A Stranger in a Strange Land Read online

  The patient was in bed, he looked at her as the door opened. Her first impression was that here was a patient too far gone to care. His lack of expression seemed to show the complete apathy of the desperately ill. Then she saw that his eyes were alive with interest; she wondered if his face were paralysed? No, she decided; the typical sags were lacking.

  She assumed her professional manner. "Well, how are we today? Feeling better?"

  Smith translated and examined the questions. The inclusion of herself in the first query was confusing, but he decided that it might symbolize a wish to cherish and grow close. The second part matched Nelson's speech forms. "Yes," he answered.

  "Good!" Aside from his odd lack of expression she saw nothing strange about him - and if women were unknown to him, he was certainly managing to conceal it. "Is there anything I can do for you?" She glanced around, noted that there was no glass on the bedside shelf. "May I get you water?"

  Smith had spotted at once that this creature was different from the others who had come to see him. Almost as quickly he compared what he was seeing with pictures Nelson had shown him on the trip from home to this place - pictures intended to explain a particularly difficult and puzzling configuration of this people group. This, then, was a "woman."

  He felt both oddly excited and disappointed. He suppressed both in order that he might grok deeply, with such success that Dr. Thaddeus noticed no change in the dial readings in the next room.

  But when he translated the last query he felt such a surge of emotion that he almost let his heartbeat increase. He caught it in time and chided himself for an undisciplined nestling. Then he checked his translation.

  No, he was not mistaken. This woman creature had offered him the water ritual. It wished to grow closer.

  With great effort, scrambling for adequate meanings in his pitifully poor list of human words, he attempted to answer with due ceremoniousness. "I thank you for water. May you always drink deep."

  Nurse Boardman looked startled. "Why, how sweet!" She found a glass, filled it, and handed it to him.

  He said, "You drink."

  Wonder if he thinks I'm trying to poison him? she asked herself - but there was a compelling quality to his request. She took a sip, whereupon he took the glass from her and took one also, after which he seemed content to sink back into the bed, as if he had accomplished something important.

  Jill told herself that, as an adventure, this was a fizzle. She said, "Well, if you don't need anything else, I must get on with my work."

  She started for the door. He called out, "Not"

  She stopped. "Eh? What do you want?"

  "Don't go away."

  "Well I have to go, pretty quickly." But she came back to the bedside, "Is there anything you want?"

  He looked her up and down. "You are... 'woman'?"

  The question startled Jill Boardman. Her sex had not been in doubt to the most casual observer for many years. Her first impulse was to answer flippantly.

  But Smith's grave face and oddly disturbing eyes checked her. She became aware emotionally that the impossible fact about this patient was true: he did not know what a woman was. She answered carefully, "Yes, I am a woman."

  Smith continued to stare at her without expression. Jill began to be embarrassed by it. To be looked at appreciatively by a male she expected and sometimes enjoyed, but this was more like being examined under a microscope. She stirred restively. "Well? I look like a woman, don't I?"

  "I do not know," Smith answered slowly. "How does woman look? What makes you woman?"

  "Well, for pity's sake!" Jill realized confusedly that this conversation was further out of hand than any she had had with a male since about her twelfth birthday. "You don't expect me to take off my clothes and show you!"

  Smith took time to examine these verbal symbols and try to translate them. The first group he could not grok at all. It might be one of those formal sound groups these people so often used... yet it had been spoken with surprising force, as if it might be a last communication before withdrawal Perhaps he had so deeply mistaken right conduct in dealing with a woman creature that the creature might be ready to discorporate at once.

  He knew vaguely that he did not want the nurse to die at that moment, even though it was certainly its right and possibly its obligation to do so. The abrupt change from the rapport of the Water ritual to a situation in which a newly won water brother might possibly be considering withdrawal or discorporation would have thrown him into panic had he not been consciously suppressing such disturbance. But he decided that if Jill died now he must die at once also - he could not grok it in any other wise, not after the giving of water.

