"Time: 0758 hours. I am being relieved by 14278 Flanders."
"Right. Go ahead."
Pilsudski took off the light, strong helmet, reached inside it, opened a
small sliding panel, and took out an object the size and shape of an
aspirin tablet--the sealed unit that permitted him to understand the
conversation over the police wave band. Without it, the police calls
would have been gibberish.
Flanders accepted the little gadget from the other officer and inserted
it in his own helmet. Then he replaced the helmet on his head. "Area 37
HQ, this is 14278 Flanders. I am relieving 13392 Pilsudski."
"37 HQ," said the voice in his ears. "Okay, Flanders. Transfer
recorded."
Police Patrolman John Flanders, Badge Number 14278, was now officially
on duty.
He looked up into the sky. "Now there's the place to be on a day like
this, Fred. Traffic patrol."
"Not me," said Pilsudski. "Too damn dull. I was on it for six months.
Damn near drove me nuts. Nobody to talk to but another cop--same cop,
day after day. He was a nice guy, don't get me wrong, but Christ!
Nothin' to do but watch for people breakin' traffic pattern. Can't even
pull over to the side and watch the traffic go by. It's dull, I'm
tellin' you, Johnny. I asked for a transfer back to a beat so's I could
see some people again."
"Maybe," said Flanders. "I'd still like to try it."
"Ever'body to their own taste, I guess. Mitchell and Warber were in luck
last night, though. Excitement." He sounded as though he meant the word
to be sarcastic.
"What happened?" Flanders asked.
"Some boob was having a fight with his wife and his air intake was
goofing off at the same time. So, while she's yelling at him, he puts
his aircar on hover." He pointed upward. "Right up there, in Level Two.
He opens the window of his aircar, mind you. His air intake ain't
workin', like I said. Mitchell, in Car 87, spots him and heads for him,
figuring there's trouble."
"But no trouble?" asked Flanders.
"Trouble enough. The driver's old lady throws a wrench at him, an' it
goes out the window." He chuckled. "First I heard about it was when that
damn wrench comes down and bounces off the pressure glass, then up to
the side of the building there, and back to the pressure glass. Then it
slides off into the rain gutter."
Flanders looked up at the curve of hard, tough, almost invisible
pressure glass that covered the street. "With all the cars overhead that
we got in this city," Flanders said philosophically, "something like
that's bound to happen every so often. That's why that glass is up
there, besides for keepin' the rain off your head."
"Yeah," Pilsudski said. "Anyway, Mitchell and Warber got there just as
she tossed the wrench. Arrested both of 'em. Now, wasn't that exciting?"
Flanders grinned. "Fred, if the rest of their tour of duty was as dull
as you say it was, then I reckon that must have been real exciting."
"Hah." Pilsudski shrugged. "Well, I'm for that beer. See you tomorrow,
Johnny."
"Right. Take care o' yourself."
As Pilsudski walked away, Flanders put his hands behind his back,
grasping the left in the right. He spread his feet slightly apart. In
that time-honored position of the foot patrolman, he surveyed his beat,
up and down both sides of the street. Everything looked perfectly
normal. Another working day had begun.
He had no idea that he was standing only a few yards from the most hated
and feared killer on the face of the Earth.
The only clue that he could possibly have had to that killer's presence
was a small ovoid the size and shape of a match head, a dark, dull gray
in color, which protruded slightly from a sewer grating six feet away,
supported on a hair-thin stalk. In one end was a tiny dark opening, and
that opening was pointed directly at Officer Flanders' head. When he
began walking slowly down the street, the little ovoid moved, turning
slowly on its stalk to keep that dark hole pointed steadily. It was so
small, that ovoid, and so inconspicuous, that no one, even looking
directly at it, would have noticed it.
The Nipe could see and hear without being either seen or heard himself.
All morning long the tiny ovoid remained in place, watching, listening.
At 11:24 a woman in a cherry-pink dress walked up to Officer Flanders
and said: "Pardon me, Officer. Could you tell me where I could find the
Donahue Building?"
