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 the 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.”