The Fourth Profession

by Larry Niven

  “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 français?”

  “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.”

  “Housewife. You're putting me on.”

  “No. You wouldn't notice the change. You never saw her before last night.”

  “Just what kind of change have you got in mind? Aside from the fact that she's beautiful, which I did notice.”

  “Yes, she is, Morris. But last night she was twenty pounds overweight. Do you think she lost it all this morning?”

  “She was too heavy. Pretty, but also pretty well padded.” Morris turned to look over his shoulder, casually turned back. “Damn. She's still well padded. Why didn't I notice before?”

  “There's another thing. By the way. Have some pizza.”

  “Thanks.” He bit into a slice. “Good, it's still hot. Well?”

  “She's been staring at that pizza for half an hour. She bought it. But she hasn't tasted it. She couldn't possibly have done that yesterday.”

  “She may have had a big breakfast.”

  “Yah.” I knew she hadn't. She'd eaten diet food. For years she'd kept a growing collection of diet food, but she'd never actively tried to survive on it before. But how could I make such a claim to Morris? I'd never even been in Louise's apartment.

  “Anything else?”

  “She's gotten good at nonverbal communication. It's a very womanly skill. She can say things just by the tone of her voice or the way she leans on an elbow or...”

  “But if mind reading is one of your new skills...”

  “Damn. Well—it used to make Louise nervous if someone touched her. And she never touched anyone else.” I felt myself flushing. I don't talk easily of personal things.

  Morris radiated skepticism. “It all sounds very subjective. In fact, it sounds like you're making yourself believe it. Frazer, why would Louise Schu want such a capsule course? Because you haven't described a housewife at all. You've described a woman looking to persuade a man to marry her.” He saw my face change. “What's wrong?”

  “Ten minutes ago we decided to get married.”

  “Congratulations,” Morris said, and waited.

  “All right, you win. Until ten minutes ago we'd never even kissed. I'd never made a pass, or vice versa. No, damn it, I don't believe it! I know she loves me; I ought to!”

  “I don't deny it,” Morris said quietly. “That would be why she took the pill. It must have been strong stuff, too, Frazer. We looked up some of your history. You're marriage shy.”

  It was true enough. I said, “If she loved me before, I never knew it. I wonder how a Monk could know.”

  “How would he know about such a skill at all? Why would he have the pill on him? Come on, Frazer, you're the Monk expert!”

  “He'd have to learn from human beings. Maybe by interviews, maybe by—well, the Monks can map an alien memory into a computer space, then interview that. They may have done that with some of your diplomats.”

  “Oh, great.”

  Louise appeared with an order. I made the drinks and set them on her tray. She winked and walked away, swaying deliciously, followed by many eyes.

  “Morris. Most of your diplomats, the ones who deal with the Monks, they're men, aren't they?”

  “Most of them. Why?”

  “Just a thought.”

  It was a difficult thought, hard to grasp. It was only that the changes in Louise had been all to the good from a man's point of view. The Monks
must have interviewed many men. Well, why not? It would make her more valuable to the man she caught—or to the lucky man who caught her...

  “Got it.”

  Morris looked up quickly. “Well?”

  “Falling in love with me was part of her pill learning. A set. They made a guinea pig of her.”

  “I wondered what she saw in you.” Morris's grin faded. “You're serious. Frazer, that still doesn't answer...”

  “It's a slave indoctrination course. It makes a woman love the first man she sees, permanently, and it trains her to be valuable to him. The Monks were going to make them in quantity and sell them to men.”

  Morris thought it over. Presently he said, “That's awful. What'll we do?”

  “Well, we can't tell her she's been made into a domestic slave! Morris, I'll try to get a memory eraser pill. If I can't—I'll marry her, I guess. Don't look at me that way,” I said, low and fierce. “I didn't do it. And I can't desert her now!”

  “I know. It's just—oh, put gin in the next one.”

  “Don't look now,” I said.

