Robert Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land

Jill told herself that, as an adventure, this was a fizzle. She said, “Well, if you don’t need anything else, I must get on with my work.”

She started for the door. He called out, “Not—”

She stopped. “Eh? What do you want?”

“Don’t go away.”

“Well I have to go, pretty quickly.” But she came back to the bedside, “Is there anything you want?”

He looked her up and down. “You are… ‘woman’?”

The question startled Jill Boardman. Her sex had not been in doubt to the most casual observer for many years. Her first impulse was to answer flippantly.

But Smith’s grave face and oddly disturbing eyes checked her. She became aware emotionally that the impossible fact about this patient was true: he did not know what a woman was. She answered carefully, “Yes, I am a woman.”

Smith continued to stare at her without expression. Jill began to be embarrassed by it. To be looked at appreciatively by a male she expected and sometimes enjoyed, but this was more like being examined under a microscope. She stirred restively. “Well? I look like a woman, don’t I?”

“I do not know,” Smith answered slowly. “How does woman look? What makes you woman?”

“Well, for pity’s sake!” Jill realized confusedly that this conversation was further out of hand than any she had had with a male since about her twelfth birthday. “You don’t expect me to take off my clothes and show you!”

Smith took time to examine these verbal symbols and try to translate them. The first group he could not grok at all. It might be one of those formal sound groups these people so often used… yet it had been spoken with surprising force, as if it might be a last communication before withdrawal. Perhaps he had so deeply mistaken right conduct in dealing with a woman creature that the creature might be ready to discorporate at once.

He knew vaguely that he did not want the nurse to die at that moment, even though it was certainly its right and possibly its obligation to do so. The abrupt change from the rapport of the Water ritual to a situation in which a newly won water brother might possibly be considering withdrawal or discorporation would have thrown him into panic had he not been consciously suppressing such disturbance. But he decided that if Jill died now he must die at once also—he could not grok it in any other wise, not after the giving of water.

The second half of the communication contained only symbols that he had encountered before. He grokked imperfectly the intention but there seemed to be an implied way out for him to avoid this crisis—by acceding to the suggested wish. Perhaps if the woman took its clothes off neither of them need discorporate. He smiled happily. “Please.”

Jill opened her mouth, closed it hastily. She opened it again. “Huh? Well, I’ll be darned!”

Smith could grok emotional violence and knew that somehow he had offered the wrong reply. He began to compose his mind for discorporation, savoring and cherishing all that he had been and seen, with especial attention to this woman creature. Then he became aware that the woman was bending over him and he knew somehow that it was not about to die. It looked into his face. “Correct me if I am wrong,” it said, “but were you asking me to take my clothes off?”

The inversions and abstractions required careful translation but Smith managed it. “Yes,” he answered, while hoping that it would not stir up a new crisis.

“That’s what I thought you said. Brother, you aren’t ill.”

The word “brother” he considered first—the woman was reminding him that they had been joined in the water ritual. He asked the help of his nestlings that he might measure up to whatever this new brother wanted. “I am not ill,” he agreed.

“Though I’m darned if I know how to cope with whatever is wrong with you. But I won’t peel down. And I’ve got to get out of here.” It straightened up and turned again toward the side door—then stopped and looked back with a quizzical smile. “You might ask me again, real prettily, under other circumstances. I’m curious to see what I might do.”

The woman was gone. Smith relaxed into the water bed and let the room fade away from him. He felt sober triumph that he had somehow comforted himself so that it was not necessary for them to die… but there was much new to grok. The woman’s last speech had contained many symbols new to him and those which were not new had been arranged in fashions not easily understood. Out he was happy that the emotional flavor of them had been suitable for communication between water brothers—although touched with something else both disturbing and terrifyingly pleasant. He thought about his new brother, the woman creature, and felt odd tingles run through him. The feeling reminded him of the first time he had been allowed to be present at a discorporation and he felt happy without knowing why.

He wished that his brother Doctor Mahmoud were here. There was so much to grok, so little to grok from.

Jill Boardman spent the rest of her watch in a mild daze. She managed to avoid any mistakes in medication and she answered from reflex the usual verbal overtures made to her. But the face of the Man from Mars stayed in her mind and she mulled over the crazy things he had said. No, not “crazy,” she corrected—she had done her stint in psychiatric wards and she felt certain that his remarks had not been psychotic.

She decided that “innocent” was the proper term—then she decided that the word was not adequate. His expression was innocent, but his eyes were not. What sort of creature had a face like that?

She had once worked in a Catholic hospital; she suddenly saw the face of the Man from Mars surrounded by the head dress of a nursing Sister, a nun. The idea disturbed her, for there was nothing female about Smith’s face.

She was changing into Street clothes when another nurse stuck her head into the locker room. “Phone, Jill. For you.” Jill accepted the call, sound without vision, while she continued to dress.

“Is this Florence Nightingale?” a baritone voice asked.

“Speaking. That you, Ben?”

“The stalwart upholder of the freedom of the press in person. Little one, are you busy?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“I have in mind taking you out, buying you a bloody steak, plying you with liquor, and asking you a question.”

“The answer is still ‘No.’”

“Not that question. Another one.”

“Oh, do you know another one? If so, tell me.”

“Later. I want you softened up by food and liquor first.”

“Real steak? Not syntho?”

“Guaranteed. When you stick a fork into it, it will turn imploring eyes on you.”

“You must be on an expense account, Ben.”

“That’s irrelevant and ignoble. How about it?”

“You’ve talked me into it.”

“The roof of the medical center. Ten minutes.”

She put the street suit she had changed into back into her locker and put on a dinner dress kept there for emergencies. It was a demure little number, barely translucent and with bustle and bust pads so subdued that they merely re-created the effect she would have produced had she been wearing nothing. The dress had cost her a month’s pay and did not look it, its subtle power being concealed like knock-out drops in a drink. Jill looked at herself with satisfaction and took the bounce tube up to the roof.

There she pulled her cape around her against the wind and was looking for Ben Caxton when the roof orderly touched her arm. “There is a car over there paging you, Miss Boardman—that Talbot saloon.”

“Thanks, Jack.” She saw the taxi spotted for take-off, with its door open. She went to it, climbed in, and was about to hand Ben a backhanded compliment on gallantry when she saw that he was not inside. The taxi was on automatic; its door closed and it took to the air, swung out of the circle, and sliced across the Potomac. Jill sat back and waited.