  The second half of the communication contained only symbols that he had encountered before. He grokked imperfectly the intention but there seemed to be an implied way out for him to avoid this crisis - by acceding to the suggested wish. Perhaps if the woman took its clothes off neither of them need discorporate. He smiled happily. "Please."

  Jill opened her mouth, closed it hastily. She opened it again. "Huh? Well, I'll be darned!"

  Smith could grok emotional violence and knew that somehow he had offered the wrong reply. He began to compose his mind for discorporation, savoring and cherishing all that he had been and seen, with especial attention to this woman creature. Then he became aware that the woman was bending over him and he knew somehow that it was not about to die. It looked into his face. "Correct me if I am wrong," it said, "but were you asking me to take my clothes off?"

  The inversions and abstractions required careful translation but Smith managed it. "Yes," he answered, while hoping that it would not stir up a new crisis.

  "That's what I thought you said. Brother, you aren't ill."

  The word "brother" he considered first - the woman was reminding him that they had been joined in the water ritual. He asked the help of his nestlings that he might measure up to whatever this new brother wanted. "I am not ill," he agreed.

  "Though I'm darned if I know how to cope with whatever is wrong with you. But I won't peel down. And I've got to get out of here." It straightened up and turned again toward the side door - then stopped and looked back with a quizzical smile. "You might ask me again, real prettily, under other circumstances. I'm curious to see what I might do."

  The woman was gone. Smith relaxed into the water bed and let the room fade away from him. He felt sober triumph that he had somehow comforted himself so that it was not necessary for them to die... but there was much new to grok. The woman's last speech had contained many symbols new to him and those which were not new had been arranged in fashions not easily understood. Out he was happy that the emotional flavor of them had been suitable for communication between water brothers - although touched with something else both disturbing and terrifyingly pleasant. He thought about his new brother, the woman creature, and felt odd tingles run through him. The feeling reminded him of the first time he had been allowed to be present at a discorporation and he felt happy without knowing why.

  He wished that his brother Doctor Mahmoud were here. There was so much to grok, so little to grok from.

  Jill Boardman spent the rest of her watch in a mild daze. She managed to avoid any mistakes in medication and she answered from reflex the usual verbal overtures made to her. But the face of the Man from Mars stayed in her mind and she mulled over the crazy things he had said. No, not "crazy," she corrected - she had done her stint in psychiatric wards and she felt certain that his remarks had not been psychotic.

  She decided that "innocent" was the proper term - then she decided that the word was not adequate. His expression was innocent, but his eyes were not. What sort of creature had a face like that?

  She had once worked in a Catholic hospital; she suddenly saw the face of the Man from Mars surrounded by the head dress of a nursing Sister, a nun. The idea disturbed her, for there was nothing female about Smith's face.

  She was changing into Street clothes when another nurse stuck her he
ad into the locker room. "Phone, Jill. For you." Jill accepted the call, sound without vision, while she continued to dress.

  "Is this Florence Nightingale?" a baritone voice asked.

  "Speaking. That you, Ben?"

  "The stalwart upholder of the freedom of the press in person. Little one, are you busy?"

  "What do you have in mind?"

  "I have in mind taking you out, buying you a bloody steak, plying you with liquor, and asking you a question."

  "The answer is still 'No.'

  "Not that question. Another one."

  "Oh, do you know another one? If so, tell me."

  "Later. I want you softened up by food and liquor first."

  "Real steak? Not syntho?"

  "Guaranteed. When you stick a fork into it, it will turn imploring eyes on you."

  "You must be on an expense account, Ben."

  "That's irrelevant and ignoble. How about it?"

  "You've talked me into it."

  "The roof of the medical center. Ten minutes."

  She put the street suit she had changed into back into her locker and put on a dinner dress kept there for emergencies. It was a demure little number, barely translucent and with bustle and bust pads so subdued that they merely re-created the effect she would have produced had she been wearing nothing. The dress had cost her a month's pay and did not look it, its subtle power being concealed like knock-out drops in a drink. Jill looked at herself with satisfaction and took the bounce tube up to the roof.

