“But how? And where is it?”

“Same place Jill’s wrapper is—and my robe. Gone.”

“But don’t worry about it, Patty,” put in Jill. “We’ll replace it. Two more . . . and twice as pretty. Mike, you shouldn’t have done it.”

“I’m sorry, Jill. I grokked it was all right.”

“Well . . . I suppose it is.” Jill decided that Aunt Patty wasn’t too upset—and certainly she would never tell; she was carney.

Mrs. Paiwonski was not worried by the loss of two scraps of costume, nor by her own nudity. Nor by the nakedness of the other two. But she was greatly troubled by a theological problem that she felt was out of her depth. “Smitty? That was real magic?”

“I guess you would call it that,” he agreed, using the words most exactly.

“I’d rather call it a miracle,” she said bluntly.

“You can call it that, too, if you want to. But it wasn’t sleight-of-hand.”

“I know that. You weren’t even near me.” She, who daily handled live cobras and who had more than once handled obnoxious drunks with her bare hands (to their sorrow), was not afraid. Patricia Paiwonski was not afraid of the Devil himself; she was sustained by her faith that she was saved and therefore invulnerable to the Devil. But she was uneasy for the safety of her friends. “Smitty . . . look me in the eye. Have you made a pact with the Devil?”

“No, Pat, I have not.”

She continued to look into his eyes, then said, “You aren’t lying.”

“He doesn’t know how to lie, Aunt Patty.”

“—so it’s a miracle. Smitty . . . you are a holy man!”

“I don’t know, Pat.”

“Archangel Foster didn’t know that he was a holy man until he reached his teens . . . even though he performed many miracles before that time. But you are a holy man; I can feel it.” She thought. “I think I felt it when I first met you.”

“I don’t know, Pat.”

“I think he may be,” admitted Jill. “But he really doesn’t know, himself. Michael . . . I think we’ve told her too much not to tell her more.”

“‘Michael!’” Patty repeated suddenly. “The Archangel Michael, sent down to us in human form.”

“Aunt Patty, please! If he is, he doesn’t know it—”

“He wouldn’t necessarily know it. God performs his wonders in his own way.”

“Aunt Patty, will you please wait and let me talk, just for a bit?”

Some minutes later Mrs. Paiwonski had accepted that Mike was indeed the Man from Mars, she had agreed to accept him as a man and to treat him as a man . . . while stating explicitly that she still held to her own opinion as to his true nature and why he was on Earth—explaining (somewhat fuzzily, it seemed to Jill) that Foster had been really and truly a man while he was on Earth, but had been also and always had been, an archangel, even though he had not known it himself. If Jill and Michael insisted that they were not saved, she would treat them as they asked to be treated—God moves in mysterious ways.

“I think you could properly call us ‘seekers,’” Mike told her.

“Then that’s enough, my dears! I’m sure you’re saved—but Foster himself was a seeker in his early years. I’ll help.”

She had participated in another minor miracle. They had been seated in a circle on the rug. Jill lay back flat and 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?”)