"'Victory?'"

            "Victory in defeat, there is none higher. She didn't give up, Ben; she's still trying to lift that stone after it has crushed her. She's a father going down to a dull office job while cancer is painfully eating away his insides, so as to bring home one more pay check for the kids. She's a twelve-yearold girl trying to mother her baby brothers and sisters because Mama had to go to Heaven. She's a switchboard operator sticking to her job while smoke is choking her and the fire is cutting off her escape. She's all the unsung heroes who couldn't quite cut it but never quit. Come. Just salute as you pass her and come see my Little Mermaid."

            Ben took him precisely at his word; if Jubal was surprised, he made no comment. "Now this one," he said, "is the only one Mike didn't give to me. But there is no need to tell Mike why I got it . . . aside from the selfevident fact that it's one of the most delightful compositions ever conceived and proudly executed by the eye and hand of man."

            "She's that, all right. This one I don't have to have explained-it's just plain pretty!"

            "Yes. And that is excuse in itself, just as with kittens and butterflies. But there is more to it than that . . . and she reminded me of Mike. She's not quite a mermaid-see?-and she's not quite human. She sits on land, where she has chosen to stay . . . and she stares eternally out to sea, homesick and forever lonely for what she left behind. You know the story?"

            "Hans Christian Andersen."

            "Yes. She sits by the harbor of KØbenhavn-Copenhagen was his home town-and she's everybody who ever made a difficult choice. She doesn't regret her choice, but she must pay for it; every choice must be paid for. The cost to her is not only endless homesickness. She can never be quite human; when she uses her dearly bought feet, every step is on sharp knives. Ben, I think that Mike must always walk on knives-but there is no need to tell him I said so. I don't think he knows this story or, at least, I don't think he knows that I connect him with it."

            "I won't tell him." Ben looked at the replica. "I'd rather just look at her and not think about the knives."

            "She's a little darling, isn't she? How would you like to coax her into bed? She would probably be lively, like a seal, and about as slippery."

            "Cripes! You're an evil old man, Jubal."

            "And getting eviler and eviler by the year. Uh ... we won't look at any others; three pieces of sculpture in an hour is more than enough- usually I don't let myself look at more than one in a day."

            "Suits. I feel as if I had had three quick drinks on an empty stomach. Jubal, why isn't there stuff like this around where a person can see it?"

            "Because the world has gone nutty and contemporary art always paints the spirit of its times. Rodin did his major work in the tail end of the nineteenth century and Hans Christian Andersen antedated him by only a few years. Rodin died early in the twentieth century, about the time the world started flipping its lid . . . and art along with it.

            "Rodin's successors noted the amazing things he had done with light and shadow and mass and composition-whether you see it or not-and they copied that much. Oh, how they copied it! And extended it. What they failed to see was that every major work of the master told a story and laid bare the human heart. Instead, they got involved with 'design' and became contemptuous of any painting or sculpture that told a story- sneering, they dubbed such work 'literary'-a dirty word. They went all out for abstractions, not deigning to paint or carve anything that resembled the human world."

            Jubal shrugged. "Abstract design is all right-for wall paper or linoleum. But an is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudo-intellectual masturbation . . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce- render emotional-his audience, each time. These laddies who won't deign to do that-and perhaps can't-of course lost the public. If they hadn't lobbied for endless subsidies, they would have starved or been forced to go to work long ago. Because the ordinary bloke will not voluntarily pay for 'art' that leaves him unmoved-if he does pay for it, the money has to be conned out of him, by taxes or such."

            "You know, Jubal, I've always wondered why I didn't give a hoot for paintings or statues-but I thought it was something missing in me, like color blindness."

            "Mmm, one does have to learn to look at art, just as you must know French to read a story printed in French. But in general it's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some privite code like Pepys and his diary. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn . . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything-obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence. Ben, would you call me an artist?"

            "Huh? Well, I've never thought about it. You write a pretty good stick."

            "Thank you. 'Artist' is a word I avoid for the same reasons I hate to be called 'Doctor.' But I am an artist, albeit a minor one. Admittedly most of my stuff is fit to read only once . . . and not even once for a busy person who already knows the little I have to say. But I am an honest artist, because what I write is consciously intended to reach the customer-reach him and affect him, if possible with pity and terror . . . or, if not, at least to divert the tedium of his hours with a chuckle or an odd idea. But I am never trying to hide it from him in a private language, nor am I seeking the praise of other writers for 'technique' or other balderdash. I want the praise of the cash customer, given in cash because I've reached him-or I don't want anything. Support for the arts-merdel A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore! Damn it, you punched one of my buttons. Let me fill your glass, and you tell me what is on your mind."

            "Uh, Jubal, I'm unhappy."

            "This is news?"

            "No. But I've got a fresh set of troubles." Ben frowned. "I shouldn't have come here, I guess. No need to burden you with them. I'm not even sure I want to talk about them."

            "Okay. But as long as you're here, you can listen to my troubles."

            "You have troubles? Jubal, I've always thought of you as the one man who had managed to beat the game, six ways from zero."

            "Hmm, sometime I must tell you about my married life. But-yes, I've got troubles now. Some of them are evident. Duke has left me, you know-or did you?"

            "Yeah. I knew."

            "Larry is a good gardener-but half the gadgets that keep this log cabin running are failing to pieces. I don't know how I can replace Duke. Good all-around mechanics are scarce . . . and ones that will fit into this household, be a member of the family in all ways, are almost non-existent. I'm limping along on repalnnen called in from town-every visit a disturbance, all of them with larceny in their hearts, and most of them incompetent to use a screw driver without cutting themselves. Which I am incapable of doing, too, so I have to hire help. Or move back into town, God forbid."

            "My heart aches for you, Jubal."

            "Never mind the sarcasm, that's just the start. Mechanics and gardenem are convenient, but for me secretaries are essential. Two of mine are pregnant, one is getting married."

            Caxton looked utterly astounded. Jubal growled, "Oh, I'm not telling tales out of school; they're smug as can be-nothing secret about any of it. They're undoubtedly sore at me right now because I took you up here without giving them time to boast. So be a gent and be surprised when they tell you."

            "Uh, which one is getting married?"

            "Isn't that obvious? The happy man is that smooth-talking refugee from a sand storm, our esteemed water brother Stinky Mahmoud. I've told him flatly that they have to live here whenever they're in this country. Dastard just laughed and said how else?-pointed out that I had invited him to live here, permanently, long ago." Jubal sniffed. "Wouldn't be so bad if he would just do it. I might even get some work out of her. Maybe."

            "You probably would. She likes to work. And the other two are pregnant?"

            "Higher 'n a kite. I'm refreshing myself in O.B. because they both say they're going to have 'em at home. And what a crimp that's going to put into my working habits! Worse than kittens. But why do you assume that neither of the two turgescent tummies belongs to the bride?"

            "Oh- Why, I suppose I assumed that Stinky was more conventional than that . . . or maybe more cautious."

            "Stinky wouldn't be given a ballot. Ben, in the eighty or ninety years I have given to this subject, trying to trace out the meanderings of their twisty little minds, the only thing that I have learned for certain about women is that when a gal is gonna, she's gonna. All a man can do is cooperate with the inevitable."

            Ben thought ruefully about times when he had resorted to fast footwork-and other times when he hadn't been fast enough. "Yeah, you're right. Well, which one isn't getting married or anything? Miriam? Or Anne?"

            "Hold it, I didn't say the bride was pregnant ... and anyhow, you seem to be assuming that Dorcas is the prospective bride. You haven't kept your eyes open. It's Miriam who is studying Arabic like mad, so she can do it right."

            "Huh? Well, I'll be a cross-eyed baboon!"

            "You obviously are."

            "But Miriam was always snapping at Stinky-"

            "And to think that they trust you with a newspaper column. Ever watch a bunch of sixth-graders?"

            "Yes, but- Dorcas did everything but a nautch dance."

            "That is just Dorcas's natural, normal behavior with all men. She used it toward you, too-although I suppose you were too preoccupied elsewhere to realize it. Never mind. Just be sure that when Miriam shows you her ring-the size of a roe's egg and about as scarce-be sure to be surprised. And I'm damned if I'll sort out which two are spawning, so that you'll be certain to be surprised. Just remember that they are pleased about it . . . which is why I tipped you off ahead of time, so that you wouldn't make the mistake of thinking that they thought they were 'caught.' They don't. They weren't. They're smug." Jubal sighed. "But I'm not. I'm getting too old to enjoy the patter of little feet when I'm busy ... and contrariwise, I won it lose perfect secretaries-and kids that I love, as you know-for any reason if I can possibly induce them to stay. But I must say that this household has become steadily more disorganized ever since the night Jill kicked Mike's feet out from under him. Not that I blame her and I don't think you do, either."

            "No, I don't, but-Jubal, let me get this straight. Are you under the impression that Jill started Mike on his merry rounds?"

            "Huh?" Jubal looked startled, then thought back-and admitted to himself that he had never known . . . he had simply assumed it from the fact that when it came to a decision, Jill had been the one who had gone away with Mike. "Who was it?"

            "'Don't be nosy, bub,' as you would put it. If she wants to tell you, she will. However, Jill told me-straightened me out when I made the same jumping-to-conclusions that you did. Mmm-" Ben thought. "As I understand it, which one of the four happened to score the first run was more or less chance."

            "Mmm ... yes. I believe you're right."

            "Jill thinks so. Except that she thinks Mike was exceedingly lucky in happening to seduce, or be seduced by (if! have the proper verb)-by the one best fitted to start him off right. Which may give you some hint if you know anything about how Jill's mind works."

            "Hell, I don't even know how mine works ... and as for Jill, I would never have expected her to take up preaching no matter how lovestruck she was-so I certainly don't know how her mind works."

            "She doesn't do much preaching-we'll get to that. Jubal, what do you read from the calendar?"

            "Huh?"

            "You know what I mean. You think Mike did it-in both cases. Or you think so if his visits home match up in either or both cases."

            Jubal said guardedly, "Why do you say that, Ben? I've said nothing to lead you to think so."

            "The hell you haven't. You said that they were smug, both of them. I know all too well the effect that goddam superman has on women."

            "Hold it, son-he's your water brother."

            Ben said levelly, "I know it-and I love him, too. If! ever decided to go gay, Mike would be my only choice. But that's all the more reason why I understand why they are smug."

            Jubal stared at his glass. "Maybe they just hope. Ben, seems to me your name could be on the list, even easier than Mike's. Yes?"

            "Jubal, you're out of your mind!"

            "Take it easy. Nobody is trying to make you get married, I promise you-why, I haven't even painted my shotgun white. While I am not snoopy and I never hold a bed check around here and I really do, so help me by all the Billion Names of God, believe in not poking my nose into other people's business, nevertheless while I may be out of my mind-a 'least hypothesis' more than once, the last couple of years-I do have normal eyesight and hearing . . . and if a brass band parades through my home, fortissimo, I'll notice it eventually. Question: You've slept under this roof dozens of times. Did you, on at least one of those nights, sleep alone?"

            "Why, you scoundrel! Uh, I slept alone the very first night I was ever here."

            "Dorcas must have been off her feed. No, I remember, you were under sedative that night. You were my patient-doesn't count. Some other night? Just one?"

            "Your question is irrelevant, immaterial, and beneath my notice."

            "That's an adequate answer, I think. But please note that the added bedrooms are as far from my bedroom as possible. Soundproofing is never perfect."

            "Jubal, it seems to me that your name is much higher up that list than mine can possibly be."

            "What?"

            "Not to mention Larry and Duke. But, Jubal, almost everybody who knows you assumes that you are keeping the fanciest harem since the Sultan went out of business. Oh, don't misunderstand me-they envy you. But they think you're a lecherous old goat, too."

            Jubal drummed on the arm of his chair before replying. "Ben, I ordinarily do not mind being treated flippantly by my juniors. I encourage it, as you know. But in some matters I insist that my years be treated with respect. This is one of them."

            "Sorry," Ben said stiffly. "I thought if it was all right for you to kick my sex life around, you would not mind my being equally frank."

            "No, no, no, Ben!-you misunderstand me. Your inquiry was in order and your side comments no more than I had invited. I mean that I require the girls to treat me with respect-on this one subject."

            "Oh-"

            "I am, as you pointed out, old-quite old. Privately, to you alone, I am happy to say that I am still lecherous. But my lechery does not command me and I am not a goat. I prefer dignity and self-respect to indulging in pastimes which, believe me, I have already enjoyed in full measure and do not need to repeat. Ben, a man my age, who looks like a slum clearance in its most depressing stages, can attract a young girl enough to bed her- and possibly big her and thanks for the compliment; it just possibly might not be amiss-through three means only: money . . . or second, the equivalent of money in terms of wills and community property and the like and-pause for question: Can you imagine any of these three girls- these four, let me include Jill-bedding with a man, even a young and handsome one, for those reasons?"

            "No. Categorical no-not any of them."

            "Thank you, sir. I associate only with ladies; I see that you know it. The third incentive is a most female one. A sweet young girl can, and sometimes does, take an old wreck to bed because she is fond of him and sorry for him and wishes to make him happy. Would that reason apply here?"

            "Uh ... yes, Jubal, I think it might. With all four of them."

            "I think it might, too. Although I'd hate like hell to have any of them sorry for me. But this third reason which any of these four ladies might find sufficient motivation is not sufficient motivation for me. I wouldn't put up with it. I have my dignity, sir-and I hope that I retain my reason long enough to extinguish myself if it ever appears about to slip. So please take my name off the list."

            Caxton grinned. "Okay-you stiff-necked old coot. I just hope that when I am your age I won't be so all-fired hard to tempt."

            Jubal smiled. "Believe me, it's better to be tempted and resist, than not to resist and be disappointed. Now about Duke and Larry: I don't know nor care. Whenever anyone has come here, to work and live as a member of the family, I have made it bluntly plain that this was neither a sweat shop nor a whore house, but a home . . . and, as such, it combined anarchy and tyranny without a trace of democracy, as in any well-run family, i.e., that they were utterly on their own except where I saw fit to give orders, which orders were not subject to vote or debate. My tyranny has never extended to their love life, if any. All the kids who live here have always chosen to keep their private matters reasonably private. At least-" Jubal smiled ruefully. "-until the Martian influence caused things to get a little out of hand . . . which includes you, too, my water brother. But Duke and Larry have been more restrained, in one sense or the other. Perhaps they have been dragging the gals behind every bush. If so, I haven't seen it-and there have been no screams."

            Ben thought of adding a little to Jubal's store of facts, decided against it. "Then you think it's Mike."

            Jubal scowled. "Yep, I think it's Mike. That part's all right-I told you the girls were smugly happy . . . and I'm not broke plus the fact that I could bleed Mike for any amount without telling the girls. Their babies won't lack. But, Ben, I'm troubled about Mike himself. Very."

            "So am I, Jubal."

            "And about Jill, too. I should have named Jill."

            "Uh ... Jubal, Jill isn't the problem-other than for me, personally. And that's my hard luck, I hold no grudge. It's Mike."

            "Damn it, why can't the boy come home and quit this obscene pulpit pounding?"

            "Mmm ... Jubal, that's not quite what he's doing." Ben added, "I've just come from there."

            "Huh? Why didn't you say so?"

            Ben sighed. "First you wanted to talk art, then you wanted to sing the blues, then you wanted to gossip. What chance have I had?"

            "Uh ... conceded. You have the floor."

            "I was coming back from covering the Cape Town conference; I squeezed out a day and visited them. What I saw worried the hell out of me-so much so that I stopped just long enough in Washington to get a few columns ahead, then came straight here. Jubal, couldn't you rig it with Douglas to shut off the faucet and close down this operation?"

            Jubal shook his head. "In the first place, I wouldn't. What Mike does with his life is his business."

            "You would if you had seen what I saw."

            "Not I! But in the second place I can't. Nor can Douglas."

            "Jubal, you know quite well that Mike would accept any decision you made about his money. He probably wouldn't even understand it-and he certainly wouldn't question it."

