_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 of this stuff straightened out in my
mind is to get more information. And it doesn't look as though anyone is
going to give it to me on a platter, either. The Institute men seem to
be awfully chary about giving information away, even to me. George even
had to chase away old rub-and-pound (That feels good!) before he would
talk about the Nipe. Can't blame 'em for that, of course. There'd be
hell to pay for everyone around if the general 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 around here, brother. Colonel Mannheim's
puppet is going to have to cut his strings and do a Pinocchio._
_[16]_
Colonel Walther Mannheim unlocked the door of his small suite of rooms
in the Officers' Barracks. God! he was tired. It wasn't so much physical
exhaustion as mental and emotional release from the tension he had been
under for the preceding few hours. Or had it been years?
He dropped his heavy briefcase on a nearby chair, took off his cap and
dropped it on the briefcase.
He stood there for a moment, looking tiredly around. Everything was in
order, as usual. He seldom came to Government City any more. Twenty or
so visits in the last ten years, and only a dozen of them had been long
enough to force him to spend the night in his old suite at the World
Police Headquarters at the southern end of the island. He didn't like to
stay in Government City; it made him uneasy, being this close to the
Nipe's underground nest. The Nipe had too many taps into government
communication channels, too many ways of seeing and hearing what went on
here in the nerve center of civilization.
One of the most difficult parts of this whole operation had been the
careful balancing of information flow through those channels that the
Nipe had tapped. To stop using them would betray immediately to that
alien mind that his taps had been detected. The information flow must go
on as usual. There was no way to censor the information, either,
although it was known that the Nipe relied on them for planning his
raids. But since there was no way of knowing, even after years of
observation, what sort of thing the Nipe would be wanting next, there
was no way of knowing which information should be removed from the
tapped channels.
And, most certainly, removing _all_ information about every possible
material that the Nipe might want would make him even more suspicious
than simply shutting down the channels altogether. To shut them down
would only indicate that the human government had detected his taps; to
censor them heavily would indicate that a trap was being laid.
It was even impossible to censor out news about the Nipe. That, too,
would have invited suspicion. So a special corps of men had been set up,
a group whose sole job was to investigate every raid of the Nipe. Every
raid produced a flurry of activity by this special group. They rushed
out to look over the scene of the raid, prowled around, and did
everything that might be expected of an investigative body. Their
reports were sent in over the usual channels. All the actual data they
came up with was sent straight through the normal channels--but the
conclusions they reached from that data were not. Always, in spite of
everything, the messages indicated that the police were as baffled as
before.
All other information relating to the Nipe went through special channels
known to be untapped by the Nipe.
And yet, there was no way to be absolutely certain of the sum total of
the information that the Nipe received. Believing, as he did, in the
existence of Real People, he would necessarily assume that _their_
communication systems were hidden from him, and the more difficult they
were to find, the more certain he would be that they existed. And it was
impossible to know what information the Nipe picked up when he was out
on a raid, away from the spying devices that had been hidden in his
tunnels.
Mannheim walked across the small living room to the sideboard that stood
against one wall and opened a door. Fresh ice, soda, and a bottle of
Scotch were waiting for him. He took one of the ten-ounce glasses,
dropped in three of the hard-frozen cubes of ice, added a precisely
measured ounce and a half of Scotch, and filled the glass to within an
inch of the brim with soda. Holding the glass in one hand, he walked
around the little apartment, checking everything with a sort of
automatic abstractedness. The air conditioner was pouring sweet, cool,
fresh air into the room; the windows--heavy, thick slabs of paraglass
welded directly into the wall--admitted the light from the courtyard
outside, but admitted nothing else. There was no need for them to open,
because of the air conditioning. A century before, some buildings still
had fire escapes running down their outsides, but modern fireproofing
had rendered such anachronisms unnecessary.
But his mind was only partly on his surroundings. He went into the
bedroom, sat down on the edge of the bed, took a long drink from the
cold glass in his hand, and then put it on the nightstand. Absently he
began pulling off his boots. His thoughts were on the Executive Session
he had attended that afternoon.
