Stranger in a Strange Land

laughing at u& People. And I suddenly knew that I was people and could not stop laughing." He paused. "This is hard to explain, because you have never lived as a Martian, for all that I've told you about it. On Mars there is never anything to laugh at. All the things that are funny to us humans either physically cannot happen on Mars or are not permitted to happen- sweetheart, what you call 'freedom' doesn't exist on Mars; everything is planned by the Old Ones-or the things that do happen on Mars which we laugh at here on Earth aren't funny because there is no wrongness about them. Death, for example."
                "Death isn't funny."
                "Then why are there so many jokes about death? Jill, with us-us humans-death is so sad that we must laugh at it. All those religions- they contradict each other on every other point but every one of them is filled with ways to help people be brave enough to laugh even though they know they are dying." He stopped and Jill could feel that he had ahuost gone into his trance state. "Jill? Is it possible that I was searching them the wrong way? Could it be that every one of all those religions is true?"
                "Huh? How could that possibly be? Mike, if one of them is true, then the others are wrong. Logic."
                "So? Point to the shortest direction around the universe. It doesn't matter which way you point, it's the shortest ... and you're pointing right back at yourself."
                "Well, what does that prove? You taught me the true answer, Mike. 'Thou art God.'"
                "And Thou art God, my lovely. I wasn't disputing that ... but that one prime fact which doesn't depend at all on faith may mean that all faiths are true."
                "Well . . . if they're all true, then right now I want to worship Siva." Jill changed the subject with emphatic direct action.
                "Little pagan," he said softly. "They'll run you out of San Francisco."
                "But we're going to Los Angeles ... where it won't be noticed. Oh! Thou art Siva!"
                "Dance, Kali, dance!"
                Some time during the night she woke and saw him standing at the window, looking out over the city. ("Trouble, my brother?")
                He turned and spoke. "There's no need for them to be so unhappy."
                "Darling, darling! I think I had better take you home. The city is not good for you."
                "But I would still know it. Pain and sickness and hunger and fighting -there's no need for any of it. It's as foolish as those little monkeys."
                "Yes, darling. But it's not your fault-"
                "Ah, but it is!"
                "Well ... that way-yes. But it's not just this one city; it's five billion people and more. You can't help five billion people."
                "I wonder."
                He came over and sat down by her. "I grok with them now, I can talk to them. Jill, I could set up our act again . . . and make the marks laugh every minute. I am certain."
                "Then why not do it? Patty would certainly be pleased ... and so would I. I liked being 'with it'-and now that we've shared water with Patty, it would be like being home."
                He didn't answer. Jill felt his mind and knew that he was contemplating, trying to grok. She waited.
                "Jill? What do I have to do to be ordained?"

    PART FOUR HIS SCANDALOUS CAREER

    XXX

                THE FIRST MIXED LOAD Of permanent colonists arrived on Mars; six of the seventeen survivors of the twenty~thtee originals retumed to Earth. Prospective colonists trained in Peru at sixteen thousand feet. The president of Argentina moved one night to Montevideo, taking with him such portables as could be stuffed into two suitcases, and the new Presidente started an extradition procesS before the high Court to yank him back, or at least the two suitcases. Last rites for Alice Douglas were held privately in the National Cathedral with less than two thousand attending, and editorialists and stereo comentators alike praised the dignified fortitude with which the Secretary General took his bereavement. A three-year-old named Inflation, carrying 126 pounds with Jinx Jenkins Up, won the Kentucky Derby, paying fifty-four for one, and two guests of the