'Shalom, Rabbi.'

Jesus looked down at the hand and then inquiringly at Hfathon.

The Krsh said, 'Rabbi, on Earth it's the custom to shake hands when greeting.' He spoke to Orme. 'But here you kiss the Messiah's hand.'

Orme felt a little better. The Messiah was not all-knowing.

Jesus said, 'They are our guests. There is no harm in honouring a harmless custom.'

Jesus extended his hand. The Marsnaut took it and felt a powerful grip and a slight tingle. He had the impression that this man could have pulped his hand if he wished to. But perhaps he was letting his imagination stampede.

Jesus then shook hands with the others. Madeleine must have summoned up her nerve; she gave him a quick strong shake and looked directly into the large, dark, deerlike eyes.

'Good woman!' Orme thought. 'She's as tough as any of us.'

Nevertheless, she looked a little pale and so did Shirazi and Bronski.

'With your permission,' Jesus said in a tone that showed he expected unreserved consent, 'I am going to do something that I seldom do. The people like it when I do these things even though I've told them that they're too much like cheap pseudomagical tricks. And I've told them that they should be able to duplicate them and could if they had enough belief in their own powers. From what Hfathon and his colleagues tell me of this book you call the New Testament, I was reported to have performed these so-called miracles while I was on Earth. I didn't, but I could have, though I didn't know it then.

'Even the Son of Man is not perfect, as I once said in Palestine. Only The Divine Presence is perfect, only He is good. But I am His adopted son, and therefore I can do some things which other mortals won't do. At least, not at this time.'

He went to a table and poured out wine into five glasses.

'First, we'll have a drink. Come join me, my friends.'

Orme took the glass from him. He thought of his parents, who steadfastly refused to drink any alcoholic beverage whatsoever, even though they believed that Jesus had turned the water into wine at the marriage in Cana. If they could see Jesus now, they'd have a psychic haemorrhage.

They drank the wine and then followed the Messiah through many rooms and into an enormous auditorium. Waiting for them were TV crews, many of the university staff, and a large number of government officials. There were also a few of the more favoured students and, no doubt, some relatives of the higher-ups in the administration. Here, as on Earth, nepotism wasn't unknown. It was just more restrained.

Jesus went ahead to talk to the TV directors and producers, each of whom had to kiss his hand first. Orme enjoyed that. They were so respectful and humble. His experiences with TV executives on Earth had soured him, they were so authoritative. Especially the civil-service TV officials. Not that they wouldn't in turn, kiss the asses of the high-echelon executives and the politicians.

He wandered around for a few minutes. The cameras were intriguing, cigarette-package-sized machines that the camera-people held one hand while looking through a telescope adjustable lens attached to the top of the camera. Some wore headbands to which were fixed cameras fitting over one eye. They looked through a hole in the camera and could zoom in or away by regulating a small wheel on the side of the camera. There were no attached wires or cables.

At one end of the room were crews which monitored the transmissions from the cameras, edited them, mixed shots, and did other strange things that so mystified the layman.

Near these was a rostrum on which a band sat. Orme, looking them over, was startled to see Gulthilo. She was practising bars on her flute.

He went up to her at once.

'Gulthilo!'

She stopped playing and smiled down at him.

'Richard Orme! How is your health?'

The Martians still said this after two thousand years, though scarcely anyone got sick.

'I'm fine, though a little bit shaken. He-' he gestured at the Messiah - 'isn't easy to get used to.' Gulthilo looked adoringly at Jesus.

'You will never get used to him.'

Then she looked at him and smiled. He felt as if he were melting. She was so beautiful.

'Have you been thinking about the other night?'

'It's never been out of my mind, day or night.'

That was a lie, but he had thought much about her.

'And the result?'

'A lot of erections,' he said, wondering if the moral code of these people permitted such frank talk.

She lost her smile, but it quickly returned.

'Is that all?'

'No, not at all. Look, Gulthilo. I think I'm in love with you. But do I really know you? Do you really know me? We come from such different cultures. Could we get along without friction? I mean, there's always a certain amount of that between two married people even when they're from the same culture. There's the basic friction that results from individual differences and that from the difference between sexes. But in this situation... it's not just that you're Jewish. You're a Martian Jew, and what a world of difference that means! If it weren't for that... well...'

'But,' she said, 'you'd become Jewish. We couldn't marry if you didn't, and I wouldn't marry you if you didn't.'

There was a silence between them, though elsewhere it was certainly noisy. The musicians were blowing, scraping, tootling, tinkling, beating. Further away there were shouts from the TV crews, and laughter at something, perhaps what Jesus had said, since it came from a crowd around him.

'I'm not going to argue or plead with you,' she said. 'But I don't see how you could hesitate. I mean, converting. You're an intelligent man. If you weren't, I wouldn't even consider becoming your wife, no matter how physically attractive you are. But I know that we could be a very loving couple, for sixty or seventy years anyway, maybe more. I sent in our physicochemicopsychic recordings to the centre, and it reported that we are a well-matched couple. And your genes are quite acceptable, though there's a hereditary tendency to diabetes, and liver cancer would have started at about the age of fifty-five. But that's been rectified. We would have beautiful intelligent children, and we'd be quite happy. Not that there wouldn't be periods of conflict and unhappiness. These are not unconquerable, however.'

Martian life seemed for him to be a series of stunning revelations. He was unable to say anything for at least a minute. Then he exploded.

'Jesus Christ!'

Gulthilo looked puzzled. He realised he'd spoken in English.

'I mean,' he said in his slow Krsh, 'you went ahead and submitted my genetic chart or whatever they're called here without asking me?'

'Why should I ask?'

'Well, I'm the other partner. Shouldn't you have asked me? And what if the charts had shown a bad mismatch? Do you people go entirely by those? Aren't you allowed to make up your own minds to marry regardless of what the charts say?'

'Oh, yes. We're allowed. A few do ignore the charts. After all, there's passion, you know. You should know. But over two thousand years, the charts have proved to be 98.1 per cent correct in predicting good marriages. I didn't say ecstatic marriages. There are no such things except perhaps in the first year. Good solid marriages with a steady abiding love. But then, from what you've told me, the majority of people on Earth don't have the character for such marriages.'

'Maybe I exaggerated somewhat,' he said. 'Okay. What about the 1.9 per cent?'

'They don't have children. Somehow, they're sterile.'

'I thought your scientists could make anybody fertile?'

'Theoretically, they can. But in these cases, they can't.'

She hesitated, then pointed swiftly beyond him and dropped the hand.