"Close enough, aside from your flippant choice of words. The lionris-" He stopped and sat up so suddenly that he dumped Miriam. "Say! It's just possible that you girls don't have souls!"

            Miriam sat up and said bitterly, "Why, you ungrateful dog of an infidel! Take that back!"   "Peace, Maryam. If you don't have a soul, then you're immortal anyhow and won't miss it. Jubal - . . is it possible for a man to die and not notice it?"

            "Can't say. Never tried it."

            "Could I have died on Mars and just dreamed that I came home? Look around you! A garden the Prophet himself would be pleased with. Four beautiful houris, passing around lovely food and delicious drinks at all hours. Even their male counterparts, if you want to be fussy. Is this Paradise?"

            "I can guarantee that it isn't," Jubal assured him. "My taxes are due this week."

            "Still, that doesn't affect me."

            "And take these houris- Even if we stipulate for the sake of argument that they are of beauty adequate to meet the specifications-alter all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder-"

            "They pass."

            "And you'll pay for that, Boss," Miriam added.

            "-there still remains," Jubal pointed out, "one more requisite attribute of houris."

            "Mmmm-" said Mahmoud, "I don't think we need go into that. In Paradise, rather than a temporary physical condition, it would be a permanent spiritual attribute-more a state of mind. Yes?"

            "In that case," Jubal said emphatically, "I am certain that these are not houris."

            Mahmoud sighed. "In that case I'll just have to convert one."

            "Why only one? There are still places left in the world where you can have the full quota."

            "No, my friend. In the wise words of the Prophet, while the Legislations permit four, it is impossible for a man to deal justly with more than one."

            "That's some relief. Which one?"

            "We'll have to see. Maryam, are you feeling spiritual?"

            "You go to hell! 'Houris' indeed!"

            "Jill?"

            "Give me a break," Ben protested. "I'm still working on Jill."

            "Later, Jill. Anne?"

            "Sorry. I've got a date."

            "Dorcas? You're my last chance."

            "Stinky," she said softly, "just how spiritual do you want me to feel?"

            When Mike got inside the house, he went straight upstairs to his room, closed the door, got on the bed, assumed the foetal position, rolled up his eyes, swallowed his tongue, and slowed his heart almost to nothing. He knew that Jill did not like him to do this in the daytime, but she did not object as long as he did not do it publicly. There were so many things that he must not do publicly, but only this one really aroused her ire. He had been waiting to do this ever since he had left that room of terrible wrongness; he needed very badly to withdraw and try to grok all that had happened. For he had done something else that Jill had told him not to- He felt a very human urge to tell himself that it had been forced on him, that it was not his fault; but his Martian training did not permit him this easy escape. He had arrived at a cusp, right action had been required, the choice had been his. He grokked that he had chosen correctly. But his water brother Jill had forbidden this choice- But that would have left him no choice. This was contradiction; at a cusp, choice is. By choice, spirit grows.

            He considered whether or not Jill would have approved had he taken other action, not wasting food?

            No, he grokked that Jill's injunction had covered that variant of action, too.

            At this point the being sprung from human genes shaped by Martian thought, and who could never be either one, completed one stage of his growth, burst out and ceased to be a nestling. The solitary loneliness of predestined free will was then his and with it the Martian serenity to embrace it, cherish it, savour its bitterness, and accept its consequences. With tragic joy he knew that this cusp was his, not Jill's. His water brother could teach, admonish, guide-but choice at a cusp was not shared. Here was "ownership" beyond any possible sale, gift, hypothecation; owner and owned grokked fully, inseparable~ He eternally was the action he had taken at cusp.

            Now that he knew himself to be self he was free to grok ever closer to his brothers, merge without let. Self's integrity was and is and ever had been. Mike stopped to cherish all his brother selves, the many threesfulfilled on Mars, both corporate and discorporate, the precious few on Earth-the as-yet-unknown powers of three on Earth that would be his to merge with and cherish now that at last long waiting he grokked and cherished himself.

            Mike remained in his trance; there was still much to grok, loose ends and bits and pieces to be puzzled over and fitted into his growing pattern- all that he had seen and heard and been at the Archangel Foster Tabernacle (not just the cusp he had encountered when he and Digby had come face to face alone), why Bishop Senator Boone had made him warily uneasy without frightening him, why Miss Dawn Ardent had tasted like a water brother when she was not, the texture and smell of the goodness he had incompletely grokked in the jumping up and down and the wailing- Jubal's stored conversation both coming and going-Jubal's words troubled him more than other details; he studied them with great care, compared them with what he bad been taught as a nestling, making great effort to bridge between his two languages, the one he thought with and the one he now spoke and was gradually learning to think in, for some purposes. The human word "church" which turned up over and over again among Jubal's words gave him most knotty difficulty; there was no Martian concept of any sort to match it-unless one took "church" and "worship" and "God" and "congregation" and many other words and equated them all to the totality of the only world he had known during most of his growing-waiting . . . then forced the concept back awkwardly into English in that phrase which had been rejected Qiut by each differently) by Jubal, by Mahmoud, by Digby.

            "Thou art God" He came closer to understanding it in English himself now, although it could never have the crystal inevitability of the Martian concept it stood for. In his mind he spoke simultaneously the English sentence and the Martian word and felt closer grokking. Repeating it like a student telling himself that the jewel is in the lotus he sank into nirvana untroubled.

            Shortly before midnight he speeded up his heart, resumed normal breathing, ran down his engineering check list, found that all was in order, uncurled and sat up. He had been spiritually weary; now he felt light and gay and clear-headed, eager to get on with the many actions he saw spreading out before him.

            He felt a puppyish need for company almost as strong as his earlier necessity for quiet. He stepped out into the upper hail, was delighted to encounter a water brother. 

            "!!!!"

            "Oh. Hello, Mike. My, you look chipper."

            "I feel fine! Where is everybody?"

            "Everybody's asleep but you and me-so keep your voice down. Ben and Stinky went home an hour ago and people started going to bed."

            "Oh." Mike felt mildly disappointed that Mahmoud had left; he wanted to explain to him his new grokking. But he would do so, when next he saw him.

            "I ought to be asleep, too, but I felt like a snack. Are you hungry?"

            "Me? Sure, I'm hungry!"

            "Good. You ought to be, you missed dinner. Come on, I know there's some cold chicken and we'll see what else." They went downstairs, loaded a tray lavishly. "Let's take it outside. It's still plenty warm."

            "That's a fine idea," Mike agreed.

            "Warm enough to swim if we wanted to-this is a real Indian summer. Just a second, I'll switch on the floods."

            "Don't bother," Mike answered. "I'll carry the tray, I can see." He could see, as they all knew, in almost total darkness. Jubal said that his exceptional night-sight probably caine from the conditions in which he had grown up, and Mike grokked that that was true but he grokked also that there was more to it than that; his foster parents had taught him to see. As for the night being warm enough, he would have been comfortable naked on Mount Everest, but he knew that his water brothers bad very little tolerance for changes in temperature and pressure; he was always considerate of their weakness, once he had learned of it. But be was eagerly looking forward to snow-seeing for himself that each tiny crystal of the water of life was a unique individual, as he had read-walking barefoot in it, rolling in it.

            In the meantime he was equally pleased with the unseasonably warm autumn night and the still more pleasing company of his water brother.

            "Okay, you carry the tray. I'll switch on just the underwater lights. That'll be plenty to eat by."

            "Fine." Mike liked having light coming up through the ripples; it was a goodness, a beauty, even though he did not need it. They picnicked by the pool, then lay back on the grass and looked at the stars.

            "Mike, there's Mars. It is Mars, isn't it? Or is it Antares?"

            "It is Mars."

            "Mike? What are they doing on Mars?"

            He hesitated a long time; the question was too wide in scope to pin down to the sparse English language. "On the side toward the horizon- the southern hemisphere-it is spring; the plants are being taught to grow."

            "'Taught to grow?'"

            He hesitated only slightly. "Larry teaches plants to grow every day. I have helped him. But my people-the Martians, I mean; I grok now that you are my people-teach the plants another way. Jn the other hemisphere it is growing colder and the nymphs, those who have stayed alive through the summer, are being brought into the nests for quickening and more growing." He thought. "Of the humans we left at the equator when I came here, one has discorporated and the others are sad."

            "Yes, I heard about it in the news."

            Mike had not heard about it in the news; he had not known it until he was asked. "They should not be sad. Mr. Booker T. W. Jones Food Technician First Class is not sad; the Old Ones have cherished him."

            "You knew him?"

            "Yes. He had his own face, dark and beautiful. But he was homesick."

            "Oh, dear! Mike ... do you ever get homesick? For Mars?"

            "At first I was very homesick," he answered truthfully. "I was lonely always." He rolled toward her and took her in his arms. "But now I am not lonely. I grok I shall never be lonely again."

            "Mike darling-" They kissed, and went on kissing.

            Presently his water brother said breathlessly. "Oh, my! That was almost worse than the first time."

            "You are all right, my brother?"

            "Yes. Yes indeed. Kiss me again."

            Quite a long time later, by cosmic clock, she said, "Mike? Is that-I mean, 'Do you know-'"

            "I know. It is for growing-closer. Now we grow closer."

            "Well, I've been ready a long time-goodness, we all have, but never mind, dear; turn just a little. I'll help."

            As they merged, grokking together, Mike said softly and triumphantly: "Thou art God."

            Her answer was not in words. Then, as their grokking made them ever closer and Mike felt himself almost ready to discorporate, her voice called him back: "Oh? ,.. Oh! Thou art God!"

            "We grok God."

XXV

            ON MARS THE LITTLE HUMAN ADVANCE GUARD were building half-buried pressure domes for the larger male & female party that would arrive by next ship. This work went much faster than originally scheduled as the Martians were uncritically helpful. Part of the time saved was spent in preparing a preliminary estimate on a very long-distance plan to free the bound oxygen in the sands of Mars to make the planet more friendly to future human generations.

            The Old Ones neither helped nor hindered these long-distance human plans; time was not yet. Their own meditations were approaching a violent cusp that would control the shape of Martian art for many millennia. On Earth elections continued as usual and a very advanced poet published a limited edition of verse consisting entirely of punctuation marks and spaces; Time magazine reviewed it and suggested that the Federation Assembly Daily Record could profitably be translated into the same medium. The poet was invited to lecture at the University of Chicago, which he did, clad in full formal evening dress lacking only trousers and shoes.

            A colossal advertising campaign opened to sell more sexual organs of plants for human use and Mrs. Joseph ("Shadow of Greatness") Douglas was quoted as saying: "I would no more think of sitting down to eat without flowers on my table than without serviettes." A Tibetan swami from Palermo, Sicily, announced in Beverly Hills a newly discovered, ancient yoga discipline for ripple breathing which greatly increased both pranha and the cosmic attraction between the sexes. His chelas were required to assume the matsyendra posture dressed in hand-woven diapers while he read aloud from the Rig-Veda and an assistant guru checked through their purses in another room-nothing was ever stolen from the purses; the purpose was less immediate.

            The President of the United States, by proclamation, named the first Sunday in November as "National Grandmothers' Day" and urged the grandchildren of America to say it with flowers. A funeral parlor chain was indicted for price-cutting. The Fosterite bishops, after secret conclave, announced the Church's second Major Miracle: Supreme Bishop Digby had been translated bodily to Heaven and spot-promoted to Archangel, ranking with-but-after Archangel Foster. The glorious news had been held up pending Heavenly confirmation of the elevation of a new Supreme Bishop, Huey Short-a compromise candidate accepted by the Boone faction after the lots had been cast repeatedly.

            L 'Unita and Hoy published identical doctrinaire denunciations of Short's elevation, L 'Osservatore Romano and the Christian Science Monitor ignored it, Times of India snickered at it editorially, and the Manchester Guardian reported it without comment-the Fbsterite congregation in England was small but extremely militant.

            Digby was not pleased with his promotion. The Man from Mars had interrupted him with his work half finished-and that stupid jackass Short was certain to louse it up. Foster listened to him with angelic patience until Digby ran down, then said, "Listen, junior, you're an angel now-so forget it. Eternity is no time for recriminations. You too were a stupid jackass until you poisoned me. Afterwards you did well enough. Now that Short is Supreme Bishop he'll do all right, too; he can't help it. Same as with the Popes. Some of them were warts until they got promoted. Check with one of them, go ahead-there's no professional jealousy here."

            Digby calmed down a little, but made one request.

            Foster shook his halo in negation. "You can't touch him. You shouldn't have tried to touch him in the first place. Oh, you can submit a requisition for a miracle if you want to make a bloody fool of yourself. But, I'm telling you, it'll be turned down-you simply don't understand the System yet. The Martians have their own setup, different from ours, and as long as they need him, we can't touch him. They run theft own show their own way-the Universe has variety, something for everybody-a fact you field workers often miss."

            "You mean this punk can brush me aside and I've got to hold still for it?"

            "I held still for the same thing, didn't I? I'm helping you now, am I not? Now look, there's work to be done and lots of it-before you can expect to be promoted again. The Boss wants performance, not gripes- If you need a Day off to get your nerve back, duck over to the Muslim Paradise and take it. Otherwise, straighten your halo, square your wings, and dig in. The sooner you start acting like an angel the quicker you'll start feeling angelic. Get Happy, junior!"

            Digby heaved a deep ethereal sigh. "Okay, I'm Happy. Where do I start?"

            Jubal was not disturbed by Digby's disappearance because he did not hear of it even as soon as it was announced, and, when he did hear, while he had a fleeting suspicion as to who had performed the miracle, he dismissed it from his mind; if Mike had had a finger in it, he had gotten away with it-and what happened to supreme bishops worried Jubal not at all as long as he didn't have to be bothered with it.

            More important, his own household had gone through a considerable upset. In this case Jubal knew what had happened but did not care to inquire. That is to say, Jubal guessed what had happened but did not know with whom-and didn't want to know. A slight case of rape. Was "rape" the word? Well, "statutory rape." No, not that, either; Mike was of legal age and presumed to be able to defend himself in the clinches. Anyhow, it was high time the boy was salted, no matter how it had happened.

            Jubal couldn't even reconstruct the crime from the way the girls behaved because their patterns kept shifting-sometimes ABC vs D, then BCD vs A . . . or AB vs CD, or AD vs CB, through all possible ways that four women can gang up on each other.

            This continued for most of the week following that ill-starred trip to church, during which period Mike stayed in his room in a withdrawal trance so deep that Jubal would have pronounced him dead had he not seen it before. Jubal would not have minded it if the service around the place had not gone to hell in a bucket. The girls seemed to spend half their time tiptoeing in~"to see if Mike was all right" and they were too preoccupied to cook properly, much less to be decent secretaries. Even rock-steady Anne-Hell, Anne was the worst of the lot! Absent-minded and subject to unexplained tears . . . and Jubal would have bet his life that if Anne were to witness the Second Coming, she would simply have memorized date, time, personae, events, and barometric pressure without batting her calm blue eyes.

            Then late Thursday afternoon Mike woke himself up and suddenly it was ABCD in the service of Mike, "less than the dust beneath his chariot wheels." Inasmuch as the girls now found time to give Jubal perfect service too, Jubal counted his blessings and let it lie - except for a wry and very private thought that, if he had demanded a showdown, Mike could easily quintuple their salaries simply by dropping a post card to Douglas-but that the girls would just as readily have supported Mike.

            Once domestic tranquility was restored Jubal did not mind that his kingdom was now ruled by a mayor of the palace. Meals were on time and (if possible) better than ever; when he shouted "Front!" the girl who appeared was bright-eyed, happy, and efficient-such being the case, Jubal did not give a hoot who rated the most side boys. Or girls.

            Besides, the change in Mike was as interesting to Jubal as the restoration of peace was pleasant. Before that week Mike had been docile in a fashion that Jubal classed as pathological; now he was so self-confident that Jubal would have described it as cocky had it not been that Mike continued to be unfailingly polite and considerate.

            But he accepted homage from the girls as if a natural right, he seemed older than his calendar age rather than younger, his voice had deepened, he spoke with disciplined forcefulness rather than timidly. Jubal decided that Mike had joined the human race; he could, in his mind, discharge this patient as cured.

            Except (Jubal reminded himself) on one point: Mike still did not laugh. He could smile at a joke and sometimes did not ask to have them explained to him. Mike was cheerful, even merry-but he never laughed.

            Jubal decided that it was not important. This patient was sane, healthy . . . and human. Short weeks earlier Jubal would have given odds against the cure taking place. He was honest and humble enough as a physician not to claim credit; the girls had had more to do with it. Or should he say "girl?"

            From the first week of his stay Jubal had told Mike almost daily that he was welcome to stay . . . but that he should stir out and see the world as soon as he felt able. In view of this Jubal should not have been surprised when Mike announced one breakfast that he was leaving. But he was both surprised and, to his greater surprise, hurt.

            He covered it by using his napkin unnecessarily before answering, "So? When?"

            "We're leaving today."

            "Um- Plural.'t Jubal looked around the table. "Are Larry and Duke and I going to have to put up with our own cooking until I can dig up more help?"

            "We've talked that over," Mike answered. "Jill is going with me- nobody else. I do need somebody with me, Jubal; I know quite well that I don't know, as yet, how people do things out in the world. I still make mistakes; I need a guide, for a time. I think it ought to be Jill, because she wants to go on learning Martian-and the others think so, too. But if you want Jill to stay, then it could be someone else. Duke and Larry are each willing to help me, if you can't spare one of the girls."

            "You mean I get a vote?"

            "What? Jubal, it has to be your decision. We all know that."

            (Son, you're a gent-and you've probably just told your first lie- I doubt if I could hold even Duke if you set your mind against it.) "I guess it ought to be Jill. But look, kids- This is still your home. The latch string is out."

            "We know that-and we'll be back. Again we will share water."

            "We will, son."

            "Yes, Father."

