Pok! Pok! Ping!

Pok! Pok! Ping!

Pok! Pok! Ping!

Pok! Pok! Ping!

The action around the handball court was beautiful to watch. The robot mechanism behind Bart Stanton would fire out a ball at random intervals ranging from a tenth to a quarter of a second, bouncing them off the wall in a random pattern. Stanton would retrieve the ball before it hit the ground and bounce it off the wall again to strike the target on the moving robot. Stanton had to work against a machine; no ordinary human being could have given him any competition.

Pok! Pok! Ping!

Pok! Pok! Ping!

Pok! Pok! PLUNK.

"One miss," Stanton said to himself. But he fielded the next one nicely and slammed it home.

Pok! Pok! Ping!

The physical therapist who was standing to one side, well out of the way of those hard-slammed, fast-moving drives, glanced at his watch. It was almost time.

Pok! Pok! Ping!

The machine, having delivered its last ball, shut itself off with a smug click. Stanton turned away from the handball court and walked toward the physical therapist, who was holding out a robe for him.

"That was good, Bart," he said. "Real good."

"One miss," Stanton said as he shrugged into the robe.

"Yeah. Your timing was off a shade there, I guess. It's hard for me to tell till I look at the slow-motion photographs. Your arms and hands are just blurs to me when they're moving that fast. But you managed to chop another ten seconds off your previous record, anyway."

Stanton looked at him. "You reset the timer again," he said accusingly. But there was a grin on his face.

The P.T. man grinned back. "Yup. Come on, step into the mummy case." He waved toward the narrow niche in the wall of the court, a niche just big enough to hold a standing man. Stanton stepped in, and various instrument pickups came out of the walls and touched him at various points on his body. Hidden machines recorded his heartbeat, his blood pressure, his brain activity, his muscular tension, his breathing, and several other factors.

After a minute the P.T. man said, "Okay, Bart, that's it. Let's hit the steam box."

Stanton stepped out of the niche and accompanied the therapist to another room, where he took off the robe again and sat down on the small stool inside an ordinary steam box. The box closed, leaving his head free, and the box began to fill with steam.

"Did I ever tell you just what it is that I don't like about that machine?" Stanton asked as the therapist draped a heavy towel around his head.

"Nope. Didn't know you had any gripe. What is it?"

"You can't gloat after you beat it. You can't walk over and pat it on the shoulder and say, 'Well, better luck next time, old man.' It isn't a good loser, and it isn't a bad loser. The damned thing doesn't even know it lost, and even if it did, it wouldn't care."

"Yeah, I see what you mean," said the P.T. man, chuckling. "You beat the pants off it and what d'you get? Nothing. Not even a case of the sulks out of it."

"Exactly. And what's worse, I know perfectly good and well that it's only half trying. The stupid gadget could beat me easily if you just turned that knob over a little more."

"Yeah, sure. But you're not competing against the machine, anyway," the therapist said. "What you're doing, you're competing against yourself, trying to beat your own record."

"I know. And what happens when I can't do that any more, either?" Stanton asked. "I can't just go on getting better and better forever. I've got limits, you know."

"Sure," said the therapist easily. "So does anybody. So does a golf player, for instance. You take a golf player, he goes out and practices by himself to try to beat his own record."

"Bunk! Hogwash! The real fun in any game is beating someone else! The big kick in golf is winning over the other guy in a twosome."

"How about crossword puzzles or solitaire?"

"When you solve a crossword puzzle, you've beaten the guy who made up the puzzle. When you play solitaire, you're playing against the laws of chance, and that can become pretty boring unless there's money on it. And, in that case, you're actually trying to beat the guy who's betting against you. What I'd like to do is get out on the golf course with someone else and do my best and then lose. Honestly."

"With a handicap ..." the therapist began. Then he grinned weakly and stopped. On the golf course, Stanton was impossibly good. It had taken him a little while to get the knack of it, but as soon as he got control of his club and knew the reactions of the ball, his score started plummeting. Now it was so low as to be almost ridiculous. One long drive to the green and one putt to the cup. An easy thirty-six strokes for eighteen holes! An occasional hole-in-one sometimes brought his score down below that; an occasional wormcast or stray wind sometimes brought it up.

