«Olé!»Ben applauded. «He's a slimy bastard — I haven't exposed his racket in my column simply because the Syndicate is afraid to print it. Stinky, keep talking and you'll have me studying Arabic and buying a rug.»
«I hope so. The rug is not necessary.»
Jubal sighed. «I agree with you. I'd rather see Mike smoking marijuana than converted by Digby. But I don't think there is any danger of Mike's being taken in by that syncretic hodgepodge … and he's got to learn to stand up to bad influences. I consider you a good influence — but I don't think you stand much more chance — the boy has an amazingly strong mind. Muhammad may have to make way for a new prophet.»
«If God so wills,» Mahmoud answered.
«That leaves no room for argument,» Jubal agreed.
«We were discussing religion before you got home,» Dorcas said softly. «Boss, did you know that women have souls?»
«They do?»
«So Stinky says.»
«Maryam,» Mahmoud explained, «wanted to know why we “Mohammedans” thought only men had souls.»
«Miriam, that's as vulgar a misconception as the notion that Jews sacrifice Christian babies. The Koran states that entire families enter into Paradise, men and women together. For example, see “Ornaments of Gold” — verse seventy, isn't it, Stinky?»
«“Enter the Garden, ye and your wives, to be made glad”. That's as well as it can be translated,» agreed Mahmoud.
«Well,» said Miriam, «I had heard about the beautiful houris that Mohammedan men have for playthings in Paradise and that didn't seem to leave room for wives.»
«Houris,» said Jubal, «are separate creations, like djinni and angels. They don't need souls, they are spirits to start with, eternal, unchanging, and beautiful. There are male houris, too, or equivalents. Houris don't earn their way into Paradise; they're on the staff. They serve delicious foods and pass around drinks that never give hangovers and entertain as requested. But the souls of wives don't have to work. Correct, Stinky?»
«Close enough, aside from your flippant choice of words. The houris — » He sat up so suddenly that he dumped Miriam. «Say! Perhaps you girls don't have souls!»
Miriam said bitterly, «Why, you ungrateful dog of an infidel! Take that back!»
«Peace, Maryam. If you don't have a soul, then you're immortal anyhow. Jubal … is it possible for a man to die and not notice it?»
«Can't say. Never tried it.»
«Could I have died on Mars and just dreamed that I came home? Look around you! A garden the Prophet himself would envy. Four beautiful houris, serving lovely food and delicious drinks at all hours. Even their male counterparts, if you want to be fussy. Is this Paradise?»
«I guarantee it ain't,» Jubal assured him. «My taxes are due.»
«Still, that doesn't affect me.»
«And take these houris — Even if we stipulate that they are of adequate beauty — after all, beauty is in the eye of the be-holder — »
«They pass.»
«And you'll pay for that, Boss,» Miriam added.
« — there still remains,» Jubal pointed out, «one requisite attribute of houris.»
«Mmmm — » said Mahmoud, «we need not go into that. In Paradise, rather than a temporary physical condition, it would be a permanent spiritual attribute. Yes?»
«In that case,» Jubal said emphatically, «I am certain that these are not houris.»
Mahmoud sighed. «Then I'll have to convert one.»
«Why one? There are places where you can have the full quota.»
«No, my brother. In the wise words of the Prophet, while the Legislations permit four, it is impossible to deal justly with more than one.»
«That's some relief. Which one?»
«We'll see. Maryam, are you feeling spiritual?»
«You go to hell! “Houris” indeed!»
«Jill?»
«Give me a break,» Ben protested. «I'm working on Jill.»
«Later, Jill. Anne?»
«Sorry. I've got a date.»
«Dorcas? You're my last chance.»
«Stinky,» she said softly, «just how spiritual do you want me to feel?»
Mike went upstairs to his room, closed the door, got on the bed, assumed the foetal position, rolled up his eyes, swallowed his tongue, and slowed his heart. Jill did not like him to do this in the daytime but did not object as long as he did not do it publicly — so many things he must not do publicly but only this one aroused her ire. He had been waiting since leaving that room of terrible wrongness; he needed very badly to withdraw and try to grok.
He had done something that Jill had told him not to —
He felt a human urge to tell himself that it had been forced on him, but his Martian training did not permit this escape. He had arrived at cusp, right action had been required, the choice had been his. He grokked that he had chosen correctly. But his water brother Jill had forbidden this choice —
But that would have left no choice. This was contradiction; at cusp, choice is. By choice, spirit grows.
Would Jill have approved had he taken other action, not wasting food?
No, he grokked that Jill's injunction covered that variant.
At this point the being sprung from human genes and shaped by Martian thought, who could never be either, completed one stage of his growth, burst out and ceased to be a nestling. The solitary loneliness of predestined free will was then his and with it Martian serenity to embrace, cherish, savor its bitterness, accept its consequences. With tragic joy he knew that this cusp was his, not Jill's. His water brother could teach, admonish, guide — but choice at cusp was not shared. Here was «ownership» beyond sale, gift, hypothecation; owner and owned grokked inseparable. He eternally was the action he had taken at cusp.
Now that he knew himself to be self he was free to grok ever closer to his brothers, merge without let. Self's integrity was and is and ever had been. Mike stopped to cherish all his brother selves, the many threes-fulfilled on Mars, corporate and discorporate, the precious few on Earth — the unknown powers of three on Earth that would be his to merge with and cherish now that at last long waiting he grokked and cherished himself.
Mike remained in trance; there was much to grok, loose ends to puzzle over and fit into his growing — all that he had seen and heard and been at the Archangel Foster Tabernacle (not just cusp when he and Digby had come face to face alone) … why Bishop Senator Boone made him warily uneasy, how Miss Dawn Ardent tasted like a water brother when she was not, the smell of goodness he had incompletely grokked in the jumping up and down and wailing —
Jubal's conversations coming and going — Jubal's words troubled him most; he studied them, compared them with what he had been taught as a nestling, struggling to bridge between languages, the one he thought with and the one he was learning to think in. The word «church» which turned up over and over again among Jubal's words gave him knotty difficulty; there was no Martian concept to match it — unless one took «church» and «worship» and «God» and «congregation» and many other words and equated them to the totality of the only world he had known during growing-waiting … then forced the concept back into English in that phrase which had been rejected (by each differently) by Jubal, by Mahmoud, by Digby.
«Thou art God.»He was closer to understanding it in English now, although it could never have the inevitability of the Martian concept it stood for. In his mind he spoke simultaneously the English sentence and the Martian word and felt closer grokking. Repeating it like a student telling himself that the jewel is in the lotus he sank into nirvana.
Before midnight he speeded his heart, resumed normal breathing, ran down his check list, uncurled and sat up. He had been weary; now he felt light and gay and clear-headed, ready for the many actions he saw spreading out before him.