"The error," he continued, "was made when Papa Nipe generalized fromonetiger toalltigers. If tigers were rare, this bit of lore might be passed on for many generations. Those who learned that most tigers arenotconquered by walking up to them and hitting them on the noggin undoubtedly died before they could pass this bit of information on. Then, one day, a Nipe survived the ordeal. His mind now contained conflicting information, which must be resolved. Heknowsthat tigers are killed in this way. He alsoknowsthat this one did not die. Plainly, then,thisone is not a tiger. Ha! He has the solution!
"What does he tell his children? Why, first he tells them how tigers are killed. Then he warns them that there is an animal that looksjust likea tiger, but isnota tiger. One should not make the mistake of thinking itisa tiger or one will get badly hurt. Since the only way to tell the true tiger from the false is to hit it, and since that test may prove fatal to the Nipe who tries it, it follows that one is better off if one avoids all animals that look like tigers. You see?"
"Yeah," said Stanton. "Some snarks are boojums."
"Exactly! Thank you for that allusion. I must remember to use it in my report."
"It seems to me to follow," Stanton said musingly, "that there would be some things that they'd never learn the truth about, once they'd gotten a wrong idea in their heads."
"Ah! Indeed. It is precisely that which led me to formulate my theory in the first place. How else to explain the fact that the Nipe, for all his technical knowledge, is still in the ancient ritual-taboo stage of development?"
"A savage?"
Yoritomo smiled. "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 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!"
"He would answer to Hi! or to any loud cry,Such as Fry me! or Fritter my wig!"
Who was that? The snark? No.
Damnthis 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."
"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. "Thenyouwill please tellme."
"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.Verygood. 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 thatcouldbe 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 wemustdo 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—unlesshis 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—howincrediblylong—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 thecoup de graceby 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 besurethey'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."
"Notstrictly, 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!
"Forweare 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 equatestrueintelligence 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 heknows.
"But—!Any truly intelligent being which did not obey the Law and follow the Ritualwouldbe 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 wasalmostilliterate. 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 heknowsthat 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?"
Is this our young man, Dr. Farnsworth?" asked the man in uniform.
"Yes, it is. Colonel Mannheim, I'd like you to meet Mr. Bartholomew Stanton."
"How are you, Mr. Stanton?"
"Fine, Colonel. A little nervous."
The colonel chuckled softly. "I can't say that I blame you. It's not an easy decision to make." He looked at Dr. Farnsworth. "Has Dr. Yoritomo any more information for us?"
Farnsworth shook his head. "No. He admits that his idea is nothing more than a wild hunch. He seems to think that five years of observing the Nipe won't be too much time at all. We may have to act before then."
"I hope not. It would be a terrible waste," said Mannheim. "Mr. Stanton, I know that Dr. Farnsworth has outlined the entire plan to you, and I'm sure you're aware that many things can change in five years. We may have to play by ear long before that. Do you understand what we are doing, and why it must be done this way?"
"Yes, sir."
"You know that you're not to say anything."
"Yes, sir. Don't worry; I can keep my mouth shut."
"We're pretty sure of that," the colonel said with a smile. "Your psychometric tests showed that we were right in picking you. Otherwise, we couldn't have told you. You understand your part in this, eh?"
"Yes, sir."
"Any questions?"
"Yes, sir. What about my brother, Martin? I mean, well, I know what's the matter with him. Aside from the radiation, I mean. Do you think he'll be able to handle his part of the job after—after the operations?"
"If the operations turn out as well as Dr. Farnsworth thinks they will, yes. And, with the therapy we'll give him afterwards, he'll be in fine shape."
"Well." He looked thoughtful. "Five more years. And then I'll have the twin brother that I never really had at all. Somehow, it doesn't really register, I guess."
"Don't worry about it, Mr. Stanton," said Dr. Farnsworth. "We've got a complex enough job ahead of us without your worrying in the bargain. By the way, we'll need your signature here." He handed him a pen and spread the paper on the desk. "In triplicate."