            "Huh?"

            "Jubal, there is no Martian word for 'father.' But lately I have grokked that you are my father. And Jill's father."

            Jubal glanced at Jill. "Mmm, I grok. Take care of yourselves."

            "Yes. Come, Jill." They were gone before he left the table.

XXVI

            IT WAS THE USUAL SORT OF CARNIVAL in the usual sort of town. The rides were the same, the cotton candy tasted the same, the flat joints practiced a degree of moderation acceptable to the local law in separating the marks from their half dollars, whether with baseballs thrown at targets, with wheels of fortune, or what-but the separation took place just the same. The sex lecture was trimmed to suit local opinions concerning Charles Darwin's opinions, the girls in the posing show wore that amount of gauze that local mores required, and the Fearless Fentons did their Death-Defying (in sober truth) Double Dive just before the last bally each night.

            The ten-in-one show was equally standard. It did not have a mentalist, it did have a magician; it did not have a bearded lady, it did have a half-man half-woman; it did not have a sword swallower, it did have a fire eater. In place of a tattooed man the show had a tattooed lady who was also a snake channer-and for the blow-off (at another half dollar per mark) she appeared "absolutely nude! .. clothed only in bare living flesh in exotic designs!"-and any mark who could find one square inch below her neckline untattooed would be awarded a twenty dollar bill.

            That twenty dollars had gone unclaimed all season, because the blowoff was honestly ballyhooed. Mrs. Paiwonski stood perfectly still and completely unclothed-other than in "bare, living flesh" ... in this case a fourteen-foot boa constrictor known as "Honey Bun." Honey Bun was looped around Mrs. P. so strategically that even the local ministerial alliance could find no real excuse to complain, especially as some of their own daughters wore not nearly as much and covered still less while attending the carnival. To keep the placid, docile Honey Bun from being disturbed, Mrs. P. took the precaution of standing on a small platform in the middle of a canvas tank-on the floor of which were more than a dozen cobras.

            The occasional drunk who was certain that all snake charmer's snakes were defanged and so tried to climb into the tank in pursuit of that undecorated square inch invariably changed his opinion as soon as a cobra noticed him, lifted and spread its hood.

            Besides, the lighting wasn't very good.

            However, the drunk could not have won the twenty dollars in any case. Mrs. P's claim was much sounder than the dollar. She and her late husband had had for many years a tattooing studio in San Pedro; when trade was slack they had decorated each other-and, eventually, at some minor inconvenience to herself, the art work on her was so definitively complete from her neck down that there was no possible room for an encore. She took great pride both in the fact that she was the most completely decorated woman in the world (and by the world's greatest artist, for such was her humbly grateful opinion of her late husband) and also in the certainty that every dollar she earned was honest.

            She associated with grifters and sinners and did not hold herself aloof from them. But her own integrity was untouched. She and her husband had been converted by Foster himself, she kept her membershiP in San Pedro and attended services at the nearest branch of the Church of the New Revelation no matter where she was.

            Patricia Paiwoush would gladly have dispensed with the protection of Honey Bun in the blow-off not merely to prove that she was honest (that needed no proof, since she knew it was true) but because she was serene in her conviCtiOn that she was the canvas for religiouS art greater than any on the walls or ceilings of the Vatican. When she and George had seen the light. there was still about three square feet of Patricia untouched before he died she carried a complete pictorial life of Foster, from his crib with the angelS hovering around to the day of glory when he had taken his appointed place among the archangels.

            Regrettably (since it might have turned many sinners into seekers of the light) much of this sacred history bad to be covered up. the amount depending on the local lawmen. But she could show it in closed Happiness ~eetiflgS of the local churches she attended, if the shepherd wanted her to, which he almost always did. But, while it was always good to add to Happiness~ the saved did not need it; Patricia would rather have saved sinners. She couldn't preach. she couldn't sing, and she had never been called to speak in tongues__but she was a living witness to the light.

            In the ten-in-One, her act came next to last, just before the magician; this gave her time to put away unsold photograPhs of herself (a quarter for black & white, half a dollar in color, a set of special photograPhs for five dollars in a sealed envelope sold only to marks who signed a printed form alleging that they were doctors of medicine, psychology, sociology, or other such entitled to professional material not available to the general public-and such was Patricia's integrity that she would not sell these even for ten dollars if the mark did not look the part; she would then ask to see his business card - no dirty dollars were going to put her kids through school-and also gave her time to slip behind the rear canvas and get herself and her snakes ready for the blOW-Off.

            The magician, Dr. Apollo, performed on the last platform nearest to the canvas fly leading to the blow-Off. He started by passing out to his audience a dozen shiny steel rings, each as wide as a plate; he invited them to convince themselves that each ring was solid and smooth. Then he bad them hold the rings so that they overlapped. Dr. Apollo walked along the platform~ reached out with his wand and tapped each overlap-the solid steel links formed a chain.

            Casually he laid his wand in the air, rolled up his sleeves, accepted a bowl of eggs from his 5ssistant, and started to juggle half a dozen of them. His juggling did not attract too many eyes; his assistant was more worthy of stares. She was a fine example of modern functional design and, while she wore a great deal more than did the young ladies in the posing show, nevertheless there seemed to be a strong probability that she was not tattooed anywhere. The marks hardly noticed it when the six eggs became eve, then four three, two -- until at last Dr. Apollo was tossing one egg in the air, with his sleeves still rolled up and a puzzled look on his faceAt last he said, "Eggs are getting scarcer every year," and tossed the remaining egg over the heads of those nearest the platform to a man in the back of the crowd. "Catch!"

            He turned away and did not seem to notice that the egg never reached its destination.

            Dr. Apollo performed several other tricks, while wearing always the same slightly puzzled expression and with the same indifferent patter. Once he called a young boy close to the platform. "Son, I can tell you what you are thinking. You think I'm not a real magician. And you're right~ For that you win a dollar." He handed the kid a dollar bill. It disappeared.

            The magician looked unhappy. "Dropped it? Well, hang on to this one." A second bill disappeared.

            "Oh, dear. Well, we'll have to give you one more chance. Use both hands. Got it? All right, better get out of here fast with it-YOU should be home in bed anyhow." The kid dashed away with the money and the magician turned back and again looked puzzled "Madame Merlin, what should we do now?"

            His pretty assistant came up to him, pulled his head down by one ear, whispered into it. He shook his head. "No, not in front of all these people."

            She whispered again; he looked distressed. "I'm sorry, friends, but Madame Merlin insists that she wants to go tobed. Will any of you gentlemen help her?"

            He blinked at the rush of volunteers- "Oh, just two of you. Were any of you gentlemen in the Army?"

            There were still more than enough volunteers. Dr. Apollo picked two and said, "There's an army cot under the end of the platforms just lift up the canvas_flow, will you set it up for her here on the platform? Madame Merlin, face this way, please."

            While the two men set up the cot, Dr. Apollo made passes in the air at his assistant. "Sleep ... sleep . . you are now asleep. Friends, she is in a deep trance. Will you two gentlemen who so kindly prepared her bed now place her on it? One take her head, one take her feet. Careful, now-" In corpselike rigidity the girl was transferred to the cot.

            "Thank you, gentlemen. But we ought not to leave her uncovered, should we? There was a sheet here, somewhere. Oh, there it is." The magician reached out, recovered his wand from where he had parked it, pointed to a table laden with props at the far end of his platform; a sheet detached itself from the pile and came to him. "Just spread this over her. Cover her head, too; a lady should not be exposed to public gaze while sleeping. Thank you. Now if you will just step down off the platform. Fine! Madame Merlin . . . can you hear me?"

            "Yes, Doctor Apollo."

            "You were heavy with sleep. Now you are resting. You feel lighter, much lighter. You are sleeping on a bed of clouds. You are floating away on clouds-" The sheet-covered form raised slowly up about a foot. "Wups! Don't get too light. We don't want to lose you."

            In the crowd, a boy in his late teens explained in a loud whisper, "She's not under the sheet now. When they put the sheet over her, she went down through a trap door. That's just a light framework, doesn't weigh as much as the sheet. And in a minute he'll flip the sheet away and while he does, the framework will collapse and disappear. It's just a gimmick -- anybody could do it,"

            Dr. Apollo ignored him and went on talking. "A little higher, Madame Merlin. Higher. There-" The draped form floated about six feet above the platform.

            The smart youngster whispered to his friends, "There's a slender steel rod but you can't see it too easily. It's probably where one corner of the sheet hangs down there and touches the cot."

            Dr. Apollo turned and requested his volunteers to remove the cot and put it back under the platform. "She doesn't need it now. She sleeps on clouds." He faced the floating form and appeared to be listening. "What? Louder, please. Oh? She says that she doesn't want the sheet-it's too heavy."

            ("Here's where the framework disappears.")

            The magician tugged one corner of the sheet, snatched it away; the audience hardly noticed that the sheet disappeared without his bothering to gather it in; they were looking at Madame Merlin, still floating, still sleeping, six feet above the platform. The platform stood in the middle rear of the tent and the audience surrounded it on all sides. A companion of the boy who knew all about stage magic said, "Okay, Speedy, where's the steel rod?"

            The kid said uncertainly, "You have to look where he doesn't want you to look, it's the way they've got those lights fixed to shine right into your eyes."

            Dr. Apollo said, "That's enough sleep, fairy princess. Give me your hand. Wake up, wake up!" He took her hand, pulled her erect and helped her step down to the platform.

            ("You see? You saw how stiff she got down, you saw where she put her foot? That's where the steel rod went." The kid added with satisfaction, "Just a gimmick.")

            The magician went on talking, "And now friends, if you will kindly give your attention to our learned lecturer, Professor Timoshenko-"

            The talker cut in at once. "Don't go 'way! For this one performance only by arrangement with the Council of Colleges and Universities and with the permission of the Department of Safety and Welfare of this wonderful city, we are offering this twenty dollar bill absolutely free to any one of you-"

            Most of the tip was turned into the blow-off. A few wandered around, then started to leave as most of the lights in the main tent were turned off. The freaks and other carnies started packing their props and slum preparatory to tear-down. There was a train jump coming in the morning and living tops would remain up for a few hours sleep, but canvas boys were already loosening stakes on the sideshow top.

            Shortly the talker-owner-manager of the ten-in-one came back into the semi-darkened tent, having rushed the blow-off and spilled the last marks out the rear exit. "Smitty, don't go 'way. Got something for you." He handed the magician an envelope, which Dr. Apollo tucked away without looking at it. The manager added, "Kid, I hate to tell you this-but you and your wife ain't going with us to Paducah."

            "I know."

            "Well ... look, don't take it hard, there's nothing personal about it -but I got to think of the show. We're replacing you with a mentalist team. They do a top reading act, then she runs a phrenology and mitt camp while he makes with the mad ball. We need 'em . . . and you know as well as I do you didn't have no season's guarantee. You were just on trial."

            "I know," agreed the magician. "I knew it was time to leave. No hard feelings, Tim."

            "Well, I'm glad you feel that way about it." The talker hesitated. "Smitty, do you want some advice? Just say no if you don't."

            "I would like very much to have your advice," the magician said simply.

            "Okay, you asked for it. Smitty, your tricks are good. Hell, some of 'em even got me baffled. But clever tricks don't make a magician. The trouble is you're not really with it. You behave like a carney-you mind your own business and you never crab anybody else's act and you're helpful if anybody needs it. But you're not a carney. You know why? You don't have any feeling for what makes a chump a chump; you don't get inside his mind. A real magician can make the marks open their mouths and catch flies just by picking a quarter out of the air. That Thurston's levitation you do-I've never seen it done any more perfectly but the marks don't warm to it. No psychology. Now take me, for example. I can't even pick a quarter out of the air-hell, I can barely use a knife and fork without cutting my mouth. I got no act . . . except I got the one act that counts. I know marks. I know where that streak of larceny is in his heart, I know just how wide it is. I know what he hungers for, whether he knows it or not. That's showmanship, son, whether you're a politician running for office, a preacher pounding a pulpit . . . or a magician. You find out what the chumps want and you can leave half your props in your trunk."

            "I'm sure you're right."

            "I know I am. He wants sex and blood and money. We don't give him any real blood-unless a fire eater or a knife thrower makes a terrible mistake. We don't give him money, either; we just encourage him to hope for it while we take away a little. We don't give him any real sex. But why do seven out of ten of a tip buy the blow-off? To see a nekkid broad, that's why-and a chance to be paid a double sawbuck for lookin'-when maybe they got one just as good or better at home, nekkid anytime they like. So he don't see one and he don't get paid-and sill we send him out happy.

            "What else does a chump want? Mystery! He wants to think that the world is a romantic place when he knows damn well it ain't. That's your job . . . only you ain't learned how. Shucks, son, even the marks know that your tricks are fake . . . only they'd like to believe they're real, and it's up to you to help 'em believe, as long as they're inside the show. That's what you lack."

            "How do I get it, Tim? How do I learn what makes a chump tick?"

            "Hell, I can't tell you that; that's the piece you have to learn for yourself. Get out and stir around and be a chump yourself a while, maybe. But- Well, take this notion you had of billing yourself as 'The Man from Mars.' You mustn't offer the chump what he won't swallow. They've all seen the Man from Mars, in pictures and on stereovision. Hell, I've seen him myself. Sure, you look a bit like him, same general type, a casual resemblance-but even if you were his twin brother, the marks know they won't find the Man from Mars in a ten-in-one in the sticks. It's as silly as it would be to bill a sword swallower as 'the President of the United States.' Get me? A chump wants to believe-but he won't thank you to insult what trace of intelligence he has. And even a chump has brains of a sort. You have to remember that."

            "I will remember."

            "Okay. I talk too much-but a talker gets in the habit. Are you kids going to be all right? How's the grouch bag? Hell, I oughtn't to do it-but do you need a loan?"

            "Thanks, Tim. We're not hurtin' any."

            "Well, take care of yourself. Bye, Jill." He hurried out.

            Patricia Paiwonski came in through the rear fly, wearing a robe. "Kids? Tim sloughed your act."

            "We were leaving anyhow, Pat."

            "I knew he was going to. He makes me so mad I'm tempted to jump the show myself."

            "Now, Pat-"

            "I mean it. I could take my act anywhere and he knows it. Leave him without a blow-off. He can get other acts . . . but a good blow-off that the clowns won't clobber is hard to find."

            "Pat, Tim is right, and Jill and I know it. I don't have showmanship."

            "Well ... maybe so. But I'm going to miss you. You've been just like my own kids to me. Oh, dear! Look, the show doesn't roll until morning-come back to my living top and set awhile and visit."

            Jill said, "Better yet, Patty, come into town with us and have a couple of drinks. How would you like to soak yourself in a big, hot tub, with bath salts?"

            "Uh, I'll bring a bottle."

            "No," Mike objected, "I know what you drink and we've got it. Come along."

            "Well, I'll come-you're at the Imperial, aren't you?-but I can't come with you. I've got to be sure my babies are all right first and tell Honey Bun I'll be gone a bit and fix her hot water bottles. I'll catch a cab. Half an hour, maybe."

            They drove into town with Mike at the controls. It was a fairly small town, without automatic traffic control even downtown. Mike drove with careful precision, exactly at zone maximum and sliding the little ground car into holes Jill could not see until they were through them. He did it without effort in the same fashion in which he juggled. Jill knew how it was done, had even learned to do it a bit herself; Mike stretched his time sense until the problem of juggling eggs or speeding through traffic was an easy one with' everything in slow motion. Nevertheless she reflected that it was an odd accomplishment for a man who, only months earlier, had been baffled by tying shoelaces.

            She did not talk. Mike could talk while on extended time, if necessary, but it was awkward to converse while they were running on different time rates. Instead she thought with mild nostalgia of the life they were leaving, calling it up in her mind and cherishing it, some of it in Martian concepts, more of it in English. She had enjoyed it very much. All her life, until she had met Mike, she had been under the tyranny of the clock, first as a little girl in school, then as a bigger girl in a much harder school, then under the unforgiving pressures of hospital routine.

            The carnival had been nothing like that. Aside from the easy and rather pleasant chore of standing around and looking pretty several times a day from midafternoon to the last bally of the night, she never had anything she actually had to do at any set time. Mike did not care whether they ate once a day or six times, and whatever housekeeping she chose to do suited him. They had their own living top and camping equipment; in many towns they had never left the lot from arrival to tear-down. The carnival was a closed little world, an enclave, where the headlines and troubles of the outside world did not reach. She had been happy in it.

            To be sure, in every town the lot was crawling with marks-but she had acquired the carney viewpoint; marks did not count-they might as well have been behind glass. Jill quite understood why the girls in the posing show could and did exhibit themselves in very little (and, in some towns, nothing, if the fix was solid) without feeling immodest . . . and without being immodest in their conduct outside the posing show. Marks weren't people to them; they were blobs of nothing, hardly seen, whose sole function was to cough up half dollars for the take.

            Yes, the carnie had been a happy, utterly safe home, even though theft act had flopped. It had not always been that way when first they left the safety of Jubal's home to go out into the world and increase Mike's education. They had been spotted more than once and several times they had had trouble getting away, not only from the press, but from the endless people who seemed to feel that they had a right to demand things of Mike, simply because he had the misfortune to be the Man from Mars.

            Presently Mike had thought his features into more mature lines and had made other slight changes in his appearance. That, plus the fact that they frequented places where the Man from Mars would certainly not be expected (by the public) to go, got them privacy. About that time, when Jill was phoning home to give a new mailing address, Jubal had suggested a cover-up story-and a couple of days later Jill had read that the Man from Mars had again gone into retreat, this time in a Tibetan monastery.

