Stranger in a Strange Land

«So you claim reflex? Anyone over the emotional age of twelve would have clamped his jaws and walked to the bathroom, then returned with some acceptable excuse after things cooled down. It was not reflex. Reflex can empty the stomach; it can't choose a course for feet, recover chattels, take you through doors and cause you to jump down a hole. Panic, Ben. Why did you panic?»

Caxton was long in replying. He sighed and said, «I guess when you come down to it — I'm a prude.»

Jubal shook his head. «A prude thinks that his own rules of propriety are natural laws. That doesn't describe you. You adjusted to many things that did not fit your code of propriety, whereas a true-blue prude would have affronted that delightful tattooed lady and stomped out. Dig deeper.»

«All I know is that I am unhappy over the whole thing.»

«I know you are, Ben, and I'm sorry. Let's try a hypothetical question. You mentioned a lady named Ruth. Suppose Gillian had not been present; assume that the others were Mike and Ruth — and they offered you the same shared intimacy: Would you have been shocked?»

«Huh? Why, yes. It's a shocking situation.I think so, even though you say it's a matter of taste.»

«How shocking? Nausea? Panic flight?»

Caxton looked sheepish. «Damn you, Jubal. All right, I would just have found an excuse to go out to the kitchen or something … then left as soon as possible.»

«Very well, Ben. You have uncovered your trouble.»

«I have?»

«What element was changed?»

Caxton looked unhappy. At last he said, «You're right, Jubal — it was because it was Jill. Because I love her.»

«Close, Ben. But not dead center.»

«Eh?»

«“Love” is not the emotion that caused you to flee. What is “love”, Ben?»

«What? Oh, come off it! Everybody from Shakespeare to Freud has taken a swing at that; nobody has answered it yet. All I know is, it hurts.»

Jubal shook his head. «I'll give an exact definition. “Love” is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.»

Ben said slowly, «I'll buy that … because that's the way I feel about Jill.»

«Good. Then you are asserting that your stomach turned and you fled in panic because of a need to make Jill happy.»

«Hey, wait a minute! I didn't say — »

«Or was it some other emotion?»

«I simply said — » Caxton stopped. «Okay, I was jealous! But, Jubal, I would have sworn I wasn't. I knew I had lost out, I had accepted it long ago — hell, I didn't like Mike the less for it. Jealousy gets you nowhere.»

«Nowhere one would wish, certainly. Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy — in fact, they're almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other. Both at once can produce unbearable turmoil — and I grok that was your trouble, Ben. When your jealousy reared its head, you couldn't look it in the eye — so you fled.»

«It was the circumstances, Jubal! This hands-around harem upsets the hell out of me. Don't misunderstand me; I would love Jill if she were a two-peso whore. Which she is not. By her lights, Jill is moral.»

Jubal nodded. «I know. Gillian has an invincible innocence that makes it impossible for her to be immoral.» He frowned. «Ben, I am afraid that you — and I, too — lack the angelic innocence to practice the perfect morality those people live by.»

Ben looked startled. «You think that sort of thing is moral? I meant that Jill doesn't know she is doing wrong — Mike's got her homswoggled — and Mike doesn't know it's wrong, either. He's the Man from Mars; he didn't get a fair start.»

Jubal frowned. «Yes, I think what those people — the entire Nest, not just our kids — are doing is moral. I haven't examined details but — yes, all of it. Bacchanalia, unashamed swapping, communal living and anarchistic code, everything.»

«Jubal, you astound me. If you feel that way, why don't you join them? They want you. They'll hold a jubilee — Dawn is waiting to kiss your feet and serve you; I wasn't exaggerating.»

Jubal sighed. «No. Fifty years ago — But now? Ben my brother, the capacity for such innocence is no longer in me. I have been too long wedded to my own brand of evil and hopelessness to be cleansed in their water of life and become innocent again. If I ever was.»

«Mike thinks you have this “innocence” — he doesn't call it that — in full measure now. Dawn told me, speaking ex officio.»

«Then I would not disillusion him. Mike sees his own reflection — I am, by profession, a mirror.»

«Jubal, you're chicken.»

«Precisely, sir! But my worry is not over their morals but dangers to them from outside.»

«Oh, they're in no trouble that way.»

«You think so? If you dye a monkey pink and shove him into a cage of brown monkeys, they'll tear him to pieces. Those innocents are courting martyrdom.»

«Aren't you being rather melodramatic, Jubal?»