            "Ah, but he would understand it! Ben, recently Mike made his will, drew it up himself-no attorney-and sent it to me to criticize. Ben, it was one of the shrewdest legal documents I've ever seen. He recognized that he had more wealth than his heirs could possibly need-so he used half his money to guard the other half . . . rigged it so that anyone who contests the will does so to his own great disadvantage. It is a very cynical document in that respect and is booby-trapped not only against possible heirsclaimants of his legal parents and his natural parents-he knows he's a bastard, though I don't know how he found out-but also the same with respect to every member of the Envoy's company . . . he provided a generous way to settle Out of court with any possible unknown heir having a good prima-facie claim-and rigged it so that they would almost have to overthrow the government to go into court and break his will . . . and the will also showed that he knew exactly each stock, bond, security, and asset he owned. I couldn't find anything to criticize in it." (-including, Jubal thought, his provision for you, my brother!) "Then he went to the trouble of depositing holographic originals in several places . . . and Fair-Witness copies in half a dozen reliable brains. Don't tell me that I could rig his money without his understanding what I had done!"

            Ben looked morose. "I wish you could."

            "I don't. But that was just the starter. It wouldn't help if we could. Mike hasn't taken a dollar out of his drawing account for almOst a year. I know, because Douglas called me to ask if I thought the major portion of the backlog should be reinvested? Mike hadn't bothere~l to answer his letters. I told him that was his headache . . . but that if I were steward, I would follow my principal's last instructions."

            "No withdrawals? Jubal, he's spending a lot."

            "Maybe the church racket pays well."

            "That's the odd part about it. The Church of All Worlds is not really church."

            "Then what is it?"

            "Uh, primarily it's a language school."

            "Repeat?"

            "To teach the Martian language."

            "Well, no harm in that. But I wish, then, that he wøuldn't call it a church."

            "Well, I guess it is a church, within the legal definition."

            "Look, Ben, a roller skating rink is a church-as long as some sect claims that roller skating is essential to their faith and a part of their worship. You wouldn't even have to go that far-Simply claim that roller skating served a desirable though not essential function parallel to that which religious music serves in most churches. If you can sing to the glory of God, you can skate to the same end. Believe me, this has all been threshed out. There are temples in Malaya which are nothing to an outsider but boarding houses for snakes . . but the same High Court rules them to be 'churches' as protects our own sects."

            "Well, Mike raises snakes, too, as well as teaching Martian. But, Jubal, isn't anything ruled out?"

            "Mmm ... that's a moot point. There are minor restrictiOnS, adjudicated. A church usually can't charge a fee for fortune telling or calling up spirits of the dead_but it can accept offerings . . . and then let custom make the 'offerings' become fees in fact. Human sacrifice is illegal everywhere-but I'm by no means sure that it is not still done in several spots around the globe-and probably right here in this former land of the free and home of the brave. The way to do anything under the guise of religion that would otherwise be suppressed is to do it in the inner sanctum and keep the gentiles out. Why, Ben? Is Mike doing something that might get him jailed or hanged?"

            "Uh, I don't know. Probably not."

            "Well, if he's careful- The Fosterites have demonstrated how to get by with almost anything. Certainly much more than Joseph Smith was lynched for."

            "Matter of fact, Mike has lifted quite a lot from the Fosterites. That's part of what worries me."

            "But what does worry you? Specifically."

            "Uh, Jubal, this has got to be a 'water brother' matter."

            "Okay, I had assumed that. I'm prepared to face redhot pincers and the rack, if necessary. Shall I start carrying poison in a hollow tooth? Against the possibility of cracking?"

            "Uh, the members of the inner circle are supposed to be able to discorporate voluntarily any second-no poison needed."

            "I'm sorry, Ben. I never got that far. Never mind, I know other adequate ways to put up the only final defense against the third degree. Let's have it."

            "You can discorporate at will, they tell me-if you learn Martian first. Never mind. Jubal, I said Mike raises snakes. I meant that both figuratively and literally-the whole setup is a snake pit. UnhealthY.

            "But let me describe it. Mike's Temple is a big place, almost a labyrinth. A big auditorium for public meetings, some smaller ones for invitational meetings-many smaller rooms-and living quarters-quite a lot of living quarters. Jill sent me a radiogram telling me where to go, so I was dxopped at the living quarters entrance on the street the Temple backs onto. The living quarters are above the main auditOrium, about as private as you can be and still live in a city."

            Jubal nodded. "Makes sense. Be your acts legal or illegal, nosy neighbors are noxious."

            "In this case a very good idea. A pair of outer doors let me in; I suppose I was scanned first, although I didn't spot the scanner. Through two more sets of automatic doors any one of which would slow down a raiding squad-then up a bounce tube. Jubal, it wasn't an ordinary bounce tube. It wasn't controlled by the passenger, but by someone out of sight. More evidence that they wanted privacy and meant to have it-a raiding squad would need special climbing gear to get up that way. No stairs anywhere. Didn't feel like the ordinary bounce tube, either-frankly, I avoid them when I can; they make me queasy."

            "I have never used them and never shall," Jubal said firmly.

            "You wouldn't have minded this. I floated up gently as a feather."

            "Not me, Ben. I don't trust machinery. It bites." Jub8l added, "However, I must concede that Mike's mother was one of the great engineers of all times and his father-his real father-was a number one pilot and a competent engineer, or better . . . and both of genius level. If Mike has improved bounce tubes until they are fit for humans, I ought not to be surprised."

            "As may be. I got to the top and was landed without having to grab for it, or depend on safety nets-I didn't see any, to tell the truth. Through more doors that unlocked for me and into an enormous living room. Enormous! Very oddly furnished and rather austere. Jubal, there are people who think you run an odd household here."

            "I can't imagine why. Just plain and comfortable."

            "Well, your ménage is Aunt Jane's Finishing School for Refined Young Ladies compared with the weirdie Mike runs. I'm just barely inside the joint when the first thing I see I don't believe. A babe, tattooed from her chin to her toes-and not a goddam stitch otherwise. Hell, not even the home-grown fig leaf-she was tattooed everywhere. Fantastic!"

            Jubal said quietly, "You're a big-city bumpkin, Ben. I knew a tattooed lady once. Very nice girl. Intense in some ways. But sweet."

            "Well," Ben conceded. "I was giving you a first impression. This gal is very nice, too, once you get adjusted to her pictorial supplement- and the fact that she usually has a snake with her. She's the one who raises them, rather than Mike."

            Jubal shook his head. "I was wondering if by any chance it was the same woman. Fully tattooed women are rather scarce these days. But the lady I knew, some thirty years back-too old now to be this one, I suppose -had the usual vulgar fear of snakes, to excess. However, I'm fond of snakes myself . . . I look forward to meeting your friend. I hope."

            "You will when you visit Mike. She's sort of a majordomo for him- and a priestess, if you'll pardon the word. Patricia-but called 'Pat,' or 'Patty.'"

            "Oh, yes! Jill has spoken of her ... and thinks very highly of her. Never mentioned her tattoos, however. Probably didn't think it was relevant. Or perhaps none of my business."

            "But she's nearly the right age to be your friend. She says. When I said 'babe' I was again giving a first impression. She looks to be in her twenties; she claims her oldest child is that old. Anyhow, she trotted up to meet me, all big smile, put her anns around me and kissed me. 'You're Ben, I know. Welcome, brother! I give you water!'

            "You know me, Jubal. I've been in the newspaper racket for years- I've been around. But I had never been kissed by a totally strange babe dressed only in tattoos . . . who was determined to be as friendly and affectionate as a collie pup. I was embarrassed."

            "Poor Ben. My heart bleeds."

            "Damn it, you would have felt the same way."

            "No. Remember, I've met one tattooed lady. They feel completely dressed in those tattoos-and rather resent having to put on clothes. Or at least this was true of my friend Sadako. Japanese, she was. But of course the Japanese are not body conscious the way we are."

            "Well," Ben answered. "Pat isn't exactly body conscious, either-just about her tattoos. She wants to be stuffed and mounted, nude, when she dies, as a tribute to George."

            "'George'?"

            "Sorry. Her husband. Up in heaven, to my relief ... although she talked about him as if he had just slipped out for a short beer. While she was behaving as if she expected a trial mounting and stuffing any moment. But, essentially, Pat is a lady . . . and she didn't let me stay embarrassed-"

XXXI

            PATRICIA HAD HER ARMS around Ben Caxton and gave him the all-out kiss of brotherhood before he knew what hit him. She felt at once his unease and was herself surprised, because Michael had told her to expect him, given her Ben's face in her mind, had explained that Ben was a brother in all fullness, of the Inner Nest, and she knew that Jill was growncloser with Ben second only to that with Michael . . . which was always necessarily first since Michael was the fountain and source of all their knowledge of the water of life.

            But the foundation of Patricia's nature was an endless wish to make other people as happy as she was; she slowed down. She invited Ben to get rid of his clothes but did so casually and did not press the matter, except to ask him to remove his shoes, with the explanation that the Nest was everywhere kind to bare feet and the unstated corollary that street shoes would not be kind to it-it was soft and clean as only Michael's powers could keep things clean, which Ben could see for himself.

            Aside from that she merely pointed out where to hang any clothes he found too warm for the Nest and hurried away to fetch him a drink. She didn't ask his preferences; she knew them from Jill. She merely decided that he would choose a double martini this time rather than Scotch and soda, the poor dear looked tired. When she came back with a drink for each of them, Ben was barefooted and had removed his street jacket. "Brother, may you never thirst."

            "We share water," he agreed and drank. "But there's mighty little water in that."

            "Enough," she answered. "Michael says that the water could be completely in the thought; it is the sharing. I grok he speaks rightly."

            "I grok. And it's just what I needed. Thanks, Patty."

            "Ours is yours and you are ours. We're glad you're safely home. Just now the others are all at services or teaching. But there's no hurry; they will come when waiting is filled. Would you like to look around your Nest?"

            Still puzzled but interested Ben let her lead him on a guided tour. Some parts of it were commonplace: a huge kitchen with a bar at one end-rather short on gadgets and having the same kind-to-the-feet floor covering as elsewhere, but not notable otherwise save for size-a library even more loaded than Jubal's, bathrooms ample and luxurious, bedrooms- Ben decided that they must be bedrooms although they contained no beds but simply floors that were even softer than elsewhere; Patty called them "little nests" and showed him one she said she usually slept in.

            It contained her snakes.

            It had been fitted on one side for the comfort of snakes. Ben suppressed his own slight queasiness about snakes until he came to the cobras. "It's all right," she assured him. "We did have glass in front of them. But Michael has taught them that they must not come past this line."

            "I think I would rather trust glass."

            "Okay, Ben." In remarkably short order she replaced the glass barrier, front and top. But he was relieved when they left, even though he managed to stroke Honey Bun when invited to. Before returning to the huge living room Pat showed him one other room. It was large, circular, had a floor which seemed almost as cushiony as that of the bedrooms, and no furniture. In its center was a round pool of water, almost a swimming pool. "This," she told him, "is the Innermost Temple, where we receive new brothers into the Nest." She went over and dabbled a foot in the water. "Just right," she said. "Want to share water and grow closer? Or maybe just swim?"

            "Uh, not right now."

            "Waiting is," she agreed. They returned to the living room and Patricia went to get him another drink. Ben settled himself on a big, very comfortable couch-then got up at once. The place was too warm for him, that first drink was making him sweat, and leaning back on a couch that adjusted itself too well to his contours made him just that much hotter. He decided it was damn silly to dress the way he would in Washington, warm as it was in here-and with Patty decked out in nothing but ink and a bull snake she had left around her shoulders during the latter part of the tour that reptile would keep him from temptation even if it wasn't already clearly evident that Patty was not trying to be provocative.

            He compromised by leaving on jockey shorts and hung his other clothes in the foyer. As he did so, he noticed a sign printed on the inside of the door through which he had entered: "Did You Remember to Dress?"

            He decided that, in this odd household, this gentle warning might be necessary if any were absent-minded. Then he saw something else that he had missed on coming in, his attention earlier having been seized by the sight of Patty herself. On each side of the door was a large bowl, as gross as a bushel basket-and each was tilled with money.

            More than filled- Federation notes of various denominations spilled out on the floor.

            He was staring at this improbability when Patricia returned. "Here's your drink, Brother Ben. Grow close in Happiness."

            "Uh, thanks." His eyes returned to the money.

            She followed his glance. "You must think I'm a sloppy housekeeper, Ben-and I am. Michael makes it so easy, most of the cleaning and such, that I forget" She squatted down, retrieved the money, stuffed it into the less crowded bowl.

            "Patty, why in the world?"

            "Oh. We keep it here because this door leads out to the street. Just for convenience. If one of us is leaving the Nest-and I do, myself, almost every day for grocery shopping-we are likely to need money. So we keep it where you won't forget to take some with you."

            "You mean ... just grab a handful and go?"

            "Why, of course, dear. Oh, I see what you mean. But there is never anyone here but us. No visitors, ever. If any of us have friends outside- and, of course, all of us do-there are plenty of nice rooms lower down, the ordinary Sort that outsiders are used to, where we can visit with them. This money isn't where it can tempt a weak person."

            "Huh! I'm pretty weak, myself!"

            She chuckled gently at his joke. "How can it tempt you when it's already yours? You're part of the Nest."

            "Uh ... I suppose so. But don't you worry about burglars?" He was trying to guess how much money one of those bowls contained. Most of the notes seemed to be larger than singles-hell, he could see one with three zeroes on it still on the floor, where Patty had missed it in her tidying up.

            "One did get in, just last week."

            "So? How much did he steal?"

            "Oh, he didn't. Michael sent him away."

            "Called the cops?"

            "Oh, no, no- Michael would never turn anybody over to the cops. I grok that would be a wrongness Michael just-" She shrugged. "-made him go away. Then Duke fixed the hole in the skylight in the garden room-did I show you that? It's lovely ... a grass floor. But I remember that you have a grass floor, Jill told me. That's where Michael first saw one. Is it grass all over? Every room?"

            "Just my living room."

            "If I ever get to Washington, can I walk on it? Lie down on it? Please?"

            "Of course, Patty. Uh, ..it's yours."

            "I know, dear. But it's not in the Nest, and Michael has taught us that it is good to ask, even when we know the answer is yes. I'll lie on it and feel the grass against me and be filled with Happiness to be in my brother's 'little nest.'

            "You'll be most welcome, Patty." Ben reminded himself sharply that he didn't give a hoot in hell what his neighbors thought-but he hoped she would leave her snakes behind. "When will you be there?"

            "I don't know. When waiting is filled. Maybe Michael knows."

            "Well, warn me if you can, so I'll be in town. If not, Jill always knows the code for my door-I change it occasionally. Patty, doesn't anybody keep track of this money?"

            "What for, Ben?"

            "Uh, people usually do."

            "Well, we don't. Just help yourself as you go out-then put back any you have left when you conic home, if you remember to. Michael told rue to keep the grouch bag filled. If it runs low I get some more from him."

            Ben dropped the matter, stonkered by the simplicity of the arrangement. He already had some idea, from Mike and second-hand from Jill and Jubal, of the moneyless communism of the Martian culture; he could see that Mike had set up an enclave of it here-and these bowls of cash marked the transition point whereby one passed from Martian to Terran economy. He wondered if Patty knew that it was a fake . . - bolstered up by Mike's enormous fortune. He decided not to ask.

            "Patty, how many are there in the Nest?" He felt a mild worry that he was acquiring too many sharing brothers without his consent, then shoved back the thought as unwOrthy after all, why would any of them want to sponge on him? Other than, possibly to lie on his grass rug~-he didn't have any pots of gold just inside his door.

            "Let me see ... there are almost twenty now, ~ountiflg novitiate brothers who don't really think in Martial) yet and aren't ordained."

            "Are you ordained, Patty?"

            "Oh, yes. But mostly I teach. Beginners' classes in Martian, and I help novitiate brothers and such. And Dawn and I-Dawn and Jill are each High Priestes -Dawn and I are pretty well-known Fosterites, especially Dawn, so we work together to show other FosteriteS that the Church of All Worlds doesn't conflict with the Faith, any more than being a Bapfist keeps a man from joining the Masons." She showed Ben Foster's kiss, explained what it meant, and showed him also its miraculous companion placed by Mike.

