Stranger in a Strange Land

“I didn’t see it, Jubal. Does it matter? There are a dozen ways they could cut from the herd the ones they wanted as long as Mike knew which they were and had worked out some way to signal Duke. I don’t know. Patty says he’s clairvoyant and says it with a straight face—and, do you know, I won’t discount the possibility. But right after that, they took the collection. Mike didn’t do even this in church style—you know, soft music and dignified ushers. He said nobody would believe that this was a church service if be didn’t take a collection… so he would, but with a difference. Either take it or put it—suit yourself. Then, so help me, they passed collection baskets already loaded with money. Mike kept telling them that this was what the last crowd had left, so help themselves… if they were broke or hungry and needed it. But if they felt like giving… give. Share with others. Just do one or the other—put something in, or take something out. When I saw it, I figured he had found one more way to get rid of too much money.”

Jubal said thoughtfully, “I’m not sure he would lose by it. That pitch, properly given, should result in more people giving more… while a few take just a little. And probably very few. I would say that it would be hard indeed to reach in and take out money when the people on each side of you are putting money in… unless you need it awfully badly.”

“I don’t know, Jubal… but I understand that they are just as casual about those collections as they are about that stack of dough upstairs. But Patty whisked me away when Mike turned the service over to his high priestess. I was taken to a much smaller auditorium where services were just opening for the seventh circle in—people who had belonged for several months at least and had made progress. If it is progress.

“Jubal, Mike had gone straight from one to the other, and I couldn’t adjust to the change. That outer meeting was half popular lecture and half sheer entertainment—this one was more nearly a voodoo rite. Mike was in robes this time; he looked taller, ascetic, and intense—I swear his eyes gleamed. The place was dimly lighted, there was music that was creepy and yet made you want to dance. This time Patty and I took a double seat together, a couch that was darn near a bed. What the service was all about I couldn’t say. Mike would sing out to them in Martian, they would answer in Martian—except for chants of ‘Thou art God! Thou art God!’ which was always echoed by some Martian word that would make my throat sore to try to pronounce it.”

Jubal made a croaking noise. “Was that it?”

“Huh? I believe it was—allowing for your horrible tall-corn accent. Jubal… are you hooked? Have you just been stringing me along?”

“No. Stinky taught it to me—and he says that it’s heresy of the blackest sort. By his lights I mean—I couldn’t care less. It’s the Martian word Mike translates as: ‘Thou art God.’ But our brother Mahmoud says that isn’t even close to being a translation. It’s the universe proclaiming its own self-awareness… or it’s ‘peccavimus’ with a total absence of contrition or a dozen other things, all of which don’t translate it. Stinky says that not only it can’t be translated but that he doesn’t really understand it in Martian—except that it is a bad word, the worst possible in his opinion and much closer to Satan’s defiance than it is to the blessing of a benevolent God. Go on. Was that all there was to it? Just a bunch of fanatics yelling Martian at each other?”

“Uh… Jubal, they didn’t yell and it wasn’t fanatical. Sometimes they would barely whisper, the room almost dead quiet. Then it might climb in volume a little but not much. They did it in sort of a rhythm, a pattern, like a cantata, as if they had rehearsed it a long time… and yet it didn’t feel as if they had rehearsed it; it felt more as if they were all just one person, humming to himself whatever he felt at the moment. Jubal, you’ve seen how the Fosterites get themselves worked up—”

“Too much of it, I’m sorry to say.”

“Well, this was not that sort of frenzy at all; this was quiet and easy, like dropping off to sleep. It was intense all right and got steadily more so, but—Jubal, ever sit in on a spiritualist séance?”

“I have. I’ve tried everything I could, Ben.”

“Then you know how the tension can grow without anybody moving or saying a word. This was much more like that than it was like a shouting revival, or even the most sedate church service. But it wasn’t mild; it packed terrific wallop.”

“The technical word is ‘Apollonian.’”

“Huh?”