

  Jubal shook his head sorrowfully. "Sven, you're the sort of honest man who thinks everybody else is honest - and you are usually right. No, nobody is going to try to poison you... but your wife might collect your insurance simply because you shared a dish with Mike."

  "You really think that?"

  "Sven, I'll order anything you want. But I won't touch it and I won't let Mike touch it. For I'll lay heavy odds that any waiter who comes to this suite will be on Kung's payroll... and maybe on two or three others'. I'm not seeing boogie men behind bushes; they know where we are - and they've had a couple of hours in which to act. Sven, in cold seriousness, my principal worry has been to keep this lad alive long enough to figure out a way to sterilize and stabilize the power he represents... so that it would be to no one's advantage to have him dead."

  Jubal sighed. "Consider the black widow spider. It's a timid little beastie, useful and, for my taste, the prettiest of the arachnids, with its shiny, patent-leather finish and its red hourglass trademark. But the poor thing has the fatal misfortune of possessing enormously too much power for its size. So everybody kills it on sight.

  "The black widow can't help it, it has no way to avoid its venomous power.

  "Mike is in the same dilemma. He isn't as pretty as a black widow spider-"

  "Why, Jubal!" Dorcas said indignantly. "What a mean thing to say! And how utterly untrue!"

  "Sorry, child. I don't have your glandular bias in the matter. Pretty or not, Mike can't get rid of that money, nor is it safe for him to have it. And not just Kung. The High Court is not as 'non-political' as it might be although their methods would probably make a prisoner out of him rather than kill him - a fate which, for my taste, is worse. Not to mention a dozen other interested parties, in and out of public office... persons who might or might not kill him, but who have certainly turned over in their minds just how it would affect their fortunes if Mike were guest of honor at a funeral. I-"

  "Telephone, Boss."

  "Anne, you have just interrupted a profound thought. You hail from Porlock."

  "No, Dallas."

  "And I will not answer the phone for anyone."

  "She said to tell you it was Becky."

  "Why didn't you say so?" Jubal hurried out of the living room, found Madame Vesant's friendly face in the screen. "Becky! I'm glad to see you, girl!" He did not bother to ask how she had known where to call him.

  "Hi, Doc. I caught your act - and I just had to call and tell you so."

  "How'd it look?"

  "The Professor would have been proud of you. I've never seen a tip turned more expertly. Then you spilled 'em before the marks knew what had hit 'em. Dot, the profession lost a great talker when you weren't born twins."

  "That's high praise, coming from you, Becky." Jubal thought rapidly. "But you set up the act; I just cashed in on it - and there's plenty of cash. So name your fee, Becky, and don't be shy." He decided that, whatever figure she picked, he would double it. That drawing account he had demanded for Mike would never feel it... and it was better, far better, to pay Becky off lavishly than to let the obligation stay open.

  Madame Vesant frowned. "Now you've hurt my feelings."

  "Becky, Becky! You're a big girl now, dear. Anybody can clap and cheer - but applause worthwhile will be found in a pile of soft, green, folding money. Not my money. The Man from Mars picks up this tab and, believe me, he can afford it." He grinned. "But all you'll get from me is thanks, and a hug and a kiss that will crack your ribs the first time I see you."

  She relaxed and smiled. "I'll hold you to it. I remember how you used to pat my fanny while you assured me that the Professor was sure to get well - you always could make a body feel better."

  "I can't believe that I ever did anything so unprofessional."

  "You did, you know you did. And you weren't very fatherly about it, either."

  "Maybe so. Maybe I thought it was the treatment you needed. I've given up fanny-patting for Lent - but I'll make an exception in your case."

  "You'd better."

  "And you'd better figure out that fee. Don't forget the zeroes."

  "Uh, I'll think about it. But, truthfully, Doc, there are more ways of collecting a fee than by making a fast count on the change. Have you been watching the market today?"

  "No, and don't tell me about it. Come over and have a drink instead."

  "Uh, I'd better not. I promised, well, a rather important client that I would be available for instant consultation."

  "I see. Mmm... Becky do you suppose that the stars would show that this whole matter would turn out best for everybody if it were all wrapped up, signed, sealed, and notarized today? Maybe just after the stock market closes?"

  She looked thoughtful. "I could look into it."

  "You do that. And come stay with us when you aren't so busy. Stay as long as you like and never wear your hurtin' shoes the whole time. You'll like the boy. He's as weird as snake's suspenders but sweet as a stolen kiss, too."

  "Uh... I will. As soon as I can. Thanks, Doc."

  They said good-by and Jubal returned to find that Dr. Nelson had taken Mike into one of the bedrooms and was checking him over. He joined them to offer Nelson the use of his kit since Nelson had not had with him his professional bag.

