In the Beginning: Tales From the Pulp Era

by Robert Silverberg

  “What did Zachary say?”

  “He didn’t—not yet. But he doesn’t want to let the Nirotans go until we get to the bottom of this vampire business.”

  “Any word from anyplace else?”

  “Not much that’s hopeful,” Russell said wearily with a tired shrug. “There are thirty Nirotans under surveillance in London, but they’re not talking. And we have twenty cooped up in Warsaw. Zero there too. Right now we’re busy protecting a couple of thousand of the bats. But how long can this keep up?”

  “Couldn’t we seize a Nirotan forcibly and examine him?” Harriman asked.

  “I’ve thought of that. But the high brass says no. If we happen to be wrong, we’ll have committed what the Nirotans are perfectly free to consider as an open act of war. And if we’re right—if the Nirotans were lying—then we still have the problem of finding out which Nirotans did the actual killing.”

  “Maybe,” Harriman said, “we ought to just let the bats clear off Earth, as they want to do. That’ll solve all our problems.”

  “And bring up a million new ones. It would mean that any alien could come down here and commit crimes, and go away untouched if he simply denied his guilt. I wouldn’t like to see a precedent like that get set. Uh-uh, Harriman. We have to find the killers, and we have to do it legally. Only I’m damned if I know how we’re going to go about doing it.”

  We have to find the killers, Harriman thought half an hour later, in the solitude of his own office. And we have to do it legally. Well, the first part of that was reasonable enough.

  But how about the second, Harriman thought?

  Legally they were powerless to continue the investigation. The forces of law and order were hopelessly stalled, while fear-crazy rioters demanded Nirotan blood in exchange for Terran.

  The main problem, he thought, was whether or not a Nirotan—any Nirotan—had actually committed the atrocities. According to the Nirotans, such crimes were beyond their capacities even to imagine. Yet the heavy weight of popular belief—as well as the damning fact of the two San Francisco witnesses—lent validity to the notion of the Nirotans as blood-sucking vampires.

  Medical examination of a Nirotan might settle the thing in one direction or another. If it could be proven that the Nirotans might possibly have committed such a crime, it would be reasonable to assume that they had. But, on the other hand, if the Nirotans had definitely not done it, Harriman would have to begin looking elsewhere for the authors of the atrocities.

  If only the Nirotans would cooperate, he thought!

  But some alien quirk, some incomprehensible pride of theirs, kept them from lowering themselves to take part in anything so humiliating to them as an official inquest. The Security Agency was stymied—officially. They were at an impasse which could not be surmounted.

  How about unofficially, though?

  Harriman moistened his lips. He had an idea. It was a gamble, a gamble that would be worth his job and his career if he lost. But it was worth taking, he decided firmly. Someone had to risk it.

  Picking up the phone, he ordered his special car to be ready for him outside the building. Then, without leaving word with anyone of his intended destination or purpose, he quietly departed.

  There were several dozen Nirotans cooped up at the consulate on Fifth Avenue. Any one of those Nirotans would do, for his purposes. The thing he had to remember was that he was in this on his own. He did not dare risk taking on an accomplice. His plan was too risky to share with another person.

  The consulate was guarded by armed Security Corpsmen. And, unless there had been a slackening of public animosity, the building was probably still surrounded by a howling mob.

  It was. More than a thousand shouting New Yorkers clustered around the building, pressing close to the steps but not daring to approach for fear of the guns of the Security men. The mob, frustrated, kept up a low animal-like murmur beneath the hysteria of the shouts and curses it hurled forth.

  Harriman ordered his driver to park his car several blocks north of the scene of the disturbance. The Agency subchief proceeded cautiously, on foot, making his way between the packed rows of angry demonstrators toward the consulate. He felt a dryness in his throat. He was gambling everything, now.

  He needed a Nirotan—dead or alive, preferably alive. And there was only one way for him to get one, he knew.

  He made his way up the steps of the consulate. The guards, recognizing him, gave way. Harriman called them together.

  “I’ve got orders to bring a Nirotan out,” he whispered. “Just one. They want him down at Headquarters. When I get him out, I want an armed convoy through this crowd—eight of you on each side of me, with drawn guns, in case anyone in the crowd tries to make trouble. All that understood?”

  They nodded. Tension pounded in Harriman’s chest. He was taking a tremendous risk, putting a Nirotan in front of the crowd in broad daylight. But there was no help for it. If he came at dead of night, when the mob had diminished, he would get no response from within. Nirotans slept the sleep of the dead at night—this much had been definitely established.

  Harriman waited in the scanner beam while the Nirotans within examined him. At last, he heard the heavy door begin to clank open. Beady yellow Nirotan eyes stared at him from within.

  “Yes? What do you want?”

  “To talk,” Harriman said. “Something new has come up that you must be told about.”

  The door widened a little to admit Harriman. But, instead of stepping inside, he extended a hand and seized the wrist of the Nirotan. Harriman tugged. The Nirotan, for all his great height, had the light bones of a flying creature; besides, surprise was on Harriman’s side. The astonished Nirotan came tumbling through the half open door before he knew what was happening. A great shout went up from the mob at the sight of the bat-creature. Harriman felt a twinge of fear at the raucous roar of the crowd. The Nirotan was squirming, struggling to break Harriman’s grasp. His wings riffled impotently.

  “What is the meaning of this?” demanded the bat-creature indignantly.

  “Just come with me, and don’t struggle, and everything will be all right,” Harriman said soothingly. He let the alien catch a glimpse of the tiny needle-blaster he held in the palm of his free hand. “We want to talk to you at headquarters. The crowd won’t hurt you if you cooperate with me.”