"Sure," said Stanton. "A handicap. What kind of a handicap do you want me to give you to induce you to make a fifty-dollar bet on a handball game with me?"

The physical therapist could imagine himself trying to get under one of Stanton's lightning-like returns. The thought of what would happen to his hand if he were accidentally to catch one made him wince.

"We wouldn't even be playing the same game," said Stanton.

The therapist stepped back and looked at Stanton. "You know," he said puzzledly, "you sound bitter."

"Sure I'm bitter," Stanton said. "All I ever get is just exercise. All the fun has gone out of it." He sighed and grinned. There was no point in upsetting the P.T. man. "I guess I'll just have to stick to cards and chess if I want competition. Speed and strength don't help anything if I'm holding two pair against three of a kind."

Before the therapist could say anything, the door opened and a tall, lean man stepped into the foggy air of the room. "You are broiling a lobster?" he asked the P.T. man blandly.

"Steaming a clam," the therapist corrected. "When he's done, I'll pound him to chowder."

"Excellent. I came for a clambake."

"You're early, then, George," Stanton said. He didn't feel much in the mood for lightness, and the appearance of Dr. Yoritomo did nothing to improve his humor.

George Yoritomo beamed broadly, crinkling up his narrow, heavy-lidded eyes. "Ah! A talking clam! Excellent! How much longer does this fine specimen of clamhood have to cook?" he asked the P.T. man.

"About twenty-three more minutes."

"Excellent!" said Dr. Yoritomo. "Would you be so good as to return at the end of that time?"

The therapist opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again, and said: "Sure, Doc. I can get some other stuff done. I'll see you in twenty-three minutes. But don't let him out of there till I get back." He went out through the far door.

After the door closed, Dr. Yoritomo pulled up a chair and sat down. "There have been new developments," he said, "as you may have surmised."

The physical therapist, like many other of the personnel around the Institute, knew of Stanton's abilities, but he didn't know the purpose of the long series of operations that had made him what he was. Such persons knew about Stanton himself, but they knew nothing of any connection with the Nipe, although they might suspect. And all of them kept their knowledge and their suspicions to themselves.

"I guessed," Stanton said. "What is it, George?" He flexed his muscles under the caress of the hot, moist currents in the box.

He wondered why it was so important that the psychologist interrupt him while he was relaxing after strenuous exercise. Yoritomo looked excited in spite of his attempt to be calm. And yet Stanton knew that, whatever it was, it wasn't anything tremendously urgent or Dr. Yoritomo would be acting a great deal differently.

Yoritomo leaned forward in his chair, his thin lips in an excited smile, his black-irised eyes sparkling. "I had to come tell you. The sheer, utter beauty of it is too much to contain. Three times in a row was almost absolute, Bart. The probability that our hypotheses were correct was computed as straight nines to seven decimals. But now! The fourth time! Straight nines to twelve decimals!"

Stanton lifted an eyebrow. "Your Oriental calm is deserting you, George. I'm not reading you."

Yoritomo's smile became broader. "Ah! Sorry. I refer to the theory we have been discussing. About the peculiar mentality of our friend, the Nipe. You remember?"

Stanton remembered. After six years of watching the recorded actions of the Nipe, Dr. Yoritomo had evolved a theory about the kind of mentality that lay behind the four baleful violet eyes in that snouted alien head. In order that his theory be validated, it was necessary that the theory be able to predict, in broad terms, the future actions of the Nipe. Evidently that proof had now come. The psychologist was smiling and rubbing his long, bony hands together. For Dr. George Yoritomo, that was almost the equivalent of hysterical excitement.

"We have been able to predict the behavior of the Nipe!" he said. "For the fourth time in succession!"

"Great," Stanton said. "Congratulations, George. But how does that fit in with the rule you once told me about? You know, the one about experimental animals."

