Growing-closer

Growing-closer is the Martian conception of intimacy as a deepening of shared understanding and relationship, rather than a physical gesture in itself. Valentine Michael Smith first approaches it through kissing, discovers that it can mean different things in different relationships, and ultimately experiences it with Jill Boardman as a union that reaches toward the divine. Across these scenes, the phrase names not a fixed act but a process: closeness depends on who is participating, what they understand, and whether they are ready to share it.

Learning the Meaning of a Kiss

Smith’s first encounter with kissing as growing-closer comes after a turbulent moment at Jubal Harshaw’s home. Having returned to his body in the pool, he is still uncertain whether he acted rightly at the point of decision, and does not yet feel ready to contemplate the men he had been forced to move. When Jill touches him, however, he takes her face in his hands and kisses her. He has learned the action only recently and does not feel that he understands it fully. He recognizes in it the growing-closer of the water ceremony, but senses that it contains something else he longs to understand in perfect fullness.

That distinction becomes explicit when Smith explains the kiss to Jubal. He describes kissing girls as goodness and growing-closer, then adds that it is more than a water-brother relation: for water brothers, kissing is growing-closer only when they are young and pretty girls like Jill. His explanation is earnest, not a joke. Jubal accepts the distinction while teasing him, telling him to kiss girls all he wants because it is better than card games. The exchange shows Smith translating a new human practice into the relational categories he already knows, while recognizing that the translation is incomplete.

Smith’s understanding is tested when he identifies Dorcas as a water sister and reasons that growing-closer is good for brothers. Dorcas invites him to kiss her. He does, and they grow closer for several seconds before she faints. Jubal catches her; Jill sharply steadies Smith when he starts to tremble toward withdrawal at the sight of what has happened. Dorcas soon reassures him that she is all right and that she did grow closer, though she needs to catch her breath. The scene makes the physical intensity of intimacy visible, but it also establishes its limits: Smith is still inexperienced, and care for the other person includes responding to their condition rather than treating the experience as a simple, repeatable act.

A Practice of Relationship and Readiness

The novel repeatedly distinguishes growing-closer from the outward forms associated with it. When Smith considers letters from strangers seeking his help in conceiving children, he understands the biological process intellectually but wonders why they have made it into a ritual. He suspects that it may be almost as precious and important as the water ceremony, and wants to understand it experientially, not just mechanically. The passage places sexuality within his larger effort to learn how humans make relationships meaningful, while leaving his understanding unfinished.

That readiness is governed by a principle different from haste. Smith is sensitive to the importance of timing, but approaches it through waiting: when humans cannot wait as long as a Martian would, he adjusts his own waiting to meet their needs. Growing-closer is therefore not presented as something to accelerate at will. Its appropriate timing depends on the people involved, and patience can itself be an act of consideration.

The water-brother practice also makes the distinction between a symbol and the relationship it signifies. When Jill explains sharing water to Patricia Paiwonski, she describes a bond of enduring trust and partnership, with the seriousness of marriage and more besides. Mike makes clear that the water is not the essence; understanding is. Patricia is free to decline if the act conflicts with her faith or her own heart. She chooses to accept, and the three share the glass. Here growing-closer is surrounded by explicit consent and a stated commitment: the ritual matters because of the trust it makes tangible, not because the water alone creates intimacy.

The practice belongs to a wider system of formation in the Nest. Its innermost temple contains a pool where new members are received, while the circles prepare members for more committed forms of communal life. Mike may recognize someone’s readiness for sharing water before that person reaches the Seventh Circle; Sam and Ruth, for instance, were offered water soon after entering the Third. The usual progression continues through the Eighth Circle and eventually into the Ninth Circle and the Nest itself, where the whole community welcomes new brothers, often a couple. Growing-closer thus belongs both to individual relations and to a structured path into community.

From Shared Understanding to Divine Union

Smith’s understanding develops beyond the early lessons in kissing and water-sharing. As he and Jill unite, he says that they are growing closer; she has long been ready, and they approach the experience together. Their merging brings Smith close to discorporation, but Jill’s voice calls him back. In that moment she answers his words with the same recognition, and Smith concludes that they grok God. The scene gives growing-closer its most expansive meaning: intimacy becomes a shared apprehension of divinity, not simply a private sensation or a social bond.

The scene’s language links the intimate and the spiritual without making them separate stages. Their recognition of God emerges through their mutual closeness, and the exchange is reciprocal: Smith speaks, Jill answers, and his concluding statement describes their shared understanding. The experience is not conveyed as one person instructing another from a distance; both participate in the recognition.

Invitation, Community, and the Limits of Observation

Growing-closer recurs as the Nest welcomes people and teaches them how its intimacy works. At the Innermost Temple, Patricia offers Ben Caxton the choice of sharing water and growing closer or simply swimming. He declines for the moment, and she accepts that waiting is appropriate. Her invitation makes clear that participation is not compulsory simply because a person is present within the community.

During the Eighth Circle ceremony, Jill appears to the candidates as Mother Eve in a garden beside a serpent, then opens her arms to them. The first candidate approaches; Smith kisses a woman, and Jill kisses a man. Their robes vanish, after which the candidates move on toward the Eighth Circle temple. The rite stages growing-closer as a passage: candidates approach, receive an intimate welcome, and proceed into a new stage of membership. Caxton, led away before he can see the ceremony’s details, experiences the power of the scene as a vision and an invitation, but not yet as a participant in its full meaning.

The novel’s range of examples prevents the expression from collapsing into a single formula. Smith’s kiss with Jill carries a meaning he is only beginning to understand; Dorcas’s experience requires immediate reassurance and recovery; Patricia’s water-sharing with Jill and Mike depends on her freely chosen trust; and the union of Smith and Jill culminates in a shared recognition of God. Growing-closer is therefore at once bodily, relational, and spiritual, but never reducible to the gesture alone. Its defining condition is that those involved come to understand and meet one another more fully.