"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!"
Who was that? The snark? No.
_Damn_ this memory of mine!
Or can I even call it mine when I can't even use it?
"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to
face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also
I am known."
Another jack-in-the-box thought popping up from nowhere.
The only way I'll ever get all 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."
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. "Then _you_ will please tell _me_."
"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. _Very_ good. 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 that _could_ be 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 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,
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--_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. 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.
* * * * *