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"I'm sure he can," Nelson said firmly. "Doctor - 'Jubal,' I mean - have you noticed anything odd about Mike's metabolism?"
"Uh, let me put it this way. There isn't anything about his metabolism which I have noticed that is not odd. Very."
"Exactly."
Jubal turned to Mahmoud. "But don't worry that I might invite Mike to suicide. I've learned not to joke with him, not ever. I grok that he doesn't grok joking." Jubal blinked thoughtfully. "But I don't grok 'grok' - not really. Stinky, you speak Martian."
"A little."
"You speak it fluently, I heard you. Do you grok 'grok'?"
Mahmoud looked very thoughtful. "No. Not really. 'Grok' is the most important word in the Martian language - and I expect to spend the next forty years trying to understand it and perhaps use some millions of printed words trying to explain it. But I don't expect to be successful. You need to think in Martian to grok the word 'grok.' Which Mike does and I don't. Perhaps you have noticed that Mike takes a rather veering approach to some of the simplest human ideas?"
"Have I! My throbbing head!"
"Mine, too."
"Food," a
"Not at all." Mahmoud spoke briefly in Martian to Mike. Mike answered him, smiled su
"I grok it," agreed Jubal. "Language itself shapes a man's basic ideas."
"Yes, but - Doctor, you speak Arabic, do you not?"
"Eh? I used to, badly, many years ago," admitted Jubal. "Put in a while as a surgeon with the American Field Service, in Palestine. But I don't now. I still read it a little� because I prefer to read the words of the Prophet in the original."
"Proper. Since the Koran ca
"Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply ca
"But nevertheless there are things which can be said in the simple Arabic tongue that ca
Jubal nodded agreement. "Quite true. That's why I've kept up my reading of it, a little."
"Yes. But the Martian language is so much more complex than is English - and so wildly different in the fashion in which it abstracts its picture of the universe - that English and Arabic might as well be considered one and the same language, by comparison. An Englishman and an Arab can learn to think each other's thoughts, in the other's language. But I'm not certain that it will ever be possible for us to think in Martian (other than by the unique fashion Mike learned it) - oh, we can learn a sort of a 'pidgin' Martian, yes - that is what I speak.
"Now take this one word: 'grok.' Its literal meaning, one which I suspect goes back to the origin of the Martian race as thinking, speaking creatures - and which throws light on their whole 'map' - is quite easy. 'Grok' means 'to drink.'"
"Huh?" said Jubal. "But Mike never says 'grok' when he's just talking about drinking. He-"
"Just a moment." Mahmoud spoke to Mike in Martian.
Mike looked faintly surprised and said, "'Grok' is drink," and dropped the matter.
"But Mike would also have agreed," Mahmoud went on, "if I had named a hundred other English words, words which represent what we think of as different concepts, even pairs of antithetical concepts. And 'grok' means all of these, depending on how you use it. It means 'fear,' it means 'love,' it means 'hate' - proper hate, for by the Martian 'map' you ca
Mahmoud screwed up his face. "It means 'identically equal' in the mathematical sense. The human clich, 'This hurts me worse than it does you' has a Martian flavor to it, if only a trace. The Martians seem to know instinctively what we learned painfully from modern physics, that the observer interacts with the observed simply through the process of observation. 'Grok' means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the process being observed - to merge, to blend, to intermarry, to lose personal identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science - and it means as little to us as color means to a blind man." Mahmoud paused. "Jubal, if I chopped you up and made a stew of you, you and the stew, whatever else was in it, would grok - and when I ate you, we would grok together and nothing would be lost and it would not matter which one of us did the chopping up and eating."
"It would to me!" Jubal said firmly.
"You aren't a Martian." Mahmoud stopped again to talk to Mike in Martian.
Mike nodded. "You spoke rightly, my brother Dr. Mahmoud. I am been saying so. Thou art God."
Mahmoud shrugged helplessly. "You see how hopeless it is? All I got was a blasphemy. We don't think in Martian. We can't"
"Thou art God," Mike said agreeably. "God groks."
"Hell, let's change the subject! Jubal, could I impose on my fraternal status for some more gin?"
"I'll get it," said Dorcas, and jumped up.
It was a pleasant family picnic, made easy by Jubal's gift for warm informality, a gift shared by his staff, plus the fact that the three newcomers were themselves the same easy sort of people - each learned, acclaimed, and with no need to strive. And all four men shared a foster-father interest in Mike. Even Dr. Mahmoud, rarely truly off guard with those who did not share with him the one true faith in submission to the Will of God, always beneficent, merciful, found himself relaxed and happy. It had pleased him very much to learn that Jubal read the words of the Prophet and, now that he stopped to notice it, the women of Jubal's household were really much plumper than he had thought at first glance. That dark one- But he put the thought out of his mind; he was a guest.