“Ask me anything.” My voice was high and strange and breathless with giddy laughter. “Monks have four limbs, all hands, each with a callus heel behind the fingers. I know their names, Morris. Each hand, each finger. I know how many eyes a Monk has. One. And the whole skull is an ear. There’s no word for ear, but medical terms for each of the—resonating cavities—between the lobes of the brain…”

“You look dizzy. You don’t sample your own wares, do you, Frazer?”

“I’m the opposite of dizzy. There’s a compass in my head. I’ve got absolute direction. Morris, it must have been the pills.”

“Pills?” Morris had small, squarish ears that couldn’t possibly have come to point. But I got that impression.

“He had a sample case full of—education pills…”

“Easy now.” He put a steadying hand on my shoulder. “Take it easy. Just start at the beginning, and talk. I’ll make some coffee.”

“Good.” Coffee sounded wonderful, suddenly. “Pot’s ready. Just plug it in. I fix it before I go to sleep.”

Morris disappeared around the partition that marks off the kitchen alcove from the bedroom/living room in my small apartment. His voice floated back. “Start at the beginning. He came back Tuesday night.”

“He came back Tuesday night,” I repeated.

“Hey, your coffee’s already perked. You must have plugged it in in your sleep. Keep talking.”

“He started his drinking where he’d left off, four bottles from the end of the top row. I’d have sworn he was cold sober. His voice didn’t give him away…”

* * *

His voice didn’t give him away because it was only a whisper, too low to make out. His translator spoke like a computer, putting single words together from a man’s recorded voice. It spoke slowly and with care. Why not? It was speaking an alien tongue.

The Monk had had five tonight. That put him through the ryes and the bourbons and the Irish whiskeys, and several of the liqueurs. Now he was tasting the vodkas.