Robert Heinlein - Red Planet

"I'm sorry," Marlowe answered. "Jim won't like that, but it's not a high price to pay if it pleases them."

"You don't understand, you don't understand at all. Willis is the key to the whole thing."

"Certainly he's been mixed up in it," agreed Marlowe, "but why the key?"

"Don't call Willis 'he'; call him 'she.' There-1 did it myself. Habit."

"I don't care what sex the little beast is. Go on."

MacRae rubbed his temples. "That's the trouble. It's very complicated and I don't know where to start. Willis is important and it does matter that he's a she. Look, Jamie, you'll go down in history as the father of your country, no doubt, but, between ourselves, Jim should be credited for being the savior of it. It was directly due to Jim and Willis-Willis's love for Jim and Jim's staunch befriending of him-that the colonists are alive today instead of pushing up daisies. The ultimatum to get off this globe represented a concession made to Jim; they had intended to exterminate us."

Marlowe's mouth dropped open. "But that's impossible! Martians wouldn't do anything like that!"

"Could and would," MacRae stated flatly. "They've been having doubts about us for a long time. Beecher's notion of shipping Willis off to a zoo pushed them over the edge-but Jim's relationship to Willis pulled them back again. They compromised."

"I can't believe that they would," protested Marlowe, "nor can I see how they could."

"Where's Beecher?" MacRae said bluntly.

"Mmm... yes."

"So don't talk about what they can or can't do. We don't know anything about them... not anything."

"I can't argue with you. But can you clear up some of this mystery about Jim and Willis? Why do they care? After all, Willis is just a bouncer."

"I don't think I can clear it up," MacRae admitted, "but I can sure lace it around with some theories. Do you know Willis's Martian name? Do you know what it means?"

"I didn't know he had one-I mean 'she'."

"It reads: 'In whom the hopes of a world are joined.' That suggest anything to you?"

"Gracious, no! Sounds like a name for a messiah, not a bouncer."

"Maybe you aren't joking. On the other hand, I may have translated it badly. Maybe it means 'Young Hopeful,' or merely 'Hope.' Maybe Martians go in for poetical meanings, like we do. Take my name, 'Donald.' Means 'World Ruler.' My parents sure muffed that one. Or maybe Martians enjoy giving bouncers fancy names. I once knew a Pekinese called, believe it or not, 'Grand Champion Manchu Prince of Belvedere.'" MacRae looked suddenly startled. "Do you know, I just remembered that dog's family-and-fireside name was Willis!"

"You don't say!"

"I do say." The doctor scratched the stubble on his chin and reflected that he should shave one of these weeks. "But it's not even a coincidence. I suggested the name 'Willis' to Jim in the first place; I was probably thinking of the Peke. Engaging little devil, with a pop-eyed way of looking at you just like Willis-our Willis. Which is to say that neither one of Willis's names necessarily means anything."

He sat so long without saying anything that Marlowe said, "You aren't clearing up the mystery very fast. You think that Willis's real name does mean something, don't you?-else you wouldn't have brought it up."

MacRae sat up with a jerk. "I do. I do indeed. I think Willis is sort of a Martian crown princess. Now wait a minute -don't throw anything. I won't get violent. That's a farfetched figure of speech. What do you think Willis is?"

"Me?" said Marlowe. "I think he's an example of exotic Martian fauna, semi-intelligent and adapted to his environment."

"Big words," complained the doctor. "I think he is what a Martian is before he grows up."

Marlowe looked pained. "There is no similarity of structure. They're as different as chalk and cheese."

"Granted. What's the similarity between a caterpillar and a butterfly?"

Marlowe opened his mouth and closed it. "I don't blame you," MacRae went on, "we never think of such metamorphosis in connection with higher types, whatever a 'higher type' is. But I think that is what Willis is and it appears to be why

Willis has to go back to his people soon. He's in the nymph stage; he's about to go into a pupal stage-some sort of a long hibernation. When he comes out he'll be a Martian."

Marlowe chewed his Up. "There's nothing unreasonable about it-just startling."

"Everything about Mars is startling. Another thing: we've never been able to find anything resembling sex on this planet -various sorts of species conjugation, yes, but no sex. It appears to me that we missed it. I think that all the nymph Martians, the bouncers, are female; all of the adults are male. They change. I use the terms for want of better ones, of course. But if my theory is correct-and mind you, I'm not saying it is-then it might explain why Willis is such an important personage. Eh?"

Marlowe said wearily, "You ask me to assimilate too much at once."

"Emulate the Red Queen. I'm not through. I think the Martians have still another stage, the stage of the 'old one' to whom I talked-and I think it's the strangest one of all. Jamie, can you imagine a people having close and everyday relations with Heaven-their heaven-as close and matter of fact as the relations between, say, the United States and Canada?"

"Doc, I'll imagine anything you tell me to."

"We speak of the Martian 'other world'; what does it mean to you?"

"Nothing. Some sort of a trance, such as me East Indians indulge in."

"I ask you because I talked, so they told me, to someone in the 'other world'-the 'old one' I mean. Jamie, I think I negotiated our new colonizing treaty with a ghost.

"Now just keep your seat," MacRae went on. "I'll tell you why. I was getting nowhere with him so I changed the subject. We were talking Basic, by the way; he had picked Jim's brains. He knew every word that Jim might know and none that Jim couldn't be expected to know. I asked him to assume, for the sake of argument, that we were to be allowed to stay -in which case, would the Martians let us use their subway system to get to Copais? I rode one of those subways to the conference. Very clever-the acceleration is always down, as if the room were mounted on gymbals. The old one had trouble understanding what I wanted. Then he showed me a globe of Mars-very natural, except that it had no canals. Gekko was with me, just as he was with Jim. The old one and Gekko had a discussion, the gist of which was what year was I at? Then the globe changed before my eyes, bit by bit. I saw the canals crawl across the face of Mars. I saw them being built, Jamie.

"Now I ask you," he concluded, "what kind of a being is it that has trouble remembering which millenium he is in? Do you mind if I tag him a ghost?"

"I don't mind anything," Marlowe assured him. "Maybe we're all ghosts."

"I've given you one theory, Jamie; here is another: bouncers are Martians and Old Ones are entirely separate races. Bouncers are third class citizens, Martians are second class citizens, and the real owners we never see, because they live down underneath. They don't care what we do with the surface as long as we behave ourselves. We can use the park, we can even walk on the grass, but we mustn't frighten the birds. Or maybe the 'old one' was just hypnosis that Gekko used on me, maybe it's bouncers and Martians only, with bouncers having some fanatical religious significance to Martians, the way Hindus feel about cows. You name it."

"I can't," said Marlowe. "I'm satisfied that you managed to negotiate an agreement that permits us to stay on Mars. I suppose it will be years before we understand the Martians."

"You are putting it mildly, Jamie. The white man was still studying the American Indian, trying to find out what makes him tick, five hundred years after Columbus-and the Indian and the European are both men, like as two peas. These are Martians. We'll never understand them; we aren't even headed in the same direction."