            The retreat had actually been "Hank's Grill" in a "nowhere" town, with Jill as a waitress and Mike as dishwasher. It was no worse than being a nurse and much less demanding-and her feet no longer hurt. Mike had a remarkably quick way of cleaning dishes, although he had to be careful not to use it when the boss was watching. They kept that job a week, then moved on, sometimes working, sometimes not. They visited public libraries almost daily, once Mike found out about them-Jill had discovered that Mike had taken for granted that Jubal's library contained a copy of every book on Earth. When he learned the marvelous truth, they had remained in Akron nearly a month. Jill did quite a lot of shopping that month, as Mike with a book was almost no company at all.

            But Baxter's Combined Shows and Riot of Fun for All the Family had been the nicest part of their meandering trip. Jill recalled with an inner giggle the time in-what town?-no matter-when the entire posing show had been pinched. It wasn't fair, even by chumps' standards, since that concession always worked under precise prearrangement: bras or no bras; blue lights or bright lights; whatever the top town clown ordained. Nevertheless the sheriff had hauled them in and the local justice of the peace had seemed disposed not only to fine but to jail the girls as "vagrants."

            The lot had closed down and most of the carnies had gone to the hearing, along with innumerable chumps slavering to catch sight of "shameless women" getting their come-uppance. Mike and Jill had managed to crowd against the back wall of the courtroom.

            Jill had long since impressed on Mike that he must never do anything that an ordinary human could not do where it might be noticed. But Mike had grokked a cusp and had not discussed it with Jill.

            The sheriff was testifying as to what he had seen, the details of this "public lewdness"-and he was enjoying it.

            Mike had restrained himself, Jill admitted. In the midst of testimony both sheriff and judge became suddenly and completely without clothes of any sort.

            She and Mike slipped quietly away during the excitement, and later she learned that the accused, all of them, had left, too, and nobody seemed disposed to object. Of course no one had connected the miracle with Mike, and he himself had never mentioned it to Jill-nor she to him; it was not necessary. The show had torn down at once and moved on two days early, to a more honest town where the rule was net bra and briefies and no beefs afterwards.

            But Jill would treasure forever the expression on the sheriff's face, and his appearance, too, when it was plain to be seen that his sudden sag in front meant that the sheriff had been wearing a tight corset for his pride.

            Yes, carnie days had been nice days. She started to speak to Mike in her mind, intending to remind him of how funny that hick sheriff had looked with creases from his girdle on his hairy pot belly. But she stopped. Martian had no concept for "funny" so of course she could not say it. They shared a growing telepathic bond~but in Martian only.

            ("Yes Jill?") his mind answered hers.

            ("Later.")

            Shortly they approached the Imperial Hotel and she felt his mind slow down as he parked the car. Jill much prefeffed camping on the carnival grounds . . . except fox one thing: bathtubS. Showers were a1~ right, but nothing could beat a big tub of hot, hot water, climb into it up to your chin and soak! Sometimes they checked into a hotel for a few days and rented a ground car. Mike did not, by early training, share her fanatic enthusiasm for scrubbing; he was now as fastidiously clean as she was- but only because she had trained him to be; it did not annoy him. Moreover, he could keep himself immaculate without wasting time on washing or bathing, just as he never had to see a barber once he knew precisely how Jill wanted his hair to grow. But Mike, too, liked the time spent in hotels for the sake of baptism alone; be enjoyed immersing himself in the water of life as much as ever, irrespective of a non-existant need to clean and no longer with any superstitious feeling about water.

            The Imperial was a very old hotel and had not been much even when new, but the tub in what was proudly called the "Bridal Suite" was satisfactorily large. Jill went straight to it as they came in, started to fill it-and was hardly surprised to find herself suddenly ready for her bath, even to pretty bare feet, except that her purse was still clutched under her arm. Dear Mike! He knew how she liked to shop. how pleased she was with new clothes; he gently forced her to indulge her childish weakness by sending to neverwhere any outfit which he sensed no longer delighted her. He would have done so daily had she not cautioned him that too many new clothes would make them conspicuous around the carnival.

            "Thanks, dear!" she called out. "Let's climb in."

            He had either undressed or caused his own clothes to go away- probably the former she decided; Mike found buying clothes for himself without interest. He still could see no possible reason for clothes other than for simple protection against the elements, a weakness he did not share. They got into the tub facing each other; she scooped up a handful of water, touched it to her lips, offered it to him. lt was not necessary to speak, nor was the ritual necessary; it simply pleased Jill to remind them both of something for which no reminder could ever be necessary, through all eternity.

            When he raised his head, she said, "The thing I was thinking of while you were driving was how funny that horrid sheriff looked in his skin"

            "Did be look funny?"

            "Oh, very funny indeed! It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud. But I did not want us noticed."

            "Explain to me why he was funny. I do not see the joke."

            "Uh ... dear, I don't think I can explain it. It was not a joke-not like puns and things like that which can be explained."

            "I did not grok that he was funny," Mike said seriously. "In both those men-the judge and the lawman-I grokked wrongness. Had I not known that it would displease you, I would have sent them both away."

            "Dear Mike." She touched his cheek. "Good Mike. Believe me, dearest, it was better far to do only what you did do. Neither one of them will ever live it down-and I'll bet that there won't be another attempt to arrest anyone for indecent exposure in that township for another fifty years. Let's talk about something else. I have been wanting to say that I am sorry, truly sorry, that your act didn't go over. I did my best in writing the patter for it, dear-but I guess I'm no showman, either."

            "It was my lack, Jill. Tim speaks rightly-I don't grok the chumps. Nevertheless it has been good to be with Baxter's Combined Shows . . . I have grokked closer to the chumps each day."

            "Only we must not call them chumps any longer, nor marks, now that we are no longer with it. Just people-not 'chumps.'"

            "I grok that they are chumps."

            "Yes, dear. But it isn't polite to say so."

            "I will remember."

            "Have you decided where we are going now?"

            "No. When the time comes, I will know."

            "Yes, dear." Jill reflected that Mike always did know. From his first change from docility to dominance he had grown steadily in strength and sureness~all ways. The boy (he bad seemed like a boy then) who had found it tiring to hold an ash tray in the air, could now not only hold her in the air (and it did feel like "floating on clouds"; that was why she had written it into the patter that way) while doing several other things and continuing to talk, but also could exert any other strength he needed~be recalled one very rainy lot where one of the trucks had bogged down. Twenty men were crowded around it, trying to get it free-Mike had added his shoulder . . and the truck moved.

            She had seen how it had happened; the sunken hind wheel had simply lifted itself out of the mud. But Mike, much more sophisticated now, had not allowed anyone to guess.

            She recalled, too, when be had at last grokked that the injunction about "wrongness" being necessary before he could make things go away applied only to living, grokking things-her dress did not have to have "wrongness" for him to toss it away. The injunction was merely a precaution in the training of nestlings; an adult was free to do as he grokked.

            She wondered what his next major change would be? But she did not worry about it; Mike was good and wise. All she could teach him were little details of how to live among humans-while leaning much more from him, in perfect happiness, greater happiness than she had known since her father died. "Mike, wouldn't it be nice to have Dorcas and Anne and Miriam all here in the tub, too? And Father Jubal and the boys and- oh, our whole family!"

            "It would take a bigger tub."

            "Who minds a little crowding? But Jubal's pool would do nicely. When are we maldng another visit home, Mike? Jubal asks me every time I talk to him."

            "I grok it will be soon."

            "Martian 'soon'? Or Earth 'soon'? Never mind, darling, I know it will be when the waiting is filled. But that reminds me that Aunt Patty will be here soon and I do mean Earth 'soon.' Wash me off?"

            She stood up, he stayed where he was. The soap lifted out of the soap dish, traveled all over her, replaced itself, and the soapy layer slathered into bubbles of lather. "Ooohl That's enough. You tickle."

            "Rinse?"

            "I'll just dunk." Quickly she squatted down, sloshed suds off her, stood up. "Just in time, too."

            Someone was knocking at the outer door. "Deane? Are you decent?"

            "Coming, Pat!" Jill shouted and added as she stepped out of the tub, "Dry me, please?"

            At once she was dry, leaving not even wet footprints on the bath mat. "Dear? You'll remember to put on some clothes before you come out? Patty's a lady-not like me."

            "I will remember."

XXVII

            JILL STOPPED TO GRAB a negligee from a well-stocked wardrobe, hurried out into the living room and let in Mrs. Paiwonski. "Come in, dear. We were grabbing baths in a hurry; he'll be right out. I'll get you a drink- then you can have your second drink in the tub if you like. Loads of hot water."

            "I had a shower after I put Honey Bun to bed, but-yes, I'd love a tub bath. But, Jill baby, I didn't come here to borrow your bath tub; I came because I'm just heartsick that you kids are leaving the show."

            "We won't lose track of you." Jill was busy with glasses. The hotel was so old that not even the "Bridal Suite" had its own ice dispenser but the night bellman, indoctrinated and subsidized, had left a carton of ice cubes. "Tim was right and you know he was. Mike and I have got to slick up our act a lot before we can hold up our end."

            "Your act is okay. Needs a few laughs in it, maybe, but-Hi, Smitty." As Mike came in, she offered him a gloved hand. Mrs. Paiwonski always wore gloves away from the lot, and a high-necked dress and stockings. Dressed so, she looked like a middle-aged, most respectable widow, who had kept her figure trim in spite of her years-looked so, because she was precisely that.

            "I was just telling Jill," she went on, "that you've got a good act, you two."

            Mike smiled gently. "Now, Pat, you don't have to kid us. It stinks. We know it."

            "No, it doesn't, dearie. Oh, maybe it needs a little something to give it some zing. A few jokes. Or, well, you could even cut down on Jill's costume a little. You've got an awful cute figure, hon."

            Jill shook her head. "That wouldn't do it."

            "Well, I saw a magician once that used to bring his assistant out dressed for the Gay 'Nineties-the eighteen-nineties, that is-not even her legs showing. Then he would disappear one garment after another. The marks loved it. But don't misunderstand me, dear-nothing unrefined. She finished . . . oh, in almost as much as you wear now."

            "Patty," Jill said frankly, "I'd do our act stark naked if the clowns wouldn't close the show." As she said it, she realized that she meant it- and wondered how Graduate Nurse Boardman, floor supervisor, had reached the point where she could mean it?

            Mike, of course- And she was quite happy about it.

            Mrs. Paiwonski shook her head. "You couldn't, honey. The marks would riot. Just a touch more ginger ale, dear. But if you've got a good figure, why not use it? How far do you think I would get as a tattooed lady ii I didn't peel off all they'll let me?"

            "Speaking of that," Mike said, "you don't look comfortable in all those clothes, Pat. I think the aircooling in this dump has gone sour again -it must be at least eighty." He himself was dressed in a light robe, his concession to the easy-going conventions of carney good manners. Extreme heat, he had learned, affected him slightly, enough so that he sometimes had to adjust consciously his metabolism-extreme cold affected him not at all. But he knew that their friend was used to the real comfort of almost nothing and affected the clothes she now wore to cover her tattoos when out among the marks; Jill had explained it to him. "Why don't you get comfortable? 'Ain't nobody here but just us chickens.'" The latter, he knew, was a joke, an appropriate one for emphasizing that friends were in private-Jubal had tried to explain it to him, but failed. But Mike had carefully noted when and how the idiom could be used.

            "Sure, Patty," Jill agreed. "If you're raw under that dress, I can get you something light and comfortable. Or we'll just make Mike close his eyes."

            "Uh ... well, I did slip back into one of my costumes."

            "Then don't be stiff with friends. I'll get your zippers."

            "Le'me get these stockings and shoes." She went on talking while trying to think how she could get the conversation around to religion, where she wanted it. Bless them, these kids were ready to be seekers, she was certain-and she had counted on the whole season to bring them around to the light . . . not just one hurried visit before they left. "The point about show business, Smitty, is that first you have to know what the marks want . . . and you have to know what it is you're giving them and how to make 'em like it. Now if you were a real magician- oh, I don't mean that you aren't skillful, dear, because you are." She tucked her carefully rolled hose in her shoes, loosened her garter belt and got out of it modestly, let Jill get her dress zippers. "I mean if your magic was real like you had made a pact with the Devil. That'd be one thing. But the marks know that it's clever sleight-of-hand. So you give 'em a light-hearted show to match. But did you ever see a fire eater with a pretty assistant? Heavens, a pretty girl would just clutter his act; the marks are standing around hoping he'll set fire to hisself~ or blow up."

            She snaked the dress over her head; Jill took it and kissed her. "You look more natural, Aunt Patty. Sit back and enjoy your drink."

            "Just a second, deane." Mrs. Paiwonski prayed mightily for guidance -wished that she were a preacher . . . or had even the gift of gab of a talker. Well, her pictures would just have to speak for themselves-and they would; that was why George had put them there. "Now this is what I've got to show the marks ... this and my snakes, but this is more important. Have either one of you ever looked, really looked, at my pictures?"

            "No," Jill admitted, "I guess not. We didn't want to stare at you, like a couple of marks."

            "Then stare at me now, dears-because that's why George, bless his sweet soul safe in heaven, put them on me. To be stared at . . . and studied. Now right up here under my chin is the birth scene of our prophet, the holy Archangel Foster-just an innocent babe and maybe not knowing what Heaven had in store for him. But the angels knew-see 'em there around him? The next scene is his first miracle, when a young sinner in the country school he attended shot down a poor little birdie . . - and he picked it up and stroked it and it flew away unharmed. See the school house behind? Now it kind o' jumps a little and I'll have to turn my back. But all of 'em are dated for each holy event in his life." She explained how George had not had a bare canvas to work with when first the great opus was started-since they had both been sinners and young Patricia already rather much tattooed . . . how with great effort and inspired genius George had been able to turn "The Attack on Pearl Harbor" into "Armageddon," and "Skyline of New York" into "The Holy City."

            "But," she admitted candidly, "even though every single one of them is a sacred picture now, it did kind of force him to skip around to find enough bare skin to record in living flesh a witness to each milestone in the earthly life of our prophet. Here you see him preaching on the steps of the ungodly theological seminary that turned him down-that was the first time he was arrested, the beginning of the Persecution. And on around, right on my spine, you see him smashing idolatrous images - . . and next you see him in jail, with the holy light streaming down on it. Then the Faithful Few bust into the jail-"

            The Reverend Foster had realized early that, when it caine to upholding religious freedom, brass knucks, clubs, and a willingness to tangle with cops was worth far more than passive resistance. His had been a church militant from scratch. But he had been a tactician, too; pitched battles were fought only where the heavy artillery was on the side of the Lord.

            "-and they rescue him and tar & feather the idolatrous judge who put him there. Around in front here. Uh, you can't see it very well; my bra covers most of it, A shame."

            ("Michael, what does she want?")

            ("Thou knowest. Tell her. ")

            "Aunt Patty," Jill said gently, "you want us to look at all your pictures. Don't you?"

            "Well ...it's just as Tim says in the bally, George used up all the skin I have in making the story complete."

            "If George went to all that work, I'm sure he meant for them to be seen. Take off your costume. I told you that I wouldn't mind working our own act stark naked if they'd let me-and ours is just entertainment. Yours has a purpose - . - a holy purpose."

            "Well ... all right. If you really want me to." She sang a silent hallelujah and decided that Foster himself was sustaining her-with blessed luck and George's pictures she would yet have these dear kids seeking the light.

            "I'll unhook you-"

            ("Jill-")

            ("No, Michael?")

            ("Wait")

            To her utter surprise and some fear Mrs. Paiwonski found that her spangled briefies and bra were gone! But Jill was surprised to find that her almost-new negligee followed the little costume into wherever and nowhere. Jill was only mildly surprised when Mike's robe disappeared, too; she chalked it up, correctly but not completely, to his catlike good manners.

            Mrs. Paiwonski clutched at her mouth and gasped. Jill at once put her arms around her. "There, there, dear! It's all right, nobody's hurt." She turned her head and said, "Mike, you did it, you'll simply have to tell her."

            "Yes, Jill. Pat-"

            "Yes, Smitty?'

            "You said a while ago that I wasn't a real magician, that my tricks were just sleight-of-hand. You were going to take off your costume anyhow -so I took it off for you."

            "But how? And where is it?"

            "Same place Jill's wrapper is-and my robe. Gone."

            "But don't worry about it, Patty," put in Jill. "We'll replace it. Two more - . - and twice as pretty. Mike, you shouldn't have done it."

            "I'm sorry, Jill. I grokked it was all right."

            "Well ... I suppose it is." Jill decided that Aunt Patty wasn't too upset-and certainly she would never tell; she was carney.

            Mrs. Paiwonski was not worried by the loss of two scraps of costume, nor by her own nudity. Nor by the nakedness of the other two. But she was greatly troubled by a theological problem that she felt was out of her depth. "Smitty? That was real magic?"

            "I guess you would call it that," he agreed, using the words most exactly.

            "I'd rather call it a miracle," she said bluntly.

            "You can call it that, too, if you want to. But it wasn't sleight-of-hand."

            "I know that. You weren't even near me." She, who daily handled live cobras and who had more than once handled obnoxious drunks with her bare hands (to their sorrow), was not afraid. Patricia Paiwonski was not afraid of the Devil himself; she was sustained by her faith that she was saved and therefore invulnerable to the Devil. But she was uneasy for the safety of her friends. "Smitty ... look me in the eye. Have you made a pact with the Devil?"

            "No, Pat, I have not."

            She continued to look into his eyes, then said, "You aren't lying-"

            "He doesn't know how to lie, Aunt Patty."

            "-so it's a miracle. Smitty ... you are a holy man!"

            "I don't know, Pat."

            "Archangel Foster didn't know that he was a holy man until he reached his teens . . . even though he performed many miracles before that time. But you are a holy man; I can feel it." She thought. "I think I felt it when I first met you."

            "I don't know, Pat."

            "I think he may be," admitted Jill. "But he really doesn't know, himself. Michael - . . I think we've told her too much not to tell her more."

            "'Michael!'" Patty repeated suddenly. "The Archangel Michael, send down to us in human form."