The young man read quickly through the release form. "All nice and legal, huh? Well...." He hesitated for a moment, then bent over and wrote:Bartholomew Stantonin a firm, clear hand.
The tunnel was long and black and the air was stale and thick with the stench of rodents. Stanton stood still, trying to probe the luminescent gloom that the goggles he wore brought to his eyes. The tunnel stretched out before him—on and on. Around him was the smell of viciousness and death. Ahead ...
It goes on to infinity, Stanton thought,ending at last at zero.
"Barbell," said a voice near his ear, "Barhop here. Do you read?" It was the barest whisper, picked up by the antennae in his shoes from the steel rail that ran along the tunnel.
"Read you, Barhop."
"Move out, then. You've got a long stroll to go."
Stanton started walking, keeping his feet near the rail, in case Barhop wanted to call again. As he walked, he could feel the slight motion of the skin-tight, woven elastic suit that he wore rubbing against his skin.
And he could hear the scratching patter of the rats.
Mostly, they stayed away from him, but he could see them hiding in corners and scurrying along the sides of the tunnel. Around him, six rat-like remote-control robots moved with him, shifting their pattern constantly as they patrolled his moving figure.
Far ahead, he knew, other rat robots were stationed, watching and waiting, ready to deactivate the Nipe's detection devices at just the right moment. Behind him, another horde moved forward to turn the devices on again.
It had taken a long time to learn how to shut off those detectors without giving the alarm to the Nipe's instruments.
There were nearly a hundred men in on the operation, operating the robot rats or watching the hidden cameras that spied upon the Nipe. Nearly a hundred. And all of them were safe.
They were outside the tunnel. They were with Stanton only in proxy. They could not die here in this stinking hole, but Stanton could.
There was no help for it. Stanton had to go in person. A full-sized robot proxy would be stronger, although not faster unless Stanton controlled it, than the Nipe. But the Nipe would be able to tell that it was a robot, and he would simply destroy it with one of his weapons. A remote-controlled robot would never get close enough to the Nipe to do any good.
"We do not know," Dr. Yoritomo had said, "whether he would recognize it as a robot or not, but his instruments would show the metal easily enough, and his eyes might be able to see that it was not covered with human skin. The rats are covered with real rat hides; they are small, and he is used to seeing them around. But a human-sized robot? Ah, no. Never."
So Stanton had to go in in person, walking southward, along the miles of blackness that led to the nest of the Nipe.
Overhead was Government City.
He had walked those streets only the night before, and he knew that only a short distance above him was an entirely different world.
Somewhere up there, his brother was waiting after having run the gamut of televised interviews, dinner at one of the best restaurants, and a party afterward. A celebrity. "The greatest detective in the Solar System," they'd called him. Fine stuff, that. Stanton wondered what the asteroids were like. Maybe that would be the place to go after this job was done. Maybe they'd have a place in the asteroids for a hopped-up superman.
Or maybe there'd only be a place here, beneath the streets of Government City for a dead superman.
Not if I can help it,Stanton thought with a grim smile.
The walking seemed to take forever, but, somehow, Stanton didn't mind it. He had a lot to think over. Seeing his brother had been unnerving yesterday, but today he felt as though everything had been all right all along.
His memory still was a long way from being complete, and it probably always would be. He could still scarcely recall any real memories of a boy named Martin Stanton, but—and he smiled at the thought—he knew more about him than his brother did, at that.
It didn't matter. That Martin Stanton was gone. In effect, he had been demolished—what little there had been of him—and a new structure had been built on the old foundation.
And yet, in another way, the new structure was very like what would have developed naturally if the accident so early in life had not occurred.
Stanton skirted a pile of rubble on his right. There had been a station here, once; the street above had caved in and filled in with brick, concrete, cobblestones, and steel scrap, and then it had been sealed over when Government City was built.
A part of one wall was still unbroken, though. A sign built of tile said86th Street, he knew, although it wasn't visible in the dim glow. He kept walking, ignoring the rats that scampered over the rubble.
