'What was that name?' Jubal interrupted.
'Dawn Ardent-ne 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 copy 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, well-tailored, 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 lovely! 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 thing we whipped up among us the other night for our entertainment and then agreed to forget the gag. He put it in a much more sugar-coated fashion, being extremely careful not to tread on competitors' toes.'
Jubal nodded and looked sour. 'Solipsism and Pantheism. Teamed together they can explain anything. Cancel out any inconvenient fact, reconcile all theories, and include any facts or delusions you care to name. Trouble is, it's just cotton candy, all taste and no substance - and as unsatisfactory as solving a story by saying: '-and then the little boy fell out of bed and woke up; it was just a dream.''
'Don't crab at me about it; take it up with Mike. But believe me, he made it sound convincing. Once he stopped and said, 'You must be tired of so much talk-' and they yelled back, 'No!'-I tell you, he really had them. But he protested that his voice was tired and, anyhow, a church ought to have miracles and this was a church, even though it didn't have a mortgage. 'Dawn, fetch me my miracle box.' Then he did some really amazing sleight-of- hand. Did you know he had been a magician with a carnival?'
'I knew he had been with it. He never told me the exact nature of his shame.'
'He's a crackerjack magician; he did stunts for them that had me fooled. But it wouldn't have mattered if it had been only the card tricks kids learn; it was his patter that had them rolling in the aisles. Finally he stopped and said apologetically. 'The Man from Mars is supposed to be able to do wonderful things? so I have to pass a few miracles each meeting. I can't help being the Man from Mars; it's just something that happened to me. But miracles can happen for you, too, if you want them. However, to be allowed to see anything more than these narrow-gauge miracles, you must enter the Circle. Those of you who truly want to learn I will see later. Cards are being passed around,'
'Patty explained to me what Mike was really doing. 'This crowd is just marks, dear - people who come out of curiosity or maybe have been shined in by some of our own people who have reached one of the inner circles.' Jubal, Mike has the thing rigged in nine circles, like degrees in a lodge - and nobody is told that there actually is a circle farther in until they're ready to be inducted into it. 'This is just Michael's bally,' Pat told me, 'which he does as easy as he breathes - while all the time he's feeling them out, sizing them up, getting inside their heads and deciding which ones are even possible. Maybe one in ten. That's why he strings it out - Duke is up behind that grille and Michael tells him every mark who just might measure up, where he sits and everything. Michael's about to turn this tip? and spill the ones he doesn't want. Dawn will handle that part, after she gets the seating diagram from Duke.''
'How did they work that?' asked Harshaw.
'I didn't see it, Jubal. Does it matter? There are a dozen ways they could cut from the herd the ones they wanted as long as Mike knew which they were and had worked out some way to signal Duke. I don't know. Patty says he's clairvoyant and says it with a straight face - and, do you know, I won't discount the possibility. But right after that, they took the collection. Mike didn't do even this in church style - you know, soft music and dignified ushers. He said nobody would believe that this was a church service if be didn't take a collection? so he would, but with a difference. Either take it or put it - suit yourself. Then, so help me, they passed collection baskets already loaded with money. Mike kept telling them that this was what the last crowd had left, so help themselves? if they were broke or hungry and needed it. But if they felt like giving? give. Share with others. Just do one or the other - put something in, or take something out. When I saw it, I figured he had found one more way to get rid of too much money.'
Jubal said thoughtfully, 'I'm not sure he would lose by it. That pitch, properly given, should result in more people giving more? while a few take just a little. And probably very few. I would say that it would be hard indeed to reach in and take out money when the people on each side of you are putting money in? unless you need it awfully badly.'
'I don't know, Jubal? but I understand that they are just as casual about those collections as they are about that stack of dough upstairs. But Patty whisked me away when Mike turned the service over to his high priestess. I was taken to a much smaller auditorium where services were just opening for the seventh circle in - people who had belonged for several months at least and had made progress. If it is progress.
'Jubal, Mike had gone straight from one to the other, and I couldn't adjust to the change. That outer meeting was half popular lecture and half sheer entertainment - this one was more nearly a voodoo rite. Mike was in robes this time; he looked taller, ascetic, and intense-! swear his eyes gleamed. The place was dimly lighted, there was music that was creepy and yet made you want to dance. This time Patty and I took a double seat together, a couch that was darn near a bed. What the service was all about I couldn't say. Mike would sing out to them in Martian, they would answer in Martian - except for chants of 'Thou art God! Thou art God!' which was always echoed by some Martian word that would make my throat sore to try to pronounce it.'
Jubal made a croaking noise. 'Was that it?'
'Huh? I believe it was - allowing for your horrible tall-corn accent. Jubal? are you hooked? Have you just been stringing me along?'
'No. Stinky taught it to me - and he says that it's heresy of the blackest sort. By his lights I mean - I couldn't care less. It's the Martian word Mike translates as: 'Thou art God.' But our brother Mahmoud says that isn't even close to being a translation. It's the universe proclaiming its own self-awareness? or it's 'peccavimus' with a total absence of contrition or a dozen other things, all of which don't translate it. Stinky says that not only it can't be translated but that he doesn't really understand it in Martian - except that it is a bad word, the worst possible in his opinion and much closer to Satan's defiance than it is to the blessing of a benevolent God. Go on. Was that all there was to it? Just a bunch of fanatics yelling Martian at each other?'
'Uh? Jubal, they didn't yell and it wasn't fanatical. Sometimes they would barely whisper, the room almost
