Robert Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land

“Same thing… you grok.”

“You speak rightly, my dear. But when do we eat around here? I feel a most un-Martian urgency inside. The service was better in the Nest.”

“You can’t expect Patty to work on your dratted old dictionary, see to it that everyone who arrives is comfortable, run errands for Mike, and still have food on the table the instant you get hungry, my love. Jubal, Stinky will never achieve priesthood—he’s a slave to his stomach.”

“Well, so am I.”

“And you girls might give Patty a hand,” her husband added.

“That sounds like a crude hint. You know we do, dear, all she will let us—and Tony will hardly allow anyone in his kitchen… even this kitchen.” She stood up. “Come on, Jubal, and let’s see what’s cooking. Tony will be very flattered if you visit his kitchen.”

Jubal went with her, was a bit bemused to see telekinesis used in preparing food, met Tony, who scowled until he saw who was with her, then was beamingly proud to show off his workshop, accompanied by a spate of invective in mixed English and Italian at the scoundrels who had destroyed “his” kitchen in the Nest. In the meantime a spoon, unassisted, continued to keel a big pot of spaghetti sauce.

Shortly thereafter Jubal declined to be jockeyed into a seat at the head of a long table, grabbed one elsewhere. Patty sat at one end; the head chair remained vacant… except for an eerie feeling which Jubal suppressed that the Man from Mars was sitting there and that everyone present but himself could see him which was true only in some cases.

Across the table from him was Dr. Nelson.

Jubal discovered that he would have been surprised only if Dr. Nelson had not been present. He nodded and said, “Hi, Sven.”

“Hi, Doc. Share water.”

“Never thirst. What are you around here? Staff physician?”

Nelson shook his bead. “Medical student.”

“So. Learn anything?”

“I’ve learned that medicine isn’t necessary.”

“If youda ast me, I coulda told yah. Seen Van?”

“He ought to be in sometime late tonight or early tomorrow. His ship grounded today.”

“Does he always come here?” inquired Jubal.

“Call him an extension student. He can’t spend much time here.”

“Well, it will be good to see him. I haven’t laid eyes on him for a year and half, about.” Jubal picked up a conversation with the man on his right while Nelson talked with Dorcas on his right. Jubal noticed the same tingling expectancy at the table which he had felt before, but reinforced. Yet there was still nothing he could put his finger on, just a quiet family dinner in relaxed intimacy. Once, a glass of water was passed all around the table, but, if there was ritual of words with it, they were spoken too low to carry. When it reached Jubal’s placer he took a sip and passed it along to the girl on his left—round-eyed and too awed to make chit-chat with him—and himself said in a low voice, “I offer you water.”

She managed to answer, “I thank you for water, Fa—Jubal.” That was almost the only word be got out of her. When the glass completed the circuit, reaching the vacant chair at the head of the table, there was perhaps a half inch of water in it. It raised itself, poured, and the water disappeared, then the tumbler placed itself on the cloth. Jubal decided, correctly, that he had taken part in a group Sharing Water of the Innermost Temple… and probably in his honour—although it certainly was not even slightly like the Bacchallalhan revels he had thought accompanied such formal welcome of a brother. Was it because they were in strange surroundings? Or had he read into unexplicit reports what his own id wanted to find in those reports?

Or had they simply toned it down to an ascetic formality out of deference to his age and opinions?

The last seemed the most likely theory—and he found that it vexed him. Of course, he told himself, he was glad to be spared the need to refuse an invitation that he certainly did not want—and would not have relished at any age, his tastes being what they were.

But just the same, damn it—“Don’t anybody mention ice skating because Grandmaw is too old and frail for ice skating and it wouldn’t be polite. Hulda, you suggest that we play checkers and we’ll all chime in—Grandmaw likes checkers. And we’ll go ice skating some other time. Okay, kids?”

Jubal resented the respectful consideration, if that was what it was—he would almost have preferred to have gone ice skating anyhow, even at the cost of a broken hip.

But he decided to forget the matter, put it entirely out of mind, which he did with the help of the man on his right, who was as talkative as the girl on his left was not. His name, Jubal learned, was Sam, and presently he learned that Sam was a man of broad and deep scholarship, a trait Jubal valued in anyone when it was not mere parrot learning—and he grokked that in Sam it was not.

“This setback is only apparent,” Sam assured him. “The egg was ready to hatch and now we’ll spread out. Of course we’ve had trouble; we’ll go on having trouble—because no society, no matter how liberal its law may appear to be, will allow its basic concepts to be challenged with impunity. Which is exactly what we are doing. We are challenging everything from the sanctity of property to the sanctity of marriage.”

“Property, too?”

“Property the way it rules today. So far Michael has merely antagonized a few crooked gamblers. But what happens when there are thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and more, of people who can’t be stopped by bank vaults and who have only their self-discipline to restrain them from taking anything they want? To be sure, that discipline is stronger than any possible legal restraint—but no banker can grok that until he himself travels the thorny road to achieve that discipline… and he’ll wind up no longer a banker. What happens to the stock market when the illuminati know which way a stock will move—and the brokers don’t?”

“Do you know?”

Sam shook his head. “Not interested. But Saul over there—that other big Hebe; he’s my cousin—gives it grokking, along with Allie. Michael has them be very cautious about it, no big killings, and they use a dozen-odd dummy accounts—but the fact remains that any of the disciplined can make any amount of money at anything—real estate, stocks, horse races, gambling, you name it—when competing with the half awake. No, I don’t think that money and property will disappear—Michael says that both concepts are useful—but I do say that they’re going to be turned upside down and inside out to the point where people will have to learn new rules (and that means learn the hard way, just as we have) or be hopelessly outclassed. What happens to Lunar Enterprises when the common carrier between here and Luna City is teleportation?”

“Should I buy? Or sell?”

“Ask Saul. He might use the present corporation, or he might bankrupt it. Or it might be left untouched for a century or two. But besides bankers and brokers, consider any other occupation. How can a school teacher teach a child who knows more than she does and won’t hold still for mistaken teaching? What becomes of physicians and dentists when people are truly healthy? What happens to the cloak & suit industry and to the I.L.G.W.U. when clothing isn’t really needed at all and women aren’t so endlessly interested in dressing up (they’ll never lose interest entirely)—and nobody gives a damn if he’s caught with his arse bare? What shape does ‘the Farm Problem’ take when weeds can be told not to grow and crops can be harvested without benefit of International Harvester or John Deere? Just name it; it changes beyond recognition when the discipline is applied. Take just one change that will shake both the sanctity of marriage—in its present form—and the sanctity of property. Jubal, do you have any idea how much is spent each year in this country on Malthusian drugs and devices?”