"Ah, yes," Yoritomo said, nodding his head agreeably. "The Harvard Law of Animal Behavior. 'A genetically standardized strain, under precisely controlled laboratory conditions, when subjected to carefully calibrated stimuli, will behave as it damned well pleases.' Yes. Very true."

He held up a cautionary finger. "But an animal could not do otherwise, could it? Only as it pleases. Could it do anything else? It could not please to behave as something it is not, could it?"

"Draw me a picture," Stanton said.

"What I mean," Yoritomo said, "is that any organism is limited in its choice of behavior. A hamster, for example, cannot choose to behave in the manner of a rhesus monkey. A dog cannot choose to react as a mouse would react. If I prick a white mouse with a needle, it may squeal or bite or jump—but it will not bark. Never. Nor will it, under any circumstances, leap to a trapeze, hang by its tail, and chatter curses at me. Never."

Stanton chuckled, but he didn't comment.

"By observing an organism's reactions," the psychologist continued, "one can begin to see a pattern. After long enough observation, the pattern almost approaches certainty. If, for instance, I tell you that I put an armful of hay into a certain animal's enclosure, and that the animal trotted over, ate the hay, and brayed, then you will be able to tell me with reasonable certainty whether or not the animal had long ears. Do you see?"

"Sure. But you haven't been able to pinpoint the Nipe's activities that easily yet, have you?" Stanton asked.

"Ah, no," said Yoritomo. "Not at all. That was merely an analogy, and we must not make the mistake of carrying an analogy too far. The more intelligent a creature is, the greater, in general, is its scope of action. The Nipe is far from being so simple as a monkey or a hamster. On the other hand—" He smiled widely, showing bright, white teeth. "—he is not so bright as a human being."

"What?" Stanton looked at him skeptically. "I wouldn't say he was exactly stupid, George. What about all those prize gadgets of his?" He blinked. "Wipe the sweat off my forehead, will you? It's running into my eyes."

Dr. Yoritomo wiped with the towel as he continued. "Ah, yes. He is quite capable in that respect, my friend. Quite capable. That is because of his great memory—at once his finest asset and his greatest curse."

He draped the towel around Stanton's head again and stepped back, his face unsmiling. "Imagine having a near-perfect memory, Bart."

Stanton's jaw muscles tightened a little before he spoke. "I think I'd like it," he said.

Yoritomo shrugged slightly. "Perhaps you would. But it would most certainly not be the asset you think. Look at it very soberly, my friend.

"The most difficult teaching job in the world is the attempt to teach an organism something that that organism already knows. True? Yes. If a man already knows the shape of the Earth, it will do you no good to teach him. If he knows, for example, that the Earth is flat, but round like a pancake, your contention that it is round like a ball will make no impression upon his mind whatever. He knows, you see. He knows.

"Now. Imagine a race with a perfect memory—a memory that never fades. A memory in which each bit of data is as bright and as fresh as the moment it was imprinted, and as readily available as the data stored in a robot's mind. It is, in effect, a robotic memory.

"If you put false data into the memory banks of a mathematical computer—such as telling it that the square of two is five—you cannot correct that error simply by telling it the true fact that the square of two is four. No. First you must remove the erroneous data. Not so?"

"Agreed," Stanton said.

"Very good. Then let us look at the Nipe race, wherever it was spawned in this universe. Let us look at the race a long time back—way back when they first became Nipe sapiens. Back when they first developed a true language. Each little Nipe child, as it is born or hatched or budded—whatever it is they do—is taught as rapidly as possible all the things it must know in order to survive. And once a little Nipelet is taught a thing, it knows. That knowledge is there, and it is permanent, and it can be brought instantly to the fore. And if it is taught a falsehood, then it cannot be taught the truth. You see?"

Stanton thought about it. "Well, yes. But eventually there are going to be cases where reality doesn't jibe with what he's been taught, aren't there? And wouldn't cold reality force a change?"

