"I have not! I haven't concerned myself with his morals; I've simply been teaching him necessary customs."

            "Customs, morals-is there a difference? Woman, do you realize what you are doing? Here, by the grace of God and an inside straight, we have a personality untouched by the psychotic taboos of our tribe-.--and you want to turn him into a carbon copy of every fourth-rate conformist in this frightened land! Why don't you go whole hog? Get him a brief case and make him carry it wherever he goes-make him feel shame if he doesn't have it."

            "I'm not doing anything of the sort! I'm just trying to keep him out of trouble. It's for his own good."

            Jubal snorted. "That's the excuse they gave the tomcat just before his operation."

            "Oh!" Jill stopped and appeared to be counting ten. Then she said formally and blealdy, "This is your house, Doctor Harshaw, and we are in your debt. If you will excuse me, I will fetch Michael at once." She got up to leave.

            "Hold it, Jill."

            "Sir?"

            "Sit back down-and for God's sake quit trying to be as nasty as I am; you don't have my years of practice. Now let me get something straight: you are not in my debt. You can't be. Impossible-because I never do anything I don't want to do. Nor does anyone, but in my case I am always aware of it. So please don't invent a debt that does not exist, or before you know it you will be trying to feel gratitude-and that is the treacherous first step downward to complete moral degradation. You grok that? Or don't you?"

            Jill bit her lip, then grinned. "I'm not sure I know what 'grok' means."

            "Nor do I. But I intend to go on taking lessons from Mike until I do. But I was speaking dead seriously. Gratitude is a euphemism for resentment. Resentment from most people I do not mind-but from pretty little girls it is distasteful to me."

            "Why, Jubal, I don't resent you-that's silly."

            "I hope you don't... but you certainly will if you don't root out of your mind this delusion that you are indebted to me. The Japanese have five different ways to say 'thank you'-and every one of them translates literally as resentment, in various degrees. Would that English had the same built-in honesty on this point! Instead, English is capable of defining sentiments that the human nervous system is quite incapable of experiencing. 'Gratitude,' for example."

            "Jubal, you're a cynical old man. I do feel grateful to you and I shall go on feeling grateful."

            "And you are a sentimental young girl. That makes us a perfect complementary pair. Hmm - let's run over to Atlantic City for a weekend of illicit debauchery, just us two."

            "Why, Jubal!"

            "You see how deep your gratitude goes when I attempt to draw on it?"

            "Oh. I'm ready. How soon do we leave?"

            "Hmmmphtt We should have left forty years ago. Shut up. The second point I want to make is that you are right; the boy does indeed have to learn human customs. He must be taught to take off his shoes in a mosque and to wear his hat in a synagogue and to cover his nakedness when taboo requires it, or our tribal shamans will burn him for deviationism. But, child, by the myriad deceptive aspects of Ahrilflafl, don't brainwash him in the process. Make sure he is cynical about each part of it."

            "Uh, I'm not sure how to go about that, Jubal. Well, Mike just doesn't seem to have any cynicism in him."

            "So? Yes. Well, I'll take a band in it. What's keeping him? Shouldn't he be dressed by now?"

            "I'll go see."

            "In a moment. Jill, I explained to you why I had not been anxious to accuse anyone of kidnapping Ben . . . and the reports I have had since Serve to support the probability that that was a tactically correct decision. If Ben is being unlawfully detained (to put it at its sweetest), at least we have not crowded the opposition into getting rid of the evidence by getting rid o~ Ben. If he is alive he stands a chance of staying alive. But I took 0ther steps the Ilrst night you were here. Do you know your Bible?"

            "Uh, not very well."

            "It merits study, it contains very practical advice for most emergencies. '-every one that doeth evil hateth the light-' John something or other, Jesus speaking to Nicodeus. I have been expecting at any moment an attempt to get Mike away from us, for it didn't seem likely that you had managed to cover your tracks perfectly. And if they do try? Well, this is a lonely place and we haven't any heavy artillery. But there is one weapon that might balk them. Light. The glaring spotlight of publicity. So I made some phone calls and arranged for any ruckus here to have publicity. Not just a little publicity that the administration might be able to hush up, but great gobs of publicity worldwide and all at once. The details do not matter-where and how the cameras are mounted and what line of sight linkages have been rigged, I mean. But if a fight breaks out here, it will be picked up by three networks and, at the same time, a number of hold for release messages will be delivered to a wide spread of V.I.P.s, all of whom would like very much to catch our Honorable Secretary General with his pants down."

            Harshaw frowned. "The weakness in this defense is that I can't maintain it indefinitely. Truthfully, when I set it up, my worry was to set up fast enough-I expected whatever popped' to pop inside of twenty four hours. Now my worry is reversed and I think we are going to have to force some action quickly while I can still keep a spotlight on us."

            "What sort of action, Jubal?"

            "I don't know. I've been fretting about it the past three days, to the point where I can't enjoy my food. But you gave me a glitn1Uefl0~ of a new approach when you told me that remarkable story about what happened when they tried to grab you two in Ben's apartment."

            "I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner, Jubal. But I didn't think anybody would believe me and I must say that it makes me feel good that you do believe me."

            "I didn't say I believed you."

            "What? But you-"

            "I think you were telling the truth, Jill. But a dream IS a true experience of a sort and so is a hypnotic delusion. But what happens in this room during the next half hour will be seen by a Fair Witness and by cameras which are" he leaned forward and pressed a button. "rolling right now. I don't think Anne can be hypnotized when she's on duty and I'll lay long odds that cameras can't be. We should be able to find out what kind of truth we're dealing with-after which we should be able to decide how to go about forcing the powers-that-be to drop the other shoe . . . and maybe figure a way that will help Ben at the same time. Go get Mike."

            Mike's delay was not mysterious, merely worrisome to him. He had managed to tie his left shoestring to his right-then had stood up, tripped himself, fallen flat, and, in so doing, jerked the knots almost hopelessly tight. He had spent the rest of the time analysing his predicament, concluding correctly why he had failed, and slowly, slowly, slowly getting the snarl untied and the strings correctly tied, one bow to each shoe, unlinked. He had not been aware that his dressing had taken long; he had simply been troubled that he had failed to repeat correctly something which Jill had already taught him. He confessed his failure abjectly to her even though he had repaired it by the time she came to fetch him.

            She soothed and reassured him, combed his hair, and herded him in to see Jubal. Harshaw looked up. "Hi, son. Sit down."

            "Hi, Jubal," Valentine Michael Smith answered gravely, sat down- waited. Jill had to rid herself of the impression that Smith had bowed deeply, when in fact he had not even nodded.

            Harshaw put aside a hush-mike and said, "Well, boy what have you learned today?"

            Smith smiled happily, then answered-as always with a slight pause. "I have today learned to do a one-and-a-half gainer. That is a jumping, a dive, for entering our water by-"

            "I know, I saw you doing it. But you splashed. Keep your toes pointed, your knees straight, and your feet together."

            Smith looked unhappy. "I rightly did not it do?"

            "You did it very rightly, for a first time. Watch how Dorcas does it. Hardly a ripple in the water."

            Smith considered this slowly. "The water groks Dorcas. It cherishes him."

            "'Her.' Dorcas is a 'her,' not a 'him.'"

            "'Her,' " Smith corrected. "Then my speaking was false? I have read in Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, published in Springfield, Massachusetts, that the masculine gender includes the feminine gender in speaking. In Hagworth's Law of Contracts, Fifth Edition, Chicago, Illinois, 1978, on page 1012, it says-"

            "Hold it," Harshaw said hastily. "The trouble is with the English language, not with you. Masculine speech forms do include the feminine, when you are speaking in general-but not when you are talking about a particular person. Dorcas is always 'she' or 'her'-never 'he' or 'him.' Remember it."

            "I will remember it."

            "You had better remember it-~r you may provoke Dorcas into proving just how female she is." Harshaw blinked thoughtfully. "Jill, is the lad sleeping with you? Or with one of you?"

            She barely hesitated, then answered flatly, "SO far as I know, Mike doesn't sleep."

            "You evaded my question."

            "Then perhaps you had better assume that I intended to evade it. However, he is not sleeping with me."

            "Mmm .. damn it, my interest is scientific. However, we'll pursue another line of inquiry. Mike, what else have you learned today?"

            "I have learned two ways to tie my shoes. One way is only good for lying down. The other way is good for walking. And I have learned conjugations. 'I am, thou art, he is, we are, you are, they are, I was, thou wast-''

            "Okay, that's enough. What else?"

            Mike smiled delightedly. "To yesterday I am learning to drive the tractor, brightly, brightly, and with beauty."

            "Eh?" Jubal turned to Jill. 'When did this happen?"

            "Yesterday afternoon while you were napping, Jubal. It's all right- Duke was very careful not to let him get hurt."

            "Umm ... well, obviously he did not get hurt. Mike, have you been reading?"

            "Yes, Jubal."

            "What?"

            "I have read," Mike recited carefully, "three more volumes of the Encyclopedia, Maryb to Mushe, Mushr to Ozon, P to Planti. You have told me not to read too much of the Encyclopedia at one reading, so I then stopped. I then read the Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by Master William Shakespeare of London. I then read the Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Sein gait as translated into English by Arthur Machen. I then read The Art of Cross-Exam mat ion by Francis Weilman. I then tried to grok what I had read until Jill told me that I must come to breakfast."

            "And did you grok it?"

            Smith looked troubled. "Jubal, I do not know."

            "Is anything bothering you, Mike?"

            "I do not grok all fullness of what I read. In the history written by Master William Shakespeare I found myself full of happiness at the death of Romeo. Then I read on and learned that he had discorporated too soon-or so I thought I grokked. Why?"

            "He was a blithering young idiot."

            "Beg pardon?"

            "I don't know, Mike."

            Smith considered this. Then he muttered something in Martian and added, "I am only an egg."

            "Eh? You usually say that when you want to ask a favor, Mike. What is it this time? Speak up."

            Smith hesitated. Then he blurted out, "Jubal my brother, would please you ask Romeo why he discorporated? I cannot ask him; I am only an egg. But you can-and then you could teach me the grokking of it."

            For the next several minutes the conversation became very tangled. Jubal saw at once that Mike believed that Romeo of Montague had been a living, breathing person, and Jubal managed with no special shock to his own concepts to realize that Mike expected him to be able, somehow, to conjure up Romeo's ghost and demand of him explanations for his conduct when in the flesh.

            But to get over to Mike the idea that none of the Capulets and Montagues had ever had any sort of corporate existence was another matter. The concept of fiction was nowhere in Mike's experience; there was nothing on which it could rest, and Jubal's attempts to explain the idea were so emotionally upsetting to Mike that Jill was afraid that he was about to roll up into a ball and withdraw himself.

            But Mike himself saw how perilously close he was coming to that necessity and he had already learned that he must not resort to this refuge in the presence of his friends, because (with the exception of his brother Doctor Nelson) it always caused them emotional disturbance. So he made a mighty effort, slowed down his heart, calmed his emotions, and smiled. "I will waiting till a grokking comes of itself."

            "That's better," agreed Jubal. "But hereafter, before you read anything, ask me or ask Jill, or somebody, whether or not it is fiction. I don't want you to get mixed up."

            "I will ask, Jubal." Mike decided that, when he did grok this strange idea, that he must report the fullness to the Old Ones . . . and suddenly found himself wondering if the Old Ones knew about "fiction." The completely incredible idea that there might be something which was as strange to the Old Ones as it was to himself was so much more revolutionary (indeed heretically so) than the sufficiently weird concept of fiction that he hastily put it aside to cool, saved it for future deep contemplation.

            "-but I didn't," his brother Jubal was saying, "call you in here to discuss literary forms. Mike, you remember the day that Jill took you away from the hospital?"

            "'Hospital'?" Mike repeated.

            "I'm not sure, Jubal," Jill interrupted, "that Mike ever knew that it was a hospital-at least I never told him it was one. Let me try it."

            "Go ahead."

            "Mike, you remember the place where you were, where you lived alone in a room, before I dressed you and took you away."

            "Yes, Jill.''

            "Then we went to another place and I undressed you and gave you a bath."

            Smith smiled in pleased recollection. "Yes. It was a great happiness."

            "Then I dried you off-and then two men came."

            Smith's smile wiped away. He relived that critical cusp of decision and the horror of his discovery that, somehow, he had chosen wrong action and hurt his water brother. He began to tremble and huddle into himself.

            Jill said loudly, "Mike! Stop it! Stop it at once! Don't you dare go away!"

            Mike took control of his being and did what his water brother required of him. "Yes, Jill," he agreed.

            "Listen to me, Mike. I want you to think about that time-but you mustn't get upset or go away. Just remember it. There were two men there. One of them pulled you Out into the living room."

            "The room with the joyful grasses on the floor," he agreed.

            "That's right. He pulled you Out into the room with the grass on the floor and I tried to stop him. He hit me. Then he was gone. Y~u remember?"

            "You are not angry?"

            "What? No, no, not at all. But I was frightened. One man disappeared, then the other one pointed a gun at me-and then he was gone, too. I was very frightened-but I was not angry."

            "You are not angry with me now?"

