The Fourth Profession Read online

  “Oh.”

  “Not that that convinced him. It only let him consider the ethics of the situation rationally.”

  “Suppose someone else unconvinces him?”

  “It could happen. That's why we'd better build the launching laser.”

  * * * *

  The next twelve hours were rough.

  In the first four hours I gave them everything I could remember about the Monk teleport system, Monk technology, Monk family life, Monk ethics, relations between Monks and aliens, details on aliens, directions of various inhabited and uninhabited worlds—everything. Morris and the Secret Service men who had been posing as customers sat around me like boys around a campfire, listening to stories. But Louise made us fresh coffee, then went to sleep in one of the booths.

  Then I let myself slack off.

  By nine in the morning I was flat on my back, staring at the ceiling, dictating a random useless bit of information every thirty seconds or so. By eleven there was a great black pool of lukewarm coffee inside me, my eyes ached marginally more than the rest of me, and I was producing nothing.

  I was convincing, and I knew it.

  But Morris wouldn't let it go at that. He believed me. I felt him believing me. But he was going through the routine anyway, because it couldn't hurt. If I was useless to him, if I knew nothing, there was no point in playing soft. What could he lose?

  He accused me of making everything up. He accused me of faking the pills. He made me sit up, and damn near caught me that way. He used obscure words and phrases from mathematics and Latin and fan vocabulary. He got nowhere. There wasn't any way to trick me.

  At two in the afternoon he had someone drive me home.

  Every muscle in me ached; but I had to fight to maintain my exhausted slump. Else my hindbrain would have lifted me onto my toes and poised me against a possible shift in artificial gravity. The strain was double, and it hurt. It had hurt for hours, sitting with my shoulders hunched and my head hanging. But now—if Morris saw me walking like a trampoline performer...

  Morris's man got me to my room and left me.

  * * * *

  I woke in darkness and sensed someone in my room. Someone who meant me no harm. In fact, Louise. I went back to sleep.

  I woke again at dawn. Louise was in my easy chair, her feet propped on a corner of the bed. Her eyes were open. She said, “Breakfast?”

  I said, “Yah. There isn't much in the fridge.”

  “I brought things.”

  “All right.” I closed my eyes.

  Five minutes later I decided I was all slept out. I got up and went to see how she was doing.

  There was bacon frying, there was bread already buttered for toasting in the Toast-R-Oven, there was a pan hot for eggs, and the eggs scrambled in a bowl. Louise was filling the percolator.

  “Give that here a minute,” I said. It only had water in it. I held the pot in my hands, closed my eyes and tried to remember...

  Ah.

  I knew I'd done it right even before the heat touched my hands. The pot held hot, fragrant coffee.

  “We were wrong about the first pill,” I told Louise. She was looking at me very curiously. “What happened that second night was this. The Monk had a translator gadget, but he wasn't too happy with it. It kept screaming in his ear. Screaming English, too loud, for my benefit.

  “He could turn off the part that was shouting English at me, and it would still whisper a Monk translation of what I was saying. But first he had to teach me the Monk language. He didn't have a pill to do that. He didn't have a generalized language-learning course either, if there is one, which I doubt.

  “He was pretty drunk, but he found something that would serve. The profession it taught me was an old one, and it doesn't have a one-or-two-word name. But if it did, the word would be prophet!”

  “Prophet,” said Louise. “Prophet?” She was doing a remarkable thing. She was listening with all her concentration, and scrambling eggs at the same time.

  “Or disciple. Maybe apostle comes closer. Anyway, it included the Gift of Tongues, which was what the Monk was after. But it included other talents too.”

  “Like turning cold water into hot coffee?”

  “Miracles, right. I used the same talent to make the little pink amnesia pills disappear before they hit my stomach. But an apostle's major talent is persuasion.

  “Last night I convinced a Monk crewman that blowing up suns is an evil thing.

  “Morris is afraid that someone might convert him back. I don't think that's possible. The mind-reading talent that goes with the prophet pill goes deeper than just reading minds. I read souls. The Monk is my apostle. Maybe he'll convince the whole crew that I'm right.

  “Or he may just curse the hachiroph shisp, the little old nova maker. Which is what I intend to do.”

  “Curse it?”

  “Do you think I'm kidding or something?”

  “Oh, no.” She poured our coffee. “Will that stop it working?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” said Louise. And I felt the power of her own faith, her faith in me. It gave her the serenity of an idealized nun.

  When she turned back to serve the eggs, I dropped a pink triangular pill in her coffee.

  She finished setting breakfast and we sat down. Louise said, “Then that's it. It's all over.”

  “All over.” I swallowed some orange juice. Wonderful, what fourteen hours’ sleep will do for a man's appetite. “All over. I can go back to my fourth profession, the only one that counts.”

  She looked up quickly.

  “Bartender. First, last, and foremost, I'm a bartender. You're going to marry a bartender.”

  “Good,” she said, relaxing.

  In two hours or so the slave sets would be gone from her mind. She would be herself again: free, independent, unable to diet, and somewhat shy.

  But the pink pill would not destroy real memories. Two hours from now, Louise would still know that I loved her; and perhaps she would marry me after all.

  I said, “We'll have to hire an assistant. And raise our prices. They'll be fighting their way in when the story gets out.”

  Louise had pursued her own thoughts. “Bill Morris looked awful when I left. You ought to tell him he can stop worrying.”

  “Oh, no. I want him scared. Morris has got to talk the rest of the world into building a launching laser, instead of just throwing bombs at the Monk ship. And we need the launching laser.”

  “Mmm! That's good coffee. Why do we need a launching laser?”

  “To get to the stars.”

  “That's Morris's bag. You're a bartender, remember? The fourth profession.”

  I shook my head. “You and Morris. You don't see how big the Monk marketplace is, or how thin the Monks are scattered. How many novas have you seen in your lifetime?

  “Damn few,” I said. “There are damn few trading ships in a godawful lot of sky. There are things out there besides Monks. Things the Monks are afraid of, and probably others they don't know about.

  “Things so dangerous that the only protection is to be somewhere else, circling some other star, when it happens here! The Monk drive is our lifeline and our immortality. It would be cheap at any price...”

  “Your eyes are glowing,” she breathed. She looked half hypnotized, and utterly convinced. And I knew that for the rest of my life, I would have to keep a tight rein on my tendency to preach.

  * * *

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  Copyright © 1971 by Larry Niven

  First published in Quark, ed. Samuel R. Delany and Marilyn Hacker, 1971

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  Larry Niven, The Fourth Profession