"Barhop to Barbell," said the soft voice near his ear. "No sign of activity from the Nipe. So far, you haven't triggered any of his alarms."
"Barbell to Barhop," Stanton whispered. "What's he doing?"
"Still sitting motionless. Thinking, I guess. Or sleeping. It's hard to tell."
"Let me know if he starts moving around."
"Will do."
Poor, unsuspecting beastie,Stanton thought.Ten years of hard work, ten years of feeling secure, and within a very short time he's going to get the shock of his life.
Or maybe not. There was no way of knowing what kind of shocks the Nipe had taken in his life, Stanton thought. Not even of knowing whether the Nipe was capable of feeling anything like security.
It was odd, he thought, that he should feel a kinship toward both the Nipe and his brother in such similar ways. He had never met the Nipe, and his brother was a dim picture in his old memories, but they were both very well known to him. Certainly better known to him than he was to them.
And yet, seeing his brother's face on the TV screen, hearing him talk, watching the way he moved about, watching the expressions on his face, had been a tremendously moving thing. Not until that moment had he really known himself.
Meeting him face to face would be easier now, but it would still be a scene highly charged with emotional tension.
He kicked something that rattled and rolled away from him. He stopped, freezing in his tracks, trying to pierce the dully glowing gloom. It was a human skull.
He relaxed and began walking again.
There were plenty of bones down here. Mannheim had said that the tunnels had been used as air-raid shelters when the sun bomb had hit the island during the Holocaust. Thousands had crowded underground after the warning had come, and they had died when the bright, hot, deadly gas had roared down through ventilators and open stairwells.
There were even caches of canned goods down here, some of them still sealed after all this time. But the rats, wiser than they knew, had chewed at them, exposing the steel beneath the tin plate. After a while, oxidation would weaken a can to the point where some lucky rat could bite through it and find himself a meal. Then he could move the empty can aside and gnaw the next one in the pile, and the cycle would begin again. It kept the rats fed almost as well as an automatic machine might have.
The tunnel was an endless monochromatic world that was both artificial and natural. Here, there was a neatly squared-off mosaic of ceramic tile; over there, on a little hillock of earth, squatted a colony of fat mushrooms. In one place, he had to skirt a pool of water; in another, climb over a heap of rust and debris that had once been a subway car.
One man, alone, walking through the dark towards a superhuman monster that had terrorized Earth for a decade.
A drug that would knock out the Nipe would have been useful, but that would have required a greater knowledge of the Nipe's biochemistry than anyone had. The same applied to anesthetic gases, or electric shock, or supersonics.
The only answer was a man called Stanton.
And the voice near his ear said: "A hundred yards to go, Barbell."
"I know," he whispered. "He hasn't moved?"
"No."
Wouldn't it be funny if he were dead?Stanton thought.If his heart had stopped, or something. Wouldn't that be a big joke on everybody? Especially me.
Ahead the tunnel made a curving turn, and there was a large area that had once been a major junction of two tunnels, one below the other. The Nipe had taken over a part of that area to build his home-away-from-home.
Stanton approached the turn and took off the infra-red goggles. Enough light spilled over from the Nipe's lair to illuminate the tunnel. He put the goggles on the trackway. He wouldn't need them again.
He went on around the curve, slowly and quietly. He didn't want to fight down here in the tracks, and he didn't want to be caught just yet.
Cautiously, he lifted himself up to the platform, where long-gone passengers had once waited for long-gone trains. Now that he was out of the trench that the tracks lay in, he could move more easily. He moved away from the tracks.
"Barbell! He's heard you! Watch it!"
But Stanton had already heard the movement of the Nipe. He jerked off the communicator and threw it away. He didn't want any encumbrances now.
And then, as fast as any express train that had ever moved in these underground ways, the Nipe came around a corner thirty feet away, his four violet eyes gleaming, his limbs rippling beneath his centipede-like body.
From fifteen feet away, he launched himself through the air, his outstretched hands ready to kill.