            "Mike, dear-I have never been angry with you. But sometimes I have been frightened. I was frightened that time-but I am not afraid now. Jubal and I want to know what happened. Those two men were there, in that room with us. And then you did something . . . and they were gone. You did it twice. What was it you did? Can you tell us?"

            "Yes, I will tell you. The man-the big man-hit you ... and I was frightened, too. So I-" He croaked a phrase in Martian, then looked puzzled. "I do not know words."

            Jubal said, "Mike, can you use a lot of words and explain it a little at a time?"

            "I will try, Jubal. Something is there, in front of me. It is a wrong thing and it must not be there. It must go. So I reach out and-" He stopped again and looked perplexed. "It is such a simple thing, such an easy thing. Anyone can do it. Tying shoe laces is much more hard. But the words not are. I am very sorry. I will learn more words." He considered it. "Perhaps the words are in Plants to Raym, or Rayn to Sarr, or Sars to Sorc. I will read them tonight and tell you at breakfast."

            "Maybe," Jubal admitted. "Just a minute, Mike." He got up from his desk, went to a corner and returned with a large carton which had lately contained twelve fifths of brandy. "Can you make this go away?"

            "This is a wrong thing and it must not be here?"

            "Well, assume that it is."

            "But-Jubal, I must know that it is a wrong thing. This is a box. I do not grok that it exists wrongly."

            "Mmm- I see. I think I see. Suppose I picked up this box and threw it at Jill's head? Threw it hard, so that it would hurt her?"

            Smith said with gentle sadness, "Jubal, you would not do that to Jill."

            "Uh ... damn it. I guess I wouldn't. Jill, will you throw the box at me? Good and hard-a scalp wound at least, if Mike can't protect me."

            "Jubal, I don't like the idea much better than you do."

            "Oh, come on! In the interest of science ... and Ben Caxton."

            "But-" Jill jumped up suddenly, grabbed the box, threw it right at Jubal's head. Jubal intended to stand and take it-but instinct and habit won out; he ducked.

            "Missed me," he said. "But where is it?" He looked around. "Confound it, I wasn't watching. I meant to keep my eyes right on it." He looked at Smith. "Mike, is that the way-what's the matter, boy?"

            The Man from Mars was trembling and looking unhappy. Jill hurried to him and put her arms around his shoulders. "There, there, it's all right, dear! You did it beautifully-whatever it is. It never touched Jubal. It simply vanished."

            "I guess it did," Jubal admitted, looking all around the room and chewing his thumb. "Anne, were you watching?"

            "Yes."

            "What did you see?"

            "The box did not simply vanish. The process was not quite instantaneous but lasted some measurable fraction of a second. From where I am sitting it appeared to shrink very, very rapidly, as if it were disappearing into the far distance. But it did not go outside the room, for I could see it right up to the instant it disappeared."

            "But where did it go?"

            "That is all I can report."

            "Mmm ... we'll run off the films later-but I'm convinced. Mike-"

            "Yes, Jubal?"

            "Where is that box now?"

            "The box is-" Smith paused. "Again I have not words. I am sorry."

            "I'm not sorry, but I'm certainly confused. Look, son, can you reach in again and haul it out? Bring the box back here?"

            "Beg pardon?"

            "You made it go away; now make it come back."

            "How can I do that? The box is nor."

            Jubal looked very thoughtful. "If this method ever becomes popular, we'll have to revise the rules concerning corpus delecti. 'I've got a little list they never will be missed.' Jill, let's find something else that will make a not-quite-lethal weapon; this time I'm going to keep my eyes open. Mike, how close do you have to be to do this trick?"

            "Beg pardon?"

            "What's your range? If you had been standing out there in the hallway and I had been clear back by the window-oh, say thirty feet-could you have stopped that box from hitting me?"

            Smith appeared mildly surprised. "Yes."

            "Hmm ... come over here by the window. Now look down there at the swimming poo1. Suppose that Jill and I had been over on the far side of the pool and you had been standing right where you are. Could you have stopped the box from here?"

            "Yes, Jubal."

            "Well ... suppose Jill and I were clear down the road there at the gate, a quarter of a mile away. Suppose we were standing just this side of those bushes that shield the gate, where you could see us clearly. Is that too far?"

            Smith hesitated a long time, then spoke slowly. "Jubal, it is not the distance. It is not the seeing. It is the knowing."

            "Hmm ... let's see if I grok it. Or grok part of it. It doesn't matter how far or how close a thing is. You don't even have to see it happening. But if you know that a bad thing is happening, you can reach out and stop it. Right?"

            Smith looked slightly troubled. "Almost it is right. But I am not long out of the nest. For knowing I must see. But an Old One does not need eyes to know. He knows. He groks. He acts. I am sorry."

            "I don't know what you are sorry about, son," Jubal said gruffly. "The High Minister for Peace would have declared you Top Secret ten minutes ago."

            "Beg pardon?"

            "Never mind. What you do is quite good enough in this vicinity." Jubal returned to his desk, looked around thoughtfully and picked up a ponderous metal ash tray. "Jill, don't aim at my face this time; this thing has sharp corners. Okay, Mike, you stand clear out in the hallway."

            "Jubal ... my brother . . . please not!"

            "What's the trouble, son? You did it beautifully a few minutes ago. I want one more demonstration-and this time I won't take my eyes off it."

            "Jubal-"

            "Yes, Jill?"

            "I think I grok what is bothering Mike."

            "Well, tell me then, for I don't."

            "We set up an experiment where I was about to hurt you by hitting you with that box. But both of us are his water brothers-so it upset Mike that I even tried to hurt you. I think there is something very unMartian about such a situation. It puts Mike in a dilemma. Divided loyalty."

            Harshaw frowned. "Maybe it should be investigated by the Committee on un-Martian Activities."

            "I'm not joking, Jubal."

            "Nor was I-for we may need such a committee all too soon. I won. der how Mrs. O'Leary's cow felt as she kicked the lantern? All right, Jill, you sit down and I'll re-rig the experiment." Harshaw handed the ash tray to Mike. "Feel how heavy it is, son, and see those sharp corners."

            Smith examined it somewhat gingerly. Harshaw went on, "I'm going to throw it straight up in the air, clear to the ceiling-and let it hit me in the head as it comes down."

            Mike stared at him. "My brother ... you will now discorporate?"

            "Eh? No, no! It won't kill me and I don't want to die. But it will cut me and hurt me-unless you stop it. Here we go!" Harshaw tossed it straight up within inches of the high ceiling, tracking it with his eyes like a soccer player waiting to pass the ball with his head. He concentrated on watching it, while one part of his mind was considering jerking his head aside at the last instant rather than take the nasty scalp wound the heavy, ugly thing was otherwise sure to give him-and another small piece of his mind reckoned cynically that he would never miss this chattel; he had never liked it-but it had been a gift.

            The ash tray topped its trajectory, and stayed there.

            Harshaw looked at it, with a feeling that he was stuck in one frame of a motion picture. Presently he remembered to breathe and found that he needed to, badly. Without taking his eyes off it he croaked, "Anne. What do you see?"

            She answered in a flat voice, "That ash tray is five inches from the ceiling. I do not see anything holding it up." Then she added in tones less certain, "Jubal, I think that's what I'm seeing ... but if the cameras don't show the same thing, I'm going to turn in my robe and tear up my license."

            "Um. Jill?"

            "It floats. It just floats."

            Jubal sighed, Went to his chair and sat down heavily, all without taking his eyes off the unruly ash tray. "Mike," he said, "what went wrong? Why didn't it disappear like the box?"

            "But, Jubal," Mike said apologetically, "you said to stop it; you did not say to make it go away. When I made the box go away, you wanted it to be again. Have I done wrongly?"

            "Oh. No, you have done exactly right. I keep forgetting that you always take things literally." Harshaw recalled certain colloquial insults common in his early years-and reminded himself forcefully never, never to use any of such to Michael Valentine Smith-for, if he told the boy to drop dead or to get lost, Harshaw now felt certain that the literal meaning of his words would at once ensue.

            "I am glad," Smith answered soberly. "I am sorry I could not make the box be again. I am sorry twice that I wasted so much food. But I did not know how to help it. Then a necessity was. Or so I grokked."

            "Eh? What food?"

            Jill said hastily, "He's talking about those two men, Jubal. Berquist and the cop with him-if he was a cop. Johnson."

            "Oh, yes." Harshaw reflected that he himself still retained unMartian notions of food, subconsciously at least. "Mike, I wouldn't worry about wasting that 'food.' They probably would have been tough and poor flavor. I doubt if a meat inspector would have passed them. In fact," he added, recalling the Federation convention about "long pig," "I am certain that they would have been condemned as unfit for food. So don't worry about it. Besides, as you say, it was a necessity. You grokked the fullness and acted rightly."

            "I am much comforted," Mike answered with great relief in his voice. 'Only an Old One can always be sure of right action at a cusp ... and I have much learning to learn and much growing to grow before I may join the Old Ones. Jubal? May I move it? I am tiring."

            "You want to make it go away now? Go ahead."

            "But now I cannot."

            "Eh? Why not?"

            "Your head is no longer under it. I do not grok wrongness in its being, where it is."

            "Oh. All right. Move it." Harshaw continued to watch it, expecting that it would float to the spot now over his head and thus regain a wrongness. Instead the ash tray moved downward at a slow, steady speed, moved sideways until it was close above his desk top, hovered for a moment, then slid to an empty spot and came in to an almost noiseless landing.

            "Thank you, Jubal," said Smith.

            "Eh? Thank YOU, Son!" Jubal picked up the ash tray, examined it curiously. It was neither hot nor cold nor did it make his fingers tingle-it was as ugly, over-decorated, commonplace, and dirty as it had been five minutes earlier. "Yes, thank you. For the most amazing experience I've had since the day the hired girl took me up into the attic." He looked up. "Anne, you trained at Rhine."

            "Yes."

            "Have you seen levitation before?"

            She hesitated slightly. "I've seen what was called telekinesis with dice -but I'm no mathematician and I could not testify that what I saw was telekinesis."

            "Hell's bells, you wouldn't testify that the sun had risen if the day was cloudy."

            "How could I? Somebody might be supplying artificial light from above the cloud layer. One of my classmates could apparently levitate objects about the mass of a paper clip-but he had to be just three drinks drunk and sometimes he couldn't do it at all. I was never able to examine the phenomenon closely enough to be competent to testify about it partly because I usually had three drinks in me by then, too."

            "Then you've never seen anything like this?"

            "No."

            "Mmm...I'm through with you professionally; I'm convinced. But if you want to stay and see what else happens, hang up your robe and drag up a chair."

            "Thanks, I will-both. But, in view of the lecture you gave Jill about mosques and synagogues, I'll go to my room first. I wouldn't want to cause a hiatus in the indoctrination."

            "Suit yourself. While you're out, wake up Duke and tell him I want the cameras serviced again."

            "Yes, Boss. Don't let anything startling happen until I get back." Anne headed for the door.

            "No promises. Mike, sit down here at my desk. You, too, Jill-gather 'round. Now, Mike, can you pick up that ash tray? Show me."

            "Yes, Jubal." Smith reached out and took it in his hand.

            "No, no!"

            "I did wrongly?"

            "No, it was my mistake. Mike, put it back down. I want to know if you can lift that ash tray without touching it?"

            "Yes, Jubal."

            "Well? Are you too tired?"

            "No, Jubal. I am not too tired."

            "Then what's the matter? Does it have to have a 'wrongness' about it?"

            "No, Jubal."

            "Jubal," Jill interrupted, "you haven't told him to do it-you've just asked him if he could."

            "Oh." Jubal looked as sheepish as he was capable of looking, which was not much. "I should learn. Mike, will you please, without touching it with your hands, lift that ash tray a foot above the desk?"

            "Yes, Jubal." The ash tray raised, floated steadily above the desk. "Will you measure, Jubal?" Mike said anxiously. "If I did wrongly, I will move it up or down."

            "That's just fine! Can you hold it there? If you get tired, tell me."

            "I can. I will tell."

            "Can you lift something else at the same time? Say this pencil? If you can, then do it."

            "Yes, Jubal," The pencil ranged itself neatly by the ash tray.

            By request, Mike added other small articles from the desk to the layer of floating objects. Anne returned, pulled up a chair and watched the performance without speaking. Duke came in, carrying a step ladder, glanced at the group, then looked a second time, but said nothing and set the ladder in one corner. At last Mike said uncertainly, "I am not sure, Jubal. I-" He stopped and seemed to search for a word. "I am idiot in these things."

            "Don't wear yourself out."

            "I can think one more. I hope." A paper weight across the desk from Mike stirred, lifted-and all the dozen-odd floating objects fell down at once. Mike seemed about to weep although no tears formed. "Jubal, I am sorry. I am utmostly sorry."

            Harshaw patted his shoulder. "You should be proud, not sorry. Son, you don't seem to realize it, but what you just did is-" Jubal searched for a comparison, rapidly discarded the many that sprang to his mind because he realized that they touched nothing in Mike's experience. "What you did is much harder than tying shoestrings, much more wonderful to us than doing a one.and-a-half gainer perfectly. You did it, uh, 'brightly, brightly, and with beauty.' You grok?"

            Mike looked surprised. "I am not sure, Jubal. I should not feel shame?"

            "You must not feel shame. You should feel proud."