And while the policeman told her, the Nipe listened carefully. Now he
knew what street he was on and its location in respect to two other
streets. He also had a number. He remembered them all, accurately and
completely. It was a good beginning, he decided. It would not be too
long before he would have enough to enable him to locate the address he
was looking for. After that, there would only remain the job of
observing and making plans to get what he wanted at that address.
He settled himself to wait for more information. He knew that it would
be a long wait.
But he was prepared for that.
_SECOND INTERLUDE_
The woman's eyes were filled with tears, for which the doctor was
privately thankful. At least, he thought to himself, the original shock
has worn off.
"And there's nothing we can do?" she asked. "Nothing?" There was anguish
in her voice.
"I'm afraid not," the doctor told her gently. "Not yet. There are
research men 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 in the comfortable chair and looked at the
specialist's diploma on the doctor's wall--and yet, she really didn't
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 them Ike and Mike.' And he
laughed a little when he said it, to show he didn't mean it."
The doctor said nothing, waiting for her to go on.
"I remember, I was propped up in the bed, the afternoon after they were
born, and Jim brought me a new bed jacket, and I said I didn't need a
new one because I'd be going right home the very next day, and he said,
'Hell, kid, you don't think I'd buy a bed jacket just for hospital use,
now 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 the
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--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, her eyes 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 ... and then when they _were_ identical boys, he was very
sensible about it. He was always so sensible. '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 any rhyming names if
they don't want them.' Jim was always very thoughtful that way, Doctor.
Very thoughtful."
She seemed suddenly 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 very brave and
very strong. "After all, it could have been worse, couldn't it? I mean,
the radiation could have killed my boy, 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
very much. 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 completely healthy,
there would normally be very little trouble in their education at home
or in school. Any of the standard texts on psychodynamics in education
will show you the pitfalls to avoid when dealing with identical
siblings.
"But your sons are no longer identical, Mrs. Stanton. One is normal,
healthy, and lively. The other is ... well, as you know, he is slow,
sluggish, and badly co-ordinated. The condition may improve with time,
but, until we know more about such damage than we do now, he will remain
an invalid."
He had been watching her for further signs of emotional upset. But she
seemed to be listening calmly enough. He went on.
"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 might
bring about in such a pair. The ill boy tends to identify with the well
one, and, oddly enough, the reverse is also true. If they are not
properly handled during their formative years, Mrs. Stanton, both can be
badly damaged emotionally."
"I ... I think I understand, Doctor," the young woman said. "But what
sort of thing should I look out for? What sort of things should I
avoid?"
"First off, I suggest you get a good man in psychic development," the
doctor said. "I, myself, would hesitate to prescribe. It's out of my
field. But I can say that, in general, most of your trouble will be
caused by a tendency for the pair to swing into one of two extremes.
"At one extreme, you will have mutual antagonism. This arises when the
ill child becomes jealous of the other's health, while, on the other
hand, the healthy one becomes jealous of the extra consideration that is
shown to his crippled brother.
"At the other extreme, the healthy boy may identify so closely with his
brother that he feels every slight or hurt, real or imagined, which the
ill boy is subjected to. He becomes extremely over-solicitous,
over-protective. At the same time, the invalid brother may come to
depend completely on his healthy twin.
"In both these situations there is a positive feedback that constantly
worsens the condition. 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," the woman said. "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 the
names of several. You can pick the one you like best, the one with whom
you seem to be most comfortable. Try several or all of them before you
decide. 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.
_[7]_
The image of the Nipe on the glowing screen was clear and finely
detailed. It was, Stanton thought, as though one were looking through a
window into the Nipe's nest itself. Only the tremendous depth of focus
of the lens that had caught the picture gave the illusion a feeling of
unreality. Everything--background and foreground alike--was sharply in
focus.
Like some horrendous dream monster, the Nipe moved in slow motion,
giving Stanton the eerie feeling that the alien was moving through a
thicker, heavier medium than air, in a place where the gravity was much
less than that of Earth. With ponderous deliberation, the fingers of one
of his hands closed upon the handle of an oddly shaped tool and lifted
it slowly from the surface upon which he worked.
