The woman's eyes were filled with tears, for which the doctor was
privately thankful. At least the original shock had worn off.
"And there's nothing we can do? Nothing?" There was a slight catch in her
voice.
"I'm afraid not. Not yet. There are research teams working on the problem,
and one day ... perhaps...." Then he shook his head. "But not yet." He
paused. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Stanton."
The woman sat there on the comfortable chair and looked at the
specialist's diploma that hung on the doctor's wall--and yet, she didn't
really see the diploma at all. She was seeing something else--a kind of
dream that had been shattered.
After a moment, she began to speak, her voice low and gentle, as though
the dream were still going on and she were half afraid she might waken
herself if she spoke too loudly.
"Jim and I were so glad they were twins. Identical twin boys. He said--I
remember, he said, 'We ought to call 'em Ike and Mike.' And he laughed a
little when he said it, to show he didn't mean it.
"I remember, I was propped up in the bed, the afternoon they were born,
and Jim had brought me a new bed jacket, and I said I didn't need a new
one because I would be going home the next day, and he said: 'Hell, kid,
you don't think I'd just buy a bed jacket just for hospital use, do you?
This is for breakfasts in bed, too.'
"And that's when he said he'd seen the boys and said we ought to name them
Ike and Mike."
The tears were coming down Mrs. Stanton's cheeks heavily now, and grief
made her look older than her twenty-four years, but the doctor said
nothing, letting her spill out her emotions in words.
"We'd talked about it before, you know--as soon as the obstetrician found
out that I was going to have twins. And Jim ... Jim said that we shouldn't
name them alike unless they were identical twins or mirror twins. If they
were fraternal twins, we'd just name them as if they'd been ordinary
brothers or sisters or whatever. You know?" She looked at the doctor,
pleading for understanding.
"I know," he said.
"And Jim was always kidding. If they were girls, he said we ought to call
them Flora and Dora, or Annie and Fanny, or maybe Susie and Floozie. He
was always kidding about it. You know?"
"I know," said the doctor.
"And then, when they _were_ identical boys, he was very sensible about it.
'We'll call them Martin and Bartholomew,' he said. 'Then if they want to
call themselves Mart and Bart, they can, but they won't be stuck with
rhyming names if they don't want them.' Jim was very thoughtful that way,
Doctor. Very thoughtful."
She suddenly seemed to realize that she was crying, and took a
handkerchief out of her sleeve to dab at her eyes and face.
"I'll have to quit crying," she said, trying to sound brave and strong.
"After all, it could have been worse, couldn't it? I mean, the radiation
could have killed my boys, too. Jim's dead, yes, and I've got to get used
to that. But I still have two boys to take care of, and they'll need me."
"Yes, Mrs. Stanton, they will," said the doctor. "They'll both need you.
And you'll have to be very gentle and very careful with both of them."
"How ... how do you mean that?" she asked.
* * * * *
The doctor settled back in his chair and chose his words carefully.
"Identical twins tend to identify with each other, Mrs. Stanton. There is
a great deal of empathy between people who are not only of the same age,
but genetically identical. If they were both healthy, there would be very
little trouble in their education at home or at school. Any of the
standard texts on psychodynamics in education will show you the pitfalls
to avoid when dealing with identical siblings.
"But these boys are no longer identical. One is normal, healthy, and
lively. The other is ... well, as you have seen, he is slow, sluggish, and
badly co-ordinated. That condition may improve with time, but, until we
know more about such damage than we do now, he will be an invalid."
"That's the trouble with radiation damage, Mrs. Stanton. Even when we can
save the victim's life, we cannot always save his health.
"You can see, I think, what sort of psychic disturbances this can bring
about in such a pair. The ill boy tends to identify with the well one and,
unfortunately, the reverse is true. If they are not properly handled
during their formative years, Mrs. Stanton, both can be badly damaged
emotionally."
"I ... I think I understand," the woman said. "But what sort of thing
should I look out for?"
"I suggest that you get a good man in psychic development," the doctor
said. "I'd hesitate to prescribe. It's out of my field. But, in general,
most of your trouble will be caused by a tendency for the pair to swing
into one of two extremes.
"Mutual antagonism can arise if one becomes jealous of the other's health,
while the healthy one becomes jealous of the extra consideration shown his
crippled brother.
"Or, on the other hand, the healthy boy may identify so closely with his
brother that he feels every hurt or slight, real or imagined. He becomes
over-solicitous, over-protective. At the same time, the other brother may
come to depend completely on the healthy twin.
"In both these situations, there is a positive feedback which constantly
worsens the situation. It requires a great deal of careful observation and
careful application of the proper educational stimuli to keep the
situation from developing toward either extreme. You'll need expert help,
if you want both boys to display the full abilities of which they are
potentially capable."
"I see. Could you give me the name of a good man, Doctor?"
