Stranger in a Strange Land

enough, my dears! I'm sure you're saved-but Foster himself was a seeker in his early years~ I'll help."
                She had participated in another minor miracle. They had been seated in a circle on the rug. Jill lay back flat and suggested it to Mike in her mind. With no patter of any sort, with no sheet nor anything to conceal a non-existent steel rod, Mike lifted her. Patricia watched it with serene happiness, convinced that she was vouchsafed sight of a miracle. "Pat," Mike then said. "Lie flat."
                She did so without argument, as readily as if he had been Foster. Jill turned her head. "Hadn't you better put me down first, Mike?"
                "No, I can do it."
                Mrs. Paiwonski felt herself gently lifted. She was not frightened by it; she simply felt overpowering religious ecstasy like heat lightning in her loins, making tears come to her eyes, the power of which she had not felt since, as a young woman, Holy Foster himself had touched her. When Mike moved them closer together and Jill put her arms around her, her tears increased, but her cries were the gentle sobs of happiness.
                Presently he lowered them gently to the floor and found, as he expected, that he was not tired-he could not recall when last he had been tired.
                Jill said to him, "Mike ... we need a glass of water."
                ("????")
                ("Yes, " her mind answered.)
                ("And?")
                ("Of elegant necessity. Why do you think she came here?")
                ("I knew. I was not sure that you knew .. or would approve. My brother. My self")
                ("My brother.")
                Mike did not get up to fetch water. He sent a glass from the tray of drinks into the bathroom, had the tap fill it, returned it to Jill's hands. Mrs. Paiwonski watched this with almost absent-minded interest; she was beyond being astonished. Jill held the glass, said to her, "Aunt Patty, this is like being baptized - . . and like getting married. It's ... a Martian thing. It means that you trust us and we trust you . . . and we can tell you anything and you can tell us anything . . . and that we are always partners, now and forever. It's very serious ... and once done it can never be broken. If you broke it, we would have to die-at once. Saved or not. If we broke it- But we won't. But you don't have to share water with us if you don't want to-we'll still be friends. Now - . - if this in any way interferes with your faith, don't do it. We don't belong to your church even though you guessed that we did. We don't. We may never belong. 'Seekers' is the most you can call us now. Mike?"
                "We grok," he agreed. "Pat, Jill speaks rightly. I wish we could say it to you in Martian, it would be clearer. But this is everything that getting married is . . - and a great deal more. We are free to offer water to you but if there is any reason at all, in your religion or in your heart, not to accept-don't drink it!"
                Patricia Paiwonski took a deep breath. She had made such a decision once before - with her husband watching . . . and had not funked it. And who was she to refuse a holy man? And his blessed bride? "I want it," she said firmly.
                Jill took a sip. "We grow ever closer." She passed the glass to Mike.
                He looked at Jill, then at Patricia. "I thank you for water, my brother." He took a sip. "Pat, I give you the water of life. May you always drink deep." He passed the glass to her.
                Patricia took it. "Thank you. Thank you, oh my dears! The 'water of life'-oh, I love you both!" She drank thirstily.
                Jill took the glass from her, finished it. "Now we grow closer, my brothers."
                ("Jill?")
                ("Now!!!")
                Michael lifted his new water brother, wafted her in and placed her gently on the bed.
                Valentine Michael Smith had grokked, when first he had known it fully, that physical human love-very human and very physical-was not simply a necessary quickening of eggs, nor was it mere ritual through which one grew closer; the act itself was a growing-closer, a very great goodness-and (so far as he knew) unknown even to the Old Ones of his former people. He was still