age, his tastes being what they were.
But just the same, damn it - 'Don't anybody mention ice skating because Grandmaw is too old and frail for ice skating and it wouldn't be polite. Hulda, you suggest that we play checkers and we'll all chime in - Grandmaw likes checkers. And we'll go ice skating some other time. Okay, kids?'
Jubal resented the respectful consideration, if that was what it was - he would almost have preferred to have gone ice skating anyhow, even at the cost of a broken hip.
But he decided to forget the matter, put it entirely out of mind, which he did with the help of the man on his right, who was as talkative as the girl on his left was not. His name, Jubal learned, was Sam, and presently he learned that Sam was a man of broad and deep scholarship, a trait Jubal valued in anyone when it was not mere parrot learning - and he grokked that in Sam it was not.
'This setback is only apparent,' Sam assured him. 'The egg was ready to hatch and now we'll spread out. Of course we've had trouble; we'll go on having trouble - because no society, no matter how liberal its law may appear to be, will allow its basic concepts to be challenged with impunity. Which is exactly what we are doing. We are challenging everything from the sanctity of property to the sanctity of marriage.'
'Property, too?'
'Property the way it rules today. So far Michael has merely antagonized a few crooked gamblers. But what happens when there are thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and more, of people who can't be stopped by bank vaults and who have only their self-discipline to restrain them from taking anything they want? To be sure, that discipline is stronger than any possible legal restraint - but no banker can grok that until he himself travels the thorny road to achieve that discipline? and he'll wind up no longer a banker. What happens to the stock market when the illuminati know which way a stock will move - and the brokers don't?'
'Do you know?'
Sam shook his head. 'Not interested. But Saul over there - that other big Hebe; he's my cousin - gives it grokking, along with Allie. Michael has them be very cautious about it, no big killings, and they use a dozen-odd dummy accounts - but the fact remains that any of the disciplined can make any amount of money at anything - real estate, stocks, horse races, gambling, you name it - when competing with the half awake. No, I don't think that money and property will disappear - Michael says that both concepts are useful - but I do say that they're going to be turned upside down and inside out to the point where people will have to learn new rules (and that means learn the hard way, just as we have) or be hopelessly outclassed. What happens to Lunar Enterprises when the common carrier between here and Luna City is teleportation?'
'Should I buy? Or sell?'
'Ask Saul. He might use the present corporation, or he might bankrupt it. Or it might be left untouched for a century or two. But besides bankers and brokers, consider any other occupation. How can a school teacher teach a child who knows more than she does and won't hold still for mistaken teaching? What becomes of physicians and dentists when people are truly healthy? What happens to the cloak amp; suit industry and to the I.L.G.W.U. when clothing isn't really needed at all and women aren't so endlessly interested in dressing up (they'll never lose interest entirely) - and nobody gives a damn if he's caught with his arse bare? What shape does 'the Farm Problem' take when weeds can be told not to grow and crops can be harvested without benefit of International Harvester or John Deere? Just name it; it changes beyond recognition when the discipline is applied. Take just one change that will shake both the sanctity of marriage - in its present form - and the sanctity of property. Jubal, do you have any idea how much is spent each year in this country on Malthusian drugs and devices?'
'I have a fairly exact idea, Sam. Almost a billion dollars on oral contraceptives alone this last fiscal year? more than half of which was for patent nostrums about as useful as corn starch.'
'Oh, yes, you're a medical man.'
'Only in passing. A pack rat mind.'
'Either way. What happens to that big industry - and to the shrill threats of moralists - when a female can conceive only when she elects to as an act of volition, when also she is immune to disease, cares only for the approval of her own sort? and has her orientation so changed that she desires intercourse with a whole- heartedness that Cleopatra never dreamed of - but any male who tried to rape her would die so quickly, if she so grokked, that he wouldn't know what hit him? When women are free of guilt and fear - but invulnerable other than by decision of self? Hell, the pharmaceutical industry will be just a passing casualty - what other industries, laws, institutions, attitudes, prejudices, and nonsense must give way?'
'I don't grok its fullness,' admitted Jubal. 'It concerns a subject that has been of little direct interest to me in quite a while.'
'One institution won't be damaged by it. Marriage.'
'So?'
'Very much so. Instead it will be purged, strengthened, and made endurable. Endurable? Ecstatic! See that wench down there with the long black hair?'
'Yes. I was delighting in its beauty earlier.'
'She knows it's beautiful and it's grown a foot and a half longer since we joined the church. That's my wife. Not much over a year ago we lived together about like bad-tempered dogs. She was jealous? and I was inattentive. Bored. Hell, we were both bored and only our kids kept us together - that and her possessiveness; I knew she would never let me go without a fight and a scandal? and I didn't have any stomach for trying to put together a new marriage at my age, anyhow. So I got a little on the side, when I could get away with it - a college professor has many temptations, few safe opportunities - and Ruth was quietly bitter. Or sometimes not so quiet. And then we joined up.' Sam grinned happily. 'And I fell in love with my own wife. Number-one gal friend.'
Sam's words had been very quiet, an intimate conversation walled by noise of eating and cheerful company. His wife was far down the table. She looked up and said clearly, 'That's an exaggeration, Jubal. I think I'm about number six.'
Her husband called out, 'Stay out of my mind, beautiful! - we're talking men talk. Give Larry your undivided attention.' He picked up a hard roll, threw it at her.
She stopped it in mid-trajectory, threw it back at him while continuing to talk; Sam caught it and buttered it. 'I'm giving Larry all the attention he wants? until later, maybe. Jubal, that brute didn't let me finish. Number-six place is wonderful! Because my name wasn't even on the list till we joined the church. I hadn't rated as high as six with Sam in the past twenty years.' She did then turn her attention back to Larry.
'The real point,' Sam said quietly, 'is that we two are now partners, much more than we ever were even at the best period in our outside marriage - and we got that way through the training, culminating in sharing and growing closer with others who had the same training. We all wind up in twosome partnerships inside the larger group - usually, but not necessarily, with our own spouses-of-record. Sometimes not? and if not, the readjustment takes place with no heartache and a warmer, closer, better relationship between the soidisant 'divorced' couple than ever, both in bed and out. No loss and all gain. Shucks, this pairing as partners needn't even be between man and woman. Dawn and Jill for example - they work together like an acrobatic team.'
'Hmm? I suppose,' Jubal said thoughtfully, 'that I had thought of those two as being Mike's wives.'
'No more so than they are to any of us. Or than Mike is to all the rest. Mike is too busy, has been, I should say, until the Temple burned - to do more than make sure that he shared himself all the way around.' Sam added, 'If anybody is Mike's wife, it's Patty, although she keeps so busy herself that the relation is more spiritual than physical. Actually, you could say that both Mike and Patty are short-changed when it comes to mauling the mattress.'
Patty was not quite as far away as Ruth, but far enough. She looked up and said, 'Sam dear, I don't feel short- changed.'
'Huh?' Sam then announced, loudly and bitterly, 'The only thing wrong with this church is that a man has absolutely no privacy!'
This brought a barrage of food in his direction, all from distaff members. He handled it all and tossed it back without lifting a hand? until the complexity of it apparently got to be too much and a plateful of spaghetti caught him full in the face-thrown, Jubal noticed, by Dorcas.
For a moment Sam looked like a particularly ghastly crash victim. Then suddenly his face was clean and even the sauce that had spattered on Jubal's shirt was gone. 'Don't give her any more, Tony. She wasted it; let her go hungry.'
'Plenty more in the kitchen,' Tony answered. 'Sam, you look good in spaghetti. Pretty good sauce, huh?'
