“As it was, you barely got out with your lives, I take it.” Jubal wondered how they had even managed to grab clothes—in view of how they probably were not dressed. “You lost all the contents of the Nest? All your personal possessions?”

“Oh, no, not anything we really wanted. Stuff like Stinky’s language tapes and a trick typer that Maryam uses—even that horrible Madame-Tussaud picture of you. And Mike grabbed our clothes and some cash that was on hand.”

Jubal objected, “You say Mike did this? But I thought Mike was in jail when the fire broke out.”

“Uh, he was and he wasn’t. His body was in jail . . . curled up in withdrawal. But he was actually with us. You understand?”

“Uh, I don’t grok.”

“Rapport. He was inside Jill’s head, mostly, but we were all pretty closely tied in together. Jubal, I can’t explain it; you have to do it. When the explosion hit, he moved us over here. Then he went back and saved the minor stuff worth saving.”

Jubal frowned. Caxton said impatiently, “Teleportation, of course. What’s so hard to grok about it, Jubal? You yourself told me to come down here and open my eyes and know a miracle when I saw one. So I did and they were. Only they aren’t miracles, any more than radio is a miracle. Do you grok radio? Or stereovision? Or electronic computers?”

“Me? No.”

“Nor do I, I’ve never studied electronics. But I’m sure I could if I took the time and the hard sweat to learn the language of electronics; I don’t think it’s miraculous—just complex. Teleportation is quite simple, once you learn the language—it’s the language that is so difficult.”

“Ben, you can teleport things?”

“Me? Oh, no, they don’t teach that in kindergarten. Oh, I’m a deacon by courtesy, simply because I’m ‘First Called’ and Ninth Circle—but my actual progress is about Fourth Circle, bucking for Fifth. Why, I’m just beginning to get control of my own body. Patty is the only one of us who uses teleportation herself with any regularity . . . and I’m not sure she ever does it without Mike’s support. Oh, Mike says she’s quite capable of it, but Patty is such a curiously naive and humble person for the genius she is that she is quite dependent on Mike. Which she needn’t be. Jubal, I grok this: we don’t actually need Mike—oh, I’m not running him down; don’t get me wrong. But you could have been the Man from Mars. Or even me. It’s like the first man to discover fire. Fire was there all along—and after he showed that it could be used, anybody could use it . . . anybody with sense and savvy enough not to get burned with it. Follow me?”

“I grok, somewhat at least.”

“Mike is our Prometheus—but, remember, Prometheus was not God. Mike keeps emphasizing this. Thou art God, I am God, he is God—all that groks. Mike is a man along with the rest of us . . . even though he knows more. A very superior man, admittedly—a lesser man, taught the things the Martians know, probably would have set himself up as a pipsqueak god. Mike is above that temptation. Prometheus . . . but that’s all.”

Jubal said slowly, “As I recall, Prometheus paid a high price for bringing fire to mankind.”

“And don’t think that Mike doesn’t! He pays with twenty-four hours of work every day, seven days a week, trying to teach a few of us how to play with matches without getting burned. Jill and Patty lowered the boom on him, started making him take one night a week off, long before I joined up.” Caxton smiled. “But you can’t stop Mike. This burg is loaded with gambling joints, no doubt you know, and most of them crooked since it’s against the law here. Mike usually spends his night off bucking crooked games—and winning. Picks up ten, twenty, thirty thousand dollars a night. They tried to mug him, they tried to kill him, they tried knock-out drops and muscle boys—nothing worked; he simply ran up a reputation as the luckiest man in town . . . which brought more people into the Temple; they wanted to see this man who always won. So they tried to shut him out of the games—which was a mistake. Their cold decks froze solid, their wheels wouldn’t spin, their dice would roll nothing but box cars. At last they started putting up with him . . . and requesting him politely to please move along after he had won a few grand. Mike would always do so, if asked politely.”

Caxton added, “Of course that’s one more power bloc we’ve got against us. Not just the Fosterites and some of the other churches—but the gambling syndicate and the city political machine. I rather suppose that job done on the Temple was by professionals brought in from out of town—I doubt if the Fosterite goon squads touched it. Too professional.”