“Possibly he would, if he could read them,” Yoritomo said. “Did I not say he was illiterate?”
“You mean he’s learned to speak our languages, but not to read them?”
The psychologist 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.”
Stanton closed one eye and gave Yoritomo the glance askance. “Aw, come awwn, George! A technological race without a written language? That’s impossible!”
“Ah, no. No, it isn’t. Ask yourself: What need has a race with a perfect memory for written records? At least, in the sense that we think of them. Certainly not to remember things. What would a Nipe need with a memorandum book or a diary? All of their history and all of their technology exists in the collective mind of the race.
“Think, for a moment, of their history. If it is somewhat analogous to human history—and, as we have seen, there is reason to believe that this is so—then we can, in a way, trace the development of writing. We—”
“Wait a minute!” Stanton held up his hand. “I think I see what you’re driving at.”
“Ah. So?” Yoritomo nodded. “Very well. Then you expound.”
“I can give it to you in two sentences,” Stanton said. “One: Their first writing was probably pictographic and was learned only by a select priestly class. Two: It still is.”
“Ahhhh!” Yoritomo’s eyes lit up. “Admirable! Most admirable! And succinctly put, too. And, to top it off, almost precisely correct. That is what happened here on Earth; are we wrong in assuming that such may have happened elsewhere in the Universe? (Remembering always, my dear Bart, that we must not make the mistake of thinking like our friend, the Nipe, and assuming that everybody else in the Universe has to be like us in all things.)
“You are correct. That is why I hedged when I said he was almost illiterate. There is a possibility that a written symbology does exist for Nipes. But it is used almost entirely for ritualistic purposes, it is pictographical in form, and is known only to a very few. For others to learn it would be taboo.
“Remember, I said that there is only one society, one culture remaining on the Nipe planet. And remember that history is a very late development in our own culture, just as written language is. One important event in every ten centuries of Nipe history would still give a Nipe historian ten thousand events to remember just since the invention of the steam engine. What, then, does Nipe history become? A series of folk chants, of chansons de geste.”
“Why?” Stanton asked. “If they have perfect memories, why would histories be distorted?”
“Time, my dear boy. Time.” Yoritomo spread his hands in a gesture of futility. “When one has a few million years of history to learn, it must become distorted, even in a race with a perfect memory. Otherwise, no individual would have a chance to learn it all in a single lifetime, even a lifetime of five hundred years, much less to pass that knowledge on to another. So only the most important events are reported. And that means that each historian must also be an editor. He must excise those portions which he considers unimportant.”
“But wouldn’t that very limitation induce them to record history?” Stanton asked. “Right there is your inducement to use a written language.”
Yoritomo looked at him with wide-eyed innocence. “Why? What good is history?”
“Ohhh,” said Stanton. “I see.”
“Certainly you do,” Yoritomo said firmly. “Of what use is history to the ritual-taboo culture? Only to record what is to be done. And, with a memory that can know what is to be done, of what use is a historian, except to remember the important things. No ritual-taboo culture looks upon history as we do. Only the doings of the great are recorded. All else must be edited out. Thus, while the memory of the individual may be, and is, perfect, the memory of the race is not. But they don’t know that!”
“What about communications, then?” Stanton asked. “What did they use before they invented radio?”
“Couriers,” Yoritomo said. “And, possibly, written messages from one priestly scribe to another. That last, by the way, has probably survived in a ritualistic form. When an officer is appointed to a post, let’s say, he may get a formal paper that says so. The Nipes may use symbols to signify rank and so on. They 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.
“For teaching purposes, it is quite unnecessary. Look at what television and such have done in our own civilization. With such tools as that at hand—recordings and pictures—it is possible to teach a person a great many things without ever teaching him to read. A Nipe certainly wouldn’t need any aid for calculation, would he? We humans must use a piece of paper to multiply two ten-digit numbers together, but that’s because our memories are faulty. A Nipe has no need for such aids.”
“Are you really positive of all this, George?” Stanton asked.
Yoritomo shrugged. “How can we be absolutely positive at this stage of the game? Eh? Our evidence is sketchy, I admit. It is not as solidly based as our other reconstructions of his background, but it appears that he thinks of symbols as being unable to convey much information. The pattern for his raids, for instance, indicates that his knowledge of the materials he wants and their locations comes from vocal sources—television advertising, eavesdropping on shipping orders, and so on. In other words, he cases the joint by ear. If he could understand written information, his job would be much easier. He could find his materials much more quickly and easily. And, too, we have never seen him either read a word or write one. From this evidence, we are fairly certain that he can neither read nor write any terrestrial language—or even his own.” He spread his hands again. “As I said, it is not proof.”
“No,” Stanton agreed, “but I must admit that 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.”
“Oh?” Stanton distinctly felt the back of his neck prickle.
