Stranger in a Strange Land Read online

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Are you ready?”

  “Let me switch on ‘recording’—go ahead.”

  “Very well. Agnes, this is a most critical period in your life; never have the heavens gathered in such strong configuration. Above all, you must be calm, not hasty, and think things through. On the whole the portents are in your favor . . . provided you avoid ill-considered action. Do not let your mind be distressed by surface appearances—” She went on giving advice. Becky Vesey always gave good advice and gave it with conviction because she believed it. She had learned from Simon that, even when the stars seemed darkest, there was always a way to soften the blow, some aspect the client could use toward happiness . . .

  The tense face opposite her in the screen calmed and began nodding agreement as she made her points. “So you see,” she concluded, “the absence of young Smith is a necessity, under the joint influences of three horoscopes. Do not worry; he will return—or you will hear from him—very shortly. The important thing is to take no drastic action. Be calm.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “One more point. The aspect of Venus is most favorable and potentially dominant over that of Mars. Venus symbolizes yourself, of course, but Mars is both your husband and young Smith—as a result of the unique circumstances of his birth. This throws a double burden on you and you must rise to the challenge; you must demonstrate those qualities calm wisdom and restraint which are peculiarly those of woman. You must sustain your husband, guide him through this crisis, and soothe him. You must supply the earth-mother’s calm wells of wisdom. That is your special genius . . . you must use it.”

  Mrs. Douglas sighed. “Allie, you are simply wonderful! I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Thank the Ancient Masters whose humble student I am.”

  “I can’t thank them so I’ll thank you. This isn’t covered by retainer, Allie. There will be a present.”

  “No, Agnes. It is a privilege to serve.”

  “And it is my privilege to appreciate service. Allie, not another word!”

  Madame Vesant let herself be coaxed, then switched off, feeling warmly content from having given a reading that she just knew was right. Poor Agnes! It was a privilege to smooth her path, make her burdens a little lighter. It made her feel good to help Agnes.

  It made Madame Vesant feel good to be treated as almost-equal by the wife of the Secretary General, although she did not think of it that way, not being snobbish. But young Becky Vesey had been so insignificant that the precinct committeeman could never remember her name even though he noticed her bust. Becky Vesey had not resented it; Becky liked people. She liked Agnes Douglas.

  Becky Vesey liked everybody.

  She sat a while, enjoying the warm glow and just a nip more tonic, while her shrewd brain shuffled the bits she had picked up. Presently she called her stockbroker and instructed him to sell Lunar Enterprises short.

  He snorted. “Allie, that reducing diet is weakening your mind.”

  “Listen, Ed. When it’s down ten points, cover me, even if it is still slipping. Then when it rallies three points, buy again . . . then sell when it gets back to today’s closing.”

  There was long silence. “Allie, you know something. Tell Uncle Ed.”

  “The stars tell me, Ed.”

  Ed made a suggestion astronomically impossible. “All right, if you won’t, you won’t. Mmm . . . I never did have sense enough to stay out of a crooked game. Mind if I ride along?”

  “Not at all, Ed. Just don’t go heavy enough to let it show. This is a delicate situation, with Saturn balanced between Virgo and Leo.”

  “As you say, Allie.”

  Mrs. Douglas got busy at once, happy that Allie had confirmed all her judgments. She gave orders about the campaign to destroy the reputation of the missing Berquist, after sending for his dossier; she summoned Commandant Twitchell-of the Special Service Squadrons—he left looking unhappy and made life unbearable for his executive officer. She instructed Sanforth to release another “Man from Mars” stereocast with a rumor “from a source close to the administration” that Smith was about to go, or possibly had gone, to a sanitarium high in the Andes, to provide him with climate as much like Mars as possible. Then she thought about how to nail down Pakistan’s votes.

  Presently she called her husband and urged him to support Pakistan’s claim to a lion’s share of the Kashmir thorium. Since he had been wanting to, he was not hard to persuade, although nettled by her assumption that he had been opposing it. With that settled, she left to address the Daughters of the Second Revolution on Motherhood in the New World.

  X.