The doctor nodded and picked up a book on his desk. "I'll give you several
names. You can pick the one you like. They're all good men. There are many
good women in the field, too, but in this case, I think a man would be
best. Of course, if one of them thinks a woman is indicated, that's up to
him. As I said, that isn't my field."
He opened the small book and riffled through it to find the names he
wanted.
V
The image of the Nipe on the glowing screen was clear and finely detailed.
It was, Bart thought, as though one were looking through a window into the
Nipe's nest itself. Only the tremendous depth of focus of the lens which
caught the picture gave the illusion a sense of unreality.
Everything--background and foreground alike--was sharply in focus.
The Nipe moved in slow motion, giving the watchers the eerie feeling that
he was moving through a thicker, heavier medium than air, in a place where
the gravity was much less than that of Earth.
"Speed the tape up to normal," said Colonel Mannheim to the man who was
operating the machine. "If there's anything Mr. Stanton wants to look at
more closely, we can run it through again."
As if in obedience to the colonel's command, the Nipe seemed to shake
himself a little and go about his business more briskly, and the air and
gravity seemed to revert to those of Earth.
"What's he doing?" Stanton asked. The Nipe was doing something with an
odd-looking box that sat on the floor in front of him.
"He's got a screwdriver that he's modified to give it a head with an
L-shaped cross-section, and he's wiggling it around inside that hole in
the box. But what he's doing is a secret between God and the Nipe at this
point," the colonel said glumly.
Stanton glanced away from the screen for a moment to look at the other men
who were there. Some of them were watching the screen, but most of them
seemed to be watching Stanton, although they looked away as soon as they
saw his eyes on them.
_Trying to see what kind of a bloke this touted superman is_, Stanton
thought. _Well, I can't say I blame 'em._
He brought his attention back to the screen.
So this was the Nipe's hideaway. He wondered if it were furnished in the
fashion that a Nipe's living quarters would be furnished on whatever
planet the multilegged horror called home. Probably it had the same
similarity as Robinson Crusoe's island home had to a middle-class
Nineteenth Century English home.
There was no furniture at all, as such. Low-slung as he was, the Nipe
needed no tables for his work, and sleeping was a form of metabolic rest
that he evidently found unnecessary, although he would sometimes just
remain quiet for periods of time ranging from a few minutes to a couple of
hours.
"We had a hard time getting the first cameras in there," the colonel was
saying. "That's why we missed some of the early stages of his work. There!
Look at that!"
"That attachment he's making?"
"That's right. Now, it looks as though it's a meter of some kind, but we
don't know whether it's a test instrument or an integral part of the
machine he's making. The whole thing might be a test instrument. After
all, he had to start out from the very beginning--making the tools to make
the tools to make the tools, you know."
* * * * *
"It's not quite as bad as all that," said one of the other men, who had
been briefly introduced to Stanton as Fred Meyer. "After all, he had our
technology to draw upon. If he'd been wrecked on Earth two or three
centuries ago, he wouldn't have been able to do a thing."
"Granted," the colonel said agreeably, "but it's quite obvious that there
are parts of our technology that are just as alien to him as parts of his
are to us. Remember how he went to all the trouble of building a pentode
vacuum tube for a job that could have been done by transistors. His
knowledge of solid-state physics seems to be about a century and a half
behind ours."
"Not completely, Colonel," Meyer said. "That gimmick he built last
year--the one that blinded those people in Bagdad--had five perfect
emeralds in it, connected in series with silver wire."
"That's true. Our technologies seem to overlap in some areas, but in
others there's total alienness."
"Which one would you say was ahead of the other?" Stanton asked.
"Hard to say," said Colonel Mannheim, "but I'd put my money on his
technology as encompassing more than ours--at least insofar as the
physical sciences are concerned."
"I agree," said Meyer, "he's got things in that little nest of his that--"
He stopped and shook his head slowly, as though he couldn't find words.
"I'll say this," Bart Stanton said musingly, "our friend, the Nipe, has
plenty of guts. And patience." He smiled a little and then amended his
statement. "From our own point of view, that is."
Colonel Mannheim's face took on a quizzical expression. "How do you mean?
I was about to agree with you until you tacked that last phrase on. What
does point of view have to do with it?"
"Everything, I should say," Stanton said. "It all depends on the equipment
an individual has. A man who rushes into a burning building to save a
life, wearing nothing but street clothes, has courage. A man who does the
same thing when he's wearing a nullotherm suit is an unknown quantity.
There is no way of knowing, from that action alone, whether he has courage
or not."
Meyer looked a little dazed. "Pardon me if I seem thick, Mr. Stanton,
but.... Are you saying that the Nipe's technological equipment is better
than ours?"
"Not at all. I'm talking about his personal equipment." He turned again to
the colonel. "Colonel Mannheim, do you think it would require any personal
courage on my part to stand up against you in a face-to-face gunfight?"