XXXIII
«WELL?» SAID Jubal. «Did you accept their invitation?»
«Huh!I got out of there fast! Grabbed my clothes, ignored the sign, jumped into the bounce tube with my arms full.»
«You did? I think, if I were Jill, I would be offended.»
Caxton turned red. «I had to leave, Jubal.»
«Hmmm — Then what?»
«Why, I put on my clothes — found I had forgotten my bag and didn't go back. In fact I left so fast I durned near killed myself. You know how the ordinary bounce tube — »
«I do not.»
«Huh? Well, if you don't dial it to lift, you sink slowly, like cold molasses. But I didn't sink, I fell — six stories. When I was about to splash, something caught me. Not a safety net, some sort of field. Scared me silly, on top of everything else.»
«Put not your faith in gadgets. I'll stick to stairs and, when unavoidable, elevators.»
«Well, the bugs aren't out of that gadget. Duke is safety inspector but whatever Mike says is Gospel to Duke; Mike's got him hypnotized. Hell, he's got 'em all hypnotized. When the crash comes it will be worse than any faulty bounce tube. Jubal, what can we do? I'm worried sick.»
Harshaw jutted out his lips. «What aspects did you find disquieting?»
«Huh? All of it.»
«So? You gave me to think that you enjoyed your visit — up to the point where you behaved like a scared rabbit.»
«Uh — So I did. Mike had me hypnotized, too.» Caxton looked puzzled. «I might not have snapped out of it if it hadn't been for that odd thing at the last. Jubal, Mike was sitting by me, his arm around me — he couldn't possibly have taken his clothes off.»
Jubal shrugged. «You were busy. Probably wouldn't have noticed an earthquake.»
«Oh, piffle! I don't close my eyes like a school girl. How did he do it?»
«I can't see its relevancy. Or are you suggesting that Mike's nudity shocked you?»
«I was shocked, all right.»
«When your own arse was bare? Come, sir!»
«No, no! Jubal, do I have to draw a diagram? I simply have no stomach for group orgies. I almost lost my breakfast.» Caxton squirmed. «How would you feel if people started acting like monkeys in a cage in the middle of your living room?»
Jubal fitted his fingers together. «That is the point, Ben; it was not my living room. You go into a man's house, you accept his household rules. That's a universal rule of civilized behavior.»
«You don't find such behavior shocking?»
«Ah, you raise another issue. Public displays of rut I find distasteful — but this reflects my early indoctrination. A large part of mankind do not share my taste; the orgy has a very wide history. But “shocking”? My dear sir, I am shocked only by that which offends me ethically.»
«You think this is just a matter of taste?»
«Nothing more. And my taste is no more sacred than the very different taste of Nero. Less sacred — Nero was a god; I am not.»
«Well, I'll be damned.»
«Possibly — if damnation is possible. But, Ben, this wasn't public.»
«Huh?»
«You told me this group was a plural marriage — a group theogamy, to be technical. Therefore whatever took place — or was about to take place; you were mealy-mouthed-was not public but private. “Ain't nobody here but just us gods» — so how could anyone be offended?»
«Iwas offended!»
«Your apotheosis was incomplete. You misled them. You invited it.»
«Me? Jubal, I did nothing of the sort.»
«Oh, rats! The time to back out was when you got there; you saw at once that their customs were not yours. But you stayed — enjoyed the favors of one goddess — behaved as a god toward her. You knew the score and they knew you knew; their error lay in accepting your hypocrisy as solid coin. No, Ben, Mike and Jill behaved with propriety; the offense lay in your behavior.»
«Damn it, Jubal, you twist things! I did get too involved — but when I left, I had to! I was about to throw up!»
«So you claim reflex? Anyone over the emotional age of twelve would have clamped his jaws and walked to the bathroom, then returned with some acceptable excuse after things cooled down. It was not reflex. Reflex can empty the stomach; it can't choose a course for feet, recover chattels, take you through doors and cause you to jump down a hole. Panic, Ben. Why did you panic?»
