Robert Heinlein - A Stranger in a Strange Land

Jubal and the first man turned and walked toward the pool, with Anne close behind them. Smith relaxed his time sense a little to let them move faster, keeping it stretched just enough so that he could comfortably watch all the men at once. Two of the men closed in and flanked the little group.

The first man stopped near the group of his friends by the pool, looked at them, then took a picture from his pocket, looked at it, and looked at Jill. Smith felt her fear and trouble mount and he became very alert. Jubal had told him, "Protect Jill. Don't worry about wasting food. Don't worry about anything else. Protect Jill."

Of course, he would protect Jill in any case, even at the risk of acting wrongly in some other fashion. But it was good to have Jubal's blanket reassurance; it left his mind undivided and untroubled.

When the first man pointed at Jill and the two men flanking him hurried toward her with their guns of great wrongness. Smith reached out through his Doppelganger and gave them each that tiny twist which causes to topple away.

The first man stared at where they had been and reached for his gun - and he was gone, too.

The other four started to close in. Smith did not want to twist them. He felt that Jubal would be more pleased with him if he simply stopped them. But stopping a thing, even an ash tray, is work-and Smith did not have his body at hand. An Old One could have managed it, all four together, but Smith did what he could do, what he had to do.

Four feather touches-they were gone.

He felt more intense wrongness from the direction of the car on the ground and went at once to it-grokked to a quick decision, and car and pilot were gone.

He almost overlooked the car riding cover patrol in the air. Smith started to relax when he had disposed of the car on the ground-when suddenly he felt wrongness and trouble increase, and he looked up.

The second car was coming in for a landing right where he was.

Smith stretched his time sense to his personal limit and went to the car in the air, inspected it carefully, grokked that it was as choked with utter wrongness as the first had been� tilted it into neverness. Then he returned to the group by the pool.

All his friends seemed quite excited; Dorcas was sobbing and Jill was holding her and soothing her. Anne alone seemed untouched by the emotions Smith felt seething around him. But wrongness was gone, all of it, and with it the trouble that had disturbed his meditations earlier. Dorcas, he knew, would be healed faster and better by Jill than by anyone-Jill always grokked a hurting fully and at once. Disturbed by emotions around him, slightly apprehensive that he might not have acted in all ways rightly at the point of cusp-or that Jubal might to grok him-Smith decided that he was now free to leave. He slipped back into the pool, found his body, grokked that it was still as he had left it, unharmed-slipped it back on.

He considered contemplating the events at the cusp, But they were too new, too recent; he was not ready to enfold them, not ready to praise and cherish the men he had been forced to move. Instead he returned happily to the task he had been on. "Sherbet" Sherbetlee" "Sherbetzide"- He had reached "Tinwork" and was about to consider "Tiny" when he felt Jill's touch approaching him. He unswallowed his tongue and made himself ready, knowing that his brother Jill could not remain very long under water without distress.

As she touched him, he reached out, took her face in his hands and kissed her. It was a thing he had learned to do quite lately and he did not feel that he grokked it perfectly. It had the growing-closer of the water ceremony. But it had something else, too� something he wanted very much to grok in perfect fullness.

JUBAL HARSHAW DID NOT WAIT for Gillian to dig her problem child out of the pool; he left instructions for Dorcas to be given a sedative and hurried to his study, leaving Anne to explain (or not explain) the events of the last ten minutes. "Front!" he called out over his shoulder.

Miriam turned and caught up with him. "I guess I must be 'front,'" she said breathlessly. "But, Boss, what in the-"

"Girl, not one word."

"But, Boss-"

"Zip it, I said. Miriam, about a week from now we'll all sit down and get Anne to tell us what we really did see. But right now everybody and his cousins will be phoning here and reporters will be crawling out of the trees-and I've got to make a couple of calls first. I need help. Are you the sort of useless female who comes unstuck when she's needed? That reminds me- Make a note to dock Dorcas's pay for the time she spent having hysterics."

Miriam gasped. "Boss! You just dare do that and every single one of us will quit cold!"

"Nonsense."

"I mean it. Quit picking on Dorcas. Why, I would have had hysterics myself if she hadn't beaten me to it." She added, "I think I'll have hysterics now."

Harshaw grinned. "You do and I'll spank you. All right, put Dorcas down for a bonus for 'extra hazardous duty.' Put all of you down for a bonus. Me, especially. I earned it."

"All right. But who pays your bonus?"

"The taxpayers, of course. We'll find a way to clip- Damn!" They had reached his study door; the telephone was already demanding attention. He slid into the seat in front of it and keyed in. "Harshaw speaking. Who the devil are you?"

"Skip the routine, Doc," a face answered cheerfully. "You haven't frightened me in years. How's everything going?"

Harshaw recognized the face as belonging to Thomas Mackenzie, production manager-in-chief for New World Networks; he mellowed slightly. "Well enough, Tom. But I'm rushed as can be, so-"

"You're rushed? Come try my forty-eight hour day. I'll make it brief. Do you still think you are going to have something for us? I don't mind the expensive equipment you've got tied up; I can overhead that. But business is business - and I have to pay three full crews just to stand by for your signal. Union rules - you know how it is. I want to do you any favor I can. We've used lots of your script in the past and we expect to use still more in the future - but I'm beginning to wonder what I'm going to tell our comptroller."

Harshaw stared at him. "Don't you think the spot coverage you just got was enough to pay the freight?"

"What spot coverage?"

A few minutes later Harshaw said good-by and switched off, having been convinced that New World Networks had seen nothing of recent events at his home. He stalled off Mackenzie's questions about it, because he was dismally certain that a factual recital would simply convince Mackenzie that poor old Harshaw had at last gone to pieces. Nor could Harshaw have blamed him.

Instead they agreed that, if nothing worth picking up happened in the next twenty-four hours, New World could break the linkage and remove their cameras and other equipment.

As the screen cleared Harshaw ordered, "Get Larry. Have him fetch that panic button - Anne probably has it." He then started making another call, followed it with a third. By the time Larry arrived, Harshaw was convinced that no network had been watching when the Special Service squads attempted to raid his home. It was not necessary to check on whether or not the two dozen "hold" messages that he had recorded had been sent; their delivery depended on the same signal that had failed to reach the news channels.

As he turned away from the phone Larry offered him the "panic button" portable radio link. "You wanted this, Boss?"

"I just wanted to sneer at it and see if it sneered back. Larry, let this be a lesson to us: never trust any machinery more complicated than a knife and fork."

"Okay. Anything else?"

"Larry, is there a way to check that dingus and see if it's working properly? Without actually hauling three networks out of their beds, I mean?"