“Yes,” said Yoritomo. “Mr. Martin feels that if we wait much longer, we may run into the danger of giving the Nipe enough time to complete his work on his communicator.” He looked at Stanton and chuckled, but there was no humor in his short laugh. “We would not wish our friend, the Nipe, to bring his relatives into this little tussle, would we, Bart?”
“That’s been our deadline all along,” Bart said levelly. “The object all along has been to let the Nipe work without hindrance as long as he did not actually produce a communicator that would—as you put it—bring his relatives into the tussle. Have things changed?”
“They have,” Yoritomo acknowledged. “Why wouldn’t they? We have been working toward that as a final deadline. If it appeared that the Nipe were actually about to contact his confederates out there somewhere, we would be forced to act immediately, of course. Plan Beta would go into effect. But we don’t want that, do we?”
“No,” said Stanton. “No.” He was well aware what a terrible loss it would be for humanity if Plan Beta went into effect. The Nipe would have to be literally blasted out of his cozy little nest.
“No, of course not.” Yoritomo chuckled again, with as little mirth as he had before. “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. I dare say that the public will be extremely happy to hear of his death, and I know that the rest of us will be happy to know that he will never kill again.”
Stanton suddenly saw the fateful day for which he had been so carefully prepared and trained looming terrifyingly large in the im
mediate future.
“How soon?” he asked in an oddly choked voice.
“Within days.” Yoritomo lowered his eyes from the ceiling and looked into Stanton’s face with a mild, bland expression.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “the propaganda phase begins. We will announce to the world that the great detective, Stanley Martin, has come to Earth to rid us of the Nipe.”
CHAPTER 20
The arrival of the great Stanley Martin was a three-day wonder in the public news channels. His previous exploits were recounted, with embellishments, several times during the next seventy-two hours. The “arrival” itself was very carefully staged. A special ship belonging to the World Police brought him in, and he was met by four Government officials in civilian clothes. The entire affair was covered live by news cameras. No one on Earth suspected that he had been on Earth for weeks before; a few knew it, but it never even occurred to the rest.
Later, a special interview was arranged. Philip Quinn, a news interviewer who was noted for his deferential attitude toward those whom he had the privilege of interviewing, was chosen for the job.
Stanley Martin’s dynamic, forceful personality completely overshadowed Quinn.
But in spite of all the publicity, not one word, not one hint about the method by which Stanley Martin intended to bring the Nipe in was released. There were all kinds of speculations, ranging from the mystically sublime to the broadly comical. One self-styled archbishop of a California nut cult declared that Martin was a saint appointed by God to exorcise the Demon Nipe that had been plaguing Mankind and that the Millennium was therefore due at any moment. He was, he said, sending Stanley Martin a sealed letter which contained a special exorcism prayer that would do the job very nicely. Why hadn’t he used it himself? Because if anyone other than a saint or an angel used it, it would backfire on the user and destroy him. Naturally the archbishop did not claim himself to be a saint, but he knew that Martin was because he had plainly seen the halo around the detective’s head when he saw him on TV.
An inventor in Palermo, Sicily, solemnly declared that he had sent Stanley Martin the plans for a device that would render him invisible to the Nipe and therefore make the Nipe easy to conquer. No, there was no danger that the device might fall into the wrong hands and be used by human criminals, since it did not render a person invisible to human eyes, only to Nipe eyes.
The first item was played up big in the newscasts. The second was quashed—fast!—for the very simple reason that the Nipe just might have believed it.
One note throbbed in the background of every interview with responsible persons. It was the unobtrusive note of a soft clarinet played in a great symphony, all the more telling because it was never played loudly or insistently, but it was there all the same. Whenever the question of the Nipe’s actual whereabouts came up, the note seemed to ring a trifle more clearly, but never more loudly. That single throbbing note was the impression given by everyone who was interviewed, or who expressed any views on the subject, that the Nipe was hiding somewhere in the Amazonian jungles of South America. It was the last place on Earth that had still not been thoroughly explored, and it seemed to be the only place that the Nipe could hide.
Only a small handful of the vast array of people who were dispensing this carefully tailored propaganda knew what was going on. More than ninety-nine percent of the newsmen involved in the affair thought they were honestly giving the news as they saw it, and none of them saw the invisible but very powerful hand of Stanley Martin shifting the news just enough to give it the bias he wanted.
The comedians on the entertainment programs let the whole story alone for the most part. There were no clever skits, no farcical takeoffs on the subject of Stanley Martin and the Nipe. One comedian, who was playing the part of a henpecked husband, did remark: “If my wife gets any meaner, I’m going to send Stan Martin after her!” But it didn’t get much of a laugh. And the Government organization had nothing to do with that kind of censorship; it was self-imposed. Every one of the really great comics recognized, either consciously or subconsciously, that the Nipe was not a subject for humor. Such jokes would have made them about as popular as the Borscht Circuit comedian who told a funny story about Dachau in 1946.