But Stanton's marvelous neuro-muscular system was already in action.
At this stage of the game, it would be suicide to let the Nipe get close. He couldn't fend off eight grasping hands with his own two. He leaped to one side, and the Nipe got his first surprise in ten years when Stanton's fist slammed against the side of his snouted head, knocking him in the opposite direction from that in which Stanton had moved.
The Nipe landed, turned, and charged back toward the man. This time, he reared up, using his two rear pairs of limbs for locomotion, while the two forward pair were held out, ready to kill.
He got surprise number two when Stanton's fist landed on his snout, rocking his head back. His own hands met nothing but air, and by the time he had recovered from the blow, Stanton was well back, out of the way.
He's so small!Stanton thought wonderingly. Even when he reared up, the Nipe's head was only three feet above the concrete floor.
The Nipe came in again—more cautiously, this time.
Stanton punched again with a straight right. The Nipe moved his head aside, and Stanton's knuckles merely grazed the side of his head, below the lower right eye. One of the Nipe's hands came in in a chopping right hook that took Stanton just below the ribs. Stanton leaped back with a gasp of pain.
The Nipe didn't use fists. He used his open hand, fingers together, like a judo fighter.
The Nipe came forward once more, and as Stanton danced back, the Nipe made a grab for his ankle, almost catching it.
There were too many hands to watch! Stanton had two advantages: weight and reach. His arms were almost half again as long as the Nipe's.
Against that, the Nipe had all those hands; and with his low center of gravity and four-footed stance, it would be hard to knock him down. If Stanton lost his footing, the fight would be over fast.
Stanton lunged suddenly forward and planted a left in the Nipe's right upper eye, then followed it with a right uppercut to the Nipe's jaw as his head snapped back. The Nipe's four hands cut inward from the sides like sword blades, but they found no target.
Backing away, Stanton suddenly realized that he had another advantage. The Nipe couldn't throw a straight jab! His shoulder—if that's what they should be called—were narrow and the upper armbones weren't articulated properly for such a blow. He could throw a mean hook, but he had to get in close to deliver it.
On the other side of the coin was the fact that the Nipe knew plenty about human anatomy—from the bones out. Stanton's knowledge of Nipe anatomy was almost totally superficial.
He wished he knew if and where the Nipe had a solar plexus. He would like to punch something soft for a change.
Instead, he tried for another eye. He danced in, jabbed and danced out again, The Nipe had ducked again, taking it on the side of his head.
Then the Nipe came in low, at an angle, trying for the groin. For his troubles, he got a knee in the jaw that staggered him badly. One grasping hand clutched at Stanton's right thigh and grasped hard. Stanton swung his fist down like a pendulum and knocked the arm aside.
But there was a slight limp in his movement as he back-pedaled away from the Nipe. That full-handed pinch had hurt!
Stanton was angry now, with the hot, controlled anger of a fighting man. He stepped in and slammed two fast, hard jabs into the point of the Nipe's snout, jarring the monster backwards. This time, it was the Nipe who scuttled backwards.
Stanton moved in to press his advantage and landed a beaut on the Nipe's lower left eye. Then he tried a body blow. It wasn't too successful. The alien had an endoskeleton, but he also had a hide that was like somewhat leathery chitin.
He pulled back, out of the way of the Nipe's judo cuts.
His fists were beginning to hurt, and his leg was paining him badly where the Nipe had clamped on to it. And his ribs—
And then he realized that, so far, the Nipe had only landed one blow!
One punch and one pinch,he thought with a touch of awe.The only other damage he's inflicted has been to my knuckles!
The Nipe charged in again, then he leaped suddenly and clawed for Stanton's face with his first pair of hands. The second and third pairs chopped in toward the man's body. The last pair propelled him off the floor.
Stanton stepped back and let him have a right just below the jaw, where his throat would have been if he'd been human.
The Nipe arced backwards in a half-somersault and landed flat on his back.
Stanton backed up a little more, waiting, while the Nipe wriggled feebly for a moment.The Marquis of Queensbury should have lived to see this,he thought.