  Jubal found Mike stripped down and the ship's surgeon looking baffled. "Doctor," Nelson said, almost angrily, "I saw this patient only ten days ago. Tell me where he got those muscles?"

  "Why, he sent in a coupon from the back cover of Rut: The Ma
gazine for He-Men. You know, the ad that tells how a ninety-pound weakling can-"

  "Doctor, please!"

  "Why don't you ask him?" Jubal suggested.

  Nelson did so. "I thinked them," Mike answered.

  "That's right," Jubal agreed. "He 'thinked' 'em. When I got him, just over a week ago, he was a mess, slight, flabby, and pale. Looked as if he had been raised in a cave - which I gather he was, more or less. So I told him he had to grow strong. So he did."

  "Exercises?" Nelson said doubtfully.

  "Nothing systematic. Swimming, when and as he wished."

  "A week of swimming won't make a man look as if he had been sweating over bar bells for years!" Nelson frowned. "I am aware that Mike has voluntary control over the so-called 'involuntary' muscles, But that is not entirely without precedent. This, on the other hand, requires one to assume that-"

  "Doctor," Jubal said gently, "why don't you just admit that you don't grok it and save the wear and tear?"

  Nelson sighed. "I might as well. Put your clothes on, Michael."

  Somewhat later, Jubal, under the mellowing influence of congenial company and the grape, was unburdening to the three from the Champion his misgivings about his morning's work. "The financial end was simple enough: just tie up Mike's money so that a struggle over it couldn't take place. Not even if he dies, because I've let Douglas know privately that Mike's death ends his stewardship whereas a rumour from a usually reliable source - me, in this case - has reached Kung and several others to the effect that Mike's death will give Douglas permanent control. Of course, if I had had magical powers, I would have stripped the boy not only of all political significance but also of every penny of his inheritance. That-"

  "Why would you have done that, Jubal?" the captain interrupted.

  Harshaw looked surprised. "Are you wealthy, Skipper? I don't mean: 'Are your bills paid and enough in the sock to buy any follies your taste runs to?' I mean rich... so loaded that the floor sags when you walk around to take your place at the head of a board-room table."

  "Me?" Van Tromp snorted. "I've got my monthly check, a pension eventually, a house with a mortgage and two girls in college. I'd like to try being wealthy for a while, I don't mind telling you!"

  "You wouldn't like it."

  "Huh! You wouldn't say that... if you had two daughters in school."

  "For the record, I put four daughters through college, and I went in debt to my armpits to do it. One of them justified the investment; she's a leading light in her profession which she practices under her husband's name because I'm a disreputable old bum who makes money writing popular trash instead of having the grace to be only a revered memory in her paragraph in Who's Who. The other three are nice people who always remember my birthday and don't bother me otherwise I can't say that an education hurt them. But my offspring are not relevant save to show that I understand that a man often needs more than he's got. But you can fix that easily; you can resign from the service and take a job with some engineering firm that will pay you several times what you're getting just to put your name on their letterhead General Atomics. Several others, You've had offers, haven't you?"

  "That's beside the point," Captain van Tromp answered stiffly. "I'm a professional man."

  "Meaning there isn't enough money on this planet to tempt you into giving up [?] space ships. I understand that."

  "But I wouldn't mind having money, too."

  "A little more money won't do you any good, because daughters can use up ten percent more than a man can make in any normal occupation regardless of the amount. That's a widely experienced but previously unformulated law of nature, to be known henceforth as 'Harshaw's Law.' But, Captain, real wealth, on the scale that causes its owner to hire a battery of finaglers to hold down his taxes, would ground you just as certainly as resigning would."

  "Why should it? I would put it all in bonds and just clip coupons."

  "Would you? Not if you were the sort of person who acquires great wealth in the first place. Big money isn't hard to come by. All it costs is a lifetime of singleminded devotion to acquiring it and making it grow into more money, to the utter exclusion of all other interests. They say that the age of opportunity has passed. Nonsense! Seven out of ten of the wealthiest men on this planet started life without a shilling - and there are plenty more such strivers on the way up. Such people are not stopped by high taxation nor even by socialism; they simply adapt themselves to new rules and presently they change the rules. But no premiere ballerina ever works harder, nor more narrowly, than a man who acquires riches. Captain, that's not your style; you don't want to make money, you simply want to have money - in order to spend it."

  "Correct, sir! Which is why I can't see why you should want to take Mike's wealth away from him."

  "Because Mike doesn't need it and it would cripple him worse than any physical handicap. Wealth - great wealth - is a curse... unless you are devoted to the money making game for its own sake. And even then it has serious drawbacks."