  There she pulled her cape around her against the wind and was looking for Ben Caxton when the roof orderly touched her arm. "There is a car over there paging you, Miss Boardman - that Talbot saloon."

  "Thanks, Jack." She saw the taxi spotted for take-off, with its door open. She went to it, climbed in, and was about to hand Ben a backhanded compliment on gallantry when she saw that he was not inside. The taxi was on automatic; its door closed and it took to the air, swung out of the circle, and sliced across the Potomac. Jill sat back and waited.

  The taxi stopped on a public landing flat over Alexandria and Ben Caxton got in; it took off again. Jill looked him over grimly. "My, aren't we getting important! Since when has your time become so valuable that you send a robot to pick up your women?"

  He reached over, patted her knee, and said gently, "Reasons, little one, reasons - I can't afford to be seen picking you up-"

  "Well!"

  "-and you can't afford to be seen being picked up by me. So simmer down. I apologize. I bow in the dust. I kiss your little foot. But it was necessary."

  "Hmm... which one of us has leprosy?"

  "Both of us, in different ways. Jill, I'm a newspaperman."

  "I was beginning to think you were something else."

  "And you are a nurse at the hospital where they are holding the Man from Mars." He spread his hands and shrugged.

  "Keep talking. Does that make me unfit to meet your mother?"

  "Do you need a map, Jill? There are more than a thousand reporters in this area, not counting press agents, ax grinders, winchells, lippmanns, and the stampede that headed this way when the Champion landed. Every one of them has been trying to interview the Man from Mars, including me. So far as I know, none has succeeded. Do you think it would be Smart for us to be seen leaving the hospital together?"

  "Umm, maybe not. But I don't really see that it matters. I'm not the Man from Mars."

  He looked her over. "You certainly aren't. But maybe you are going to help me see him - which is why I didn't want to be seen picking you

  "Huh? Ben, you've been out in the sun without your hat. They've got a marine guard around him." She thought about the fact that she herself had not found the guard too hard to circumvent, decided not to mention it.

  "So they have. So we talk it over."

  "I don't see what there is to talk about."

  "Later. I didn't intend to let the subject come up until I had softened you with animal proteins and ethanol. Let's eat first."

  "Now you sound rational. Where? Would your expense account run to the New Mayflower? You are on an expense account, aren't you?"

  Caxton frowned. "Jill, if we eat in a restaurant, I wouldn't want to risk one closer than Louisville. It would take this hack more than two hours to get us that far. How about dinner in my apartment?"

  "'-Said the Spider to the Fly.' Ben, I remember the last time. I'm too tired to wrestle."

  "Nobody asked you to. Strictly business. King's X, cross my heart and hope to die."

  "I don't know as I like that much better. If I'm safe alone with you, I must be slipping. Well, all right, King's X."

  Caxton leaned forward and punched buttons; the taxi, which had been circling under a "hold" instruction, woke up, looked around, and headed for the apartment hotel where Ben lived. He then dialed a phone number and said to Jill, "How much time do you want to get liquored up, sugar foot? I'll tell the kitchen when to have the steaks ready."

  Jill considered it. "Ben, your mousetrap has a private kitchen."

  "Of sorts. I can grill a steak, if that is what you mean."

  "I'll grill the steak. Hand me the phone." She gave orders, stopping to make sure that Ben liked endive.

  The taxi dropped them on the roof and they went down to his flat. It was unstylish and old-fashioned; its one luxury was a live grass lawn in the living room. Jill stopped in the entrance hail, slipped off her shoes, then stepped bare-footed into the living room and wiggled her toes among the cool green blades. She sighed. "My, that feels good. My feet have hurt ever since I entered training."

  "Sit down."

  "No, I want my feet to remember this tomorrow, when I'm on duty."

  "Suit yourself." He went into his pantry and mixed drinks.

