The Fourth Profession

beautiful with so little excuse.

She moved back by the same route, lighting the candles as she went. Finally she put the tray down, leaned across the bar and said, “I’m sorry. I can’t joke about it when I don’t know.”

“Stop worrying, will you? Whatever the Monk fed you, he was trying to help you.”

“I love you.”

“What?”

“I love you.”

“Okay. I love you too.” I use those words so seldom that they clog in my throat, as if I’m lying, even when it’s the truth. “Listen, I want to marry you. Don’t shake your head. I want to marry you.”

Our voices had dropped to whispers. In a tormented whisper, then, she said, “Not until I find out what I do, what was in the pill. Ed, I can’t trust myself until then!”

“Me too,” I said with great reluctance. “But we can’t wait. We don’t have time.”

“What?”

“That’s right, you weren’t in earshot. Sometime between three and ten years from now, the Monks may blow up our sun.”

Louise said nothing. Her forehead wrinkled.

“It depends on how much time they spend trading. If we can’t build them the launching laser, we can still con them into waiting for awhile. Monk expeditions have waited as long as…”

“Good Lord. You mean it. Is that what you and Bill were fighting over?”

“Yah.”

Louise shuddered. Even in the dimness I saw how pale she had become. And she said a strange thing.

She said, “All right, I’ll marry you.”

“Good,” I said. But I was suddenly shaking. Married. Again. Me. Louise stepped up and put her hands on my shoulders, and I kissed her.

I’d been wanting to do that for—five years? She fitted wonderfully into my arms. Her hands closed hard on the muscles of my shoulders, massaging. The tension went out of me, drained away somewhere. Married. Us. At least we could have three to ten years.

“Morris,” I said.

She drew back a little. “He can’t hold you. You haven’t done anything. Oh, I wish I knew what was in that pill I took! Suppose I’m the trained assassin?”

“Suppose I am? We’ll have to be careful of each other.”

“Oh, we know all about you. You’re a starship commander, an alien teleport and a translator for Monks.”

“And one thing more. There was a fourth profession. I took four pills last night, not three.”

“Oh? Why didn’t you tell Bill?”

“Are you kidding? Dizzy as I was last night, I probably took a course in how to lead a successful revolution. God help me if Morris found that out.”

She smiled. “Do you really think that was what it was?”

“No, of course not.”

“Why did we do it? Why did we swallow those pills? We should have known better.”

“Maybe the Monk took a pill himself. Maybe there’s a pill that teaches a Monk how to look trustworthy to a generalized alien.”

“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.