            "Yes, Jubal," he answered contentedly. "I feel proud."

            "Good. Mike, I cannot lift even one ash tray without touching it."

            Smith looked startled. "You cannot?"

            "No. Can you teach me?"

            "Yes, Jubal. You-" Smith stopped speaking, looked embarrassed. "I again have not words. I am sorry. But I will read and I will read and I will read, until I find the words. Then I will teach my brother."

            "Don't set your heart on it."

            "Beg pardon?"

            "Mike, don't be disappointed if you do not find the right words. You may not find them in the English language."

            Smith considered this quite a long time. "Then I will teach my brother the language of my nest."

            "Maybe. I would like to try-but you may have arrived about fifty years too late."

            "I have acted wrongly?"

            "Not at all. I'm proud of you. You might start by trying to teach Jill your language."

            "It hurts my throat," put in Jill.

            "Try gargling with aspirin." Jubal looked at her. "That's a silly excuse, nurse-but it occurs to me that this gives me an excuse to put you on the payroll . . . for I doubt if they will ever take you back at Bethesda. All right, you're my staff research assistant for Martian linguistics which includes such extra duties as may be necessary. Take that up with the girls. Anne, put her on the payroll-and be sure it gets entered in the tax records."

            "She's been doing her share in the kitchen since the day after she got here. Shall I date it back?"

            Jubal shrugged. "Don't bother me with details."

            "But, Jubal," Jill protested shrilly, "I don't think I can learn Martian!"

            "You can try, can't you? That's all Columbus did."

            "But-"

            "What was that idle chatter you were giving me about 'gratitude'? Do you take the job? Or don't you?"

            Jill bit her lip. "I'll take it. Yes ... Boss."

            Smith timidly reached out and touched her hand. "Jill ... I will teach."

            Jill patted his. "Thanks, Mike." She looked at Harshaw. "And I'm going to learn it just to spite you!"

            He grinned warmly at her. "That's a motive I grok perfectly-you'll learn it all right. Now back to business- Mike, what else can you do that we can't do? Besides making things go away-when they have a 'wrongness'-and lifting things without touching them."

            Smith looked puzzled. "I do not know."

            "How could he know," protested Jill, "when he doesn't really know what we can and can't do?"

            "Mmm .-. yes. Anne, change that job title to 'staff research assistant for Martian linguistics, culture, and techniques.' Jill, in learning their language you are bound to stumble Onto Martian things that are different, really different-and when you do, tell me. Everything and anything about a culture can be inferred from the shape of its language-and you're probably young enough to learn to think like a Martian . . . which I misdoubt I am not. And you, Mike, if you notice anything which you can do but we don't do, tell me."

            "I will tell, Jubal. What things will be these?"

            "I don't know. Things like you just did ... and being able to stay on the bottom of the pool much longer than we can. Hmm . . . Duke!"

            "Yes, Boss? I've got both hands full of flim. Don't bother me."

            "You can talk, can't you? I noticed the pool is pretty murky."

            "Yeah. I'm going to add precipitant tonight and vacuum it in the morning."

            "How's the count?"

            "The count is okay, the water is safe enough to serve at the table. It just looks messy."

            "Let it stay murky for the time being. Test it as usual. I'll let you know when I want it cleaned up."

            "Hell, Boss, nobody likes to swim in a pool that looks like dishwater. I would have tidied it up long before this if there hadn't been so much hooraw around here this week."

            "Anybody too fussy to swim in it can stay dry. Quit jawing about it, Duke; I'll explain later. Films ready?"

            "Five minutes."

            "Good. Mike, do you know what a gun is?"

            "A gun," Smith answered carefully, "is a piece of ordnance for throwing projectiles by the force of some explosive, as gunpowder, consisting of a tube or barrel closed at one end, where the-"

            "Okay, okay. Do you grok it?"

            "I am not sure."

            "Have you ever seen a gun?"

            "I do not know."

            "Why, certainly you have," Jill interrupted. "Mike, think back to that time we were talking about, in the room with the grass on the floor-but don't get upset now! The big man hit me, you remember."

            "Yes."

            "The other man pointed something at me. In his hand."

            "Yes. He pointed a bad thing at you."

            "That was a gun."

            "I had thinked that the word for that bad thing might be 'gun.' The Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, published in-"

            "That's fine, son," Harshaw said hastily. "That was certainly a gun. Now listen to me carefully. If someone points a gun at Jill again, what will you do?"

            Smith paused rather longer than usual. "You will not be angry if I waste food?"

            "No, I would not be angry. Under those circumstances no one would be angry at you. But I am trying to find out something else. Could you make just the gun go away, without making the man who is pointing it go away?"

            Smith considered it. "Save the food?"

            "Uh, that isn't quite what I mean. Could you cause the gun to go away without hurting the man?"

            "Jubal, he would not hurt at all. I would make the gun go away, but the man I would just stop. He would feel no pain. He would simply be discorporate. The food he leaves after him would not damage at all."

            Harshaw sighed. "Yes, I'm sure that's the way it would be. But could you cause to go away just the gun? Not do anything else? Not 'stop' the man, not kill him, just let him go on living?"

            Smith considered it. "That would be much easier than doing both at once. But, Jubal, if I left him still corporate, he might still hurt Jill. Or so I grok it."

            Harshaw stopped long enough to remind himself that this baby innocent was neither babyish nor innocent-was in fact sophisticated in a culture which he was beginning to realize, however dimly, was far in advance of human culture in some very mysterious ways . . . and that these naive remarks came from a superman-or what would do in place of a "superman" for the time being. Then he answered Smith, choosing his words most carefully as he had in mind a dangerous experiment and did not want disaster to follow from semantic mishap.

            "Mike ... if you reach a-'cusp'----where you must do something in order to protect Jill, you do it."

            "Yes, Jubal. I will."

            "Don't worry about wasting food. Don't worry about anything else. Protect Jill."

            "Always I will protect Jill."

            "Good. But suppose a man pointed a gun at someone-or simply had it in his hand. Suppose you did not want or need to kill him . . , but you needed to make the gun go away. Could you do it?"

            Mike paused only briefly. "I think I grok it. A gun is a wrong thing. But it might be needful for the man to remain corporate." He thought. "I can do if."

            "Good. Mike, I am going to show you a gun. A gun is a wrong thing."

            "A gun is a very wrong thing. I will make it go away."

            "Don't make it go away as soon as you see it."

            "Not?"

            "Not. I will lift the gun and start to point it at you. Like this. Before I can get it pointed at you, make it go away. But don't stop me, don't hurt me, don't kill me, don't do anything to me. Just the gun. Don't waste me as food, either."

            "Oh, I never would," Mike said earnestly. "When you discorporate, my brother Jubal, I hope to be allowed to eat of you myself, praising and cherishing you with every bite . . . until I grok you in fullness."

            Harshaw controlled a seasick reflex he had not felt in decades and answered gravely, "Thank you, Mike."

            "It is I who must thank you, my brother-and if it should come to be that I am selected before you, I hope that you will find me worthy of grokking. Sharing me with Jill. You would share me with Jill? Please?"

            Harshaw glanced at Jill, saw that she had kept her face serene- reflected that she probably was a rock-steady scrub nurse. "I will share you with Jill," he said solemnly. "But, Mike, no one of us will be food today, nor any time soon. Right now I am going to show you this gun- and you wait until I say . . . and then you be very careful, because I have, many things to do before I am ready to discorporate."

            "I will be careful, my brother."

            "All right." Harshaw leaned over, grunting slightly, and opened a~ lower drawer of his desk. "Look in here, Mike. See the gun? I'm going to pick it up. But don't do anything until I tell you to. Girls-get up and move away to the left; I don't want it pointed at you. Okay. Mike, not yet." Harshaw reached for the gun, a very elderly police special, took it out of the drawer. "Get ready, Mike. Now!"-and Harshaw did his very best to get the weapon aimed at the Man from Mars.

            His hand was suddenly empty. No shock, no jar, no twisting-the gun was gone and that was all.

            Jubal found that he was shaking, so he stopped it. "Perfect," he said to Mike. "You got it before I had it aimed at you. That's utterly perfect."

            "I am happy."

            "So am I. Duke, did that get in the camera?"

            "Yup. I put in fresh film cartridges. You didn't say."

            "Good." Harshaw sighed and found that he was very tired. "That's all today, kids. Run along. Go swimming. You, too, Anne."

            Anne said, "Boss? You'll tell me what the films show?"

            "Want to stay and see them?"

            "Oh, no! I couldn't, not the parts I Witnessed. But I would like to know-later-whether or not they show that I've slipped my clutches."

            "All right."

XIII

            WHEN THEY HAD GONE, Harshaw started to give instructions to Duke- then instead said grumpily, "What are you looking sour about?"

            "Boss, when are we going to get rid of that ghoul?"

            "'Ghoul'? Why, you provincial lout!"

            "Okay, so I come from Kansas. You won't find any cases of cannibalism in Kansas-they were all farther west. I've got my own opinions about who is a lout and who isn't . . . but I'm eating in the kitchen until we get rid of him."

            Harshaw said icily, "So? Don't put yourself out. Anne can have your closing check ready in five minutes . . . and it ought not to take you more than ten minutes to pack up your comic books and your other shirt."

            Duke had been setting up a projector. He stopped and straightened up. "Oh, I didn't mean that I was quitting."

            "It means exactly that to me, son."

            "But-I mean, what the hell? I've eaten in the kitchen lots of times."

            "So you have. For your own convenience, or to keep from making extra work for the girls. Or some such. You can have breakfast in bed, for all of me, if you can bribe the girls to serve it to you. But nobody who sleeps under my roof refuses to eat at my table because he doesn't want to eat with others who eat there. I happen to be of an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman-which means I can be a real revolving son of bitch when it suits me. And it suits me right now . . . which is to say that no ignorant, superstitious, prejudiced bumpkin is permitted to tell me who is, or is not, fit to eat at my table. If I choose to dine with publicans and sinners, that is my business. But I do not choose to break bread with Pharisees."

            Duke turned red and said slowly, "I ought to pop you one-and I would, if you were my age."

            "Don't let that stop you, Duke. I may be tougher than you think and if I'm not, the commotion will probably bring the others in. Do you think you can handle the Man from Mars?"

            "Him? I could break him in two with one hand!" "Probably ... if you could lay a hand on him." "Huh?"

            "You saw me try to point a pistol at him. Duke-where's that pistol? Before you go flexing your biceps, stop and think-or whatever it is you do in place of thinking. Find that pistol. Then tell me whether or not you still think you can break Mike in two. But find the pistol first."

            Duke wrinkled his forehead, then went ahead setting up the projector. "Some sort of sleight-of-hand. The films will show it."

            Harshaw said, "Duke. Stop fiddling with that projector. Sit down. I'll take care of it after you've left and run off the films myself. But I want to talk to you a few moments first."

            "Huh? Jubal, I don't want you touching this projector. Every time you do, you get it out of whack. It's a delicate piece of machinery."

            "Sit down, I said."

            "But-"

            "It's my projector, Duke. I'll bust the damned thing if it suits me. Or: I'll get Larry to run it for me. But I do not accept service from a man alter he has resigned from my employ."

            "Hell, I didn't resign! You got nasty and sounded off and fired me- for no reason."

            "Sit down, Duke," Harshaw said quietly. "Either sit down ... and let me try to save your life-or get off this place as fast as you can and let me send your clothes and wages after you. Don't stop to pack; it's too risky. You might not live that long."

            "What the hell do you mean?"

            "Exactly what I say. Duke, it's irrelevant whether you resigned or were fired; you terminated your employment here when you announced that you would no longer eat at my table. Nevertheless I would find it distasteful for you to be killed on my premises. So sit down and I will do my best to avoid it."

            Duke looked startled, opened his mouth-closed it and sat down. Harshaw went on, "Are you Mike's water brother?"

            "Huh? Of course not. Oh, I've heard such chatter-but it's nonsense, if you ask me."

            "It is not nonsense and nobody asked you; you aren't competent to have an opinion about it." Harshaw frowned. "That's too bad. I can see that I am not only going to have to let you go-and, Duke, I don't want to fire you; you do a good job of keeping the gadgetry around here working properly and thereby save me from being annoyed by mechanical buffoonery I am totally uninterested in. But I must not only get you safely off the place but I must also find out at once who else around here is not a water brother to Mike . . . and either see to it that they become such-or get them off the place before anything happens to them." Jubal chewed his lip and stared at the ceiling. "Maybe it would be sufficient to exact a solemn promise from Mike not to hurt anyone without my specific permission. Mmmm . . . no, I can't risk it. Too much horse play around here-and there is always the chance that Mike might misinterpret something that was meant in fun. Say if you-or Larry, rather, since you won't be here- picked up Jill and tossed her into the pool, Larry might wind up where that pistol went, before I could explain to Mike that it was all in fun and Jill was not in danger. I wouldn't want Larry to die through my oversight. Larry is entitled to work out his own damn foolishness without having it cut short through my carelessness. Duke, I believe in everyone's working out his own damnation his own way . . . but nevertheless that is no excuse for an adult to give a dynamite cap to a baby as a toy."