_"How much longer, do you think, Colonel?"_
_"A few weeks, sir. Perhaps less."_
_"There was another raid in Miami, Colonel. Another man died. We could
have prevented that death, Colonel. We could have prevented a great many
deaths in the past six years."_
And what answer was there to that? The Executive Council knew that the
deaths were preventable in only one way--by killing the Nipe. And they
had long ago agreed that the knowledge in that alien mind was worth the
sacrifice. But, as he had known would happen when they made the decision
six years before, there were some of them who had, inevitably, weakened.
Not all--not even a majority--but a minority that was becoming stronger.
It had been, to a great degree, Mannheim's arguments that had convinced
them then, and now they were tending to shift the blame for their
decision to Mannheim's shoulders.
Most of the Executives were tough-minded, realistic men. They were not
going to step out now unless there were good reason for it. But if the
subtle undercutting of the vacillating minority weakened Mannheim's own
resolve, or if he failed to give solid, well-reasoned answers to their
questions, then the whole project would begin to crumble rapidly.
He had not directly answered the Executive who had pointed out that many
lives could have been saved if the Nipe had been killed six years ago.
There was no use in fighting back on such puerile terms.
_"Gentlemen, within a few weeks, we will be ready to send Stanton in
after the Nipe. If that fails, we can blast him out of his stronghold
within minutes afterwards. But if we stop now, if we allow our judgment
to be colored at this point, then all those who have died in the past
six years will have died in vain."_
He had gone on, exploring and explaining the ramifications of the plans
for the next few weeks, but he had carefully kept it on the same level.
It had been an emotional sort of speech, but it had been purposely so,
in answer to the sort of emotionalism that the weakening minority had
attempted to use on him.
Men had died, yes. But what of that? Men had died before for far less
worthwhile causes. And men, do what they will, will die eventually. In
the back of his mind, he had recalled the battle-cry of some sergeant of
the old United States Marines during an early twentieth-century war. As
he led his men over the top, he had shouted, "_Come on, you sons of
bitches! Do you wanna live forever?_"
But Mannheim hadn't mentioned it aloud to the Executive Council.
Nor had he pointed out that ten thousand times as many people had died
during the same period through preventable accidents. That would not
have had the effect he wanted.
These particular men had died for this particular purpose. They had not
asked to die. They had not known they were being sacrificed. None of
them could be said to have died a hero's death. They had died simply
because they were in a particular place at a particular time.
They had been allowed to die for a specific purpose. To abort that
purpose at this time would be to make their deaths, retroactively,
murder.
Mannheim put his head on the pillow and lifted his feet up on the bed.
All he wanted was a few minutes of relaxation. He'd get ready for sleep
later. He pressed the control button on the bedframe that lifted the
head of the bed up so that he was in a semi-reclining position. He
picked up his drink and took a second long pull from it.
Then he touched the phone switch and put the receiver to his ear.
"Beta-beta," he said when he heard the tone.
He heard the hum, and he knew that the ultraprivate phone on the desk of
Dr. Farnsworth, in St. Louis, was signaling. Then Farnsworth's voice
came over the linkage.
"_F_ here."
"_M_ here," Mannheim replied. Then he asked guardedly, "Any sign of our
boy?"
"None."
"Keep on him," Mannheim said. "Let me know immediately."
"Will do. Any further?"
"No. Carry on." Mannheim cut off the phone.
Where the hell had Stanton disappeared to, and why? He had wanted to
bring the young man to Government City to show him off before the
Executives. It would have helped. But Stanton had disappeared.
Mannheim was well aware that Stanton had been in the habit of leaving
the Institute for long walks during the evenings, but this was the first
time he had been gone for twenty-four hours. And even Yoritomo, that
master psychologist, had been unable to give any solid reason for
Stanton's disappearance.
"You must remember, my dear Colonel," Yoritomo had said, "our young Mr.
Stanton is a great deal more complex in his thinking than is our friend
the Nipe."
_A hell of a job for a police officer_, Mannheim thought to himself. _I
know where the criminal is, but I have to hunt for the only cop on Earth
who can arrest him._
He drained his glass, put it on the nightstand, and closed his eyes to
think.
* * * * *
An operator on duty at the spy screens that watched every move of the
Nipe while he was in the tunnels underneath Government City thumbed down
a switch and said, "All stations alert. Subject is moving southward
toward exit, carrying raiding equipment."
