“Ambulance? Looks like he’s having a fit.”

“Anything!” A few minutes later she was leading Mike into a piloted air cab. She gave the address, then said urgently, “Mike, you’ve got to listen to me. Quiet down.”

He became somewhat more quiet but continued to chuckle, laugh aloud, chuckle again, while she wiped his eyes, for all the few minutes it took to get back to their flat. She got him inside, got his clothes off, made him lie down on the bed. “All right, dear. Withdraw now if you need to.”

“I’m all right. At last I’m all right.”

“I hope so.” She sighed. “You certainly scared me, Mike.”

“I’m sorry, Little Brother. I know. I was scared, too, the first time I heard laughing.”

“Mike, what happened?”

“Jill . . . I grok people!”

“Huh?” (“????”)

(“I speak rightly, Little Brother. I grok.”) “I grok people now, Jill . . . Little Brother . . . precious darling . . . little imp with lively legs and lovely lewd lascivious lecherous licentious libido . . . beautiful bumps and pert posterior . . . with soft voice and gentle hands. My baby darling.”

“Why, Michael!”

“Oh, I knew all the words; I simply didn’t know when or why to say them . . . nor why you wanted me to. I love you, sweetheart—I grok ‘love’ now, too.”

“You always have. I knew. And I love you . . . you smooth ape. My darling.”

“‘Ape,’ yes. Come here, she ape, and put your head on my shoulder and tell me a joke.”

“Just tell you a joke?”

“Well, nothing more than snuggling. Tell me a joke I’ve never heard and see if I laugh at the right place. I will, I’m sure of it—and I’ll be able to tell you why it’s funny. Jill . . . I grok people!”

“But how, darling? Can you tell me? Does it need Martian? Or mind-talk?”

“No, that’s the point. I grok people. I am people . . . so now I can say it in people talk. I’ve found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much . . . because it’s the only thing that’ll make it stop hurting.”

Jill looked puzzled. “Maybe I’m the one who isn’t people. I don’t understand.”

“Ah, but you are people, little she ape. You grok it so automatically that you don’t have to think about it. Because you grew up with people. But I didn’t. I’ve been like a puppy raised apart from other dogs—who couldn’t be like his masters and had never learned how to be a dog. So I had to be taught. Brother Mahmoud taught me, Jubal taught me, lots of people taught me . . . and you taught me most of all. Today I got my diploma—and I laughed. That poor little monk.”

“Which one, dear? I thought that big one was just mean . . . and the one I fiipped the peanut to turned out to be just as mean. There certainly wasn’t anything funny.”

“Jill, Jill my darling! Too much Martian has rubbed off on you. Of course it wasn’t funny; it was tragic. That’s why I had to laugh. I looked at a cageful of monkeys and suddenly I saw all the mean and cruel and utterly unexplainable things I’ve seen and heard and read about in the time I’ve been with my own people—and suddenly it hurt so much I found myself laughing.”

“But—Mike dear, laughing is something you do when something is nice . . . not when it’s horrid.”

“Is it? Think back to Las Vegas—When all you pretty girls came out on the stage, did people laugh?”

“Well . . . no.”

“But you girls were the nicest part of the show. I grok now, that if they had laughed, you would have been hurt. No, they laughed when a comic tripped over his feet and fell down . . . or something else that is not a goodness.”

“But that’s not all people laugh at.”

“Isn’t it? Perhaps I don’t grok all its fullness yet. But find me something that really makes you laugh, sweetheart . . . a joke, or anything else—but something that gave you a real belly laugh, not a smile. Then we’ll see if there isn’t a wrongness in it somewhere—and whether you would laugh if the wrongness wasn’t there.” He thought. “I grok when apes learn to laugh, they’ll be people.”

“Maybe.” Doubtfully but earnestly Jill started digging into her memory for jokes that had struck her as irresistibly funny, ones which had jerked a laugh out of her . . . incidents she had seen or heard of which had made her helpless with laughter:

“—her entire bridge club.” . . . “Should I bow?” . . . “Neither one, you idiot—instead!” . . . “—the Chinaman objects.” . . . “—broke her leg.” . . . “—make trouble for me!” . . . “—but it’ll spoil the ride for me.” . . . “—and his mother-in-law fainted.” . . . “Stop you? Why, I bet three to one you could do it!” . . . “—someting has happened to Ole.” . . . “—and so are you, you clumsy ox!”