“You don’t remember how many pills you took?”
I shook my head. Maybe the motion jarred something loose. “That bottle of little triangular pills. I know what they were. Memory erasers.”
“Good God! You didn’t—”
“No, no, Morris. They don’t erase your whole memory. They erase pill memories. The RNA in a Monk memory pill is tagged somehow, so that the eraser pill can pick it out and break it down.”
Morris gaped. Presently he said, “That’s incredible. The education pills are wild enough, but that—You see what they must do, don’t you? They hang a radical on each and every RNA molecule in each and every education pill. The active principle in the eraser pill is an enzyme for just that radical.”
He saw my expression and said, “Never mind, just take my word for it. They must have had the education pills for a hundred years before they worked out the eraser principle.”
“Probably. The pills must be very old.”
He pounced. “How do you know that?”
“The name for the pill has only one syllable, like fork. There are dozens of words for kinds of pill reflexes, for swallowing the wrong pill, for side effects depending on what species is taking the pill. There’s a special word for an animal training pill, and another one for a slave training pill. Morris, I think my memory is beginning to settle down.”
“Good!”
“Anyway, the Monks must have been peddling pills to aliens for thousands of years. I’d guess tens of thousands.”
“Just how many kinds of pill were in that case?”
I tried to remember. My head felt congested. “I don’t know if there was more than one of each kind of pill. There were four stiff flaps like the leaves of a book and each flap had rows of little pouches with a pill in each one. The flaps were maybe sixteen pouches long by eight across. Maybe. Morris, we ought to call Louise. She probably remembers better than I do, even if she noticed less at the time.”
“You mean Louise Schu, the barmaid? She might at that. Or she might jar something loose in your memory.”
“Right.”
“Call her. Tell her we’ll meet her. Where’s she live, Santa Monica?”
He’d done his homework, all right.
Her phone was still ringing when Morris said, “Wait a minute. Tell her we’ll meet her at the Long Spoon. And tell her we’ll pay her amply for her trouble.”
Then Louise answered and told me I’d jarred her out of a sound sleep, and I told her she’d be paid amply for her trouble, and she said what the hell kind of a crack was that?
After I hung up I asked, “Why the Long Spoon?”
“I’ve thought of something. I was one of the last customers out last night. I don’t think you cleaned up.”
“I was feeling peculiar. We cleaned up a little, I think.”
“Did you empty the wastebaskets?”
“We don’t usually. There’s a guy who comes in in the morning and mops the floor and empties the wastebaskets and so forth. The trouble is, he’s been home with flu the last couple of days. Louise and I have been going early.”
“Good. Get dressed, Frazer. We’ll go down to the Long Spoon and count the pieces of Monk cellophane in the wastebaskets. They shouldn’t be too hard to identify. They’ll tell us how many pills you took.”
###
I noticed it while I was dressing. Morris’s attitude had changed subtly. He had become proprietary. He tended to stand closer to me, as if someone might try to steal me, or as if I might try to steal away.
Imagination, maybe. But I began to wish I didn’t know so much about Monks.
I stopped to empty the percolator before leaving. Habit. Every afternoon I put the percolator in the dishwasher before I leave. When I come home at three a.m. it’s ready to load.
I poured out the dead coffee, took the machine apart, and stared.
The grounds in the top were fresh coffee, barely damp from steam. They hadn’t been used yet.
###
There was another Secret Service man outside my door, a tall Midwesterner with a toothy grin. His name was George Littleton. He spoke not a word after Bill Morris introduced us, probably because I looked like I’d bite him.
I would have. My balance nagged me like a sore tooth. I couldn’t forget it for an instant.
Going down in the elevator, I could feel the universe shifting around me. There seemed to be a four-dimensional map in my head, with me in the center and the rest of the universe traveling around me at various changing velocities.
The car we used was a Lincoln Continental. George drove. My map became three times as active, recording every touch of brake and accelerator.
“We’re putting you on salary,” said Morris, “if that’s agreeable. You know more about Monks than any living man. We’ll class you as a consultant and pay you a thousand dollars a day to put down all you remember about Monks.”
“I’d want the right to quit whenever I think I’m mined out.”
“That seems all right,” said Morris. He was lying. They would keep me just as long as they felt like it. But there wasn’t a thing I could do about it at the moment. I didn’t even know what made me so sure.
So I asked, “What about Louise?”
“She spent most of her time waiting on tables, as I remember. She won’t know much. We’ll pay her a thousand a day for a couple of days. Anyway, for today, whether she knows anything or not.”
“Okay,” I said, and tried to settle back.
“You’re the valuable one, Frazer. You’ve been fantastically lucky. That Monk language pill is going to give us a terrific advantage whenever we deal with Monks. They’ll have to learn about us. We’ll know about them already. Frazer, what does a Monk look like under the cowl and robe?”
“Not human,” I said. “They only stand upright to make us feel at ease. And there’s a swelling along one side that looks like equipment under the robe, but it isn’t. It’s part of the digestive system. And the head is as big as a basketball, but it’s half hollow.”
