VALENTINE MICHAEL SMITH SWAM through the murky water to thedeepest part of the pool, under the diving board, and settled himself on thebottom. He did not know why his water brother Jubal had told him to hidethere; indeed he did not know that he was hiding. His water brother Jubal hadtold him to do this and to remain there until his water brother Jill came forhim; that was sufficient.

　　As soon as he was sure that he was at the deepest part, he curled himselfinto the foetal position, let most of the air out of his lungs, swallowed histongue, rolled his eyes up, slowed his heart down to almost nothing, andbecame effectively .dead“ save that he was not actually discorporate andcould start his engines again at will. He also elected to stretch his time senseuntil seconds flowed past like hours, as he had much to contemplate and didnot know how quickly Jill would come to get him.

　　He knew that he had failed again in an attempt to achieve the perfectunderstanding, the mutually merging rapport-the grokking-that should existbetween water brothers. He knew that the failure was his, caused by hisusing wrongly the oddly variable human language, because Jubal hadbecome upset as soon as he had spoken to him.

　　He now knew that his human brothers could suffer intense emotion withoutany permanent damage, nevertheless Smith was wistfully sorry that he hadbeen the cause of such upset in Jubal. At the time, it had seemed to him thathe had at last grokked perfectly a most difficult human word. He should haveknown better because, early in his learnings under his brother Mahmoud, hehad discovered that long human words (the longer the better) were easy,unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings . . but short words wereslippery, unpredictable, changing their meanings without any pattern. Or sohe seemed to grok. Short human words were never like a short Martian wordsuchas .grok“ which forever meant exactly the same thing. Short humanwords were like trying to lift water with a knife.

　　And this had been a very short word.

　　Smith still felt that he had grokked rightly the human word .God“- theconfusion had come from his own failure in selecting other human words.

　　The concept was truly so simple, so basic, so necessary that any nestlingcould have explained it perfectly-in Martian. The problem, then, was to findhuman words that would let him speak rightly, make sure that he patternedthem rightly to match in fullness how it would be said in his own people’slanguage.

　　He puzzled briefly over the curious fact that there should be any difficulty insaying it, even in English, since it was a thing everyone knew else they couldnot grok alive. Possibly he should ask the human Old Ones how to say it,rather than struggle with the shifting meanings of human words. If so, hemust wait until Jubal arranged it, for here he was only an egg and could notarrange it himself.

　　He felt brief regret that he would not be privileged to be present at the comingdiscorporation of brother Art and brother Dottie.

　　Then he settled down to reread in his mind Webster’s New InternationalDictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, published in Springfield,Massachusetts.

　　From a long way off Smith was interrupted by an uneasy awareness that hiswater brothers were in trouble. He paused between .sherbacha“ and.sherbet“ to ponder this knowledge. Should he start himself up, leave theenfolding water of life, and join them to grok and share their trouble? At homethere could have been no question about it; trouble is shared, in joyfulcloseness.

　　But this place was strange in every way . . and Jubal had told him to waituntil Jill came.

　　He reviewed Jubal’s words, trying them Out in long contemplation againstother human words, making sure that he grokked. No, Jubal had spokenrightly and he had grokked rightly; he must wait until Jill came.

　　Nevertheless he was made so uneasy by the certain knowledge of hisbrothers’ trouble that he could not go back to his word hunt. At last an ideacame to him that was filled with such gay daring that he would have trembledhad his body not been unready for trembling.

　　Jubal had told him to place his body under water and leave it there until Jillcame . . . but had Jubal said that he himself must wait with the body?

　　Smith took a careful long time to consider this, knowing that the slipperyEnglish words that Jubal had used could easily lead him (and often had ledhim) into mistakes. He concluded that Jubal had not specifically ordered himto stay with his body . . . and that left a way Out of the wrongness of notsharing his brothers’ trouble.

　　So Smith decided to take a walk.

　　He was a bit dazed at his own audacity, for, while he had done it before,twice, he had never .soloed.“ Each time an Old One had been with him,watching over him, making sure that his body was safe, keeping him frombecoming disoriented at the new experience, staying with him until hereturned to his body and started it up again.

　　There was no Old One to help him now. But Smith had always been quick tolearn; he knew how to do it and was confident that he could do it alone in afashion that would fill his teacher with pride. So first he checked over everypart of his body, made certain that it would not be damaged while he wasgone, then got cautiously Out of it, leaving behind only that trifle of himselfneeded as watchman and caretaker.

　　Then he rose up and stood on the edge of the pool, remembering to behaveas if his body were still with him, as a guard against disorienting- againstlosing track of the pool, the body, everything, and wandering off into unknownplaces where he could not find his way back.

　　Smith looked around.

　　An air car was just landing in the garden by the pool and beings under it werecomplaining of injuries and indignities done them. Perhaps this was thetrouble he could feel? Grasses were for walking on, flowers and bushes werenot-this was a wrongness.

　　No, there was more wrongness. A man was just stepping out of the air car,one foot about to touch the ground, and Jubal was running toward him. Smithcould see the blast of icy anger that Jubal was hurling toward the man, ablast so furious that, had one Martian hurled it toward another, both wouldhave discorporated at once.

　　Smith noted it down as something he must ponder and, if it was a cusp ofnecessity as it seemed to be, decide what he must do to help his brother.

　　Then he looked over the others.

　　Dorcas was climbing out of the pool; she was puzzled and rather troubled butnot too much so; Smith could feel her confidence in Jubal. Larry was at theedge of the pool and had just gotten out; drops of water falling from him werein the air. Larry was not troubled but excited and pleased; his confidence inJubal was absolute. Miriam was near him and her mood was midwaybetween those of Dorcas and Larry. Anne was standing where she had beenseated and was dressed in the long white garment she had had with her allday. Smith could not fully grok her mood; he felt in her some of the coldunyielding discipline of mind of an Old One. It startled him, as Anne wasalways soft and gentle and warmly friendly.

　　He saw that she was watching Jubal closely and was ready to help him. Andso was Larry! . . . and Dorcas! . . . and Miriam! With a sudden burst ofempathic catharsis Smith learned that all these friends were water brothers ofJubal-and therefore of him. This unexpected release from blindness shookhim so that he almost lost anchorage on this place. Calming himself as hehad been taught, he stopped to praise and cherish them all, one by one andtogether.

　　Jill had one arm over the edge of the pooi and Smith knew that she had beendown under, checking on his safety. He had been aware of her when she haddone it . . . but now he knew that she had not alone been worried about hissafety; Jill felt other and greater trouble, trouble that was not relieved byknowing that her charge was safe under the water of life. This troubled himvery much and he considered going to her, making her know that he was withher and sharing her trouble.

　　He would have done so had it not been for a faint, uneasy feeling of guilt: hewas not absolutely certain that Jubal had intended to permit him to walkaround while his body was hidden in the p............