A few minutes later Jubal found, to his great disgust, that he had promised Mike an interview with some Fosterite bigmouth - or Mike seemed to think that he had, which came to the same thing. Nor had he been able to do more than dent Mike's assumption that the Fosterites were in close touch with human "Old Ones." It appeared that Mike's difficulty in understanding the nature of truth was that he didn't know what a lie was - the dictionary definitions of "lie" and "falsehood" had been filed in his mind with no trace of grokking. One could "speak wrongly" only by accident or misunderstanding. So he necessarily had taken what he had heard of the Fosterite service at its bald, face value.
Jubal tried to explain that all human religions claimed to be in touch with "Old Ones" in one way or another; nevertheless their answers were all different.
Mike looked patiently troubled. "Jubal my brother, I try� but I do not grok how this can be right speaking. With my people, the Old Ones speak always rightly. Your people-"
"Hold it, Mike."
"Beg pardon?"
"When you said, 'my people' you were talking about Martians. Mike, you are not a Martian; you are a man."
"What is 'Man'?"
Jubal groaned inwardly. Mike could, he was sure, quote the full list of dictionary definitions. Yet the lad never asked a question simply to be annoying; he asked always for information - and he expected his water brother Jubal to be able to tell him. "I am a man, you are a man, Larry is a man."
"But Anne is not a man?"
"Uh� Anne is a man, a female man. A woman."
("Thanks, Jubal."-"Shut up, Anne.")
"A baby is a man? I have not seen babies, but I have seen pictures - and in the goddam-noi-in stereovision. A baby is not shaped like Anne and Anne is not shaped like you� and you are not shaped like I. But a baby is a nestling man?"
"Uh� yes, a baby is a man."
"Jubal� I think I grok that my people - 'Martians' - are man. Not shape, shape is not man. Man is grokking. I speak rightly?"
Jubal made a fierce resolve to resign from the Philosophical Society and take up tatting. What was "grokking"? He had been using the word himself for a week now - and he still didn't grok it. But what was "Man"? A featherless biped? God's image? Or simply a fortuitous result of the "survival of the fittest" in a completely circular and tautological definition? The heir of death and taxes? The Martians seemed to have defeated death, and he had already learned that they seemed to have neither money, property, nor government in any human sense - so how could they have taxes?
And yet the boy was right; shape was an irrelevancy in defining "Man," as unimportant as the bottle containing the wine. You could even take a man out of his bottle, like the poor fellow whose life those Russians had persisted in "saving" by placing his living brain in a vitreous envelope and wiring him like a telephone exchange. Gad, what a horrible joke! He wondered if the poor devil appreciated the grisly humor of what had been
But how, in essence, from the unprejudiced viewpoint of a Martian, did Man differ from other earthly animals? Would a race that could levitate (and God knows what else) be impressed by engineering? And, if so, would the Aswan Dam, or a thousand miles of coral reef, win first prize? Man's self-awareness? Sheer local conceit; the upstate counties had not reported, for there was no way to prove that sperm whales or giant sequoias were not philosophers and poets far exceeding any human merit.
There was one field in which man was unsurpassed; he showed unlimited ingenuity in devising bigger and more efficient ways to kill off, enslave, harass, and in all ways make an unbearable nuisance of himself to himself. Man was his own grimmest joke on himself. The very bedrock of humor was-
"Man is the animal who laughs," Jubal answered.
Mike considered this seriously. "Then I am not a man."
"Huh?"
"I do not laugh. I have heard laughing and it frighted me. Then I grokked that it did not hurt. I have tried to learn-" Mike threw his head back and gave out a raucous cackle, more nerve-racking than the idiot call of a kookaburra.
Jubal covered his ears. "Stop! Stop!"
"You heard," Mike agreed sadly. "I cannot rightly do it. So I am not man."
"Wait a minute, son. Don't give up so quickly. You simply haven't learned to laugh yet� and you'll never learn just by trying. But you will learn, I promise you. If you live among us long enough, one day you will see how funny we are - and you will laugh."
"I will?"
"You will. Don't worry about it and don't try to grok it; just let it come. Why, son, even a Martian would laugh once he grokked us."
"I will wait," Smith agreed placidly.
"And while you are waiting, don't ever doubt that you are a man. You are. Man born of woman and born to trouble� and some day you will grok its fullness and you will laugh - because man is the animal that laughs at himself. About your Martian friends, I do not know. I have never met them, I do not grok them. But I grok that they may be 'man.'"
"Yes, Jubal."
Harshaw thought that the interview was over and felt relieved. He decided that he had not been so embarrassed since a day long gone when his father had undertaken to explain to him the birds and the bees and the flowers - much too late.
But the Man from Mars was not quite done. "Jubal my brother, you were ask me, 'Who made the World?' and I did not have words to say why I did not rightly grok it to be a question. I have been thinking words."
"So?"
"You told me, 'God made the World.'"
"No, no!" Harshaw said hastily. "I told you that, while all these many religions said many things, most of them said, 'God made the World.' I told you that I did not grok the fullness, but that 'God' was the word that was used."
"Yes, Jubal," Mike agreed. "Word is 'God'" He added. "You grok."
"No, I must admit I don't grok."
"You grok," Smith repeated firmly. "I am explain. I did not have the word. You grok. Anne groks. I grok. The grass under my feet groks in happy beauty. But I needed the word. The word is God."
Jubal shook his head to clear it. "Go ahead."
Mike pointed triumphantly at Jubal. "Thou art God!"
Jubal slapped a hand to his face. "Oh, Jesus H. - What have I done? Look, Mike, take it easy! Simmer down! You didn't understand me. I'm sorry. I'm very sorry! Just forget what I've been saying and we'll start over again on another day. But-"
"Thou art God," Mike repeated serenely. "That which groks. Anne is God. I am God. The happy grass are God, Jill groks in beauty always. Jill is God. All shaping and making and creating together-." He croaked something in Martian and smiled.
"All right, Mike. But let it wait. Anne, have you been getting all this?"
"You bet I have, Boss!"
"Make me a tape. I'll have to work on it. I can't let it stand. I must-" Jubal glanced up, said, "Oh, my God! General Quarters, everybody! Anne! Set the panic button on 'dead-man' setting - and for God's sake keep your thumb on it; they may not be coming here." He glanced up again, at two large air cars approaching from the south. "But I'm afraid they are. Mike! Hide in the pool! Remember what I told you - down in the deepest part, stay there, hold still - and don't come up until I send Jill to get you."
"Yes, Jubal."
"Right now! Move!"
"Yes, Jubal." Mike ran the few steps, cut the water and disappeared. He remembered to keep his knees straight, his toes pointed and his feet together.
"Jill!" Jubal called out. "Dive in and climb out. You too, Larry. If anybody saw that, I want 'em confused as to how many are using the pool. Dorcast climb out fast, child, and dive in again. Anne- No, you've got the panic button; you can't."
"I can take my cloak and go to the edge of the pool. Boss, do you want some delay on this 'dead-man' setting?"
"Uh, yes, thirty seconds. If they land here, put on your Witness cloak at once and get your thumb back on the button. Then wait - and if I call you over to me, let the balloon go up. But I don't dare shout 'Wolf!' on this unless-" He shielded his eyes. "One of them is certainly going to land and it's got that Paddy-wagon look to it, all right. Oh, damn, I had thought they would parley first."