            Duke said slowly, "Boss, you sound like you've come unzipped. Mike wouldn't hurt anybody-shucks, this cannibalism talk makes me want to throw up but don't get me wrong; I know he's just a savage, he doesn't know any better. Hell, Boss, he's gentle as a lamb. He would never hurt anybody."

            "You think so?"

            "I'm sure of it."

            "So. You've got two or three guns in your room. I say he's dangerous. It's open season on Martians, so pick a gun you trust, go down to the swimming pool, and kill him. Don't worry about the law; I'll be your attorney and I guarantee that you'll never be indicted. Go ahead, do it!"

            "Jubal ... you don't mean that."

            "No. No, I don't really mean it. Because you can't. If you tried it, your gun would go where my pistol went-and if you hurried him you'd probably go with it. Duke, you don't know what you are fiddling with- and I don't either except that I know it's dangerous and you don't. Mike is not 'gentle as a lamb' and he is not a savage. I suspect we are the savages. Ever raise snakes?"

            "Uh ... no."

            "I did, when I was a kid. Thought I was going to be a zoologist then. One winter, down in Florida, I caught what I thought was a scarlet snake. Know what they look like?"

            "I don't like snakes."

            "Prejudice again, rank prejudice. Most snakes are harmless, useful, and fun to raise. The scarlet snake is a beauty-red, and black and yellow-docile and makes a fine pet. I think this little fellow was fond of me, in its dim reptilian fashion. Of course I knew how to handle snakes, how not to alarm them and not give them a chance to bite, because the bite of even a non-poisonous snake is a nuisance. But I was fond of this baby; he was the prize of my collection. I used to take him out and show him to people, holding him back of his head and letting him wrap himself around my wrist.

            "One day I got a chance to show my collection to the herpetologist of the Tampa zoo-and I showed him my prize first. He almost had hysterics. My pet was not a scarlet snake-it was a young coral snake. The American cobra . . . the most deadly snake in North America. Duke, do You see my point?"

            "I see that raising snakes is dangerous. I could have told you."

            "Oh, for Pete's sake! I already had rattlesnakes and water moccasins In my collection. A poisonous snake is not dangerous, not any more than a loaded gun is dangerous-in each case, if you handle it properly. The thing that made that coral snake dangerous was that I hadn't known what it was, what it could do. If, in my ignorance, I had handled it carelessly, it would have killed me as casually and as innocently as a kitten scratches. And that's what I'm trying to tell you about Mike. He seems as gentle as a lamb-and I'm convinced that he really is gentle and unreservedly friendly with anyone he trusts. But if he doesn't trust you-well, he's not what he seems to be. He seems like an ordinary young male human, rather underdeveloped, decidedly clumsy, and abysmally ignorant...but bright and very docile and eager to learn. All of which is true and not surprising, in view of his ancestry and his strange background. But, like my pet snake, Mike is more than he appears to be. If Mike does not trust you, blindly and all out, he can be instantly aggressive and much more deadly than that coral snake. Especially if he thinks you are harming one of his water brothers, such as Jill-or me."

            Harshaw shook his head sadly. "Duke, if you had given way to your natural impulse to take a poke at me, a few minutes ago when I told you some homely truths about yourself, and if Mike had been standing in that doorway behind you . . . well, I'm convinced that you would have stood no chance at all. None. You would have been dead before you knew it, much too quickly for me to stop him. Mike would then have been sorrowfully apologetic over having 'wasted food'-namely your big, beefy carcass. Oh, he would feel guilty about that; you heard him a while ago. But he wouldn't feel guilty about killing you; that would just be a necessity you had forced on him . . . and not a matter of any great importance anyhow, even to you. You see, Mike believes that your soul is immortal."

            "Huh? Well, hell, so do I. But-"

            "Do you?" Jubal said bleakly. "I wonder."

            "Why, certainly I do! Oh, I admit I don't go to church much, but I was brought up right. I'm no infidel. I've got faith."

            "Good. Though I've never been able to understand 'faith' myself, nor to see how a just God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion Out of an infinitude of false ones-by faith alone. It strikes me as a sloppy way to run an organization, whether a universe or a smaller one. However, since you do have faith and it includes belief in your own immortality, we need not trouble further over the probability that your prejudices will result in your early demise. Do you want to be cremated or buried?"

            "Huh? Oh, for cripe's sake, Jubal, quit trying to get my goat."

            "Not at all. I can't guarantee to get you off my place safely as long as you persist in thinking that a coral snake is a harmless scarlet snake-any blunder you make may be your last. But I promise you I won't let Mike eat you."

            Duke's mouth dropped open. At last he managed to answer, explosively, profanely, and quite incoherently. Harshaw listened, then said testily, "All right, all right, but pipe down. You can make any arrangements with Mike you like. I thought I was doing you a favor." Harshaw turned and bent over the projector. "I want to see these pictures. Stick around, if you want to, until I'm through. Prob'ly safer. Damn!" he added. "The pesky thing savaged me."

            "You tried to force it. Here-" Duke completed the adjustment Harshaw had muffed, then went ahead and inserted the first film cartridge. Neither of them re-opened the question of whether Duke was, or was not, still working for Jubal. The cameras were Mitchell servos; the projector was a Yashinon tabletop tank, with an adapter to permit it to receive Land Solid-Sight-Sound 4 mm. film. Shortly they were listening to and watching the events leading up to the disappearance of the empty brandy case.

            Jubal watched the box being thrown at his head, saw it wink out in midair. "That's enough," he said. "Anne will be pleased to know that the cameras back her up. Duke, let's repeat that last bit in slow motion."

            "Okay." Duke spooled back, then announced, "This is ten-to-one."

            The scene was the same but the slowed-down sound was useless; Duke switched it off. The box floated slowly from Jill's hands toward Jubal's head, then quite suddenly ceased to be. But it did not simply wink out; under slow-motion projection it could be seen shrinking, smaller and smaller until it was no longer there.

            Jubal nodded thoughtfully. "Duke, can you slow it down still more?"

            "Just a sec. Something is fouled up with the stereo."

            "What?"

            "Darned if I can figure it out. It looked all right on the fast run. But when I slowed it down, the depth effect was reversed. You saw it. That box went away from us fast, mighty fast-but it always looked closer than the wall. Swapped parallax, of course. But I never took that cartridge off the spindle. Gremlins."

            "Oh. Hold it, Duke. Run the film from the other camera."

            "Unh ... oh, I see, That'll give us a ninety-degree cross on it and we'll see properly even if I did jimmy this film somehow." Duke changed cartridges. "Zip through the first part, okay? Then undercranked ten-to-one on the part that counts."

            "Go ahead."

            The scene was the same save for angle. When the image of Jill grabbed the box, Duke slowed down the show and again they watched the box go away. Duke cursed. "Something was fouled up with the second camera too."

            "So?"

            "Of course. It was looking at it around from the side so the box~ should have gone out of the frame to one side or the other. Instead it went ~ straight away from us again. Well, didn't it? You saw it. Straight away from us."

            "Yes," agreed Jubal. "'Straight away from us.'"

            "Out it can't-not from both angles."

            "What do you mean, it can't? It already did." Harshaw added, "If we I had used doppler-radar in place of each of those cameras, I wonder what ~ they would have shown?"

            "How should I know? I'm going to take both these cameras apart."

            "Don't bother."

            "But-"

            "Don't waste your time, Duke; the cameras are all right. What is exactly ninety degrees from everything else?"

            "I'm no good at riddles."

            "It's not a riddle and I meant it seriously. I could refer you to Mr. A. Square from Flatland, but I'll answer it myself. What is exactly at right angles to everything else? Answer: two dead bodies, one old pistol, and an empty liquor case."

            "What the deuce do you mean, Boss?"

            "I never spoke more plainly in my life. Try believing what the cameras see instead of insisting that the cameras must be at fault because what they saw was not what you expected. Let's see the other films."

            Harshaw made no comment as they were shown; they added nothing ~ to what he already knew but did confirm and substantiate. The ash tray when floating near the ceiling had been out of camera angle, but its leisurely descent and landing had been recorded. The pistol's image in the:' stereo tank was quite small but, so far as could be seen, the pistol had done just what the box appeared to have done: shrunk away into the far distance~ without moving. Since Harshaw had been gripping it tightly when it had shrunk out of his hand, he was satisfied-if "satisfied" was the right word, he added grumpily to himself. "Convinced" at least.

            "Duke, when you get time, I want duplicate prints of all of those."

            Duke hesitated. "You mean I'm still working here?"

            "What? Oh, damn it! You can't eat in the kitchen, and Duke, try to cut your local prejudices out of the circuit and just while. Try really hard."

            "I'll listen."

            "When Mike asked for the privilege of eating my stringy old carcass, he was doing me the greatest honor that he knew of-by the only rules he knows. What he had 'learned at his mother's knee,' so to speak. Do you savvy that? You heard his tone of voice, you saw his manner. He was paying me his highest compliment-and asking of me a boon. You see? Never mind what they think of such things in Kansas; Mike uses the values taught him on Mars."

            "I think I'll take Kansas."

            "Well," admitted Jubal, "so do I. But it is not a matter of free choice for me, nor for you-nor for Mike. All three of us are prisoners of our early indoctrinations, for it is hard, very nearly impossible, to shake off one's earliest training. Duke, can you get it through your skull that if you had been born on Mars and brought up by Martians, you yourself would have exactly the same attitude toward eating and being eaten that Mike has?"

            Duke considered it, then shook his head. "I won't buy it, Jubal. Sure, about most things it's just Mike's hard luck that he wasn't brought up in civilization-and my good luck that I was. I'm willing to make allowances for him. But this is different, this is an instinct."

            "'Instinct,' dreck!"

            "But it is. I didn't get any 'training at my mother's knee' not to be a cannibal. Hell, I didn't need it; I've always known it was a sin-a nasty one. Why, the mere thought of it makes my stomach do a flip-flop. It's a basic instinct."

            Jubal groaned. "Duke, how could you learn so much about machinery and never learn anything about how you yourself tick? That nausea you feel-that's not an instinct; that's a conditioned reflex. Your mother didn't have to say to you, 'Mustn't eat your playmates, dear; that's not nice,' because you soaked it up from our whole culture-and so did I. Jokes about cannibals and missionaries, cartoons, fairy tales, horror stories, endless little things. But it has nothing to do with instinct. Shucks, son, it couldn't possibly be instinct . . . because cannibalism is historically one of the most widespread of human customs, extending through every branch of the human race. Your ancestors, my ancestors, everybody."

            "Your ancestors, maybe. Don't bring mine into it."

            "Um. Duke, didn't you tell me you had some Indian blood?"

            "Huh? Yeah, an eighth. In the Army they used to call me 'Chief.' What of it? I'm not ashamed of it. I'm proud of it,"

            "No reason to be ashamed-nor proud, either, for that matter, But, while both of us certainly have cannibals in our family trees, chances are that you are a good many generations closer to cannibals than I am, because-"

            "Why, you bald-headed old-"

            "Simmer down! You were going to listen; remember? Ritual cannibalism was a widespread custom among aboriginal American cultures. But don't take my word for it; look it up. Besides that, both of us, simply as North Americans, stand a better than even chance of having a touch of the Congo in us without knowing it . . . and there you are again. But even if both of us were Simon-pure North European stock, certified by the American Kennel Club, (a silly notion, since the amount of casual bastardy among humans is far in excess of that ever admitted)-but even if we were, such ancestry would merely tell us which cannibals we are descended from. . because every branch of the human race, without any exception, has practiced cannibalism in the course of its history. Duke, it's silly to talk about a practice being 'against instinct' when hundreds of millions of human beings have followed that practice."

            "But- All right, all right, I should know better than to argue with you, Jubal; you can always twist things around your way. But suppose we all did come from savages who didn't know any better-I'm not admitting it but just supposing. Suppose we did. What of it? We're civilized now. Or at least I am."

            Jubal grinned cheerfully. "Implying that I am not. Son, quite aside from my own conditioned reflex against munching a roast haunch of- well, you, for example-quite aside from that trained-in emotional prejudice, for coldly practical reasons I regard our taboo against cannibalism as an excellent idea . . . because we are not civilized."

            "Huh?"

            "Obvious. If we didn't have a tribal taboo about the matter so strong that you honestly believed it was an instinct, I can think of a long list of people I wouldn't trust with my back turned, not with the price of beef what it is today. Eh?"

            Duke grudged a grin. "Maybe you've got something there. I wouldn't want to take a chance on my ex-mother-in-law. She hates my guts."

            "You see? Or how about our charming neighbour on the south, who is so casual about other people's fences and live stock during the hunting season? I wouldn't want to bet that you and I wouldn't wind up in his freezer if we didn't have that taboo. But Mike I would trust utterly- because Mike is civilized."

            "Huh?"

