  There was a knock at the door, and the physical therapist put his head in. "Sorry to interrupt, but the clam is done. I'll give him a rubdown, Doc, and you can have him back." "Excellent. Would you come up to my office, Bart, as soon as you've had your mauling?" "Sure. I'll be right up." Yoritomo left, and the P.T. man opened the steam box. "Feel O.K., Bart?" "Yeah, sure," he said abstractedly as he got up on the rubdown table and lay prone. The therapist saw that Stanton was in no mood for conversation, so he proceeded with the massage in silence. For the first time, Stanton was seeing the Nipe as an individual, as a person, as a thinking, feeling being. We have a great deal in common, you and I, he thought. Except that you're a lot worse off than I am. I'm actually feeling sorry for the poor guy, Stanton thought. Which, I suppose, is better than feeling sorry for myself. The only difference between us freaks is that you're a bigger freak than I am. "Molly O'Grady and the Colonel's lady are sisters under the skin." Where'd that come from? Something I learned in school, I guess—like the snarks and boojums. "He would answer to Hi! or to any loud cry, Such as Fry me! or Fritter my wig!" Who was that? The snark? No. Damn this memory of mine! Or can I even call it mine when I can't even use it? "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." Another jack-in-the-box thought popping up from nowhere. The only way I'll ever get all this stuff straightened out is to get more information. And it doesn't look as though anyone is going to give it to me on a platter. The Institute seems to be awfully chary about giving information away. George even had to chase away old rub-and-pound, here (That feels good!) before he would talk about the Nipe. Can't blame 'em for that, I guess. There'd be hell to pay if the public ever found out that the Nipe has been kept as a pet for six years. How many people has he killed in that time? Twenty? Thirty? How much blood does Colonel Mannheim have on his hands? "Though they know not why, Or for what they give, Still, the few must die, That the many may live." I wonder whether I read all that stuff complete or just browsed through a copy of Bartlett's Quotations. Fragments. We've got to get organized here, brother. Colonel Mannheim's little puppet is going to cut his strings and do a Pinocchio. "O.K., Bart," the P.T. said, giving Stanton a final slap, "you're all set. See you tomorrow." "Right. Gimme my clothes." Stanton dressed and took the elevator up to Yoritomo's office. This section of the building was off-limits to the other patients in the Institute, but Stanton, the star border, had free rein. Not that it mattered, one way or another. There wasn't any way they could have stopped him. Aside from the fact that he was physically capable of going through or around almost any guards they wanted to put up, there was also the little matter of gentle blackmail. When a man is genuinely indispensable, he can work wonders by threatening to drop the whole business. He felt as though he had been slowly awakening from a long sleep. At first, he had accepted as natural that he should obey orders and do as he was told without question, as thought he had been drugged or hypnotized. And it's very likely they subjected me to both at one time or another, he told himself. But now his brain was beginning to function again, and the need to know was strong in his mind. Dr. Yoritomo was sitting in one of the big, soft chairs, puffing at his pipe, but he leaped to his feet when Stanton came in. "Ah! About the ritual-taboo culture of the Nipe! Yes. Sit down. Yes. So. Do you find it impossible that a high technology could be present in such a system?" "No. I've been thinking about it." "Ah, so." He sat down again. "Then you will please tell me." "Well, let's see. In the first place, let's take religion. In tribal cultures, religion is—uh—animistic, I think the word is." Yoritomo nodded silently. "There are spirits everywhere," Scanton went on. "That sort of belief, it seems to me, would grow up in any race that had imagination, and the Nipes must have plenty of that, or they wouldn't have the technology they do have." "Very good. Very good. But what evidence have you that this technology was not given them by some other race?" "I hadn't thought of that." Stanton stared into space for a moment, then nodded his head. "Of course. It would take too long for another race to teach it to them; it wouldn't be worth the trouble unless this hypothetical other race killed off all the adult Nipes and started the little ones off fresh. And if that had happened, their ritual-taboo system would have disappeared, too." "That argument is imperfect," Yoritomo said, "but it will do for the moment. Go on with the religion." "O.K.; religious beliefs are not subject to pragmatic tests. That is, the spiritual beliefs aren't. Any belief that could be disproven would eventually die out. But beliefs in ghosts or demons or angels or life after death aren't disprovable. So, as a race increases its knowledge of the physical world, its religion tends to become more and more spiritual." "Agreed. Yes. But how do you link this with ritual-taboo?" "Well, once a belief gains a foothold, it's hard to wipe it out, even among humans. Among Nipes, it would be well-nigh impossible. Once a code of ritual and social behavior was set up, it became permanent." "For example?" Yoritomo urged. "Well, shaking hands, for example. We still do that, even if we don't have it fixed solidly in our heads that we must do it. I suppose it would never occur to a Nipe not to perform such a ritual." "Just so," Yoritomo agreed vigorously. "Such things, once established, would tend to remain. But