It was all that was necessary. The Nipe could not be followed after he
left his lair, but the proper groups would be standing by. Somewhere,
the Nipe would hit and raid again. Somewhere, there were human lives in
danger.
All anyone could do was wait.
* * * * *
Cautiously and carefully, the Nipe lifted his head out of the cool salt
water of the Hudson River, near the point where it widened into New York
Harbor--still so called after the city that had been the greatest on the
North American continent before the violence of a sun bomb had
demolished it forever.
He looked around carefully to get his bearings, then submerged again.
The opening into the ancient sewer was nearby. Once into that network,
he would know exactly where he was heading. It had taken weeks to find
his way around within the unexplored maze of the old sewers, and he had
been uncertain whether they would lead him to the place he intended to
visit, but luck had been with him.
Now he knew exactly where he wanted to go, and exactly what he would
find there.
He had avoided Government City itself since his first appearance there,
shortly after his arrival, just as he had, as much as possible, avoided
ever striking in the same place more than once. But now that it had
become necessary, he went about his work with the same cool
determination that had always marked his activities.
He knew his destination, too. He knew the two rooms thoroughly, having
explored them carefully and gone away undetected. And now that he knew
the one he sought was in those rooms, he was ready to make his final
investigation of the man.
He swam on through the utter blackness of the brackish water until his
head broke surface again. Then he went on along the great conduits that
were above the level of the sea.
* * * * *
Captain Davidson Greer sat in the gun tower that overlooked the
Officers' Barracks and the courtyard surrounding the five-story
building. He was a tall, solidly built man in his early thirties, with
dark gray-green eyes and dark blond hair. He didn't particularly care
for gun-tower duty, but this sort of thing couldn't be left to anyone
who was not in on the secret of the Nipe. As long as Colonel Mannheim
was here in Government City, there would be special officers guarding
him instead of the usual guard contingent.
Not that Captain Greer was actually expecting the Nipe to make any
attempt on the colonel's life; that was too remote to be worried about.
But the gun towers had been erected fifty or more years before because
there were always those who wanted to attempt assassination. Officers of
the World Police had not enjoyed great popularity during the
reconstruction period after the Holocaust. The petty potentates who had
set themselves up as autocratic rulers in various spots over the Earth
had quite often decided that the best way to get the WP off their backs
was to kill someone, and quite often that someone was a Police officer.
Disgruntled nationalists and fanatics of all kinds had tried at various
times to kill one officer or another. The protection was needed then.
Even now there were occasional assassins who attempted to invade World
Police Headquarters, but they were usually stopped long before they got
into the enclosure itself.
Still, there was always the chance. There had been, in the past few
years, an undercurrent of rebellion all over Earth because of the Nipe.
The monster hadn't been killed, and there were those who screamed that
the failure was due to the inefficiency of the Police.
One attempt had already been made on the life of a Major Thorensen
because he had failed to get the Nipe after a raid in Leopoldville. The
would-be assassin had been cut down just before he threw a grenade that
would have killed half a dozen men. Captain Greer had been assigned to
make sure that no such attempt would succeed with Colonel Mannheim.
He could see the length of the hallway that led to Colonel Mannheim's
suite. The hallway had been purposely designed for watching from the gun
tower. To one who was inside, it looked like an ordinary hallway,
stretching down the length of the building. But it was walled with a
special plastic that, while opaque to visible light, was perfectly
transparent to infra-red. To the ordinary unaided eye, the walls of the
building presented a blank face to the gun tower, but to the eye of an
infra-red scope, the hallways of all five floors looked as though they
were long, glass-enclosed terraces. And those walls were neither the
ferro-concrete of the main building nor the pressure glass of the
windows, but ordinary heavy-gauge plastic. To the bullets that could be
spewed forth from the muzzle of the heavy-caliber, high-powered machine
gun in the tower, those walls were practically nonexistent.
Captain Greer surveyed the hallways with his infra-red binoculars.
Nothing. The halls were empty. He lowered the binoculars and lit a
cigarette. Then he put his eyes to the aiming scope of the gun and
swiveled the muzzle a little. The aiming scope showed nothing either.
He leaned back and exhaled a cloud of smoke.