            "Mike is utterly civilized, Martian style. Duke, I don't understand the Martian viewpoint and probably never shall. But I've talked enough with Mike on this subject to know that the Martian practice isn't at all dog-eat-dog . . . or Martian-eat-Martian. Surely they eat their dead, instead of burying them, or burning them, or exposing them to vultures. But the custom is highly formalized and deeply religious. A Martian is never grabbed and butchered against his will. In fact, so far as I have been able to find out, the idea of murder isn't even a Martian concept. Instead, a Martian dies when he decides to die, having discussed it with and been advised by his friends and having received the consent of his ancestors' ghosts to join them. Having decided to die, he does so, as easily as you close your eyes-no violence, no lingering illness, not even an overdose of sleeping pills. One second he is alive and well, the next second he's a ghost, with a dead body left over. Then, or maybe later (Mike is always vague about time factors) his closest friends eat what he no longer has any use for, 'grokking' him, as Mike would say, and praising his virtues as they spread the mustard. The new ghost attends the feast himself, as it is sort of a bar mitzvah or confirmation service by which the ghost attains the status of 'Old One'-becomes an elder statesman, if I understand it."

            Duke made a face of disgust. "God, what superstitious junk! Turns my stomach."

            "Does it? To Mike it's a most solemn-but joyful-religious ceremony."

            Duke snorted, "Jubal, you don't believe that stuff about ghosts, do you? Oh, I know you don't. It's just cannibalism combined with the rankest sort of superstition."

            "Well, now, I wouldn't go that far. I admit that I find these Martian 'Old Ones' a little hard to swallow-but Mike speaks of them as matter-offactly as we talk about last Wednesday. As for the rest-Duke, what church were you brought up in?" Duke told him; Jubal nodded and went on: "I thought it might be; in Kansas most belong to yours or to one enough like it that you would have to look at the sign out in front to tell the difference. Tell me . . . how did you feel when you took part in the symbolic cannibalism that plays so paramount a part in your church's rituals?"

            Duke stared at him. "What the devil do you mean?"

            Jubal blinked solemnly back. "Were you actually a church member? Or were you simply sent to Sunday School as a kid?"

            "Huh? Why, certainly I was a church member. My whole family was. I still am . . . even though I don't go much."

            "I thought perhaps you weren't entitled to receive it, But apparently you are, so you know what I'm talking about, if you stop to think." Jubal Stood up suddenly. "But I don't belong to your church nor to Mike's, so I shan't attempt to argue the subtle differences between one form of ritual cannibalism and another. Duke, I've got urgent work to do; I can't spend any more time trying to shake you loose from your prejudices. Are you leaving? If you are, I think I had better chaperone you off the place, make sure you're safe. Or do you want to stay? Stay and behave yourself, I mean-eat at the table with the rest of us cannibals." Duke frowned. "Reckon I'll stay."

            "Suit yourself. Because from this moment forward I wash my hands of any responsibility for your safety. You saw those movies; if you're bright enough to hit the floor with your hat, you've figured out that this man-Martian we've got staying with us can be unpredictably dangerous."

            Duke nodded. "I got the point. I'm not as stupid as you think I am, Jubal. But I'm not letting Mike run me off the place, either." He added, "You say he's dangerous ... and I see how he could be, if he got stirred up. But I'm not going to stir him up. Shucks, Jubal, I like the little dope, most ways."

            "Mmm ... damn it, I still think you underestimate him, Duke. See here, if you really do feel friendly toward him, the best thing you can do is to offer him a glass of water. Share it with him. Understand me? Become his 'Water brother.'"

            "Um. I'll think about it."

            "But if you do, Duke, don't fake it. If Mike accepts your offer of water-brotherhood, he'll be dead serious about it. He'll trust you utterly, no matter what-so don't do it unless you are equally willing to trust him and stand by him, no matter how rough things get. Either all out-or don't do it."

            "I understood that. That's why I said, 'I'll think about it.'"

            "Okay. But don't take too long making up your mind ... because I expect things to get very rough before long."

XIV

            IN THE VOLANT LAND OF LAPUTA, according to the journal of Lemuel Gulliver recounting his Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, no person of importance ever listened or spoke without the help of a servant, known as a "climenole" in Laputian-or "flapper" in rough English translation, as such a Servant's only duty was to flap the mouth and ears of his master with a dried bladder whenever, in the opinion of the servant, it was desirable for his master to speak or listen.

            Without the consent of his flapper it was impossible to gain the attention of any Laputian of the master class.

            Gulliver's journal is usually regarded by Terrans as a pack of lies composed by a sour churchman. As may be, there can be no doubt that, at this time, the "flapper" system was widely used on the planet Earth and had been extended, refined, and multiplied until a Laputian would not have recognized it other than in spirit.

            In an earlier, simpler day one prime duty of any Ten~an sovereign was to make himself publicly available on frequent occasions so that even the lowliest might come before him without any intermediary of any sort and demand judgment. Traces of this aspect of primitive sovereignty persisted on Earth long after kings became scarce and impotent. It continued to be the right of an Englishman to "Cry Harold!" although few knew it and none did it. Successful city political bosses held open court all through the twentieth century, leaving wide their office doors and listening to any gandy dancer or bindlestiff who came in.

            The principle itself was never abolished, being embalmed in Articles I & IX of the Amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America-and therefore nominal law for many humans-even though the basic document had been almost superseded in actual practice by the Articles of World Federation.

            But at the time the Federation Ship Champion returned to Terra from Mars, the "flapper system" had been expanding for more than a century and had reached a stage of great intricacy, with many persons employed solely in carrying out its rituals. The importance of a public personage could be estimated by the number of layers of flappers cutting him off from ready congress with the plebian mob. They were not called "flappers," but were known as executive assistants, private secretaries, secretaries to private secretaries, press secretaries, receptionists, appointment clerks, et cetera. In fact the titles could be anything-or (with some of the most puissant) no title at all, but they could all be identified as "flappers" by function: each one held arbitrary and concatenative veto over any attempted communication from the outside world to the Great Man who was the nominal superior of the flapper.

            This web of intermediary officials surrounding every V.I.P. naturally caused to grow up a class of unofficials whose function it was to flap the ear of the Great Man without permission from the official flappers, doing so (usually) on social or pseudo-social occasions or (with the most successful) via back-door privileged access or unlisted telephone number. These unofficials usually had no formal titles but were called a variety of names: "golfing companion," "kitchen cabinet," "lobbyist," "elder statesman," "five-percenter," and so forth. They existed in benign Symbiosis with the official barricade of flappers, since it was recognized almost universally that the tighter the system the more need for a safety valve.

            The most successful of the unofficials often grew webs of flappers of their own, until they were almost as hard to reach as the Great Man whose unofficial contacts they were . . . in which case secondary unofficials sprang up to circumvent the flappers of the primary unofficial. With a personage of foremost importance, such as the Secretary General of the World Federation of Free States, the maze of by-passes through unofficials would be as formidable as were the official phalanges of flappers surrounding a person merely very important.

            Some Terran students have suggested that the Laputians must have been, in fact, visiting Martians, citing not only their very unworldly obsession with the contemplative life but also two concrete matters: the Laputians were alleged to have known about Mars' two moons at least a century and half before they were observed by Terran astronomers, and, secondly, Laputa itself was described in size and shape and propulsion such that the only English term that fits is "flying saucer." But that theory will not wash, as the flapper system, basic to Laputian society, was unknown on Mars. The Martian Old Ones, not hampered by bodies subject to space-time, would have had as little use for flappers as a snake has for shoes. Martians still corporate conceivably could use flappers but did not; the very concept ran contrary to their way of living.

            A Martian having need of a few minutes or years of contemplation simply took it. If another Martian wished to speak with him, this friend would simply wait, as long as necessary. With all eternity to draw on there could be no reason for hurrying-in fact "hurry" was not a concept that could be symbolized in the Martian language and therefore must be presumed to be unthinkable. Speed, velocity, simultaneity, acceleration, and other mathematical abstractions having to do with the pattern of eternity were part of Martian mathematics, but not of Martian emotion, Contrariwise, the unceasing rush and turmoil of human existence came not from mathematical necessities of time but from the frantic urgency implicit in human sexual bipolarity.

            Dr. Jubal Harshaw, professional clown, amateur subversive, and parasite by choice, had long attempted to eliminate "hurry" and all related emotions from his pattern. Being aware that he had but a short time left to live and having neither Martian nor Kansan faith in his own immortality, it was his purpose to live each golden moment as if it were eternity- without fear, without hope, but with sybaritic gusto. To this end he found that he required something larger than Diogenes' tub but smaller than Kubla's pleasure dome and its twice five miles of fertile ground with walls and towers girdled round; his was a simple little place, a few acres kept private with an electrified fence, a house of fourteen rooms or so, with running secretaries laid on and all other modern conveniences. To support his austerely upholstered nest and its rabble staff he put forth minimum effort for maximum return simply because it was easier to be rich than to be poor-Harshaw merely wished to live exactly as he liked, doing whatever he thought was best for him.

            In consequence he felt honestly aggrieved that circumstances had forced on him a necessity for hurry and would not admit that he was enjoying himself more than he had in years.

            This morning he found it needful to speak to the third planet's chief executive. He was fully aware of the flapper system that made such contact with the head of government all but impossible for the ordinary citizen, even though Harshaw himself disdained to surround himself with buffers suitable to his own rank-Harshaw answered his telephone himself if he happened to be at hand when it signalled because each call offered good odds that he would be justified in being gratifyingly rude to some stranger for daring to invade his privacy without cause-"cause" by Harshaw's definition, not by the stranger's.

            Jubal knew that he could not hope to find the same conditions obtaining at the Executive Palace; Mr. Secretary General would not answer his own phone. But Harshaw had many years of practice in the art of outwitting human customs; he tackled the matter cheerfully, right after breakfast.

            Much later he was tired and very frustrated. His name alone had carried him past three layers of the official flapper defense, and he was sufficiently a narrow-gauge V.I.P. that he was never quite switched off. Instead he was referred from secretary to secretary and wound up speaking voice-&-vision to a personable, urbane young man who seemed willing to discuss the matter endlessly and without visible irritation no matter what Harshaw said-but would not agree to connect him with the Honorable Mr. Douglas.

            Harshaw knew that he would get action if he mentioned the Man from Mars and that he certainly would get very quick action if he claimed to have the Man from Mars with him, but he was far from certain that the resultant action would be a face-to-face hookup with Douglas. On the Contrary, he calculated that any mention of Smith would kill any chance of reaching Douglas but would at once produce violent reaction from subordinates-which was not what he wanted. He knew from a lifetime of experience that it was always easier to dicker with the top man. With Ben Caxton's life very possibly at stake Harshaw could not risk failure through a subordinate's lack of authority or excess of ambition.

            But this soft brush-off was trying his patience. Finally he snarled, "Young man, if you have no authority yourself, let me speak to someone who has! Put me through to Mr. Berquist."

            The face of the staff stooge suddenly lost its smile and Jubal thought gleefully that he had at last pinked him in the quick. So he pushed his advantage. "Well? Don't just sit there! Get Gil on your inside line and tell him you've been keeping Jubal Harshaw waiting. Tell him how long you've kept me waiting." Jubal reviewed in his own excellent memory all that Witness Cavendish had reported concerning the missing Berquist, plus the report on him from the detective service. Yup, he thought happily, this lad is at least three rungs down the ladder from where Berquist was-so let's shake him up a little . . . and climb a couple of rungs in the process.

            The face said woodenly, "We have no Mr. Berquist here."

            "I don't care where he is. Get him! If you don't know Gil Berquist personally, ask your boss. Mr. Gilbert Berquist, personal assistant to Mr. Douglas. If you've been around the Palace more than two weeks you've at least seen Mr. Berquist at a distance-thirty-five years old, about six feet and a hundred and eighty pounds, sandy hair a little thin on top, smiles a lot and has perfect teeth. You've seen him. If you don't dare disturb him yourself, dump it in your boss's lap. But quit biting your nails and do something. I'm getting annoyed."

            Without expression the young man said, "Please hold on. I will enquire."

            "I certainly will hold on. Get me Gil." The image in the phone was replaced by a moving abstract pattern; a pleasant female voice recorded, said, "Please wait while your call is completed. This delay is not being charged to your account. Please relax while-" Soothing music came up and covered the voice; Jubal sat back and looked around. Anne was waiting, reading, and safely out of the telephone's vision angle. On his other side the Man from Mars was also out of the telephone's sight pickup and was watching images in stereovision and listening via ear plugs.

            Jubal reflected that he must remember to have that obscene babble box placed in the basement where it belonged, once this emergency was over. "What you got, son?" he asked, leaned over and turned on the speaker to low gain.

            Mike answered, "I don't know, Jubal."

            The sound confirmed what Jubal had suspected from his glance at the image: Smith was listening to a broadcast of a Fosterite service. The imaged Shepherd was not preaching but seemed to be reading church notices:"-junior Spirit-in-Action team will give a practice demonstration before the supper, so come early and see the fur fly! Our team coach, Brother Hornsby, has asked me to tell you boys on the team to fetch only your helmets, gloves, and sticks-we aren't going after sinners this time. However, the Little Cherubim will be on hand with their first-aid kits in case of excessive zeal." The Shepherd paused and smiled broadly, "And now wonderful news, My Children! A message from the Angel Ramzai for Brother Arthur Renwick and his good wife Dorothy. Your prayer has been approved and you will go to heaven at dawn Thursday morning! Stand up, Art! Stand up, Dottie! Take a bow!"

            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 Ban 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 an~ 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 geing 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!

