Stranger in a Strange Land

“You do that. And come stay with us when you aren’t so busy. Stay as long as you like and never wear your hurtin’ shoes the whole time. You’ll like the boy. He’s as weird as snake’s suspenders but sweet as a stolen kiss, too.”

“Uh… I will. As soon as I can. Thanks, Doc.”

They said good-by and Jubal returned to find that Dr. Nelson had taken Mike into one of the bedrooms and was checking him over. He joined them to offer Nelson the use of his kit since Nelson had not had with him his professional bag.

Jubal found Mike stripped down and the ship’s surgeon looking baffled. “Doctor,” Nelson said, almost angrily, “I saw this patient only ten days ago. Tell me where he got those muscles?”

“Why, he sent in a coupon from the back cover of Rut: The Magazine for He-Men. You know, the ad that tells how a ninety-pound weakling can—”

“Doctor, please!”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Jubal suggested.

Nelson did so. “I thinked them,” Mike answered.

“That’s right,” Jubal agreed. “He ‘thinked’ ‘em. When I got him, just over a week ago, he was a mess, slight, flabby, and pale. Looked as if he had been raised in a cave—which I gather he was, more or less. So I told him he had to grow strong. So he did.”

“Exercises?” Nelson said doubtfully.

“Nothing systematic. Swimming, when and as he wished.”

“A week of swimming won’t make a man look as if he had been sweating over bar bells for years!” Nelson frowned. “I am aware that Mike has voluntary control over the so-called ‘involuntary’ muscles, But that is not entirely without precedent. This, on the other hand, requires one to assume that—”

“Doctor,” Jubal said gently, “why don’t you just admit that you don’t grok it and save the wear and tear?”

Nelson sighed. “I might as well. Put your clothes on, Michael.”

* * *

Somewhat later, Jubal, under the mellowing influence of congenial company and the grape, was unburdening to the three from the Champion his misgivings about his morning’s work. “The financial end was simple enough: just tie up Mike’s money so that a struggle over it couldn’t take place. Not even if he dies, because I’ve let Douglas know privately that Mike’s death ends his stewardship whereas a rumour from a usually reliable source—me, in this case—has reached Kung and several others to the effect that Mike’s death will give Douglas permanent control. Of course, if I had had magical powers, I would have stripped the boy not only of all political significance but also of every penny of his inheritance. That—”

“Why would you have done that, Jubal?” the captain interrupted.

Harshaw looked surprised. “Are you wealthy, Skipper? I don’t mean: ‘Are your bills paid and enough in the sock to buy any follies your taste runs to?’ I mean rich… so loaded that the floor sags when you walk around to take your place at the head of a board-room table.”

“Me?” Van Tromp snorted. “I’ve got my monthly check, a pension eventually, a house with a mortgage and two girls in college. I’d like to try being wealthy for a while, I don’t mind telling you!”

“You wouldn’t like it.”

“Huh! You wouldn’t say that… if you had two daughters in school.”

“For the record, I put four daughters through college, and I went in debt to my armpits to do it. One of them justified the investment; she’s a leading light in her profession which she practices under her husband’s name because I’m a disreputable old bum who makes money writing popular trash instead of having the grace to be only a revered memory in her paragraph in Who’s Who. The other three are nice people who always remember my birthday and don’t bother me otherwise I can’t say that an education hurt them. But my offspring are not relevant save to show that I understand that a man often needs more than he’s got. But you can fix that easily; you can resign from the service and take a job with some engineering firm that will pay you several times what you’re getting just to put your name on their letterhead General Atomics. Several others. You’ve had offers, haven’t you?”

“That’s beside the point,” Captain van Tromp answered stiffly. “I’m a professional man.”

“Meaning there isn’t enough money on this planet to tempt you into giving up commanding space ships. I understand that.”

“But I wouldn’t mind having money, too.”

“A little more money won’t do you any good, because daughters can use up ten percent more than a man can make in any normal occupation regardless of the amount. That’s a widely experienced but previously unformulated law of nature, to be known henceforth as ‘Harshaw’s Law.’ But, Captain, real wealth, on the scale that causes its owner to hire a battery of finaglers to hold down his taxes, would ground you just as certainly as resigning would.”

“Why should it? I would put it all in bonds and just clip coupons.”