The Nipe rolled over and crouched on all eight limbs. His violet eyes watched Stanton, but the man could read no expression on that inhuman face.
"You did not kill."
For a moment, Stanton found it hard to believe that the hissing, guttural voice had come from the crouching monster.
"You did not eventryto kill."
"I have no wish to kill you," Stanton said evenly.
"I can see that. Do you ... Are you...." He stopped, as if baffled. "There are not the proper words. Do you follow the Customs?"
Stanton felt a surge of triumph. This was what George Yoritomo had guessed might happen!
"If I must kill you," he said carefully, "I, myself, will do the honors. You will not go uneaten."
The Nipe sagged a little, relaxing all over. "I had hoped it was so. It was the only thinkable thing. I saw you on the television, and it was only thinkable that you came for me."
Stanton blinked, stunned. What was the Nipe thinking? But, of course, he knew. And he saw that even his brother's return had been a part of the plan.
"I knew you were out in the asteroids," the Nipe went on. "But I had decided you had come to kill. Since you did not, what are your thoughts, Stanley Martin?"
"That we should help each other," Stanton said.
It was as simple as that.
Stanton sat in his hotel room, smoking a cigarette, staring at the wall, and thinking.
He was alone again. All the fuss, feathers, and fooferaw were over. Farnsworth was in another room of the suite, making his plans for a complete physical examination of the Nipe. Yoritomo was having the time of his life, holding a conversation with the Nipe, drawing the alien out and getting him to talk about his own race and their history. And Mannheim was plotting the next phase of the capture—the cover-up.
Stanton smiled a little. Colonel Mannheim was a great one for planning, all right. Every little detail was taken care of. It sometimes made his plans more complex than necessary, Stanton suspected. Mannheim tended to try to account for every eventuality, and, after he had done that, he would set aside reserves here and there, just in case they might be useful if something unforeseen happened.
Stanton got up, walked over to the window, and looked down at the streets of Government City, eight floors below.
All things considered, the Government had done the right thing. And, in picking Mannheim, they had picked the right man. What would the average citizen think if he knew the true story of the Nipe? If he discovered that, at this very moment, the Nipe was being treated almost as an honored guest of the Government? If he suspected that the Nipe could have been killed easily at any time during the past six years?
Would it be possible to explain that, in the long run, the knowledge possessed by the Nipe was tremendously more valuable to the Race of Man that the lives of a few individuals?
Could those people down there, and the others like them all over the world, be made to understand that, by his own lights, the Nipe had been acting in a most civilized and gentlemanly way he knew? Would they see that, because of the priceless information stored in that alien brain, the Nipe's life had to be preserved at any cost?
Dr. Yoritomo assumed that Mannheim would spread a story about the Nipe's death—perhaps even display a carefully-made "corpse". But Stanton had the feeling that the colonel had something else up his sleeve.
The phone rang. Stanton walked over, thumbed the answer stud, and watched Dr. Farnsworth's face take shape on the screen.
"Bart, I just saw the tapes of your fight with the Nipe, Incredible! I'm going to have them run over again, slowed down, so that I can see what went on, and I'd like to have you tell as best you can, what went on in your mind at each stage of the fight."
"You mean right now? I have an appointment—"
Farnsworth waved a hand. "No, no. Later. Take your time. But I am honestly amazed that you won so easily. I knew you were good, and I knew you'd win, but I honestly expected you to be injured."
Stanton looked down at his bandaged hands, and felt the ache of his broken rib and the blue bruise on his thigh. In spite of the way it looked, he had actually been hurt worse than the Nipe had. That boy wastough!
"The trouble was that he couldn't adapt himself to fighting in a new way," he told Farnsworth. "He fought me as he would have fought another Nipe, and that didn't work. I had the reach on him, and I could maneuver faster."
"It looked to me as though you were fighting him as you would fight another human being," Farnsworth said.
Stanton grinned. "I was, in a modified way. ButIwon—the Nipe didn't."