            "Aunt Patty, please! If he is, he doesn't know it-"

            "He wouldn't necessarily know it. God performs his wonders in his own way."

            "Aunt Patty, will you please wait and let me talk, just for a bit?"

            Some minutes later Mrs. Paiwonski had accepted that Mike was indeed the Man from Mars, she had agreed to accept him as a man and to treat him as a man - . . while stating explicitly that she still held to her own opinion as to his true nature and why he was on Earth-explaining (somewhat fuzzily, it seemed to Jill) that Foster had been really and truly a man while he was on Earth, but had been also and always had been, an archangel, even though he had not known it himself. If Jill and Michael insisted that they were not saved, she would treat them as they asked to be treated-God moves in mysterious ways.

            "I think you could properly call us 'seekers,'" Mike told her.

            "Then that's enough, my dears! I'm sure you're saved-but Foster himself was a seeker in his early years~ I'll help."

            She had participated in another minor miracle. They had been seated in a circle on the rug. Jill lay back flat and suggested it to Mike in her mind. With no patter of any sort, with no sheet nor anything to conceal a non-existent steel rod, Mike lifted her. Patricia watched it with serene happiness, convinced that she was vouchsafed sight of a miracle. "Pat," Mike then said. "Lie flat."

            She did so without argument, as readily as if he had been Foster. Jill turned her head. "Hadn't you better put me down first, Mike?"

            "No, I can do it."

            Mrs. Paiwonski felt herself gently lifted. She was not frightened by it; she simply felt overpowering religious ecstasy like heat lightning in her loins, making tears come to her eyes, the power of which she had not felt since, as a young woman, Holy Foster himself had touched her. When Mike moved them closer together and Jill put her arms around her, her tears increased, but her cries were the gentle sobs of happiness.

            Presently he lowered them gently to the floor and found, as he expected, that he was not tired-he could not recall when last he had been tired.

            Jill said to him, "Mike ... we need a glass of water."

            ("????")

            ("Yes, " her mind answered.)

            ("And?")

            ("Of elegant necessity. Why do you think she came here?")

            ("I knew. I was not sure that you knew .. or would approve. My brother. My self")

            ("My brother.")

            Mike did not get up to fetch water. He sent a glass from the tray of drinks into the bathroom, had the tap fill it, returned it to Jill's hands. Mrs. Paiwonski watched this with almost absent-minded interest; she was beyond being astonished. Jill held the glass, said to her, "Aunt Patty, this is like being baptized - . . and like getting married. It's ... a Martian thing. It means that you trust us and we trust you . . . and we can tell you anything and you can tell us anything . . . and that we are always partners, now and forever. It's very serious ... and once done it can never be broken. If you broke it, we would have to die-at once. Saved or not. If we broke it- But we won't. But you don't have to share water with us if you don't want to-we'll still be friends. Now - . - if this in any way interferes with your faith, don't do it. We don't belong to your church even though you guessed that we did. We don't. We may never belong. 'Seekers' is the most you can call us now. Mike?"

            "We grok," he agreed. "Pat, Jill speaks rightly. I wish we could say it to you in Martian, it would be clearer. But this is everything that getting married is . . - and a great deal more. We are free to offer water to you but if there is any reason at all, in your religion or in your heart, not to accept-don't drink it!"

            Patricia Paiwonski took a deep breath. She had made such a decision once before - with her husband watching . . . and had not funked it. And who was she to refuse a holy man? And his blessed bride? "I want it," she said firmly.

            Jill took a sip. "We grow ever closer." She passed the glass to Mike.

            He looked at Jill, then at Patricia. "I thank you for water, my brother." He took a sip. "Pat, I give you the water of life. May you always drink deep." He passed the glass to her.

            Patricia took it. "Thank you. Thank you, oh my dears! The 'water of life'-oh, I love you both!" She drank thirstily.

            Jill took the glass from her, finished it. "Now we grow closer, my brothers."

            ("Jill?")

            ("Now!!!")

            Michael lifted his new water brother, wafted her in and placed her gently on the bed.

            Valentine Michael Smith had grokked, when first he had known it fully, that physical human love-very human and very physical-was not simply a necessary quickening of eggs, nor was it mere ritual through which one grew closer; the act itself was a growing-closer, a very great goodness-and (so far as he knew) unknown even to the Old Ones of his former people. He was still grokking it, trying at every opportunity to grok its fullness. But he had long since broken through any fear that heresy lay in his suspicion that even the Old Ones did not know this ecstasy-he grokked already that these his new people held spiritual depths unique. Happily he tried to sound them, with no inhibitions from his childhood to cause him guilt or reluctance of any sort.

            His human teachers had been unusually well qualified to instruct his innocence without bruising it. The result was as unique as he himself.

            Jill was very pleased but not really surprised to find that "Aunt Patty" accepted as inevitable and necessary, and with forthright fullness, the fact that sharing water in a very ancient Martian ceremony with Mike led at once to sharing Mike himself in a human rite ancient itself. Jill was somewhat surprised (although still pleased) at Pat's continued calm acceptance when it certainly had been demonstrated to their new water brother that Mike was capable of more miracles than he had disclosed up to then. However, Jill did not then know that Patricia Paiwonskj had met a holy man before-Patricia expected more of holy men. Jill herself was simply serenely happy that a cusp had been reached and passed with right action and was ecstatically happy herself to grow closer as the cusp was determinbed-all of which she thought in Martian and quite differently.

            In time they rested and Jill had Mike treat Patty to a bath given by telekinesis, and herself sat on the edge of the tub and squealed and giggled when the older woman did. It was just play, very human and not at all Martian; Mike had done it for Jill on the initial occasion almost lazily rather than raise himself up out of the water-an accident, more or less. Now it had become a custom, one that Jill knew Patty would like. It tickled Jill to see Patty's face when she found herself being scrubbed all over by gentle. invisible hands . . . and then, presently dried in a whisk with neither towel nor blast of air.

            Patricia blinked. "After that I need a drink. A big one."

            "Certainly, darling."

            "And I still want to show you kids my pictures... all of them." Patricia followed Jill out into the living room, Mike in train, and stood in the middle of the rug. "But first look at me. Look at me, not at my pictures. What do you see?"

            With mild regret Mike stripped her tattoos off in his mind and looked at his new brother without her decorations. He liked her tattoos very much; they were peculiarlY her own, they set her apart and made her a self. They seemed to him to give her a slightly Martian flavor, in that she did not have the bland sameness of most humans. He had already memorized them all and had thought pleasantly of having hiniseif tattooed all over, once be grokked what should be pictured. The life of his father, water brother Jubal? Re would have to ponder it. He would discuss it with Jill-and Jill might wish to be tattooed, too. What designs would make Jill more beautifully Jill? In the way in which perfume multiplied Jill's odor without changing it?

            What he saw when he looked at Pat without her tattooS pleased him but not as much; she looked as a woman necessarily must look to be woman. Mike still did not grok Duke's collection of pictures; the pictures were interesting and had taught Mike that there was more variety in the sizes, shapes, proportions and colors of women than he had known up to then and that there was some variety in the acrobadcs involving physical love-but having learned these simple facts he seemed to grok that there was nothing more to be learned from Duke's prized pictures. Mike's early training had made of him a very exact observer, by eye (and other senses), but that ssme training bad left him unresponsive to the subtle pleasures of voyeurism, it was not that be did not find women (including, most emphaticaly Patricia Paiwoiiski) sexually stimulating, but it lay not in seeing them. Of his senses, smell and touch counted inucb higher-in which he was quasi-human, quasi-Martian; the parallel Martian reflex (as unsubtle as a sneeze) was triggered by those two, but could activate only in season-what must be termed "sex" in a Martian is as romantic as intravenous feeding.

            But, having been invited to see her without her pictures. Mike did notice more sharply one thing about Patricia that he already knew: she had her own face, marked in beauty by bet life. She bad, he saw with gentle wonder, her own face even more than Jill had, and it made him feel toward Fat even more of an emotion he did not as yet call love but for which be used a Martian concept more discriminating.

            She had her own odor, too, and her own voice, as all humans did. Her voice was husky and he liked to hear it even when he did not grok her meaning; her odor was mixed (he knew) with an unscrubbed trace of bitter muskiness from daily contact with snakes. It did not put him off; Pat's snakes were part of Pat as were her tattoos. Mike liked Pat's snakes and could handle the poisonous ones with perfect safety-and not alone by stretching time to anticipate and avoid their strikes. They grokked with him; he savored their innocent merciless thoughts-they reminded him of home. Other than Pat, Mike was the only person who could handle Honey Bun with pleasure to the boa constrictor. Her torpor was usually such that others could, if necessary, handle her-but Mike she accepted as a substitute for Pat.

            Mike let the pictures reappear.

            Jill looked at her and wondered why Aunt Patty had ever let herself be tattooed in the first place? She would really look rather nice-if she weren't a living comic strip. But she loved Aunt Fatty for what she was, not the way she looked-and, of course, it did give her a steady living at least until she got so old and haggard that the marks wouldn't pay to look at her even if all those pictures had been signed by Rembrandt. She hoped that Patty was tucking away plenty in the grouch bag_then she remembered that Aunt Patty was now one of Mike's water brothers (and her own, of course) and Mike's endless fortune gave Patty certain old-age insurance; Jill felt warmed by it.

            "Well?" repeated Mrs. Paiwonski. "What do you see? How old am I, Michael?"

            "I don't know," he said simply.

            "Guess."

            "I can't guess, Pat."

            "Oh, go ahead. You won't hurt my feelings."

            "Patty," Jill put in, "he really does mean that he can't guess. He hasn't had much chance to learn to judge ages-you know how short a time he's been on Earth. And besides that, Mike thinks of things in Martian years and Martian arithmetic. If it's time or figures, I keep track of it for him."

            "Well ... you guess, hon. Be truthful."

            Jill looked Patty over again, noting her trim figure but also noting her hands and throat and the corners of her eyes-then discounted her guess by five years despite the Martian honesty she owed a water brother. "Mmm, thirtyish, give or take a year."

            Mrs. Paiwonski laughed triumphantly. "That's just one bonus from the True Faith, my dears! Jill hon, I'm 'way into my forties. Just how far in we won't say; I've quit counting."

            "You certainly don't look it."

            "I know I don't. That's what Happiness does for you, dear. Alter my first kid, I let my figure go to pot. I got quite a can on me-they invented the word 'broad' just to fit me. My belly always looked like four months gone, or worse. My busts hung down-and I've never had 'em lifted. You don't have to believe me; sure, I know a good plastic surgeon doesn't leave a scar . . . but on me it would show, dear; it would chop chunks out of two of my pictures.

            "Then I seen the light! I got converted. Nope, not exercise, not diet- I still eat like a pig and you know it. Happiness, dear. Perfect Happiness in the Lord through the help of Blessed Foster."

            "It's amazing," said Jill, and meant it. She knew women who had kept their looks quite as well (as she firmly intended to keep hers) but in every case only through great effort. She knew that Aunt Patty was telling the truth about diet and exercise, at least during the time she had known her . . . and as a surgical nurse Jill knew exactly what was excised and where in a breast-lifting job; those tattoos had certainly never known a knife.

            But Mike was not amazed. He assumed conclusively that Pat had learned how to think her body as she wished it, whether she attributed it to Foster or not. He was still trying to teach this control to Jill, but knew that she would have to perfect her knowledge of Martian before it could be perfect. No hurry, waiting would accomplish it. Pat went on talking:

            "I wanted you to see what the Faith has done for me. But that's just outside; the real change is inside. Happiness. I've got to try to tell you about it. The good Lord knows that I'm not ordained and I'm not gifted with tongues . . . but I've got to try. And then I'll answer your questions if I can. The first thing that you've got to accept is that all the other socalled churches are traps of the Devil. Our dear Jesus preached the True Faith, so Foster said and I truly believe. But, in the Dark Ages his words were deliberately twisted and added to and changed until Jesus wouldn't recognize 'em. And that is why Foster was sent down to Earth, to proclaim a New Revelation and straighten it out and make it clear again."

            Patricia Paiwonski pointed her finger and suddenly looked very impressive, a priestess clothed in holy dignity and mystic symbols. "God wants us to be Happy. He filled the world with things to make us Happy if only we see the light. Would God let grape juice turn into wine if He didn't want us to drink and be joyful? He could just as easily let is stay grape juice . . . or turn it straight into vinegar that nobody could get a happy giggle out of. Ain't that true? Of course He don't mean you should get roaring drunk and beat your wife and neglect your kids . . . but He gave us good things to use, not abuse . . . and not to ignore. But if you feel like a drink or six, among friends who have seen the light, too, and it makes you want to jump up and dance and give thanks to the Lord on high for his goodness-why not? God made alcohol and he made feet- and he made 'em so you could put 'em together and be happy!"

            She paused and said, "Fill 'er up again, honey; preaching is thirsty work-and not too strong on the ginger ale this time; that's good rye. And that ain't all. If God didn't want women to be looked at, he would have made 'em ugly-that's reasonable, isn't it? God isn't a cheat; He set up the game Himself-He wouldn't rig it so that the marks can't win, like a flat joint wheel in a town with the fix on. He wouldn't send anybody to Hell for losing in a crooked game.

            "All right! God wants us to be Happy and he told us how: 'Love one another!' Love a snake if the poor thing needs love. Love thy neighbor if he's seen the light and has love in his heart . . . and the back of your hand only to sinners and Satan's corruptors who want to lead you away from the appointed path and down into the pit. And by 'love' he didn't mean namby-pamby old-maid-aunt love that's scared to look up from a hymn book for fear of seeing a temptation of the flesh. If God hated flesh, why did lie make so much of it? God is no sissy. He made the Grand Canyon and comets coursing through the sky and cyclones and stallions and earthquakes-can a God who can do all that turn around and practically wet his pants just because some little sheila leans over a mite and a man catches sight of a tit? You know better, hon-and so do I! When God told us to love, He wasn't holding out a card on us; He meant it. Love little babies that always need changing and love strong, smelly men so that there will be more little babies to love-and in between go on loving because it's so good to love!

            "Of course that don't mean to peddle it any more than a bottle of rye whiskey means I gotta get fighting drunk and clobber a cop. You can't sell love and you can't buy Happiness, no price tags on either one and if you think there is, the way to Hell lies open to you. But if you give with an open heart and receive what God has an unlimited supply of, the Devil can't touch you. Money?" She looked at Jill. "Hon, would you do that water-sharing thing with somebody, say for a million dollars? Make it ten million, tax free."

            "Of course not." ("Michael, do you grok this?")

            ("Almost in fullness, Jill. Waiting is. ")

            "You see, dearie? I knew what it meant, I knew love was in that water. You're seekers, very near the light. But since you two, from the love that is in you, did 'share water and grow closer,' as Michael says, I can tell you things I couldn't ordinarily tell a seeker-"

            The Reverend Foster, self-ordained--or directly ordained by God, depending on authority cited-had an intuitive instinct for the pulse of his culture and his times at least as strong as that of a skilled carney sizing up a mark. The country and culture commonly known as "America" had had a badly split personality all through its history. Its overt laws were almost always puritanical for a people whose covert behavior tended to be Rabelaisian; its major religions were all Apollonian in varying degree-its religious revivals were often hysterical in fashion almost Dionysian. In the twentieth century (Terran Christian Era) nowhere on Earth was sex so vigorously suppressed as in America-and nowhere else was there such a deep interest in it.

            The Reverend Foster had in common with almost every great religious leader of that planet two traits: he had an extremely magnetic personality ("hypnotist" was a word widely used by his detractors, along with others less mild) and, sexually, he did not fall anywhere near the human norm. Great religious leaders on Earth were always either celibate, or the antithesis. (Great leaders, the innovators-not necessarily the major administrators and consolidators.) Foster was not celibate.

            Nor were any of his wives and high priestesses-the clincher for complete conversion and rebirth under the New Revelation usually included a ritual which Valentine Michael Smith at a later time was to grok as especially suited for growing-closer.

            This, of course, was nothing new; in Terran history sects, cults, and major religions too numerous to list had used essentially the same technique-but not on a major scale in America before Foster's times. Foster was run out of town more than once before he "perfected" a method and organization that permitted him to expand his capric cult. In organization he borrowed as liberally from freemasonry, from Catholicism, from the Communist Party, and from Madison Avenue as he had borrowed from any and all earlier scriptures in composing his New Revelation . . . and he sugar-coated it all as a return to primitive Christianity to suit his customers. He set up an outer church which anybody could attend-and a person could remain a "seeker" with many benefits of the church for years. Then there was a middle church, which to all outward appearance was "The Church of the New Revelation," the happy saved, who paid their tithes, enjoyed all economic benefits of the church's ever-widening business tie-ins, and whooped it up in the endless carnival & revival atmosphere of Happiness, Happiness, Happiness! Their sins were forgiven-and henceforth very little was sinful as long as they supported their church, dealt honestly with their fellow Fosterites, condemned sinners, and stayed Happy. The New Revelation does not specifically encourage adultery; it simply gets rather mystical in discussing sexual conduct.

            The saved of the middle church supplied the ranks of the shock troops when direct action was needed. Foster borrowed a trick from the early-twentieth-century Wobblies; if a community tried to suppress a budding Fosterite movement, Fosterites from elsewhere converged on that town until there were neither jails nor cops enough to cope with them- and the cops usually had had their ribs kicked in and the jails were smashed.

            If some prosecutor were brave enough to push an indictment thereafter, it was almost impossible to make it stick. Foster (after learning his lesson under fire) saw to it that such prosecutions were indeed persecution under the letter of the law; not one Conviction of a Fosterite qua Fosterite ever was upheld by the national Supreme Court-nor, later, by the High Court.

            But, in addition to the overt church, there was the Inner Church, never named as such-a hard core of the utterly dedicated who made up the priesthood, all the church lay leaders, all keepers of keys and records and makers of policy. They were the "reborn," beyond sin, certain of their place in heaven, and sole participants of the inner mysteries-and the only candidates for direct admission to Heaven.

