Stranger in a Strange Land

Part Four His Scandalous Career

XXX

THE FIRST MIXED LOAD of colonists reached Mars; six of seventeen survivors of twenty-three originals returned to Earth. Prospective colonists trained in Peru at sixteen thousand feet. The President of Argentina moved one night to Montevideo, taking two suitcases; the new Presidente started an extradition process before the High Court to yank him back, or at least the suitcases. Last rites for Alice Douglas were held privately in the National Cathedral with two thousand attending; commentators praised the fortitude with which the Secretary General took his bereavement. A three-year-old named Inflation, carrying 126 pounds, won the Kentucky Derby paying fifty-four for one; two guests of the Colony Airotel, Louisville, discorporated, one voluntarily, one by heart failure.

A bootleg edition of the unauthorized biography The Devil and Reverend Foster appeared throughout the United States; by nightfall every copy was burned and plates destroyed, along with damage to chattels and real estate, plus mayhem, maiming, and simple assault. The British Museum was ru mored to possess a copy of the first edition (untrue), and also the Vatican Library (true, but available only to church scholars).

In the Tennessee legislature a bill was introduced to make pi equal to three; it was reported out by the committee on public education and morals, passed without objection by the lower house and died in the upper house. An interchurch fundamentalist group opened offices in Van Buren, Arkansas, to solicit funds to send missionaries to the Martians; Dr. Jubal Harshaw made a donation but sent it in the name (and with the address) of the editor of the New Humanist, rabid atheist and his close friend.

Otherwise Jubal had little to cheer him — too much news about Mike. He treasured the visits home of Jill and Mike and was most interested in Mike's progress, especially after Mike developed a sense of humor. But they seldom came home now and Jubal did not relish the latest developments.

It had not troubled Jubal when Mike was run out of Union Theological Seminary, pursued by a pack of enraged theologians, some of whom were angry because they believed in God and others because they did not — but unanimous in detesting the Man from Mars. Jubal reckoned anything that happened to a theologian short of breaking him on the wheel as no more than meet — and the experience was good for the boy; he'd know better next time.

Nor had he been troubled when Mike (with the help of Douglas) enlisted under an assumed name in the Federation armed forces. He had been sure that no sergeant could cause Mike permanent distress, and Jubal was not troubled by what might happen to Federation troops — an unreconciled old reactionary, Jubal had burned his honorable discharge and all that went with it the day the United States ceased having its own forces.

Jubal was surprised at how little shambles Mike created as «Private Jones» and how long he lasted — almost three weeks. Mike crowned his military career by grabbing the question period following a lecture to preach the uselessness of force (with comments on the desirability of reducing surplus population through cannibalism), then offered himself as a test animal for any weapon of any nature to prove that force was not only unnecessary but impossible when attempted against a self-disciplined person.

They did not take his offer; they kicked him out.

Douglas allowed Jubal to see a super-secret eyes-only numbered-one-of-three report after cautioning Jubal that no one, not even the Supreme Chief of Staff, knew that «Private Jones» was the Man from Mars. Jubal scanned the exhibits, mostly conflicting reports as to what happened when «Jones» had been «trained» in the uses of weapons; the surprising thing to Jubal was that some witnesses had the courage to state under oath that they had seen weapons disappear.

The last paragraph Jubal read carefully; «Conclusion: Subject man is a natural hypnotist and could conceivably be useful in intelligence, but he is unfitted for any combat branch. However, his low intelligence quotient (moron), his extremely low general classification score, and his paranoid tendencies (delusions of grandeur) make it inadvisable to exploit his idiot- savant talent. Recommendation: Discharge, Inaptitude — no pension credit, no benefits.»

Mike had managed to have fun. At parade on his last day while Mike's platoon was passing in review, the commanding general and his staff were buried hip deep in a bucolic end-product symbolic to all soldiers but no longer common on parade grounds. This deposit vanished, leaving nothing but an odor and a belief in mass hypnosis. Jubal decided that Mike had atrocious taste in practical jokes. Then he recalled an incident in medical school involving a cadaver and the Dean — Jubal had worn rubber gloves and a good thing, too!