A Stranger in a Strange Land Read online

  "Will you marry me? Then, when they ride you out of town on a rail, I'll be waiting at the city line and take you away from your sordid existence. You'll come back here and cool your toes in my grass - our grass - and forget your ignominy. But you've durn well got to sneak me into that hospital room first."

  "Ben, you almost sound serious. If I phone for a Fair Witness, will you repeat the offer?"

  Caxton sighed. "Jill, you're a hard woman. Send for a Witness."

  She stood up. "Ben," she said softly, "I won't hold you to it." She rumpled his hair and kissed him. "But don't ever joke about marriage to a spinster."

  "I wasn't joking."

  "I wonder. Wipe off the lipstick and I'll tell you everything I know, then we'll consider how you can use it without getting me ridden on that rail. Fair enough?"

  "Fair enough."

  She gave him a detailed account. "I'm sure he wasn't drugged. I'm equally sure that he was rational - although why I'm sure I don't know, for he talked in the oddest fashion and asked the darnedest questions. But I'm sure. He isn't psychotic."

  "It would be odder still if he hadn't talked in an odd fashion."

  "Huh?"

  "Use your head, Jill. We don't know much about Mars but we do know that Mars is very unlike Earth and that Martians, whatever they are, certainly are not human. Suppose you were suddenly popped into a tribe so far back in the jungle that they had never laid eyes on a white woman. Would you know all the sophisticated small talk that comes from a lifetime in a culture? Or would your conversation sound odd? That's a very mild analogy; the truth in this case is at least forty million miles stranger."

  Jill nodded. "I figured that out� and that is why I discounted his odd remarks. I'm not dumb."

  "No, you're real bright, for a female."

  "Would you like this martini poured in your thinning hair?"

  "I apologize. Women are lots smarter than men; that is proved by our whole cultural setup. Gimme, I'll fill it."

  She accepted the peace offerings and went on, "Ben, that order about not letting him see women, it's silly. He's no sex fiend."

  "No doubt they don't want to hand him too many shocks at once."

  "He wasn't shocked. He was just� interested. It wasn't like having a man look at me at all."

  "If you had humored him on that request for a private viewing, you might have had your hands full. He probably has all the instincts and no inhibitions."

  "Huh? I don't think so. I suppose they've told him about male and female; he just wanted to see how women are different."

  "'Vive la difference!'" Caxton answered enthusiastically.

  "Don't be more vulgar than you have to be."

  "Me? I wasn't being vulgar, I was being reverent. I was giving thanks to all the gods that I was born human and not Martian."

  "Be serious."

  "I was never more serious."

  "Then be quiet. He wouldn't have given me any trouble. He would probably have thanked me gravely. You didn't see his face - I did."

  "What about his face?"

  Jill looked puzzled. "I don't know how to express it. Yes, I do! - Ben, have you ever seen an angel?"

  "You, cherub. Otherwise not."

  "Well, neither have I - but that is what he looked like. He had old, wise eyes in a completely placid face, a face of unearthly innocence." She shivered.

  "'Unearthly' is surely the right word," Ben answered slowly. "I'd like to see him."

  "I wish you had. Ben, why are they making such a thing out of keeping him shut up? He wouldn't hurt a fly. I'm sure of it."

  Caxton fitted his fingertips together. "Well, in the first place they want to protect him. He grew up in Mars gravity; he's probably weak as a cat."

  "Yes, of course. You could see it, just looking at him. But muscular weakness isn't dangerous; myasthenia gravis is much worse and we manage all right with such cases."

  "They would want to keep him from catching things, too. He's like those experimental animals at Notre Dame; he's never been exposed."

  "Sure, sure - no antibodies. But from what I hear around the mess hail, Doctor Nelson - the surgeon in the Champion, I mean - Doctor Nelson took care of that on the trip back. Repeated mutual transfusion until he had replaced about half of his blood tissue."

  "Really? Can I use that, Jill? That's news."

  "All right, just don't quote me. They gave him shots for everything but housemaid's knee, too. But, Ben, even if they want to protect him from infection, that doesn't take armed guards outside his door."