  WHILE MRS. DOUGLAS was speaking freely on a subject she knew little about, Jubal E. Harshaw, LL.B, M.D., Sc.D., bon vivant, gourmet, sybarite, popular author extraordinary, and neo-pessimist philosopher, was sitting by his pool at his home in the Poconos, scratching the grey thatch on his chest, and watching his three secretaries splash in the pool. They were all amazingly beautiful; they were also amazingly good secretaries. In Harshaw’s opinion the principle of least action required that utility and beauty be combined.

  Anne was blonde, Mirian red-headed, and Dorcas dark; they ranged, respectively, from pleasantly plump to deliciously slender. Their ages spread over fifteen years but it was hard to tell which was the eldest.

  Harshaw was working hard. Most of him was watching pretty girls do pretty things with sun and water; one small, shuttered, soundproofed compartment was composing. He claimed that his method of writing was to hook his gonads in parallel with his thalamus and disconnect his cerebrum; his habits lent credibility to the theory.

  A microphone on a table was hooked to a voicewriter but he used it only for notes. When he was ready to write he used a stenographer and watched her reactions. He was ready now. “Front!” he shouted.

  “Anne is ‘front,’ ” answered Dorcas. “I’ll take it. That splash was Anne.”

  “Dive in and get her.” The brunette cut the water; moments later Anne climbed out, put on a robe and sat down at the table. She said nothing and made no preparations; Anne had total recall.

  Harshaw picked up a bucket of ice over which brandy had been poured, took a swig. “Anne, I’ve got a sick-making one. It’s about a little kitten that wanders into a church on Christmas Eve to get warm. Besides being starved and frozen and lost, the kitten has—God knows why—an injured paw. All right; start: ‘Snow had been falling since—’ ”

  “What pen name?”

  “Mmm . . . use ‘Molly Wadsworth’; this one is pretty icky. Title it The Other Manger. Start again.” He went on talking while watching her. When tears started to leak from her closed eyes he smiled slightly and closed his own. By the time he finished tears were running down his cheeks as well as hers, both bathed in catharsis of schmaltz.

  “Thirty,” he announced. “Blow your nose. Send it off and for God’s sake don’t let me see it.”

  “Jubal, aren’t you ever ashamed?”

  “No.”

  “Someday I’m going to kick you right in your fat stomach for one of these.”

  “I know. Get your fanny indoors and take care of it before I change my mind.”

  “Yes, Boss.”

  She kissed his bald spot as she passed behind his chair. Harshaw yelled, “Front!” and Miriam started toward him. A loudspeaker mounted on the house came to life:

  “Boss!”

  Harshaw uttered one word and Miriam clucked. He added, “Yes, Larry?”

  The speaker answered, “There’s a dame down here at the gate—and she’s got a corpse with her.”

  Harshaw considered this. “Is she pretty?”

  “Uh . . . yes.”

  “Then why are you sucking your thumb? Let her in.” Harshaw sat back. “Start,” he said. “City montage dissolving into medium two-shot interior. A cop is seated in a straight chair, no cap, collar open, face covered with sweat. We see the back of the other figure, depthed between us and cop. Figure raises
a hand, bringing it back and almost out of the tank. He slaps the cop with a heavy, meaty sound, dubbed.” Harshaw glanced up and said, “Pick up from there.” A car was rolling up the hill toward the house.

  Jill was driving; a young man was beside her. As the car stopped the man jumped out, as if happy to divorce himself from it. “There she is, Jubal.”

  “So I see. Good morning, little girl. Larry, where is this corpse?”

  “Back seat, Boss. Under a blanket.”

  “But it’s not a corpse,” Jill protested. “It’s . . . Ben said that you . . . I mean—” She put her head down and sobbed.

  “There, my dear,” Harshaw said gently. “Few corpses are worth tears. Dorcas—Miriam—take care of her. Give her a drink and wash her face.”

  He went to the back seat, lifted the blanket. Jill shrugged off Miriam’s arm and said shrilly, “You’ve got to listen! He’s not dead. At least I hope not. He’s . . . oh dear!” She started to cry again. “I’m so dirty . . . and so scared!”

  “Seems to be a corpse,” Harshaw mused. “Body temperature down to air temperature, I judge. Rigor not typical. How long has he been dead?”

  “But he’s not! Can’t we get him out of there? I had an awful time getting him in.”

