«I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner, Jubal. I didn't think anybody would believe me — and it makes me feel good that you do.»
«I didn't say I believed you.»
«What? But you — »
«I think you told the truth, Jill. But a dream is a true experience of a sort and so is a hypnotic delusion. But what happens in this room during the next hour will be seen by a Fair Witness and by cameras which are — » He pressed a button. « — rolling now. I don't think Anne can by hypnotized when she's on duty and I'll lay odds that cameras can't be. We will find out what kind of truth we're dealing with — after which we can consider how to force the powers-that-be to drop the other shoe … and maybe figure a way to help Ben, too. Go get Mike.»
Mike's delay was not mysterious. He had tied his left shoe-string to his right — had stood up, tripped himself, fallen flat, and jerked the knots almost hopelessly tight. He spent the rest of the time analyzing his predicament and slowly getting the snarl untied and the strings correctly tied. He was not aware that he had taken long but was troubled that he had failed to repeat correctly something which Jill had taught him. He confessed his failure even though he had it repaired when she came to fetch him.
She soothed him, combed his hair, herded him in. Harshaw looked up. «Hi, son. Sit down.»
«Hi, Jubal,» Valentine Michael Smith answered gravely, sat down — waited.
Harshaw said, «Well, boy, what have you learned today?»
Smith smiled happily, then answered — as always with a pause. «I have today learned to do a one-and-a- half gainer. That is a jumping, a dive, for entering our water by — »
«I know, I saw you. Keep your toes pointed, knees straight, and feet together.»
Smith looked unhappy. «I rightly did not it do?»
«You did it very rightly, for a first time. Watch Dorcas.»
Smith considered this. «The water groks Dorcas. It cherishes him.»
«“Her.” Dorcas is “her,” not “him.”»
«“Her,”» Smith corrected. «Then my speaking was false? I have read in Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, published in Springfield, Massachusetts, that the masculine gender includes the feminine gender in speaking. In Hagworth's Law of Contracts, Fifth Edition, Chicago, Illinois, 1978, on page 1012, it says — »
«Hold it,» Harshaw said hastily. «Masculine forms do include the feminine, when you are speaking in general — but not when talking about a particular person. Dorcas is always “she” or “her” — never “he” or “him.”»
«I will remember.»
«You had better — or you may provoke Dorcas into proving just how female she is.» Harshaw blinked thoughtfully. «Jill, is the lad sleeping with you? Or one of you?»
She hesitated, then answered flatly, «So far as I know, Mike doesn't sleep.»
«You evaded my question.»
«Then you can assume that I intended to. However, he is not sleeping with
«Mmm … damn it, my interest is scientific. Mike, what else have you learned?»
«I have learned two ways to tie my shoes. One way is only good for lying down. The other way is good for walking. And I have learned conjugations. I am, thou art[2], he is, we are, you are, they are, I was, thou wast — »
«Okay, that's enough. What else?»
Mike smiled delightedly. «To yesterday I am learning to drive the tractor, brightly, brightly, and with beauty.»
«Eh?» Jubal turned to Jill. «When was this?»
«Yesterday while you were napping, Jubal. It's all right — Duke was careful not to let him get hurt.»
«Umm … well, obviously he didn't. Mike, have you been reading?»
«Yes, Jubal.»
«What?»
«I have read,» Mike recited, «three more volumes of the Encyclopedia, Maryb to Mushe, Mushr to Ozon, P to Planti. You have told me not to read too much of the Encyclopedia at one reading, so I then stopped. I then read the
«And did you grok it?»
Smith looked troubled. «Jubal, I do not know.»
«Something bothering you?»
«I do not grok all fullness of what I read. In the history written by Master William Shakespeare I found myself full of happiness at the death of Romeo. Then I read on and learned that he had discorporated too soon — or so I thought I grokked. Why?»
«He was a blithering young idiot.»
«Beg pardon?»
«I don't know, Mike.»
Smith considered this. Then he muttered in Martian and added, «I am only an egg.»
«Eh? You say that when you want to ask a favor, Mike. What is it?»
Smith hesitated. Then he blurted, «Jubal my brother, would please you ask Romeo why he discorporated? I cannot ask him; I am only an egg. But you can — and then you could teach me the grokking of it.»
Jubal saw that Mike believed. that Romeo had been a living person and managed to grasp that Mike expected him to conjure up Romeo's ghost and demand explanations for his conduct in the flesh. But to explain that the Capulets and Montagues had never had corporated existence was another matter. The concept of fiction was beyond Mike's experience; there was nothing on which it could rest. Jubal's attempts to explain were so upsetting to Mike that Jill was afraid that he was about to roll up into a ball.
Mike saw how perilously close he was to that necessity and had learned that he must not resort to this refuge in the presence of friends, because (with the exception of his brother Doctor Nelson) it caused them emotional disturbance. So he made a mighty effort, slowed his heart, calmed his emotions, and smiled. «I will waiting till a grokking comes of itself.»
«Good,» agreed Jubal. «Hereafter, before you read anything, ask me or Jill, or somebody, whether or not it is fiction. I don't want you mixed up.»
«I will ask, Jubal.» Mike decided that, when he did grok this strange idea, he must report the fullness to the Old Ones … and found himself wondering if the Old Ones knew about «fiction.» The incredible idea that there might be something as strange to the Old Ones as it was to himself was so much more revolutionary than the weird concept of fiction that he put it aside to cool, saved it for meditation.
« — but I didn't,» his brother Jubal was saying, «call you in to discuss literary forms. Mike, remember the day that Jill took you away from the hospital?»
«“Hospital”?» Mike repeated.
«I'm not sure, Jubal,» Jill interrupted, «that Mike knew it was a hospital. Let me try.»
«Go ahead.»
«Mike, you remember where you were, where you lived alone in a room, before I dressed you and took you away.»
«Yes, Jill.»
«Then we went to another place and I undressed you and gave you a bath.»
Smith smiled in recollection. «Yes. It was great happiness.»
«Then I dried you off — and two men came.»
Smith's smile wiped away. He began to tremble and huddle into himself.
Jill said, «Mike! Stop it! Don't you dare go away!»
Mike took control of his being. «Yes, Jill.»
