Stranger in a Strange Land полностью

“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 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.