there, for you saw at once that their customs and manners were not yours. Instead you stayed, and enjoyed the favors of one goddess - and behaved yourself as a god toward her - in short, you learned the score, and they knew it. It seems to me that Mike's error lay only in accepting your hypocrisy as solid coin. But he does have the weakness - a godlike one - of never doubting his 'water brothers' - but even Jove nods - and his weakness - or is it a strength? - comes from his early training; he can't help it. No, Ben, Mike behaved with complete propriety; the offense against good manners lay in your behavior.'
'Damn it, Jubal, you've twisted things again. I did what I had to do - I was about to throw up on their rug!'
'So you claim reflex. So stipulated; however, anyone over the emotional age of twelve could have clamped his jaws and made a slow march for the bathroom with at worst the hazard of clogged sinuses - instead of a panicked dash for the street door - then returned when the show was over with a euphemistic but acceptable excuse.'
'That wouldn't have been enough. I tell you I had to leave!'
'I know. But not through reflex. Reflex will evacuate the stomach; it will not choose a course for the feet, recover chattels, take you through doors and cause you to jump down a hole without looking. Panic, Ben. Why did you panic?'
Caxton was long in replying. He sighed and said, 'I guess when you come right down to it, Jubal - I'm a prude.'
Jubal shook his head. 'Your behavior was momentarily prudish, but not from prudish motivations. You are not a prude, Ben. A prude is a person who thinks that his own rules of propriety are natural laws. You are almost entirely free of this prevalent evil. You adjusted, at least with passable urbanity, to many things which did not fit your code of propriety whereas a true-blue, stiff-necked, incorrigible prude would promptly have affronted that delightful tattooed lady and stomped out. Dig deeper? Do you wish a hint?'
'Uh, maybe you'd better. All I know is that I am mixed up and unhappy about the whole Situation - on Mike's account, too, Jubal! - which is why I took a day off to see you.'
'Very well. Hypothetical situation for you to evaluate: You mentioned a lady named Ruth whom you met in passing - a kiss of brotherhood and a few minutes conversation - nothing more.'
'Yeah?'
'Suppose the actors had been Ruth and Mike? Gillian not even present? Would you have been shocked?'
'Huh? Hell, yes, I would have been shocked!'
'Just how shocked? Retching? Panic flight?'
Caxton looked thoughtful, then sheepish. 'I suppose not. I still would have been startled silly. But I guess I would've just gone out to the kitchen or something? then found an excuse to leave. I still feel like a fool for having made that mad dash to get out.'
'Would you actually have sought an excuse to leave? Or were you looking forward to your own 'welcome home' party that night?'
'Well,' Caxton mused. 'I hadn't made up my mind about that when this happened. I was curious, I admit - but I wasn't quite sold.'
'Very well. You now have your motivation.'
'Do I?'
'You name it, Ben. Haul it out and look at it - and find out how you want to deal with it.'
Caxton chewed his lip and looked unhappy. 'All right. I would have been startled if it had been Ruth - but I wouldn't really have been shocked. Hell, in the newspaper racket you get over being shocked by anything but - well, you expressed it: something that cuts deep about right and wrong. Shucks, if it had been Ruth, I might even have sneaked a look - even though I still think I would have left the room; such things ought to be - or at least I feel that they ought to be - private.' He paused. 'It was because it was Jill. I was hurt? and jealous.'
'Stout fellow, Ben.'
'Jubal, I would have sworn that I wasn't jealous. I knew that I had lost out - I had accepted it. It was the circumstances, Jubal. Now don't get me wrong. I would still love Jill if she were a two-peso whore. Which she is not. This hands-around harem deal upsets the hell out of me. But by her lights Jill is moral.'
Jubal nodded. 'I know. I feel sure that Gillian is incapable of being corrupted. She has an invincible innocence which makes it impossible for her to be immoral.' lie frowned. 'Ben we are close to the root of your trouble. I am afraid that you - and I, too, I admit - lack the angelic innocence to abide by the perfect morality those people live by.'