            Foster selected these with great care, doing so personally until the operation got too big. He looked for men as much like himself as possible and for women like his priestess-wives----dynamic, utterly convinced (as he was himself convinced), stubborn, and free (or able to be freed, once their guilt and insecurity was purged) of jealousy in its simplest, most human meaning-and all of them potential satyrs and nymphs, as the secret inner church was that utterly Dionysian cult that America had never had and for which there was an enormous potential market.

            But he was most cautious-if candidates were married, it had to be both spouses. An unmarried candidate had to be sexually attractive as well as sexually aggressive-and he impressed on his priests that the males must always equal or exceed in number the females. Nowhere is it admitted that Foster had studied the histories of earlier, somewhat parallel cults in America but he either knew (or sensed) that most of such had foundered because the possessive concupiscence of their priestS led to male jealousy and violence. Foster never made this error; not once did he keep a woman entirely to himself, not even the women he married legally.

            Nor did he try too eagerly to expand his core group; the middle church, the one known to the public~ offered plenty to slake the milder needs of the great masses of guilt-ridden and unhappy. If a local revival produced even two couples who were capable of "Heavenly Marriage" Foster was content-if it produced none, he let the other seeds grow and sent in a salted priest and priestess to nurture them.

            But, so far as possible, he always tested candidate couples himself, in company with some devoted priestess. Since such a couple was already "saved" insofar as the middle church was concerned, he ran little risk- none, really, with the woman candidate and he always sized up the man himself before letting his priestess go ahead.

            At the time she was saved, Patricia Paiwonsi was still young, married, and "very happy, very happy." She had her first child, she looked up to and admired her much older husband. George Paiwoüski was a generous, very affectionate man. He did have one weakness, which often left him too drunk to show his affection after a long day . . . but his tattooing needle was still steady and his eye sharp. Patty counted herself a faithful wife and, on the whole, a lucky one-true, George occasionally got affectionate with a female client . . . quite affectionate if it was early in the day-and, of course, some tattooing required privacy, especially with ladies. Patty was tolerant . . . besides, she sometimes herself made a date with a male client, especially after George got to hitting the bottle more and more.

            Nevertheless there was a lack in her life, one which was not filled even when an especially grateful client made her the odd gift of a bull snake- shipping out on a freighter, he said, and couldn't keep it any longer. She had always liked pets and had none of the vulgar phobia about snakes; she made a home for it in their show window facing the street, and George made a beautiful four-color picture to back it up: "Don't Tread on Me!" His new design turned out to be very popular.

            Preseutly she had more snakes and they were quite a comfort to her. But she was the daughter of an Ulster Protestant and a girl from Cork; the armed truce between her parents had left her with no religion.

            She was already a "seeker" when Foster preached in san Pedro; she had managed to get George to go a few Sundays but he had not yet seen the light.

            Foster brought them the light, they made their confessions the same day. When Foster returned six months later for a quick check on how his branch was doing, the Paiwonskis were so dedicated that he gave them personal attention.

            "I never had a minute's trouble with George from the day he saw the holy light," she told Mike and Jill- "Of course, he still drank •.. but he drank in church and never too much. When our holy leader returned, George had already started his Great Project. Naturally we wanted to show it to Foster, if he could find time-" Mrs. Paiwonski hesitated. "Kids, I really ought not to be telling you any of this."

            "Then don't," sill said emphatically "Patty darling, neither of us want you ever to do or say anything you don't feel easy about. 'Sharing water' has to be easy and natural . . and waiting until it comes easy for you is easy for us."

            "Uh ... but I do want to share it. Look, darlings, I trust you both utterly. But I just want you to remember that this is Church things Pm telling you, so you mustn't ever tell anyone . . . just as I wouldn't tell anything about you."

            Mike nodded. "Here on Earth we sometimes call it 'water brother' business. On Mars there's no problem . . . but here I grok that there sometimes is. ~Water brother' business you don't repeat."

            "I...I,'Grok.' That's a funny word, but I'm learning it, All right, darlings, this is 'water brother' business. Did you know that all Fosterites are tattooed? Real Church members I mean, the ones who are eternally saved forever and ever and a day-like me? Oh, I don't mean tattooed all over, the way I am, but-look, see that? Right over my heart . . . see? That's Foster's holy kiss. George worked it into the design so that it looks like part of the picture it's in ... so that nobody could guess unless I told 'em. But it's his kiss-and Foster put it there hisselfi" She looked ecstatically proud.

            They both examined it. "It is a kiss mark," Jill said wonderingly. "Just like somebody had kissed you there wearing lipstick. But, until you showed us, I thought it was part of that sunset."

            "Yes, indeedy, that's why George did it. Because you don't go showing Foster's kiss to anyone who doesn't wear Foster's kiss-and I never have, up to now. But," she insisted, "I'm sure you're going to wear one, both of you, someday-and when you do, I want to be the one to tattoo 'em on."

            Jill said, "I don't quite understand, Patty. I can see that it's wonderful for you to have been kissed by Foster-but how can he ever kiss us? After all, he's-up in Heaven."

            "Yes, dearie, he is. But let me explain. Any ordained priest or priestess can give you Foster's kiss. It means God's in your heart. God is part of you . . . forever."

            Mike was suddenly intent. "Thou art God!"

            "Huh, Michael? Well, that is a strange way to say it-I've never heard a priest put it quite that way. But that does sort of express it . . . God is in you and of you and with you, and the Devil can't ever get at you."

            "Yes," agreed Mike. "You grok God." He thought happily that this was nearer to putting the concept across than he had ever managed before except that Jill was learning it, in Martian. Which was inevitable. "That's the idea, Michael. God ... groks you-and you are married in Holy Love and eternal Happiness to His Church. The priest, or maybe priestess-it can be either-kisses you and then the kiss mark is tattooed on to show that it's forever. Of course it doesn't have to be this big-mine is just exactly the size and shape of Foster's blessed tips-and the kiss can be placed anywhere to shield from sinful eyes. Lots of men have a patch of skull shaved and then wear a hat or a bandage until the hair grows out. Or any spot where it's blessed certain it won't be seen unless you want it to be. You mustn't sit or stand on it-but anywhere else is okay. Then you show it when you go into a closed Happiness gathering of the eternally saved."

            "I've heard of Happiness meetings," Jill commented, "but I've never known quite what they are."

            "Well," Mrs. Paiwonski said judicially, "there are Happiness meetings and Happiness meetings. The ones for ordinary members, who are saved but might backslide, are an awful lot of fun-grand parties with only the amount of praying that comes natural and happily, and plenty of whoopit-up that makes a good party. Maybe, even, a little real lovin'-but that's frowned on there and you'd better be mighty careful who and how, because you mustn't be a seed of dissension among the brethren. The Church is way strict about keeping things in their proper place.

            "But a Happiness meeting for the eternally saved-well, you don't have to be careful because there won't be anybody there who can sin-all past and done with, If you want to drink and pass out . . . okay, it's God's will or you wouldn't want to. You want to kneel down and pray, or lift up your voice in song-Or tear off your clothes and dance; it's God's will. Although," she added, "you might not have any clothes on at all, because there can't possibly be anybody there who would see anything wrong in it."

            "It sounds like quite a party," said Jill.

            "Oh, it is, it is-always! And you're filled with heavenly bliss the whole time. And if you wake up in the morning on a couch with one of the eternally saved brethren, you know he's there because God willed it to make you all blessedly Happy. And you are. They've all got Foster's kiss on -they're yours." She frowned slightly. "It feels a little like 'sharing water.' You understand me?"

            "I grok," agreed Mike.

            ("Mike?!!?")

            ("Wait, Jill. Wait for fullness.")

            "But don't think," Patricia said earnestly, "that a person can get into an Inner Temple Happiness meeting just with a little tattoo mark-after all, it's too easy to fake. A visiting brother or sister- Well, take me. As soon as I know where the carnie is going, I write to the local churches and send 'em my finger prints so they can check 'em against the master file of the eternally saved at Archangel Foster Tabernacle_-unless they already know me. I give 'em my address care of Billboard. Then when I go to church-and I always go to church Sundays and I would never miss a Happiness meeting even if it means Tim has to slough the blow-off some nights-I go first time and get positively identified. Most places they're mighty glad to see me; I'm an added attraction, with my unique and unsurpassed sacred pictures-I often spend most of the evening just letting people examine me . . . and every minute of it bliss. Sometimes the priest wants me to bring Honey Bun and I do Eve and the serpent-that takes body make-up, of course, or skin-colored tights if there isn't time. Some local brother plays Adam and we get scourged out of the Garden of Eden, and the local priest explains the real meaning, not all the twisted lies you hear-and we end by regaining our blessed innocence and happiness, and that's certain to get the party realLy rolling. Joy!"

            She added, "But everybody is atways interested in my Foster's kiss, Because, since he went back to Heaven almost twenty years ago now and the Church has increased and flourished, not too many of us have a Foster's kiss that wasn't laid on by proxy-I always have the Tabernacle testify to that, too. And I tell them about it. Uh-"

            Mrs. Paiwonski hesitated, then told them about it, in explicit detail-and Jill wondered where her admittedly limited ability to blush had gone? Then she grokked that Mike and Patty were two of a kind-God's innocents, unable to be anything else, no matter what they did. She wished, for Patty's sake, that this preposterous mishmash were really true, that Foster had really been a holy prophet who had saved her for eternal bliss.

            But Foster! God's Wounds, what a travesty! Then suddenly, through her greatly improved recall, Jill was standing back in a room with a wall of glass and looking into Foster's dead eyes. But, in her mind, he seemed alive and she felt a shiver in her loins and wondered what she would have done if Foster himself had offered her his holy kiss-and his holy self?

            She shut it out of her mind, but not before Mike had caught much of it. She felt him smile, with knowing innocence.

            She stood up. "Pattycake darling, what time do you have to be back at the lot?"

            "Oh dear! I should be back this blessed minutel"

            "Why? The show doesn't roll until nine-thirty."

            "Well ... Honey Bun misses me...and she's jealous if I stay out late."

            "Can't you tell her that it's a Happiness meeting night?"

            "Uh...The older woman gathered Jill in her arms. "It is! It certainly is!"

            "Good. Then I'm going to get a certain amount of sleep-Jill is bushed, believe me. What time do you have to be up, then?"

            "Uh, if I'm back on the lot by eight, I can get Sam to tear down my living top and have time to make sure that my babies are loaded safely."

            "Breakfast?"

            "I don't eat breakfast right away, I'll get it on the train. Just coffee when I wake up, usually."

            "We can make that right here in the room. I'll see that you're up. Now you dears stay up and talk religion as long as you like; I won't let you oversleep-if you sleep. Mike doesn't sleep."

            "Not at all?"

            "Never. He sort of curls up and thinks a while, if he's got something to think about-but he doesn't sleep."

            Mrs. Paiwonski nodded solemnly. "Another sign. I know it-and, Michael, some day you will know. Your call will come."

            "Maybe," agreed Jill. "Mike, I'm falling asleep. Pop me into bed. Please?" She was lifted, wafted into the bedroom, the covers rolled back by invisible hands-she was asleep before he covered her.

            Jill woke up, as she had planned, exactly at seven. Mike had a clock in his head, too, but his was quite erratic so far as Earth calendars and times were concerned; it vibrated to another need. She slipped out of bed, put her head into the other room. Lights were out and the shades were tight; it was quite dark. But they were not asleep. Jill heard Mike say with soft certainty:

            "Thou art God."

            "'Thou art God'-" Patricia whispered back in a voice as heavy as if drugged.

            "Yes. Jill is God."

            "Jill ... is God. Yes, Michael."

            "And thou art God."

            "Thou-are God. Now, Michael, now!"

            Jill went very softly back in and quietly brushed her teeth. Presently she let Mike know in her mind that she was awake and found, as she expected, that he knew it. When she came back into the living room, shades were up and morning sun was streaming in. "Good morning, darlings!" She kissed them both.

            "Thou art God," Patty said simply.

            "Yes, Patty. And thou art God. God is in all of us." She looked at Patty in the harsh, bright morning light and noted that her new brother did not look tired. She looked as if she had had a full night of sleep and some extra - . . and looked younger and sweeter than ever. Well, she knew that effect-if Mike wanted to stay up, instead of reading or thinking all night, Jill never found it any trouble . . and she suspected that her own sudden sleepiness the night before had been Mike's idea, too - and heard Mike agree in his mind that it was.

            "Now coffee for both you darlings-and me, too. And I just happen to have stashed away a redipak of orange juice, too."

            They breakfasted lightly, filled out with happiness. Jill saw Patty looking thoughtful. "What is it, dear?"

            "Uh, I hate to mention this-but what are you kids going to eat on? Happens that Aunt Patty has a pretty well stuffed grouch bag and I thought-"

            Jill laughed. "Oh, darling, I'm sorry; I didn't mean to laugh. But the Man from Mars is rich! Surely you know that? Or don't you ever read the news?"

            Mrs. Paiwonski looked baffled. "Well, I guess I knew-that way. But you can't trust anything you hear over the news."

            Jill sighed. "Patty, you're an utter darling. And believe me, now that we're water brothers, we wouldn't hesitate an instant to mipose on you- 'sharing the nest' isn't just poetry. But it happens to be the other way around. If you ever need money-it doesn't matter how much; we can't use it up-just say so. Any amount. Any time. Write to me-or better yet, call me-because Mike doesn't have the foggiest idea about money. Why, dear, I've got a couple of hundred thousand dollars in a checking account in my name right this minute. Want some of it?"

            Mrs. Paiwonski looked startled, something she had not looked since Mike had caused her costume to go away. "Bless mel No, I don't need money."

            Jill shrugged. "If you ever do, just holler. We can't possibly spend it all and the government won't let Mike give it away. At least, not much of it. If you want a yacht- Mike would enjoy giving you a yacht."

            "I certainly would, Pat. I've never seen a yacht."

            Mrs. Paiwonski shook her head. "Don't take me up on a tall mountain, dearie-I've never wanted much ... and all I want from you two is your love-"

            "You have that," Jill told her.

            "I don't grok 'love'," Mike said seriously. "But Jill always speaks rightly. If we've got it, it's yours."

            "-and to know that you're both saved. But I'm no longer worried about that. Mike has told me about waiting, and why waiting is. You understand me, Jill?"

            "I grok. I'm no longer impatient about anything."

            "But I do have something for you two." The tattooed lady got up and crossed to where she had left her purse, took a book out of it. She came back, stood close to them. "My dear ones ... this is the very copy of the New Revelation that Blessed Foster gave me . . . the night he placed his kiss on me. I want you to have it."

            Jill's eyes suddenly filled with tears and she felt herself choking. "But, Aunt Patty-Patty our brother! We can't take this one. Not this one. We'll buy one."

            "No. It's ...it's 'water' I'm sharing with you. For growing-closer."

            "Oh-" Jill jumped up. "We'll take it. But it's ours now-all of us." She kissed her.

            Presently Mike tapped her on the shoulder. "Greedy little brother. My turn."

            "I'll always be greedy, that way."

            The Man from Mars kissed his new brother first on her mouth, then paused and gently kissed the spot where Foster had kissed her. Then he pondered, briefly by Earth time, picked a corresponding spot on the other side where he saw that George's design could be matched well enough for his purpose-kissed her there while he thought by stretched-out time and in great detail what he wanted to accomplish. It was necessary to grok the capillaries- To the other two, subject and spectator, he simply gently and briefly pressed his lips to the garishly decorated skin. But Jill caught a hint of the effort he had exerted and looked. "Patty! See!"

            Mrs. Paiwonski looked down at herself. Marked on her skin, paired stigmata in blood red, were his lips. She started to faint-then showed the depth of her own staunch faith. "Yes. Yes! Michael-"

            Most shortly thereafter the tattooed lady had disappeared, replaced by a rather mousy housewife in high neck, long sleeves and gloves. "I won't cry," she said soberly, "and it's not good-by; there are no good-bys in eternity. But I will be waiting." She kissed them both, briefly, left without looking back. 

XXVIII

            "BLASPHEMY!"

            Foster looked up. "Something bite you, Junior?" This temporary annex had been run up in a hurry and Things did get in-swarms of almost invisible imps usually - . . harmless, of course, but a bite from one left an itch on the ego.

            "Uh ... you'd have to see it to believe it-here, I'll run the omniscio back a touch."

            "You'd be surprised at what I can believe, Junior." Nevertheless Digby's supervisor shifted a part of his attention. Three temporals-humans, he saw they were; a man and two women-speculating about the eternal. Nothing odd about that. "Yes?"

            "You heard what she said! The 'Archangel Michael' indeed!"

            "What about it?"

            "'What about it?' Oh, for God's sake!"

            "Very possibly."

            Digby was so indignant that his halo quivered. "Foster, you must not have taken a good look. She meant that over-age juvenile delinquent that sent me to the showers. Scan it again."

            Foster let the gain increase, noted that the angel-in-training had spoken rightly-and noticed something else and smiled his angelic smile. "How do you know he isn't, Junior?"

            "Huh?"

            "I haven't seen Mike around the Club lately and I recall that his name has been scratched on the Millennial Solipsist Tournament-that's a Sign that he's likely away on detached duty, as Mike is one of the most eager Solipsism players in this sector."

            "But the notion's obscene!"

            "You'd be surprised how many of the Boss's best ideas have been called 'obscene' in some quarters-or, rather, you should not be surprised, in view of your field work. But 'obscene' is a concept you don't need; it has no theological meaning. 'To the pure all things are pure.'"

            "But-"

            "I'm still Witnessing, Junior. You listen. In addition to the fact that our brother Michael seems to be away at this micro-instant-and I don't keep track of him; we're not on the same Watch list-that tattooed lady who made that oracular pronouncement is not likely to be mistaken; she's a very holy temporal herself."