Aside from the subtle coloring given it by the small, Mannheim-trained group of propaganda experts, the news went out straight.
The detective himself, after that one single interview, vanished from sight. No one knew where he was, though, again, there were all kinds of speculations, all of them erroneous. Actually, he was a carefully guarded and willing prisoner in a suite in one of the big hotels in Government City.
On the fourth day, the big operation began without fanfare. The actual maneuvering to capture the alien that had terrorized a planet began shortly after noon.
At a few minutes before three that afternoon, the man whom the world knew as Stanley Martin suddenly suffered a dizzy spell and nearly fainted.
Then, almost like a child, he began to weep.
FINAL INTERLUDE
Colonel Walther Mannheim said: “It will take five years, Stanton.”
He was looking at the young man seated in one of the three chairs in the small, comfortable room. There was a clublike atmosphere about the room, but none of the three men were relaxed.
“Five years?” said the young man. He looked at the third man.
Dr. Farnsworth nodded. “More or less. More if it’s a partial failure—less if it’s a complete failure.”
“Then there is a chance of failure?” the young man asked.
“There is always a chance of failure in any major surgical undertaking,” Dr. Farnsworth said. “Even in the most routine cases, things can go wrong. We’re only men, Mr. Stanton. We’re neither magicians nor gods.”
“I know that, Doctor,” the young man said. “Nobody’s perfect, and I don’t expect perfection. Can you give me a—an estimate on the chances?”
“I can’t even give you any kind of guess,” said Farnsworth. He smiled rather grimly. “So far, we have had no failures. Our mortality rate is a flat zero. We have never lost a patient because we’ve never had one. As I told you, this will be the first time the operation has ever been performed on a human being. Or, rather,” he corrected himself, “I should say series of operations. This is not one single—er—cut-and-suture job, like an appendectomy.”
“All right, then, call it a series of operations,” the young man said. “I assume each of them has been performed individually?”
“Not exactly. Some of them have never been performed on any human being simply because they require not only special conditions, but they require that the steps leading up to them have already been performed.”
“You don’t make things sound very rosy, Doctor.”
“I’m not trying to. I’m trying to give you the facts. Personally, I think we have a better than ninety percent chance of success. I wouldn’t try it if I thought otherwise. With modern mathematical methods of analyzing medical theory, we can predict success for such an intricate series of operations. We can predict what will happen when massive doses of hormones and enzymes and such are used. But medicine still remains largely an art in spite of all that.
“In parallel operations, performed on primates, our results were largely successful. But remember that not even every human being has the genetic structure necessary to undergo this particular treatment, and a monkey’s gene structure is quite different from yours or mine.”
“I’ll just ask you one question,” the young man said firmly. “If you were being asked to undergo this treatment, would you do it?”
Dr. Farnsworth didn’t hesitate. “All things considered, yes, I would.”
“What do you mean, ‘All things considered’?”
“The very fact that the Nipe exists, and that this is the only method of dealing with him that is even remotely possible would certainly influence my opinion,” Farnsworth said. “I might not be so quick to go through it, frankly, if it were not
for the fact that the future of the entire human race would depend upon my decision.” He paused, then added: “I would hesitate to go through with it if there were no Nipe threat, not because I would be afraid that the operations might fail, but because of what I would be afterward.”
“Um. Yes.” The young man caught his lower lip between his teeth and thought for a moment. “Yes, I see what you mean. Being a lone superman in a world of ordinary people mightn’t be so pleasant.”
Colonel Mannheim, who had been sitting silently during the discussion between the two men, said: “Look, Stanton, I know this is tough. Actually, it’s a lot tougher on you than it is on your brother, because you have to make the decision. He can’t. But I want you to keep it in mind that there’s nothing compulsory in this. Nobody’s trying to force you to do anything.”
There was a touch of bitterness in the young man’s smile as he looked at the colonel. “No. You merely remind me of the fact and leave the rest to my sense of duty.”
Colonel Mannheim, recognizing the slightly altered quotation, returned his smile and gave him the next line. “‘Your sense of duty!’”
The bitterness vanished, and the young man’s smile became a grin. “‘Don’t put it on that footing!’” he quoted back in a melodramatic voice. “‘As I was merciful to you just now, be merciful to me! I implore you not to insist on the letter of your bond just as the cup of happiness is at my lips!’”
“‘We insist on nothing,’” returned the colonel; “‘we content ourselves with pointing out your duty.’”
Dr. Farnsworth had no notion of what the two of them were talking about, but he kept silent as he noticed the tension fading.
“‘Well, you have appealed to my sense of duty,’” the young man continued, “‘and my duty is all too clear. I abhor your infamous calling; I shudder at the thought that I have ever been mixed up with it; but duty is before all—at any price I will do my duty.’”
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