“‘Taught to grow?’”

He hesitated only slightly. “Larry teaches plants to grow every day. I have helped him. But my people—the Martians, I mean; I grok now that you are my people—teach the plants another way. In the other hemisphere it is growing colder and the nymphs, those who have stayed alive through the summer, are being brought into the nests for quickening and more growing.” He thought. “Of the humans we left at the equator when I came here, one has discorporated and the others are sad.”

“Yes, I heard about it in the news.”

Mike had not heard about it in the news; he had not known it until he was asked. “They should not be sad. Mr. Booker T. W. Jones Food Technician First Class is not sad; the Old Ones have cherished him.”

“You knew him?”

“Yes. He had his own face, dark and beautiful. But he was homesick.”

“Oh, dear! Mike . . . do you ever get homesick? For Mars?”

“At first I was very homesick,” he answered truthfully. “I was lonely always.” He rolled toward her and took her in his arms. “But now I am not lonely. I grok I shall never be lonely again.”

“Mike darling—” They kissed, and went on kissing.

Presently his water brother said breathlessly. “Oh, my! That was almost worse than the first time.”

“You are all right, my brother?”

“Yes. Yes indeed. Kiss me again.”

Quite a long time later, by cosmic clock, she said, “Mike? Is that—I mean, ‘Do you know—”’

“I know. It is for growing-closer. Now we grow closer.”

“Well . . . I’ve been ready a long time—goodness, we all have, but . . . never mind, dear; turn just a little. I’ll help.”

As they merged, grokking together, Mike said softly and triumphantly: “Thou art God.”

Her answer was not in words. Then, as their grokking made them ever closer and Mike felt himself almost ready to discorporate, her voice called him back: “Oh! . . . Oh! Thou art God!”

“We grok God.”





25

On Mars the little human advance guard were building half-buried pressure domes for the larger male & female party that would arrive by next ship. This work went much faster than originally scheduled as the Martians were uncritically helpful. Part of the time saved was spent in preparing a preliminary estimate on a very long-distance plan to free the bound oxygen in the sands of Mars to make the planet more friendly to future human generations.

The Old Ones neither helped nor hindered these long-distance human plans; time was not yet. Their own meditations were approaching a violent cusp that would control the shape of Martian art for many millennia. On Earth elections continued as usual and a very advanced poet published a limited edition of verse consisting entirely of punctuation marks and spaces; Time magazine reviewed it and suggested that the Federation Assembly Daily Record could profitably be translated into the same medium. The poet was invited to lecture at the University of Chicago, which he did, clad in full formal evening dress lacking only trousers and shoes.

A colossal advertising campaign opened to sell more sexual organs of plants for human use and Mrs. Joseph (“Shadow of Greatness”) Douglas was quoted as saying: “I would no more think of sitting down to eat without flowers on my table than without serviettes.” A Tibetan swami from Palermo, Sicily, announced in Beverly Hills a newly discovered, ancient yoga discipline for ripple breathing which greatly increased both pranha and the cosmic attraction between the sexes. His chelas were required to assume the matsyendra posture dressed in hand-woven diapers while he read aloud from the Rig-Veda and an assistant guru checked through their purses in another room—nothing was ever stolen from the purses; the purpose was less immediate.

The President of the United States, by proclamation, named the first Sunday in November as “National Grandmothers’ Day” and urged the grandchildren of America to say it with flowers. A funeral parlor chain was indicted for price-cutting. The Fosterite bishops, after secret conclave, announced the Church’s second Major Miracle: Supreme Bishop Digby had been translated bodily to Heaven and spot-promoted to Archangel, ranking with-but-after Archangel Foster. The glorious news had been held up pending Heavenly confirmation of the elevation of a new Supreme Bishop, Huey Short—a compromise candidate accepted by the Boone faction after the lots had been cast repeatedly.

L’Unita and Hoy published identical doctrinaire denunciations of Short’s elevation, L’Osservatore Romano and the Christian Science Monitor ignored it, Times of India snickered at it editorially, and the Manchester Guardian reported it without comment—the Fosterite congregation in England was small but extremely militant.