Puzzles of the Black Widowers - By Isaac Asimov Page 0,40

your existence?"

"If you expect me to say," said Hume, "that I justify it by making people rich through clever investments, you'll be disappointed. The justification comes from my skill as an after-dinner speaker."

"It does, does it? I take it you consider yourself good at it?"

"Yes, I do. I've been doing it for fifteen years and by now I've reached a routine fee of seventy-five hundred dollars for an hour talk. I think that's an adequate measure of my skill."

"Huh," said Rubin, seeing no immediate opportunity for a riposte. "Why do you bother doing anything else?"

Hume shrugged. "I don't particularly like to travel, so I want to be in a position to be able to pick and choose - to turn down any talk, regardless of fee. I can do that best if I have a regular job as a financial cushion. And that's why I don't have an agent. They put pressure on you - and they take thirty percent."

Rubin said, "If you don't have an agent, how do you get speaking engagements?"

"Word of mouth. If you can give a good talk, the world will beat a path to your door."

"What's your subject?"

"Futurism, Mr. Rubin - which you don't think much of. Despite your comments on the subject, everyone seems interested these days in what the future holds. What's the future of education? Of robots? Of international relations? Of space exploration? You name it - they're interested."

"And you speak on all of that?"

"I do."

"How many different talks do you have prepared?"

"None. If I had to prepare my talks, I'd have to neglect my brokerage work, and I can't do that. I speak extemporaneously and I don't need preparation. Call out your subject and I'll stand up and talk for an hour - but you'll have to pay me my fee."

Halsted said, "Listen, I've heard him speak. He is good."

Gonzalo said, "Have you had any funny experiences in your speaking career, Mr. Hume?"

"Funny?" said Hume, leaning back in his chair, and looking completely comfortable. "I've had some memorable introductions, which I didn't think were funny, though others might laugh. I once had someone object to my fee and write me a letter saying that it was four times as much as they had ever paid anyone. I wrote back and said, 'I'm four times as good - at least.' In introducing me, he read the correspondence, and the audience, a professional engineers organization, suddenly realized they were being soaked four times the usual by an arrogant bum. I could feel the north wind blow as I rose and it took me half the talk to win them over.

"Another time, a woman introduced me in a thoroughly pedestrian way - which I'm used to. Mild applause came and I rose, in order to begin right after it had peaked so that I could start with the audience's self-hypnosis in my favor. Except that the woman who introduced me - and may she have a special place in hell someday - began to call out to latecomers that there were seats on the side. She kept it up till the applause died, and I had to rise and address a dead audience. I never did quite liven them up.

"Then there's the funny man. I had one give a fifteen-minute talk as an introduction. Fifteen minutes! I timed it on my watch. And he was funny, really funny. He had the audience rolling and he wasn't charging a penny. I had to follow him, and I knew that the audience was going to consider me far less funny - and at an exorbitant price. I was considering forfeiting the money and leaving, when my introducer concluded by saying, 'But don't let me give you the impression that Mr. Hume can do anything. I happen to know that he has never sung the role of the Duke in Rigoletto,' and sat down to loud laughter.

"What he didn't know was that he had handed it to me on a plate. I got up, waited for the routine applause to die all the way down, and in the dead silence I belted out, in my best tenor voice, 'Bella figlia dell'amore,' the first notes of the Duke's contribution to the famous Quartet, and the audience rocked with the loudest laugh of the evening, and I had them.

"I had to give a talk twelve hours before I had a heart attack, and then another twelve hours after the attack. Fortunately, I didn't know it was a heart attack