  “Surely. Larry, help me—and quit looking green; if you puke, you’ll clean it up.” They got Valentine Michael Smith out and laid him on the grass; his body remained stiff, huddled together. Dorcas fetched Dr. Harshaw’s stethoscope, set it on the ground, switched it on and stepped up the gain.

  Harshaw stuck the headpiece in his ears, started sounding for heart beat. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” he said gently to Jill. “This one is beyond my help. Who was he?”

  Jill sighed. Her face was drained of expression and she answered in a flat voice, “He was the Man from Mars. I tried so hard.”

  “I’m sure you did—the Man from Mars?”

  “Yes. Ben . . . Ben Caxton said you were the one to come to.”

  “Ben Caxton, eh? I appreciate the confid—hush!” Harshaw gestured for silence. He looked puzzled, then surprise burst over his face. “Heart action! I’ll be a babbling baboon. Dorcas—upstairs, the clinic—third drawer in the locked part of the cooler; the code is ‘sweet dreams.’ Bring the drawer and a one cc. hypo.”

  “Right away!”

  “Doctor, no stimulants!”

  Harshaw turned to Jill. “Eh?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I’m just a nurse . . . but this case is different. I know.”

  “Mmm . . . he’s my patient now, nurse. But about forty years ago I found out I wasn’t God, and ten years later I discovered I wasn’t even Aesculapius. What do you want to try?”

  “I want to try to wake him. If you do anything to him, he goes deeper into it.”

  “Hmm . . . go ahead. Just don’t use an ax. Then we’ll try my methods.”

  “Yes, sir.” Jill knelt, started trying to straighten Smith’s limbs. Harshaw’s eyebrows went up when he saw her succeed. Jill took Smith’s head in her lap. “Please wake up,” she said softly. “This is your water brother.”

  Slowly the chest lifted. Smith let out a long sigh and his eyes opened. He looked up at Jill and smiled his baby smile. He looked around, the smile left him.

  “It’s all right,” Jill said quickly. “These are friends.”

  “Friends?”

  “All of them are your friends. Don’t worry—and don’t go away again. Everything is all right.”

  He lay quiet with eyes open, staring at everything. He seemed as content as a cat in a lap.

  Twenty-five minutes later both patients were in bed. Jill had told Harshaw, before the pill he gave her took hold, enough to let him know that he had a bear by the tail. He looked at the utility car Jill had arrived in. Lettered across it was: READING RENTALS—Permapowered Ground Equipment—“Deal with the Dutchman!”

  “Larry, is the fence hot?”

  “No.”

  “Switch it on. Then polish every fingerprint off that heap. When it gets dark, drive over the other side of Reading—better go almost to Lancaster—and leave it in a ditch. Then go to Philadelphia, catch the Scranton shuttle, come home from there.”

  “Sure thing, Jubal. Say—is he really the Man from Mars?”

  “Better hope not. If he is and they catch you before you dump that wagon and connect you with him, they’ll quiz you with a blow torch. I think he is.”

  “I scan it. Should I rob a bank on the way back?”

  “Probably the safest thing you can do.”

  “Okay, Boss.” Larry hesitated. “Mind if I stay over night in Philly?”

  “Suit yourself. But what in God’s name can a man do at night in Philadelphia?” Harshaw turned away. “Front!”

  Jill slept until dinner, awoke refreshed and alert. She sniffed the air from the grille overhead and surmised that the doctor had offset the hypnotic with a stimulant. While she slept someone had removed her dirty torn clothes and had left a dinner dress and sandals. The dress was a fair fit; Jill concluded that it must belong to the one called Miriam. She bathed and painted and combed and went down to the living room feeling like a new woman.

  Dorcas was curled in a chair, doing needle point; she nodded as if Jill were part of the family, turned back to her fancy work. Harshaw was stirring a mixture in a frosty pitcher. “Drink?” he said.

  “Uh, yes, thank you.”

  He poured large cocktail glasses to their brims, handed her one. “What is it?” she asked.

  “My own recipe. One third vodka, one third muriatic acid, one third battery water—two pinches of salt and add pickled beetle.”

  “Better have a highball,” Dorcas advised.