Caxton was long in replying. He sighed and said, «I guess when you come down to it — I'm a prude.»
Jubal shook his head. «A prude thinks that his own rules of propriety are natural laws. That doesn't describe you. You adjusted to many things that did not fit your code of propriety, whereas a true-blue prude would have affronted that delightful tattooed lady and stomped out. Dig deeper.»
«All I know is that I am unhappy over the whole thing.»
«I know you are, Ben, and I'm sorry. Let's try a hypothetical question. You mentioned a lady named Ruth. Suppose Gillian had not been present; assume that the others were Mike and Ruth — and they offered you the same shared intimacy: Would you have been shocked?»
«Huh? Why, yes. It's a shocking situation.I think so, even though you say it's a matter of taste.»
«How shocking? Nausea? Panic flight?»
Caxton looked sheepish. «Damn you, Jubal. All right, I would just have found an excuse to go out to the kitchen or something … then left as soon as possible.»
«Very well, Ben. You have uncovered your trouble.»
«I have?»
«What element was changed?»
Caxton looked unhappy. At last he said, «You're right, Jubal — it was because it was Jill. Because I love her.»
«Close, Ben. But not dead center.»
«Eh?»
«“Love” is not the emotion that caused you to flee. What is “love”, Ben?»
«What? Oh, come off it! Everybody from Shakespeare to Freud has taken a swing at that; nobody has answered it yet. All I know is, it hurts.»
Jubal shook his head. «I'll give an exact definition. “Love” is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.»
Ben said slowly, «I'll buy that … because that's the way I feel about Jill.»
«Good. Then you are asserting that your stomach turned and you fled in panic because of a need to make Jill happy.»
«Hey, wait a minute! I didn't say — »
«Or was it some other emotion?»
«I simply said — » Caxton stopped. «Okay, I was jealous! But, Jubal, I would have sworn I wasn't. I knew I had lost out, I had accepted it long ago — hell, I didn't like Mike the less for it. Jealousy gets you nowhere.»
«Nowhere one would wish, certainly. Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy — in fact, they're almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other. Both at once can produce unbearable turmoil — and I grok that was your trouble, Ben. When your jealousy reared its head, you couldn't look it in the eye — so you fled.»
«It was the circumstances, Jubal! This hands-around harem upsets the hell out of me. Don't misunderstand me; I would love Jill if she were a two-peso whore. Which she is not. By her lights, Jill is moral.»
Jubal nodded. «I know. Gillian has an invincible innocence that makes it impossible for her to be immoral.» He frowned. «Ben, I am afraid that you — and I, too — lack the angelic innocence to practice the perfect morality those people live by.»
Ben looked startled. «You think that sort of thing is moral? I meant that Jill doesn't know she is doing wrong — Mike's got her homswoggled — and Mike doesn't know it's wrong, either. He's the Man from Mars; he didn't get a fair start.»
Jubal frowned. «Yes, I think what those people — the entire Nest, not just our kids — are doing is moral. I haven't examined details but — yes, all of it. Bacchanalia, unashamed swapping, communal living and anarchistic code, everything.»
«Jubal, you astound me. If you feel that way, why don't you join them? They want you. They'll hold a jubilee — Dawn is waiting to kiss your feet and serve you; I wasn't exaggerating.»
Jubal sighed. «No. Fifty years ago — But now? Ben my brother, the capacity for such innocence is no longer in me. I have been too long wedded to my own brand of evil and hopelessness to be cleansed in their water of life and become innocent again. If I ever was.»
«Mike thinks you have this “innocence” — he doesn't call it that — in full measure now. Dawn told me, speaking ex officio.»
«Then I would not disillusion him. Mike sees his own reflection — I am, by profession, a mirror.»
«Jubal, you're chicken.»
«Precisely, sir! But my worry is not over their morals but dangers to them from outside.»
