Robert Heinlein - A Stranger in a Strange Land

"Maybe." Doubtfully but earnestly Jill started digging into her memory for jokes that had struck her as irresistibly funny, ones which had jerked a laugh out of her� incidents she had seen or heard of which had made her helpless with laughter:

"-her entire bridge club."

"Should I bow?"

"Neither one, you idiot - instead!"

"-the Chinaman objects."

"-broke her leg."

"-make trouble for me!"

"-but it'll spoil the ride for me."

"-and his mother-in-law fainted."

"Stop you? Why, I bet three to one you could do it!"

"-something has happened to Ole."

"-and so are you, you clumsy ox!"

She gave up on "funny" stories, pointing out to Mike that such were just fantasies, not real, and tried to recall real incidents. Practical jokes? All practical jokes supported Mike's thesis, even ones as mild as a dribble glass - and when it came to an interne's notion of a practical joke - well, internes and medical students should be kept in cages. What else? The time Elsa Mae had lost her monogrammed panties? It hadn't been funny to Elsa Mae. Or the- She said grimly, "Apparently the pratfall is the peak of all humor. It's not a pretty picture of the human race, Mike."

"Oh, but it is!"

"Huh?"

"I had thought - I had been told - that a 'funny' thing is a thing of a goodness. It isn't. Not ever is it funny to the person it happens to. Like that sheriff without his pants. The goodness is in the laughing itself. I grok it is a bravery� and a sharing� against pain and sorrow and defeat."

"But - Mike, it is not a goodness to laugh at people."

"No. But I was not laughing at the little monkey. I was laughing at you people. And I suddenly knew that I was people and could not stop laughing." He paused. "This is hard to explain, because you have never lived as a Martian, for all that I've told you about it. On Mars there is never anything to laugh at. All the things that are funny to us humans either physically cannot happen on Mars or are not permitted to happen - sweetheart, what you call 'freedom' doesn't exist on Mars; everything is planned by the Old Ones - or the things that do happen on Mars which we laugh at here on Earth aren't funny because there is no wrongness about them. Death, for example."

"Death isn't funny."

"Then why are there so many jokes about death? Jill, with us - us humans - death is so sad that we must laugh at it. All those religions - they contradict each other on every other point but every one of them is filled with ways to help people be brave enough to laugh even though they know they are dying." He stopped and Jill could feel that he had almost gone into his trance state. "Jill? Is it possible that I was searching them the wrong way? Could it be that every one of all those religions is true?"

"Huh? How could that possibly be? Mike, if one of them is true, then the others are wrong. Logic."

"So? Point to the shortest direction around the universe. It doesn't matter which way you point, it's the shortest� and you're pointing right back at yourself."

"Well, what does that prove? You taught me the true answer, Mike. 'Thou art God.'"

"And Thou art God, my lovely. I wasn't disputing that� but that one prime fact which doesn't depend at all on faith may mean that all faiths are true."

"Well� if they're all true, then right now I want to worship Siva." Jill changed the subject with emphatic direct action.

"Little pagan," he said softly. "They'll run you out of San Francisco."

"But we're going to Los Angeles� where it won't be noticed. Oh! Thou art Siva!"

"Dance, Kali, dance!"

Some time during the night she woke and saw him standing at the window, looking out over the city. ("Trouble, my brother?")

He turned and spoke. "There's no need for them to be so unhappy."

"Darling, darling! I think I had better take you home. The city is not good for you."

"But I would still know it. Pain and sickness and hunger and fighting - there's no need for any of it. It's as foolish as those little monkeys."

"Yes, darling. But it's not your fault-"

"Ah, but it is!"

"Well� that way - yes. But it's not just this one city; it's five billion people and more. You can't help five billion people."

"I wonder."

He came over and sat down by her. "I grok with them now, I can talk to them. Jill, I could set up our act again� and make the marks laugh every minute. I am certain."

"Then why not do it? Patty would certainly be pleased� and so would I. I liked being 'with it' - and now that we've shared water with Patty, it would be like being home."

He didn't answer. Jill felt his mind and knew that he was contemplating, trying to grok. She waited.

"Jill? What do I have to do to be ordained?"

THE FIRST MIXED LOAD Of permanent colonists arrived on Mars; six of the seventeen survivors of the twenty-three originals returned to Earth. Prospective colonists trained in Peru at sixteen thousand feet. The president of Argentina moved one night to Montevideo, taking with him such portables as could be stuffed into two suitcases, and the new Presidente started an extradition process before the high Court to yank him back, or at least the two suitcases. Last rites for Alice Douglas were held privately in the National Cathedral with less than two thousand attending, and editorialists and stereo commentators alike praised the dignified fortitude with which the Secretary General took his bereavement. A three-year-old named Inflation, carrying 126 pounds with Jinx Jenkins Up, won the Kentucky Derby, paying fifty-four for one, and two guests of the Colony Airotel, Louisville, Kentucky, discorporated, one voluntarily, the other by heart failure.

Another bootleg edition of the (unauthorized) biography The Devil and Reverend Foster appeared simultaneously on news stands throughout the United States; by nightfall every copy had been burned and the plates destroyed, along with incidental damage to other chattels and to real estate, plus a certain amount of mayhem, maiming, and simple assault. The British Museum was rumored to possess a copy of the first edition (untrue), and also the Vatican Library (true, but available only to certain church scholars).

In the Tennessee legislature a bill was again introduced to make the ratio pi exactly equal to three; it was reported out by the committee on public education and morals, passed with no objection by the lower house and died in committee in the upper house. An interchurch fundamentalist group opened offices in Van Buren, Arkansas, for the purpose of soliciting funds to send missionaries to the Martians; Dr. Jubal Harshaw happily sent them a lavish donation, but took the precaution of sending it in the name (and with the address) of the editor of the New Humanist, a rabid atheist and his close friend.

Other than that, Jubal had very little to feel amused about - there had been too much news about Mike lately, and all of it depressing. He had treasured the occasional visits home of Jill and Mike and had been most interested in Mike's progress, especially after Mike developed a sense of humor. But they came home less frequently now and Jubal did not relish the latest developments.

It had not troubled Jubal when Mike was run out of Union Theological Seminary, hotly pursued in spirit by a pack of enraged theologians, some of whom were angry because they believed in God and others because they did not - but all united in detesting the Man from Mars. Jubal honestly evalued anything that happened to a theologian short of breaking him on the wheel was no more than meet - and the experience was good for the boy; he'd know better next time.

Nor had he been troubled when Mike (with the help of Douglas) had enlisted under an assumed name in the Federation armed forces. He had been quite sure (through private knowledge) that no sergeant could cause Mike any permanent distress, and contrariwise, Jubal was not troubled by what might happen to sergeants or other ranks - an unreconciled old reactionary, Jubal had burned his own honorable discharge and all that went with it on the day that the United States had ceased having its own armed forces.