  "Oh, nonsense, Jubal, you talk like a harem guard trying to convince a whole man of the advantages of being a eunuch. Pardon me."

  "Very possibly." agreed Jubal, "and perhaps for the same reason; the human mind's ability to rationalize its own shortcomings into virtues is unlimited, and I am no exception. Since I, like yourself, sir, have no interest in money other than to spend it, there has never been the slightest chance that I would acquire any significant degree of wealth just enough for my vices. Nor any real danger that I would fail to scrounge that modest amount, since anyone with the savvy not to draw to a small pair can always manage to feed his vices, whether they be tithing or chewing betel nut. But great wealth? You saw that performance this morning. Now answer me truthfully. Do you think I could have revised it slightly so that I myself acquired all that plunder - become its sole manager and de facto owner while milking off for my own use any income I cared to name - and still have rigged the other issues so that Douglas would have supported the outcome? Could I have done that, sir? Mike trusts me; I am his water brother. Could I have stolen his fortune and so arranged it that the government in the person of Mr. Douglas would have condoned it?"

  "Uh... damn you, Jubal, I suppose you could have."

  "Most certainly I could have. Because our sometimes estimable Secretary General is no more a money-seeker than you are. His drive is political power - a drum whose beat I do not hear. Had I guaranteed to Douglas (oh, gracefully, of course - there is decorum even among thieves) that the Smith estate would continue to bulwark his administration, then I would have been left undisturbed to do as I liked with the income and had my acting guardianship made legal."

  Jubal shuddered. "I thought that I was going to have to do exactly that, simply to protect Mike from the vultures gathered around him - and I was panic-stricken. Captain, you obviously don't know what an Old Man of the Sea great wealth is. It is not a fat purse and time to spend it. Its owner finds himself beset on every side, at every hour, wherever he goes, by persistent pleaders, like beggars in Bombay, each demanding that he invest or give away part of his wealth. He becomes suspicious of honest friendship - indeed honest friendship is rarely offered him; those who could have been his friends are too fastidious to be jostled by beggars, too proud to risk being mistaken for one.

  "Worse yet, his life and the lives of his family are always in danger. Captain, have your daughters ever been threatened with kidnapping?"

  "What? Good Lord, I should hope not!"

  "If you possessed the wealth Mike had thrust on him, you would have those girls guarded night and day - and even then you would not rest, because you would never be sure that those very guards were not tempted. Look at the records of the last hundred or so kidnappings in this country and note how many of them involved a trusted employee - and note, too, how few victims escaped alive. Then ask yourself: is there any luxury wealth can buy which is worth having your daughters' pretty necks always in a noose?"

  Van Tromp looked thoughtful. "N
o. I guess I'll keep my mortgaged house - it's more my speed. Those girls are all I've got, Jubal."

  "Amen. I was appalled at the prospect. Wealth holds no charm for me. All I want is to live my own lazy, useless life, sleep in my own bed - and not be bothered! Yet I thought I was going to be forced to spend my last few years sitting in an office, barricaded by buffers, and working long hours as Mike's man of business.

  "Then I had an inspiration. Douglas already lived behind such barricades, already had such a staff. Since I was forced to surrender the power of that money to Douglas merely to ensure Mike's continued health and freedom, why not make the beggar pay for it by assuming all the headaches, too? I was not afraid that Douglas would steal from Mike; only pipsqueak, second-rate politicians are money hungry - and Douglas, whatever his faults, is no pipsqueak. Quit scowling, Ben, and hope that he never dumps the load on you.

  "So I dumped the whole load on Douglas - and now I can go back to my garden. But, as I have said, the money was relatively simple, once I figured it out. It was the Larkin Decision that fretted me."

  Caxton said, "I thought you had lost your wits on that one, Jubal. That silly business of letting them give Mike sovereign 'honors.' Honors indeed! For God's sake, Jubal, you should simply have had Mike sign over all right, title, and interest, if any, under that ridiculous Larkin theory. You knew Douglas wanted him to - Jill told you."

  "Ben m'boy," Jubal said gently, "as a reporter you are hard-working and sometimes readable."

  "Gee, thanks! My fan."

  "But your concepts of strategy are Neanderthal."

  Caxton sighed. "I feel better, Jubal. For a moment there I thought you had become softly sentimental in your old age."

  "When I do, please shoot me. Captain, how many men did you leave on Mars?"

  "Twenty-three."

  "And what is their status, under the Larkin Decision?"

  Van Tromp looked troubled. "I'm not supposed to talk."

  "Then don't," Jubal reassured him. "I can deduce it, and so can Ben."

  Dr. Nelson said, "Skipper, both Stinky and I are civilians again. I shall talk where and how I please-"