«Oh, they're in no trouble that way.»
«You think so? If you dye a monkey pink and shove him into a cage of brown monkeys, they'll tear him to pieces. Those innocents are courting martyrdom.»
«Aren't you being rather melodramatic, Jubal?»
Jubal glared. «If I am, sir, does that make my words less weighty? Saints have burned at stakes ere this — would you dismiss their holy anguish as “melodrama”?»
«I didn't mean to get your back up. I simply meant that they aren't in that sort of danger — after all, this isn't the Dark Ages.»
Jubal blinked. «Really? I hadn't noticed the change. Ben, this pattern has been offered to a naughty world many times — and the world has always crushed it. The Oneida Colony was much like Mike's nest — it lasted a while but out in the country, not many neighbors. Or take the early Christians — anarchy, communism, group marriage, even that kiss of brotherhood — Mike has borrowed a lot from them. Hmm … if he picked up that kiss of brotherhood from them, I would expect men to kiss men.»
Ben looked sheepish. «I held out on you. But it's not a pansy gesture.»
«Nor was it with the early Christians. D'you think I'm a fool?»
«No comment.»
«Thank you. I wouldn't advise anyone to offer the kiss of brotherhood to the pastor of some boulevard church today; primitive Christianity is no more. Over and again it's been the same sad story: a plan for perfect sharing and perfect love, glorious hopes and high ideals — then persecution and failure.» Jubal sighed again. «I've been fretting about Mike; now I'm worried about them all.»
«How do you think I feel? Jubal, I can't accept your sweetness-and-light theory. What they are doing is wrong!»
«It's that last incident that sticks in your craw.»
«Uh… not entirely.»
«Mostly. Ben, the ethics of sex is a thorny problem. Each of us is forced to grope for a solution he can live with — in the face of a preposterous, unworkable, and evil code of so-called “Morals”. Most of us know the code is wrong, almost everybody breaks it. But we pay Danegeld by feeling guilty and giving lip service. Willy-nilly, the code rides us, dead and stinking, an albatross around the neck.
«You, too, Ben. You fancy yourself a free soul — and break that evil code. But faced with a problem in sexual ethics new to you, you tested it against the same Judeo-Christian code … so automatically your stomach did flip-flops … and you think that proves you're right and they're wrong.Faugh! I'd as lief use trial by ordeal. All your stomach can reflect is prejudice trained into you before you acquired reason.»
«What about your stomach?»
«Mine is stupid, too — but I don't let it rule my brain. I see the beauty of Mike's attempt to devise an ideal ethic and applaud his recognition that such must start by junking the present sexual code and starting fresh. Most philosophers haven't the courage for this; they swallow the basics of the present code — monogamy, family pattern, continence, body taboos, conventional restrictions on intercourse, and so forth — then fiddle with details … even such piffle as discussing whether the female breast is an obscene sight!
«But mostly they debate how we can be made to obey this code — ignoring the evidence that most tragedies they see around them are rooted in the code itself rather than in failure to abide by it.
«Now comes the Man from Mars, looks at this sacrosanct code with a fresh viewpoint — and rejects it. I don't know the details of Mike's code, but it clearly violates laws of every major nation and would outrage “right-thinking” people of every major faith — and most agnostics and atheists, too. Yet this poor boy — »
«Jubal, he is not a boy, he's a man.»
«Is he a “man”? This poor ersatz Martian is saying that sex is a way to be happy. Sex should be a means of happiness. Ben, the worst thing about sex is that we use it to hurt each other. It ought never to hurt; it should bring happiness, or at least, pleasure.
«The code says, “Thou shalt not covet they neighbor's wife.” The result? Reluctant chastity, adultery, jealousy, bitterness, blows and sometimes murder, broken homes and twisted chil dren — and furtive little passes degrading to woman and man. Is this Commandment ever obeyed? If a man swore on his own Bible that he refrained from coveting his neighbor's wife because the code forbade it, I would suspect either self-deception or subnormal sexuality. Any male virile enough to sire a child has coveted many women, whether he acts or not.