“They’re natural quadrupeds?”
“Yah. Four-footed, but climbers. The animal they evolved from lives in forests of plants that look like giant dandelions. They can throw rocks with any foot. They’re still around on Center; that’s the home planet. You’re not writing this down.”
“There’s a tape recorder going.”
“Really?” I’d been kidding.
“You’d better believe it. We can use anything you happen to remember. We still don’t even know how your Monk got out here to California.”
My Monk, forsooth.
“They briefed me pretty quickly yesterday. Did I tell you? I was visiting my parents in Carmel when my supervisor called me yesterday morning. Ten hours later I knew just about everything anyone knows about Monks. Except you, Frazer.
“Up until yesterday we thought that every Monk on Earth was either in the United Nations Building or aboard the Monk ground-to-orbit ship.
“We’ve been in that ship, Frazer. Several men have been through it, all trained astronauts wearing lunar exploration suits. Six Monks landed on Earth—unless more were hiding somewhere aboard the ground-to-orbit ship. Can you think of any reason why they should do that?”
“No.”
“Neither can anyone else. And there are six Monks accounted for this morning. All in New York. Your Monk went home last night.”
That jarred me. “How?”
“We don’t know. We’re checking plane flights, silly as that sounds. Wouldn’t you think a stewardess would notice a Monk on her flight? Wouldn’t you think she’d go to the newspapers?”
“Sure.”
“We’re also checking flying saucer sightings.”
I laughed. But by now that sounded logical.
“If that doesn’t pan out, we’ll be seriously considering teleportation. Would you—”
“That’s it,” I said without surprise. It had come the way a memory comes, from the back of my mind, as if it
had always been there. “He gave me a teleportation pill. That’s why I’ve got absolute direction. To teleport I’ve got to know where in the universe I am.”
Morris got bug-eyed. “You can teleport?”
“Not from a speeding car,” I said with reflexive fear. “That’s death. I’d keep the velocity.”
“Oh.” He was edging away as if I had sprouted horns.
More memory floated up, and I said, “Humans can’t teleport anyway. That pill was for another market.”
Morris relaxed. “You might have said that right away.”
“I only just remembered.”
“Why did you take it, if it’s for aliens?”
“Probably for the location talent. I don’t remember. I used to get lost pretty easily. I never will again. Morris, I’d be safer on a high wire than you’d be crossing a street with the Walk sign.”
“Could that have been your ‘something unusual’?”
“Maybe,” I said. At the same time I was somehow sure that it wasn’t.
###
Louise was in the dirt parking lot next to the Long Spoon. She was getting out of her Mustang when we pulled up. She waved an arm like a semaphore and walked briskly toward us, already talking. “Alien creatures in the Long Spoon, forsooth!” I’d taught her that word. “Ed, I keep telling you the customers aren’t human. Hello, are you Mr. Morris? I remember you. You were in last night. You had four drinks. All night.”
Morris smiled. “Yes, but I tipped big. Call me Bill, okay?”
Louise Schu was a cheerful blonde, by choice, not birth. She’d been working in the Long Spoon for five years now. A few of my regulars knew my name; but they all knew hers.
Louise’s deadliest enemy was the extra twenty pounds she carried as padding. She had been dieting for some decades. Two years back she had gotten serious about it and stopped cheating. She was mean for the next several months. But, clawing and scratching and half-starved every second, she had worked her way down to 125 pounds. She threw a terrific celebration that night and—to hear her tell it afterward—ate her way back to 145 in a single night.
Padding or not, she’d have made someone a wonderful wife. I’d thought of marrying her myself. But my marriage had been too little fun, and was too recent, and the divorce had hurt too much. And the alimony. The alimony was why I was living in a cracker box, and also the reason I couldn’t afford to get married again.
While Louise was opening up, Morris bought a paper from the coin rack.
The Long Spoon was a mess. Louise and I had cleaned off the tables and collected the dirty glasses and emptied the ashtrays into waste bins. But the collected glasses were still dirty and the waste bins were still full.
Morris began spreading newspaper over an area of floor.
And I stopped with my hand in my pocket.
Littleton came out from behind the bar, hefting both of the waste bins. He spilled one out onto the newspaper, then the other. He and Morris began spreading the trash apart.
My fingertips were brushing a scrap of Monk cellophane.
I’d worn these pants last night, under the apron.
Some impulse kept me from yelling out. I brought my hand out of my pocket, empty. Louise had gone to help the others sift the trash with their fingers. I joined them.
Presently Morris said, “Four. I hope that’s all. We’ll search the bar too.”
And I thought: Five.
And I thought: I learned five new professions last night. What are the odds that I’ll want to hide at least one of them?
If my judgment was bad enough to make me take a teleport pill intended for something with too many eyes, what else might I have swallowed last night?
I might be an advertising man, or a superbly trained thief, or a palace executioner skilled in the ways of torture. Or I might have asked for something really unpleasant, like the profession followed by Hitler or Alexander the Great.
