Stranger in a Strange Land

«And so was mine. And so am I. But is there any reason why a citizen's franchise should be voided simply because he is dead? The precinct I was raised in had a large graveyard vote — almost Martian. As may be, our lad Mike can't own anything because the “Old Ones” already own everything. So I have trouble explaining to him that he owns over a million shares of Lunar Enterprises, plus the Lyle Drive, plus assorted chattels and securities. It doesn't help that the original owners are dead; that makes them “Old Ones” — Mike never would stick his nose into the business of “Old Ones”.»

«Uh . . . damn it, he's incompetent.»

«Of course. He can't manage property because he doesn't believe in its mystique — any more than I believe in his ghosts. Ben, all that Mike owns is a toothbrush — and he doesn't know he owns that. If you took it, he would assume that the “Old Ones” had authorized the change.»

Jubal shrugged. «He is incompetent. So I shan't allow his competency to be tried — for what guardian would be appointed?»

«Huh! Douglas. Or one of his stooges.»

«Are you certain, Ben? Consider the makeup of the High Court. Might not the appointee be named Savvonavong? Or Nadi? Or Kee?»

«Uh . . . you could be right.»

«In which case the lad might not live long. Or he might live to a ripe age in some pleasant garden more difficult to escape from than Bethesda Hospital.»

«What do you plan to do?»

«The power the boy nominally owns is too dangerous. So we give it away.»

«How do you give away that much money?»

«You don't. Giving it away would change the balance of power — any attempt would cause the boy to be examined on his competence. So, instead, we let the tiger run like hell while hanging onto its ears for dear life. Ben, let me outline what I intend to do… then you do your damnedest to pick holes in it. Not the legality; Douglas's legal staff will write the double-talk and I'll check it. I want you to sniff it for political feasibility. Now here's what we are going to do — »

XIX

THE MARTIAN DIPLOMATIC DELEGATION went to the Executive Palace the next morning. The unpretentious pretender to the Martian throne, Mike Smith, did not worry about the purpose of the trip; he simply enjoyed it. They rode a chartered Flying Greyhound; Mike sat in the astrodome, Jill on one side and Dorcas on his other, and stared and stared as the girls pointed out sights and chattered. The seat was intended for two; a warming growing-closer resulted. He sat with an arm around each, and looked and listened and tried to grok and could not have been happier if he had been ten feet under water.

It was his first view of Terran civilization. He had seen nothing in being removed from the Champion; he had spent a few minutes in a taxi ten days earlier but had grokked none of it. Since then his world had been bounded by house and pool, garden and grass and trees — he had not been as far as Jubal's gate.

But now he was sophisticated; he understood windows, realized that the bubble surrounding him was for looking out of and that the sights he saw were cities. He picked out, with the help of the girls, where they were on the map flowing across the lap board. He had not known until recently that humans knew about maps. It had given him a twinge of happy homesickness the first time he had grokked a human map. It was static and dead compared with maps used by his people — but it was a map. Even human maps were Martian in essence — he liked them.

He saw almost two hundred miles of countryside, most of it sprawling world metropolis, and savored every inch, tried to grok it. He was startled by the size of human cities and their bustling activity, so different from the monastery-garden cities of his own people. It seemed to him that a human city must wear out almost at once, so choked with experience that only the strongest Old Ones could bear to visit its deserted streets and grok in contemplation events and emotions piled layer on endless layer in it. He had visited abandoned cities at home on a few wonderful and dreadful occasions, then his teachers had stopped it, grokking that he was not strong enough.

Questions to Jill and Dorcas enabled him to grok the city's age; it had been founded a little over two Earth centuries ago. Since Earth time units had no favor for him, he converted to Martian years and numbers-three-filled-plus-three-waiting years (34+ 33= 08 Martian years).

Terrifying and beautiful! Why, these people must be preparing to abandon the city to its thoughts before it shattered under the strain and became not … yet, by mere time, the city was only-an-egg.

Mike looked forward to returning to Washington in a century or two to walk its empty streets and try to grow close to its endless pain and beauty, grokking thirstily until he was Washington and the city was himself — if he were strong enough by then. He filed the thought as he must grow and grow and grow before he would be able to praise and cherish the city's mighty anguish.