  "Mmmm� Jill, I've picked up a few tidbits you may not know. I haven't been able to use them because I've got to protect my sources, just as with you. But I'll tell you; you've earned it - just don't talk."

  "Oh, I won't."

  "It's a long story. Want a refill?"

  "No, let's start the steak. Where's the button?"

  "Right here."

  "Well, push it."

  "Me? You offered to cook dinner. Where's that Girl Scout spirit you were boasting about?"

  "Ben Caxton, I will lie right here in the grass and starve before I will get up to push a button that is six inches from your right forefinger."

  "As you wish." He pressed the button to tell the stove to carry out its pre-set orders. "But don't forget who cooked dinner. Now about Valentine Michael Smith. In the first place there is grave doubt as to his right to the name 'Smith.'"

  "Repeat, please?"

  "Honey, your pal appears to be the first interplanetary bastard of record. I mean 'love child.'"

  "The hell you say!"

  "Please be more ladylike in your speech. Do you remember anything about the crew of the Envoy? Never mind, I'll hit the high points. Eight people, four married couples. Two couples were Captain and Mrs. Brant, Doctor and Mrs. Smith. Your friend with the face of an angel appears to be the son of Mrs. Smith by Captain Brant."

  "How do they know? And, anyhow, who cares?" Jill sat up and said indignantly, "It's a pretty snivelin' thing to dig up a scandal after all this time. They're all dead - let 'em alone, I say!"

  "As to how they know, you can figure that out. Blood typing, Rh factor, hair and eye color, all those genetic things - you probably know more about them than I do. Anyhow it is a mathematical certainty that Mary Jane Lyle Smith was his mother and Captain Michael Brant was his father. All the factors are matters of record for the entire crew of the Envoy; there probably never were eight people more thoroughly measured and typed. Also it gives Valentine Michael Smith a wonderfully fine heredity; his father had an I.Q. of 163, his mother 170, and both were tops in their fields.

  "As to who cares," Ben went on, "a lot of people care very much - and a lot more will care, once this picture shapes up. Ever heard of the Lyle Drive?"

  "Of course. That's what the Champion used."

  "And every other space ship, these days. Who invented it?"

  "I don't - wait a minute! You mean she-"

  "Hand the little lady a cigar! Dr. Mary Jane Lyle Smith. She knew she had something important, even though development work remained to be done on it. So before she left on the expedition, she applied for a dozen odd basic patents and placed it all in a corporate trust - not a non-profit corporation, mind you - then assigned control and interim income to the Science Foundation. So eventually the government got control of it - but your friend with the face of an angel owns it. No possible doubt. It's worth millions, maybe hundreds of millions; I couldn't guess."

  They brought in dinner. Caxton used ceiling tables to protect his lawn; he lowered one down in front of his chair and another to Japanese height so that Jill could sit on the grass. "Tender?" he asked.

  "Ongerful!" she answered with her mouth full.

  "Thanks. Remember, I cooked it."

  "Ben," she said after swallowing, "how about Smith being a - I mean, being illegitimate? Can he inherit?"

  "He's not illegitimate. Doctor Mary Jane was at Berkeley, and California laws deny the concept of bastardy. Same for Cap
tain Brant, as New Zealand also has civilized laws on the subject. While under the laws of the home State of Doctor Ward Smith, Mary Jane's husband, a child born in wedlock is legitimate, come hell or high water. We have here. Jill, a man who is the Simon-pure legitimate child of three different parents.

  "Huh? Now wait a minute, Ben; he can't be it both ways. One or the other but not both. I'm not a lawyer but-"

  "You sure ain't. Such legal fictions bother a lawyer not at all. Smith is legitimate different ways in different jurisdictions, all kosher and all breaking his way - even though he is probably a bastard in his physical ancestry. So he inherits. Besides that, while his mother was wealthy, both his fathers were at least well to do. Brant was a bachelor until just before the expedition; he had ploughed most of his scandalous salary as a pilot on the Moon run back into Lunar Enterprises, Limited. You know how that stuff has boomed - they just declared another three-way stock dividend. Brant had one vice, gambling - but the bloke won regularly and invested that, too. Ward Smith had family money; he was a medical man and scientist by choice. Smith is heir to both of them."

