in
this way. He also _knows_ that this one did not die. Plainly, then, _this_
one is not a tiger. Ha! He has the solution!

"What does he tell his children? Why, first he tells them how tigers are
killed. Then he warns them that there is an animal that looks _just like_
a tiger, but is _not_ a tiger. One should not make the mistake of thinking
it _is_ a tiger or one will get badly hurt. Since the only way to tell the
true tiger from the false is to hit it, and since that test may prove
fatal to the Nipe who tries it, it follows that one is better off if one
avoids all animals that look like tigers. You see?"

"Yeah," said Stanton. "Some snarks are boojums."

"Exactly! Thank you for that allusion. I must remember to use it in my
report."

"It seems to me to follow," Stanton said musingly, "that there would be
some things that they'd never learn the truth about, once they'd gotten a
wrong idea in their heads."

"Ah! Indeed. It is precisely that which led me to formulate my theory in
the first place. How else to explain the fact that the Nipe, for all his
technical knowledge, is still in the ancient ritual-taboo stage of
development?"

"A savage?"

Yoritomo smiled. "As to his savagery, I think no one on Earth would
disagree. But they are not the same thing. What I do mean is that the Nipe
is undoubtedly the most superstitious and bigoted being on the face of
this planet."

XIV

There was a knock at the door, and the physical therapist put his head in.
"Sorry to interrupt, but the clam is done. I'll give him a rubdown, Doc,
and you can have him back."

"Excellent. Would you come up to my office, Bart, as soon as you've had
your mauling?"

"Sure. I'll be right up."

Yoritomo left, and the P.T. man opened the steam box. "Feel O.K., Bart?"

"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