            "Who says?"

            "I say. I know." Foster smiled again with angelic sweetness. Dear little Patricia! Getting a little long in the tooth now but still Earthily desirable-and shining with an inner light that made her look like a stained glass window. He noted without temporal pride that George had finished his great dedication since he had last looked at Patricia-and that picture of his being called up to Heaven wasn't bad, not bad at all, in the Higher sense. He must remember to look up George and compliment him on it, and tell him he had seen Patricia-hnun, where was George? A creative artist in the universe design section working right under the Architect, as he recalled-no matter, the master file would dig him out in a split millennium.

            What a delicious little butterball Patricia had been and such holy frenzy! If she had had just a touch more assertiveness and a touch less humility he could have made her a priestess. But such was Patricia's need to accept God according to her own nature that she could have qualified only among the Lingayats . . . where she wasn't needed. Foster considered scanning back and seeing her as she had been, decided against it with angelic restraint; there was work to be done- "Forget the omniscio, Junior. I want a Word with you." Digby did so and waited. Foster twanged his halo, an annoying habit he had when he was meditating. "Junior, you aren't shaping up too angelically."

            "I'm sorry."

            "Sorrow is not for eternity. But the Truth is you've been preoccupied with that young fellow who may or may not be our brother Michael. Now wait- In the first place it is not for you to Judge the instrument used to call you from the pasture. In the second place it is not he who vexes you-you hardly knew him-what's bothering you is that little brunette secretary you had. She had earned my Kiss quite some temporal period before you were called. Hadn't she?"

            "I was still testing her."

            "Then no doubt you have been angelically pleased to note that Supreme Bishop Short, after giving her a most thorough examination himself-oh, very thorough; I told you he would measure up-has passed her and she now enjoys the wider Happiness she deserves. Mmmm, a shepherd should take joy in his work . . . but when he's promoted, he should take joy in that, too. Now it just happens I know there is a spot open for a Guardian-in-Training in a new sector being opened up-a job under your nominal rank, I concede, but good angelic experience. This planet-well, you can think of it as a planet; you'll see-is occupied by a race of tripolaxity instead of bipolarity and I have it on High Authority that Don Juan himself could not manage to take Earthly interest in any of their three polarities . . . that's not an opinion; he was borrowed as a test. He screamed, and prayed to be returned to the solitary hell he has created for himself."

            "Going to send me out to Flatbush, huh? So I won't interfere!"

            "Tut, tut! You can't interfere-the one Impossibility that permits all else to be possible; I tried to tell you that when you arrived. But don't let it fret you; you are eternally permitted to try. Your orders will include a loop so that you will check back at here-now without any loss of temporality. Now fly away and get cracking; I have work to do." Foster turned back to where he had been interrupted. Oh, yes, a poor soul temporally designated as "Alice Douglas"-to be a goad was a hard assignment at best and she had met it unflaggingly. But her job was complete and now she would need rest and rehabilitation from the inescapable battle fatigue . . . she'd be kiclthig and screaming and foaming ectoplasm at all orifices.

            Oh, she would need a thorough exorcism after a job that rough! But they were all rough; they couldn't be anything else. And "Alice Douglas" was an utterly reliable field operative; she could take any left-hand assignment as long as it was essentially virginal-burn her at the stake or put her in a nunnery; she always delivered.

            Not that he cared much for virgins, other than with professional respect for any job well done. Foster sneaked a quick last look at Mrs. Paiwonski. There was a fellow worker he could appreciate. Darling little Patricia! What a blessed, lusty benison-

XXIX

            AS THE DOOR OF THEIR SUITE closed itself behind Patricia Paiwonski, Jill said, "What now, Mike?"

            "We're leaving. Jill, you've read some abnormal psychology."

            "Yes, of course. In training. Not as much as you have, I know."

            "Do you know the symbolism of tattooing? And snakes?"

            "Of course. I knew that about Patty as soon as I met her. I had been hoping that you would find a way."

            "I couldn't, until we were water brothers. Sex is necessary, sex is a helpful goodness-but only if it is sharing and growing closer. I grok that if I did it without growing closer-well, I'm not sure."

            "I grok that you would learn that you couldn't, Mike. That is one of the reasons-one of the many reasons-I love you."

            He looked worried. "I still don't grok 'love.' Jill, I don't grok 'people.' Not even you. But I didn't want to send Pat away."

            "Stop her. Keep her with us."

            ("Waiting is, Jill.")

            ("I know.")

            He added aloud, "Besides, I doubt if I could give her all she needs. She wants to give herself all the time, to everybody. Even her Happiness meetings and her snakes and the marks aren't enough for Pat. She wants to offer herself on an altar to everybody in the world, always-and make them happy. This New Revelation . . . I grok that it is a lot of other things to other people. But that is what it is to Pat."

            "Yes, Mike. Dear Mike."

            "Time to leave. Pick the dress you want to wear and get your purse. I'll dispose of the rest of the trash."

            Jill thought somewhat sadly that she would like, sometimes, to take along just one or two things. But Mike always moved on with just the clothes on his back-and seemed to grok that she preferred it that way, too. "I'll wear that pretty blue one."

            It floated out to her, poised itself over her, wriggled down onto her as she held up her hands; the zipper closed. Shoes to suit it walked toward her, waited while she stepped into them. "I'm ready, Mike."

            Mike had caught the wistful flavor of her thought, but not the concept; it was too alien to Martian ideas. "Jill? Do you want to stop and get married?"

            She thought about it. "We couldn't, today, Mike. It's Sunday. We couldn't get a license."

            "Tomorrow, then. I will remember. I grok that you would like it."

            She thought about it. "No, Mike."

            "Why not, Jill?"

            "Two reasons. One, we couldn't be any closer through it, because we already share water. That's logic, both in English and in Martian. Yes?"

            "Yes."

            "And two, a reason valid just in English. I wouldn't have Dorcas and Anne and Miriam-and Patty-think that I was trying to crowd them out and one of them might think so."

            "No, Jill, none of them would think so."

            "Well, I won't chance it, because I don't need it. Because you married me in a hospital room ages and ages ago. Just because you were the way you are. Before I even guessed it." She hesitated. "But there is something you might do for me."

            "What, Jill?"

            "Well, you might call me pet names occasionally! The way I do you."

            "Yes, Jill. What pet names?"

            "Oh!" She kissed him quickly. "Mike, you're the sweetest, most lovable man I've ever met-and the most infuriating creature on two planets! Don't bother with pet names. Just call me 'little brother' occasionally...it makes me go all quivery inside."

            "Yes, Little Brother."

            "Oh, my! Now get decent fast and let's get out of here-before I take you back to bed. Come on. Meet me at the desk; I'll be paying the bill." She left very suddenly.

            They went to the town's station flat and caught the first Greyhound going anywhere. A week or two later they stopped at home, shared water for a couple of days, left again without saying good-by--or, rather, Mike did not; saying good-by was one human custom Mike stubbornly resisted and never used with his own. He used it formally with strangers under circumstances in which Jill required him to.

            Shortly they were in Las Vegas, stopping in an unfashionable hotel near but not on the Strip. Mike tried all the games in all the casinos while Jill filled in the time as a show girl-gambling bored her. Since she couldn't sing or dance and had no act, standing or parading slowly in a tall improbable hat, a smile, and a scrap of tinsel was the job best suited to her in the Babylon of the West. She preferred to work if Mike was busy and, somehow, Mike could always get her the job she picked out. Since the casinos never closed, Mike was busy almost all their time in Las Vegas.

            Mike was careful not to win too much in any one casino, keeping to limits Jill set for him. After he had milked each one for a few thousand he carefully put it all back, never letting himself be the big-money player at any game, whether winning or losing. Then he took a job as a croupier, studying people, trying to grok why they gambled. He grokked unclearly a drive in many of the gamblers that seemed to be intensely sexual in nature-but he seemed to grok wrongness in this. He kept the job quite a while, letting always the little ball roll without interference.

            Jill was amused to discover that the customers in the palatial theater restaurant where she worked were just marks . . . marks with more money but still marks. She discovered something about herself, too; she enjoyed displaying herself, as long as she was safe from hands that she did not want to grab her. With her steadily increasing Martian honesty she examined this newly uncovered facet in herself. In the past, while she had known that she enjoyed being admired, she had sincerely believed that she wanted it only from a select few and usually only from one-she had been irked at the discovery, now long past, that the sight of her physical being really didn't mean anything to Mike even though he had been and remained as aggressively and tenderly devoted to her physically as a woman could dream of-il he wasn't preoccupied.

            And he was even generous about that, she reminded herself. If she wished, he would always let her call him out of his deepest withdrawal trances, shift gears without complaint and be smiling and eager and loving.

            Nevertheless, there it was-one of his strangenesses, like his inability to laugh. Jill decided, after her initiation as a show girl, that she enjoyed being visually admired because that was the one thing Mike did not give her.

            But her own perfecting self-honesty and steadily growing empathy did not allow that theory to stand. The male half of the audience always had that to-be-expected high percentage who were too old, too fat, too bald, and in general too far gone along the sad road of entropy to be likely to be attractive to a female of Jill's youth, beauty, and fastidiousness-she had always been scornful of "lecherous old wolves"-althOugh not of old men per se, she reminded herself in her own defense; Jubal could look at her, even use crude language in deliberate indecencies, and not give her the slightest feeling that he was anxious to get her alone and grope her. She was so serenely sure of Jubal's love for her and its truly spiritual nature that she told herself that she could easily share a bed with him, go right to sieep-and be sure that be would also, with only the goodnight peck she always gave him.

            But now she found that these unattractive males did not set her teeth on edge. When she felt their admiring stares or even their outright lust- and she found that she did feel it, could even identify the source-she did not resent it; it warmed her and made her feel smugly pleased.

            "Exhibitionism" had been to her simply a word used in abnormal psychology-a neurotic weakness she had held in contempt. Now, in digging out her own and looking at it, she decided that either this form of narcissism was normal, or she was abnormal and had not known it. But she didn't feel abnormal; she felt healthy and happy-healthier than she had ever been. She had been always of better than average health-nurses need to be-but she hadn't had a sniffle nor even an upset stomach in she couldn't remember when . . . why, she thought wonderingly, not even cramps.

            Okay, she was healthy-and if a healthy woman liked to be looked at-and not as a side of beefi-then it follows as the night from day that healthy men should like to look at them, else there was just no darn sense to itl At which point she finally understood, intellectually, Duke and his pictures . . . and begged his pardon in her mind.

            She discussed it with Mike, tried to explain her changed viewpoint- not easy, since Mike could not understand why Jill had ever minded being looked at, at any time, by anyone. Not wishing to be touched he understood; Mike avoided shaking hands if he could do so without offense, he wanted to touch and be touched only by water brothers (Jill wasn't sure just how far this included male water brothers in Mike's mind; she had explained homosexuality tO him, after he had read about it and failed to grok it-and had given him practical rules for avoiding even the appearance thereof and how to keep such passes from being made at him, since she assumed correctly that Mike, pretty as he was, would attract such passes. He had followed her advice and had set about making his face more masculine, instead of the androgynous beauty he had first had. Nevertheless Jill was not sure that Mike would refuse such an invitation from, say, Duke-but fortunately Mike's male water brothers were all decidedly masculine men, just as his others were very female women. Jill hoped that it would stay that way; she suspected that Mike would grok a "wrongness" in the poor in-betweeners anyhow-they would never be offered water.)

            Nor could Mike understand why it now pleased her to be stared at. The only time when their two attitudes had been even roughly similar had been as they left the carnival, when Jill had discovered that she had become indifferent to stares-willing to do their act "stark naked," as she had told Patty, if it would help.

            Jill saw that her present self-knowledge had been nascent at that point; she had never been truly indifferent to masculine stares. Under the unique necessities of adjusting to life with the Man from Mars she had been forced to shuck off part of her artificial, training-imposed persona, that degree of ladylike prissiness a nurse can retain despite the rigors of an unusually no-nonsense profession. But Jill hadn't known that she had any prissiness to lose until she lost it.

            Of course, Jill was even more of a "lady" than ever-but she preferred to think of herself as a "gent." But she was no longer able to conceal from her conscious mind (nor had any wish to) that there was something inside her as happily shameless as a tabby in heat going into her belly dance for the enticement of the neighborhood toms.

            She tried to explain all this to Mike, giving him her theory of the complementary and functional nature of narcissist display and voyeurism, with herself and Duke as clinical examples. "The truth is, Mike, that I find I get a real kick out of having all those men stare at me . . . lots of men and almost any man. So now I grok why Duke likes to have lots of pictures of women, the sexier the better. Same thing, only in reverse. It doesn't mean that I want to go to bed with them, any more than Duke wants to go to bed with a photograph-ShUcks~ dearest, I don't even want to say hello to them. But when they look at me and tell me-think at me-that I'm desirable, it gives me a tingle, a warm pleasant feeling right in my middle." She frowned slightly. "You know, I think I ought to get a real naughty picture taken of me and send it to Duke. Just to tell him that I'm sorry I snooted him and failed to grok what I thought was a weakness in him, If it's a weakness, I've got it, too-but girl style. If it is a weakness- But I grok it isn't."

            "All right. We'll find a photographer in the morning."

            She shook her head. "I'll simply apologize to Duke the next time we go home, I wouldn't actually send such a picture to Duke. He has never made a pass at me-and I don't want him getting ideas."

            "Jill, you would not want Duke?"

            She heard an echo of "water brother" in his mind. "11mm truthfully I've never really thought about it. I guess I've been 'being faithful' to you-not that it has been an effort. But I grok you speak rightly; I wouldn't turn Duke down-and I would enjoy it, too. What do you think of that darling?"

            "I grok a goodness," Mike said seriously.

            "Hmm ... my gallant Martian, there are times when we human females appreciate at least a semblance of jealousy-but I don't think there is the slightest chance that you will ever grok 'jealousy.' Darling, what would you grok if one of those marks-those men in the audience, not a water brother-made a pass at me?"

            Mike barely smiled. "I grok he would be missing."

            "Mmm ... I grok he might be, too. But, Mike-listen to me carefully, dear. You promised me that you wouldn't do anything of that sort except in utter emergency. So don't be hasty. If you hear me scream and shout, and reach into my mind and know that I'm in real trouble, that's another matter. But I was coping with wolves when you were still on Mars. Nine times out often, if a girl gets raped, it's at least partly her own fault. That tenth time-well, all right. Give him your best heave-ho to the bottomless pit. But you aren't going to find it necessary."

            "All right, I will remember. I wish you were sending that naughty picture to Duke."

            "What, dear? I will if you want me to. It's just that if I ever make a pass at Duke-and I might, now that you've put the idea into my little pointy head-I'd rather grab his shoulders and look him in the eye and say, 'Duke, how about it?-I'm willing.' I don't want to do it by sending him a naughty picture through the mail, like those nasty women used to send to you. But if you want me to, okay. Uh, I needn't make it too naughty-I could make it obviously a show girl's professional picture and tell him what I'm doing and ask him if he has room for it in his scrap book. He might not take it as a pass."

            Mike frowned. "I spoke incompletely. If you wish to send Duke a naughty picture, do so. If you do not wish, then do not. But I had hoped to see the naughty picture taken. Jill, what is a 'naughty' picture?"

            Mike was baffled by the whole idea-Jill's reversal from an attitude that he had never understood but bad learned to accept into exactly the opposite attitude of pleasure-sexual pleasure, he understood-at being stared at . . . plus a third and long-standing bafflement at Duke's "art" collection-it certainly was not art. But the pale, wan Martian thing which parallels tumultuous human sexuality gave him no foundation for grokking either narcissism or voyeurism, modesty or display.

            He added, '"Naughty' means a wrongness, usually a small wrongness, but I grokked that you did not mean even a small wrongness, but a goodness." a naughty picture could be either one, I guess-depending on who it's for-now that I'm over some prejudice. But- Mike, I'll have to show you; I can't tell you. But first close those slats, will you?"

            The Venetian blinds flipped themselves shut. "All right," she said. "Now this pose would be just a little bit naughty-any of the show girls would use it as a professional pic . . . and this one is just a little bit more so, some of the girls would use it. But this one is unmistakably naughty and this one is quite naughty . . . and this one is so extremely naughty that I wouldn't pose for it with my face wrapped in a towel- unless you wanted it."

            "But if your face was covered, why would I want it?"

            "Ask Duke. That's all I can say."

            He continued to look puzzled. "I grok not wrongness, I grok not goodness. I grok-" He used a Martian word indicating a null state of all emotions.

            But he was interested because he was so baffled; they went on discussing it, in Martian as much as possible because of its extremely fine discriminations for emotions and values-and in English, too, because Martian. rich as it is, simply couldn't cope with the concepts.

            Mike showed up at a ringside table that night, Jill having coached him in how to bribe the maître d'hôtel to give him such a spot; he was determined to pursue this mystery. Jill was not averse. She came strutting out in the first production number, her smile for everyone but a quick wink for Mike as she turned and her eyes passed across his. She discovered that, with Mike present, the warm, pleased sensation she had been enjoying nightly was greatly amplified-she suspected that, if the lights were out, she would glow in the dark.

            When the parade stopped and the girls formed a tableau, Mike was no more than ten feet from her-she had been promoted her first week to a front position. The director had looked her over on her fourth day with the show and had said, "I don't know what it is, kid. We've got girls around town begging for just any job with twice the shape you've got-but when the lights hit you, you've got what the customers look at. Okay, I'm moving you up where they can see better. The standard raise . . . and I still don't know why."

            She posed and talked with Mike in her mind. ("Feel anything?")

            ("I grok but not in fullness.')

            ("Look where I am looking, my brother. The small one. He quivers. He thirsts for me.')

