Stranger in a Strange Land

you-"
                ("Jill-")
                ("No, Michael?")
                ("Wait")
                To her utter surprise and some fear Mrs. Paiwonski found that her spangled briefies and bra were gone! But Jill was surprised to find that her almost-new negligee followed the little costume into wherever and nowhere. Jill was only mildly surprised when Mike's robe disappeared, too; she chalked it up, correctly but not completely, to his catlike good manners.
                Mrs. Paiwonski clutched at her mouth and gasped. Jill at once put her arms around her. "There, there, dear! It's all right, nobody's hurt." She turned her head and said, "Mike, you did it, you'll simply have to tell her."
                "Yes, Jill. Pat-"
                "Yes, Smitty?'
                "You said a while ago that I wasn't a real magician, that my tricks were just sleight-of-hand. You were going to take off your costume anyhow -so I took it off for you."
                "But how? And where is it?"
                "Same place Jill's wrapper is-and my robe. Gone."
                "But don't worry about it, Patty," put in Jill. "We'll replace it. Two more - . - and twice as pretty. Mike, you shouldn't have done it."
                "I'm sorry, Jill. I grokked it was all right."
                "Well ... I suppose it is." Jill decided that Aunt Patty wasn't too upset-and certainly she would never tell; she was carney.
                Mrs. Paiwonski was not worried by the loss of two scraps of costume, nor by her own nudity. Nor by the nakedness of the other two. But she was greatly troubled by a theological problem that she felt was out of her depth. "Smitty? That was real magic?"
                "I guess you would call it that," he agreed, using the words most exactly.
                "I'd rather call it a miracle," she said bluntly.
                "You can call it that, too, if you want to. But it wasn't sleight-of-hand."
                "I know that. You weren't even near me." She, who daily handled live cobras and who had more than once handled obnoxious drunks with her bare hands (to their sorrow), was not afraid. Patricia Paiwonski was not afraid of the Devil himself; she was sustained by her faith that she was saved and therefore invulnerable to the Devil. But she was uneasy for the safety of her friends. "Smitty ... look me in the eye. Have you made a pact with the Devil?"
                "No, Pat, I have not."
                She continued to look into his eyes, then said, "You aren't lying-"
                "He doesn't know how to lie, Aunt Patty."
                "-so it's a miracle. Smitty ... you are a holy man!"
                "I don't know, Pat."
                "Archangel Foster didn't know that he was a holy man until he reached his teens . . . even though he performed many miracles before that time. But you are a holy man; I can feel it." She thought. "I think I felt it when I first met you."
                "I don't know, Pat."
                "I think he may be," admitted Jill. "But he really doesn't know, himself. Michael - . . I think we've told her too much not to tell her more."
                "'Michael!'" Patty repeated suddenly. "The Archangel Michael, send down to us in human form."
                "Aunt Patty, please! If he is, he doesn't know it-"
                "He wouldn't necessarily know it. God performs his wonders in his own way."
                "Aunt Patty, will you please wait and let me talk, just for a bit?"
                Some minutes later Mrs. Paiwonski had accepted that Mike was indeed the Man from Mars, she had agreed to accept him as a man and to treat him as a man - . . while stating explicitly that she still held to her own opinion as to his true nature and why he was on Earth-explaining (somewhat fuzzily, it seemed to Jill) that Foster had been really and truly a man while he was on Earth, but had been also and always had been, an archangel, even though he had not known it himself. If Jill and Michael insisted that they were not saved, she would treat them as they asked to be treated-God moves in mysterious ways.
                "I think you could properly call us 'seekers,'" Mike told her.
                "Then that's