Robert Heinlein - A Stranger in a Strange Land

Smith hesitated a long time, then spoke slowly. "Jubal, it is not the distance. It is not the seeing. It is the knowing."

"Hmm� let's see if I grok it. Or grok part of it. It doesn't matter how far or how close a thing is. You don't even have to see it happening. But if you know that a bad thing is happening, you can reach out and stop it. Right?"

Smith looked slightly troubled. "Almost it is right. But I am not long out of the nest. For knowing I must see. But an Old One does not need eyes to know. He knows. He groks. He acts. I am sorry."

"I don't know what you are sorry about, son," Jubal said gruffly. "The High Minister for Peace would have declared you Top Secret ten minutes ago."

"Beg pardon?"

"Never mind. What you do is quite good enough in this vicinity." Jubal returned to his desk, looked around thoughtfully and picked up a ponderous metal ash tray. "Jill, don't aim at my face this time; this thing has sharp corners. Okay, Mike, you stand clear out in the hallway."

"Jubal� my brother� please not!"

"What's the trouble, son? You did it beautifully a few minutes ago. I want one more demonstration - and this time I won't take my eyes off it."

"Jubal-"

"Yes, Jill?"

"I think I grok what is bothering Mike."

"Well, tell me then, for I don't."

"We set up an experiment where I was about to hurt you by hitting you with that box. But both of us are his water brothers - so it upset Mike that I even tried to hurt you. I think there is something very un-Martian about such a situation. It puts Mike in a dilemma. Divided loyalty."

Harshaw frowned. "Maybe it should be investigated by the Committee on un-Martian Activities."

"I'm not joking, Jubal."

"Nor was I - for we may need such a committee all too soon. I wonder how Mrs. O'Leary's cow felt as she kicked the lantern? All right, Jill, you sit down and I'll re-rig the experiment." Harshaw handed the ash tray to Mike. "Feel how heavy it is, son, and see those sharp corners."

Smith examined it somewhat gingerly. Harshaw went on, "I'm going to throw it straight up in the air, clear to the ceiling - and let it hit me in the head as it comes down."

Mike stared at him. "My brother� you will now discorporate?"

"Eh? No, no! It won't kill me and I don't want to die. But it will cut me and hurt me - unless you stop it. Here we go!" Harshaw tossed it straight up within inches of the high ceiling, tracking it with his eyes like a soccer player waiting to pass the ball with his head. He concentrated on watching it, while one part of his mind was considering jerking his head aside at the last instant rather than take the nasty scalp wound the heavy, ugly thing was otherwise sure to give him - and another small piece of his mind reckoned cynically that he would never miss this chattel; he had never liked it - but it had been a gift.

The ash tray topped its trajectory, and stayed there.

Harshaw looked at it, with a feeling that he was stuck in one frame of a motion picture. Presently he remembered to breathe and found that he needed to, badly. Without taking his eyes off it he croaked, "Anne. What do you see?"

She answered in a flat voice, "That ash tray is five inches from the ceiling. I do not see anything holding it up." Then she added in tones less certain, "Jubal, I think that's what I'm seeing� but if the cameras don't show the same thing, I'm going to turn in my robe and tear up my license."

"Um. Jill?"

"It floats. It just floats."

Jubal sighed, Went to his chair and sat down heavily, all without taking his eyes off the unruly ash tray. "Mike," he said, "what went wrong? Why didn't it disappear like the box?"

"But, Jubal," Mike said apologetically, "you said to stop it; you did not say to make it go away. When I made the box go away, you wanted it to be again. Have I done wrongly?"

"Oh. No, you have done exactly right. I keep forgetting that you always take things literally." Harshaw recalled certain colloquial insults common in his early years - and reminded himself forcefully never, never to use any of such to Michael Valentine Smith - for, if he told the boy to drop dead or to get lost, Harshaw now felt certain that the literal meaning of his words would at once ensue.

"I am glad," Smith answered soberly. "I am sorry I could not make the box be again. I am sorry twice that I wasted so much food. But I did not know how to help it. Then a necessity was. Or so I grokked."

"Eh? What food?"

Jill said hastily, "He's talking about those two men, Jubal. Berquist and the cop with him - if he was a cop. Johnson."

"Oh, yes." Harshaw reflected that he himself still retained un-Martian notions of food, subconsciously at least. "Mike, I wouldn't worry about wasting that 'food.' They probably would have been tough and poor flavor. I doubt if a meat inspector would have passed them. In fact," he added, recalling the Federation convention about "long pig," "I am certain that they would have been condemned as unfit for food. So don't worry about it. Besides, as you say, it was a necessity. You grokked the fullness and acted rightly."

"I am much comforted," Mike answered with great relief in his voice. 'Only an Old One can always be sure of right action at a cusp� and I have much learning to learn and much growing to grow before I may join the Old Ones. Jubal? May I move it? I am tiring."

"You want to make it go away now? Go ahead."

"But now I cannot."

"Eh? Why not?"

"Your head is no longer under it. I do not grok wrongness in its being, where it is."

"Oh. All right. Move it." Harshaw continued to watch it, expecting that it would float to the spot now over his head and thus regain a wrongness. Instead the ash tray moved downward at a slow, steady speed, moved sideways until it was close above his desk top, hovered for a moment, then slid to an empty spot and came in to an almost noiseless landing.

"Thank you, Jubal," said Smith.

"Eh? Thank YOU, Son!" Jubal picked up the ash tray, examined it curiously. It was neither hot nor cold nor did it make his fingers tingle - it was as ugly, over-decorated, commonplace, and dirty as it had been five minutes earlier. "Yes, thank you. For the most amazing experience I've had since the day the hired girl took me up into the attic." He looked up. "Anne, you trained at Rhine."

"Yes."

"Have you seen levitation before?"

She hesitated slightly. "I've seen what was called telekinesis with dice - but I'm no mathematician and I could not testify that what I saw was telekinesis."

"Hell's bells, you wouldn't testify that the sun had risen if the day was cloudy."

"How could I? Somebody might be supplying artificial light from above the cloud layer. One of my classmates could apparently levitate objects about the mass of a paper clip - but he had to be just three drinks drunk and sometimes he couldn't do it at all. I was never able to examine the phenomenon closely enough to be competent to testify about it partly because I usually had three drinks in me by then, too."

"Then you've never seen anything like this?"

"No."

"Mmm�I'm through with you professionally; I'm convinced. But if you want to stay and see what else happens, hang up your robe and drag up a chair."

"Thanks, I will - both. But, in view of the lecture you gave Jill about mosques and synagogues, I'll go to my room first. I wouldn't want to cause a hiatus in the indoctrination."

"Suit yourself. While you're out, wake up Duke and tell him I want the cameras serviced again."

"Yes, Boss. Don't let anything startling happen until I get back." Anne headed for the door.

"No promises. Mike, sit down here at my desk. You, too, Jill - gather 'round. Now, Mike, can you pick up that ash tray? Show me."

"Yes, Jubal." Smith reached out and took it in his hand.