            ("I grok his thirst ")

            ("Can you see him?") Jill stared straight into the customer's eyes and gave him a warm smile . . . not alone to increase his interest in her but also to let Mike use her eyes, if possible. As her grokking of Martian thought had increased and as they had grown steadily closer in other ways they had begun to be able to use this common Martian convenience. Not fully as yet, but with increasing ease-Jill had no control over it; Mike could see through her eyes simply by calling to her, she could see through his only if he gave it his attention.

            ("We grok him together," Mike agreed. ("Great thirst for my little brother.")

            ("!!!!")

            ("Yes. Beautiful agony.")

            A music cue told Jill to break her pose and resume her slow strut. She did so, moving with proud sensuousness and feeling lust boil up in herself in response to emotions she was getting both from Mike and from the stranger. The routine caused her to walk away from Mike and almost toward the rutty little stranger, approaching him during her first few steps. She continued to lock eyes with him.

            At which point something happened which was totally unexpected to her because Mike had never explained that it was possible. She had been letting herself receive as much as possible of the stranger's emotions, intentionally teasing him with eyes and body, and relaying what she felt from him back to Mike- -when suddenly the circuit was completed and she was looking at herself, seeing herself through strange eyes, much more lavish than she considered herself to be-and feeling the primitive need with which that stranger saw her.

            Blindly she stumbled and would have fallen flat had not Mike instantly sensed her hazard, caught her, lifted her, straightened her up, and steadied her until she could walk unassisted, second-sight gone.

            The parade of beauties continued on through exit. Once off stage the girl behind her said, "What the devil happened to you, Jill?"

            "Caught my heel."

            "Happens. But that was the wildest recovery I ever saw. For a second there you looked like a puppet on strings."

            (-and so I was, dear, and so I was! But we won't go into that.) "i'm going to ask the stage manager to check that spot. I think there's a loose board. A gal could break her leg."

            For the rest of the show whenever she was on stage Mike gave her quick glimpses of how she looked to various men while always making sure that she was not again taken by surprise. Jill was amazed to discover how varied were their images of her: one noticed only her legs, another seemed fascinated by the undulations of her torso, a third saw only her proud bosom. Then Mike, warning her first, let her look at other girls in the tableaux. She was relieved to find that Mike saw them as she saw them-but sharper.

            But she was amazed to find that her own excitement did not diminish as she looked at, second hand, the girls around her; it increased.

            Mike left promptly at the finale, ducking out ahead of the crowd as she had warned him to do, She did not expect to see him again that night since he had asked for relief from his job as croupier only long enough to see his wife in her show. But when she dressed and returned to their hotel room, she felt him inside before she reached the room.

            The door opened for her, she stepped inside, it closed behind her. "Hello, darling!" she called out. "How nice you came home!"

            He smiled gently. "I now grok naughty pictures." Her clothes vanished. "Make naughty pictures."

            "Huh? Yes, dear, of course." She ran through much the same poses she had earlier in the day. With each one, as soon as she was in it, Mike let her use his eyes to see herself. She looked at herself and felt his emotions and felt her own swell in response in a closed and mutually amplified re-echoing. At last she placed herself in a pose as randily carefree as her imagination could devise.

            "Naughty pictures are a great goodness," Mike said gravely.

            "Yes! And now I grok them, too! What are you waiting for?"

            They quit their jobs and for the next several days saw as many of the revues as possible, during which period Jill made still another discovery: she "grokked naughty pictures" only through a man's eyes. If Mike watched, she caught and shared his mood, from quiet sensuous pleasure in a beautiful woman to fully aroused excitement at times-but if Mike's attention was elsewhere, the model, dancer, or peeler was just another woman to Jill, possibly pleasant to look at but in no wise exciting. She was likely to get bored and wish mildly that Mike would take her home. But only mildly for she was now nearly as patient as he was.

            She pondered this new fact from all sides and decided that she preferred not to be excited by women other than through his eyes. One man gave her all the problems she could handle and more-to have discovered in herself unsuspected latent Lesbian tendencies would have been entirely too much.

            But it certainly was a lot of fun-"a great goodness"-~to see those girls through his eyes as he had now learned to see them-and a still greater, ecstatic goodness to know that, at last, he looked at her herself in the same way . . . only more so.

            They stopped in Palo Alto long enough for Mike to try (and fail to) swallow all the Hoover Library in mammoth gulps. The task was mechanically impossible; the scanners could not spin that fast, nor could Mike turn pages of bound books fast enough to read them all. He gave up and admitted that he was taking in raw data much faster than he could grok it, even by spending all hours the library was closed in solitary contemplation. With relief Jill moved them to San Francisco and he embarked on a more systematic search.

            She came back to their flat one day to find him sitting, not in trance but doing nothing, and surrounded by books-many books: The Talmud, the Kama-Sutra, Bibles in various versions, the Book of the Dead, the Book of Mormon, Patty's precious copy of the New Revelation, Apocrypha of various sorts, the Koran, the unabridged Golden Bough, The Way, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the sacred writings of a dozen other religions major and minor-even such deviant oddities as Crowley's Book of the Law.

            "Trouble, dear?"

            "Jill, I don't grok." He waved his hand at the books. ("Waiting, Michael Waiting for fullness is~ ")

            "I don't think waiting will ever fill it. Oh, I know what's wrong; I'm not really a man, I'm a Martian-a Martian in a body of the wrong shape."

            "You're plenty of man for me, dear-and I love the way your body is shaped."

            "Oh, you grok what I'm talking about. I don't grok people. I don't understand this multiplicity of religions. Now among my people-"

            "Your people, Mike?"

            "Sorry. I should have said that, among the Martians, there is only one religion-and that one is not a faith, it's a certainty. You grok it. 'Thou art God!"

            "Yes," she agreed. "I do grok ... in Martian. But you know, dearest, that it doesn't say the same thing in English . . . or any other human speech. I don't know why."

            "Mmmm ... on Mars, when we needed to know anything-anything at all-we could consult the Old Ones and the answer was never wrong. Jill, is it possible that we humans don't have any 'Old Ones?' No souls, that has to mean. When we discorporate-die!--do we die dead? die all over and nothing left? Do we live in ignorance because it doesn't matter? Because we are gone and not a rack behind in a time so short that a Martian would use it for one long contemplation? Tell me, Jill. You're human."

            She smiled with sober serenity. "You yourself have told me. You have taught me to know eternity and you can't take it away from me, ever. You can't die, Mike-you can only discorporate." She gestured down at herself with both hands. "This body that you have taught me to see through your eyes . . . and that you have loved so well, someday it will be gone. But I shall not be gone . . . I am that I am! Thou art God and I am God and we are God, eternally. I am not sure where I will be, or whether I will remember that I was once Jill Boardman who was happy trotting bedpanS and equally happy strutting her stuff in her buff under bright lights. I have liked this body-"

            With a most uncustomary gesture of impatience Mike threw away her clothes.

            "Thank you, dear," she said quietly, not stirring from where she was seated. "It has been a nice body to me-and to you-to both of us who thought of it. But I don't expect to miss it when I am through with it. I hope that you will eat it when I discorporate."

            "Oh, I'll eat you, all right-unless I discorporate first."

            "I don't suppose that you will. With your much greater control over your sweet body I suspect that you can live several centuries at least. If you wish it. Unless you choose to discorporate sooner."

            "I might. But not now. Jill, I've tried and tried. How many churches have we attended?"

            "All the sorts there are in San Francisco, I think-except, possibly, for little, secret ones that don't list their addresses. I don't recall how many times we have been to seekers' services."

            "That's just to comfort Pat-I'd never go again if you weren't sure that she needs to know that we haven't given up."

            "She does need to. And we can't lie about it-you don't know how and I can't, not to Patty. Nor any brother."

            "Actually," he admitted, "the Fosterites do have quite a bit on the ball. All twisted, of course. They are clumsy, groping-the way I was as a carney. And they'll never correct their mistakes, because this thing-" He caused Patty's book to lift. "-is mostly crap!"

            "Yes. But Patty doesn't see those parts of it. She is wrapped in her own innocence. She is God and behaves accordingly . . . only She doesn't know who She is."

            "Uh huh," he agreed. "That's our Pat. She believes it only when I tell her-with proper emphasis. But, Jill, there are only three places to look. Science-and I was taught more about how the physical universe is put together while I was still in the nest than human scientists can yet handle. So much that I can't even talk to them . . . even about as elementary a gimmick as levitation. I'm not disparaging human scientists . . . what they do and how they go about it is just as it should be; I grok that fully. But what they are after is not what I am looking for-you don't grok a desert by counting its grains of sand. Then there's philosophy-supposed to tackle everything. Does it? All any philosopher ever comes Out with is exactly what be walked in with-except for those sell-deluders who prove their assumptions by their conclusions, in a circle. Like Kant. Like many other tail-chasers. So the answer, if it's anywhere, ought to be here." He waved at the pile of religious books. "Only it's not. Bits and pieces that grok true, but never a pattern-Or if there is a pattern, every time, without fail, they ask you to take the hard part on faith. Faith! What a dirty Anglo~ Saxon monosyllable-Jill, how does it happen that you didn't mention that one when you were teaching me the words that mustn't be used in polite company?"

            She smiled. "Mike, you just made a joke."

            "I didn't mean it as a joke ... and I can't see that it's funny. Jill, I haven't even been good for you-you used to laugh. You used to laugh and giggle until I worried about you. I haven't learned to laugh; instead you've forgotten how. Instead of my becoming human . . . you're becoming Martian."

            "I'm happy, dear. You probably iust haven't noticed me laughing."

            "If you laughed clear down on Market Street, I would hear it. I grok. Once I quit being frightened by it I always noticed it-you, especially~ If I grokked it, then I would grok people-I think. Then I could help somebody like Pat . . . either teach her what I know, or learn from her what she knows. Or both. We could talk and understand each other."

            "Mike, all you need to do for Patty is to see her occasionally. 'Why don't we, dear? Let's get out of this dreary fog. She's home now; the carnie is closed for the season. Drop south and see her . . . and I've always wanted to see Baja California; we could go on south into warmer weather-and take her with us, that would be fun!"

            "All right."

            She stood up. "Let me get a dress on. Do you want to save any of those books? Instead of one of your usual quick housecleanings I could ship them to Jubal."

            He flipped his fingers at them and all were gone but Patricia's gift. "Just this one and we'll take it with us; Pat would notice. But, Jill, right now I need to go out to the zoo."

            "All right."

            "I want to spit back at a camel and ask him what he's so sour about. Maybe camels are the real 'Old Ones' on this planet . . . and that's what is wrong with the place."

            "Two jokes in one day, Mike."

            "I ain't laughing. And neither are you. Nor is the camel. Maybe he groks why. Come on. is this dress all right? Do you want underCloth& I noticed you were wearing some when i moved those other clothes."

            "Please, dear. It's windy and chilly outdoors."

            "Up easy." He levitated her a couple of feet. "Pants. Stockings. Garter belt. Shoes. Down you go and lift your arms. Bra? You don't need a bra. And now the dress-and you're decent again. And you're pretty, whatever that is. You look good. Maybe I can get a job as a lady's maid if I'm not good for anything else. Baths, shampoos, massages, hair styling, make-up, dressing for all occasions-I've even learned to do your nails in a fashion that suits you. Will that be all, Madom?"

            "You're a perfect lady's maid, dear. But I'm going to keep you myself."

            "Yes, I grok I am. You look so good I think I'll toss it all away again and give you a massage. The growing closer kind."

            "Yes, Michael!"

            "I thought you had learned waiting? First you have to take me to the zoo and buy mc peanuts~"

            "Yes, Mike. Jill will buy you peanuts."

            It was cold and windy out at Golden Gate Park but Mike did not notice it and Jill had learned that she didn't have to be cold or uncomfortable if she did not wish it. Nevertheless it was pleasant to relax her control by going into the warm monkey house. Aside from its heat Jill did not like the monkey house too well-monkeys and apes were too much like people, too depressingly human. She was, she thought, finished forever with any sort of prissiness; she had grown to cherish an ascetic, almost Martian joy in all things physical The public copulations and evacuations of these simian prisoners did not trouble her as they once had; these poor penned people possessed no privacy, they were not at fault. She could now watch such without repugnance; her own impregnable fastidiousness untouched. No, it was that they were "Human, All Too Human", every action, every expression, every puzzled troubled look reminded her of what she liked least about her own race.

            Jill preferred the Lion House-the great males arrogant and sure of themselves even in captivity-the placid motherliness of the big females, the lordly beauty of Bengal tigers with jungle staring out of their eyes, the little leopards~swift and deadly, the reek of musk that airconditioners could not purge. Mike usually shared her tastes for other exhibits, too; he would spend hours in the Aviary, or the Reptile House, or in watching seals- once he had told her that, if one had to be hatched on this planet to be a sea lion would be of greatest goodness.

            When he had first seen a zoo, Mike had been much upset; Jill had been forced to order him to wait and grok, as be had been about to take immediate action to free all the animals. He had conceded presently, under her arguments- that most of these animals could not stay alive free in the climate and environment where he proposed to turn them ioose~that a zoo was a nest . . of a sort. He had followed this first experience with many hours of withdrawal, after which he never again threatened to remove all the bars and glass and grills. He explained to Jill that the bars were to keep people out at least as much as to keep the animals in, which he had failed to grok at first. After that Mike never missed a zoo wherever they went.

            But today even the unmitigated misanthropy of the camels could not shake Mike's moodiness; he looked at them without smiling. Nor did the monkeys and apes cheer him up. They stood for quite a while in front of a cage containing a large family of capuchins, watching them eat, sleep, court, nurse, grooms and swarm aimlessly around the cage, while Jill surreptitiously tossed them peanuts despite "No Feeding" signs.

            She tossed one to a medium sized monk; before he could eat it a much larger male was on him and not only stole his peanut but gave him a beating, then left. The little fellow made no attempt to pursue his tormentor; be squatted at the scene of the crime, pounded his knucks against the concrete floor, and chattered his helpless rage. Mike watched it solemnly. Suddenly the mistreated monkey rushed to the side of the cage, picked a monkey still smaller, bowled it over and gave it a drubbing worse than the one he had suffered-after which he seemed quite relaxed. The third monk crawled away, still whimpering, and found shelter in the arm of a female who had a still smaller one, a baby, on her back. The other monkeys paid no attention to any of it.

            Mike threw back his head and laughed-went on laughing, loudly and uncontrollably. He gasped for breath, tears came from his eyes; he started to tremble and sink to the floor, still laughing.

            "Stop it, Mike!"

            He did cease folding himself up but his guffaws and tears went on. An attendant hurried over. "Lady, do you need help?"

            "No. Yes, I do. Can you call us a cab? Ground car, air cab, anything -I've got to get him out of here." She added, "He's not well."

            "Ambulance? Looks like he's having a fit."

            "Anything!" A few minutes later she was leading Mike into a piloted atr cab. She gave the address, then said urgently. "Mike, you've got to listen to me. Quiet down."

            He became somewhat more quiet but continued to chuckle, laugh aloud, chuckle again, while she wiped his eyes, for all the few minutes it took to get back to their flat. She got him inside, got his clothes off, made him lie down on the bed. "All right, dear. Withdraw now if you need to."

            "I'm all right. At last I'm all right."

            "I hope so." She sighed. "You certainly scared me, Mike."

            "I'm sorry, Little Brother. I know. I was scared, too, the first time I heard laughing."

            "Mike, what happened?"

            "Jill ... I grok people!"

            "Huh?" ("!!??")

            ("I speak rightly, Little Brother. I grok.") 

            "I grok people now, Jill Little Brother . . . precious darling , little imp with lively legs and lovely lewd lascivious lecherous licentious libido . . beautiful bumps and pert posterior . . . with soft voice and gentle hands. My baby darling."

            "Why, Michael!"

            "Oh, I knew all the words; I simply didn't know when or why to say them . . . nor why you wanted me to. I love you, sweetheart-I grok 'love' now, too."

            "You always have. I knew. And I love you ... you smooth ape. My darling."

            "'Ape,' yes. Come here, she ape, and put your bead on my shoulder and tell me a joke."

            "Just tell you a joke?"

            "Well, nothing more than snuggling. Tell me a joke I've never heard and see if I laugh at the right place. I will, I'm sure of it-and I'll be able to tell you why it's funny. Jill ... I grok people!"

            "But how, darling? Can you tell me? Does it need Martian? Or mindtalk?"

            "No, that's the point. I grok people. I am people ... so now I can say it in people talk. I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much . . . because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting."

            Jill looked puzzled. "Maybe I'm the one who isn't people. I don't understand."

            "Ah, but you are people, little she ape. You grok it so automatically that you don't have to think about it. Because you grew up with people. But I didn't. I've been like a puppy raised apart from other dogs-Who couldn't be like his masters and had never learned how to be a dog. So I had to be taught. Brother Mahmoud taught me, Jubal taught me, lots of people taught me . . . and you taught me most of all. Today I got my diploma-and I laughed. That poor little monk."

            "Which one, dear? I thought that big one was just mean ... and the one I flipped the peanut to turned out to be just as mean. There certainly wasn't anything funny."

            "Jill, Jill my darling! Too much Martian has rubbed off on YOU. Of course it wasn't funny-it was tragic. That's why I had to laugh. I looked at a cageful of monkeys and suddenly I saw all the mean and cruel and utterly unexplainable things I've seen and beard and read about in the time I've been with my own people and suddenly it hurt so much I found myself laughing."

            "But- Mike dear, laughing is something you do when something is nice - . . not when it's horrid."

            "Is it? Think back to Las Vegas- When all you pretty girls came out on the stage, did people laugh?"

            "Well ... no."

            "But you girls were the nicest part of the show. I grok now, that if they had laughed, you would have been hurt. No, they laughed when a comic tripped over his feet and fell down . . . or something else that is not a goodness."

            "But that's not all people laugh at."