  Presently she pattered after him and became domestic. The steak was waiting in the package lift; with it were pre-baked potatoes ready to be popped into short-wave. She tossed the salad, handed it to the refrigerator, then set up a combination on the stove to grill the steak and have the potatoes hot simultaneously, but did not start the cycle. "Ben, doesn't this stove have a remote control?"

  "Of course."

  "Well, I can't find it."

  He studied the setup on the control panel, then flipped an unmarked switch. "Jill, what would you do if you had to cook over an open fire?"

  "I'd do darn well. I was a Girl Scout and a good one. How about you, smarty?"

  He ignored it, picked up a tray and went back to the living room; she followed and sat down at his feet, spreading her skirt to avoid grass stains. They applied themselves seriously to martinis. Opposite his chair was a stereovision tank disguised as an aquarium; he switched it on from his chair, guppies and tetras faded out and gave way to the face of a commentator, the well-known winchell Augustus Greaves.

  "-it can be stated authoritatively," the stereo image was saying, "that the Man from Mars is being kept constantly under hypnotic drugs to keep him from disclosing these facts. The administration would find it extremely embarrassing if-"

  Canon flipped it off. "Gus old boy," he said pleasantly, "you don't know a durn thing more about it than I do." He frowned. "Though you might be right about the government keeping him under drugs."

  "No, they aren't," Jill said suddenly.

  "Eh? How's that, little one?"

  "The Man from Mars isn't being kept under hypnotics." Having blurted more than she had meant to, she added carefully, "He's got a nurse and a doctor all to himself on continuous watch, but there aren't any orders for sedation."

  "Are you sure? You aren't one of his nurses - or are you?"

  "No. They're male nurses. Uh... matter of fact, there's an order to keep women away from him entirely and a couple of tough marines to make sure of it."

  Caxton nodded. "I heard about that. Fact is, you don't know whether they are drugging him or not. Do you?"

  Jill stared into her empty glass. She felt annoyed to have her word doubted but realized she would have to tell on herself to bac
k up what she had said. "Ben? You wouldn't give me away? Would you?"

  "Give you away? How?"

  "Any way at all."

  "Hmm... that covers a lot of ground, but I'll go along."

  "All right. Pour me another one first." He did so, Jill went on. "I know they don't have the Man from Mars hopped up - because I talked with him."

  Caxton gave a slow whistle. "I knew it. When I got up this morning I said to myself, 'Go see Jill. She's the ace up my sleeve.' Honey lamb, have another drink. Have six. Here, take the pitcher."

  "Not so fast, thanks."

  "Whatever you like. May I rub your poor tired feet? Lady, you are about to be interviewed. Your public waits with quivering impatience. Now let's begin at the beginning. How-"

  "No, Ben! You promised - remember? You quote me just one little quote and I'll lose my job."

  "Mmm... probably. How about 'from a usually reliable source'?"

  "I'd be scared."

  "Well? Are you going to tell Uncle Ben? Or are you going to let him die of frustration and then eat that steak by yourself?"

  "Oh, I'll talk - now that I've talked this much. But you can't use it." Ben kept quiet and did not press his luck; Jill described how she had outflanked the guards.

  He interrupted. "Say! Could you do that again?"

  "Huh? I suppose so, but I won't. It's risky."

  "Well, could you slip me in that way? Of course you could! Look, I'll dress up like an electrician - greasy coveralls, union badge, tool kit. You just slip me the pass key and-"

  "No!"

  "Huh? Look, baby girl, be reasonable. I'll bet you four to one that half the hospital staffers around him are ringers, stuck in there by one news service or another. This is the greatest human-interest story since Colombo conned Isabella into hocking her jewels. The only thing that worries me is that I may find another phony electrician-"

  "The only thing that worries me is me," Jill interrupted. "To you it's just a story; to me it's my career. They'd take away my cap, my pin, and ride me out of town on a rail. I'd be finished as a nurse."

  "Mmm... there's that."

  "There sure is that."

  "Lady, you are about to be offered a bribe."