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.