            "They all know what Foster's kiss means and how hard it is to win it and by then they've seen some of Mike's miracles and they are just about ripe to buckle down and sweat to climb into a higher circle."

            "It's an effort?"

            "Of course it is, Ben-for them. In your case and mine, and Jill's, and a few others-YOU know them all-Michael called us straight into brotherhood. But to others Michael first teaches a discipline-not a faith but a way to realize faith in works. And that means they've got to start by learning Martian. That's not easy; I'm not perfect in it myself. But it is much Happiness to work and learn. You asked about the size of the Nest-let me see, Duke and Jim and Michael and myself-two Fosterites, Dawn and myself . . . one circumcised Jew and his wife and four children-"

            "Kids in the Nest?"

            "Oh, more than a dozen. Not here, but in the nestlings' nest just off of here; nobody could meditate with kids hooting and hollering and raising Ned, Want to see it?"

            "Uh, later."

            "One Catholic couple with a baby boy-excommunicated I'm sorry to say; their priest found out about it. Michael had to give them very special help; it was a nasty shock to them-and so utterly unnecessary. They were getting up early every Sunday morning to go to mass just as usual-but kids will talk. One Mormon family of the new schism-that's three more, and their kids. The rest are the usual run of Protestants and one atheist . . . that is, he thought he was an atheist, until Michael opened his eyes. He came here to scoff; he stayed to learn . . - and he'll be a priest before long. Uh, nineteen grown-ups-I'm pretty sure that's right though it's hard to say, since we're hardly ever all in the Nest at once, except for our own services in the Innermost Temple. The Nest is built to hold eighty-one-that's 'three-filled,' or three times three multiplied by itself-but Michael says that there will be much waiting before we'd need a bigger nest and by then we will be building other nests. Ben? Wouldn't you like to see an outer service, see how Michael makes the pitch, instead of just listening to me ramble on? Michael will be preaching just about now."

            "Why, yes, if it's not too much trouble."

            "You could go by yourself. But I'd like to go with you ... and I'm not busy. Just a see, dearie, while I get decent."

            "Jubal, she was back in a couple of minutes in a robe not unlike Anne's Witness robe but cut differently, with angel-wing sleeves and a high neck and the trademark Mike uses for the Church of All Worlds-nine concentric circles and a conventionalized Sun-embroidered over her heart. This getup was a priestess robe, her vestments; Jill and the other priestesses wear the same sort, except that Patty's was opaque, a heavy synthetic silk, and came so high that it covered her cartoons, and was caught at both wrists for the same reason. She had put on stockings, too, or maybe bobby socks, and was carrying sandals.

            "Changed the hell out of her, Jubal. It gave her great dignity. Her face is quite nice and I could see that she was considerably older than I had first guessed her although not within twenty years of what she claims to be. She has an exquisite complexion and I thought what a shame it was that anyone had ever touched a tattooing needle to such skin.

            "I had dressed again. She asked me to take off just my shoes because we weren't going out the way I had come in. She led me back through the Nest and out into a corridor; we stopped to put on shoes and went down a ramp that wound down maybe a couple of floors until we reached a gallery. It was sort of a loge overlooking the main auditorium. Mike was holding forth on the platform. No pulpit, no altar, just a lecture hall, with a big All-Worlds symbol on the wall behind him. There was a robed priestess on the platform with him and, at that distance, I thought it was Jill- but it wasn't; it was another woman who looks a bit like her and is almost as beautiful. The other high priestess, Dawn-Dawn Ardent."

            "What was that name?" Jubal interrupted.

            "Dawn Ardent-née Higgins, if you want to be fussy."

            "I've met her."

            "I know you have, you allegedly retired goat. She's got a crush on you..."

            Jubal shook his head. "Some mistake. The 'Dawn Ardent' I mean I just barely met, about two years ago. She wouldn't even remember me."

            "She remembers you. She gets every one of your pieces of commercial crud, on tape, under every pseudonym she has been able to track down. She goes to sleep by them, usually, and they give her beautiful dreams. She says. Furthermore there is no doubt that she knows who you are. Jubal, that big living room, the Nest proper, has exactly one item of ornamentation, if you'll pardon the word-a life-sized color so11y of your head. Looks as if you had been decapitated, with your face in a hideous grin. A candid shot that Duke sneaked of you, I understand."

            "Why, that brat!"

            "Jill asked him to, behind your back."

            "Double brat!"

            "Sir, you are speaking of the woman I love-although I'm not alone in that distinction. But Mike put her up to it. Brace yourself, Jubal-you are the patron saint of the Church of All Worlds."

            Jubal looked horrified. "They can't do this to me!"

            "They already have. But don't worry; it's unofficial and not publicized. But Mike freely gives you credit, inside the Nest just among water brothers, for having instigated the whole show and explained things to him so well that he was finally able to figure out how to put over Martian theology to humans."

            Jubal looked about to retch. Ben went on, "I'm afraid you can't duck it. But in addition, Dawn thinks you're beautiful. Aside from that quirk, she is an intelligent woman-and utterly charming. But I digress. Mike spotted us at once, waved and called out, 'Hi, Ben! Later'-and went on with his spiel.

            "Jubal, I'm not going to try to quote him, you'll just have to hear it. He didn't sound preachy and he didn't wear robes-just a smart, welltailored, white syntholinen suit. He sounded like a damned good car salesman, except that there was no doubt he was talking about religion. He cracked jokes and told parables-none of them straitlaced but nothing really dirty, either. The essence of it was a sort of pantheism . . . one of his parables was the oldy about the earthworm burrowing along through the soil who encounters another earthworm and at once says, 'Oh, you're beautiful! You're lovelyl Will you marry me?' and is answered: 'Don't be silly! I'm your other end.' You've heard it before?"

            "'Heard it?' I wrote it!"

            "I hadn't realized it was that old. Anyhow, Mike made good use of it. His idea is that whenever you encounter any other grokking thing-he didn't say 'grokking' at this stage-any other living thing, man, woman, or stray cat . . . you are simply encountering your 'other end' . . . and the universe is just a little thing we whipped up among us the other night for our entertainment and then agreed to forget the gag. He put it in a much more sugar-coated fashion, being extremely careful not to tread on competitors' toes."

            Jubal nodded and looked sour. "Solipsism and Pantheism. Teamed together they can explain anything. Cancel out any inconvenient fact, reconcile all theories, and include any facts or delusions you care to name. Trouble is, it's just cotton candy, all taste and no substance-and as unsatisfactory as solving a story by saying: '-and then the little boy fell out of bed and woke up; it was just a dream.'"

            "Don't crab at me about it; take it up with Mike. But believe me, he made it sound convincing. Once he stopped and said, 'You must be tired of so much talk-' and they yelled back, 'No!'-I tell you, he really had them. But he protested that his voice was tired and, anyhow, a church ought to have miracles and this was a church, even though it didn't have a mortgage. 'Dawn, fetch me my miracle box.' Then he did some really amazing sleight-of-hand. Did you know he had been a magician with a carnival?"

            "I knew he had been with it. He never told me the exact nature of his shame."

            "He's a crackerjack magician; he did stunts for them that had me fooled. But it wouldn't have mattered if it had been only the card tricks kids learn; it was his patter that had them rolling in the aisles. Finally he stopped and said apologeticallY~ 'The Man from Mars is supposed to be able to do wonderful things . . . so I have to pass a few miracles each meeting. I can't help being the Man from Mars; it's just something that happened to me. But miracles can happen for you, too, if you want them. However, to be allowed to see anything more than these narrow-gauge miracles, you must enter the Circle. Those of you who truly want to learn I will see later. Cards are being passed around,'

            "Patty explained to me what Mike was really doing. 'This crowd is just marks, dear-people who come out of curiosity or maybe have been shined in by some of our own people who have reached one of the inner circles.' Jubal, Mike has the thing rigged in nine circles, like degrees in a lodge-and nobody is told that there actually is a circle farther in until they're ready to be inducted into it. 'This is just Michael's bally,' Pat told me, 'which he does as easy as he breathes-while all the time he's feeling them out, sizing them up, getting inside their heads and deciding which ones are even possible. Maybe one in ten. That's why he strings it out- Duke is up behind that grille and Michael tells him every mark who just might measure up, where he sits and everything. Michael's about to turn this tip . . . and spill the ones he doesn't want. Dawn will handle that part, after she gets the seating diagram from Duke.'"

            "How did they work that?" asked Harshaw.

            "I didn't see it, Jubal. Does it matter? There are a dozen ways they could cut from the herd the ones they wanted as long as Mike knew which they were and bad worked out some way to signal Duke. I don't know. Patty says he's clairvoyant and says it with a straight face-and, do you know, I won't discount the possibility. But right after that, they took the collection. Mike didn't do even this in church style-you know, soft music and dignified ushers. He said nobody would believe that this was a church service if be didn't take a collection . . . so he would, but with a difference. Either take it or put it-suit yourself. Then, so help me, they passed collection baskets already loaded with money. Mike kept telling them that this was what the last crowd had left, so help themselves . . . if they were broke or hungry and needed it. But if they felt like giving . . - give. Share with others. Just do one or the other-put something in, or take something out. When I saw it, I figured he had found one more way to get rid of too much money."

            Jubal said thoughtfully, "I'm not sure he would lose by it. That pitch, properly given, should result in more people giving more . . . while a few take just a little. And probably very few. I would say that it would be hard indeed to reach in and take out money when the people on each side of you are putting money in . . unless you need it awfully badly."

            "I don't know, Jubal ... but I understand that they are just as casual about those collections as they are about that stack of dough upstairs. But Patty whisked me away when Mike turned the service over to his high priestess. I was taken to a much smaller auditorium where services were just opening for the seventh circle in-people who had belonged for several months at least and had made progress. If it is progress.

            "Jubal, Mike had gone straight from one to the other, and I couldn't adjust to the change. That outer meeting was half popular lecture and half sheer entertainment-this one was more nearly a voodoo rite. Mike was in robes this time; he looked taller, ascetic, and intense-! swear his eyes gleamed. The place was dimly lighted, there was music that was creepy and yet made you want to dance. This time Patty and I took a double seat together, a couch that was darn near a bed. What the service was all about I couldn't say. Mike would sing out to them in Martian, they would answer in Martian__-except for chants of 'Thou art GodI Thou art God!' which was always echoed by some Martian word that would make my throat sore to try to pronounce it."

            Jubal made a croaking noise. "Was that it?"

            "Huh? I believe it was-allowing for your horrible tall-corn accent. Jubal . . . are you hooked? Have you just been stringing me along?"

            "No. Stinky taught it to me-and he says that it's heresy of the blackest sort. By his lights I mean-I couldn't care less. It's the Martian word Mike translates as: 'Thou art God.' But our brother Mahmoud says that isn't even close to being a translation. It's the universe proclaiming its own self-awareness . . * or it's 'peccavimus' with a total absence of contrition or a dozen other things, all of which don't translate it. Stinky says that not only it can't be translated but that he doesn't really understand it in Martian-except that it is a bad word, the worst possible in his opinion and much closer to Satan's defiance than it is to the blessing of a benevolent God. Go on. Was that all there was to it? Just a bunch of fanatics yelling Martian at each other?"

            "Uh ... Jubal, they didn't yell and it wasn't fanatical. Sometimes they would barely whisper, the room almost dead quiet. Then it might climb in volume a little but not much. They did it in sort of a rhythm, a pattern, like a cantata, as if they had rehearsed it a long time . . . and yet it didn't feel as if they had rehearsed it; it felt more as if they were all just one person, humming to himself whatever he felt at the moment. Jubal, you've seen how the Fosterites get themselves worked up-"

            "Too much of it, I'm sorry to say."

            "Well, this was not that sort of frenzy at all; this was quiet and easy, like dropping off to sleep. It was intense all right and got steadily more so, but-Jubal, ever sit in on a spiritualist séance?"

            "I have. I've tried everything I could, Ben."

            "Then you know how the tension can grow without anybody moving or saying a word. This was much more like that than it was like a shouting revival, or even the most sedate church service. But it wasn't mild; it packed terrific wallop."

            "The technical word is 'Apollonian.'"

            "Huh?"

            "As opposed to 'Dionysian.' And both rather Procrustean I'm sorry to say. People tend to simplify 'Apollonian' into 'mild,' and 'calm,' and 'cool.' But 'Apollonian' and 'Dionysian' are two sides of the same coin-a nun on her knees in her cell, holding perfectly still and her facial muscles relaxed, can be in a religious ecstasy more frenzied than any priestess of Pan Priapus celebrating the vernal equinox. Ecstasy is in the skull, not in the setting-up exercises." Jubal frowned. "Another common error is to identify 'Apollonian' with 'good'-merely because our most respectable sects are all rather Apollonian in ritual and precept. Mere local prejudice. Proceed."

            "Well ... things weren't as quiet as a nun at her devotions anyhow. They didn't just stay seated and let Mike entertain them. They wandered about a bit, swapped seats, and there was no doubt that there was necking going on; no more than necking, I believe, but the lighting was very low key and it was hard to see from one pew to another. One gal wandered over our way, started to join us, but Patty gave her some sign to let us be so she just kissed us and left." Ben grinned. "Kissed quite well, too, though she didn't daily about it. I was the only person not dressed in a robe; I was as conspicuous as a space suit in a salon. But she gave no sign of noticing.

            "The whole thing was very casual ... and yet it seemed as coordinated as a ballerina's muscles. Mike kept busy, sometimes out in front, sometimes wandering among the others-once he squeezed my shoulder and kissed Patty, unhurriedly but quickly. He didn't speak to me. Back of the spot where he stood when he seemed to be leading them was some sort of a dingus like a magic mirror, or possibly a big stereo tank; he used it for 'miracles,' only at this stage he never used the word-at least not in English. Jubal, every church promises miracles. But it's always jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, never jam today."

            "Exception," Jubal interrupted again. "Many of them deliver as a matter of routine-exempli gratia among many: Christian Scientists and Roman Catholics."

            "Catholics? You mean Lourdes?"

            "The example included Lourdes, for what it may be worth. But I referred to the Miracle of Transubstantiation, called forth by every Catholic priest at least daily."

            "Hmm- Well, I can't judge that subtle a miracle. To a heathen outsider like myself that sort of miracle is impossible to test. As for Christian Scientists, I won't argue-but if I break a leg, I want a sawbones."

            "Then watch where you put your feet," Jubal growled. "Don't bother me with your fractures."

            "Wouldn't think of it. I want one who wasn't a classmate of William Harvey."

            "Harvey could reduce a fracture. Proceed."

            "Yeah, but how about his classmates? Jubal, those things you cited as miracles may be such-but Mike offers splashy ones, ones the cash customers can see. He's either an expert illusionist, one who would make the fabled Houdini look clumsy ... or an amazing hypnotist-"

            "He might be both."

            "-or he's smoothed the bugs out of closed-circuit stereovision to the point where it simply cannot be told from reality, for his special effects. Or 'I've been 'ad fer a button, dearie.'"

            "How can you rule out real miracles, Ben?"

            "I included them with the button. It's not a theory I like to think about. Whatever he used, it was good theater. Once the lights came up behind him and here was a black~mafled lion, lying as stately and sedately as if guarding library steps, while a couple of little lambs wobbled around him. The lion just blinked and yawned. Sure, Hollywood can tape that sort of special effect any day-but it looked real, so much so that I thought I smelled the lion . . . and of course that can be faked, too."

            "Why do you insist on fakery?"

            "Damn it, I'm trying to be judicial!"

            "Then don't lean over backwards so far you fall down. Try to emulate Anne."

            "I'm not Anne. And I wasn't very judicial at the time. I just lounged back and enjoyed it, in a warm glow. It didn't even annOY me that I couldn't understand most of what was said; it felt as if I got the gist of it. Mike did a lot of gang-ho miracles-or illusions. Levitation and such. I wasn't being critical, I was willing to enjoy it as good showmanship Patty slipped away toward the end after whispering to me to stay where I was and she would be back. 'Michael has just told them that any who do not feel ready for the next circle should now 'eave,' she told me.

            "I said, 'I guess I had better leave, too.'

            "And she said, 'Oh, no, dear-You're already Ninth Circle-Y0U know that. Just stay seated, I'll be back.' And she left.