it is a characteristic of a ritual-taboo system that it resists change. How, then, do you account for their high technological achievements?" "The pragmatic engineering approach, I imagine. If a thing works, it is usable. If not, it isn't." "Very good. Now it is my turn to lecture." He put his pipe in an ash tray and held up a long, bony finger. "Firstly, we must remember that the Nipe is equipped with an imagination. Secondly, he has in his memory a tremendous amount of data, all ready at hand. He is capable of working out theories in his head, you see. Like the ancient Greeks, he finds no need to test such theories—unless his thinking indicates that such an experiment would yield something useful. Unlike the Greeks, he has no aversion to experiment. But he sees no need for useless experiment, either. "Oh, he would learn, yes. But, once a given theory proved workable, how resistant he would be to a new theory. How long—how incredibly long—it would take such a race to achieve the technology the Nipe now has!" "Hundreds of thousands of years," said Stanton. Yoritomo shook his head briskly. "Puh! Longer! Much longer!" He smiled with satisfaction. "I estimate that the Nipe race first invented the steam engine not less than ten million years ago." He kept smiling into the dead silence that followed. After a long minute, Scanton said: "What about atomic energy?" "At least two million years ago. I do not think they have had the interstellar drive more than fifty thousand years." "No wonder our pet Nipe is so patient," Stanton said wonderingly. "I wonder what their individual life span is." "Not long, in comparison," said Yoritomo. "Perhaps no longer than our own, perhaps five hundred years. Considering their handicaps, they have done quite well. Quite well, indeed, for a race of illiterate cannibals." "How's that again?" Stanton realized that the scientist was quite serious. "Hadn't it occurred to you, my friend, that they must be cannibals? And that they are very nearly illiterate?" "No," Stanton admitted, "it hadn't." "The Nipe, like Man, is omnivorous. Specialization tends to lead any race up a blind alley, and dietary restrictions are a particularly pernicious form of specialization. A lion would starve to death in a wheat field. A horse would perish in a butcher shop full of steaks. A man will survive as long as there's something around to eat—even if it's another man. "Also, Man, early in his career as top dog on Earth, began using a method of increasing the viability of the race by removing the unfit. It survives today in some societies. Before and immediately after the Holocaust, there were still primitive societies on Earth which made a rather hard ordeal out of the Rite of Passage—the ceremony that enabled a boy to become a Man, if he passed the tests. "A few millennia ago, a boy was killed outright if failed. And eaten. "The Nipe race must, of necessity, have had some similar ritualistic tests or they would not have become what they are. And we have already agreed that, once the Nipes adopted something of that kind, it remained with them, not so? Yes. "Also, it is extremely unlikely that the Nipe civilisation—if such it can be called—has any geriatric problem. No old age pensions, no old folks' homes, no senility. When a Nipe becomes a burden because of age, he is ritually murdered and eaten with due solemnity. "Ah. You frown, my friend. Have I made them sound heartless, without the finer feelings that we humans are so proud of? Not so. When Junior Nipe fails his puberty tests, when Mama and Papa Nipe are sent to their final reward, I have no doubt that there is sadness in the hearts of their loved ones as the honored T-bones are passed around the table. "My own ancestors, not too far back, performed a ritual suicide by disemboweling themselves with a sharp knife. Across the abdomen—so!—and up into the heart—so! It was considered very bad form to die or faint before the job was done. Nearby, a relative or close friend stood with a sharp sword, to administer the coup de grace by decapitation. It was all very sad and very honorable. Their loved ones bore the sorrow with pride." His voice, which had been low and tender, suddenly became very brisk. "Thank goodness it's gone out of fashion!" "But how can you be sure they're cannibals?" Stanton asked. "Your argument sounds logical enough, but logic alone isn't enough." "True! True!" Yoritomo jabbed the air twice with his finger. "Evidence would be most welcome, would it not? Very well, I give you the evidence. He eats human beings, our Nipe." "That doesn't make him a cannibal." "Not strictly, perhaps. But consider. The Nipe is not a monster. He is not a criminal. No. He is a gentleman. He behaves as a gentleman. He is shipwrecked on an alien planet. Around his, he sees evidence that ours is a technological society. But that is a contradiction! A paradox! "For we are not civilized! No! We are not rational! We are not sane! We do not obey the Laws, we do not perform the Rituals. We are animals. Apparently intelligent animals, but animals never the less. How can this be? "Ha! Says the Nipe to himself. These animals must be ruled over by Real People. It is the only explanation. Not so?" "Colonel Mannheim mentioned that. Are you implying that the Nipe thinks that there are other Nipes around, running the world from secret hideouts, like the Fu Manchu novel?" "Not quite. The Nipe is not incapable of learning something new; in fact, he is quite good at it, as witness the fact that he has learned many Earth languages. He picked up Russian in less then eight months simply by listening and observing. Like our own race, his undoubtedly evolved many languages during the beginnings of its progress—when there