Stranger in a Strange Land

came so high that it covered her cartoons, and was caught at both wrists for the same reason. She had put on stockings, too, or maybe bobby socks, and was carrying sandals.
                "Changed the hell out of her, Jubal. It gave her great dignity. Her face is quite nice and I could see that she was considerably older than I had first guessed her although not within twenty years of what she claims to be. She has an exquisite complexion and I thought what a shame it was that anyone had ever touched a tattooing needle to such skin.
                "I had dressed again. She asked me to take off just my shoes because we weren't going out the way I had come in. She led me back through the Nest and out into a corridor; we stopped to put on shoes and went down a ramp that wound down maybe a couple of floors until we reached a gallery. It was sort of a loge overlooking the main auditorium. Mike was holding forth on the platform. No pulpit, no altar, just a lecture hall, with a big All-Worlds symbol on the wall behind him. There was a robed priestess on the platform with him and, at that distance, I thought it was Jill- but it wasn't; it was another woman who looks a bit like her and is almost as beautiful. The other high priestess, Dawn-Dawn Ardent."
                "What was that name?" Jubal interrupted.
                "Dawn Ardent-née Higgins, if you want to be fussy."
                "I've met her."
                "I know you have, you allegedly retired goat. She's got a crush on you..."
                Jubal shook his head. "Some mistake. The 'Dawn Ardent' I mean I just barely met, about two years ago. She wouldn't even remember me."
                "She remembers you. She gets every one of your pieces of commercial crud, on tape, under every pseudonym she has been able to track down. She goes to sleep by them, usually, and they give her beautiful dreams. She says. Furthermore there is no doubt that she knows who you are. Jubal, that big living room, the Nest proper, has exactly one item of ornamentation, if you'll pardon the word-a life-sized color so11y of your head. Looks as if you had been decapitated, with your face in a hideous grin. A candid shot that Duke sneaked of you, I understand."
                "Why, that brat!"
                "Jill asked him to, behind your back."
                "Double brat!"
                "Sir, you are speaking of the woman I love-although I'm not alone in that distinction. But Mike put her up to it. Brace yourself, Jubal-you are the patron saint of the Church of All Worlds."
                Jubal looked horrified. "They can't do this to me!"
                "They already have. But don't worry; it's unofficial and not publicized. But Mike freely gives you credit, inside the Nest just among water brothers, for having instigated the whole show and explained things to him so well that he was finally able to figure out how to put over Martian theology to humans."
                Jubal looked about to retch. Ben went on, "I'm afraid you can't duck it. But in addition, Dawn thinks you're beautiful. Aside from that quirk, she is an intelligent woman-and utterly charming. But I digress. Mike spotted us at once, waved and called out, 'Hi, Ben! Later'-and went on with his spiel.
                "Jubal, I'm not going to try to quote him, you'll just have to hear it. He didn't sound preachy and he didn't wear robes-just a smart, welltailored, white syntholinen suit. He sounded like a damned good car salesman, except that there was no doubt he was talking about religion. He cracked jokes and told parables-none of them straitlaced but nothing really dirty, either. The essence of it was a sort of pantheism . . . one of his parables was the oldy about the earthworm burrowing along through the soil who encounters another earthworm and at once says, 'Oh, you're beautiful! You're lovelyl Will you marry me?' and is answered: 'Don't be silly! I'm your other end.' You've heard it before?"
                "'Heard it?' I wrote it!"
                "I hadn't realized it was that old. Anyhow, Mike made good use of it. His idea is that whenever you encounter any other grokking thing-he didn't say 'grokking' at this stage-any other living thing, man, woman, or stray cat . . . you are simply encountering your 'other end' . . . and the universe is just a little