  "Whew!"

  "That ain't half, honey. Smith is heir to the entire crew."

  "Huh?"

  "All eight signed a 'Gentlemen Adventurers' contract, making them all mutually heirs to each other - all of them and their issue. They did it with great care, using as models similar contracts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that had stood up against every effort to break them. Now these were all high-powered people; among them they had quite a lot. Happened to include considerable Lunar Enterprises stock, too, besides what Brant held. Smith might turn out to own a controlling interest, or at least a key bloc in a proxy fight."

  Jill thought about the childlike creature who had made such a touching ceremony out of just a drink of water and felt sorry for him. But Caxton went on: "I wish I could sneak a look at the Envoy's log. I know they recovered it - but I doubt if they'll ever release it."

  "Why not, Ben?"

  "Because it's a nasty story. I got Just enough to be sure before my informant sobered up and clammed up. Dr. Ward Smith delivered his wife of child by Caesarian section - and she died on the table. He seems to have worn his horns complacently until then. But what he did next shows that he knew the score; with the same scalpel he cut Captain Brant's throat - then cut his own. Sorry, hon."

  Jill shivered. "I'm a nurse. I'm immune to such things."

  "You're a liar and I love you for it. I was on police beat for three years, Jill; I never got hardened to it."

  "What happened to the others?"

  "I wish I knew. If we don't break the bureaucrats and high brass loose from that log, we'll never know - and I am enough of a starry-eyed newsboy to think we should know. Secrecy begets tyranny."

  "Ben, he might be better off if they gypped him out of his inheritance. He's very� uh, unworldly."

  "The exact word, I'm sure. Nor does he need all that money; the Man from Mars will never miss a meal. Any of the governments and any of a thousand-odd universities and scientific institutions would be delighted to have him as a permanent, privileged guest."

  "He'd better sign it over and forget it."

  "It's not that easy. Jill, you know about the famous case of General Atomics versus Larkin, et al?"

  "Uh, not really. You mean the Larkin Decision. I had to study it in school, same as everybody. But what's it got to do with Smith?"

  "Think back. The Russians sent the first rocket to the Moon, it crashed. The United States and Canada combine to send another one; it gets back but leaves nobody on the Moon. So when the United States and the Commonwealth are getting set to send a colonizing one jointly under the nominal sponsorship of the Federation and Russia is mounting the same deal on their own, General Atomics steals a march by sending one of their own from an island leased from Ecuador - and their men are still there, sitting pretty and looking smug when the Federation vessel shows up� followed by the Russian one.

  "You know what happened. General Atomics, a Swiss corporation American controlled, claimed the Moon. The Federation couldn't just brush them off; that would have been too raw and anyhow the Russians wouldn't have held still. So the High Court ruled that a corporate person, a mere legal fiction, could not own a planet; therefore the real owners were the flesh-and-blood men who had maintained the occupation - Larkin and associates. So they recognized them as a sovereign nation and took them into the Federation - with some melon slicing for those on the inside and fat concessions to General Atomics and its daughter corporation, Lunar Enterprises. This did not entirely suit anybody and the Federation High Court was not all powerful in those days - but it was a compromise everybody could swallow. It resulted in some tight rules for colonizing planets, all based on the Larkin Decision and intended to avoid bloodshed. Worked, too - it's a matter of history that World War Three did not result from conflict over space travel and such. So now the Larkin Decision is solidly a part of our planetary law and applies to Smith."

  Jill shook her head. "I don't see the connection. Martinis-"

  "Think, Jill. By our laws, Smith is a sovereign nation in himself - and sole owner of the planet Mars."

  V

  JILL LOOKED ROUND-EYED. "I've certainly had too many martinis Ben. I would swear that you said that that patient owns the planet Mars."