* * * * *
Colonel Mannheim blinked and looked at the ceiling. It took him a minute
to re-orient himself. Then he grinned rather sheepishly, realizing that
he had dozed off with his clothes on. Even worse, the pressure at his
hip told him that he hadn't even bothered to take his sidearm off. He
sat up and swung his feet to the floor, then glanced at his wrist. Three
in the morning.
_And the moral of that, my dear Walther_, he told himself, _is that a
tired man should put on his pajamas first, before he lies down and
drinks a Scotch_.
He stood up. Might as well put his pajamas on and get to bed. He would
have to be back in St. Louis by ten in the morning, so he ought to get
as much sleep as possible.
The phone chimed.
He scooped it up and became instantly awake as he heard the voice of
Captain Greer from the gun tower that faced the outer wall. "Colonel,
the Nipe is just outside the wall of your apartment, in the hallway. I
have him in my sights." He was trying to stay calm, Mannheim could tell
by his voice, but he rattled the words off with machine-gun rapidity.
Mannheim thought rapidly. Whatever the Nipe was up to, it wouldn't
include planting a bomb or anything that might kill anyone accidentally.
If there was a life in danger, it was his own, and the danger would come
from the Nipe's hands, not from any device or weapon.
He was thankful that it was Captain Greer up in that tower, not an
ordinary guard who would have fired the instant he saw the alien through
the infra-red-transparent walls. Even so, he knew that the captain's
fingers must be tightening on those triggers. No human being could do
otherwise with that monster in his sights.
Mannheim spoke very calmly and deliberately. "Captain, listen very
carefully. Do _not_--I repeat, do _not_, under any circumstances
whatever, fire that gun. Understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"What's he doing?"
"I can't tell, sir. He has some sort of gadget in his hands, but he just
seems to be squatting there."
"At the door?"
"No. To the left of it, at the wall."
"You have your cameras going?"
"Yes, sir."
"All right. Get everything that happens. Under no circumstances shoot or
give the alarm--_even if he kills me_. Let him go. I don't think that
will happen, but if it does, let him go. I think I can talk to him. I
don't think there's much danger. I'm going to leave the phone open so
you can record everything, and--"
There was a muffled noise from the living room. He heard Captain Greer's
gasp as he turned. He could see through the bedroom door to the wall of
the living room. A large section of the ferro-concrete wall had sagged
away and collapsed, having suddenly lost its tensile strength. On the
top of the rubble, frozen for a long instant, stood the Nipe, watching
with those four glowing violet eyes.
Mannheim let go the phone and turned to face the monster, and in that
instant he realized his mistake.
* * * * *
The Nipe stared at the human being. Was this, at last, a Real Person? It
was surprising that the man should be awake. Only a minute before, the
instruments had shown him to be in the odd cataleptic state that these
creatures lapsed into periodically, similar to, but not identical with,
his own rest state. And yet he was now awake and fully dressed. Surely
that indicated--
And then the man turned, and the Nipe saw the weapon in the holster at
his waist. There was a blinding instant of despair as he realized that
his hopes had been shattered--
--and then he launched himself across the room.
* * * * *
Colonel Mannheim's hand darted toward the gun at his hip. It was purely
reflex action. Even as he did it, he was aware that he would never get
the weapon out in time to bring it to bear on the onrushing monster, and
he was content that it should be so.
* * * * *
Twenty-five minutes later, the Nipe, after carefully licking off the
fingers of his first pair of hands, went back into the hallway and
headed down toward the sewers again.
The emotion he felt is inexpressible in human terms. Although he had not
wished to kill the man, it cannot be said that the Nipe felt contrition.
Although he had had no desire to harm the family, if any, of the late
Colonel Mannheim, it cannot be said that the Nipe felt sadness or
compassion.
Nor, again, although his stomachs churned and his body felt sluggish
and heavy, can it be said that he felt any regret for what he had done.
That is not to say that he felt _no_ emotion. He did. His emotions were
as strong and as deep as those of a very sensitive human being. His
emotions could bring him pain and they could bring him pleasure. They
could crush him or exalt him. His emotions were just as real and as
effective as any human emotions.
But they were _not_ human emotions.
They were emotions, but not _human_ emotions.
It is impossible to render into any human terms the simple statement:
"The Nipe felt that he had properly rendered homage to a validly slain
foe."
That cannot even begin to indicate the emotion the Nipe felt as he moved
down toward the sewer and escape.