            "Isn't it? Perhaps I don't grok all its fullness yet. But find me something that really makes you laugh, sweetheart . . . a joke, or anything else-but something that gave you a real belly laugh, not a smile. Then we'll see if there isn't a wrongness in it somewhere and whether you would laugh if the wrongness wasn't there." He thought. "I grok when apes learn to laugh, they'll be people."

            "Maybe." Doubtfully but earnestly Jill started digging into her memory for jokes that had struck her as irresistibly funny, ones which had jerked a laugh out of her . . . incidents she had seen or heard of which had made her helpless with laughter:

            "-her entire bridge club."

            "Should I bow?"

            "Neither one, you idiot -- instead!"

            "-the Chinaman objects." 

            "-broke her leg."

            "-make trouble for me!"

            "-but it'll spoil the ride for me."

            "-and his mother-in-law fainted."

            "Stop you? Why, I bet three to one you could do it!"

            "-something has happened to Ole."

            "-and so are you, you clumsy ox!"

            She gave up on "funny" stories, pointing out to Mike that such were just fantasies, not real, and tried to recall real incidents. Practical jokes? All practical jokes supported Mike's thesis, even ones as mild as a dribble glass-and when it came to an interne'S notion of a practical joke-Well, internes and medical students should be kept in cages. What else? The time Elsa Mae had lost her monogrammed panties? It hadn't been funny to Elsa Mae. Or the- She said grimly, "Apparently the pratfall is the peak of all humor. It's not a pretty picture of the human race, Mike."

            "Oh, but it is!"

            "Huh?"

            "I had thought-I had been told-that a 'funny' thing is a thing of a goodness. It isn't. Not ever is it funny to the person it happens to. Like that sheriff without his pants. The goodness is in the laughing itself. I grok it is a bravery . . . and a sharing . . . against pain and sorrow and defeat."

            "But- Mike, it is not a goodness to laugh at people."

            "No. But I was not laughing at the little monkey. I was laughing at u& People. And I suddenly knew that I was people and could not stop laughing." He paused. "This is hard to explain, because you have never lived as a Martian, for all that I've told you about it. On Mars there is never anything to laugh at. All the things that are funny to us humans either physically cannot happen on Mars or are not permitted to happen- sweetheart, what you call 'freedom' doesn't exist on Mars; everything is planned by the Old Ones-or the things that do happen on Mars which we laugh at here on Earth aren't funny because there is no wrongness about them. Death, for example."

            "Death isn't funny."

            "Then why are there so many jokes about death? Jill, with us-us humans-death is so sad that we must laugh at it. All those religions- they contradict each other on every other point but every one of them is filled with ways to help people be brave enough to laugh even though they know they are dying." He stopped and Jill could feel that he had ahuost gone into his trance state. "Jill? Is it possible that I was searching them the wrong way? Could it be that every one of all those religions is true?"

            "Huh? How could that possibly be? Mike, if one of them is true, then the others are wrong. Logic."

            "So? Point to the shortest direction around the universe. It doesn't matter which way you point, it's the shortest ... and you're pointing right back at yourself."

            "Well, what does that prove? You taught me the true answer, Mike. 'Thou art God.'"

            "And Thou art God, my lovely. I wasn't disputing that ... but that one prime fact which doesn't depend at all on faith may mean that all faiths are true."

            "Well . . . if they're all true, then right now I want to worship Siva." Jill changed the subject with emphatic direct action.

            "Little pagan," he said softly. "They'll run you out of San Francisco."

            "But we're going to Los Angeles ... where it won't be noticed. Oh! Thou art Siva!"

            "Dance, Kali, dance!"

            Some time during the night she woke and saw him standing at the window, looking out over the city. ("Trouble, my brother?")

            He turned and spoke. "There's no need for them to be so unhappy."

            "Darling, darling! I think I had better take you home. The city is not good for you."

            "But I would still know it. Pain and sickness and hunger and fighting -there's no need for any of it. It's as foolish as those little monkeys."

            "Yes, darling. But it's not your fault-"

            "Ah, but it is!"

            "Well ... that way-yes. But it's not just this one city; it's five billion people and more. You can't help five billion people."

            "I wonder."

            He came over and sat down by her. "I grok with them now, I can talk to them. Jill, I could set up our act again . . . and make the marks laugh every minute. I am certain."

            "Then why not do it? Patty would certainly be pleased ... and so would I. I liked being 'with it'-and now that we've shared water with Patty, it would be like being home."

            He didn't answer. Jill felt his mind and knew that he was contemplating, trying to grok. She waited.

            "Jill? What do I have to do to be ordained?"

PART FOUR HIS SCANDALOUS CAREER

XXX

            THE FIRST MIXED LOAD Of permanent colonists arrived on Mars; six of the seventeen survivors of the twenty~thtee originals retumed to Earth. Prospective colonists trained in Peru at sixteen thousand feet. The president of Argentina moved one night to Montevideo, taking with him such portables as could be stuffed into two suitcases, and the new Presidente started an extradition procesS before the high Court to yank him back, or at least the two suitcases. Last rites for Alice Douglas were held privately in the National Cathedral with less than two thousand attending, and editorialists and stereo comentators alike praised the dignified fortitude with which the Secretary General took his bereavement. A three-year-old named Inflation, carrying 126 pounds with Jinx Jenkins Up, won the Kentucky Derby, paying fifty-four for one, and two guests of the Colony Airotel, Louisville, Kentucky, discorporated, one voluntarily, the other by heart failure.

            Another bootleg edition of the (unauthorized) biography The Devil and Reverend Foster appeared simultaneously on news stands throughout the United States; by nightfall every copy had been burned and the plates destroyed, along with incidental damage to other chattels and to real estate, plus a certain amount of mayhem, maiming, and simple assault. The British Museum was rumored to possess a copy of the first edition (untrue), and also the Vatican Library (true, but available only to certain church scholars).

            In the Tennessee legislature a bill was again introduced to make the ratio pi exactly equal to three; it was reported out by the committee on public education and morals, passed with no objection by the lower house and died in conimittee in the upper house. An interchurch fundamentalist group opened offices in Van Buren, Arkansas, for the purpose of soliciting funds to send missionaries to the Martians; Dr. Jubal Harshaw happily sent them a lavish donation, but took the precaution of sending it in the name (and with the address) of the editor of the New Humanist, a rabid atheist and his close friend.

            Other than that, Jubal had very little to feel amused about_there had been too much news about Mike lately, and all of it depressing. He had treasured the occasional visits home of Jill and Mike and had been most interested in Mike's progress, especially after Mike developed a sense of humor. But they came home less frequently now and Jubal did not relish the latest developments.

            It bad not troubled Jubal when Mike was run out of Union Theological Seminary, hotly pursued in spirit by a pack of enraged theologians, some of whom were angry because they believed in God and others because they did not-but all united in detesting the Man from Mars. Jubal honestly evalued anything that happened to a theologian short of breaking him on the wheel was no more than meet-and the experience was good for the boy; he'd know better next time.

            Nor had he been troubled when Mike (with the help of Douglas) had enlisted under an assumed name in the Federation armed forces. He had been quite sure (through private knowledge) that no sergeant could cause Mike any permanent distress, and contrariwise, Jubal was not troubled by what might happen to sergeants or other ranks-an unreconciled old reactionary, Jubal had burned his own honorable discharge and all that went with it on the day that the United States had ceased having its own armed forces.

            Actually, Jubal had been surprised at how little shambles Mike had created as "Private Jones" and how long be had lasted-almost three weeks. He had crowned his military career the day that be had seized on the question period following an orientation lecture to hold forth on the utter uselessness of force and violence under any circumstances (with some side continents on the desirability of reducing surplus population through cannibalism) and had offered himself as a test animal for any weapon of any nature to prove to them that force was not only unnecessary but literally impossible when attempted against a self-disciplined person.

            They had not taken his offer; they had kicked him out.

            But there had been a little more to it than that, Douglas had allowed Jubal to see a top-level super secret eyes-only numbered-one-of-three report after cautioning Jubal that no one, not even the Supreme Chief of staff, knew that "Private Jones" was the Man from Mars. Jubal had merely scanned the exhibits, which bad been mostly highly conflicting reports of eye witnesses as to what had happened at various times when "Jones" had been "trained" in the uses of various weapons; the only surprising thing to Jubal about them was that some witnesses bad the courage and self-confidence to state under oath that they bad seen weapons disappear. "Jones" had also been placed on the report three times for losing weapons, same being accountable property of the Federation.

            The end of the report was all that Jubal had bothered to read carefully enough to remember: "Conclusion: Subject man is an extremely talented natural hypnotist and, as such, could conceivably be useful in intelligence work, although he is totally unfitted for any combat branch. However, his low intelligence quotient (moron), his extremely low general classification score, and his paranoid tendencies (delusions of grandeur) make it inadvisable to attempt to exploit his idiot-savant talent. Recommendation: Discharge, Inaptitude-no pension credit, no benefits."

            Such little romps were good for the boy and Jubal had greatly enjoyed Mike's inglorious career as a soldier because Jill had spent the time at home. When Mike had come home for a few days after it was over, he hadn't seemed hurt by it-he had boasted to Jubal that he had obeyed Jill's wishes exactly and hadn't disappeared anybody merely a few dead things . . . although, as Mike grokked it, there had been several times when Earth could have been made a better place if Jill didn't have this queasy weakness. Jubal didn't argue it; he had a lengthy-though inactive, "Better Dead" list himself.

            But apparently Mike had managed to have fun, too. During parade on his last day as a soldier, the commanding General and his entire staff had suddenly lost their trousers as Mike's platoon was passing in review-and the top sergeant of Mike's company fell fiat on his face when his shoes momentarily froze to the ground. Jubal decided that, in acquiring a sense of humor, Mike bad developed an atrocious taste in practical jokes-but what the hell? the kid was going through a delayed boyhood; he needed to dump over a few privies. Jubal recalled with pleasure an incident in medical school involving a cadaver and the Dean-Jubal had worn rubber gloves for that caper, and a good thing, too!

            Mike's unique ways of growing up were all right; Mike was unique.

            But this last thing-"The Reverend Dr. Valentine M. Smith, AS., D.D., Ph.D.," founder and pastor of the Church of All Worlds, inc.-gad! It was bad enough that the boy had decided to be a Holy Joe, instead of leaving other people's souls alone, as a gentleman should. But those diploma-mill degrees he had tacked onto his name-Jubal wanted to throw up.

            The worst of it was that Mike had told him that he had gotten the whole idea from something he had heard Jubal say, about what a church was and what it could do. Jubal was forced to admit that it was something he could have said, although he did not recall it; it was little consolation that the boy knew so much law that he might have arrived at the same end on his own.

            But Jubal did concede that Mike had been cagy about the operation- some actual months of residence at a very small, very poor (in all senses) sectarian college, a bachelor's degree awarded by examination, a "call" to their ministry followed by ordination in this recognized though flat-headed sect, a doctor's dissertation on comparative religion which was a marvel of scholarship while ducking any real conclusions (Mike had brought it to Jubal for literary criticism, Jubal had added some weasel words himself through conditioned reflex), the award of the "earned" doctorate coinciding with an endowment (anonymous) to this very hungry school, the second doctorate (honorary) right on top of it for "contributions to interplanetary knowledge" from a distinguished university that should have known better, when Mike let it be known that such was his price for showing up as the drawing card at a conference on solar system studies. The one and only Man from Mars had turned down everybody from CalTech to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in the past; Harvard University could hardly be blamed for swallowing the bait.

            Well, they were probably as crimson as their banner now, Jubal thought cynically. Mike had then put in a few weeks as assistant chaplain at his church-mouse alma mater-then had broken with the sect in a schism and founded his own church. Completely kosher, legally airtight, as venerable in precedent as Martin Luther . . . and as nauseating as last week's garbage.

            Jubal was called out of his sour daydream by Miriam. "Boss! Company!"

            Jubal looked up to see a car about to land and ruminated that he had not realized what a blessing that S.S. patrol cap had been until it was withdrawn.

            "Larry, fetch my shotgun-I promised myself that I would shoot the next dolt who landed on the rose bushes."

            "He's landing on the grass, Boss."

            "Well, tell him to try again. We'll get him on the next pass."

            "Looks like Ben Caxton."

            "So it is. We'll let him live-this time. Hi, Ben! What'll you drink?"

            "Nothing, this early in the day, you professional bad influence. Need to talk to you, Jubal."

            "You're doing it. Dorcas, fetch Ben a glass of warm milk; he's sick."

            "Without too much soda," amended Ben, "and milk the bottle with the three dimples in it. Private talk, Jubal."

            "All right, up to my study-although if you think you can keep anything from the kids around here, let me in on your method." After Ben finished greeting properly (and somewhat unsanitarily, in three cases) the members of the family, they moseyed upstairs.

            Ben said, "What the deuce? Am I lost?"

            "Oh. You haven't seen the alterations, have you? A new wing on the north, which gives us two more bedrooms and another bath downstairs- and up here, my gallery."

            "Enough statues to fill a graveyard!"

            "Please, Ben. 'Statues' are dead politicians at boulevard intersections. What you see is 'sculpture.' And please speak in a low, reverent tone lest I become violent . . . for here we have exact replicas of some of the greatest sculpture this naughty globe has produced."

            "Well, that hideous thing I've seen before ... but when did you acquire the rest of this ballast?"

            Jubal ignored him and spoke quietly to the replica of La Belle Heaulmière. "Do not listen to him, ma petite chere-he is a barbarian and knows no better." He put his hand to her beautiful raaged cheek, then gently touched one empty, shrunken dug. "I know just how you feel but it can't be very much longer. Patience, my lovely."

            He turned back to Caxton and said briskly, "Ben, I don't know what you have on your mind but it will have to wait while I give you a lesson in how to look at sculpture-though it's probably as useless as trying to teach a dog to appreciate the violin. But you've just been rude to a lady and I don't tolerate that."

            "Huh? Don't be silly, Jubal; you're rude to ladies-live ones-a dozen times a day. And you know which ones I mean."

            Jubal shouted, "Anne! Upstairs! Wear your cloak!"

            "You know I wouldn't be rude to the old woman who posed for that. Never. What I can't understand is a so-called artist having the gall to pose somebody's great grandmother in her skin . . . and you having the bad taste to want it around."

            Anne came in, cloaked, said nothing. Jubal said to her, "Anne have I ever been rude to you? Or to any of the girls?"

            "That calls for an opinion."

            "That's what I'm asking for. Your opinion. You're not in court-"

            "You have never at any time been rude to any of us, Jubal."

            "Have you ever known me to be rude to a lady?"

            "I have seen you be intentionally rude to a woman. I have never seen you be rude to a lady."

            "That's all. No, one more opinion. What do you think of this bronze?"

            Anne looked carefully at Rodin's masterpiece, then said slowly, "When I first saw it, I thought it was horrible. But I have come to the conclusion that it may be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."

            "Thanks. That's all." She left. "Do you want to argue it, Ben?"

            "Huh? When I argue with Anne, that's the day I turn in my suit." Ben looked at it. "But I don't get it."

            "All right, Ben. Attend me. Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is . . . and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be . . . and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart . . . no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn't matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them. Look at her!"

            Ben looked at her. Presently Jubal said gruffly, "All right, blow your nose and wipe your eyes-she accepts your apology. Come on and sit down. That's enough for one lesson."

            "No," Caxton answered, "I want to know about these others. How about this one? It doesn't bother me as much . . . I can see it's a young girl, right off. But why tie her up like a pretzel?"

            Jubal looked at the replica "Caryatid Who has Fallen under the Weight of her Stone" and smiled. "Call it a tour de force in empathy, Ben. I won't expect you to appreciate the shapes and masses which make that figure much more than a 'pretzel'-but you can appreciate what Rodin was saying. Ben, what do people get out of looking at a crucifix?"

            "You know how much I go to church."

            "'How little' you mean. Still, you must know that, as craftsmanship, paintings and sculpture of the Crucifixion are usually atrocious-and the painted, realistic ones often used in churches are the worst of all . . . the blood looks like catsup and that ex-carpenter is usually portrayed as if he were a pansy . . . which He certainly was not if there is any truth in the four Gospels at all. He was a hearty man, probably muscular and of rugged health. But despite the almost uniformly poor portrayal in representations of the Crucifixion, a poor one is about as effective as a good one for most people. They don't see the defects; what they see is a symbol which inspires their deepest emotions; it recalls to them the Agony and Sacrifice of God."

            "Jubal, I thought you weren't a Christian?"

            "What's that got to do with it? Does that make me blind and deaf to fundamental human emotion? I was saying that the crummiest painted plaster crucifix or the cheapest cardboard Christmas Crèche can be sufficient symbol to evoke emotions in the human heart so strong that many have died for them and many more live for them. So the craftsmanship and artistic judgment with which such a symbol is wrought are largely irrelevant. Now here we have another emotional symbol-wrought with exquisite craftsmanship, but we won't go into that, yet. Ben, for almost three thousand years or longer, architects have designed buildings with columns shaped as female figures-it got to be such a habit that they did it as casually as a small boy steps on an ant. After all those centuries it took Rodin to see that this was work too heavy for a girl. But he didn't simply say, 'Look, you jerks, if you must design this way, make it a brawny male figure.' No, he showed it . . . and generalized the symbol. Here is this poor little caryatid who has tried-and failed, fallen under the load. She's a good girl-look at her face. Serious, unhappy at her fafrure, but not blaming anyone else, not even the gods . . . and still trying to shoulder her load, after she's crumpled under it.

            "But she's more than good art denouncing some very bad art; she's a symbol for every woman who has ever tried to shoulder a load that was too heavy for her-over half the female population of this planet, living and dead, I would guess. But not alone women-this symbol is sexless. It means every man and every woman who ever lived who sweated out life in uncomplaining fortitude, whose courage wasn't even noticed until they crumpled under their loads. It's courage, Ben, and victory."