"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 s.p.a.ce 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.

After a long minute, Scanton said: "What about atomic energy?"

"At least two million years ago. I do not think they have had the interstellar drive more than fifty thousand years."

"No wonder our pet Nipe is so patient," Stanton said wonderingly. "I wonder what their individual life span is."

"Not long, in comparison," said Yoritomo. "Perhaps no longer than our own, perhaps five hundred years. Considering their handicaps, they have done quite well. 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? And that they are very nearly illiterate?"

"No," Stanton admitted, "it hadn't."

"The Nipe, like Man, is omnivorous. 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's something around to eat--even if it's another man.

"Also, Man, early in his career as top dog on Earth, began using a method of increasing the viability of the race by removing the unfit. It survives today in some societies. Before and immediately after the Holocaust, there were still primitive societies on Earth which made a rather hard ordeal out of the Rite of Pa.s.sage--the ceremony that enabled a boy to become a Man, if he pa.s.sed the tests.

"A few millennia ago, a boy was killed outright if failed. And eaten.

"The Nipe race must, of necessity, have had some similar ritualistic tests or they would not have become what they are. And we have already agreed that, once the Nipes adopted something of that kind, it remained with them, not so? Yes.

"Also, it is extremely unlikely that the Nipe civilisation--if such it can be called--has any geriatric problem. No old age pensions, no old folks'

homes, no senility. When a Nipe becomes a burden because of age, he is ritually murdered and eaten with due solemnity.

"Ah. You frown, my friend. Have I made them sound heartless, without the finer feelings that we humans are so proud of? Not so. When Junior Nipe fails his p.u.b.erty tests, when Mama and Papa Nipe are sent to their final reward, I have no doubt that there is sadness in the hearts of their loved ones as the honored T-bones are pa.s.sed around the table.

"My own ancestors, not too far back, performed a ritual suicide by disemboweling themselves with a sharp knife. Across the abdomen--so!--and up into the heart--so! It was considered very bad form to die or faint before the job was done. Nearby, a relative or close friend stood with a sharp sword, to administer the _coup de grace_ by decapitation. It was all very sad and very honorable. Their loved ones bore the sorrow with pride."

His voice, which had been low and tender, suddenly became very brisk.

"Thank goodness it's gone out of fashion!"

"But how can you be _sure_ they're cannibals?" Stanton asked. "Your argument sounds logical enough, but logic alone isn't enough."

"True! True!" Yoritomo jabbed the air twice with his finger. "Evidence would be most welcome, would it not? Very well, I give you the evidence.

He eats human beings, our Nipe."

"That doesn't make him a cannibal."

"Not _strictly_, perhaps. But consider. The Nipe is not a monster. He is not a criminal. No. He is a gentleman. He behaves as a gentleman. He is shipwrecked on an alien planet. Around his, he sees evidence that ours is a technological society. But that is a contradiction! A paradox!

"For _we_ are not civilized! No! We are not rational! We are not sane! We do not obey the Laws, we do not perform the Rituals. We are animals.

Apparently intelligent animals, but animals never the less. How can this be?

"Ha! Says the Nipe to himself. These animals must be ruled over by Real People. It is the only explanation. Not so?"

"Colonel Mannheim mentioned that. Are you implying that the Nipe thinks that there are other Nipes around, running the world from secret hideouts, like the Fu Manchu novel?"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Not quite. The Nipe is not incapable of learning something new; in fact, he is quite good at it, as witness the fact that he has learned many Earth languages. He picked up Russian in less then eight months simply by listening and observing. Like our own race, his undoubtedly evolved many languages during the beginnings of its progress--when there were many tribes, separated and out of communication. It would not surprise me to find that most of those languages have survived and that our distressed astronaut knows them all. A new language would not distress him.

"Nor would strangely-shaped intelligent beings distress him. His race should be aware, by now, that such things exist. But it is very likely that he equates _true_ intelligence with technology, and I do not think he has ever met a race higher than the barbarian level before. Such races were not, of course, human--by his definition. They showed possibilities, perhaps, but they had not evolved far enough. Considering the time span involved, it is not at all unlikely that the Nipe thinks of technology as something that evolves with a race in the same way intelligence does--or the body itself.

"So it would not surprise him to find that the Real People of this system were humanoid in shape. That is something new, and he can absorb it. It does not contradict anything he _knows_.

"_But--!_ Any truly intelligent being which did not obey the Law and follow the Ritual _would_ be a contradiction in terms. For he has no notion of a Real Person without those characteristics. Without those characteristics, technology is impossible. Since he sees technology all around him, it follows that there must be Real People with those characteristics. Anything else is unthinkable."