characteristics. Anything else is unthinkable."

"It seems to me that you're building an awfully involved theory out of
pretty flimsy stuff," Stanton said.

Yoritomo shook his head. "Not at all. All evidence points to it. Why, do
you suppose, does the Nipe conscientiously devour his victims, often
risking his own safety to do so? Why do you suppose he never uses any
weapons but his own hands to kill with?

"Why? To tell the Real People that he is a gentleman!"

* * * * *

It made perfect sense, Stanton thought. It fitted every known fact, as far
as he knew. Still--

"I would think," he said, "that the Nipe would have realized, after ten
years, that there is no such race of Real People. He's had access to all
our records, and such things. Or does he reject them as lies?"

"Possibly he would, if he could read them. Did I not say he was
illiterate?"

"You mean he's learned to speak our languages, but not to read them?"

The scientist smiled broadly. "Your statement is accurate, my friend, but
incomplete. It is my opinion that the Nipe is incapable of reading any
written language whatever. The concept does not exist in his mind, except
vaguely."

"A technological race without a written language? That's impossible!"

"Ah, no. Ask yourself: What need has a race with a perfect memory for
written records--at least, in the sense we know them. Certainly not to
remember things. All their history and all their technology exists in the
collective mind of the race--or, at least, most of it. I dare say that the
less important parts of their history has been glossed over and forgotten.
One important event in every ten centuries would still give a historian
ten thousand events to remember--and history is only a late development in
our own society."

"How about communications?" Stanton said, "What did they use before they
invented radio?"

"Ah. That is why I hedged when I said he was _almost_ illiterate. There is
a possibility that a written symbology did at one time exist, for just
that purpose. If so, it has probably survived as a ritualistic form--when
an officer is appointed to a post, let's say, he may get a formal paper
that says so. They may use symbols to signify rank and so on. They
certainly must have a symbology for the calibration of scientific
instruments.

"But none of these requires the complexity of a written language. I dare
say our use of it is quite baffling to him. And