by Anthology
"That's right," the detective said warily. "What did he want with you?"
"Now, that's a funny thing," BenChaim said. "It seems that he's under the impression that you turned down his job to take on this kidnapping. Is that right?"
"Not exactly," the detective said tightly. "I was working on your son's case before he and a couple of other men came out here to talk to me. But they'd written to me long before that." He wondered what BenChaim was getting at. He didn't owe any explanations to the industrialist, but, on the other hand, he couldn't be impolite to him.
"I see," BenChaim said, nodding his head slowly. "Like most Earthies, Mr. Nguma is suffering under a misapprehension. He seems to think that I have some sort of hold over you, that I was the one who made you turn down his job, so that you'd take my case."
"Oh? Was he angry because you'd put your own selfish interests ahead of his unselfish ones?" the detective asked with a trace of hard sarcasm in his voice.
"Oh, no," said BenChaim. "Oh, no. Not at all. He said he understood perfectly. But he wondered if, now that my boy had been returned safely, I might not put a little pressure on you to get you to take his case."
"And what did you say?"
Moishe BenChaim scowled. "I told him exactly where he could head in. I told him that I had no power over you whatever, that I hadn't hired you at all, that I didn't even know that you were working on the case until after you rescued Shmuel. I told him that even if I held the power of life and death over you I would never lift so much as a finger against you. I told him that it was just the other way around, in fact. I told him that you have such a power over me because of what you did for Shmuel that it is I who will jump through your hoop if ordered, not the other way around. I was quite angry." BenChaim relaxed a little before going on. "Actually, I'm sorry I blew up. He's a well-meaning man, I think."
"No doubt," the detective said. "Did he tell you what the job was?"
"With most heart-rending particulars," said BenChaim. "I was told all about how this Nipe has been killing and eating people, as if I didn't know already. But it wasn't until I heard him talk that I realized how scared people are back there on Earth. You know, Martin, we're insulated out here. We don't feel that terror, even when we read about it or see the reports on the newscasts. If everybody on Earth is as scared as that Mr. Nguma is, it's a wonder they haven't all panicked and taken to running around in circles."
"As a matter of fact, Mr. BenChaim," the detective said levelly, "they have begun to do just that. Mr. Nguma and his friends have been after me for a long time to take their job. They have pulled every trick they can think of--including this last one with you--to get me to go back to Earth and find that monster. I have refused them so often and so firmly that they are convinced I'm afraid to tackle the Nipe. They are convinced that I know I'll fail. And yet they keep after me. If that isn't running around in circles, it'll do until a better example comes along."
"They're out of their minds," BenChaim said flatly. "Of course no man in his right mind would try to face down that thing! It would be as silly as trying to outrun a bullet or do arithmetic faster than a computer. That's common sense. That's showing a healthy respect for the Nipe--not fear. At least, not fear in the way that those men are afraid."
Suddenly the detective knew why the industrialist had come. He knew that Moishe BenChaim wanted to reassure Stanley Martin, to tell him that he was doing the sensible thing in turning down so dangerous an assignment. He could almost have predicted word for word what BenChaim was going to say next.
"Nguma may be here at any minute," said the industrialist. "He told me that he was going to come as soon as the trial was over. What are you going to tell him this time? I know it's none of my business, but I'm asking, just the same."
"I'm going to tell him no," the detective said. "I will not return to Earth for any reason whatever."
"Good," said BenChaim. "Good. That's the smart thing to do. And don't let him buffalo you. We know you out here in the Belt, Martin. I've been out here for thirty years, and I know what kind of guts it takes to do the things you've done. Those men don't understand space. Nobody understands space until he's lived in it and worked in it, and had cold death only a fraction of an inch away from his skin for hours and days at a time. No matter what those Earthies say, we know you've got more guts than anybody else in the Belt--to say nothing of those stay-at-homes on Earth."
"Thank you. I appreciate that," the detective said. But they were only words. He knew that BenChaim meant exactly what he said--or thought he meant it. But he also knew that BenChaim and others would always wonder why he had turned the job down.
God! he thought, I wish I knew! The thought was only momentary. Then, as it had done so many times before, his mind veered away from the dangerous subject.
Moishe BenChaim stood up. "Well, that's all I had to say, Mr. Martin. I just wanted to warn you that that man might be coming around and to tell you how I felt. Remember what I said about jumping through a hoop. Any time you need me, for anything at all, you just say so. Understand?"
"I understand," the detective said, forcing a smile. He rose and shook the industrialist's outstretched hand. "And thanks again," he added.
