suggested it to Mike in her mind. With no patter of any sort, with no sheet nor anything to conceal a non-existent steel rod, Mike lifted her. Patricia watched it with serene happiness, convinced that she was vouchsafed sight of a miracle. 'Pat,' Mike then said. 'Lie flat.'
She did so without argument, as readily as if he had been Foster. Jill turned her head. 'Hadn't you better put me down first, Mike?'
'No, I can do it.'
Mrs. Paiwonski felt herself gently lifted. She was not frightened by it; she simply felt overpowering religious ecstasy like heat lightning in her loins, making tears come to her eyes, the power of which she had not felt since, as a young woman, Holy Foster himself had touched her. When Mike moved them closer together and Jill put her arms around her, her tears increased, but her cries were the gentle sobs of happiness.
Presently he lowered them gently to the floor and found, as he expected, that he was not tired - he could not recall when last he had been tired.
Jill said to him, 'Mike? we need a glass of water.'
('????')
('Yes, ' her mind answered.)
('And?')
('Of elegant necessity. Why do you think she came here?')
('I knew. I was not sure that you knew? or would approve. My brother. My self')
('My brother.')
Mike did not get up to fetch water. He sent a glass from the tray of drinks into the bathroom, had the tap fill it, returned it to Jill's hands. Mrs. Paiwonski watched this with almost absent-minded interest; she was beyond being astonished. Jill held the glass, said to her, 'Aunt Patty, this is like being baptized? and like getting married. It's? a Martian thing. It means that you trust us and we trust you? and we can tell you anything and you can tell us anything? and that we are always partners, now and forever. It's very serious? and once done it can never be broken. If you broke it, we would have to die - at once. Saved or not. If we broke it - but we won't. But you don't have to share water with us if you don't want to - we'll still be friends. Now - if this in any way interferes with your faith, don't do it. We don't belong to your church even though you guessed that we did. We don't. We may never belong. 'Seekers' is the most you can call us now. Mike?'
'We grok,' he agreed. 'Pat, Jill speaks rightly. I wish we could say it to you in Martian, it would be clearer. But this is everything that getting married is? and a great deal more. We are free to offer water to you but if there is any reason at all, in your religion or in your heart, not to accept - don't drink it!'
Patricia Paiwonski took a deep breath. She had made such a decision once before - with her husband watching? and had not funked it. And who was she to refuse a holy man? And his blessed bride? 'I want it,' she said firmly.
Jill took a sip. 'We grow ever closer.' She passed the glass to Mike.
He looked at Jill, then at Patricia. 'I thank you for water, my brother.' He took a sip. 'Pat, I give you the water of life. May you always drink deep.' He passed the glass to her.
Patricia took it. 'Thank you. Thank you, oh my dears! The 'water of life' - oh, I love you both!' She drank thirstily.
Jill took the glass from her, finished it. 'Now we grow closer, my brothers.'
('Jill?')
('Now!!!')
Michael lifted his new water brother, wafted her in and placed her gently on the bed.
Valentine Michael Smith had grokked, when first he had known it fully, that physical human love - very human and very physical - was not simply a necessary quickening of eggs, nor was it mere ritual through which one grew closer; the act itself was a growing-closer, a very great goodness - and (so far as he knew) unknown even to the Old Ones of his former people. He was still grokking it, trying at every opportunity to grok its fullness. But he had long since broken through any fear that heresy lay in his suspicion that even the Old Ones did not know this ecstasy - he grokked already that these his new people held spiritual depths unique. Happily he tried to sound them, with no inhibitions from his childhood to cause him guilt or reluctance of any sort.
His human teachers had been unusually well qualified to instruct his innocence without bruising it. The result was as unique as he himself.
Jill was very pleased but not really surprised to find that 'Aunt Patty' accepted as inevitable and necessary, and with forthright fullness, the fact that sharing water in a very ancient Martian ceremony with Mike led at once to sharing Mike himself in a human rite ancient itself. Jill was somewhat surprised (although still pleased) at Pat's continued calm acceptance when it certainly had been demonstrated to their new water brother that Mike was capable of more miracles than he had disclosed up to then. However, Jill did not then know that Patricia Paiwonski had met a holy man before - Patricia expected more of holy men. Jill herself was simply serenely happy that a cusp had been reached and passed with right action and was ecstatically happy herself to grow closer as the cusp was determined - all of which she thought in Martian and quite differently.
In time they rested and Jill had Mike treat Patty to a bath given by telekinesis, and herself sat on the edge of the tub and squealed and giggled when the older woman did. It was just play, very human and not at all Martian; Mike had done it for Jill on the initial occasion almost lazily rather than raise himself up out of the water - an accident, more or less. Now it had become a custom, one that Jill knew Patty would like. It tickled Jill to see Patty's face when she found herself being scrubbed all over by gentle. invisible hands? and then, presently dried in a whisk with neither towel nor blast of air.
Patricia blinked. 'After that I need a drink. A big one.'
'Certainly, darling.'
'And I still want to show you kids my pictures? all of them.' Patricia followed Jill out into the living room, Mike in train, and stood in the middle of the rug. 'But first look at me. Look at me, not at my pictures. What do you see?'
With mild regret Mike stripped her tattoos off in his mind and looked at his new brother without her decorations. He liked her tattoos very much; they were peculiarly her own, they set her apart and made her a self. They seemed to him to give her a slightly Martian flavor, in that she did not have the bland sameness of most humans. He had already memorized them all and had thought pleasantly of having himself tattooed all over, once be grokked what should be pictured. The life of his father, water brother Jubal? He would have to ponder it. He would discuss it with Jill - and Jill might wish to be tattooed, too. What designs would make Jill more beautifully Jill? In the way in which perfume multiplied Jill's odor without changing it?
What he saw when he looked at Pat without her tattoos pleased him but not as much; she looked as a woman necessarily must look to be woman. Mike still did not grok Duke's collection of pictures; the pictures were interesting and had taught Mike that there was more variety in the sizes, shapes, proportions and colors of women than he had known up to then and that there was some variety in the acrobatics involving physical love - but having learned these simple facts he seemed to grok that there was nothing more to be learned from Duke's prized pictures. Mike's early training had made of him a very exact observer, by eye (and other senses), but that same training had left him unresponsive to the subtle pleasures of voyeurism, it was not that be did not find women (including, most emphatically Patricia Paiwonski) sexually stimulating, but it lay not in seeing them. Of his senses, smell and touch counted much higher - in which he was quasi-human, quasi-Martian; the parallel Martian reflex (as unsubtle as a sneeze) was triggered by those two, but could activate only in season - what must be termed 'sex' in a Martian is as romantic as intravenous feeding.
But, having been invited to see her without her pictures. Mike did notice more sharply one thing about Patricia that he already knew: she had her own face, marked in beauty by her life. She bad, he saw with gentle wonder, her own face even more than Jill had, and it made him feel toward Pat even more of an emotion he did not as yet call love but for which be used a Martian concept more discriminating.
She had her own odor, too, and her own voice, as all humans did. Her voice was husky and he liked to hear it even when he did not grok her meaning; her odor was mixed (he knew) with an unscrubbed trace of bitter muskiness from daily contact with snakes. It did not put him off; Pat's snakes were part of Pat as were her tattoos. Mike liked Pat's snakes and could handle the poisonous ones with perfect safety - and not alone by stretching time to anticipate and avoid their strikes. They grokked with him; he savored their innocent merciless thoughts - they reminded him of home. Other than Pat, Mike was the only person who could handle Honey Bun with pleasure to the