            As a devout agnostic, Jubal consciously evalued all religions, from the animism of the Kalahari Bushmen to the most sober and intellectualized of the major western faiths, as being equal. But emotionally he disliked some more than others . . . and the Church of the New Revelation set his teeth on edge. The Fosterites' fiat-footed claim to utter gnosis through a direct pipeline to Heaven, their arrogant intolerance implemented in open persecution of all other religions wherever they were strong enough to get away with it, the sweaty football-rally & sales-convention flavor of their services-all these ancillary aspects depressed him. If people must go to church, why the devil couldn't they be dignified about it, like Catholics, Christian Scientists, or Quakers?

            If God existed (a question concerning which Jubal maintained a meticulous intellectual neutrality) and if He desired to be worshipped (a proposition which Jubal found inherently improbable but conceivably possible in the dim light of his own ignorance), then (stipulating affirmatively both the above) it nevertheless seemed wildly unlikely to Jubal to the point of reductio ad absurdum that a God potent to shape galaxies would be titillated and swayed by the whoop-te-do nonsense the Fosterites offered Him as "worship."

            But with bleak honesty Jubal admitted to himself that the Universe (correction: that piece of the Universe he himself had seen) might very well be in toto an example of reduction to absurdity. In which case the Fosterites might be possessed of the Truth, the exact Truth, and nothing but the Truth. The Universe was a damned silly place at best . . . but the least likely explanation for its existence was the no-explanation of random chance, the conceit that some abstract somethings "just happened" to be some atoms that "just happened" to get together in configurations which "just happened" to look like consistent laws and then some of these configurations "just happened" to possess self-awareness and that two such "just happened" to be the Man from Mars and the other a bald-headed old coot with Jubal himself inside.

            No, Jubal would not buy the "just happened" theory, popular as it was with men who called themselves scientists. Random chance was not a sufficient explanation of the Universe-in fact, random chance was not sufficient to explain random chance; the pot could not hold itself.

            What then? "Least hypothesis" held no place of preference; Occam's razor could not slice the prime problem, the Nature of the Mind of God (might as well call it that to yourself, you old scoundrel; it's a short, simple, Anglo-Saxon monosyllable, not banned by having four letters- and as good a tag for what you don't understand as any).

            Was there any basis for preferring any one sufficient hypothesis over another? When you simply did not understand a thing: No! And Jubal readily admitted to himself that a long lifetime had left him completely. and totally not understanding the basic problems of the Universe.

            So the Fosterites might be right. Jubal could not even show that they were probably wrong.

            But, he reminded himself savagely, two things remained to him~ his own taste and his own pride. If indeed the Fosterites held a monopoly on Truth (as they claimed), if Heaven were open only to Fosterites, then he, Jubal Harshaw, gentleman and free citizen, preferred that eternity of pain. filled damnation promised to all "sinners" who refused the New Revela..1 tion. He might not be able to see the naked Face of God . . but his ~ eyesight was good enough to pick out his social equals-and those Foster~ ites, by damn, did not measure up!

            But he could see how Mike had been misled; the Fosterite "going to Heaven" at a pre-selected time and place did sound like the voluntary and planned "discorporation" which, Jubal did not doubt, was the accepted~ practice on Mars. Jubal himself held a dark suspicion that a better term for.~ the Fosterite practice was "murder"-but such had never been proved and~ had rarely been publicly hinted, much less charged, even when the cult was young and relatively small. Foster himself had been the first to "go to Heaven" on schedule, dying publicly at a self-prophesied instant. Since that first example, it had been a Fosterite mark of special grace . . . and it had been years since any coroner or district attorney had had the temerity to pry into such deaths.

            Not that Jubal cared whether they were spontaneous or induced. In his opinion a good Fosterite was a dead Fosterite. Let them be!

            But it was going to be hard to explain to Mike.

            No use stalling, another cup of coffee wouldn't make it any easier-~ "Mike, who made the world?"

            "Beg pardon?"

            "Look around you. All this. Mars, too. The stars. Everything. Yo~ and me and everybody. Did the Old Ones tell you who made it?"

            Mike looked puzzled. "No, Jubal."

            "Well, you have wondered about it, haven't you? Where did the Silt come from? Who put the stars in the sky? Who started it all? All of it, everything, the whole world, the Universe . - . so that you and I are I talking." Jubal paused, surprised at himself. He had intended to make thc~ usual agnostic approach . . . and found himself compulsively followin~ his legal training, being an honest advocate in spite of himself, attempti~ to support a religious belief he did not hold but which was believed most human beings. He found that, willy-nilly, he was attorney for the orthodoxies of his own race against-he wasn't sure what. An unhuman viewpoint. "How do your Old Ones answer such questions?"

            "Jubal, I do not grok ... that these are questions. I am sorry."

            "Eh? I don't grok your answer."

            Mike hesitated a long time. "I will try. But words are ... are not rightly. Not 'putting.' Not 'mading.' A nowing. World is. World was. World shall be. Now."

            "'As it was in the beginning, so it now and ever shall be, World without end-'"

            Mike smiled happily. "You grok it!"

            "I don't grok it," Jubal answered gruffly, "I was quoting something, uh, an 'Old One' said." He decided to back off and try a new approach; apparently God the Creator was not the easiest aspect of Deity to try to explain to Mike as an opening . . . since Mike did not seem to grasp the idea of Creation itself. Well, Jubal wasn't sure that he did, either-he had long ago made a pact with himself to postulate a Created Universe on even-numbered days, a tail-swallowing eternal-and-uncreated Universe on odd-numbered days-since each hypothesis, while equally paradoxical, neatly avoided the paradoxes of the other-with, of course, a day off each leap year for sheer solipsist debauchery. Having thus tabled an unanswerable question he had given no thought to it for more than a generation.

            Jubal decided to try to explain the whole idea of religion in its broadest sense and then tackle the notion of Deity and Its aspects later.

            Mike readily agreed that learnings came in various sizes, from little learnings that even a nestling could grok on up to great learnings which only an Old One could grok in perfect fullness. But Jubal's attempt to draw a line between small learnings and great learnings so that "great learnings" would have the human meaning of "religious questions" was not successful, as some religious questions did not seem to Mike to be questions with any meaning to them (such as "Creation") and others seemed to him to be "little" questions, with obvious answers known even to nestlings-such as life after death.

            Jubal was forced to let it go at that and passed on to the multiplicity of human religions. He explained (or tried to explain) that humans had hundreds of different ways by which these "great learnings" were taught, each with its own answers and each claiming to be the truth.

            "What is 'truth'?" Mike asked.

            ("What is Truth?" asked a Roman judge, and washed his hands of a troublesome question. Jubal wished that he could do likewise.) "An answer is truth when you speak rightly, Mike. How many hands do I have?"

            "Two hands. I see two hands," Mike amended.

            Anne glanced up from her knitting. "In six weeks I could make a Witness of him."

            "You keep out of this, Anne. Things are tough enough without your help. Mike, you spoke rightly; I have two hands. Your answer was truth. Suppose you said that I had seven hands?"

            Mike looked troubled. "I do not grok that I could say that."

            "No, I don't think you could. You would not speak rightly if you did; your answer would not be truth. But, Mike-now listen carefully-each religion claims to be truth, claims to speak rightly. Yet their answers to the same question are as different as two hands and seven hands. The Fosterites say one thing, the Buddhists say another, the Moslems say still another-many answers, all different."

            Mike seemed to be making a great effort to understand. "All speak rightly? Jubal, I do not grok it."

            "Nor do I."

            The Man from Mars looked greatly troubled, then suddenly he smiled. "I will ask the Fosterites to ask your Old Ones and then we will know, my brother. How will I do this?"

            A few minutes later Jubal found, to his great disgust, that he had promised Mike an interview with some Fosterite bigmouth-or Mike seemed to think that he had, which came to the same thing. Nor had he been able to do more than dent Mike's assumption that the Fosterites were in close touch with human "Old Ones." It appeared that Mike's difficulty in understanding the nature of truth was that he didn't know what a lie was--the dictionary definitions of "lie" and "falsehood" had been filed in his mind with no trace of grokking. One could "speak wrongly" only by accident or misunderstanding. So he necessarily had taken what he had heard of the Fosterite service at its bald, face value.

            Jubal tried to explain that all human religions claimed to be in touch with "Old Ones" in one way or another; nevertheless their answers were all different.

            Mike looked patiently troubled. "Jubal my brother, I try ... but I do not grok how this can be might speaking. With my people, the Old Ones speak always rightly. Your people-"

            "Hold it, Mike."

            "Beg pardon?"

            "When you said, 'my people' you were talking about Martians. Mike, you are not a Martian; you are a man."

            "What is 'Man'?"

            Jubal groaned inwardly. Mike could, he was sure, quote the full list of dictionary definitions. Yet the lad never asked a question simply to be annoying; he asked always for information-and he expected his water brother Jubal to be able to tell him. "I am a man, you are a man, Larry is a man."

            "But Anne is not a man?"

            "Uh ... Anne is a man, a female man. A woman."

            ("Thanks, Jubal."-"Shut up, Anne.")

            "A baby is a man? I have not seen babies, but I have seen pictures- and in the goddam-noi-in stereovision. A baby is not shaped like Anne and Anne is not shaped like you . . . and you are not shaped like I. But a baby is a nestling man?"

            "Uh ... yes, a baby is a man."

            "Jubal ... I think I grok that my people-'Martians'-are man. Not shape, Shape is not man. Man is grokking. I speak rightly?"

            Jubal made a fierce resolve to resign from the Philosophical Society and take up tatting. What was "grokking"? He had been using the word himself for a week now-and he still didn't grok it. But what was "Man"? A featherless biped? God's image? Or simply a fortuitous result of the "survival of the fittest" in a completely circular and tautological definition? The heir of death and taxes? The Martians seemed to have defeated death, and he had already learned that they seemed to have neither money, property, nor government in any human sense-so how could they have taxes?

            And yet the boy was right; shape was an irrelevancy in defining "Man," as unimportant as the bottle containing the wine. You could even take a man out of his bottle, like the poor fellow whose life those Russians had persisted in "saving" by placing his living brain in a vitreous envelope and wiring him like a telephone exchange. Gad, what a horrible joke! He wondered if the poor devil appreciated the grisly humor of what had been

            But how, in essence, from the unprejudiced viewpoint of a Martian, did Man differ from other earthly animals? Would a race that could levitate (and God knows what else) be impressed by engineering? And, if so, would the Aswan Dam, or a thousand miles of coral reef, win first prize? Man's self-awareness? Sheer local conceit; the upstate counties had not reported, for there was no way to prove that sperm whales or giant sequoias were not philosophers and poets far exceeding any human merit.

            There was one field in which man was unsurpassed; he showed unlimited ingenuity in devising bigger and more efficient ways to kill off, enslave, harass, and in all ways make an unbearable nuisance of himself to himself. Man was his own grimmest joke on himself. The very bedrock of humor was-

            "Man is the animal who laughs," Jubal answered.

            Mike considered this seriously. "Then I am not a man."

            "Huh?"

            "I do not laugh. I have heard laughing and it frighted me. Then I grokked that it did not hurt. I have tried to learn-" Mike threw his head back and gave out a raucous cackle, more nerve-racking than the idiot call of a kookaburra.

            Jubal covered his ears. "Stop! Stop!"

            "You heard," Mike agreed sadly. "I cannot rightly do it. So I am not man."

            "Wait a minute, son. Don't give up so quickly. You simply haven't learned to laugh yet . . . and you'll never learn just by trying. But you will learn, I promise you. If you live among us long enough, one day you will see how funny we are-and you will laugh."

            ''I will?"

            "You will. Don't worry about it and don't try to grok it; just let it come. Why, son, even a Martian would laugh once he grokked us."

            "I will wait," Smith agreed placidly.

            "And while you are waiting, don't ever doubt that you are a man. You are. Man born of woman and born to trouble . . . and some day you will grok its fullness and you will laugh-because man is the animal that laughs at himself. About your Martian friends, I do not know. I have never met them, I do not grok them. But I grok that they may be 'man.'"

            "Yes, Jubal."

            Harshaw thought that the interview was over and felt relieved. He decided that he had not been so embarrassed since a day long gone when his father had undertaken to explain to him the birds and the bees and the flowers-much too late.

            But the Man from Mars was not quite done. "Jubal my brother, you were ask me, 'Who made the World?' and I did not have words to say why I did not rightly grok it to be a question. I have been thinking words."

            "So?"

            "You told me, 'God made the World.'"

            "No, no!" Harshaw said hastily. "I told you that, while all these many religions said many things, most of them said, 'God made the World.' I told you that I did not grok the fullness, but that 'God' was the word that was used."

            "Yes, Jubal," Mike agreed. "Word is 'God'" He added. "You grok."

            "No, I must admit I don't grok."

            "You grok," Smith repeated firmly. "I am explain. I did not have the word. You grok. Anne groks. I grok. The grass under my feet groks in happy beauty. But I needed the word. The word is God."

            Jubal shook his head to clear it. "Go ahead."

            Mike pointed triumphantly at Jubal. "Thou art God!"

            Jubal slapped a hand to his face. "Oh, Jesus H.- What have I done? Look, Mike, take it easy! Simmer down! You didn't understand me. I'm sorry. I'm very sorry! Just forget what I've been saying and we'll start over again on another day. But-"

            "Thou art God," Mike repeated serenely. "That which groks. Anne is God. I am God. The happy grass are God, Jill groks in beauty always. Jill is God. All shaping and making and creating together-." He croaked something in Martian and smiled.