"Ah. In some cases, yes. In most, no," said Yoritomo. "Look: Suppose one of these primordial Nipes runs across a tiger—or whatever large carnivore passes for a tiger on their home planet. This Nipe, let us say, has never seen a tiger before, so he does not observe that this particular tiger is old, ill, and weak. It is, as a matter of fact, on its last legs. Our primordial Nipe hits it on the head, and it drops dead. He drags the body home for the family to feed upon.

"'How did you kill it, Papa?'

"'Why, it was the simplest thing in the world, my child. I walked up to it, bashed it firmly on the noggin, and it died. That is the way to kill tigers.'"

Yoritomo smiled. "It is also a good way to kill Nipes. Eh?" He took the towel and wiped Stanton's brow again.

"The error," he continued, "was made when Papa Nipe made the generalization from one tiger to all tigers. If tigers were rare, this erroneous bit of lore might be passed on for many generations unchecked and spread through the Nipe community as time passed. Those who did learn that most tigers are not conquered by walking up to them and hitting them on the noggin undoubtedly died before they could pass this new bit of information on. Then, perhaps, one day a Nipe survived the ordeal. His mind now contained conflicting information which must be resolved. He knows that tigers are killed in this way. He also knows that this one was not so obliging as to die. What is wrong? Ha! He has the solution! Plainly, this particular beast was not a tiger!"

"How does he explain that to the others?" Stanton asked.

"What does he tell his children?" Yoritomo asked rhetorically. "Why, first he tells them how tigers are killed. You walk up to one and bash it on the head. But then he warns his little Nipelets that there is an animal around that looks just like a tiger, but it is not a tiger. One should not make the mistake of thinking it is a tiger or one will get oneself badly hurt. Now, since the only way to tell the true tiger from the false is to give it a hit on the head, and since that test may prove rather injurious, if not absolutely fatal, to the Nipe who tries it, it follows that one is better off if one scrupulously avoids all animals that look like tigers. You see?"

"Yeah," said Stanton. "Some snarks are boojums."

"Exactly! Thank you for that allusion," Yoritomo said with a smile. "I must remember to use it in my report."

"It seems to me to follow," Stanton said musingly, "that there would inevitably be some things that they'd never learn the truth about, once they had gotten the wrong idea into their heads."

"Ah! Indeed. Absolutely true. It is precisely that which led me to formulate my theory in the first place. How else are we to explain that the Nipe, for all his tremendous technical knowledge, is nonetheless a member of a society that is still in the ancient ritual-taboo stage of development?"

"A savage?"

Yoritomo laughed softly. "As to his savagery, I think no one on Earth would disagree. But they are not the same thing. What I do mean is that the Nipe is undoubtedly the most superstitious and bigoted being on the face of this planet."

There was a knock on the door of the steam room.

"Yes?" said Dr. Yoritomo.

The physical therapist stuck his head in. "Sorry to interrupt, but the clam is done. I'll have to give him a rubdown, Doc."

"Perfectly all right," Yoritomo said. "We had almost finished. Think over what I have said, eh, Bart?"

"Yeah, sure, George," Stanton said abstractedly. Yoritomo left, and Stanton got up on the rubdown table and lay prone. The therapist, seeing that his patient was in no mood for conversation, proceeded with the massage in silence.

Stanton lay on the table, his head pillowed in his arms, while the therapist rubbed and kneaded his muscles. The pleasant sensation formed a background for his thoughts. 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 a hell of a lot better than feeling sorry for myself. The only real, basic difference between us freaks is that you're more of a 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, no doubt—like the snarks and the boojums.

Who was that? The snark? No. The snark had a flavor like that of will-o'-the-wisp. And I must remember to distinguish those that have feathers, and bite, from those that have whiskers, and scratch.

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 of this stuff straightened out in my mind is to get more information. And it doesn't look as though anyone is going to give it to me on a platter, either. The Institute men seem to be awfully chary about giving information away, even to me. George even had to chase away old rub-and-pound (That feels good!) before he would talk about the Nipe. Can't blame 'em for that, of course. There'd be hell to pay for everyone around if the general 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?

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 around here, brother. Colonel Mannheim's puppet is going to have to cut his strings and do a Pinocchio.

---