            "I don't think anybody decided to chicken out. This group was not only Seventh Circle but Seventh Circlers who were all supposed to be promoted. But I didn't really notice for the lights came up again . . . and there was Jill!

            "Jubal, this time it definitely did not feel like stereoviSiofl. Jill picked me out with her eyes and smiled at me. Oh, I know, if the person being photograPhed looks directly at the cameras, then the eyes meet yours no matter where you're seated But if Mike has it smoothed out this well, he had better patent it. Jill was dressed in an outlandish costume-~ priestess outfit, I suppoSe~ but not like the others. Mike started intoning something to her and to us, partly in English ... stuff about the Mother of All, the unity of many, and started calling her by a series of names . . and with each name her costume changed-"

            Ben Caxton came quickly alert when the lights came up behind the High Priest and he saw Jill Boardmafl posed, above and behind the priest. He blinked and made sure that he had not again been fooled by lighting and distance-this was Jill She looked back at him and smiled. He half listened to the invocation while thinking that he had been convinced that the space behind the Man from Mars was surely a stereo tank, or some gitumick. But he could almost swear that he could walk up those steps and pinch her. He was tempted to do so-then reminded himself that it would be a crummY trick to ruin Mike's show. Wait till it was over and Jill was free- "Cybele!" -and Jill's costume suddenly changed-again

            "Frigg!"

            "Gel"

            "Devil"

            "Ishtar!"

            "Maryam"

            "Mother Eve! Mater Deus Magna! Loving and Beloved, Life Undying-"

            Caxton stopped hearing the woids . . . for Jill suddenly was Mother Eve, clothed only in her own glory. The light spread and he saw that she was standing gently at rest in a Garden, beside a tree around and on which was twined a great serpent.

            Jill smiled at them all, turned a little, reached up and smoothed the serpent's head turned back and opened her arms to all of them.   The first of the candidates moved forward to enter the Garden.   Patty returned and touched Caxton on the shoulder. "Ben, I'm back. Come with me, dear."

            Caxton was reluctant, he wanted to stay and drink in the glorious vision of Jill . . . he wanted to do more than that; he wanted to join that proceSsiOn and go where she was. But he found himself getting up and leaving with Patricia. He looked back and saw Mike about to put his arms around and kiss the first woman in the line . . . turned to follow Patricia outside and failed to see the candidates' robe vanish as Mike kissed her- and did not see what followed at once, when Jill kissed the first male candidate for elevation to the eighth circle...and his robe vanished.

            "We have to go long way 'round," Patty explained~ "to give them time to get clear and on into the Temple of the Eighth Circle. Oh, it wouldn't actually hurt to barge in, but it would waste Michael's time, getting them back in the mooa-and he does work so very hard."

            "Where are we going now?"

            "To pick up Honey Bun. Then back to the Nest. Unless you want to take part in the initiation to the Eighth Circle. You can, you know, since you're Ninth Circle. But you haven't learned Martian yet; you'd find it very confusing."

            "Well-I'd like to see Jill. When will she be free?"

            "Oh. She told me to tell you that she was going to duck upstairs and see you. Down this way, Ben."

            A door opened and Ben found himself in the garden he had seeD. The serpent was still festooned on the tree; she raised her head as they came in. "There, there, dears" Patricia said to her. "You were Mama's good girl, weren't you?" She gently unwrapped the boa and flaked it down into a basket, tail first. "Duke brought her down for me but I have to arrange her on the tree and tell her to stay there and not go wandering off. You were lucky, Ben; a transition service from Seventh to Eighth happens very seldom-Michael won't hold it until there are enough candidateS ready to build and hold the mood ... although we used to supply people out of the Innermost Circle to help the first candidates from outside through."

            Ben carried Honey Bun for Patty until they reached the top level and learned that a fourteen-foot snake is quite a load; the basket had steel braces and needed them. As soon as they were that high, Patricia stopped. "Put her down, Ben." She took off her robe and handed it to him, then go out the snake and draped it around her. "This is Honey Bun's reward for being a good girl; she expects to cuddle up to Mama. I've got a class starting almost at once, so I'll walk the rest of the way with her on me and let her stay on me until the last possible second. It's not a goodness to disappoint a snake; they're just like babies. They can't grok in fullness, except that Honey Bun groks Mama...and Michael, of course."

            They walked the fifty yards or so to the entrance to the Nest proper and at its door Patricia let Ben take off her sandals for her after he removed his shoes, He wondered bow she could balance on one foot under such a load . . . and noticed, too, that she had gotten rid of her socks or stockings at some point -- no doubt while she was out arranging Honey Bun's stage appearance.

            They went inside and she went with him, still clothed in the big snake, while be shucked down to his jockey shorts-stalling as he did so, trying to make up his mind whether to discard the shorts, too. He had seen enough to be fairly certain that clothing, any clothing, inside the Nest was as unconventional by these conventions (and possibly as rude), as hob-nailed boots on a dance tloor. The gentle warning on the exit door, the fact that there were no windows anywhere in the Nest, the womblike comfort of the Nest itself, Patricia's lack of attire plus the fact that she had suggested (but not insisted) that he do likewise-all added up to an unmistakable pattern of habitual domestic nudity . . . among people who were all at least nominally his own "water brothers," even though he had not met most of them.

            He had seen further confirmation in addition to Patricia, whose behavior he had discounted somewhat from a vague feeling that a tattooed lady might very 'well have odd habits about clothing. On coming into the living room they had passed a man beaded the other way, toward the baths and the "little ~"-and he had worn less than Patricia by one snake and lots of pictures. He had greeted them with "Thou art God" and gone on, apparently as used to buff as Patricia was. But, Ben reminded himself, this "brother" hadn't seemed surprised that Ben was dressed, either.

            There had been other such evidence in the living room: a body sprawled face down on a couch across the room-a woman, Ben thought, although he had not wanted to stare after a quick glance had shown him that this one was naked, too.

            Ben Caxtofl had thought himself to be sophisticated about such things. Swimming without suits be considered only sensible. He knew that many families were casually naked in their own homes-and this was a family, of sorts-although he himself had not been brought up in the custom. He had even (once) let a girl invite him to a nudist resort, and it had not troubled him especially after the first five minutes or so-he had simply regarded it as a silly lot of trouble to go to for the dubiOus pleasures of poison ivy, scratches, and an all-over sunburn that bad put him in bed for a day.

            But now he found himself balanced in perfect indecision, unable to make up his mind between the probable urbanity of removing his symbolic fig leaf . . . and the even stronger probability-certainty he decided-that if he did so and strangers came in who were dressed and stayed that way, he would feel all-fired silly~ Hell, he might even blush!

            "What would you have done, Jubal?" Ben demanded.

            Harshaw lifted his eyebrows. "Axe you expecting me to be shocked, Ben? I have seen the human body, professionally and otherwise, for most of a century. It is often pleasing to the eye, frequently most depressiflg and never significant per se. Only in the subjective value the viewer places on the sight. I grok Mike runs his household along nudist lines. Shall I cheer? Or must I cry? Neither. It leaves me unmoved."

            "Damn it man!, it's easy for you to sit there and be Olympian about it-you weren't faced with the choice. I've never seen you take off your pants in company."

            "Nor are you likely to. 'Other times, other customs.' But I grok you were not motivated by modesty. You were suffering from a morbid fear of appearing ridiculous-a well-known phobia with a long, pseudo-Greek name with which I shall not bore you."

            "Nonsense! I simply wasn't certain what was polite."

            "Nonsense to you, sir-YOU already knew what was polite ... but were afraid you might look silly . . or possibly feared being trapped inadvertently in the gallant reflex. But I seem to grok that Mike had a reason for instituting this household custom-Mike always has reasons for everything he does, although some of them seem strange to me."

            "Oh, yes. He has reasons. Jill told me about them."

            Ben Caxton was standing in the foyer, his back to the living room and his hands on his shorts, having told himself, not very firmly, to take the plunge and get it over with-when two arms came snugly around his waist from behind. "Ben darling! How wonderful to have you here!"

            He turned and had Jill in his arms and her mouth warm and greedy against his-and was very glad that he had not quite finished stripping. For she was no longer "Mother Eve"; she was wearing one of the long, allenveloping priestess robes. Nevertheless he was happily aware that he had a double armful of live, warm, and gently squirming girl; her priestly vestment was no greater impediment than would have been a thin gown, and both kinesthetic and tactile senses told him that the rest was Jill.

            "Golly!" she said, breaking from the kiss. "I've missed you, you old beast. Thou art God."

            "Thou art God," he conceded. "Jill, you're prettier than ever."

            "Yes," she agreed. "It does that for you. But I can't tell you what a thrill it gave me to catch your eye at the blow-off."

            "'Blow-off'?"

            "Jill means," Patricia put in, "the end of the service where she is All Mother, Mater Deum Magna. Kids, I must rush."

            "Never hurry, Pattycake."

            "I gotta rush so I won't have to hurry. Ben, I must put Honey Bun to bed and go down and take my class-so kiss me good-night now. Please?"

            Ben found himself kissing good-night a woman still wrapped most thoroughly by a giant snake-and decided that he could think of better ways . . . say wearing full armor. But he tried to ignore Honey Bun and treat Patty as she deserved to be treated.

            Jill kissed her and said, "Stop by and tell Mike to stall until I get there, pretty please."

            "He will anyhow. 'Night, dears." She left unhurriedly.

            "Ben, isn't she a lamb?"

            "She certainly is. Although she had me baffled at first."

            "I grok. But it's not because she's tattooed nor because of her snakes, I know. She baffled you-she baffles everybody-because Patty never has any doubts; she just automatically always does the right thing. She's very much like Mike. She's the most advanced of any of us-she ought to be high priestess. But she won't take it because her tattoos would make some of the duties difficult-be a distraction at least-and she doesn't want them taken off."

            "How could you possibly take off that much tattooing? With a flensing knife? It would kill her."

            "Not at all, dear. Mike could take them off completely, not leave a trace, and not even hurt her. Believe me, dear, he could, But he groks that she does not think of them as belonging to her; she's just their custodian- and he groks with her about it. Come sit down. Dawn will be in with supper for all three of us in a moment-I must eat while we visit or I won't have a chance until tomorrow. That's poor management with all eternity to draw from . . . but I didn't know when you would get here and you happen to arrive on a very full day. But tell me what you think of what you've seen? Dawn tells me you saw an outsiders' service, too."

            "Yes."

            "Well?"

            "Mike," Caxton said slowly, "has certainly blossomed out. I think he could sell shoes to snakes."

            "I'm quite sure he could. But he never would because it would be wrong-snakes don't need them. What's the matter, Ben? I grok there's something bothering you."

            "No," he answered. "Certainly not anything I can put my finger on. Oh, I'm not much for churches ... but I'm not against them exactly- certainly not against this one. I guess I just don't grok it."

            "I'll ask you again in a week or two. There's no hurry."

            "I won't be here even a week."

            "You have some columns on the spike"-it was not a question.

            "Three fresh ones. But I shouldn't stay even that long."

            "I think you will ... then you'll phone in a few . . . probably about the Church. By then I think you will grok to stay much longer."

            "I don't think so."

            "Waiting is, until fullness. You know it's not a church?"

            "Well, Patty did say something of the sort."

            "Let's say it's not a religion. It is a church, in every legal and moral senses-and I suppose our Nest is a monastery. But we're not trying to bring people to God; that's a contradiction in terms, you can't even say it in Martian. We're not trying to save souls, because souls can't be lost. We're not trying to get people to have faith, because what we offer is not faith but truth-truth they can check; we don't urge them to believe it. Truth for practical purposes, for here-and-now, truth as matter of fact as an ironing board and as useful as a loaf of bread . . . so practical that it can make war and hunger and violence and hate as unnecessary as . . . as-well, as clothes here in the Nest. But they have to learn Martian first. That's the only hitch-finding people who are honest enough to believe what they see, and then are willing to do the hard work-it is hard work- of learning the language it can be taught in. A composer couldn't possibly write down a symphony in English . . and this sort of symphony can't be stated in English any more than Beethoven's Fifth can be." She smiled. "But Mike never hurries. Day after day he screens hundreds of people finds a few dozen . . . and out of those a very few trickle into the Nest and he trains them further. And someday Mike will have some of us so thoroughly trained that we can go out and start other nests, and then it can begin to snowball. But there's no hurry. None of us, even us in the Nest, are really trained. Are we, dear?"

            Ben looked up, somewhat startled by Jill's last three words-then was really startled to find bending over him to offer him a plate a woman whom he belatedly recognized as the other high priestess-Dawn, yes, that was right. His surprise was not reduced by the fact that she was dressed in Patricia's fashion, minus tattoos.

            But Dawn was not startled. She smiled and said, "Your supper, my brother Ben. Thou art God."

            "Uh, thou art God. Thanks." He was beyond being surprised when she leaned down and kissed him, then got plates for herself and Jill, sat down on the other side of him and began to eat. He was willing to concede that, if not God, Dawn had the best attributes associated with goddesses; he was rather sorry she had not sat down across from him-he couldn't see her well without being obvious about it.

            "No," Dawn agreed, between bites, "we aren't really trained yet, Jill. But waiting will fill."

            "That's the size of it, Ben," Jill continued. "For example, I took a break to eat. But Mike hasn't had a bite for well over twenty-four hours and won't eat until he's not needed-you happened to bit a crowded day, because of that group making transition to Eighth Circle. Then when Mike is through, he'll eat like a pig and that will carry him as long as necessary. Besides that, Dawn and I get tired . . . don't we, sweet?"

            "We surely do. But I'm not too tired, Gillian. Let me take this service and you can visit with Ben. Give me that robe."

            "You're crazy in your little pointy head, my love-and Mama spank. Ben, she's been on duty almost as long as Mike has. We both can take that long a stretch-but we eat when we're hungry and sometimes we need sleep. Speaking of robes, Dawn, this was the last vanishing robe in the Seventh Temple. I meant to tell Patty she'd better order a gross or two."

            "She has."

            "I should have known. This one seems a little tight." Jill wiggled in it in a fashion that disturbed Ben more than Dawn's perfect and unrobed skin. "Are we putting on weight, Dawn?"

            "I think we are, a little. No matter."

            "Helps, you mean. We were too skinny. Ben, you noticed, didn't you, that Dawn and I have the same figure? Height, bust, waist, hips, weight, everything-not to mention coloration. We were almost the same when we met . . . and then, with Mike's help, we matched up exactly and are holding it that way. Even our faces are getting more alike-but we didn't plan that. That just comes from doing the same things and thinking about the same things. Stand up and let Ben look at us, dear."

            Dawn put her plate aside and did so, in a pose that reminded Ben oddly of Jill, more so than the figure resemblance seemed to justify; then he realized it was the exact pose Jill had been in when she had first stood revealed as Mother Eve.

            Invited to Stare, he did. Jill said, with her mouth full, "See, Ben? That's me."

            Dawn smiled at her. "A razor's edge of difference, Gillian."

            "Pooh. You're getting that control, too. I'm almost sorry we'll never have the same face. It's very handy, Ben, for Dawn and myself to look so much alike. We have to have two high priestesses; it's all two of us can do to keep up with Mike. We can trade places right in the middle of a service -and sometimes do. And besides," she added, swallowing, "Dawn can buy a fitted dress and it fits me, too. Saves me the nuisance of shopping for clothes. When we wear clothes."

            "I wasn't sure," Ben said slowly, "that you still wore clothes at all. Except these priestess things."

            Jill looked surprised. "Do you think we would go out dancing in these? We wear evening dresses, same as everybody else. That's our favorite way of not getting our beauty sleep, isn't it, dear? Sit back down and finish your supper; Ben has stared at us long enough for the moment. Ben, there's a man in that transition group you were just with who's a perfectly dreamy dancer and this town is loaded with good night clubs-and Dawn and I have kept the poor fellow so busy, alternated keeping him up so many nights in a row, that we've had to help him stay awake in language classes. But he'll be all right; once you reach Eighth Circle you don't need nearly so much sleep. Whatever made you think we never dressed, dear?"

            "Uh-" Ben finally blurted Out the embarrassing predicament he had been in.