  “Mind your business,” Harshaw said. “Hydrochloric acid aids digestion; the beetle adds vitamins and protein.” He raised his glass and said solemnly, “Here’s to our noble selves! There are damned few of us left.” He emptied it.

  Jill took a sip, then a bigger one. Whatever the ingredients it seemed to be what she needed; well-being spread from her center toward her extremities. She drank about half, let Harshaw add a dividend. “Look in on our patient?” he asked.

  “No, sir. I didn’t know where he was.”

  “I checked a few minutes ago. Sleeping like a baby—I think I’ll rename him Lazarus. Would he like to come down to dinner?”

  Jill looked thoughtful. “Doctor, I don’t know.”

  “Well, if he wakes I’ll know it. He can join us, or have a tray. This is Freedom Hall, my dear. Everyone does as he pleases . . . then if he does something I don’t like, I kick him the hell out. Which reminds me: I don’t like to be called ‘Doctor.’ ”

  “Sir?”

  “Oh, I’m not offended. But when they began handing out doctorates for comparative folk dancing and advanced flyfishing, I became too stinkin’ proud to use the title. I won’t touch watered whiskey and take no pride in watered-down degrees. Call me Jubal.”

  “Oh. But the degree in medicine hasn’t been watered down.”

  “Time they called it something else, so as not to confuse it with playground supervisors. Little girl, what is your interest in this patient?”

  “Eh? I told you, Doct—Jubal.”

  “You told me what happened; you didn’t tell me why. Jill, I saw the way you spoke to him. Are you in love with him?”

  Jill gasped. “Why, that’s preposterous!”

  “Not at all. You’re a girl; he’s a boy—that’s a nice setup.”

  “But—No, Jubal, it’s not that. I . . . well, he was a prisoner and I thought—or Ben thought—that he was in danger. We wanted to see him get his rights.”

  “Mmm . . . my dear, I’m suspicious of a disinterested interest. You look as if you had normal glandular balance, so it’s my guess that it is either Ben, or this poor boy from Mars. You had better examine your motives, then judge which way you are going. In the meantime, what do you want me to do?”

  The scope of the question made it hard to answer. Fro
m the time Jill crossed her Rubicon she had thought of nothing but escape. She had no plans. “I don’t know.”

  “I thought not. On the assumption that you might wish to protect your license, I took the liberty of having a message sent from Montreal to your Chief of Nursing. You asked for leave because of illness in your family. Okay?”

  Jill felt sudden relief. She had buried all worry about her own welfare; nevertheless down inside was a heavy lump caused by what she had done to her professional standing. “Oh, Jubal, thank you!” She added, “I’m not delinquent in watch standing yet; today was my day off.”

  “Good. What do you want to do?”

  “I haven’t had time to think. Uh, I should get in touch with my bank and get some money—” She paused, trying to recall her balance. It was never large and sometimes she forgot to—

  Jubal cut in. “If you do, you will have cops pouring out of your ears. Hadn’t you better stay here until things level off?”

  “Uh, Jubal, I wouldn’t want to impose on you.”

  “You already have. Don’t worry, child; there are always freeloaders around here. Nobody imposes on me against my will, so relax. Now our patient: you said you wanted him to get his ‘rights.’ You expected my help?”

  “Well . . . Ben said—Ben seemed to think you would help.”

  “Ben does not speak for me. I am not interested in this lad’s so-called rights. His claim to Mars is lawyers’ hogwash; as a lawyer myself I need not respect it. As for the wealth that is supposed to be his, the situation results from other people’s passions and our odd tribal customs; he has earned none of it. He would be lucky if they bilked him of it—but I would not scan a newspaper to find out. If Ben expected me to fight for Smith’s ‘rights’ you have come to the wrong house.”

  “Oh.” Jill felt forlorn. “I had better arrange to move him.”

  “Oh, no! Not unless you wish.”

  “But you said—”

  “I said I was not interested in legal fictions. But a guest under my roof is another matter. He can stay, if he likes. I just wanted to make clear that I had no intention of meddling with politics to suit romantic notions you or Ben Caxton may have. My dear, I used to think I was serving humanity . . . and I pleasured in the thought. Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it. So now I do what pleases Jubal Harshaw.” He turned away. “Time for dinner, isn’t it, Dorcas? Is anyone doing anything?”