“I did trust him,” said Louise. “I remember. He seemed so sympathetic. Would he really blow up our sun?”
“He really would.”
“That fourth pill. Maybe it taught you a way to stop him.”
“Let’s see. We know I took a linguistics course, a course in teleportation for Martians, and a course in how to fly a light-sail ship. On that basis … I probably changed my mind and took a karate course for worms.”
“It wouldn’t hurt you, at least. Relax… Ed, if you remember taking the pills, why don’t you remember what was in them?”
“But I don’t. I don’t remember anything.”
“How do you know you took four, then?”
“Here.” I reached in my pocket and pulled out the scrap of Monk cellophane. And knew immediately that there was something in it. Something hard and round.
We were staring at it when Morris came back.
“I must have cleverly put it in my pocket,” I told them. “Sometime last night, when I was feeling sneaky enough to steal from a Monk.”
Morris turned the pill like a precious jewel in his fingers. Pale blue it was, marked on one side with a burnt orange triangle. “I don’t know whether to get it analyzed or take it myself, now. We need a miracle. Maybe this will tell us—”
“Forget it. I wasn’t clever enough to remember how fast a Monk pill deteriorates. The wrapping’s torn. That pill has been bad for at least twelve hours.”
Morris said a dirty thing.
“Analyze it,” I said. “You’ll find RNA, and you may even be able to tell what the Monks use as a matrix. Most of the memories are probably intact. But don’t swallow the damn thing. It’ll scramble your brains. All it takes is a few random changes in a tiny percentage of the RNA.”
“We don’t have time to send it to Douglass tonight. Can we put it in the freezer?”
“Good. Give it here.”
I dropped the pill in a sandwich-size plastic Baggy, sucked the air out the top, tied the end, and dropped it in the freezer. Vacuum and cold would help preserve the thing. It was something I should have done last night.
“So much for miracles,” Morris said bitterly. “Let’s get down to business. We’ll have several men outside the place tonight, and a few more in here. You won’t know who they are, but go ahead and guess if you like. A lot of your customers will be turned away tonight. They’ll be told to watch the newspapers if they want to know why. I hope it won’t cost you too much business.”
“It may make our fortune. We’ll be famous. Were you maybe doing the same thing last night?”
“Yes. We didn’t want the place too crowded. The Monks might not like autograph hounds.”
“So that’s why the place was half empty.”
Morris looked at his watch. “Opening time. Are we ready?”
“Take a seat at the bar. And look nonchalant, dammit.”
Louise went to turn on the lights.
Morris took a seat to one side of the middle. One big square hand was closed very tightly on the bar edge. “Another gin and tonic. Weak. After that one, leave out the gin.”
“Right.”
“Nonchalant. Why should I be nonchalant? Frazer, I had to tell the President of the United States of America that the end of the world is coming unless he does something. I had to talk to him myself!”
“Did he buy it?”
“I hope so. He was so goddam calm and reassuring, I wanted to scream at him. God, Frazer, what if we can’t build the laser? What if we try and fail?”
I gave him a very old and classic answer. “Stupidity is always a capital crime.”
He screamed in my face. “Damn you and your supercilious attitude and your murdering monsters too!” The next second he was ice-water calm. “Never mind, Frazer. You’re thinking like a starship captain.”
“I’m what?”
“A starship captain has to be able to make a sun go nova to save the ship. You can’t help it. It was in the pill.”
Damn, he was right. I could feel that he was right. The pill had warped my way of thinking. Blowing up the sun that warms another race had to be immoral. Didn’t it?
I couldn’t trust my own sense of right and wrong!
Four men came in and took one of the bigger tables. Morris’s men? No. Real estate men, here to do business.
“Something’s been bothering me,” said Morris. He grimaced. “Among all the things that have been ruining my composure, such as the impending end of the world, there was one thing that kept nagging at me.”
I set his gin-and-tonic in front of him. He tasted it and said, “Fine. And I finally realized what it was, waiting there in the phone booth for a chain of human snails to put the President on. Frazer, are you a college man?”
“No. Webster High.”
“See, you don’t really talk like a bartender. You use big words.”
“I do?”
“Sometimes. And you talked about ‘suns exploding,’ but you knew what I meant when I said ‘nova.’ You talked about ‘H-bomb power,’ but you knew what fusion was.”
“Sure.”
“I got the possibly silly impression that you were learning the words the instant I said them. Parlez-vous francais?”
“No. I don’t speak any foreign languages.”
“None at all?”
“Nope. What do you think they teach at Webster High?”
“Je parle la langue un peu, Frazer. Et tu?”
“Merde de cochon! Morris, je vous dit—oops.”
He didn’t give me a chance to think it over. He said, “What’s fanac?”
My head had that clogged feeling again. I said, “Might be anything. Putting out a zine, writing to the lettercol, helping put on a Con—Morris, what is this?”
“That language course was more extensive than we thought.”
“Sure as hell, it was. I just remembered. Those women on the cleaning team were speaking Spanish, but I understood them.”
“Spanish, French, Monkish, technical languages, even fannish. What you got was a generalized course in how to understand languages the instant you hear them. I don’t see how it could work without telepathy.”
“Reading minds? Maybe.” Several times today, it had felt like I was guessing with too much certainty at somebody’s private thoughts.
“Can you read my mind?”
“That’s not quite it. I get the feel of how you think, not what you’re thinking. Morris, I don’t like the idea of being a political prisoner.”
“Well, we can talk that over later.” When my bargaining position is better, Morris meant. When I don’t need the bartender’s good will to con the Monk. “What’s important is that you might be able to read a Monk’s mind. That could be crucial.”
“And maybe he can read mine. And yours.”
I let Morris sweat over that one while I set drinks on Louise’s tray. Already there were customers at four tables. The Long Spoon was filling rapidly and only two of them were Secret Service.
Morris said, “Any ideas on what Louise Schu ate last night? We’ve got your professions pretty well pegged down. Finally.”
“I’ve got an idea. It’s kind of vague.” I looked around. Louise was taking more orders. “Sheer guesswork, in fact. Will you keep it to yourself for awhile?”
“Don’t tell Louise? Sure—for awhile.”
I made four drinks and Louise took them away. I told Morris, “I have a profession in mind. It doesn’t have a simple one or two word name, like teleport or starship captain or translator. There’s no reason why it should, is there? We’re dealing with aliens.”
Morris sipped at his drink. Waiting.
“Being a woman,” I said, “can be a profession, in a way that being a man can never be. The word is housewife, but it doesn’t cover all of it. Not nearly.”