it possibly a new sort of art? Could more such pieces be produced by surprise discorporation of artists while they were working? The Old Ones had been discussing the exciting possibilities in ruminative rapport for centuries and all corporate Martians were eagerly awaiting their verdict.
The question was of greater interest because it had not been abstract art, but religious (in the Terran sense) and strongly emotional - it described the contact between the Martian Race and the people of the fifth planet, an event that had happened long ago but which was alive and important to Martians in the sense in which one death by crucifixion remained alive and important to humans after two Terran millennia. The Martian Race had encountered the people of the fifth planet, grokked them completely, and in due course had taken action; the asteroid ruins were all that remained, save that the Martians continued to cherish and praise the people they had destroyed. This new work of art was one of many attempts to grok all parts of the whole beautiful experience in all its complexity in one opus. But before it could be judged it was necessary to grok how to judge it.
It was a very pretty problem.
On the third planet Valentine Michael Smith was not concerned with the burning issue on Mars; he had never heard of it. His Martian keeper and his keeper's water brothers had not mocked him with things he could not grasp. Smith knew of the destruction of the fifth planet and its emotional importance - just as any human school boy learns of Troy and Plymouth Rock, but he had not been exposed to art that he could not grok. His education had been unique, enormously greater than that of his nestlings, enormously less than that of an adult; his keeper and his keeper's advisers among the Old Ones had taken a large passing interest in seeing just how much and of what sort this nestling alien could learn. The results had taught them more about the potentialities of the human race than that race had yet learned about itself, for Smith had grokked very readily things that no other human being had ever learned.
But just at present Smith was simply enjoying himself with a lightheartedness he had not experienced in many years. He had won a new water brother in Jubal, he had acquired many new friends, he was enjoying delightful new experiences in such kaleidoscopic quantity that he had no time to grok them; he could only file them away to be relived at leisure.
His brother Jubal had assured him that be would grok this strange and beautiful place more quickly if he would learn to read, so he had taken a full day off to learn to read really well and quickly, with Jill pointing to words and pronouncing them for him. It had meant staying out of the swimming pool all that day, which had been a great sacrifice, as swimming (once he got it through his head that it was actually permitted) was not merely an exuberant, sensuous delight but almost unbearable religious ecstasy. If Jill and Jubal had not told him to do otherwise, he would never have come out of the pool at all.
Since he was not permitted to swim at night he read all night long. He was zipping through the Encyclopedia Britannica and was sampling Jubal's medicine and law libraries as dessert. His brother Jubal had seen him leafing rapidly through one of the books, had stopped him and questioned him about what he had read. Smith had answered carefully, as it reminded him of the tests the Old Ones had occasionally given him. His brother had seemed a bit upset at his answers and Smith had found it necessary to go into an hour's contemplation on that account, for he had been quite sure that he had answered with the words written in the book even though he did not grok them all.
But he preferred the pool to the books, especially when Jill and Miriam and Larry and Anne and the rest were all splashing each other. He had not learned at once to swim as they did, but had discovered the first time that he could do something they could not. He had simply gone down to the bottom and lain there, immersed in quiet bliss - where upon they had hauled him out with such excitement that he had almost been forced to withdraw himself, had it not been evident that they were concerned for his welfare.
Later that day he had demonstrated the matter to Jubal, remaining on the bottom for a delicious time, and he had tried to teach it to his brother Jill? but she had become disturbed and he had desisted. It was his first clear realization that there were things that he could do that these new friends could not. He thought about it a long time, trying to grok its fullness.
Smith was happy; Harshaw was not. He continued his usual routine of aimless loafing, varied only by casual and unplanned observation of his laboratory animal, the Man from Mars. He arranged no schedule for Smith, no programme of study, no regular physical examinations, but simply allowed Smith to do as he pleased, run wild, like a puppy growing up on a ranch. What supervision Smith received came from Jill: more than enough, in Jubal's grumpy opinions as he took a dim view of males being reared by females.
However, Gillian Boardman did little more than coach Valentine Smith in the rudiments of human social behavior - and he needed very little coaching. He ate at the table with the others now, dressed himself (at least Jubal thought he did; he made a mental note to ask Jill if she still had to assist him); he conformed acceptably to the household's very informal customs and appeared able to cope with most new experiences on a 'monkey-see- monkey' basis. Smith started his first meal at the table using only a spoon and Jill had cut up his meat for him. By the end of the meal he was attempting to eat as the others ate. At the next meal his table manners were a precise imitation of Jill's, including superfluous mannerisms.
Even the twin discovery that Smith had taught himself to read with the speed of electronic scanning and appeared to have total recall of all that he read did not tempt Jubal Harshaw to make a 'project' of Smith, one with controls, measurements, and curves of progress. Harshaw had the arrogant humility of the man who has learned so much that he is aware of his own ignorance and he saw no point in 'measurements' when he did not know what he was measuring. Instead he limited himself to notes made privately, without even any intention of publishing his observations.
But, while Harshaw enjoyed watching this unique animal develop into a mimicry copy of a human being, his pleasure afforded him no happiness.
Like Secretary General Douglas, Harshaw was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Waiting with increasing tenseness. Having found himself coerced into action by the expectation of action against him on the part of the government, it annoyed and exasperated him that nothing as yet had happened. Damn it, were the Federation cops so stupid that they couldn't track an unsophisticated girl dragging an unconscious man all across the countryside? Or (as seemed more likely) had they been on her heels the whole way? - and even now were keeping a stake-out on his place? The latter thought was infuriating; to Harshaw the notion that the government might be spying on his home, his castle, with anything from binoculars to radar, was as repulsive as the idea of having his mail opened.
And they might be doing that too, he reminded himself morosely. Government! Three fourths parasitic and the other fourth stupid fumbling - oh, he conceded that man, a social animal, could not avoid having government, any more than an individual man could escape his lifelong bondage to his bowels. But Harshaw did not have to like it. Simply because an evil was inescapable was no reason to term it a 'good.' He wished that government would wander off and get lost?
But it was certainly possible, or even probable, that the administration knew exactly where the Man from Mars was hiding? and for reasons of their own preferred to leave it that way, while they prepared - what?
If so, how long would it go on? And how long could he keep his defensive 'time bomb' armed and ready?
And where the devil was that reckless young idiot Ben Caxton?
Jill Boardman forced him out of his spiritual thumb-twiddling. 'Jubal?'
'Eh? Oh, it's you, bright eyes. Sorry, I was preoccupied. Sit down. Have a drink?'
'Uh, no, thank you. Jubal, I'm worried.'
'Normal. Who isn't? That was a mighty pretty swan dive you did. Let's see another one just like it.'
Jill bit her lip and looked about twelve years old. 'Jubal? Please listen! I'm terribly worried.'
He sighed. 'In that case, dry yourself off. The breeze is getting chilly.'
'I'm warm enough. Uh, Jubal? Would it be all right if I left Mike here? Would you take care of him?'
Harshaw blinked. 'Of course he can stay here. You know that. The girls will look out for him - and I'll keep an eye on him from time to time. He's no trouble. I take it you're leaving?'
She didn't meet his eye. 'Yes.'
'Mmmm? you're welcome here. But you're welcome to leave, too, if that's what you want.'
'Huh? But, Jubal - I don't want to leave!'
'Then don't.'
'But I must!'
'Better play that back. I didn't scan it.'