“Nothing here,” Morris said from behind the bar. Louise shrugged agreement. Morris handed the four scraps to Littleton and said, “Run these out to Douglas. Call us from there.”
“We’ll put them through chemical analysis,” he said to Louise and me. “One of them may be real cellophane off a piece of candy. Or we might have missed one or two. For the moment let’s assume there were four.”
“All right,” I said.
“Does it sound right, Frazer? Should it be three, or five?”
“I don’t know.” As far as memory went, I really didn’t.
“Four, then. We’ve identified two. One was a course in teleportation for aliens. The other was a language course. Right?”
“It looks that way.”
“What else did he give you?”
I could feel the memories floating back there, but all scrambled together. I shook my head.
Morris looked frustrated.
“Excuse me,” said Louise. “Do you drink on duty?”
“Yes.” Morris said without hesitation.
And Louise and I weren’t on duty. Louise mixed us three gin and tonics and I brought them to us at one of the padded booths. Morris had opened a flattish briefcase that turned out to be part tape recorder. He said, “We won’t lose anything now. Louise, let’s talk about last night.”
“I hope I can help.”
“Just what happened in here after Ed took his first pill?”
“Mmm.” Louise looked at me askance. “I don’t know when he took that first pill. About one I noticed that he was acting strange. He was slow on orders. He got drinks wrong. I remembered that he had done that for a while last fall, when he got his divorce—”
I felt my face go stiff. That was unexpected pain, that memory. I am far from being my own best customer; but there had been a long lost weekend about a year ago. Louise had talked me out of trying to drink and bartend too. So I had gone drinking. When it was out of my system I had gone back to tending bar.
She was saying, “Last night I thought it might be the same problem. I covered for him, said the orders twice when I had to, watched him make the drinks so he’d get them right. He was spending most of his time talking to the Monk. But Ed was talking English, and the Monk was making whispery noises in his throat. Remember last week, when they put the Monk speech on television? It sounded like that.
“I saw Ed take a pill from the Monk and swallow it with a glass of water.” She turned to me, touched my arm. “I thought you were crazy. I tried to stop you.”
“I don’t remember.”
“The place was practically empty by then. Well, you laughed at me and said that the pill would teach you not to get lost! I didn’t believe it. But the Monk turned on his translator gadget and said the same thing.”
“I wish you’d stopped me,” I said.
She looked disturbed. “I wish you hadn’t said that. I took a pill myself.”
###
I started choking. She’d caught me with a mouthful of gin and tonic.
Louise pounded my back and saved my life, maybe. She said, “You don’t remember that?”
“I don’t remember much of anything coherent after I took the first pill.”
“Really? You didn’t seem loaded. Not after I’d watched you awhile.”
Morris cut in. “Louise, the pill you took. What did the Monk say it would do?”
“He never did. We were talking about me.” She stopped to think. Then, baffled and amused at herself, she said, “I don’t know how it happened. All of a sudden I was telling the story of my young life. To a Monk. I had the idea he was sympathetic.”
“The Monk?”
“Yes, the Monk. And at some point he picked out a pill and gave it to me. He said it would help me. I believed him. I don’t know why, but I believed him, and I took it.”
“Any symptoms? Have you learned anything new this morning?”
She shook her head, baffled and a little truculent now. Taking that pill must have seemed sheer insanity in the cold gray light of afternoon.
“
All right,” said Morris. “Frazer, you took three pills. We know what two of them were. Louise, you took one, and we have no idea what it taught you.” He closed his eyes a moment, then looked at me. “Frazer, if you can’t remember what you took, can you remember rejecting anything? Did the Monk offer you anything—” He saw my face and cut it off.
Because that had jarred something . . .
The Monk had been speaking his own language, in that alien whisper that doesn’t need to be more than a whisper because of the basic sounds of the Monk language are so unambiguous, so easily distinguished, even to a human ear. This teaches proper swimming technique. A——can reach speeds of sixteen to twenty-four——per——using these strokes. The course also teaches proper exercises . . .
I said, “I turned down a swimming course for intelligent fish.”
Louise giggled. Morris said, “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not. And there was something else.” That swamped-in-data effect wasn’t as bad as it had been at noon. Bits of data must be reaching cubbyholes in my head, linking up, finding their places.
“I was asking about the shapes of aliens. Not about Monks, because that’s bad manners, especially from a race that hasn’t yet proved its sentiency. I wanted to know about other aliens. So the Monk offered me three courses in unarmed combat techniques. Each one involved extensive knowledge of basic anatomy.”
“You didn’t take them?”
“No. What for? Like, one was a pill to tell me how to kill an armed intelligent worm, but only if I was an unarmed intelligent worm. I wasn’t that confused.”
“Frazer, there are men who would give an arm and a leg for any of those pills you turned down.”
“Sure. A couple of hours ago you were telling me I was crazy to swallow an alien’s education pill.”
“Sorry,” said Morris.
“You were the one who said they should have driven me out of my mind. Maybe they did,” I said, because my hypersensitive sense of balance was still bothering the hell out of me.
Project Solar Sail Page 17
