Robert Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We’re leaving today.”

“Um—Plural.” Jubal looked around the table. “Are Larry and Duke and I going to have to put up with our own cooking until I can dig up more help?”

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

“You mean I get a vote?”

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

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

“We know that—and we’ll be back. Again we will share water.”

“We will, son.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Huh?”

“Jubal, there is no Martian word for ‘father.’ But lately I have grokked that you are my father. And Jill’s father.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Besides, the lighting wasn’t very good.

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