            Jill looked wide-eyed, then barely giggled-and stopped it at once, at which Ben realized that he had heard none of these people laugh only the "marks" in the outer service. "I see. But, darling, I just never got around to taking this robe off. I am wearing it because I have to gobble and git. But had I grokked that that was troubling you, I certainly would have chucked it before I said hello even though I wasn't sure there was another one handy. We're so used to dressing or not dressing according to what we need to do that I just plain forgot that I might not be behaving politely. Sweetheart, take those shorts off-or leave them on, exactly as suits you."

            "Uh-"

            "Just don't fret about it, either way." Jill smiled and dimpled. "Reminds me of the first time Mike tried a public beach, but in reverse. 'Member, Dawn?"

            "I'll never forget it!"

            "Ben, you know how Mike is about clothes. He just doesn't understand them. Or didn't. I had to teach him everything. He couldn't see any point to them as protection, until he grokked-to his great surprise-that we aren't as invulnerable as he is. Modesty-that sort of 'modesty'; he's so modest in its true sense that it hurts-body-modesty isn't a Martian concept, it couldn't be. And only lately has Mike grokked clothes as ornaments, after we started experimenting with various ways to costume our acts.

            "But, Ben, while Mike was always wiJling to do what I told him to, whether he grokked it or not, you can't imagine how many million little things there are to being a human being. We take twenty or thirty years to learn them; Mike had to learn them almost overnight. There are gaps, even now. He does things not knowing that isn't how a human does them. We all teach him-Dawn and I especially. All but Patty, who is sure that anything that Michael does must be perfect. But he's still grokking the nature of clothes. He's groks mostly that they're a wrongness that keeps people apart-and get in the way of letting love cause them to grow closer. Lately he's come to realize that part of the time you want and need, such a barrier-with outsiders. But for a long time Mike wore clothes only because I told him to and when I told him he must.

            "And I missed a gap."

            "We were down in Baja California; it was just at the time we met-or remet, actually-Dawn. Mike and I checked in at night at one of those big fancy beach hotels and he was so anxious to grok the ocean, get wet all over, that he let me sleep the next morning and went down by himself for his first encounter with the ocean. And I didn't realize that Mike didn't know about swim suits. Oh, he may have seen them . . . but he didn't know what they were for or had some mixed-up idea. He certainly didn't know that you were supposed to wear them in the water-the idea was almost sacrilege. And you know Jubal's rigid rules about keeping his pool clean-I'm sure it's never seen a suit. I do remember one night a lot of people got tossed in with all their clothes on, but it was when Jubal was going to have it drained right away anyhow.

            "Poor Mike! He got down to the beach and threw off his robe and headed for the water . . . looking like a Greek god and just as unaware of local conventions-and then the riot Started and I came awake fast and grabbed some clothes myself and got down there just in time to keep him out of jail . . . and fetched him back to the room and he spent the rest of the day in a trance."

            Jill got a momentary faraway look. "And he needs me now, too, so I must run along. Kiss me good-night, Ben; I'll see you in the morning."

            "You'll be gone all night?"

            "Probably. It's a fairly big transition class and, truthfully, Mike has just been keeping them busy the past half hour and more while we visited. But that's all right." She stood up, pulled him gently to his feet and went into his arms.

            Presently she broke from the kiss but not from his arms and murmured, "Ben darling, you've been taking lessons. Whew!"

            "Me? I've been utterly faithful to you-in my own way."

            "In the same way I've been to you ... the nicest way. I wasn't complaining . . . I just think Dorcas has been helping you to practice kissing."

            "Some, maybe. Nosy."

            "Uh huh, I'm always nosy. The class can wait while you kiss me once more. I'll try to be Dorcas."

            "You be yourself."

            "I would be, anyway. Self. But Mike says that Dorcas kisses more thoroughly-'groks a kiss more'-than anyone."

            "Quit chattering."

            She did, for a while, then sighed. "Transition class, here I come- glowing like a lightning bug. Take good care of him, Dawn."

            "I will."

            "And better kiss him right away and see what I mean!"

            "I intend to."

            "'Bye, darlings! Ben, you be a good boy and do what Dawn tells You." She left, not hurrying-but running.

            Dawn stood up, flowed up against him, put up her arms.

            Jubal cocked an eyebrow. "And now I suppose you are going to tell me that at that point, you went chicken."

            "Uh, not exactly. A near miss, call it. To tell the truth I didn't have too much to say about it. I, uh, 'cooperated with the inevitable.'"

            Jubal nodded. "No other possible course. You were trapped and couldn't run. Whereupon the best a man can do is try for a negotiated peace." He added, "But I'm sorry that the civilized habits of my household caused the boy to fall afoul the law of the jungles of Baja California."

            "I don't think he's a boy any longer, Jubal."

XXXII

            BEN CAXTON HAD AWAKENED not knowing where he was nor what time it was. It was dark around him, perfectly quiet, he was lying on something soft. Not a bed-where was he?

            The night came back in a rush. The last he clearly remembered he had been lying on the soft floor of the Innermost Temple, talking quietly and intimately with Dawn. She had taken him there, they had immersed, shared water, grown closer- Frantically he reached around him in the dark, found nothing.

            "Dawn!"

            Light swelled softly to a gentle dimness. "Here, Ben."

            "Oh! I thought you had gone!"

            "I didn't intend to wake you." She was wearing-to his sudden and intense disappointment-her robe of office. "I must go start the Sunrisers' Outer Service. Gillian isn't back yet. As you know, it was a fairly big class."

            Her words brought back to him things she had told him last night things which, at the time, had upset him despite her gentle and quite logical explanations . . . and she had soothed his upset until he found himself agreeing with her. He still was not quite straight in his mind he didn't grok it all-but, yes, Jill was probably still busy with her rites as high priestess-a task, or perhaps a happy duty, that Dawn had offered to take for her. Ben felt a twinge that he really should have been sorry that Jill had refused, had insisted that Dawn get much needed rest.

            But he did not feel sorry. "Dawn ... do you have to leave?" He scrambled to his feet, put his arms around her.

            "I must go, Ben dear ... dear Ben." She melted up against him.

            "Right now? In such a rush?"

            "There is never," she said softly, "that much hurry." Suddenly the robe no longer kept them apart. He was too bemused to wonder what had become of it.

            He woke up a second time, found that the "little nest" he was in lighted softly when he stood up. He stretched, discovered that he felt wonderful, then looked around the room for his shorts. They were not in sight and no way for them to be out of sight. He tried to recall where he had left them . . . and had no recollection of ever having taken them off. But he certainly had not worn them into the water. Probably beside the pool in the Innermost Temple- He made a mental note to stop back there and pick them up, then went out and found a bathroom.

            Some minutes later, shaved, showered, and refreshed, he did remember to look into the Innermost Temple, failed to find his shorts and decided that somebody, Patty maybe, had noticed them and put them near the outer door where apparently everybody kept what they needed for street wear . . . said to hell with it and grinned at himself for having made such a jittery old-maid issue last night out of wearing them or not. He needed them, here in the Nest, the way he needed a second head.

            Come to think of it, he didn't have the slightest trace of a head-a hangover head-although he recalled that he had had more than several drinks with Dawn. Hadn't got drunk, as he recalled, but certainly more than he ordinarily allowed himself-he couldn't sop up the stuff the way Jubal did without paying for it.

            Dawn didn't seem to be affected by liquor at all-which was probably why he had gone over his usual quota. Dawn . . . what a gal, what a gal! She hadn't even seemed annoyed when, in a moment of emotional confusion, he had called her Jill-she had seemed pleased.

            He found no one in the big room and wondered what time it was? Not that he gave a damn, except that his stomach told him that it was long past breakfast time. He went into the kitchen to see what he could scrounge.

            A man in there looked up as he came in. "Ben!"

            "Well! Hi, Duke!"

            Duke gave him a bear hug and slapped him on the back. "Ben, you're a sight for sore eyes! Gosh, it's good to see you. Thou art God. How do you like your eggs?"

            "Thou art God. Are you the cook?"

            "Only when I can't find somebody else to do it for me-such as right now. Tony does most of it. We all do some. Even Mike unless Tony catches him and chases him out-Mike is the world's worst cook, bar none." Duke went on breaking eggs into a dish.

            Ben moved in on the job. "You look after toast and coffee. Any Wocestershire sauce around here?"

            "You name it, Pat's got it. Here." Duke added, "I looked in on you a half hour ago, but you were still sawing wood. I've been busy or you've been busy ever since you got here-until now."

            "What do you do around here, Duke? Aside from cooking when you can't avoid it?"

            "Well, I'm a deacon ... and I'll be a priest someday. But I'm slow-not that it matters. I study Martian . . . everybody does that. And I'm the fix-it boy, same as I was for Jubal"

            "Must take quite a gang to maintain a place this size."

            "Ben, you'd be surprised how little it takes. Aside from keeping an eye on the plumbing-and sometime you must see Mike's unique way of dealing with a stopped toilet-I don't have to play plumber very much. Aside from plumbing, ninety percent of the gadgetry in this building is right here in the kitchen . . . and it's not as gadgeted as Jubal's kitchen."

            "I had the impression that you have some very complicated gadgets for some of the temple ceremonies."

            "Uuh uh, nary a gadget. Some lighting controlS, that's all, and simple ones. Actually" Duke grinned. "-One of my most important jobs is no job at all. Fire warden"

            "Huh?"

            "I'm a licensed deputy fire warden, examined and everything, and same for sanitation and safety inspector-neither one takes any work. But it means that we never have to let an outsider go through the joint-and we don't. They attend outer services...but they never get any farther unless Mike gives an up check."

            They transferred food to plates and sat down at a table. Duke said, "You're staying, aren't you, Ben?"

            "I don't see how I can, Duke."

            "Mmmm . . . I had hoped that you would have more sense than I had. I came for just a short visit, too . . went back and moped around for nearly a month before I told Jubal I was leaving and wouldn't be back. But never mind; you'll be back. Don't make any final decisions before the water sharing tonight."

            "Didn't Dawn tell you? Or Jill?"

            "Uh ... I don't think so."

            "Then they didn't. Hmm, maybe i should let Mike explain it. No, no need to; people will be mentioning it to you all day long. Sharing water you grok, of course; you're one of the First Called."

            "'First Called?' Dawn used that expression."

            "That handful of us who became Mike's water brothers without learning Martian. The others ordinarily do not share water and grow closer until they pass from the Seventh Circle to the Eighth . . . and by that time they are beginning to think in Martian. Heck, some of them know more Martian by that stage than I do now, since I'm a 'First Called' myself and started my studies after I was already in the Nest. Oh, it's not actually forbidden to share water with someone who isn't ready for Eighth Circle. Hell, if I wanted to, I could pick up a babe in a bar, share water with her, then take her to bed -- and then take her to the Temple and start her on her apprentisship But I wouldn't want to. That's the point; I wouldn't even want to. At the very most I might decide that it was worth while to bring her around to an outer service and let Mike look her over and find out whether any of it clicked with her. Ben, I'll make a flat-footed prediction. You've been around a lot -- I'm sure you've been in some fancy beds with some fancy babes."

            "Uh . . some,"

            "I know damn' well you have. But you will never again in your life crawl in with one who is not your water brother."

            "Hmm."

            "You'll see. Let's cheek it a year from now and you tell me. Now Mike may decide that someone is ready to share water before that person reaches even Seventh Circle. One couple we've got in the Nest, Mike picked, and offered them Water, when they had just entered Third Circle and now he's a priest and she's a priestess . . . Sam and Ruth."

            "Haven't met 'em."

            "You will. Tonight at the latest. But Mike is the only one who can be certain, that soon. Very occasionally Dawn, and sometimes Patty, will spot somebody for special promotion and special training . . but never as far down as Third Circle and I'm pretty sure that they always consult Mike before going ahead. Not that they are required to. Anyhow, into the Eighth Circle . . . and sharing and growing closer starts. Then, sooner or later, into Ninth Circle, and the Nest itself -- and that's the service we mean when we say 'Sharing Water' even though we share water all day long. The whole Nest attends and the new brothers -- usually it's a couple -- becomes forever part of the Nest. In your case you already are . . , but we've never held the service for you, so everything else is being pushed aside tonight while we welcome you. They did the same for me." Duke got a faraway look. "Ben, it's the most wonderful feeling in the world"

            "But I still don't know what it is, Duke."

            "Uh ...it's a lot of things. Ever been on a real luau of a party, the kind the cops raid and usually ends up in a divorce or two?"

            "Well ... yes."

            "Up to now, brother, you've only been on Sunday School picnics. That's one aspect of it. Have you ever been married?"

            "No."

            "You are married. You just don't know it yet. After tonight there will never again be any doubt in your mind about it." Duke again looked faraway, happily pensive. "Ben, I was married before ... and for a short time it was pretty nice and then it was steady hell on wheels. This time I like it, all the time. Shucks, I love it! And look, Ben, I don't mean just that it's fun to be shacked up with a bunch of bouncy babes. I love them-all my brothers, both sexes. Take Patty-and you willi-Patty mothers all of us . . . and I don't think anybody, man or woman, gets over needing that, even if they think they've outgrown it. Patty . . . well, Patty is just swell! She reminds me of Jubal . . . and that old bastard had better get down here and get the word! My point is that it is not just that Patty is female. Oh, I'm not running down tail-"

            "Who is running down tail?" The voice, a rich contralto, came from behind them.

            Duke swung around. "Not me, you limber Levantine whore! Come here, babe, and kiss your brother Ben."

            "Never charged for it in my life," the woman denied as she glided toward them. "Started giving it away before anybody told me." She kissed Ben carefully and thoroughly. "Thou art God, brother."

            "Thou art God. Share water."

            "Never thirst. And don't ever pay any mind to what Duke says- from the way he behaves he must have been a bottle baby." She leaned over Duke and kissed him even more lingeringly while he patted her ample fundament. Ben noted that she was short, plump, brunette almost to swarthiness, and had a mane of heavy blue-black hair almost to her waist "Duke, did you see anything of a Ladies' Home Journal when you got up?" She reached past his shoulder, took his fork and started eating his scrambled eggs. "Mmm ... good. You didn't cook these, Duke."

            "Ben did. What in the world would I want with a Ladies' Home Journal?"

            "Ben, stir up a couple of dozen more exactly the same way and I'll scramble 'em in relays. There was an article in it I wanted to show Patty, dear."

            "Okay," agreed Ben and got up to do it.

            "Don't you two get any ideas about redecorating this dump or I'm moving out. And leave some of those eggs for me! You think us men can do our work on mush?"

            "Tut, tut, Dukie darling. Water divided is water multiplied. As I was saying, Ben, Duke's complaints never mean anything-as long as he has enough women for two men and enough food for three, he's a perfect little lamb." She shoved one forkful into Duke's mouth, went on eating the rest herself. "So quit making faces, brother; I'm about to cook you a second breakfast. Or will this be your third?"

            "Not even the first, yet. You ate ~. Ruth, I was telling Ben how you and Sam pole-vaulted from Third to Ninth. I think he's uneasy about whether he belongs in the Sharing-Water tonight."

            She pursued the last bite on Duke's plate, then moved over and started preparations to cook. "Duke, you run along and I'll send you out something other than mush. Take your coffee cup and skedaddle. Ben, I was worried, too, when my time came-but don't you be worried, dear, because Michael does not make mistakes. You belong here or you wouldn't be here. You're going to stay?"

            "Uh, I can't. Ready for the first installment?"

            "Pour them in. Then you'll be back. And someday you'll stay. Duke is correct-Sam and I pole-vaulted . . . and it was almost too fast for a middle-aged, prim and proper housewife."

            "Middle-aged?"

            "Ben, one of the bonuses about the discipline is that as it straightens out your soul, your body straightens out, too. That's a matter in which the Christian Scientists are precisely right. Notice any medicine bottles in any of the bathrooms?"

            "Uh, no."

            "There aren't any. How many people have kissed you?"

            "Several, at least."

