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 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 proven its sentience. 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.
But Morris’s reaction bothered me worse. Frazer could start gibbering any minute. Better pump him for all he’s worth while I’ve got the chance.
No, his face showed none of that. Was I going paranoid?
“Tell me more about the pills,” Morris said. “It sounds like there’s a lot of delayed reaction involved. How long do we have to wait before we know we’ve got it all?”
“He did say something…” I groped for it, and presently it came.
It works like a memory, the Monk had said. He’d turned off his translator and was speaking his own language, now that I could understand him. The sound of his translator had been bothering him. That was why he’d given me the pill.
But the whisper of his voice was low, and the language was new, and I’d had to listen carefully to get it all. I remembered it clearly.
The information in the pills will become part of your memory. You will not know all that you have learned until you need it. Then it will surface. Memory works by association, he’d said.
And: There are things that cannot be taught by teachers. Always there is the difference between knowledge from school and knowledge from doing the work itself.
“Theory and practice,” I told Morris. “I know just what he meant. There’s not a bartending course in the country that will teach you to leave the sugar out of an Old Fashioned during rush hour.”
“_What_ did you say?”
“It depends on the bar, of course. No posh bar would let itself get that crowded. But in an ordinary bar, anyone who orders a complicated drink during rush hour deserves what he gets. He’s slowing the bartender down when it’s crucial, when every second is money. So you leave the sugar out of an Old Fashioned. It’s too much money.”
“The guy won’t come back.”
“So what? He’s not one of your regulars. He’d have better sense if he were.”
I had to grin. Morris was shocked and horrified. I’d shown him a brand new sin. I said, “It’s something every bartender ought to know about. Mind you, a bartending school is a trade school. They’re teaching you to survive as a bartender. But the recipe calls for sugar, so at school you put in the sugar or you get ticked off.”
Morris shook his head, tight-lipped. He said, “Then the Monk was warning you that you were getting theory, not practice.”
“Just the opposite. Look at it this way, Morris…”
“Bill.”
“Listen, Bill. The teleport pill can’t make a human nervous system capable of teleportation. Even my incredible balance, and it is incredible, won’t give me the muscles to do ten quick backflips. But I do know what it feels like to teleport. That’s what the Monk was warning me about. The pills give field training. What you have to watch out for are the reflexes. Because the pills don’t change you physically.”
“I hope you haven’t become a trained assassin.”
One must be wary of newly learned reflexes, the Monk had said.
Morris said, “Louise, we still don’t know what kind of an education you got last night. Any ideas?”
“Maybe I repair time machines.” She sipped her drink, eyed Morris demurely over the rim of the glass.
Morris smiled back. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
The idiot. He meant it.
“If you really want to know what was in the pill,” said Louise, “why not ask the Monk?” She gave Morris time to look startled, but no time to interrupt. “All we have to do is open up and wait. He didn’t even get through the second shelf last night, did he, Ed?”
“No, by God, he didn’t.”
Louise swept an arm about her. “The place is a mess, of course. We’d never get it clean in time. Not without help. How about it, Bill? You’re a government man. Could you get a team to work here in time to get this place cleaned up by five o’clock?”
“You know not what you ask. It’s three-fifteen now!”
Truly, the Long Spoon was a disaster area. Bars are not meant to be seen by daylight. Just because our worlds had been turned upside down, and just because the Long Spoon was clearly unfit for human habitation, we had been thinking in terms of staying closed tonight. Now it was too late…
“Tip Top Cleaners,” I remembered. “They send out a four-man team with its own mops. Fifteen bucks an hour. But we’d never get them here in time.”
Morris stood up abruptly. “Are they in the phone book?”
“Sure.”
Morris moved.
I waited until he was in the phone booth before I asked, “Any new thoughts on what you ate last night?”
Louise looked at me closely. “You mean the pill? Why so solemn?”
“We’ve got to find out before Morris does.”
“Why?”
“If Morris has his way,” I said, “they’ll classify my head Top Secret. I know too much. I’m likely to be a political prisoner the rest of my life; and so are you, if you learned the wrong things last night.”
What Louise did then, I found both flattering and comforting. She turned upon the phone booth where Morris was making his call, a look of such poisonous hatred that it should have withered the man where he stood.
She believed me. She needed no kind of proof, and she was utterly on my side.
Why was I so sure? I had spent too much of today guessing at other people’s thoughts. Maybe it had something to do with my third and fourth professions…
I said, “We’ve got to find out what kind of pill you took. Otherwise Morris and the Secret Service will spend the rest of their lives following you around, just on the off chance that you know something useful. Like me. Only they know I know something useful. They’ll be picking my brain until Hell freezes over.”
Morris yelled from the phone booth. “They’re coming! Forty bucks an hour, paid in advance when they get here!”