            "All right, Mike. But let it wait. Anne, have you been getting all this?"

            "You bet I have, Boss!"

            "Make me a tape. I'll have to work on it. I can't let it stand. I must-" Jubal glanced up, said, "Oh, my God! General Quarters, everybody! Anne! Set the panic button on 'dead-man' setting-and for God's sake keep your thumb on it; they may not be coming here." He glanced up again, at two large air cars approaching from the south. "But I'm afraid they are. Mike! Hide in the pool! Remember what I told you-down in the deepest part, stay there, hold still-and don't come up until I send Jill to get you."

            "Yes, Jubal."

            "Right now! Move!"

            "Yes, Jubal." Mike ran the few steps, cut the water and disappeared. He remembered to keep his knees straight, his toes pointed and his feet together.

            "Jill!" Jubal called out. "Dive in and climb Out. You too, Larry. If anybody saw that, I want 'em confused as to how many are using the pool. Dorcast Climb Out fast, child, and dive in again. Anne- No, you've got the panic button; you can't."

            "I can take my cloak and go to the edge of the pool. Boss, do you want some delay on this 'dead-man' setting?"

            "Uh, yes, thirty seconds. If they land here, put on your Witness cloak at once and get your thumb back on the button. Then wait-and if I call you over to me, let the balloon go up. But I don't dare shout 'Wolf!' on this unless-" He shielded his eyes. "One of them is certainly going to land and it's got that Paddy-wagon look to it, all right. Oh, damn, I had thought they would parley first."

            The first car hovered, then dropped vertically for a landing in the garden area around the pool; the second started slowly circling the house at low altitude. The cars were black, squad carriers in size, and showed only a small, inconspicuous insignia: the stylized globe of the Federation.

            Anne put down the radio relay link that would let "the balloon go up," got quickly into her professional garb, picked the link up again and put her thumb back on the button. The door of the first car started to open as it touched and Jubal charged toward it with the cocky belligerence of a Pekingese. As a man stepped out, Jubal roared, "Get that God damned heap off my rose hushes!"

            The man said, "Jubal Harshaw?"

            "You heard me! Tell that oaf you've got driving for you to raise that bucket and move it back! Off the garden entirely and onto the grass! Anne!"

            "Coming, Boss."

            "Jubal Harshaw, I have a warrant here for-"

            "I don't care if you've got a warrant for the King of England; first you'll move that junk heap off my flowers! Then, so help me, I'll sue you for-" Jubal glanced at the man who had landed, appeared to see him for the first time. "Oh, so it's you," he said with bitter contempt. "Were you born stupid, Heinrich, or did you have to study for it? And when did that uniformed jackass working for you learn to fly? Earlier today? Since I talked to you?"

            "Please examine this warrant," Captain Heinrich said with careful patience. "Then-"

            "Get your go-cart out of my flower beds at once or I'll make a civil rights case out of this that will cost you your pension!"

            Heinrich hesitated. 'Wow!" Jubal screamed. "And tell those other yokels getting out to pick up their big feet! That idiot with the buck teeth is standing on a prize Elizabeth M. Hewitt!"

            Heinrich turned his head. "You men-careful of those flowers. Paskin, you're standing on one. Rogers! Raise the car and move it back about fifty feet, clear of the garden." He turned his attention back to Harshaw. "Does that satisfy you?"

            "Once he actually moves it-but you'll still pay damages. Let's see your credentials . . and show them to the Fair Witness and state loud and clearly to her your name, rank, organization, and pay number."

            "You know who I am. Now I have a warrant to-"

            "I have a common-law warrant to part your hair with a shotgun unless you do things legally and in order! I don't know who you are. You look remarkably like a stuffed shirt I saw over the telephone earlier today -but that's not evidence and I don't identify you. You must identify yourself, in the specified legal fashion, World Code paragraph 1602, part II, before you can serve a warrant. And that goes for all those other apes, too, and that pithecan parasite piloting for you."

            "They are police officers, acting under my orders."

            "I don't know that they are anything of the sort. They might have hired those ill-fitting clown suits at a costumer's. The letter of the law, sir! You've come barging into my castle. You say you are a police officer-and you allege that you have a warrant for this intrusion. But I say you are trespassers until you prove otherwise . . . which invokes my sovereign right to use all necessary force to eject you-which I shall start to do in about three seconds."

            "I wouldn't advise it."

            "Who are you to advise? If I am hurt in attempting to enforce this my right, your action becomes constructive assault-with deadly weapons, if those things those mules are toting are guns, as they appear to be. Civil and criminal, both-why, my man, I'll wind up with your hide for a door mat!" Jubal drew back a skinny arm and clenched a bony fist. "Off my property!"

            "Hold it, Doctor. We'll do it your way." Heinrich had turned bright red, but he kept his voice under tight control. He offered his identification, which Jubal glanced at, then turned back to him for him to show to Anne. Heinrich then stated his full name, said that he was a captain of police, Federation Special Service Bureau, and recited his pay number. One by one, the other six men who had left the car, and at last the driver, went through the same rigamarole at Heinrich's frozen-faced orders.

            When they were done, Jubal said sweetly, "And now, Captain Heinrich, how may I help you?"

            "I have a search warrant here for Gilbert Berquist, which warrant names this property, its buildings and grounds."

            "Show it to me, then show it to the Witness."

            "I will do so. But I have another search warrant, similar to the first, for Gillian Boardman."

            "Who?"

            "Gillian Boardman. The charge is kidnapping."

            "My goodness!"

            "And another for Hector C. Johnson ... and one for Valentine Michael Smith . . . and one for you, Jubal Harshaw."

            "Me? Taxes again?"

            "No. Look at it. Accessory to this and that ... and material witness on some other things . . . and I'd take you in on my own for obstructing justice if the warrant didn't make it unnecessary."

            "Oh, come now, Captain! I've been most cooperative since you identified yourself and started behaving in a legal manner. And I shall continue to be. Of course, I shall still sue all of you-and your immediate superior and the government-for your illegal acts before that time . . and I am not waiving any rights or recourses with respect to anything any of you may do hereafter. Mmm . . . quite a list of victims. I see why you brought an extra wagon. But-dear me! something odd here. This, uh, Mrs. Borkmann?-I see that she is charged with kidnapping this Smith fellow . . . but in this other warrant he seems to be charged with fleeing custody. I'm confused."

            "It's both. He escaped-and she kidnapped him."

            "Isn't that rather difficult to manage? Both, I mean? And on what charge was he being held? The warrant does not seem to state?"

            "How the devil do I know? He escaped, that's all. He's a fugitive."

            "Gracious me! I rather think I shall have to offer my services as counsel to each of them. Interesting case. If a mistake has been made-or mistakes-it could lead to other matters."

            Heinrich grinned coldly. "You won't find it easy. You'll be in the pokey, too."

            "Oh, not for long, I trust." Jubal raised his voice more than necessary and turned his head toward the house. "I do know another lawyer. I rather think, if Judge Holland were listening to this, habeas corpus proceedings- for all of us-might be rather prompt. And if the Associated Press just happened to have a courier car nearby, there would be no time lost in knowing where to serve such writs."

            "Always the shyster, eh, Harshaw?"

            "Slander, my dear sir. I take notice."

            "A fat lot of good it will do you. We're alone."

            "Are We?"

XV

            VALENTINE MICHAEL SMITH SWAM through the murky water to the deepest part of the pool, under the diving board, and settled himself on the bottom. He did not know why his water brother Jubal had told him to hide there; indeed he did not know that he was hiding. His water brother Jubal had told him to do this and to remain there until his water brother Jill came for him; that was sufficient.

            As soon as he was sure that he was at the deepest part, he curled himself into the foetal position, let most of the air out of his lungs, swallowed his tongue, rolled his eyes up, slowed his heart down to almost nothing, and became effectively "dead" save that he was not actually discorporate and could start his engines again at will. He also elected to stretch his time sense until seconds flowed past like hours, as he had much to contemplate and did not know how quickly Jill would come to get him.

            He knew that he had failed again in an attempt to achieve the perfect understanding, the mutually merging rapport-the grokking-that should exist between water brothers. He knew that the failure was his, caused by his using wrongly the oddly variable human language, because Jubal had become upset as soon as he had spoken to him.

            He now knew that his human brothers could suffer intense emotion without any permanent damage, nevertheless Smith was wistfully sorry that he had been the cause of such upset in Jubal. At the time, it had seemed to him that he had at last grokked perfectly a most difficult human word. He should have known better because, early in his learnings under his brother Mahmoud, he had discovered that long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings . . but short words were slippery, unpredictable, changing their meanings without any pattern. Or so he seemed to grok. Short human words were never like a short Martian word-such as "grok" which forever meant exactly the same thing. Short human words were like trying to lift water with a knife.

            And this had been a very short word.

            Smith still felt that he had grokked rightly the human word "God"- the confusion had come from his own failure in selecting other human words. The concept was truly so simple, so basic, so necessary that any nestling could have explained it perfectly-in Martian. The problem, then, was to find human words that would let him speak rightly, make sure that he patterned them rightly to match in fullness how it would be said in his own people's language.

            He puzzled briefly over the curious fact that there should be any difficulty in saying it, even in English, since it was a thing everyone knew else they could not grok alive. Possibly he should ask the human Old Ones how to say it, rather than struggle with the shifting meanings of human words. If so, he must wait until Jubal arranged it, for here he was only an egg and could not arrange it himself.

            He felt brief regret that he would not be privileged to be present at the coming discorporation of brother Art and brother Dottie.

            Then he settled down to reread in his mind Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, published in Springfield, Massachusetts.

            From a long way off Smith was interrupted by an uneasy awareness that his water brothers were in trouble. He paused between "sherbacha" and "sherbet" to ponder this knowledge. Should he start himself up, leave the enfolding water of life, and join them to grok and share their trouble? At home there could have been no question about it; trouble is shared, in joyful closeness.

            But this place was strange in every way . . and Jubal had told him to wait until Jill came.

            He reviewed Jubal's words, trying them Out in long contemplation against other human words, making sure that he grokked. No, Jubal had spoken rightly and he had grokked rightly; he must wait until Jill came.

            Nevertheless he was made so uneasy by the certain knowledge of his brothers' trouble that he could not go back to his word hunt. At last an idea came to him that was filled with such gay daring that he would have trembled had his body not been unready for trembling.

            Jubal had told him to place his body under water and leave it there until Jill came . . . but had Jubal said that he himself must wait with the body?

            Smith took a careful long time to consider this, knowing that the slippery English words that Jubal had used could easily lead him (and often had led him) into mistakes. He concluded that Jubal had not specifically ordered him to stay with his body . . . and that left a way Out of the wrongness of not sharing his brothers' trouble.

            So Smith decided to take a walk.

            He was a bit dazed at his own audacity, for, while he had done it before, twice, he had never "soloed." Each time an Old One had been with him, watching over him, making sure that his body was safe, keeping him from becoming disoriented at the new experience, staying with him until he returned to his body and started it up again.

            There was no Old One to help him now. But Smith had always been quick to learn; he knew how to do it and was confident that he could do it alone in a fashion that would fill his teacher with pride. So first he checked over every part of his body, made certain that it would not be damaged while he was gone, then got cautiously Out of it, leaving behind only that trifle of himself needed as watchman and caretaker.

            Then he rose up and stood on the edge of the pool, remembering to behave as if his body were still with him, as a guard against disorienting- against losing track of the pool, the body, everything, and wandering off into unknown places where he could not find his way back.

            Smith looked around.

            An air car was just landing in the garden by the pool and beings under it were complaining of injuries and indignities done them. Perhaps this was the trouble he could feel? Grasses were for walking on, flowers and bushes were not-this was a wrongness.

            No, there was more wrongness. A man was just stepping out of the air car, one foot about to touch the ground, and Jubal was running toward him. Smith could see the blast of icy anger that Jubal was hurling toward the man, a blast so furious that, had one Martian hurled it toward another, both would have discorporated at once.

            Smith noted it down as something he must ponder and, if it was a cusp of necessity as it seemed to be, decide what he must do to help his brother. Then he looked over the others.

            Dorcas was climbing out of the pool; she was puzzled and rather troubled but not too much so; Smith could feel her confidence in Jubal. Larry was at the edge of the pool and had just gotten out; drops of water falling from him were in the air. Larry was not troubled but excited and pleased; his confidence in Jubal was absolute. Miriam was near him and her mood was midway between those of Dorcas and Larry. Anne was standing where she had been seated and was dressed in the long white garment she had had with her all day. Smith could not fully grok her mood; he felt in her some of the cold unyielding discipline of mind of an Old One. It startled him, as Anne was always soft and gentle and warmly friendly.

            He saw that she was watching Jubal closely and was ready to help him. And so was Larry! . . . and Dorcas! . . . and Miriam! With a sudden burst of empathic catharsis Smith learned that all these friends were water brothers of Jubal-and therefore of him. This unexpected release from blindness shook him so that he almost lost anchorage on this place. Calming himself as he had been taught, he stopped to praise and cherish them all, one by one and together.