"That's our best-placed camera," said Colonel Mannheim, "but some of the
others can always get details that this one doesn't. The trouble is
that we'll never really have enough cameras in there--not unless we stud
the walls, ceilings, and floors with them, and even then I'm not so sure
we'd get everything. It isn't the same as having a trained expert on
camera who is _trying_ to demonstrate what he's doing. An expert plays
to the camera and never obstructs any of his own movements. But the
Nipe ..." He left the sentence unfinished and shook his head sadly.
Stanton narrowed his eyes at the image. To his own speeded-up perceptive
processes, the motion seemed intolerably slow. "Would you mind speeding
it up a little?" he asked the colonel. "I want to get an idea of the way
he moves, and I can't really get the feeling of it at this speed."
"Certainly." The colonel turned to the technician at the controls.
"Speed the tape up to normal. 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 performing some sort of
operation on an odd-looking box that sat on the floor in front of him.
The colonel pointed. "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," Colonel Mannheim 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. All, that is, except Dr. George Yoritomo,
who simply gave him a smile of confidence.
_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 had come from. 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 in it at all, as such. Low-slung as he was, the
Nipe needed no tables or workbenches; all his work was spread out on the
floor, with a neatness and tidiness that would have surprised many human
technicians. For the same reason, he needed no chairs, and, since true
sleep was a form of metabolic rest he evidently found unnecessary, he
needed no bed. The closest thing he did that might be called sleep was
his habit of stopping whatever he was doing and remaining quiet for
periods of time that ranged from a few minutes to a couple of hours.
Sometimes his eyes remained opened during these periods, sometimes they
were closed. It was difficult to tell whether he was sleeping or just
thinking.
"The difficulty was in getting cameras in there in the first place,"
Colonel Mannheim was saying. "That's why we missed so much of his early
work. There! Look at that!" His finger jabbed at the image.
"The 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 and necessary
part of the machine he's making. The whole machine might even be only a
test instrument for something else he's building. Or perhaps a machine
to make parts for some other machine. After all, he had to start out
from the very beginning--making the tools to make the tools to make the
tools, you know."
Dr. Yoritomo spoke for the first time. "It's not quite as bad as all
that, eh, Colonel? We must remember that 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."
Colonel Mannheim smiled at the tall, lean man. "Granted," he 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 he already had
had a chance to get and didn't. His knowledge of solid-state physics
seems to be about a century and a half behind ours."
Stanton listened. Dr. Yoritomo was, in effect, one of his training
instructors. _Advanced Alien Psychology_, Stanton thought; _Seminar
Course. The Mental Whys & Wherefores of the Nipe, or How to Outthink the
Enemy in Twelve Dozen Easy Lessons. Instructor: Dr. George Yoritomo._
The smile on Yoritomo's face was beatific, but he held up a warning
finger. "Ah, ah, Colonel! We mustn't fall into a trap like that so
easily. Remember that gimmick he built last year? The one that blinded
those people in Baghdad? It had five perfect emeralds in it, connected
in series with silver wire. Eh?"
"That's true," the colonel admitted. "But they weren't used the way we'd
use semiconducting materials."
"Indeed not. But the thing _worked_, didn't it? He has a knowledge of
solid-state physics that we don't have, and vice versa."
"Which one would you say was ahead of the other?" Stanton asked. "I
don't mean just in solid-state physics, but in science as a whole."
"That's a difficult question to answer," Dr. Yoritomo said thoughtfully.
"Frankly, 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 Colonel Mannheim. "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 will say this," Yoritomo continued. "Whatever his great technological
abilities, our friend the Nipe has plenty of good, solid guts. And
patience." He smiled a little, and then amended his statement. "From our
own point of view."
Stanton looked at him quizzically. "How do you mean? I was just 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," said Yoritomo. "It all depends on the
equipment an individual has. A man, for instance, who rushes into a
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."
Stanton thought he saw what the scientist was driving at. "But you're
not talking about technological equipment now," he said.
"Not at all. I'm talking about personal equipment." He turned his head
slightly to look at the colonel. "Colonel Mannheim, do you think it
would require any personal courage on Mr. Stanton's part to stand up
against you in a face-to-face gunfight?"