were many tribes, separated and out of communication. It would not surprise me to find that most of those languages have survived and that our distressed astronaut knows them all. A new language would not distress him. "Nor would strangely-shaped intelligent beings distress him. His race should be aware, by now, that such things exist. But it is very likely that he equates true intelligence with technology, and I do not think he has ever met a race higher than the barbarian level before. Such races were not, of course, human—by his definition. They showed possibilities, perhaps, but they had not evolved far enough. Considering the time span involved, it is not at all unlikely that the Nipe thinks of technology as something that evolves with a race in the same way intelligence does—or the body itself. "So it would not surprise him to find that the Real People of this system were humanoid in shape. That is something new, and he can absorb it. It does not contradict anything he knows. "But—! Any truly intelligent being which did not obey the Law and follow the Ritual would be a contradiction in terms. For he has no notion of a Real Person without those characteristics. Without those characteristics, technology is impossible. Since he sees technology all around him, it follows that there must be Real People with those characteristics. Anything else is unthinkable." "It seems to me that you're building an awfully involved theory out of pretty flimsy stuff," Stanton said. Yoritomo shook his head. "Not at all. All evidence points to it. Why, do you suppose, does the Nipe conscientiously devour his victims, often risking his own safety to do so? Why do you suppose he never uses any weapons but his own hands to kill with? "Why? To tell the Real People that he is a gentleman!" It made perfect sense, Stanton thought. It fitted every known fact, as far as he knew. Still— "I would think," he said, "that the Nipe would have realized, after ten years, that there is no such race of Real People. He's had access to all our records, and such things. Or does he reject them as lies?" "Possibly he would, if he could read them. Did I not say he was illiterate?" "You mean he's learned to speak our languages, but not to read them?" The scientist smiled broadly. "Your statement is accurate, my friend, but incomplete. It is my opinion that the Nipe is incapable of reading any written language whatever. The concept does not exist in his mind, except vaguely." "A technological race without a written language? That's impossible!" "Ah, no. Ask yourself: What need has a race with a perfect memory for written records—at least, in the sense we know them. Certainly not to remember things. All their history and all their technology exists in the collective mind of the race—or, at least, most of it. I dare say that the less important parts of their history has been glossed over and forgotten. One important event in every ten centuries would still give a historian ten thousand events to remember—and history is only a late development in our own society." "How about communications?" Stanton said, "What did they use before they invented radio?" "Ah. That is why I hedged when I said he was almost illiterate. There is a possibility that a written symbology did at one time exist, for just that purpose. If so, it has probably survived as a ritualistic form—when an officer is appointed to a post, let's say, he may get a formal paper that says so. They may use symbols to signify rank and so on. They certainly must have a symbology for the calibration of scientific instruments. "But none of these requires the complexity of a written language. I dare say our use of it is quite baffling to him. And if he thinks of symbols as being unable to convey much information, then he might not be able to learn to read at all. You see?" "Where's your evidence for that?" "It is sketchy, I will admit," said Yoritomo. "It is not as solidly based as our other reconstructions of his background. The pattern of his raids indicates, however, that his knowledge of the materials he wants and their locations comes from vocal sources—television advertising, eaves-dropping, and so on. In other words, he cases the joint by ear. If he could understand written information, his job would have been much easier. He could have found the materials more quickly and easily. From this evidence, we are fairly certain that he can't read any Terrestrial writing. "Add to that the fact that he has never been observed writing down anything himself, and the suspicion dawns that perhaps he knows that symbols can only convey a very small amount of specialized information. Eh? "As I said, it is not proof." "No. But the whole thing makes for some very interesting speculation, doesn't it?" "Very interesting indeed." Yoritomo folded his hands in his lap, smiled seraphically, and looked at the ceiling. "In fact, my friend, we are now so positive of our knowledge of the Nipe's mind that we are prepared to enter into the next phase of our program. Within a very short while, if we are correct, we shall, with your help, arrest the most feared arch-criminal that Earth has ever known." He chuckled, but there was little mirth in it. "I dare say that the public will be extremely happy to hear of his death, and I know that Colonel Mannheim and the rest of us will be glad to know that he will never kill again." Stanton saw that the fateful day was looming suddenly large in the future. "How soon?" "Within days." He lowered his eyes from the ceiling and looked into Stanton's face with a mildly bland expression. "By the way," he said, "did you know that your brother is returning to Earth tomorrow?" |
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