* * * * *
Captain Davidson Greer, his eyes staring with glassy hatred through the
infra-red gunsight, was registering a very human emotion. His trigger
fingers were twitching spasmodically--squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.
But his fingers were not on the triggers.
_[17]_
"It is not your fault, Bart," said George Yoritomo softly. "You had a
perfect right to go."
Bart Stanton clenched his fists and turned suddenly to face the Japanese
psychologist. "Sure! Hell, yes! We're not discussing my _rights_,
George! We're discussing my criminal stupidity! I had the right to leave
here any time I wanted to, sure. But I didn't have the right to
exercise that right--if that makes any sense to you."
"It makes sense," Yoritomo agreed, "but it is not the way to look at it.
You could not have been with the colonel every minute of every day.
There was no way of knowing--"
"Of course not!" Stanton cut in angrily. "But I should have been there
_this_ time. He wanted me there, and I was gone. If I'd been there, he'd
be alive at this moment."
"Possibly," Yoritomo said, "and then again, possibly not. Sit down over
there on your bed, my young friend, and listen to me. Sit! That's it.
Take a deep breath, hold it, and relax. I want your ears functioning
when I talk to you. That's better.
"Now. I do not know where you went. That is your business. All you--"
"I went to Denver," Stanton said.
"And you found?"
"Nothing," Stanton said. "Absolutely nothing."
"What were you looking for?"
"I don't know. Something about my past. Something about myself. I don't
know."
"Ah. You went to look up your family. You were trying to fill the holes
in your memory. Eh?"
"Yes."
"And you did not succeed."
"No. No. There wasn't anything there that I didn't remember. In general,
I mean. I found the files in the Bureau of Statistics. I know how my
father died now, and how my mother died. And what happened to my
brother. But all that didn't tell me anything. I'm still looking for
something, and I don't know what it is. I was stupid to have gone. I
suppose I should have asked you or Dr. Farnsworth or the colonel."
"But you thought we wouldn't answer," Yoritomo said.
"I guess that's about it. I should have asked you."
Yoritomo shook his head. "Not necessarily. It was actually better that
you looked for yourself. Besides, we could not have given you any answer
if you yourself do not know the question. We still can't."
"I have a feeling," Stanton said, "that you know the question as well as
the answer."
"Perhaps. Perhaps not. But there are some things that every man must
find out for himself. You were right to do as you did. If you had asked
Colonel Mannheim for permission, he would have let you go. He would not
have asked you to go to Government City with him. We--"
"That's the whole damned trouble!" Stanton snapped. "I'm the star
boarder around here, the indispensable man. So I'm babied and I'm
coddled, and when I goof off I'm patted on the back."
"And just how did you goof off?" Yoritomo asked.
"I should have been here, ready to go with the colonel."
"Very well. Suppose you had gone. Do you think you could have saved his
life? He could have saved his own life if he'd wanted to. Instead, he
specifically ordered the guard not to shoot under any circumstances. If
you had been there, the results would have been the same. He would have
forbidden you to do anything at all. The time is not yet ripe for you to
face the Nipe. You would not have been able to protect him without
disobeying his orders."
"I might have done just that," said Stanton.
Yoritomo was suddenly angry. "Then it is better that you were in Denver,
young fool! Colonel Walther Mannheim believed that no single human life
is worth the loss of the knowledge in that alien's mind! He proved that
by sacrificing his own life when that became necessary. I like to think
that I would have done the same thing myself. I am certain Dr.
Farnsworth would. We would rather _all_ be dead than allow that fund of
data to be lost to the rest of humanity!"
"But--but who will carry on, with him dead?" Stanton asked. "He was the
one who co-ordinated everything. You and Farnsworth aren't cut out for
that sort of thing. Nor am I."
"No," Yoritomo said. "But that has already been taken care of. Mannheim
had a replacement ready. A message is being sent out in Mannheim's name,
since we are keeping the colonel's death secret for the time being.
_You_ are the only indispensable man, Stanton. The rest of us can easily
be replaced. The lives of dozens of human beings have been
sacrificed--five years of your own life have been sacrificed--to put you
in the right place at the right time. And the job you are to do does not
and never has included acting as bodyguard for Colonel Mannheim or
anyone else. Understand?"