by Larry Niven
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.
Usually I know the ending of a story before I write it. Sometimes I just start writing…and write a few pages, and throw it away. Sometimes I keep writing.
Through most of “The Fourth Profession” I didn’t even know how many pills Frazer had taken! And when I understood the first pill, I knew an important truth: you can always rewrite the opening.
I want to thank Marilyn Hacker for pointing out an important aspect of that fourth pill. At her suggestion I did considerable rewriting.
• • •
• • •
A grendel head popped through the hole, inverted, looking at them with fixed, milky, dead eyes. Cadmann sank a baling hook into its neck and dragged it through the opening.
Rick said quietly, “You wouldn’t want to do that to a live and curious grendel. Whack the tail with a stick first and see if it wiggles.”
THE LEGACY OF HEOROT [with Jerry Pournelle and Steven Barnes], 1987
“SHALL WE INDULGE IN RISHATHRA?”
LETTER TO SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW, NOVEMBER 1978
Enclosed are five cartoons and a possibly cryptic list, and this letter. They all relate to the word “rishathra.”
“Rishathra” is a word used extensively in THE RINGWORLD ENGINEERS, a sequel to RINGWORLD, now two-thirds finished. It is one of the few words commo
n to all of the Ringworld languages.
The word means “Sex outside of one’s species, but within the hominids.” Sometimes rishathra applies to intelligent hominids only, and sometimes not, depending on who [and what] you’re talking to. A given species’ attitude toward rishathra, whether determined by custom or by biology, can be very important in trading, in treaties, in war.
Obviously, what Louis Wu was doing with Halrloprillalar was “rishathra.”
I was having lunch with Bill Rotsler and Sharman DiVono a year ago, and I broached this subject. I had been jotting down a list of possible replies to the question. “Shall we do rishathra?” Bill looked it over. Then he started drawing cartoons. He’s given me permission to send them to you for publication.
Some of what’s on the list of replies will go into the book. Some are useless, of course. “You do not have sufficient openings” would surely not apply to the hominids!
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
“SHALL WE INDULGE IN RISHATHRA?”
Sure.
You’re too big/small.
If that’s what it takes to make a trade deal…
It is not my season. Can you wait around, or come back in a falen or so?
Taboo!
Our species cannot. Please do not be angry/insulted.
Only during our menstrual period. Day after tomorrow?
Only with sentient beings. Would you mind taking a short intelligence test?
Only with nonsentient beings. It lets us avoid becoming involved.
Does your companion indulge? (This would require long explanation, given that Louis Wu’s companion is a kzin.)
Yes. We will choose you a companion if you will state your sex.
May my family watch?
My family insists on watching.
We have certain practices to be used as a substitute…
We must eat together first.
Our form of foreplay may be dangerous to you.
Can you function underwater?
No! You have the odor of a meat eater.
May we watch you with your companion? We will reciprocate…(Sorry, Chmeee is male.)
You do not have sufficient openings.
Negotiate first! Then discuss rishathra.
No, but we like to talk about it.
We would like to make tape recordings for our communal archives.
Only during our fertile period, as a means of birth control.
• • •
• • •
I could have taken a transfer booth straight to the hotel, I decided to walk a little first.
Everyone on Earth had made the same decision.
…No two looked alike. There were reds and blues and greens, yellows and oranges, plaids and stripes. I’m talking about hair, you understand, and skin.
“Flatlander,” 1967
MAN OF STEEL,
WOMAN OF KLEENEX
At the ripe old age of forty,* Kal-El (alias Superman, alias Clark Kent) is still unmarried. Almost certainly he is still a virgin. This is a serious matter. The species itself is in danger!
An unwed Superman is a mobile Superman. Thus it has been alleged that those who chronicle the Man of Steel’s adventures are responsible for his condition. But the cartoonists are not to blame.
Nor is Superman handicapped by psychological problems.
Granted that the poor oaf is not entirely sane. How could he be? He is an orphan, a refugee, and an alien. His homeland no longer exists in any form, save for gigatons upon gigatons of dangerous, prettily colored rocks.
As a child and young adult, Kal-El must have been hard put to find an adequate father-figure. What human could control his antisocial behavior? What human would dare try to punish him? His actual, highly social behavior during this period indicates an inhuman self-restraint.
What wonder if Superman drifted gradually into schizophrenia? Torn between his human and kryptonian identities, he chose to be both, keeping his split personalities rigidly separate. A psychotic desperation is evident in his defense of his “secret identity.”
