Stranger in a Strange Land

Jubal enjoyed Mike's inglorious military career because Jill spent the time at home. When Mike came home after it was over, he hadn't seemed hurt by it — he boasted to Jubal that he had obeyed Jill's wishes and hadn't disappeared anybody, merely a few dead things … although, as Mike grokked it, there had been times when Earth could have been made a better place if Jill didn't have this weakness. Jubal didn't argue; he had a lengthy «Better Dead» list himself.

Mike's unique ways of growing up were all right; Mike was unique. But this last thing — «The Reverend Doctor Valentine M. Smith, A.B., D.D., Ph.D., Founder and Pastor of the Church of All Worlds, Inc.» — gad! It was bad enough that the boy had decided to be a Holy Joe instead of leaving other people's souls alone as a gentleman should. But those diploma-mill degrees — Jubal wanted to throw up.

The worst was that Mike claimed that he had hatched the idea from something Jubal had said, about what a church was and what it could do. Jubal admitted that it was something he could have said, although he did not recall it.

Mike had been cagey about the operation — some months of residence at a very small, very poor sectarian college, a bachelor's degree awarded by examination, a «call» to their ministry followed by ordination in this recognized though flat-headed sect, a doctor's dissertation on comparative religion which was a marvel of scholarship while ducking any conclusions, the award of the «earned» doctorate coinciding with an endowment (anonymous) to this very hungry school, the second doctorate (honorary) for «contributions to interplanetary knowledge» from a university that should have known better, when Mike let it be known that such was his price for appearing at a conference on solar system studies. The Man from Mars had turned down everybody from Cal-Tech to Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in the past; Harvard could not resist the bait.

Well, they were as crimson as their banner now, Jubal thought cynically. Mike put in a few weeks as assistant chaplain at his churchmouse alma mater — then broke with the sect in a schism and founded his own church. Completely kosher, legally airtight, as venerable in precedent as Martin Luther — and as nauseating as last week's garbage.

Jubal was called out of his sour daydream by Miriam. «Boss! Company!»

Jubal looked up to see a car about to land. «Larry, fetch my shotgun — swore I would shoot the next dolt who landed on the rose bushes.»

«He's landing on the grass, Boss.»

«Tell him to try again. We'll get him on the next pass.»

«Looks like Ben Caxton.»

«So it is. Hi, Ben! What'll you drink?»

«Nothing, you professional bad influence. Need to talk to you, Jubal.»

«You're doing it. Dorcas, fetch Ben a glass of warm milk; he's sick.»

«Without much soda,» amended Ben, «and milk the bottle with the three dimples. Private talk, Jubal.»

«All right, up to my study — although if you can keep anything from the kids around here, let me in on your method.» After Ben finished greeting properly (and unsanitarily, in three cases) members of the family, they moseyed upstairs.

Ben said, «What the deuce? Am I lost?»

«Oh. You haven't seen the new wing. Two bedrooms and another bath downstairs — and up here, my gallery.»

«Enough statues to fill a graveyard!»

«Please, Ben. “Statues” are dead politicians. This is “sculpture”. Please speak in a reverent tone lest I become violent. Here are replicas of some of the greatest sculpture this naughty globe has produced.»

«Well,that hideous thing I've seen before … but when did you acquire the rest of this ballast?»

Jubal spoke to the replica La Belle Heaulmiere. «Do not listen, ma petite chere — he is a barbarian and knows no better.» He put his hand to her beautiful ravaged cheek, then gently touched one empty, shrunken dug. «I know how you feel … it can't be much longer. Patience, my lovely.»

He turned to Caxton and said briskly, «Ben, you will have to wait while I give you a lesson in how to look at sculpture. You've been rude to a lady. I don't tolerate that.»

«Huh? Don't be silly, Jubal; you're rude to ladies — live ones — a dozen times a day.»

Jubal shouted,«Anne! Upstairs! Wear your cloak!»

«You know I wouldn't be rude to the old woman who posed for that. What I can't understand is a so-called artist having the gall to pose somebody's great grandmother in her skin … and you having the bad taste to want it around.»

Anne came in, cloaked. Jubal said, «Anne, have I ever been rude to you? Or to any of the girls?»

«That calls for opinion.»

«That's what I'm asking for. You're not in court.»

«You have never been rude to any of us, Jubal.»

«Have you ever known me to be rude to a lady?»

«I have seen you be intentionally rude to a woman. I have never seen you be rude to a lady.»

«One more opinion. What do you think of this bronze?»