After BenChaim had gone, the detective sat thinking, toying with a pencil on his desk. Moishe BenChaim, like so many others in the Belt, had come out with nothing but his brain and his two hands and the equipment necessary to keep him alive. In thirty years, he had parlayed that into one of the biggest fortunes in the Solar System. It was men like that whose respect he valued, and, on the surface, he apparently had that respect. But refusing the Nipe job would dull the bright sheen of that respect, and he knew it. BenChaim had talked about how foolish it would be to try to beat the Nipe in a face-to-face encounter, but he hadn't meant it. He knew perfectly well that all Stanley Martin would be expected to do would be to find out where the Nipe's hideout was. Once that had been accomplished, men and machines--most especially machines--could wipe the monster from the face of the Earth. One well-placed bomb would do it, if the authorities only knew where to place that bomb. If only--
Again his mind veered away, refusing to consider the Nipe too carefully or too closely.
The intercom on his desk hummed, and he pressed the switch.
"Yes, Helen?"
"That Mr. Nguma was here while Mr. BenChaim was with you, Mr. Martin. I followed your instructions and told him that you would not see him."
"Fine. Thanks, Helen."
"Also, there's a radiogram for you from Earth."
"If it's from one of Nguma's colleagues," the detective said, "I don't want to see it. File it in the cylindrical file--under W."
"I don't think it is," the secretary said doubtfully. "I can't make any sense out of it. I'd better bring it in."
"Okay. And then put that call through to Pelham. I want to get going on that Morton spaceship wrecking. I'm getting itchy for action."
She brought in the radiogram and put it on his desk before calling Pelham. She had already read it, of course. It was her job to read such things.
The detective picked up the sheet of paper and read it.
THE OPERATION IS ABOUT TO BEGIN. I NEED
THE OTHER HALF OF MY FORCEPS. COME HOME
AND JOIN THE BIG PARADE.
MANNHEIM
It took a second for the words to really impress themselves on his mind. He read them over again.
And the veil began to drop from the closed-off part of his mind.
Memories began to swarm back into his mind--memories that had been walled off and kept away from his conscious mind by the hypnotic suggestion implanted so long ago.
Oddly, it did not surprise or shock him. He was an expert at hypnosis, especially self-hypnosis. He recognized the message for exactly what it was: a series of code phrases designed to break the blockage that had been placed in his mind.
His only reaction was to laugh aloud. "By God!" he said. "It worked! It actually worked! Nearly six years,
and I never suspected once!"
The phone hummed. He switched it on. "Mr. Pelham is on the phone, Mr. Martin," Helen said.
He watched as the florid, smiling face of Pelham, his superior, appeared on the screen. "What can I do for you, Martin?" he asked.
"I have a favor to ask, Mr. Pelham."
"Anything within reason," Pelham said. "After this BenChaim affair, you're in good standing around here." He chuckled.
"I want a leave of absence," the detective said.
Pelham looked a little surprised. "Well, I guess you deserve it. You need a rest, I imagine."
"No," the detective said. "No, it isn't that. I'm going after bigger game, is all."
"What's that?"
"I'm going to Earth to find the Nipe."
[19]
From the very moment he had heard that "Stanley Martin" had arrived to take charge of the project, Bart Stanton pushed all thoughts of his brother out of his mind. He had fouled up once by thinking of himself rather than thinking of what had to be done; he would not make that mistake again.
Nor, apparently, did Martin have any desire to meet Bart Stanton. He took control of the project smoothly. Apparently Mannheim had taken into account the possibility of his own death and had arranged things accordingly. Although Martin was not a member of the World Police, his own record showed that he had the ability to handle the job, and an Executive Session had unanimously accepted Colonel Mannheim's wishes in the matter. There was little else they could do; the very fact that Mannheim had died in the way he had, ordering the guard to hold his fire, had stilled those voices on the Executive Council who had been wavering before.
Martin had come in to Earth almost secretly, without fanfare, and the general public was totally unaware that anything at all had happened.
Special messages, going through the channels known to be tapped by the Nipe, said that it would not be in the public interest to admit that the Nipe could actually penetrate the defenses of World Police Headquarters, so the Nipe was not surprised when the public news channels announced quietly that Colonel Walther Mannheim, the man who had been decorated twelve years before for the quelling of the Central Brazilian Insurrection, had died peacefully in his sleep. The funeral was quiet, but with full honors.
Stanton stopped worrying about such things. Until he had done the job that he had been rebuilt for, he was determined to make that goal his sole purpose. As the weeks sped by, he kept determinedly to his regime, exercising regularly to keep himself in top physical condition, and studying the three-dimensional motion studies of the Nipe in action.
Only one of these made him ill the first time he watched it, but it was the only recording of the Nipe actually in the process of killing a man, so he watched, over and over again, the shots taken from the gun tower when the Nipe attacked Colonel Mannheim.
A full-sized mockup of the Nipe's body had been built, with the best approximation possible of the Nipe's bone structure and musculature, and Stanton worked with it to determine what, if any, were the Nipe's physical limitations.