  "He does. He maintained occupation of it, unassisted, for the required length of time. Smith is the planet Mars - King, President, sole civic body, what you will. If the skipper of the Champion had not left colonists behind, Smith's tenure might have failed. But he did, and that continues occupation even though Smith came to Earth. But Smith doesn't have to split with them; they are mere immigrants until he grants them Martian citizenship."

  "Fantastic!"

  "It surely is. Also it's legal. Honey, do you now see why so many people are interested in who Smith is and where he came from? And why the administration is so damned anxious to keep him under a rug? What they are doing isn't even vaguely legal. Smith is also a citizen of the United States and of the Federation, by derivation - dual citizenship with no conflict. It's illegal to hold a citizen, even a convicted criminal, incommunicado anywhere in the Federation; that's one of the things we settled in World War Three. But I doubt if Smith knows his rights. Also, it has been considered an unfriendly act all through history to lock up a visiting friendly monarch - which is what he is - and not to let him see people, especially the press, meaning me. You still won't sneak me in as a thumbfingered electrician?"

  "Huh? You've got me worse scared than ever. Ben, if they had caught me this morning, what do you think they would have done to me?"

  "Mmm� nothing rough. Just locked you in a padded cell, with a certificate signed by three doctors, and allowed you mail on alternate leap years. They aren't mad at you. I'm wondering what they are going to do to him."

  "What can they do?"

  "Well, he might just happen to die - from gee-fatigue, say. That would be a fine out for the administration."

  "You mean murder him?"

  "Tut, tut! Don't use nasty words. I don't think they will. In the first place he is a mine of information; even the public has some dim notion of that. He might be worth more than Newton and Edison and Einstein and six more like them all rolled into one. Or he may not be. I don't think they would dare touch him until they were sure. In the second place, at the very least, he is a bridge, an ambassador, a unique interpreter, between the human race and the only other civilized race we have as yet encountered. That is certainly important but there is no way to guess just how important. How are you on the classics? Ever read H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds?"

  "A long time ago, in school."

  "Consider the idea that the Martians might decide to make war on us - and win. They might, you know, and we have no way of guessing how big a club they can swing. Our boy Smith might be the go-between, the peacemaker, who could make the First Interplanetary War unnecessary. Even if this possibility is remot
e, the administration can't afford to ignore it until they know. The discovery of intelligent life on Mars is something that, politically, they haven't figured out yet."

  "Then you think he is safe?"

  "Probably, for the time being. The Secretary General has to guess and guess right. As you know, his administration is shaky."

  "I don't pay any attention to politics."

  "You should. It's only barely less important than your own heartbeat."

  "I don't pay any attention to that, either."

  "Don't talk when I'm orating. The majority headed by the United States could slip apart overnight - Pakistan would bolt at a nervous cough. In which case there would be a vote of no confidence, a general election, and Mr. Secretary General Douglas would be out and back to being a cheap lawyer again. The Man from Mars can make or break him. Are you going to sneak me in?"

  "I am not. I'm going to enter a nunnery. Is there more coffee?"

  "I'll see."

  They both stood up. Jill stretched and said, "Oh, my ancient bones! And, Lordy, look at the time! Never mind the coffee, Ben; I've got a hard day tomorrow, being polite to nasty patients and standing clear of internes. Run me home, will you? Or send me home, I guess that's safer. Call a cab, that's a lamb."

  "Okay, though the evening is young." He went into his bedroom, came out carrying an object about the size and shape of a small cigarette lighter. "Sure you won't sneak me in?"

  "Gee, Ben, I want to, but-"

  "Never mind. I wouldn't let you. It really is dangerous - and not just to your career. I was just softening you up for this." He showed her the little object. "Will you put a bug on him?"

  "Huh? What is it?"

  "The greatest boon to divorce lawyers and spies since the Mickey Finn. A microminiaturized wire recorder. The wire is spring driven so that it can't be spotted by a snooper circuit. The insides are transistors and resistors and capacitors and stuff, all packed in plastic - you could drop it out of a cab and not hurt it. The power is about as much radioactivity as you would find in a watch dial, but shielded, The wire is good for twenty-four hours. Then you slide out a spool and stick in another one - the spring is part of the spool, already wound."