Half-joking, I said, “Try this as a theory. Years ago you must have sublimated your sex urge into an urge for food. Either that or the rest of us sublimated our appetites into a sex urge, and you didn’t.”
“Then the pill un-sublimated me, hmm?” She looked thoughtfully at the pizza. Clearly its lure was gone. “That’s what I mean. I didn’t used to be able to outstare a pizza.”
“Those olive eyes.”
“Hypnotic, they were.”
“A good call girl should be able to keep herself in shape.” Immediately I regretted saying it. It wasn’t funny. “Sorry,” I said.
“It’s all right.” She picked up a tray of candles in red glass vases and moved away, depositing the candles on the small square tables. She moved with grace and beauty through the twilight of the Long Spoon, her hips swaying just enough to avoid the sharp corners of tables.
I’d hurt her. But she’d known me long enough; she must know I had foot-in-mouth disease…
I had seen Louise before and known that she was beautiful. But it seemed to me that she had never been 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.”