  In the glass of the door there was darkness and motion. A hooded shape, shadow-on-shadow, supernatural, a human silhouette twisted out of true...

  * * * *

  He came gliding in with the hem of his robe just brushing the floor. Nothing was to be seen of him but his flowing gray robe, the darkness in the hood and the shadow where his robe parted. The real estate men broke off their talk of land and stared, popeyed, and one of them reached for his heart attack pills.

  The Monk drifted toward me like a vengeful ghost. He took the stool we had saved him at one end of the bar.

  It wasn't the same Monk.

  In all respects he matched the Monk who had been here the last two nights. Louise and Morris must have been fooled completely. But it wasn't the same Monk.

  “Good evening,” I said.

  He gave an equivalent greeting in the whispered Monk language. His translator was half on, translating my words into a Monk whisper, but letting his own speech alone. He said, “I believe we should begin with the Rock and Rye.”

  I turned to pour. The small of my back itched with danger.

  When I turned back with the shot glass in my hand, he was holding a fist-sized tool that must have come out of his robe. It looked like a flattened softball, grooved deeply for five Monk claws, with two parallel tubes poking out in my direction. Lenses glinted in the ends of the tubes.

  “Do you know this tool? It is a...” and he named it.

  I knew the name. It was a beaming tool, a multi-frequency laser. One tube locked on the target; thereafter the aim was maintained by tiny flywheels in the body of the device.

  Morris had seen it. He didn't recognize it, and he didn't know what to do about it, and I had no way to signal him.

  “I know that tool,” I confirmed.

  “You must take two of these pills.” The Monk had them ready in another hand. They were small and pink and triangular. He said, “I must be convinced that you have taken them. Otherwise you must take more than two. An overdose may affect your natural memory. Come closer.”

  I came closer. Every man and woman in the Long Spoon was staring at us, and each was afraid to move. Any kind of signal would have trained four guns on the Monk. And I'd be fried dead by a narrow beam of X-rays.

  The Monk reached out with a third hand/foot/claw. He closed the fingers/toes around my throat, not hard enough to strangle me, but hard enough.

  Morris was cursing silently, helplessly. I could feel the agony in his soul.

  The Monk whispered, “You know of the trigger mechanism. If my hand should relax now, the device will fire. Its target is yourself. If you can prevent four government agents from attacking me, you should do so.”

  I made a palm-up gesture toward Morris. Don't do anything. He caught it and nodded very slightly without looking at me.

  “You can read minds,” I said.

  “Yes,” said the Monk—and I knew instantly what he was hiding. He could read everybody's mind, except mine.

  So much for Morris's little games of deceit. But the Monk could not read my mind, and I could see into his own soul.

  And, reading his alien soul, I saw that I would die if I did not swallow the pills.

  I placed the pink pills on my tongue, one at a time, and swallowed them dry. They went down hard. Morris watched it happen and could do nothing. The Monk felt them going down my throat, little lumps moving past his finger.

  And when the pills had passed across the Monk's finger, I worked a miracle.

  “Your pill-induced memories and skills will be gone within two hours,” said the Monk. He picked up the shot glass of Rock and Rye and moved it into his hood. When it reappeared it was half empty.

  I asked, “Why have you robbed me of my knowledge?”

  “You never paid for it.”

  “But it was freely given.”

  “It was given by one who had no right,” said the Monk. He was thinking about leaving. I had to do something. I knew now, because I had reasoned it out with great care, that the Monk was involved in an evil enterprise. But he must stay to hear me or I could not convince him.

  Even then, it wouldn't be easy. He was a Monk crewman. His ethical attitudes had entered his brain through an RNA pill, along with his professional skills.

  “You have spoken of rights,” I said. In Monk. “Let us discuss rights.” The whispery words buzzed oddly in my throat; they tickled; but my ears told me they were coming out right.

  The Monk was startled. “I was told that you had been taught our speech, but not that you could speak it.”

  “Were you told what pill I was given?”

  “A language pill. I had not known that he carried one in his case.”