«Now comes Mike and says: “There is no need to covet my wife …love her! There's no limit to her love, we have everything to gain — and nothing to lose but fear and guilt and hatred and jealousy.” The proposition is incredible. So far as I recall only pre-civilization Eskimos were this naive — and they were so isolated that they were almost “Men from Mars” themselves. But we gave them our “virtues” and now they have chastity and adultery just like the rest of us. Ben, what did they gain?»
«I wouldn't care to be an Eskimo.»
«Nor I. Spoiled fish makes me bilious.»
«I had in mind soap and water. I guess I'm effete.»
«Me, too, Ben. I was born in a house with no more plumbing than an igloo; I prefer the present. Nevertheless Eskimos were invariably described as the happiest people on Earth. Any unhappiness they suffered was not through jealousy; they didn't have a word for it. They borrowed spouses for convenience and fun — it did not make them unhappy. So who's looney? Look at this glum world around you, then tell me: Did Mike's disciples seem happier, or unhappier, then other people?»
«I didn't talk to them all, Jubal. But — yes, they're happy. So happy they seem slap-happy. There's a catch in it somewhere.»
«Maybe you were the catch.»
«How?»
«It's a pity your tastes canalized so young. Even three days of what you were offered would be something to treasure when you reach my age. And you, you young idiot, let jealousy chase you away! At your age I would have gone Eskimo — why, I'm so vicariously vexed that my only consolation is the sour certainty that you will regret it. Age does not bring wisdom, Ben, but it does give perspective … and the saddest sight of all is to see, far behind you, temptations you've resisted. I have such regrets — but nothing to the whopper you will suffer! »
«Quit rubbing it in!»
«Heavens, man! — or are you a mouse? — I'm trying to goad you. Why are you moaning to an old man? When you should be heading for the Nest like a homing pigeon! Hell, if I were even twenty years younger, I'd join Mike's church myself.»
«Lay off, Jubal. What do you really think of Mike's church?
«You said it was just a discipline.»
«Yes and no. It is supposed to be “Truth” with a Capital “T” as Mike got it from the Martian “Old Ones”. »
«The “Old Ones”, eh? To me, they're hogwash.»
«Mike believes in them.»
«Ben, I once knew a manufacturer who believed that he consulted the ghost of Alexander Hamilton. However — Damn it, why must I be the Devil's advocate?»
«What's biting you now?»
«Ben, the foulest sinner of all is the hypocrite who makes a racket of religion. But we must give the Devil his due. Mike does believe and he's teaching the truth as he sees it. As for his “Old Ones”, I don't know that they don't exist; I simply find the idea hard to swallow. As for his Thou-Art-God creed, it is neither more nor less credible than any other. Come Judgment Day, if they hold it, we may find that Mumbo Jumbo the God of the Congo was Big Boss all along.»
«Oh, for Heaven's sake, Jubal!»
«All names belong in the hat, Ben. Man is so built that he cannot imagine his own death. This leads to endless invention of religions. While this conviction by no means proves immortality to be a fact, questions generated by it are overwhelmingly important. The nature of life, how ego hooks into the body, the problem of ego itself and why each ego seems to be the center of the universe, the purpose of life, the purpose of the universe — these are paramount questions, Ben; they can never be trivial. Science hasn't solved them — and who am I to sneer at religions for trying, no matter how unconvincingly to me? Old Mumbo Jumbo may eat me yet; I can't rule him out because he owns no fancy cathedrals. Nor can I rule out one godstruck boy leading a sex cult in an upholstered attic; he might be the Messiah. The only religious opinion I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping together!»
«Whew: Jubal, you should have been a preacher.»