Ben looked surprised. 'Jubal, you think what they are doing is moral? Monkeys in the zoo stuff and all? All I meant was that Jill really didn't know that what she was doing was wrong - Mike's got her hornswoggled - and Mike doesn't know he's doing wrong either. He's the Man front Mars; he didn't get off to a fair start. Everything about us was strange to him - he'll probably never get straightened out.'
Jubal looked troubled. 'You've raised a hard question, Ben - but I'll give you a straight answer. Yes, I think what those people - the entire Nest, not just our own kids - are doing is moral. As you described it to me yes. I haven't had a chance to examine details - but yes: all of it. Group orgies, and open and unashamed swapping off at other times? their communal living and their anarchistic code, everything. And most especially their selfless dedication to giving their perfect morality to others.'
'Jubal, you utterly astonish me.' Caxton scratched his head and frowned. 'Since you feel that way, why don't you join them? You're welcome, they want you, they're expecting you. They'll hold a jubilee - and Dawn is waiting to kiss your feet and serve you in any way you will permit; I wasn't exaggerating.'
Jubal shook his head. 'No. Had I been approached fifty years ago - But now? Ben my brother, the potential for such innocence is no longer in me - and I am not referring to sexual potency, so wipe that cynical smile off your face. I mean that I have been too long wedded to my own brand of evil and hopelessness to be cleansed in their water of life and become innocent again. If I ever was.'
'Mike thinks you have this innocence - he doesn't call it that - in full measure now. Dawn told me, speaking ex officio.'
'Then Mike does me great honor; I would not disillusion him. He sees his own reflection - I am, by profession a mirror.'
'Jubal, you're chicken.'
'Precisely, sir! The thing that troubles me most is whether those innocents can make their pattern fit into a naughty world. Oh, it's been tried before! - and every time the world etched them away like acid. Some of the early Christians - anarchy, communism, group marriage - why even that kiss of brotherhood has a strong primitive- Christian flavor to it. That might be where Mike picked it up, since all the forms he uses are openly syncretistic, especially that Earth-Mother ritual.' Jubal frowned. 'If he picked that up from primitive christianity - and not just from kissing girls, which he enjoys, I now - then I would expect men to kiss men, too.'
Ben snorted. 'I held out on you - they do. But it's not a pansy gesture. I got caught once; after that I managed to duck.'
'So? It figures. The Oneida Colony was much like Mike's 'Nest'; it managed to last quite a while but in a low population density - not as an enclave in a resort city. There have been many others, all with the same sad story: a plan for perfect sharing and perfect love, glorious hopes and high idea - followed by persecution and eventual failure.' Jubal sighed. 'I was worried about Mike before - now I'm worried about all of them.'
'You're worried? How do you think I feel? Jubal, I can't accept your sweetness and light theory. What they are doing is wrong.'
'So? Ben, it's that last incident that sticks in your craw.'
'Well? maybe. Not entirely.'
'Mostly. Ben. the ethics of sex is a thorny problem because each of us has to find a solution pragmatically compatible with a preposterous, utterly unworkable, and evil public code of so-called 'morals.' Most of us know, or suspect, that the public code is wrong, and we break it. Nevertheless we pay Danegeld by giving it lip service in public and feeling guilty about breaking it in private. Willy-nilly, that code rides us, dead and stinking, an albatross around the neck. You think of yourself as a free soul, I know, and you break that evil code yourself - but faced with a problem in sexual ethics new to you, you unconsciously tested it against that same Judeo-Christian code which you consciously refuse to obey. All so automatically that you retched? and believed thereby - and continue to believe - that your reflex proved that you were 'right' and they were 'wrong.' Faugh! I'd as like use trial by ordeal as use your stomach to test guilt. All your stomach can reflect are prejudices trained into you before you acquired
