Becky Vesant

Becky Vesant is an astrologer and skilled performer whose practical intelligence and personal ties connect Jubal Harshaw’s circle to the political and religious currents surrounding Valentine Michael Smith. She calls Jubal after watching his public performance, recognizes how expertly he has managed its risks, and becomes the person he turns to when he needs astrological cover for a consequential financial arrangement. Her presence also reaches indirectly into his later encounter with Supreme Bishop Digby: Digby’s charm reminds Jubal of Becky’s late husband, Professor Simon Magus. Though the excerpts offer only brief direct scenes with Becky, they place her at the intersection of performance, personal loyalty, and the novel’s wider account of religious authority.

Identity and Character

Becky is addressed both as Becky and Madame Vesant. The narrative presents her as familiar with performance and public persuasion: she has watched Jubal’s act and can assess not merely that it succeeded, but how he controlled its timing. Her astrological practice is also part of her professional role. When Jubal asks whether the stars would favor completing a matter that day, she does not immediately pronounce an answer; she says she can look into it. This exchange presents her as both a consultant with a recognizable public identity and a person whose judgment Jubal trusts enough to involve in important business.

Her relationship with Jubal is easy and long-standing enough for teasing and warmth. He greets her with open pleasure, offers her hospitality, and speaks of her as someone he wants to have stay with his household. His playful description of the young man there as peculiar but sweet is an invitation to meet Valentine Michael Smith, not a formal introduction to a stranger. The exchange makes clear that Becky belongs within Jubal’s circle of personal confidence, even though the available scenes do not detail the full history of their acquaintance.

The Call and Jubal’s Financial Arrangement

Becky calls after seeing Jubal’s public performance and tells him she had to congratulate him. She praises the way he redirected attention and completed his maneuver before the people involved understood what had happened. Her response is not generic applause: she identifies the performance as a successful piece of professional misdirection and credits Jubal with exceptional persuasive ability. The call therefore confirms that his public act has reached an observer capable of judging its mechanics.

Jubal immediately turns the conversation toward payment. He acknowledges that Becky helped set up the act and says he has benefited from it; he offers to name and pay her fee, deciding that he would double whatever amount she requested. He wants to settle the obligation generously rather than leave it outstanding. In his thinking, this payment can come from the drawing account he demanded for Mike and will not materially affect it. The moment shows how Jubal converts a debt of personal gratitude into a deliberate financial decision, while also revealing that he considers Becky’s contribution valuable enough to compensate lavishly.

Becky responds that his offer has hurt her feelings, resisting the assumption that her call and praise are simply a billable service. Jubal counters with affectionate teasing, distinguishing applause from a meaningful reward and insisting that the Man from Mars can afford the tab. He promises that what he himself will give her is thanks and an embrace when they meet. The exchange leaves both sides visible: Jubal wants a clean settlement, but his affection and gratitude exceed the transaction; Becky’s protest suggests that their connection cannot be reduced to payment.

Astrology, Hospitality, and Trust

When Becky explains that she cannot come over because she has promised to remain available to an important client, Jubal asks whether the stars might indicate that a matter should be completed, signed, sealed, and notarized that day—perhaps after the market closes. His indirect approach makes the practical objective legible without turning the call into a plain business instruction. Becky considers the request and agrees to investigate. The passage establishes her as a potential participant in Jubal’s effort to bring an arrangement to completion, although it does not state the result of her astrological inquiry.

Jubal also invites her to visit and stay as long as she likes, assuring her that she need not dress uncomfortably while there. The offer follows his attempt to pay her and his joke about the money, but it carries a different kind of value: he wants her among the people of his household, not merely available as a professional contact. Becky says she will come as soon as she can. The call ends on that promise, and Jubal returns to the immediate matter of Smith’s examination by Dr. Nelson. Becky’s part in the episode is brief, yet it helps reveal the ordinary network of friendship and professional assistance that Jubal mobilizes around the extraordinary political crisis.

Professor Simon Magus and Digby

Becky’s late husband, Professor Simon Magus, enters the narrative through Jubal’s response to Digby, the Supreme Bishop. When Digby welcomes Smith and speaks warmly to Jill and Jubal, Jubal studies the new church leader’s manner. Digby’s friendly, practiced charm reminds him of a used-car salesman, but then of someone more personally familiar: Simon Magus, whom Jubal remembers as a likable scoundrel. That association relaxes Jubal and makes him feel friendlier toward Digby.

The resemblance does not establish that Digby and Simon share a specific history or role; it records Jubal’s subjective impression. Becky’s connection to Simon matters because the memory gives Jubal a human frame for interpreting a religious leader whose public manner might otherwise make him guarded. Digby’s social ease becomes familiar by way of a man Jubal knew through Becky, linking her personal past to Jubal’s judgment in the present.

The Larger Religious Context

The narrative’s account of Fosterism situates Becky’s world in a society where public religious respectability coexists with suppressed desire and intense fascination with sexuality. Reverend Foster’s talent is described as an instinct for the culture’s divided character, as well as a magnetic personality that critics sometimes called hypnotic. He built an organization that combined methods borrowed from fraternal orders, Catholicism, political movements, and advertising, presenting its doctrines as a return to primitive Christianity. This history helps explain why performance and persuasion recur as more than personal talents in the novel: they are also instruments by which religious authority is made persuasive and organized.

Fosterism is described as layered. An outer church permits people to remain seekers while receiving some benefits; a middle church gathers the saved into a public religious community supported by tithes and commercial connections; and an unnamed Inner Church holds the dedicated leaders, keepers of records and keys, and custodians of policy. Foster selected its members carefully, and married candidates had to be accepted as couples. These details are not facts about Becky’s own membership or status. Rather, they establish the institutional background against which the novel’s religious and social networks operate, including the prominent place of public personality, organized affiliation, and intimate trust.

Performance and Institutional Change

The later account of the Church of All Worlds shows a different organization adapting to public pressure. Patty says she teaches beginner classes in Martian and helps novitiate brothers, while she and Dawn work to persuade Fosterites that joining the new church need not conflict with their existing faith. She explains the significance of Foster’s kiss and its companion mark from Mike, which can encourage Fosterites who have witnessed his miracles to undertake the work of advancing through the church’s circles.

Mike’s public meetings also combine performance with recruitment. He uses carnival-trained magic and comic patter to entertain an audience, presents limited miracles, and invites those who want to learn more to enter a circle. The organization is described as having nine circles; its leaders assess visitors and decide who may be suitable for further instruction. This later development echoes the novel’s earlier attention to the reading and directing of an audience—precisely the kind of skill Becky recognizes in Jubal’s performance—while giving that skill a new institutional setting.

Under pressure, the congregation expects to close and reopen under other names and in other places, building a disciplined core that can endure repeated persecution. Sam describes the Church of All Worlds as having grown from a small beginning, with only a few untrained priestesses, into a solid Nest and a wider body of advanced pilgrims. The account does not identify Becky as a participant in these developments. Her significance remains rooted in the earlier scenes: a trusted consultant whose professional judgment, warmth, and connection to Simon Magus illuminate the social world from which the novel’s later struggles over charisma and religious organization emerge.