            Jill had one arm over the edge of the pooi and Smith knew that she had been down under, checking on his safety. He had been aware of her when she had done it . . . but now he knew that she had not alone been worried about his safety; Jill felt other and greater trouble, trouble that was not relieved by knowing that her charge was safe under the water of life. This troubled him very much and he considered going to her, making her know that he was with her and sharing her trouble.

            He would have done so had it not been for a faint, uneasy feeling of guilt: he was not absolutely certain that Jubal had intended to permit him to walk around while his body was hidden in the pool. He compromised by telling himself that he would share their trouble-and let them know that he was present if it became needful.

            Smith then looked over the man who was stepping out of the air car, felt his emotions and recoiled from them, forced himself nevertheless to examine him carefully, inside and out.

            In a shaped pocket strapped around his waist by a belt the man was carrying a gun.

            Smith was almost certain it was a gun. He examined it in great detail, comparing it with two guns that he had seen briefly, checking what it appeared to be against the definition in Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, published in Springfield, Massachusetts.

            Yes, it was a gun-not alone in shape but also in wrongness that surrounded and penetrated it. Smith looked down the barrel, saw how it must function, and wrongness stared back at him.

            Should he turn it and let it go elsewhere, taking its wrongness with it? Do it at once before the man was fully out of the car? Smith felt that he should . . . and yet Jubal had told him, at another time, not to do this to a gun until Jubal told him that it was time to do it.

            He knew now that this was indeed a cusp of necessity . . . but he resolved to balance on the point of the cusp until he grokked all of it- since it was possible that Jubal, knowing that a cusp was approaching, had sent him under water to keep him from acting wrongly at the cusp.

            He would wait . . . but in the meantime he would hold this gun and its wrongness carefully under his eye. Not at the moment being limited to two eyes facing always one way, being able to see all around him if needful, he continued to watch the gun and the man stepping out of the car while he went inside the car.

            More wrongness than he would have believed possible! Other men were in there, all but one of them crowding toward the door. Their minds smelled like a pack of Khaugha who had scented an unwary nymph and each one held in his hands a something having wrongness.

            As he had told Jubal, Smith knew that shape alone was never a prime determinant; it was necessary to go beyond shape to essence in order to grok. His own people passed through five major shapes: egg, nymph, nestling, adult-and Old One which had no shape. Yet the essence of an Old One was already patterned in the egg.

            These somethings that these men carried seemed like guns. But Smith did not assume that they were guns; he examined one most carefully first. It was much larger than any gun he had ever seen, its shape was very different, and its details were quite different.

            It was a gun.

            He examined each of the others, separately and just as carefully. They were guns.

            The one man who was still seated had strapped to him a small gun.

            The car itself had built into it two enormous guns-plus other things which Smith could not grok but which he felt had wrongness also.

            He stopped and seriously considered twisting the car, its contents, and all-letting it topple away. But, in addition to his lifelong inhibition against wasting food, he knew that he did not fully grok what was happening. Better to move slowly, watch carefully, and help and share at the cusp by following Jubal's lead * . . and if right action for him was to remain passive, then go back to his body when the cusp had passed and discuss it all with Jubal later.

            He went back outside the car and watched and listened and waited.

            The first man to get out talked with Jubal concerning many things which Smith could only file without grokking; they were beyond his experience. The other men got out and spread out; Smith spread his attention to watch all of them. The car raised, moved backwards, stopped again, which relieved the beings it had sat on; Smith grokked with them to the extent that he could spare attention, trying to soothe their hurtings.

            The first man handed papers to Jubal; in turn they were passed to Anne. Smith read them along with her. He recognized their word shapings as being concerned with certain human rituals of healing and balance, but, since he had encountered these rituals only in Jubal's law library, he did not try to grok the papers then, especially as Jubal seemed quite untroubled by them-the wrongness was elsewhere. He was delighted to recognize his own human name on two of the papers; he always got an odd thrill out of reading it, as if he were two places at once-impossible as that was for any but an Old One.

            Jubal and the first man turned and walked toward the pool, with Anne close behind them. Smith relaxed his time sense a little to let them move faster, keeping it stretched just enough so that he could comfortably watch all the men at once. Two of the men closed in and flanked the little group.

            The first man stopped near the group of his friends by the pool, looked at them, then took a picture from his pocket, looked at it, and looked at Jill. Smith felt her fear and trouble mount and he became very alert. Jubal had told him, "Protect Jill. Don't worry about wasting food. Don't worry about anything else. Protect Jill."

            Of course, he would protect Jill in any case, even at the risk of acting wrongly in some other fashion. But it was good to have Jubal's blanket reassurance; it left his mind undivided and untroubled.

            When the first man pointed at Jill and the two men flanking him hurried toward her with their guns of great wrongness. Smith reached out through his Doppelganger and gave them each that tiny twist which causes to topple away.

            The first man stared at where they had been and reached for his gun -and he was gone, too.

            The other four started to close in. Smith did not want to twist them. He felt that Jubal would be more pleased with him if he simply stopped them. But stopping a thing, even an ash tray, is work-and Smith did not have his body at hand. An Old One could have managed it, all four together, but Smith did what he could do, what he had to do.

            Four feather touches-they were gone.

            He felt more intense wrongness from the direction of the car on the ground and went at once to it-grokked to a quick decision, and car and pilot were gone.

            He almost overlooked the car riding cover patrol in the air. Smith started to relax when he had disposed of the car on the ground-when suddenly he felt wrongness and trouble increase, and he looked up.

            The second car was coming in for a landing right where he was.

            Smith stretched his time sense to his personal limit and went to the car in the air, inspected it carefully, grokked that it was as choked with utter wrongness as the first had been . . . tilted it into nevemess. Then he returned to the group by the pool.

            All his friends seemed quite excited; Dorcas was sobbing and Jill was holding her and soothing her. Anne alone seemed untouched by the emotions Smith felt seething around him. But wrongness was gone, all of it, and with it the trouble that had disturbed his meditations earlier. Dorcas, he knew, would be healed faster and better by Jill than by anyone-Jill always grokked a hurting fully and at once. Disturbed by emotions around him, slightly apprehensive that he might not have acted in all ways rightly at the point of cusp-or that Jubal might to grok him-Smith decided that he was now free to leave. He slipped back into the pool, found his body, grokked that it was still as he had left it, unharmed-slipped it back on.

            He considered contemplating the events at the cusp, But they were too new, too recent; he was not ready to enfold them, not ready to praise and cherish the men he had been forced to move. Instead he returned happily to the task he had been on. "Sherbet"  Sherbetlee" "Sherbetzide"- He had reached "Tinwork" and was about to consider "Tiny" when he felt Jill's touch approaching him. He unswallowed his tongue and made himself ready, knowing that his brother Jill could not remain very long under water without distress.

            As she touched him, he reached out, took her face in his hands and kissed her. It was a thing he had learned to do quite lately and he did not feel that he grokked it perfectly. It had the growing-closer of the water ceremony. But it had something else, too . . . something he wanted very much to grok in perfect fullness.

XVI

            JUBAL HARSHAW DID NOT WAIT for Gillian to dig her problem child out of the pool; he left instructions for Dorcas to be given a sedative and hurried to his study, leaving Anne to explain (or not explain) the events of the last ten minutes. "Front!" he called out over his shoulder.

            Miriam turned and caught up with him. "I guess I must be 'front,'" she said breathlessly. "But, Boss, what in the-"

            "Girl, not one word."

            "But, Boss-"

            "Zip it, I said. Miriam, about a week from now we'll all sit down and get Anne to tell us what we really did see. But right now everybody and his cousins will be phoning here and reporters will be crawling out of the trees-and I've got to make a couple of calls first. I need help. Are you the sort of useless female who comes unstuck when she's needed? That reminds me- Make a note to dock Dorcas's pay for the time she spent having hysterics."

            Miriam gasped. "Boss! You just dare do that and every single one of us will quit cold!"

            "Nonsense."

            "I mean it. Quit picking on Dorcas. Why, I would have had hysterics myself if she hadn't beaten me to it." She added, "I think I'll have hysterics now."

            Harshaw grinned. "You do and I'll spank you. All right, put Dorcas down for a bonus for 'extra hazardous duty.' Put all of you down for a bonus. Me, especially. I earned it."

            "All right. But who pays your bonus?"

            "The taxpayers, of course. We'll find a way to clip- Damn!" They had reached his study door; the telephone was already demanding attention. He slid into the seat in front of it and keyed in. "Harshaw speaking. Who the devil are you?"

            "Skip the routine, Doc," a face answered cheerfully. "You haven't frightened me in years. How's everything going?"

            Harshaw recognized the face as belonging to Thomas Mackenzie, production manager-in-chief for New World Networks; he mellowed slightly. "Well enough, Tom. But I'm rushed as can be, so-"

            "You're rushed? Come try my forty-eight-hour day. I'll make it brief. Do you still think you are going to have something for us? I don't mind the expensive equipment you've got tied up; I can overhead that. But business is business-and I have to pay three full crews just to stand by for your signal. Union rules-you know how it is. I want to do you any favor I can. We've used lots of your script in the past and we expect to use still more in the future-but I'm beginning to wonder what I'm going to tell our comptroller."

            Harshaw stared at him. "Don't you think the spot coverage you just got was enough to pay the freight?"

            "What spot coverage?"

            A few minutes later Harshaw said good-by and switched off, having been convinced that New World Networks had seen nothing of recent events at his home. He stalled off Mackenzie's questions about it, because he was dismally certain that a factual recital would simply convince Mackenzie that poor old Harshaw had at last gone to pieces. Nor could Harshaw have blamed him.

            Instead they agreed that, if nothing worth picking up happened in the next twenty-four hours, New World could break the linkage and remove their cameras and other equipment.

            As the screen cleared Harshaw ordered, "Get Larry. Have him fetch that panic button-Anne probably has it." He then started making another call, followed it with a third. By the time Larry arrived, Harshaw was convinced that no network had been watching when the Special Service squads attempted to raid his home. It was not necessary to check on whether or not the two dozen "hold" messages that he had recorded had been sent; their delivery depended on the same signal that had failed to reach the news channels.

            As he turned away from the phone Larry offered him the "panic button" portable radio link. "You wanted this, Boss?"

            "I just wanted to sneer at it and see if it sneered back. Larry, let this be a lesson to us: never trust any machinery more complicated than a knife and fork."

            "Okay. Anything else?"

            "Larry, is there a way to check that dingus and see if it's working properly? Without actually hauling three networks out of their beds, I mean?"

            "Sure. The techs set up the transceiver down in the shop and it's got a switch on it for that very purpose. Throw the switch, push the button; a light comes on. To test on through, you simply call 'em, right from the transceiver and tell 'em you want a hot test clear through to the cameras and back to the monitor stations."

            "And suppose the test shows that we aren't getting through? If the trouble is here, can you spot what's wrong?"

            "Well, I might," Larry said doubtfully, "if it wasn't anything more than a loose connection. But Duke is the electron pusher around here- I'm more the intellectual type."

            "I know, son-I'm not too bright about practical matters, either. Well, do the best you can. Let me know."

            "Anything else, Jubal?"

            "Yes, if you see the man who invented the wheel, send him up; I want to give him a piece of my mind. Meddler!"

            Jubal spent the next few minutes in umbilical contemplation. He considered the possibility that Duke had sabotaged the "panic button" but rejected the thought as time wasting, if not unworthy. He allowed himself to wonder for a moment just what had really happened down in his garden and how the lad had done it-from ten feet under water. For he had no doubt that the Man from Mars had been behind those impossible shenanigans.

            Admittedly, what he had seen only the day before in this very room was just as intellectually stupefying as these later events-but the emotional impact was something else. A mouse was as much a miracle of biology as was an elephant; nevertheless there was an important difference -an elephant was bigger.

            To see an empty carton, just rubbish, disappear in midair logically implied the possibility that a squad car full of men could vanish in the same fashion. But one event kicked your teeth in-the other didn't.

            Well, he wasn't going to waste tears on those Cossacks. Jubal conceded that cops qua cops were all right; he had met a number of honest cops in his life . . . and even a fee-splitting village constable did not deserve to be snuffed out like a candle. The Coast Guard was a fine example of what cops ought to be and frequently were.

            But to be a member of the S.& squads a man had to have larceny in his heart and sadism in his soul. Gestapo. Storm troopers in the service of whatever politico was in power. Jubal longed for the good old days when a lawyer could cite the Bill of Rights and not have some over-riding Federation trickery defeat him.

            Never mind- What would logically happen now? Heinrich's task force certainly had had radio contact with its base; ergo, its loss would be noted, if only by silence. Shortly more S.S. troops would come looking for them-were already headed this way if that second car had been chopped off in the middle of an action report. "Miriam-"

            "Yes, Boss."

            "I want Mike, Jill, and Anne here at once. Then find Larry-in the shop, probably-and both of you come to the house, lock all doors, and all ground floor windows."

            "More trouble?"

            "Get movin', gal."

            If the S.S. apes showed up again-no, when they showed up-they probably would not have duplicate warrants. If their leader was silly enough to break into a locked house without a warrant, well, he might have to turn Mike loose on them. But this blind warfare of attrition had to be stopped-which meant that Jubal simply had to get through to the Secretary General.