His only periods of relative relaxation occurred when he discussed the psychological peculiarities of the Nipe mind with George Yoritomo.
One afternoon, after a particularly strenuous boxing session, he walked into Yoritomo's office with a grin on his face. "I've been considering the problem of the apparent paradox of a high technology in a ritual-taboo system."
Yoritomo grinned back delightedly and waved Stanton to a chair. "Excellent! It is always much better if the student thinks these things out for himself. Now, while I fill this hand-furnace with tobacco and fire up, you will please explain to me all about it."
Stanton sat down and settled himself comfortably. "All right. In the first place, there's the notion of religion. In tribal cultures, the religion is usually--uh--animistic, I think the word is."
Yoritomo nodded silently.
"They believe there are spirits everywhere," Stanton said. "That sort of belief, it seems to me, would grow up in any race that had imagination, and the Nipes must have had plenty of that, or they wouldn't have the technology that we know they do have. Am I on the right track?"
"Very good. Very good," Yoritomo said in approval. "But what evidence have you that this technology was not given to them by some other, more advanced 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 to teach them. It wouldn't be worth all the trouble it would take to make them unlearn their fallacies and learn the new facts. It would take generations to do it unless this hypothetical other race killed off all the adult Nipes and started the little ones off fresh. And that didn't happen, because if it had, the ritual-taboo system would have died out, too. So that other-race theory is out."
"The argument is imperfect," Yoritomo said, "but it will suffice for the moment. Go on about the religion."
"Okay. Religious beliefs are not subject to pragmatic tests. That is, the spiritual beliefs aren't. Any belief that could be disproven by such a test would eventually die out. But beliefs in ghosts or demons or angels or life after death aren't disprovable by material tests, any more than they are provable. So, as a race increases its knowledge of the physical world, its religion would tend to become more and more spiritual."
"Agreed. Yes. It happened so among human beings," said Yoritomo. "But how do you link this fact with ritual-taboo?"
"Well, once a belief gains a foothold," Stanton said, "it is very difficult to wipe it out, even among human beings. Among Nipes, it would be well-nigh impossible. Once a code of ritual and of social behavior had been set up, it became permanent."
"For example?" Yoritomo urged.
"Well, shaking hands, for example," Stanton said after a pause. "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 in the minds of the race, would tend to remain. But it is a characteristic of a ritual-taboo system that it resists change. Change is evil. Change is wrong. We must use what we know to be true, not try something that has never been tried before. In a ritual-taboo system, a thing which is not ritual is, ipso facto, taboo. How, then, can we account for their high technological achievements?"
"The pragmatic engineering approach, I imagine," Stanton said. "If a thing works, then go ahead and use it. It is usable. If not, it isn't."
"Approximately," said Yoritomo. "But only approximately. Now it is my turn to lecture." He put his pipe in an ashtray and held up a long, bony finger. "Firstly, we must remember that the Nipe is equipped with a functioning 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. Innovators, even in our own culture, have a very hard time working against the great inertia of a recognized theory. How much harder it would be in a ritual-taboo society with a perfect memory! 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, Stanton said: "What about atomic energy?"
"At least two million years ago," Yoritomo said. "I do not think they have had the interstellar drive more than some fifty thousand years."
"No wond
er our pet Nipe is so patient," Stanton said with a touch of awe in his voice. "How long do you suppose their individual life-span is?"
"Not so long, in comparison," said Yoritomo. "Perhaps no longer than our own at the least, or perhaps as much as five hundred years. Considering the tremendous handicaps against them, they have done quite well, I think. 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?" Yoritomo asked. "And that they must be very nearly illiterate?"
"No," Stanton admitted, "it hadn't."
"The Nipe, like man, is omnivorous," Yoritomo pointed out. "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 is something around to eat--even if it's another man."
Yoritomo picked up his pipe and began tapping the ashes out of it. "Also," he went on, "we must remember that Man, early in his career of becoming top dog on Earth, began using a method of removing the unfit. Ritual traces of it remain today in some societies--the Jewish Bar Mitzvah, for instance, or the Christian Confirmation. Before and immediately after the Holocaust, there were still primitive societies on Earth--in New Guinea, for instance--which still made a rather hard ordeal out of the Rite of Passage, the ceremony whereby a boy becomes a man--if he passes the tests."
Yoritomo was filling his pipe, a look of somber satisfaction on his lean face. "A few millennia ago, a boy who underwent those tests was killed outright if he failed. And was eaten. He had not shown the ability to overrule with reason his animal instincts. Therefore, he was not a human being, but an animal. What better use for a young and succulent animal than to provide meat for the common larder?"
"And you think the same process must have been used by the Nipes?" Stanton asked.