«Missed it by luck. If Mike can show us a better way to run this fouled-up planet, his sex life needs no vindication. Geniuses are justifiably contemptuous of lesser opinion and are always indifferent to sexual customs of the tribe; they make their own rules. Mike is a genius. So he ignores Mrs. Grundy and diddles to suit himself.
«But from a theological standpoint Mike's sexual behavior is as orthodox as Santa Claus. He preaches that all living creatures are collectively God … which makes Mike and his disciples the only self-aware gods on this planet … which rates him a union card by all the rules for godding. Those rules always permit gods sexual freedom limited only by their own judgment.
«You want proof? Leda and the Swan? Europa and the Bull? Osiris, Isis, and Horus? The incredible incests of the Norse gods? I won't cite eastern religions; their gods do things that a mink breeder wouldn't tolerate. But look at the relations of the Trinity-in-One of the most widely respected western religion. The only way that religion's precepts can be reconciled with the interrelations of what purports to be a monotheos is by concluding that breeding rules for deity are not the rules for mortals. But most people never think about it; they seal it off and mark it: “Holy — Do Not Disturb”.
«One must allow Mike any dispensation granted other gods. One god alone splits into at least two parts, and breeds, not just Jehovah — they all do. A group of gods will breed like rabbits, and with as little regard for human proprieties. Once Mike entered the godding business, orgies were as predictable as sunrise — so forget the standards of Podunk and judge them by Olympian morals.»
Jubal glowered. «Ben, to understand this, you must start by conceding their sincerity.»
«Oh, I do! It's just that — »
«Doyou?You start by assuming that they must be wrong, judging them by that very code you reject. Try logic instead. Ben, this “growing-closer” by sexual union, this plurality-into-unity, logically has no place for monogamy. Since shared-by-all sexual congress is basic to this creed — a fact that your account makes crystal clear — why expect it to be hidden? One hides what one is ashamed of — but they are not ashamed, they glory in it. To duck behind closed doors would be a sop to the very code they have rejected… or it would shout aloud that you were an outsider who should never have been admitted in the first place.»
«Maybe I shouldn't have been.»
«Obviously you shouldn't have been. Mike clearly had misgivings. But Gillian insisted. Eh?»
«That only makes it worse!»
«How? She wanted you to be one of them “in all fullness”, as Mike would say. She loves you — and is not jealous of you. But you are jealous of her — and, while you claim to love her, your behavior doesn't show it.»
«Damn it, I do love her!»
«So? As may be, you clearly did not understand the Olympian honor you were being offered.»
«I guess I didn't,» Ben conceded glumly.
«I'm going to offer you a way out. You wondered how Mike got rid of his clothes. I'll tell you.»
«How?»
«A miracle.»
«Oh, for God's sake!»
«Could be. One thousand dollars says it was a miracle. Go ask Mike. Get him to show you. Then send me the money.»
«Hell, Jubal, I don't want to take your money.»
«You won't. Bet?»
«Jubal,you go see what the score is. I can't go back.»
«They'll take you back with open arms and never ask why you left. One thousand on that prediction, too. Ben, you were there less than twenty-four hours. Did you give them the careful investigation that you give something smelly in public life before you blast it?»
«But — »
«Did you?»
«No, but — »
«Oh, for God's sake, Ben! You claim to love Jill… yet you won't give her the fair shake you give a crooked politician. Not a tenth the effort she made to help you when you were in trouble. Where would you be if she had made so feeble a try? Roasting in Hell, most likely. You're bitching about friendly fornication — do you know what I'm worried about?»
«What?»
«Christ was crucified for preaching without a police permit. Sweat over that, instead!»
Caxton chewed a thumb and said nothing — then stood up suddenly. «I'm on my way.»
«After lunch.»
«Now.»
Twenty-four hours later Ben wired Jubal two thousand dollars. When, after a week, Jubal received no other message, he sent a stat care of Ben's office:«What the hell are you doing?» The answer was somewhat delayed:
«Studying Martian — aquafraternally yours — Ben»