Robert Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He’s landing on the grass, Boss.”

“Well, tell him to try again. We’ll get him on the next pass.”

“Looks like Ben Caxton.”

“So it is. We’ll let him live—this time. Hi, Ben! What’ll you drink?”

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

“You’re doing it. Dorcas, fetch Ben a glass of warm milk; he’s sick.”

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

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

Ben said, “What the deuce? Am I lost?”

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

“Enough statues to fill a graveyard!”

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

“Well, that hideous thing I’ve seen before… but when did you acquire the rest of this ballast?”

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

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

“Huh? Don’t be silly, Jubal; you’re rude to ladies— live ones—a dozen times a day. And you know which ones I mean.”

Jubal shouted, “Anne! Upstairs! Wear your cloak!”

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

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

“That calls for an opinion.”

“That’s what I’m asking for. Your opinion. You’re not in court—”

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

“Have you ever known me to be rude to a lady?”

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

“That’s all. No, one more opinion. What do you think of this bronze?”

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

“Thanks. That’s all.” She left. “Do you want to argue it, Ben?”

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

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