            "As a priestess I kiss a lot more than 'several,' believe me. But there's never so much as a sniffle in the Nest. I used to be the sort of whiny woman who is never quite well and given to 'female complaints.'" She smiled. "Now I'm more female than ever but I'm twenty pounds lighter and years younger and have nothing to complain about-I like being female. As Duke flattered me, 'a Levantine whore' and unquestionably much more limber than I was-I always sit in the lotus position when I'm teaching a class, whereas it used to be all I could do just to squat down and straighten up again . . . hot flashes and dizziness.

            "But it did happen fast," Ruth went on. "Sam was a professor of Oriental languages at the University here-the city U., that is. Sam started coming to the Temple because it was a way, the only way, to learn the Martian language. Strictly professional motivation, he wasn't interested in it as a church. And I went along to keep an eye on him . . . I had heard rumors and I was a jealous wife, even more possessive than the average.

            "So we worked up to the Third Circle, Sam learning the language rapidly, of course, and myself grimly hanging on and studying hard because I didn't want to let him out of my sight. Then boom! the miracle happened. We suddenly began to think in it, just a little . . . and Michael felt it and had us stay after service, a Third Circle service, one night and Michael and Gillian gave us water. Afterwards, I knew that I was all the things I had despised in other women and I knew that I should despise my husband for letting me do it and hate him for what he had done himself. All this in English, with the wont parts in Hebrew. So I wept all day and moaned and made myself a stinking nuisance to Sam . . . and couldn't wait to get back to share more water and grow closer again that night.

            "After that things were steadily easier but not easy, as we were pushed through all the inner circles just as rapidly as we could take it; Michael knew that we needed help and wanted to get us into the safety and peace of the Nest. So when it came time for our Sharing.Water, I was still unable to discipline myself without constant help. I knew that I wanted to be received into the Nest-once you start, there's no turning back-but I wasn't sure I could merge myself with seven other people. I was scared silly; on the way over I almost begged Sam to turn around and go home."

            She stopped talking and looked up, unsmiling but beatific, a plump angle with a big stirring spoon in one hand. "Then we walked into the Innermost Temple and a spotlight hit me and our robes were whisked away . . . and they were all in the pool and calling out to us in Martian to come, come and share the water of life-and I stumbled into that pool and submerged and I haven't come up since!

            "Nor ever want to. Don't fret, Ben, you'll learn the language and acquire the discipline and you'll have loving help from all of us every step of the way. You stop worrying and jump in that pool tonight; I'll have my arms out to catch you. All of us will have our arms out, welcoming you home. Now take this plate in to Duke and tell him I said he was a pig but a charming one. And take this one in for yourself-oh, of course you can eat that much!-give me a kiss and run along; Ruthie has work to do."

            Ben delivered the kiss and the message and the plate, then found that he did have some appetite left . . . but nevertheless did not concentrate on food as he found Jill stretched out, apparently asleep, on one of the wide, soft couches. He sat down opposite her, enjoying the sweet sight of her and thinking that Dawn and Jill were even more alike than he had realized the night before.

            He looked up from a bite and saw that her eyes were open and she was smiling at him. "Thou art God, darling-and that smells good."

            "And you look good. But I didn't mean to wake you." He got up and sat by her, put a bite in her mouth. "My own cooking, with Ruth's help."

            "I know. And good, too. Duke told me to stay out of the kitchen because Ruthie was giving you a good-for-your-soul lecture. You didn't wake me; I was just lazing until you came out. I haven't been asleep all night."

            "Not at all?"

            "Not a wink. But I'm not tired, I feel grand. Just hungry. That's a hint." So he fed her. She let him do so, never stirring, not using her own hands. "But did you get any sleep?" she asked presently.

            "Uh, some."

            "Enough? No, you got enough. But how much sleep did Dawn get? As much as two hours?"

            "Oh, more than that, I'm certain."

            "Then she's all right. Two hours of sleep does us as much good as eight used to. I knew what a sweet night you were going to have-both of you-but I was a teeny bit worried that she might not rest."

            "Well, it was a wonderful night," Ben admitted, "although I was, uh, surprised at the way you shoved her at me."

            "Shocked, you mean. I know you, Ben, maybe better than you know yourself. You arrived here yesterday with jealousy sticking out in lumps. I think it's gone now. Yes?"

            He looked back at her. "I think so."

            "That's good. I had a wonderful and joyous night, too-made free from any worry by knowing you were in good hands. The best hands- better than mine."

            "Oh, no!"

            "Hmm. I grok a few lumps still-but tonight we'll wash them away in water." She sat up, reached toward the end of the couch-and it looked to Canon as if a pack of cigarettes on the end table jumped the last few inches into her hand.

            "You seemed to have picked up some sleight-of-hand tricks, too."

            She seemed momentarily puzzled, then she smiled. "Some. Nothing much. Parlor tricks. 'I am only an egg,' to quote my teacher."

            "How did you do that trick?"

            "Why, I just whistled to it in Martian. First you grok a thing, then you grok what you want it to-Mike!" She waved. "We're over here, dear!"

            "Coming." The Man from Mars came straight to Ben, took his hands, pulled him to his feet. "Let me look at you, Ben! Golly, it's good to see you!"

            "It's good to see you. And to be here."

            "And we're going to twist your arm to keep you here. What's this about three days? Three days indeed!"

            "I'm a working man, Mike."

            "We'll see. The girls are all excited, getting ready for your party tonight. Might just as well shut down services and classes for the rest of the day-they won't be worth a damn."

            "Patty has already done any necessary rescheduling," Jill told Mike. "She just didn't bother you with it. Dawn and Ruth and Sam are going to take care of what's necessary. Patty decided to slough the Outer matinee- so you're through for the day."

            "That's good news." Mike sat down, pulled Jill's head into his lap, pulled Ben down, put an arm around him, and sighed. He was dressed as Ben had seen him in the outer meeting, smart tropical business suit, lacking only shoes. "Ben, don't ever take up preaching. I spend my days and nights rushing from one job to another, telling people why they must never hurry. I owe you, along with Jill and Jubal, more than anyone else on this planet-yet you've been here since yesterday afternoon and this is the first time I've been able to say hello. How've you been? You're looking fit. In fact Dawn tells me you are fit."

            Ben found himself blushing. "I'm okay."

            "That's good. Because, believe me, the hill tribes will be restless tonight. But I'll grok close and sustain you. You'll be fresher at the end of the party than at the start-won't he, Little Brother?"

            "Yes," agreed Jill. "Ben, you won't believe it until you've had it done for you, but Mike can lend you strength-physical strength, I mean, not just moral support. I can do it a little bit. Mike can really do it."

            "Jill can do it quite a lot." Mike caressed her. "Little Brother is a tower of strength to everybody. Last night she certainly was." He smiled down at her, then sang:

            "You'll never find a girl like Jill.

            "No, not one in a billion."

            "Of all the tarts who ever will "The willingest is our Gillian!-isn't that right, Little Brother?"

            "Pooh," answered Jill, obviously pleased, covering his hand with her own and pressing it to her. "Dawn is exactly like me and you know it- and every bit as willing."

            "Maybe. But you're here ... and Dawn is downstairs interviewing the possibles out of the tip. She's busy-you ain't. That's an important difference-isn't it, Ben?"

            "Could be." Caxton was finding that their unself-conscious behavior was beginning to embarrass him, even in this uniquely relaxed atmosphere-he wished that they would either knock off necking . . . or give him an excuse to leave.

            Instead Mike went right on cuddling Jill with one hand while keeping his other arm snug around Ben's waist . . . and Ben was forced to admit that Jill encouraged him, rather than otherwise. Mike said very seriously, "Ben, a night like last night-helping a group to make the big jump to Eighth Circle-gets me terribly keyed up. Let me tell you something out of the lessons for Sixth, Ben. We humans have something that my former people don't even dream of. They can't. And I can tell you how precious it is . . . how especially precious I know it to be, because I have known what it is not to have it. The blessing of being male and female. Man and Woman created He them-the greatest treasure We-Who-Are-God ever invented. Right, Jill?"

            "Beautifully right, Mike-and Ben knows it is Truth. But make a song for Dawn, too, darling."

            "Okay- "Ardent is our lovely Dawn;"Ben grokked that in her glance- "She buys new dresses every morn. "But never shops for pants!" Jill giggled and squirmed. "Did you tune her in?"

            "Yes, and she gave me a big Bronx cheer-with a kiss behind it for Ben. Say, isn't there anybody in the kitchen this morning? I just remembered I haven't eaten for a couple of days. Or years, maybe; I'm not sure."

            "I think Ruth is," Ben said, untangling himself and standing up. "I'll go see."

            "Duke can do it. Hey, Duke! See if you can ~nd somebody who'll fix me a stack of wheat cakes as tall as you are and a gallon of maple syrup."

            "Right, Mike!" Duke called back.

            Ben Caxton hesitated, without an excuse to run an errand. He thought of a trumped-up excuse and glanced back over his sboulder.

            "Jubal," Caxton said earnestly, "I wouldn't tell you this part at all if it weren't essential to explaining how I feel about the whole thing, why I'm worried about them-all of them, Duke and Mike as well as Jill and Mike's other victims, too. By that morning I was myself half conned into thinking everything was all right-Weird as bell in spots-but jolly. Mike himself had me fascinated, too-his new personalitY is pretty powerful. Cocky and too much supersalesman . . but very compelling. Then he-or both of them-got me rather embarassed, so 1 took that chance to get up from the couch.

            "Then I glanced back-and couldn't believe my eyes. I hadn't been tu~ncd away five seconds . . and Mike bad managed to get rid of every stitch of clothes . . . and so help me, they were going to it, with myself and three or four others in the room at the time-just as boldly as monkeys in a zoo!

            "Jubal, I was so shocked I almost lost my breakfast."

XXXIII

            "WELL," SAID JUBAL, "what did you do? Cheer?"

            "Like hell. I left, at once. I dashed for the outer door, grabbed my clothes and shoes-forgot my bag and didn't go back for it-ignored the sign on the door, went on through-jumped in that bounce tube with my clothes in my arms. Blooie! Gone without saying good-by."

            "Rather abrupt"

            "I felt abrupt. I had to leave. In fact I left so fast that I durn near killed myself. You know the ordinary bounce tube-"

            "I do not."

            "Well, unless you set it to take you up to a certain level, when you get into it you simply sink slowly, like cold molasses I didn't sink, I fell_and I was about six stories up. But just when I thought I had made my last mistake, something caught me. Not a safety net-a field of some sort I didn't quite splash. But Mike needs to smooth out that gadget. Or put in the regular sort of bounce tube."

            Jubal said, "I'll stick to stairs and, when unavoidable, elevators"

            "Well, I hadn't realized that this one was so risky. But the only safety inspector they've got is Duke . . . and to Duke whatever Mike says is Gospel. Jubal, that whole place is riding for a fall. They're all hypnotized by one man . . . who isn't right in his head. What can be done about it?"

            Jubal jutted out his lips and then scowled, "Let's see first if you've got it analyzed correctlY. Just what aspects of the situation did you find disquieting?"

            "Why...the whole thing."

            "So? In fact, wasn't it just one thing? And that an essentiallY harmless act which we both know was nothing new . . . but was, we can assume rather conclusively, initially performed in this house or on these grounds about two years ago? I did not then object-nor did you, when you learned of it, whenever that was, in fact, I have implied that you yourself have, on other occasions, joined in that same act with the same young lady-and she is a lady, despite your tale-and you neither denied my implication nor acted offended at my presumPtion. To put it bluntly, son-what are you belly-aching about?"

            "Well, for cripe's sake, Jubal...Would you put up with it, in your living room?"

            "Decidedly not-unless perhaps I have, it having taken place so clandestinely, at night perhaps, that no one noticed. In which case it would be-or has been, if such be the case-no skin off'n my nose. But the point is that it was not my living room . . . nor would I presume to lay down rules for another man's living room. It was Mike's house . . . and his wife-common law or otherwise, we need not inquire. So what business is it of mine? Or yours? You go into a man's house, you accept his household rules-that's a universal law of civilized behavior."

            "You mean to say you don't find it shocking?"

            "Ah, you've raised an entirely different issue. Public exhibitiOn ~luSt I would find most distasteful, either as participant or spectator . . but I grok this reflects my early indoctrination, nothing more. A very large minority of mankind-possibly a majority-do not share my taste in this matter. Decidedly not-for the orgy has a long and very widespread history. Nonetheless it is not to my taste. But shocking? My dear sir, I can be shocked only by that which offends me ethically. Ethical questiotions are subject to logic-but this is a matter of taste and the old saw is in point-"de gusribus non est disputandu."

            "You think that a public shagging is merely 'a matter of taste?'"

            "Precisely. In which respect I concede that my own taste, rooted in early training, reinforced by some three generations of habit, and now, I believe, calcified beyond possibility of change, is no more sacred than the very different taste of Nero. Less sacred-Nero was a god; I am not."

            "Well, I'll be damned."

            "In due course, possibly-if it is possible ... a point on which I am 'neutral-against.' But, Ben, this wasn't public."

            "Huh?"

            "You yourself have said it. You described this group as a plural marriage-a group theogamy, to be precise. Not public but utterly private. Aint nobody here but just us gods'-so how could anyone be offended?"

            "I was offended!"

            "That was because your own apotheosis was less complete than theirs-I'm afraid they over-rated you . . . and you misled them. You invited it.''

            "Me? Jubal, I did nothing of the sort"

            "Tommy busted my dolly ... I hitted him over the head with it.' The time to back out was the instant you got there, for you saw at once that their customs and manners were not yours. Instead you stayed, and enjoyed the favors of one goddess-and behaved yourself as a god toward her-in short, you learned the score, and they knew it. It seems to me that Mike's error lay only in accepting your hypocrisy as solid coin. But he does have the weakness-a godlike one-of never doubting his 'water brothers'-but even Jove nods-and his weakness-or is it a strength?- comes from his early training; he can't help it. No, Ben, Mike behaved with complete propriety; the offense against good manners lay in your behavior."

            "Damn it, Jubal, you've twisted things again. I did what I had to do-I was about to throw up on their rug!"

            "So you claim reflex. So stipulated; however, anyone over the emotional age of twelve could have clamped his jaws and made a slow march for the bathroom with at worst the hazard of clogged sinuses-instead of a panicked dash for the street door-then returned when the show was over with a euphemistic but acceptable excuse."

            "That wouldn't have been enough. I tell you I had to leave!"

            "I know. But not through reflex. Reflex will evacuate the stomach; it will not choose a course for the feet, recover chattels, take you through doors and cause you to jump down a hole without looking. Panic, Ben. Why did you panic?"

            Caxton was long in replying. He sighed and said, "I guess when you come right down to it, Jubal-I'm a prude."

            Jubal shook his head. "Your behavior was momentarily prudish, but not from prudish motivations. You are not a prude, Ben. A prude is a person who thinks that his own rules of propriety are natural laws. You are almost entirely free of this prevalent evil. You adjusted, at least with passable urbanity, to many things which did not fit your code of propriety whereas a true-blue, stiff-necked, incorrigible prude would promptly have affronted that delightful tattooed lady and stomped out. Dig deeper.. Do you wish a hint?"

            "Uh, maybe you'd better. All I know is that I am mixed up and unhappy about the whole Situation-on Mike's account, too, Jubal!- which is why I took a day off to see you."

            "Very well. Hypothetical situation for you to evaluate: You mentioned a lady named Ruth whom you met in passing-a kiss of brotherhood and a few minutes conversation-nothing more."

            "Yeah?"

            "Suppose the actors had been Ruth and Mike? Gillian not even present? Would you have been shocked?"

            "Huh? Hell, yes, I would have been shocked!"

            "Just how shocked? Retching? Panic flight?"

            Caxton looked thoughtful, then sheepish. "I suppose not. I still would have been startled silly. But I guess I would've just gone out to the kitchen or something . . . then found an excuse to leave. I still feel like a fool for having made that mad dash to get out."

            "Would you actually have sought an excuse to leave? Or were you looking forward to your own 'welcome home' party that night?"

            "Well," Caxton mused. "I hadn't made up my mind about that when this happened. I was curious, I admit-but I wasn't quite sold."

            "Very well. You now have your motivation."

            "Do I?"

            "You name it, Ben. Haul it out and look at it-and find out how you want to deal with it."

