"Larry Niven - The Fourth Profession v1.0 italics" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

"A language says things about the person who speaks it, about the way he thinks and the way he lives. Morris, the Monk language says a lot about Monks."
"Call me Bill," he said irritably.
"Okay. Take Monks and alcohol. Alcohol works on a Monk the way it works on a man, by starving his brain cells a little. But in a Monk it gets absorbed more slowly. A Monk can stay high for a week on a night's dedicated drinking.
"I knew he was sober when he left Monday night By Tuesday night he must have been pretty high."
I sipped my coffee. Today it tasted different, and better, as if memories of some Monk staple foods had worked their way as overtones into my taste buds.
Morris said, "And you didn't know it."
"Know it? I was counting on his sense of responsibility!" Morris shook his head in pity, except that he seemed to be grinning inside.
"We talked some more after that . . . and I took some more pills."
"Why?"
"I was high on the first one."
"It made you drunk?"
"Not drunk, but I couldn't think straight. My head was full of Monk words all trying to fit themselves to meanings. I was dizzy with nonhuman images and words I couldn't pronounce."
"Just how many pills did you take?"
"I don't remember."
"Swell."
An image surfaced. "I do remember saying, 'But how about something unusual? Really unusual.'"
Morris was no longer amused. "You're lucky you can still talk. The chances you took, you should be a drooling idiot this morning!"
"It seemed reasonable at the time."
"You don't remember how many pills you took?"
I shook my head. Maybe the motion jarred something loose. "That bottle of little triangular pills. I know what they were. Memory erasers."
"Good God! You didn't-"
"No, no, Morris. They don't erase your whole memory. They erase pill memories. The RNA in a Monk memory pill is tagged somehow, so that the eraser pill can pick it out and break it down."
Morris gaped. Presently he said, "That's incredible. The education pills are wild enough, but that-You see what they must do, don't you? They hang a radical on each and every RNA molecule in each and every education pill. The active principle in the eraser pill is an enzyme for just that radical."
He saw my expression and said, "Never mind, just take my word for it. They must have had the education pills for a hundred years before they worked out the eraser principle."
"Probably. The pills must be very old."
He pounced. "How do you know that?"
"The name for the pill has only one syllable, like fork. There are dozens of words for kinds of pill reflexes, for swallowing the wrong pill, for side effects depending on what species is taking the pill. There's a special word for an animal, training pill, and another one for a slave training pill. Morris, I think my memory is beginning to settle down."
"Good!"
"Anyway, the Monks must have been peddling pills to aliens for thousands of years. I'd guess tens of thousands."
"Just how many kinds of pill were in that case?"
I tried to remember. My head felt congested.
"I don't know if there was more than one of each kind of pill. There were four stiff flaps like the leaves of a book, and each flap had rows of little pouches with a pill in each one. The flaps were maybe sixteen pouches long by eight across. Maybe. Morris, we ought to call Louise. She probably remembers better than I do, even if she noticed less at the time."
"You mean Louise Schu the barmaid? She might at that. Or she might jar something loose in your memory."
"Right."
"Call her. Tell her we'll meet her. Where's she live, Santa Monica?"
He'd done his homework, all right.
Her phone was still ringing when Morris said, "Wait a minute. Tell her we'll meet her at the Long Spoon. And tell her we'll pay her amply for her trouble."
Then Louise answered and told me I'd jarred her out of a sound sleep, and I told her she'd be paid amply for her trouble, and she said what the hell kind of a crack was that?
After I hung up I asked, "Why the Long Spoon?"
"I've thought of something. I was one of the last customers out last night. I don't think you cleaned up."
"I was feeling peculiar. We cleaned up a little, I think."
"Did you empty the wastebaskets?"
'We don't usually. There's a guy who comes in in the morning and mops the floors and empties the wastebaskets and so forth. The trouble is, he's been home with flu the last couple of days. Louise and I have been going early."
"Good. Get dressed, Frazer. We'll go down to the Long Spoon and Count the pieces of Monk cellophane in the waste' baskets. They shouldn't be too hard to identify. They'll tell us how many pills you took."

I noticed it while I was dressing. Morris's attitude had, changed subtly. He had become proprietary. He tended to stand closer to me, as if someone might try to steal me, or as if I might try to steal away.
Imagination, maybe. But I began to wish I didn't know so much about Monks.
I stopped to empty the percolator before leaving. Habit. Every afternoon I put the percolator in the dishwasher before I leave. When I come home at three A.M. it's ready to load.
I poured out the dead coffee, took the machine apart, and stared.
The grounds in the top were fresh coffee, barely damp from steam. They hadn't been used yet.