Miriam

Miriam, the red-haired secretary in Jubal Harshaw’s household, is more than a member of his staff: she cooks, manages the table’s serving machinery, cares for visitors, and stands ready to support the people bound to the household by friendship and shared water. Her quick, irreverent exchanges with Harshaw coexist with practical hospitality and religious openness. Late in the story, her Arabic studies are revealed as preparation for marriage to Mahmoud, while her household’s future expands to include children.

Identity and place in the household

Miriam is identified as the redhead among Harshaw’s three secretaries, alongside Anne and Dorcas. The women differ in appearance and temperament, but the household treats them as a close-knit group rather than as employees defined by formal titles. At dinner, Miriam is already seated at the foot of the table after preparing the meal, and she operates the controls directing the serving machines. The food is excellent, and Jill is made welcome in the lively, irreverent company.

The household’s domestic labor is both capable and conspicuous. Harshaw complains about the meal, and Anne recognizes that his criticism invokes his mother’s cooking. When the women respond by carrying him out of the dining room and into the pool, Miriam returns without fuss and offers Jill more salad. Harshaw later reappears in his robe and resumes eating from the plate the machine has kept covered. The incident establishes the familiar balance between his theatrical complaints and the women’s ability to answer them on their own terms.

Miriam’s place is not limited to food and service. During a tense arrival at the pool, she is among the household members watching Harshaw and prepared to help him. Mike senses that her concern falls between Dorcas’s uncertainty and Larry’s confidence, and recognizes that Miriam, like the others, is a water brother of Harshaw and therefore connected to him as well. This realization changes Mike’s understanding of the bonds already present around him: the household’s solidarity is not merely a matter of living together.

Care, work, and mutual belonging

Miriam repeatedly takes part in looking after others. When Jill arrives frightened and crying, Harshaw directs Miriam and Dorcas to care for her, give her a drink, and wash her face. Later, when the household gathers for a family picnic, Miriam is part of the warm hospitality that helps make the gathering easy and informal. She is also physically present in the everyday care of visitors: on one occasion, she rubs Mahmoud’s back while Dorcas rubs his head, and he remains among the household’s guests even when Harshaw is away.

Her familiarity with Harshaw allows her to speak with an ease that outsiders may misread. Mahmoud initially notices her casual disrespect toward her employer, but recognizes it as liberty permitted within the privacy of the home. The freedom runs both ways: Harshaw can tease and complain, while Miriam can answer without behaving as though every exchange were a formal workplace interaction. Her household role combines practical work with membership in a community whose closeness is expressed through teasing, food, hospitality, and physical presence.

Miriam also acts beyond the domestic sphere. At a Federation meeting, Harshaw entrusts her with a letter for Douglas and insists that she deliver it personally and return with a receipt. The task is urgent: Harshaw wants Douglas to read the letter before the meeting. Miriam has the letter, and Harshaw signs and thumbprints its envelope before giving it to Bradley for delivery. Her participation places her in the practical chain of action through which Harshaw pursues his political aims, rather than leaving her only at home as an observer.

Religious exchange and Mike’s water brotherhood

Miriam’s bond with Mike is expressed directly through the household’s water ceremony. After Jill drinks, Miriam tells her to pull herself together, then welcomes Mike as a brother through water. She adds a greeting to Mahmoud about nest, water, and life, drinks, and offers the glass onward. The gesture joins the personal care she has shown Jill to a shared ritual of kinship: hospitality becomes an explicit bond.

Mahmoud answers in Arabic with a religious saying about mingling one’s affairs with others and recognizing them as brothers. Harshaw agrees. The scene brings different traditions into the same act without making them identical. Miriam participates in the Martian-inflected water brotherhood while also sharing the Muslim household’s language and religious conversation. Her later study of Arabic makes this cultural connection more than a passing courtesy.

Religious discussion is part of the household’s ongoing conversation. When Dorcas asks Harshaw whether he knows women have souls, he replies with surprise, and Dorcas explains that the claim comes from Mahmoud. Mahmoud’s account of the afterlife prompts him to wonder whether he could have died on Mars and awakened in what appears to him like Paradise: a garden, abundant food and drink, and the women of Harshaw’s household. Miriam is present in this exchange, which playfully reveals how the household can become a setting where theological claims, hospitality, and domestic familiarity meet. The scene also makes clear that the women are not simply props in the men’s discussion: Miriam answers Harshaw’s religious speculation sharply when he suggests that the women may not have souls, and Mahmoud tries to calm her.

Marriage, Arabic, and the household’s future

Harshaw later tells Ben that two secretaries are pregnant and one is getting married. He stresses that the women are pleased and have not been trapped or caught; they have chosen their circumstances and are happy with them. The news unsettles his work routine, since he depends on his secretaries and anticipates the practical changes that pregnancies and marriage will bring. Yet he also says that the women are people he loves and that he does not want to lose them if he can persuade them to stay.

The identity of the bride becomes a small test of how well Ben understands the household. Ben guesses at the secretaries, but Harshaw points out that Miriam is the one studying Arabic intensely so that she can do it properly. He then identifies the prospective groom as Mahmoud, whom he calls their water brother, and says he has insisted that Mahmoud and his wife live at the house whenever they are in the country. Mahmoud, Harshaw adds, had already reminded him that Harshaw had invited him to live there permanently. Miriam’s language study thus signals a chosen marriage and a shared future rooted in the same home where her work and friendships have developed.

The news also gives fresh meaning to Miriam’s earlier religious and linguistic exchanges with Mahmoud. Her use of Arabic is not merely an accommodation for a guest: she is preparing to enter a marriage across cultural and religious difference. The evidence does not elaborate on the details of that future, but Harshaw’s invitation and the household’s established welcome make clear that the relationship is expected to remain connected to the community.

Character and narrative significance

Miriam’s characterization rests on a recurring conjunction: she is a capable worker, an irreverent member of Harshaw’s household, and an active participant in a chosen network of kinship. The novel shows these qualities in concrete actions—cooking, operating the serving controls, tending to visitors, delivering an urgent letter, and sharing water—rather than by presenting her through a separate account of her ambitions. Her fluency in domestic life becomes a form of agency within the household, where closeness allows her to answer Harshaw and where her labor is recognized as essential.

Her marriage plans and the pregnancies in the household mark a change in the balance Harshaw has long relied on. He worries about losing essential secretaries and about the disruption to his work, but his concern is inseparable from affection: he regards the women as family and wants them to remain. Miriam’s future therefore reveals both the limits and the durability of the household’s arrangement. It may become less orderly and less convenient for Harshaw, yet its bonds are strong enough to accommodate new commitments. Through Miriam, the domestic setting is shown not as a static refuge but as a community continually reshaped by care, belief, work, and chosen kinship.