            Caxton chewed his lip and looked unhappy. "All right. I would have been startled if it had been Ruth-but I wouldn't really have been shocked. Hell, in the newspaper racket you get over being shocked by anything but-well, you expressed it: something that cuts deep about right and wrong. Shucks, if it had been Ruth, I might even have sneaked a look ~ -even though I still think I would have left the room; such things ought to be-or at least I feel that they ought to be-private." He paused. "It was because it was Jill. I was hurt . . . and jealous."

            "Stout fellow, Ben."

            "Jubal, I would have sworn that I wasn't jealous. I knew that I had lost out-I had accepted it. It was the circumstances, Jubal. Now don't get me wrong. I would still love Jill if she were a two-peso whore. Which she is not. This hands-around harem deal upsets the hell out of me. But by her lights Jill is moral."

            Jubal nodded. "I know. I feel sure that Gillian is incapable of being corrupted. She has an invincible innocence which makes it impossible for her to be immoral." lie frowned. "Ben we are close to the root of your trouble. I am afraid that you-and I, too, i admit-lack the angelic innocence to abide by the perfect morality those people live by."

            Ben looked surprised. "Jubal, you think what they are doing is moral? Monkeys in the zoo stuff and all? All I meant was that Jill really didn't know that what she was doing was wrong__Mike's got her homswoggled-and Mike doesn't know he's doing wrong either. He's the Man front Mars; he didn't get off to a fair start. Everything about us was strange to him-he'll probably never get straightened out."

            Jubal looked troubled. "You've raised a hard question, Ben-but I'll give you a straight answer. Yes, I think what those people-the entire Nest, not just our own kids-are doing is moral. As you described it to me _yes. I haven't had a chance to examine details-but yes: all of it. Group orgies, and open and unashamed swapping off at other times . . . their communal living and their anarchistic code, everything. And most especially their selfless dedication tO giving their perfect morality to others."

            "Jubal, you utterly astonish me." Caxton scratched his head and frowned. "Since you feel that way, why don't you join them? You're welcome, they want you, they're expecting you. They'll hold a jubilee-and Dawn is waiting to kiss your feet and serve you in any way you will permit; I wasn't exaggerating."

            Jubal shook his head. "No. Had I been approached fifty years ago- But now? Ben my brother, the potential for such innocence is no longer in me-and I am not referring to sexual potency, so wipe that cynical smile off your face. I mean that I have been too long wedded to my own brand of evil and hopelessness to be cleansed in their water of life and become innocent again. If I ever was."

            "Mike thinks you have this innocence-he doesn't call it that-in full measure now. Dawn told me, speaking ex officio."

            "Then Mike does me great honor; I would not disillusion him. He sees his own reflection-I am, by profession a mirror."

            "Jubal, you're chicken."

            "Precisely, sir! The thing that troubles me most is whether those innocents can make their pattern fit into a naughty world. Oh, it's been tried beforel-and every time the world etched them away like acid. Some of the early Christians_anarchy, communism, group marriage-why even that kiss of brotherhood has a strong primitive-Christian flavor to it. That might be where Mike picked it up, since all the forms he uses are openly syncretistic, especially that Earth-Mother ritual." Jubal frowned. "If he picked that up from primitive christa ity-and not just from kissing girls, which he enjoys, I now-then I would expect men to kiss men, too."

            Ben snorted. "I held out on you-they do. But it's not a pansy gesture. I got caught once; after that I managed to duck."

            "So? It figures. The Oneida Colony was much like Mike's 'Nest'; it managed to last quite a while but in a low population density-not as an enclave in a resort city. There have been many others, all with the same sad story: a plan for perfect sharing and perfect love, glorious hopes and high idea -- followed by persecution and eventual failure." Jubal sighed. "I was worried about Mike before-now I'm worried about all of them."

            "You're worried? How do you think I feel? Jubal, I can't accept your sweetness and light theory. What they are doing is wrong."

            "So? Ben, it's that last incident that sticks in your craw."

            "Well ... maybe. Not entirely."

            "Mostly. Ben. the ethics of sex is a thorny problem because each of us has to find a solution pragmatically compatible with a preposterous, utterly unworkable, and evil public code of so-called 'morals.' Most of us know, or suspect, that the public code is wrong, and we break it. Nevertheless we pay Danegeld by giving it lip service in public and feeling guilty about breaking it in private. Willy-nilly, that code rides us, dead and stinking, an albatross around the neck. You think of yourself as a free soul, I know, and you break that evil code yourself-but faced with a problem in sexual ethics new to you, you unconsciously tested it against that same Judeo-Christian code which you consciously refuse to obey. All so automatically that you retched . . . and believed thereby-and continue to believe-that your reflex proved that you were 'right' and they were 'wrong.' Faugh! I'd as lief use trial by ordeal as use your stomach to test guilt. All your stomach can reflect are prejudices trained into you before you acquired reason."

            "What about your stomach?"

            "Mine is as stupid as yours-but I don't let it rule my brain. I can at least see the beauty of Mike's attempt to devise an ideal human ethic and applaud his recognition that such a code must be founded on ideal sexual behavior, even though it calls for changes in sexual mores so radical as to frighten most people -- including you. For that I admire him-I should nominate him for the Philosophical Society. Most moral philosophers consciously or unconsciously assume the essential correctness of our cultural sexual code-family, monogamy, continence, the postulate of privacy that troubled you so, restriction of intercourse to the marriage bed, et cetera. Having stipulated our cultural code as a whole, they fiddle with details- even such piffle as solemnly discussing whether or not the female breast is an 'obscene' sight! But mostly they debate how the human animal can be induced or forced to obey this code, blandly ignoring the high probability that the heartaches and tragedies they see all around them originate in the code itself rather than failure to abide by the code.

            "Now comes the Man from Mars, looks at this sacrosanct code-and rejects it in toto. I do not grasp exactly what Mike's sexual code is, but it is clear from what little you told me that it violates the laws of every major nation on Earth and would outrage 'right-thinking' people of every major faith-and most agnostics and atheists, too. And yet this poor boy-"

            "Jubal, I repeat-he's not a boy, he's a man"

            "Is he a 'man?' I wonder. This poor ersatz Martian is saying, by your own report, that sex is a way to be happy together. I go along with Mike this far: sex should be a means of happiness. The worst thing about sex is that we use it to hurt each other. It ought never to hurt; it should bring happiness, or, at the very least, pleasure. There is no good reason why it should ever be anything less.

            "The code says, 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wif'e'-and the result? Reluctant chastity, adultery, jealousy, bitter family fights, blows and sometimes murder, broken homes and twisted children . . . and furtive, dirty little passes at country club dances and the like, degrading to both man and woman whether consummated or not, Is this injunction ever obeyed? The Commandment not to 'covet' I mean; I'm not referring to any physical act. I wonder. If a man swore to me on a stack of his own Bibles that he had refrained from coveting another man's wife because the code forbade it, I would suspect either self-deception or subnormal sexuality. Any male virile enough to sire a child is almost certainly so virile that he has coveted many, many women-whether he takes action in the matter or not.

            "Now comes Mike and says: 'There's no need for you to covet my wife . . love her! There's no limit to her love, we all have everything to gain-and nothing to lose but fear and guilt and hatred and jealousy.' The proposition is so naive that it's incredible. So far as I recall only precivilization Eskimos were ever this naive-and they were so remote from the rest of us that they almost qualified as 'Men from Mars' themselves. However, we soon gave them our virtues and instead of happy sharing they now have chastity and adultery just like the rest of us-those who survived the transition. I wonder if they gained by it? What do you think,

            "I wouldn't care to be an Eskimo. thank you."

            "Neither would I. Spoiled raw fish makes me bilious."

            "Well, yes-but, Jubal, I had in mind hot water and soap. I guess I'm effete."

            "I'm decadent in that respect, too, Ben; I was born in a house with no more plumbing than an igloo-and I've no wish to repeat my childhood. But I assume that noses hardened to the stink of rotting blubber would not be upset by unwashed human bodies. But nevertheless, despite curious cuisine and pitiful possessions, the Eskimos were invariably reported to have been the happiest people on Earth. We can never be sure why they were happy, but we can be utterly certain that any unhappiness they did suffer was not caused by sexual jealousy. They borrowed and lent spouses, both ways, both for convenience and purely for fun-and it did not make them unhappy.

            "One is tempted to ask: Who's looney? Mike and the Eskimos? Or the rest of us? We can't judge by the fact that you and I have no stomach for such group sports-our canalized tastes are irrelevant. But take a look at this glum world around you-then tell me this: Did Mike's disciples seem happier, or unhappier, than other people?"

            "I talked to only about a third of them, Jubal ... but-yes, they're happy. So happy they seem slap-happy to me. I don't trust it. There's some catch in it."

            "Mmm ... maybe you yourself were the catch in it."

            "How?"

            "I was thinking that it was regrettable that your tastes have grown canalized so young. There it was, raining soup-and you were caught without a spoon. Even three days of what you were offered-urged on you!-would have been something to treasure when you reach my age. And you, you young idiot, let jealousy chase you away! Believe me, at your age I would have gone Eskimo in a big way, thankful that I had been given a free pass instead of having to attend church and study Martian to qualify. I'm so vicariously vexed that my only consolation is the sour one that I know you will live to regret it. Age does not bring wisdom, Ben, but it does give perspective . . . and the saddest perspective of all is to see far, far behind you, the temptations you've passed up. I have such regrets myself but all of them are as nothing to the whopper of a regret I am happily certain you will suffer."

            "Oh, for Pete's sake, quit rubbing it in!"

            "Heavens, man!-or are you a mouse? I'm not rubbing it in, I am trying to goad you into the obvious. Why are you sitting here moaning to an old man?-.-when you should be heading for the Nest like a homing pigeon? Before the cops raid the joint! Hell, if I were even twenty years younger, I'd join Mike's church myself."

            "Let up on me, Jubal. What do you really think of Mike's church?"

            "You told me it wasn't a church-just a discipline."

            "Well ... yes and no, It is supposed to be based on the 'Truth' with a capital "T" as Mike got it from the Martian 'Old Ones.'"

            "The 'Old Ones,' eli? To me, they're still hogwash."

            "Mike certainly believes in them."

            "Ben, I once knew a manufacturer who believed that he ~0nsulted the ghost of Alexander Hamilton on all his business decisions. All that proves is that he believed it. However-Damn it, why must I always be the Devil's advocate?"

            "What's biting you now?"

            "Ben, the foulest sinner of all is the hypocrite who makes a racket of religion. But we must give the Devil his due. Mike does believe in those 'Old Ones' and he is not pulling a racket. He's teaching the truth as he sees it even though he has seen fit to borrow from other religions to illustrate his meaning. That 'All Mother' rite -- little as I like it, he seems merely to have been illustrating the versatility of the Female Principle, regardless of name and form. Fair enough. As for his 'Old Ones,' of course I don't know that they don't exist-I simply find hard to swallow the idea that any planet is ruled by a hierarchy of ghosts. As for his Thou-art-God creed, to me it is neither more nor less credible than any other. Come Judgment Day, if they hold it, we may find that Mumbo Jumbo the God of the Congo was the Big Boss all along.

            "All the names are still in the hat, Ben. Self-aware man is so built that he cannot believe in his own extinction . . and this automatically leads to endless invention of religions. While this involuntary conviction of immortality by no means proves immortality to be a fact, the questions generated by this conviction are overwhelmingly important . . . whether we can answer them or not, or prove what answers we suspect. The nature of life, how the ego hooks into the physical body, the problem of the ego itself and why each ego seems to be the centeT of the universe, the purpose of life, the purpose of the universe-these are paramount questions Ben; they can never be trivial. Science can't, or hasn't, coped with any of them-and who am I to sneer at religions for trying to answer them, no matter how unconvincingly to me? Old Mumbo Jumbo may eat me yet; I can't rule Him out because He owns no fancy cathedrals. Nor can I rule out one godstruck boy leading a sex cult in an upholstered attic; he might be the Messiah. The only religious opinion that I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping together!"

            "Whew! Jubal, you should have been a preacher."

            "Missed it by only a razor's edge, my boy-and I'll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head. One more word in Mike's defense and I'll throw tüin on the mercy of the court. If be can show us a better way to run this fouled-up planet~his sex life is vindicated thereby, regardless of your taste or mine. Geniuses are notoriously indifferent to the sexual customs of the culture in which they find themselves, they make their own rules; this is not opinion, it was proved by ArmattOe 'way back in 1945. And Mike is a genius; he's shown it more ways than one. Re can therefore be expected to ignore Mrs. Grundy and diddle to suit himself. Geniuses are justifiably contemptuous of the opinions of their inferiors.

            "And from a religious standpoint Mike's sexual behavior IS as kosher as fish on Friday, as orthodox as Santa Claus. He preaches that all living creatures are collectively God . . . which makes him and his disciples the only self-aware gods in his pantheon hich rates him a union card by the rules for godding on this planet. Those rules always permit gods sexual freedom limited ouly by their own judgment; mortal rules never apply. Leda and the Swan? Europa and the Bull? Osiris, Isis, and Horus? The incredible incestuous games of the Norse gods? Of course . . . but why stop there? Take a hard look at the family relations of the Trinity~in~One of the most widely respected western religion (I won't cite eastern tellgions; their gods do things a mink breeder wouldn't put up with!). The only way in which the odd interrelations of the various aspects of what purportS to be a monotheos can be reconciled with the precepts of the religion thereto is by assuming that the rules in these matters for deity are not the rules for ordinary inortais. Of course most people don't think about it; they compartment it off in their minds and mark it: 'Holy-DO Not Disturb.'

            "But an outside referee is forced to allow Mike the same dispensation granted all other gods. There are rules for this game: one god alone splits into at least two parts~ male and fetnale-and breeds. Not just Jehovah-they all do it. Look it up. Contrariwise, a group of godS will breed like rabbits, every time, and with as little regard for human formalities. Once Mike entered the godding business, those orgies of his group were as logically certain as Sunday follows Saturday. So quit using the standards of Podunk and judge them only by Olympian morals-I think you will then find that they are showing unusual restraint. Furthermore, Ben, this 'growmg-closer' by sexual union, this unity~into-Pluralty and plurality-baCk-into-unity, cannot tolerate monogamy inside the god group. Any pairing that excluded the others would be immoral, obscene, under the postulated creed. And if such mutual, shared-by-all sexual congress is essential to their creed, as I grok it has to be, then why do you expect this holy union to be hidden behind a door? Your insistence that they should hide it would have turned a holy rite-which it was-into something obscene-which it was not You just plain did not understand what you were looking at."

            "Maybe I didn't," Ben said glumly.

            "I'm going to offer you one box-top premium, as an inducement. You wondered how Mike got rid of his clothes so quickly. I'll tell you how."

            "How?"

            "It was a miracle."

            "Oh, for God's sake!"

            "Could be. But one thousand dollars says that it was a miracle by the usual rules for miracles-outcome to be decided by you. Go back and ask Mike how he did it. Get him to show you. Then send me the money."

            "Hell, Jubal, I don't want to take your money."

            "You won't. I've got inside information. Bet?"

            "No, damn it. Jubal, you go down there and see what the score is. I can't go back-not now."

            "They'll take you back with open arms and not even ask why you left so abruptly. One thousand on that prediction, too. Ben, you were there less than a day-fifteen hours, about-and you spent over half that time sleeping and playing hopscotch with Dawn. Did you give them a square shake? The sort of careful investigation you give something smelly in public life before you blast it in your column?"

            "But-"

            "Did you, or didn't you?"

            "No, but-"

            "Oh, for Pete's sake yourself, Ben! You claim to be in love with Jill yet you won't give her the consideration you give a crooked politician. Not a tenth the effort she made to help you when you were kidnapped. Where would you be today if she had given it so feeble a try? Pushing up daisies! Roasting in hell! You're bitching about those kids over some friendly fornication-but do you know what I'm worried about?"

            "What?"

            "Christ was crucified for preaching without a police permit. Think it over."

            Caxton stood up. "I'm on my way."

            "After lunch."

            "Now."

            Twenty-four hours later Ben wired Jubal two thousand dollars.

