Jill had to point it out to him and tell him that it was water, and Dorcas added that it was the Atlantic Ocean and traced the shore line on the map. Mike was not ignorant: he had known since he was a nestling that the planet next nearer the Sun was almost covered with the water of life and lately he had learned that these people accepted this lavish richness casually. He had even taken, unassisted, the much more difficult hurdle of grokking at last the Martian orthodoxy that the water ceremony did not require water, that water was merely symbol for the essence beautiful but not indispensable.
But, like many a human still virgin toward some major human experience, Mike discovered that knowing a fact in the abstract was not at all the same thing as experiencing its physical reality; the sight of the Atlantic Ocean filled him with such awe that Jill squeezed him and said sharply, 'Stop it, Mike! Don't you dare!'
Mike chopped off his emotion and stored it away for later use. Then he stared at the ocean, stretching out to an unimaginably distant horizon, and tried to measure its size in his mind until his head was buzzing with threes and powers of threes and superpowers of powers.
As they landed Jubal called out, 'Now remember, girls, form a square around him and don't be at all backward about planting a heel in an instep or jabbing an elbow into some oaf's solar plexus. Anne, I realize you'll be wearing your cloak but that's no reason not to step on a foot if you're crowded. Or is it?'
'Quit fretting, Boss; nobody crowds a Witness - but I'm wearing spike heels and I weigh more than you do.'
'Okay. Duke, you know what to do - but get Larry back here with the bus as soon as possible. I don't know when I'll need it.'
'I grok it, Boss. Quit jittering.'
'I'll jitter as I please. Let's go.' Harshaw, the four girls with Mike, and Caxton got out; the bus took off at once. To Harshaw's mixed relief and apprehension the landing flat was not crowded with newsmen.
But it was far from empty. A man picked him out at once, stepped briskly forward and said heartily, 'Dr. Harshaw? I'm Tom Bradley, senior executive assistant to the Secretary General. You are to go directly to Mr. Douglas' private office. He will see you for a few moments before the conference starts.'
'No.'
Bradley blinked. 'I don't think you understood me. These are instructions from the Secretary General. Oh, he said that it was all right for Mr. Smith to come with you - the Man from Mars, I mean-'
'No. This party stays together, even to go to the washroom. Right now we're going to that conference room. Have somebody lead the way. And have all these people stand back; they're crowding us. In the meantime, I have an errand for you. Miriam, that letter.'
'But, Dr. Harshaw-'
'I said, 'No!' Can't you understand plain English? But you are to deliver this letter to Mr. Douglas at once and to him personally, and fetch back his receipt to me.' Harshaw paused to write his signature across the flap of the envelope Miriam had handed to him, pressed his thumb print over the signature, and handed it to Bradley. 'Tell him that it is most urgent that he read this at once - before the meeting.'
'But the Secretary General specifically desires-'
'The Secretary desires to see that letter. Young man, I am endowed with second sight? and I predict that you won't be working here later today if you waste any time getting it to him.'
Bradley locked eyes with Jubal, then said, 'Jim, take over,' and left, with the letter. Jubal sighed inwardly. He had sweated over that letter; Anne and he had been up most of the night preparing draft after draft. Jubal had every intention of arriving at an open settlement, in full view of the world's news cameras and microphones - but he had no intention of letting Douglas be taken by surprise by any proposal.
Another man stepped forward in answer to Bradley's order; Jubal sized him up as a prime specimen of the clever, conscienceless young-men-on-the-way-up who gravitate to those in power and do their dirty work; he disliked him on sight. The man smiled heartily and said smoothly, 'The name's Jim Sanforth, Doctor - I'm the Chief's press secretary. I'll be buffering for you from now on - arranging your press interviews and so forth. I'm sorry to say that the conference room is not quite ready; there have been last minute changes and we've had to move to a larger room. Now it's my thought that-'
'It's my thought that we'll go to that conference room right now. We'll stand up until chairs are fetched for us.'
'Doctor, I'm sure you don't understand the situation. They are still stringing wires and things, and that room is swarming with reporters and commentators.'
'Very well. We'll chat with 'em till you're ready.'
'No, Doctor. I have instructions'
'Youngster, you can take your instructions, fold them until they are all corners and shove them in your oubliette. We are not at your beck and call. You will not arrange press interviews for us. We are here for just one purpose: a public conference. If the conference is not ready to meet, we'll see the press now - in the conference room.'
'But-'
'And that's not all. You're keeping the Man from Mars standing on a windy roof' Harshaw raised his voice. 'Is there anyone here smart enough to lead us straight to this conference room without getting lost?'
Sanforth swallowed and said, 'Follow me, Doctor.'
The conference room was indeed crowded with newsmen and technicians but there was a big oval table, plenty of chairs, and several smaller tables. Mike was spotted at once and Sanforth's protests did not keep them from crowding in on him. But Mike's flying wedge of amateur Amazons got him as far as the big table; Jubal sat him against it with Dorcas and Jill in chairs flanking him and the Fair Witness and Miriam seated behind him. Once this was done, Jubal made no attempt to fend oft questions or pictures. Mike had been warned that he would meet lots of people and that many of them would do strange things and Jubal had most particularly warned him to take no sudden actions (such as causing persons or things to go away, or to stop) unless Jill told him to.
Mike took the confusion gravely, without apparent upset; Jill was holding his hand and her touch reassured him.
Jubal wanted news pictures taken, the more the better; as for questions put directly to Mike, Jubal did not fear them and made no attempt to field them. A week of trying to talk with Mike had convinced him that no reporter could possibly get anything of importance out of Mike in only a few minutes - without expert help. Mike's habit of answering a question as asked, answering it literally and stopping, would be enough to nullify most attempts to pump him.
And so it proved. Most questions Mike answered with a polite: 'I do not know,' or an even less committal; 'Beg pardon?'
But one question backfired on the questioner. A Reuters correspondent, anticipating a monumental fight over Mike's status as an heir, tried to sneak in his own test of Mike's competence: 'Mr. Smith? What do you know about the laws of inheritance here?'
Mike was aware that he was having trouble grokking in fullness the human concept of property and, in particular, the ideas of bequest and inheritance. So he most carefully avoided inserting his own ideas and stuck to the book - a book which Jubal recognized shortly as Ely on Inheritance and Bequest, chapter one.
Mike related what he had read, with precision and careful lack of expression, like a boring but exact law professor, for page after tedious page, while the room gradually settled into stunned silence and his interrogator gulped.
Jubal let it go on until every newsman there knew more than he wanted to know about dower and curtesy, consanguinean and uterine, per stirpes and per capita, and related mysteries. At last Jubal touched his shoulder, 'That's enough, Mike.'
Mike looked puzzled. 'There is much more.'
'Yes, but later. Does someone have a question on some other subject?'
A reporter for a London Sunday paper of enormous circulation jumped in with a question closer to his employer's pocketbook: 'Mr. Smith, we understand you like the girls here on Earth. But have you ever kissed a girl?'
'Yes.'
'Did you like it?'
'Yes.'
'How did you like it?'