But Superman’s sex problems are strictly physiological, and quite real.
The purpose of this article is to point out some medical drawbacks to being a kryptonian among human beings, and to suggest possible solutions. The kryptonian humanoid must not be allowed to go the way of the pterodactyl and the passenger pigeon.
I
What turns on a kryptonian?
Superman is an alien, an extraterrestrial. His humanoid frame is doubtless the result of parallel evolution, as the marsupials of Australia resemble their mammalian counterparts. A specific niche in the ecology calls for a certain shape, a certain size, certain capabilities, certain eating habits.
Be not deceived by appearances. Superman is no relative to homo sapiens.
What arouses Kal-El’s mating urge? Did kryptonian women carry some subtle mating cue at appropriate times of the year? Whatever it is, Lois Lane probably doesn’t have it. We may speculate that she smells wrong, less like a kryptonian woman than like a terrestrial monkey. A mating between Superman and Lois Lane would feel like sodomy—and would be, or course, by church and common law.
II
Assume a mating between Superman and a human woman, designated LL for convenience.
Either Superman has gone completely schizo and believes himself to be Clark Kent; or he knows what he’s doing, but no longer gives a damn. Forty years is a long time. For Superman it has been even longer. He has X-ray vision; he knows just what he’s missing.*
The problem is this. Electroencephalograms taken of men and women during sexual intercourse show that orgasm resembles “a kind of pleasurable epileptic attack.” One loses control over one’s muscles.
Superman has been known to leave his fingerprints in steel and in hardened concrete, accidentally. What would he do to the woman in his arms during what amounts to an epileptic fit?
III
Consider the driving urge between a man and a woman, the monomaniacal urge to achieve greater and greater penetration. Remember also that we are dealing with kryptonian muscles.
Superman would literally crush LL’s body in his arms, while simultaneously ripping her open from crotch to sternum, gutting her like a trout.
IV
Lastly, he’d blow off the top of her head.
Ejaculation of semen is entirely involuntary in the human male, and in all other forms of terrestrial life. It would be unreasonable to assume otherwise for a kryptonian. But with kryptonian muscles behind it, Kal-El’s semen would emerge with the muzzle velocity of a machine gun bullet.*
In view of the foregoing, normal sex is impossible between LL and Superman.
Artificial insemination may give us better results.
V
First we must collect the semen. The globules will emerge at transsonic speeds. Superman must first ejaculate, then fly frantically after the stuff to catch it in a test tube. We assume that he is on the Moon, both for privacy and to prevent the semen from exploding into vapor on hitting the air at such speeds.
He can catch the semen, of course, before it evaporates in vacuum. He’s faster than a speeding bullet.
But can he keep it?
All known forms of kryptonian life have superpowers. The same must hold true of living kryptonian sperm. We may reasonably assume that kryptonian sperm are vulnerable only to starvation and to green kryptonite; that they can travel with equal ease through water, air, vacuum, glass, brick, boiling steel, solid steel, liquid helium, or the core of a star; and that they are capable of translight velocities.
What kind of a test tube will hold such beasties?
Kryptonian sperm and their unusual powers will give us further trouble. For the moment we will assume (because we must) that they tend to stay in the seminal fluid, which tends to stay in a simple glass tube. Thus Superman and LL can perform artificial insemination.
At least there w
ill be another generation of kryptonians.
Or will there?
VI
A ripened but unfertilized egg leaves LL’s ovary, begins its voyage down her Fallopian tube.
Some time later, tens of millions of sperm, released from a test tube, begin their own voyage up LL’s Fallopian tube.
The magic moment approaches…
Can human breed with Kryptonian? Do we even use the same genetic code? On the face of it, LL could more easily breed with an ear of corn than with Kal-El. But coincidence does happen. If the genes match…
One sperm arrives before the others. It penetrates the egg, forms a lump on its surface. The cell wall now thickens to prevent other sperm from entering. Within the now-fertilized egg, changes take place…
And ten million kryptonian sperm arrive slightly late.
Were they human sperm, they would be out of luck. But these tiny blind things are more powerful than a locomotive. A thickened cell wall won’t stop them. They will all enter the egg, obliterating it entirely in an orgy of microscopic gang rape. So much for artificial insemination.
But LL’s problems are just beginning.
VII
Within her body there are still tens of millions of frustrated kryptonian sperm. The single egg is now too diffuse to be a target. The sperm scatter.