            When, after a week, Jubal had had no other message, he sent a stat care of Ben's office: "What the hell are you doing?" Ben's answer came back, somewhat delayed: "Studying Martian and the rules for hopscotch -- fraternally yours -- Ben."

PART FIVE HIS HAPPY DESTINY

XXXIV

            FOSTER LOOKED UP from his current Work in Progress. "Junior!"

            "Sir?"

            "That youngster you wanted-he's available now. The Martians have released him."

            Digby looked puzzled. "I'm sorry. There was some young creature toward whom I have a Duty?"

            Foster smiled angelically. Miracles were never necessary-in Truth the pseudo-concept "miracle" was self-contradicting. But these young fellows always had to learn it for themselves. "Never mind," he said gently. "It's a minor job and I'll handle it myself-and Junior?"

            "Sir?"

            "Call me 'Fog,' please-ceremony is all right in the field but we don't need it in the studio. And remind me not to call you 'Junior' after this- you made a very nice record on that temporary duty assignment. Which name do you like to be called?"

            His assistant blinked. "I have another name?"

            "Thousands of them. Do you have a preference?"

            "Why, I really don't recall at this eon."

            "Well ... how would you like to be called 'Digby'?"

            "Uh, yes. That's a very nice name. Thanks."

            "Don't thank me. You earned it." Archangel Foster turned back to his work, not forgetting the minor item he had assumed. Briefly he considered how this cup might be taken from little Patricia-then chided himself for such unprofessional, almost human, thought. Mercy was not possible to an angel; angelic compassion left no room for it.

            The Martian Old Ones had reached an elegant and awesome trial solution to their major esthetic problem and put it aside for a few filledthrees to let it generate new problems. At which time, unhurriedly but at once and almost absent-mindedly, the alien nestling which they had returned to his proper world was tapped of what he had learned of his people and dropped, after cherishing, since he was of no further interest to their purposes.

            They collectively took the data he had accumulated and, with a view to testing that trial solution, began to work toward considering an inquiry leading to an investigation of esthetic parameters involved in the possibility of the artistic necessity of destroying Earth. But necessarily much waiting would be, before fullness would grok decision.

            The Daibutsu at Kamakura was again washed by a giant wave secondary to a seismic disturbance some 280 kilometers off Honshu. The wave killed more than 13,000 people and lodged a small male infant high up in the Buddha image's interior, where it was eventually found and succored by surviving monks. This infant lived ninety-seven Terran years after the disaster that wiped out his family, and himself produced no progeny nor anything of any note aside from a reputation reaching to Yokohama for loud and sustained belching. Cynthia Duchess entered a nunnery with all benefits of modern publicity and left same without fanfare three days later. Ex-Secretary General Douglas suffered a slight stroke which impaired the use of his left hand but did not reduce his ability to conserve assets entrusted to his stewardship. Lunar Enterprises, Ltd., published a prospectus on a bond issue for the wholly owned subsidiary Ares Chandler Corporation. The Lyle-Drive Exploratory Vessel Mary Jane Smith landed on Pluto. Fraser, Colorado, reported the coldest average February of its recorded history.

            Bishop Oxtongue, speaking at the New Grand Avenue Temple in Kansas City, preached on the text (Matt. XXIV:24): 'Por there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect." He was careful to make clear that his diatribe did not refer to Mormons, Christian Scientists, Roman Catholics, nor Fosterites-most especially not to the last-nor to any other fellow travelers whose good works counted for more than minute and, in the final analysis, inconsequential differences in creed or ritual . - . but solely to recent upstart heretics who were seducing faithful contributors away from the faiths of their fathers. In a lush subtropical resort city in the southern part of the same nation three complainants swore an information charging public lewdness on the part of a pastor, three of his assistants, and Joe Doe, Mary Roe, et al., plus further charges of running a disorderly house and contributing to the delinquency of minors. The county attorney had at first only the mildest interest in prosecuting under the information as he had on file a dozen much like it- the complaining witnesses had always failed to appear at arraignment.

            He pointed this out. Their spokesman said, "We know. But you'll have plenty of backing this time. Supreme Bishop Short is determined that this Antichrist shall flourish no longer."

            The prosecutor was not interested in antichrists-but there was a primary coming up. "Well, just remember I can't do much without backing."

            "You'll have it."

            Farther north, Dr. Jubal Harshaw was not immediately aware of this incident and its consequences, but he did know of too many others for peace of mind. Against his own rules he had succumbed to that most insidious drug, the news. Thus far, he had contained his vice; he merely subscribed to a clipping service instructed for "Man from Mars," "V. M. Smith," "Church of All Worlds," and "Ben Caxton." But the monkey was crawling up his back-twice lately he had had to fight off an impulse to order Larry to set up the babble box in his study- Damn it, why couldn't those kids tape him an occasional letter?- instead of letting him wonder and worry. "Front!"

            He heard Anne come in but he still continued to stare Out a window at snow and an empty swimming pool. "Anne," he said without turning around, "rent us a small tropical atoll and put this mausoleum up for sale."

            "Yes, Boss. Anything else?"

            "But get that atoll tied down on a long-term lease before you hand this wilderness back to the Indians; I will not put up with hotels. How long has it been since I wrote any pay copy?"

            "Forty-three days."

            "You see? Let that be a lesson to you. Begin. 'Death Song of a Wood's Colt':

            "The depths of winter longing are ice within my heart

            The shards of broken covenants lie sharp against my soul

            The wraiths of long-lost ecstasy still keep us two apart

            The sullen winds of bitterness still keen from turn to pole.

            "The scars and twisted tendons, the stumps of struck-off limbs,

            The aching pit of hunger and the throb of unset bone,

            My sanded burning eyeballs, as light within them dims,

            Add nothing to the torment of lying here alone

            "The shimmering flames of fever trace out your blessed face

            My broken eardrums echo yet your voice inside my head

            I do not fear the darkness that comes to me apace

            I only dread the loss of you that comes when I am dead.

            "There," he added briskly, "sign it 'Louisa M. Alcott' and have the agency send it to Togetherness magazine."

            "Boss, is that your idea of 'pay copy'?"

            "Huh? Of course it isn't. Not now. But it will be worth something later, so put it in file and my literary executor can use it to help settle the death duties. That's the catch in all artistic pursuits; the best work is always worth most after the workman can't be paid. The literary life.- dreck! It consists in scratching the cat till it purrs."

            "Poor Jubali Nobody ever feels sorry for him, so he has to feel sorry for himself."

            "Sarcasm yet. No wonder I don't get any work done."

            "Not sarcasm, Boss. Only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches."

            "My apologies. All right, here's pay copy. Begin. Title: 'One for the Road,'

            "There's amnesia in a hang knot,

            And comfort in the ax,

            But the simple way of poison will make your nerves relax.

            "There's surcease in a gunshot,

            And sleep that comes from racks,

            But a handy draft of poison avoids the harshest tax.

            "You find rest upon the hot squat,

            Or gas can give you pax,

            But the closest corner chemist has peace in packaged stacks.

            "There's refuge in the church lot

            When you tire of facing facts,

            And the smoothest route is poison prescribed by kindly quacks.

            "Chorus-

            With an ugh! and a groan, and a kick of the heels, 

            Death comes quiet, or it comes with squeals-

            But the pleasantest place to find your end

            Is a cup of cheer from the hand of a friend."

            "Jubal," Anne said worriedly, "is your stomach upset?"

            "Always."

            "That one's for file, too?"

            "Huh? That's for the New Yorker. Their usual pen name."

            "They'll bounce it."

            "They'll buy it. It's morbid, they'll buy it."

            And besides, there's something wrong with the scansion."

            "Of course there is! You have to give an editor something to change, or he gets frustrated. After he pees in it himself, he likes the flavor much better, so he buys it. Look, my dear, I was successfully avoiding honest work long before you were born-so don't try to teach Granpaw how to suck eggs. Or would you rather I nursed Abby while you turn Out copy? Hey! It's Abigail's feeding time, isn't it? And you weren't 'Front,' Dorcas is 'Front.' I remember."

            "It won't hurt Abby to wait a few minutes. Dorcas is lying down. Morning sickness."

            "Nonsense. If she's pregnant, why won't she let me run a test? Anne, I can spot pregnancy two weeks before a rabbit can-and you know it. I'm going to have to be firm with that girl."

            "Jubal, you let her be! She's scared she didn't catch ... and she wants to think she did, as long as possible. Don't you know anything about women?"

            "Mmm ... come to think about it-no. Not anything. All right, I won't heckle her. But why didn't you bring our baby angel in and nurse her here? You have both hands free when you take dictation."

            "In the first place, I'm glad I didn't-she might have understood what you were saying-"

            "So I'm a bad influence, am I?"

            "She's too young to see the marshmallow syrup underneath, Boss. But the real reason is that you don't do any work at all if I bring her in with me; you just play with her."

            "Can you think of any better way of enriching the empty hours?"

            "Jubal, I appreciate the fact that you are dotty over my daughter; I think she's pretty nice myself. But you've been spending all your time either playing with Abby . . . or moping. That's not good."

            "How soon do we go on relief?"

            "That's beside the point. If you don't crank out stories, you get spiritually constipated. It's reached the point where Dorcas and Larry and I are biting our nails-and when you do yell 'Front!' we jitter with relief. Only it's always a false alarm."

            "If there's money in the bank to meet the bills, what are you worried about?"

            "What are you worried about, Boss?"

            Jubal considered it. Should he tell her? Any possible doubt as to the paternity of Abigail had been settled, in his mind, in her naming; Anne had wavered between "Abigail" and "Zenobia"-and had settled it by loading the infant with both names. Anne had never mentioned the meanings of those names; presumably she did not know that he knew them.

            Anne went on firmly, "You're not fooling anyone but yourself; Jubal. Dorcas and Larry and I all know that Mike can take care of himself . and you ought to know it. But because you've been so frenetic about it-"

            "'Frenetic!' Me?"

            "-Larry very quietly set up the stereo tank in his room and some one of us three had been catching the news, every broadcast. Not because we are worried, for we aren't-except about you. But when Mike gets into the news-and of course he does get into the news; he's still the Man from Mars-we know about it before those silly clippings ever reach you. I wish you would quit reading them."

            "How do you know anything about any clippings? I went to a lot of trouble to see that you didn't. I thought."

            "Boss," she said in a tired voice, "somebody has to dispose of the trash. Do you think Larry can't read?"

            "So. That confounded oubliette hasn't worked right since Duke left. Damn it, nothing has!"

            "All you have to do is to send word to Mike that you want Duke to come back-Duke will show up at once."

            "You know I can't do that." It graveled him that what she said was almost certainly true - . - and the thought was followed by a sudden and bitter suspicion. "Anne! Are you still here because Mike told you to stay?"

            She answered promptly, "I am here because I wish to be here."

            "Mmmm ... not sure that's a responsive answer."

            "Jubal, sometimes I wish you were small enough to spank. May I finish what I was saying?"

            "You have the floor." Would any of them be here? Would Maryam have married Stinky and gone off to Beirut if Mike had not approved it? The name "Fatima Michele" might be an acknowledgment of her adopted faith plus her husband's wish to compliment his closest friend-or it might be code almost as explicit as baby Abby's double name, one which stated that Mike was somewhat more than godfather to the daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Mahmoud. If so, did Stinky wear his antlers unaware? Or with serene pride as Joseph was alleged to have done? Uh . . . but it must be concluded with utter certainty that Stinky knew the minutes of his houri; water.brothershiP permitted not even diplomatic omission of any matter so important. If indeed it was important, which as a physician and agnostic Jubal doubted. But to them it would be- "You aren't listening."

            "Sorry. Woolgathering." -and stop it, you nasty old man ... reading meanings into names that mothers give their children indeed! Next thing you'll be taking up numerology - . . then astrology . . . then spiritualism-until your senility has progressed so far that all there is left is custodial treatment for a hulk too dim-witted to discorporate in dignity. Go to locked drawer nine in the clinic, code "Lethe"-and use at least two grains to be sure, although one is more than enough- "There's no need for you to read those clippings, because we know the public news about Mike before you do - . - and lien has given us a water promise to let us know any private news we need to know at once- and Mike of course knows this. But, Jubal, Mike can't be hurt. If you would only visit the Nest, as we three have done, you would know this."

            "I have never been invited."

            "We didn't have specilic invitations, either; we just went. Nobody has to have an invitation to go to his own home . . . any more than they require invitations to come here. Like 'The Death of the Hired Man.' But you are just making excuses, Jubal, and poor ones . - . for Ben urged you to, and both Dawn and Duke sent word to you."

            "Mike hasn't invited me."

            "Boss, that Nest belongs to me and to you quite as much as it does to Mike. Mike is first among equals - . . as you are here. Is this Abby's home?"

            "Happens," he answered evenly, "that title aheady vests in her with lifetime tenancy for me." Jubal had changed his own will, knowing that Mike's will now made it unnecessary to provide for any water brother of Mike. But not being sure of the exact 'water' status of this nestling- save that she was usually wet-he had made redispositions in her favor and n favor of descendants, if any, of certain others. "I hadn't intended to tell you, but there is no harm in your knowing."

            "Jubal ... you've made me cry. And you've almost made me forget what I was saying. And I must say it. Mike would never hurry you, you know that. I grok he is waiting for fullness-and I grok that you are, too."

            "Mmmm ... I grok you speak rightly."

            "All right. I think you are especially glum today simply because Mike has been arrested again. But that's happened many-"

            "'Arrested?' I hadn't heard about this! What goes on?" He added, "Damn it, girl-"

            "Jubal, Jubal! Ben hasn't called; that's all we need to know. You know how many times Mike has been arrested-in the army, as a carney, other places-half a dozen times as a preacher. He never hurts anybody; he just lets them do it. They can never convict him and he gets out as soon as he wishes-at once, if he wants to."

            "What is it this time?"

            "Oh, the usual nonsense-public lewdness, statutory rape, conspiracy to defraud, keeping a disorderly house, contributing to the delinquency of minors, conspiracy to evade the state truancy laws-"

            "Huh?"

            "That involves their own nestlings' school. Their license to operate a parochial school was canceled; the kids still didn't go back to public school. No matter, Jubal-none of it matters. The one thing on which they are technically in violation of the law-and so are you, Boss darling-can't possibly be proved. Jubal, if you had ever seen the Temple and the Nest you would know that even the F.D.S. couldn't sneak a spy-eye into it. So relax. After a lot of publicity, charges will be dropped-and the crowds at the outer services will be bigger than ever."

            "Hmm! Anne, does Mike rig these persecutions himself?"

            She looked startled, an expression her face was unused to. "Why, I had never considered the possibility, Jubal. Mike can't lie, you know."

            "Does it involve lying? Suppose he planted perfectly true rumors about himself? But ones that can't be proved in court?"

            "Do you think Michael would do that?"

            "I don't know. I do know that the slickest way in the world to lie is to tell the right amount of truth at the right time-and then shut up. And it wouldn't be the first time that persecution has been courted for its headline value. All right, I'll dismiss it from my mind unless it turns out he can't handle it. Are you still 'Front'?"

            "If you can refrain from chucking Abby under the chin and saying cootchy-coo and similar uncommercial noises, I'll fetch her. Otherwise I had better tell Dorcas to get up and get to work."

            "Bring in Abby. I'm going to make an honest effort to make some commercial noises-a brand-new plot, known as boy-meets-girl."

            "Say, that's a good one, Boss! I wonder why nobody ever thought of it before? Half a sec-" She hurried out.

            Jubal did restrain himself-less than one minute of uncommercial noises and demonstrations, just enough to invoke Abigail's heavenly smile, cum dimples, then Anne settled back and let the infant nurse. "Title:" he began. "'Girls Are Like Boys, Only More So.' Begin. Henry M. Haversham Fourth had been very carefully reared, He believed that there were only two kinds of girls: those in his presence and those who were not. He vastly preferred the latter sort, especially when they stayed that way. Paragraph. He had not been introduced to the young lady who fell into his lap, and he did not consider a common disaster as equivalent to a formal intro-' What the hell do you want? Can't you see I'm working?"

            "Boss-" said Larry.

            "Get out of that door, close it behind you, and-"