Robert Heinlein - A Stranger in a Strange Land

Dawn looked thoughtful. "No, I don't think so, Ben. Of course I would have to, in order to handle even a tenth so much. But I grok Michael could do it riding a bicycle while standing on his head."

"Mmm� I wouldn't know, I'm still making mud pies." Ben stood up. "Sometimes you miracle workers give me a slight pain, honey child. I'm going to go watch the tank for a while." He stopped to kiss her. "You entertain old Pappy Jubal; he likes little girls." Caxton left and a package of cigarettes he had left on a coffee table got up, followed him, and placed themselves in one of his pockets.

Jubal said, "Did you do that? Or Ben?"

"Ben did. I don't smoke, unless the man I'm with wants to smoke. But he's always forgetting his cigarettes; they chase him all over the Nest."

"Hmmm� pretty fair-sized mud pies he makes these days."

"Ben is advancing much more rapidly than he will ever admit. He's a very holy person - but he hates to admit it. He's shy."

"Umph. Dawn, you are the Dawn Ardent I met at Foster Tabernacle about two and half years ago, aren't you?"

"Oh, you remember!!" She looked as if he had handed her a lollipop.

"Of course I remember. But I was slightly puzzled. You've changed some. All for the better. You seem much more beautiful."

"That's because I am more beautiful," she said simply. "You mistook me for Gillian. And she is more beautiful, too."

"Where is that child? I haven't seen her� and I expected to see her at once."

"She's been working." Dawn paused. "But I told her and she says she's coming in." She paused again. "And I am to take her place. If you will excuse me."

"Oh, certainly. Run along, child."

"There's no hurry." But she did get up and leave almost at once as Dr. Mahmoud sat down.

Jubal looked at him sourly. "You might at least have had the common courtesy to let me know that you were in this country instead of letting me meet my goddaughter for the first time through the good offices of a snake."

"Oh, Jubal, you're always in such a bloody hurry,"

"Sir, when one is of-" Jubal was interrupted by two hands placed over his eyes from behind. A well-remembered voice demanded:

"Guess who?"

"Beelzebub?"

"Try again."

"Lady Macbeth?"

"Much closer. Third guess, or a forfeit."

"Gillian, stop that and come around here and sit beside me."

"Yes, Father." She obeyed.

"And knock off calling me 'Father' anywhere but home. Sir, I was saying that when one is of my age, one is necessarily in a hurry about some things. Each sunrise is a precious jewel� for it may never be followed by its sunset. The world may end at any moment."

Mahmoud smiled at him. "Jubal, are you under the impression that if you stop cranking, the world stops going around?"

"Most certainly, sir - from my viewpoint." Miriam joined them silently, sat down on Jubal's free side; he put an arm around her. "While I might not be honing to see your ugly face again� nor even to gaze on the somewhat more acceptable one of my former secretary-"

Miriam whispered, "Boss, are you honing for a kick in the stomach? I'm exquisitely beautiful; I have it on highest authority."

"Quiet. -new goddaughters are in another category. Through your failure to drop me so much as a postcard, I might have missed seeing Fatima Michele. In which case I would have returned to haunt you."

"In which case," Miriam pointed out, "you could take a took at Micky at the same time� rubbing strained carrots in her hair. A disgusting sight."

"I was speaking metaphorically."

"I wasn't. She's a sloppy trencherman."

"Why," asked Jill quietly, "were you speaking metaphorically, Boss?"

"Eh? The concept 'ghost' is one I feel no need for, other than as a figure of speech."

"It's more than a figure of speech," insisted Jill.

"Uh� as may be. I prefer to meet baby girls in the flesh, including my own."

Dr. Malmoud said, "But that is what I was saying, Jubal. You aren't about to die; you aren't even close to it. Mike has grokked you to be certain. He says you have a long stretch of years ahead of you."

Jubal shook his head. "I set a top limit of three figures years ago. No more."

"Which three figures, Boss?" Miriam inquired innocently. "The three Methuselah used?"

He shook her shoulders. "Don't be obscene!"

"Stinky says women should be obscene but not heard."

"Your husband speaks rightly. So pipe down. The day my machine first shows three figures on its mileage meter is the day I discorporate, whether Martian style or by my own crude methods. You can't take that away from me. Going to the showers is the best part of the game."

"I grok you speak rightly, Jubal," Jill said slowly, "about its being the best part of the game. But I wouldn't count on it any time soon. Your fullness is not yet. Allie cast a horoscope on you just last week."

"A horoscope? Oh, my God! Who is 'Ailie?' And how dare she cast a horoscope on me! Show her to me! Swelp me, I'll turn her in to the Better Business Bureau."

"I'm afraid you can't, Jubal," Mahmoud put in, "just now, as she is working on our dictionary. As to who she is, she's Madame Alexandra Vesant."

Jubal sat up and looked pleased. "Becky? Is she in this nut house, too? I should have known it. Where is she?"

"Yes, Becky. But we call her 'Allie' because we've got another Becky. But you'll have to wait. And don't scoff at her horoscopes, Jubal; she has the Sight."

"Oh, balderdash, Stinky. Astrology is nonsense and you know it."

"Oh, certainly. Even Allie knows it. And a percentage of astrologers are clumsy frauds. Nevertheless Allie practices it even more assiduously than she used to, when she did it for the public - using Martian arithmetic now and Martian astronomy - much fuller than ours. But it's her device for grokking, It could be gazing into a pool of water, or a crystal ball, or examining the entrails of a chicken. The means she uses to get into the mood do not matter and Mike has advised her to go on using the symbols she is used to. The point is: she has the Sight."

"What the hell do you mean by 'the Sight,' Stinky?"

"The ability to grok more of the universe than that little piece you happen to be sitting on at the moment. Mike has it from years of Martian discipline; Allie was an untrained semi-adept. The fact that she used as meaningless a symbol as astrology is beside the point. A rosary is meaningless, too - I speak of a Muslim rosary, of course; I'm not criticizing our competitors across the street." Mahmoud reached into his pocket, got out one, started fingering it. "If it helps to turn your hat around during a poker game - then it helps. It is irrelevant that the hat has no magic powers and cannot grok."

Jubal looked at the Islamic device for meditation and ventured a question he had hesitated to put before. "Then I take it you are still one of the Faithful? I had thought perhaps that you had joined Mike's church all the way."

Mahmoud put away the beads. "I have done both."

"Huh? Stinky, they're incompatible. Or else I don't grok either one."

Mahmoud shook his head. "Only on the surface. You could say, I suppose, that Maryam took my religion and I took hers; we consolidated. But, Jubal my beloved brother, I am still God's slave, submissive to His will� and nevertheless can say: 'Thou art God, I am God, all that groks is God.' The Prophet never asserted that he was the last of all prophets nor did he claim to have said all there was to say - only fanatics after his lifetime insisted on those two very misleading fallacies. Submission to God's will is not to become a blind robot, incapable of free decision and thus of sin - and the Koran does not say that. Submission can include - and does include - utter responsibility for the fashion in which I, and each of us, shape the universe. It is ours to turn into a heavenly garden or to rend and destroy." He smiled. "'With God all things are possible,' if I may borrow for a moment - except one thing� the one Impossible. God cannot escape Himself, He cannot abdicate His own total responsibility - He forever must remain submissive to His own will. Islam remains - He cannot pass the buck. It is His - mine� yours Mike's."