Farnsworth grinned back. "I see. Well, I'll let you know when I'm ready for your impressions. Probably tomorrow some time."
"Fine."
He walked back over to the window, but this time he looked at the horizon, not at the street.
Farnsworth had called him "Bart". It's funny, Stanton thought, how habit can get the best of a man. Farnsworth had known the truth all along, and now he knew that his patient—formerpatient—was aware of the truth. And still, he had called him "Bart".
And I still think of myself as Bart,he thought.I probably always will.
And why not? Martin Stanton no longer existed—in fact he had never had much of a real existence. He was only a bad dream; only "Bart" was real.
Take two people, genetically identical. Damage one of them so badly that he is helpless and useless—and always only a step away from death. It is inevitable that the weaker will identify himself with the stronger.
The vague telepathic bond that always links identical twins (they "think alike", they say) becomes unbalanced under such conditions. Normally, there is a give-and-take, and each preserves the sense of his own identity, since the two different sets of sense receptors give different viewpoints. But if one of the twins is damaged badly enough something must happen to the telepathic link. Usually, it is broken.
But the link between Mart and Bart Stanton had not been broken. It had become a one-way channel. Martin, in order to escape the prison of his own body, had become a receptor for Bart's thoughts. He felt as Bart felt—the thrill of running after a baseball, the pride of doing something clever with his hands.
In effect, Martin ceased to think. The thoughts in his mind were Bart's. The feeling of identity was almost complete.
To an outside observer, it appeared that Martin had become a cataleptic schizophrenic, completely cut off from reality. The "Bart" part of him did not want to be disturbed by the sensory impressions that "Mart's" body provided. Like the schizophrenic, Martin was living in a little world that was cut off from the actual physical world around his body.
The difference between Martin's condition and that of the ordinary schizophrenic was thathislittle world actually existed. It was an almost exact counterpart of the world that existed in the perfectly sane, rational mind of his brother, Bart. It grew and developed as Bart did, fed by the telepathic flow from the stronger mind to the weaker.
There were two Barts, and no Mart at all.
And then the Neurophysical Institute had come into the picture. A new process had been developed, by which a human being could be reconstructed—made, literally, into a superman. The drawback was that a normal human body resisted the process—to the death, if necessary, just as a normal human body will resist a skin graft from an alien donor.
But the radiation-damaged body of Martin Stanton had no resistance of that kind. With him—perhaps—the process might work.
So Bartholomew Stanton, Martin's legal guardian after the death of their mother, had given permission for the series of operations that would rebuild his brother.
The telepathic link, of course, had to be shut off—for a time, at least. Part of that could be done in the treatment of Martin, but Bart, too, had to do his part. By submitting to hypnosis, he had allowed himself to be convinced that his name was Stanley Martin. He had taken a job on Luna, and then had gone to the asteriods. The simple change of name and environment had been just enough to snap the link during a time when Martin's brain had been inactivated by therapy and anesthetics.
Only the sense of identity remained. The patient was still Bart.
Mannheim had used them both, naturally. Colonel Mannheim had the ability to use anyone at hand, including himself, to get a job done.
Stanton looked at his watch. It was almost time.
Mannheim had sent for "Stanley Martin" when the time had come for him to return in order to give the Nipe data that he would be sure to misinterpret. A special code phrase in the message had released "Stanley Martin" from the posthypnotic suggestion that had held him for so long. He knew that he was Bartholomew Stanton again.
And so do I,thought the man by the window.We have a lot to straighten out, we two.
There was a knock at the door.
Stanton walked over and opened it, trying to think.
It was like looking into a mirror.
"Hello, Bart," he said.
"Hello, Bart," said the other.
In that instant, the complete telepathic linkage was restored, and they both knew what only one of them had known before—that, for a time, the flow had been one-way again—that "Stanley Martin" had experienced the entire battle with the Nipe. His release from the posthypnotic suggestion had made it possible.
E duobus unum.
There was unity without loss of identity.