  “He did not finish his tasting of the alcohols of Earth. Will you have another drink?”

  I felt him guess at my motives, and guess wrong. He thought I was taking advantage of his curiosity to sell him my wares for cash. And what had he to fear from me? Whatever mental powers I had learned from Monk pills, they would be gone in two hours.

  I set a shot glass before him. I asked him, “How do you feel about launching lasers?”

  * * * *

  The discussion became highly technical. “Let us take a special case,” I remember saying. “Suppose a culture has been capable of starflight for some sixty-fours of years—or even for eights of times that long. Then an asteroid slams into a major ocean, precipitates an ice age...” It had happened once, and well he knew it. “A natural disaster can't spell the difference between sentience and non-sentience, can it? Not unless it affects brain tissue directly.”

  At first it was his curiosity that held him. Later it was me. He couldn't tear himself loose. He never thought of it. He was a sailship crewman, and he was cold sober, and he argued with the frenzy of an evangelist.

  “Then take the general case,” I remember saying. “A world that cannot build a launching laser is a world of animals, yes? And Monks themselves can revert to animal.”

  Yes, he knew that.

  “Then build your own launching laser. If you cannot, then your ship is captained and crewed by animals.”

  At the end I was doing all the talking. All in the whispery Monk tongue, whose sounds are so easily distinguished that even I, warping a human throat to my will, need only whisper. It was a good thing. I seemed to have been eating used razor blades.

  Morris guessed right. He did not interfere. I could tell him nothing, not if I had had the power, not by word or gesture or mental contact. The Monk would read Morris's mind. But Morris sat quietly drinking his tonic-and-tonics, waiting for something to happen, while I argued in whispers with the Monk.

  “But the ship!” he whispered. “What of the ship?” His agony was mine; for the ship must be protected...

  At one fifteen the Monk had progressed halfway across the bottom row of bottles. He slid from the stool, paid for his drinks in one-dollar bills, and drifted to th
e door and out.

  All he needed was a scythe and hour glass, I thought, watching him go. And what I needed was a long morning's sleep. And I wasn't going to get it.

  “Be sure nobody stops him,” I told Morris.

  “Nobody will. But he'll be followed.”

  “No point. The Garment to Wear Among Strangers is a lot of things. It's bracing; it helps the Monk hold human shape. It's a shield and an air filter. And it's a cloak of invisibility.”

  “Oh?”

  “I'll tell you about it if I have time. That's how he got out here, probably. One of the crewmen divided, and then one stayed and one walked. He had two weeks.”

  Morris stood up and tore off his sport jacket. His shirt was wet through. He said, “What about a stomach pump for you?”

  “No good. Most of the RNA-enzyme must be in my blood by now. You'll be better off if you spend your time getting down everything I can remember about Monks, while I can remember anything at all. It'll be nine or ten hours before everything goes.” Which was a flat-out lie, of course.

  “Okay. Let me get the dictaphone going again.”

  “It'll cost you money.”

  Morris suddenly had a hard look. “Oh? How much?”

  I'd thought about that most carefully. “One hundred thousand dollars. And if you're thinking of arguing me down, remember whose time we're wasting.”

  “I wasn't.” He was, but he'd changed his mind.

  “Good. We'll transfer the money now, while I can still read your mind.”

  “All right.”

  He offered to make room for me in the booth, but I declined. The glass wouldn't stop me from reading Morris's soul.

  He came out silent; for there was something he was afraid to know. Then: “What about the Monks? What about our sun?”

  “I talked that one around. That's why I don't want him molested. He'll convince others.”

  “Talked him around? How?”

  “It wasn't easy.” And suddenly I would have given my soul to sleep. “The profession pill put it in his genes; he must protect the ship. It's in me too. I know how strong it is.”

  “Then...”

  “Don't be an ass, Morris. The ship's perfectly safe where it is, in orbit around the Moon. A sailship's only in danger when it's between stars, far from help.”