  For an uneasy moment Harriman wondered if the alien might not prefer suicide to cooperation. But evidently the Nirotans’ pride did not extend that far. Eyes blazing with fury but otherwise meek, the Nirotan allowed himself to be led down the consulate steps by Harriman.

  “Keep back!” the Security Corpsmen shouted, gesturing with their weapons, as they formed an enflankment to protect Harriman and his captive. An ugly menacing buzz rose from the crowd; some began to jostle forward, evidently impelled by hotter heads behind them. But they gave way as the little convoy proceeded past.

  The trip to the car seemed to take hours. Harriman was limp and sweat-soaked by the time he finally reached the vehicle and thrust the Nirotan in. There had not been a single overt act of violence on the part of the crowd. It was as if the actual sight of a Nirotan walking safely through their very midst had left them too stunned to react.

  “This is an outrage,” the Nirotan started to say, as the car pulled away. “I will protest this kidnapping and I—”

  Smiling in relief, Harriman took from his pocket the anesthetic capsule he had prepared, and crushed it under the Nirotan’s snout. The bat-creature slumped instantly into unconsciousness and said no more.

  Some fifteen minutes later, a stretcher was borne into the headquarters of the Terran Security Agency. The form on the stretcher was totally swathed in wrappings, and it was impossible to detect what lay beneath. Harriman supervised delivery of the stretcher to the inner office of Security Corps Medical Examiner van Dyne.

  Dr. van Dyne looked puzzled and more than a little irritated. “Would you mind telling me what all this mystery is about, Harriman?”r />
  Harriman nodded agreeably. “Is your office absolutely secure-tight?”

  “Of course. What do you think—”

  “Okay, then. I’ve brought you someone to examine. He’s currently out with a double dose of anesthetrin, and I’ll guarantee his complete cooperation for the next couple of hours, at least. Don’t ask any questions about where or how I got him, Doc. Just examine him, and get in touch with me the instant you’re finished.”

  Harriman reached forward and yanked the coverings off the figure on the stretcher. Even in sleep, the face of the Nirotan was hideous. Dr. van Dyne’s jaw sagged in disbelief.

  “My God! A Nirotan! Harriman, how did you—”

  “I told you, Doc, don’t ask any questions. He’s here, that’s all, and until the anesthetrin wears off he won’t say a word. Look him over. Find out whether or not a Nirotan can be a vampire. Let me know the outcome—and don’t breathe a syllable of this to anybody else, anybody, or it’ll be worth your head and mine. Clear?”

  The pudgy medico looked troubled by the obvious irregularity of the situation. But he remained silent for a moment, eyeing the slumbering Nirotan on the stretcher. Finally van Dyne said, “Okay. I’ve always wanted to have a close look at one of these fellows. And we can get a lot of things settled this way.”

  Harriman smiled. “Thanks, Doc. Remember, you don’t know anything. If there’s any blame to be taken, let me be the one to take it. How soon will you have any information to give me?”

  “That’s hard to say. Suppose you stick around the building for a while. I’ll phone you in—oh, say, an hour and a half.”

  “Right. I’ll be waiting.”

  As Harriman walked toward the door of van Dyne’s office, the medical examiner had already begun to select the equipment he planned to use in the examination.

  Back in his own office, Harriman dropped down wearily at his desk and ran tensely quivering hands through his hair. In ninety minutes, he would have the answers to some of the questions that were plaguing him about the Nirotans.

  He had kidnapped a Nirotan in front of a raging mob. It had been bold, foolhardy—but necessary. Without a close look at one of the bat-creatures, it was impossible to take even the first steps toward solving the vampire mysteries.

  Now, he needed information. He rang up the library circuit and requested everything they had on Nirota—immediately.

  The tapes started arriving a few minutes later. Harriman sorted through them. The first ones were dry statistics on Terran-Nirotan trade over the past ten months. But at length Harriman came up with something that was more useful to him—a tape about Nirota itself.

  The Nirotans are a proud, aloof people, Harriman read. They do not welcome contact with other races except for the purpose of trade.

  Their historical records stretch back for nearly fifteen thousand Terran years. They have had space travel for ten thousand of those years. The Nirotan Federation extends over some thirteen worlds, all of them settled by Nirotan colonists many centuries previously.

  The Nirotans are superb mechanical craftsmen and their wares are prized throughout the galaxy. In general they do not take part in galactic disputes, preferring to remain above politics. However, the Nirotans have been engaged in fierce economic competition with the artisans of Drosk for the past thousand years, and several times during this period the rivalry has become so

  Harriman’s reading was suddenly interrupted by the strident sound of the telephone. As he answered, his eye fell on the wall-clock, and he discovered with some surprise that he had been immersed in Nirotan history for rather more than an hour. Perhaps, he thought hopefully, van Dyne has completed his examination and was reporting on his findings!

  “Harriman speaking.”

  “van Dyne here, Neil. I’ve just finished giving our specimen a good checkdown.”

  “Well?” Harriman demanded eagerly.

  In a quiet voice said “If a Nirotan committed those murders, Neil, then I should have been a streetcleaner instead of a medic.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Item one, the Nirotan’s big front incisor teeth are wedge-shaped—triangular. The holes in the victims’ throats were round. Item two is that the Nirotan’s jaws aren’t designed for biting—he’d have to be a contortionist or better, in order to get his teeth onto a human throat. And item three is that metabolically the Nirotans are as vegetarian as can be. Their bodies don’t have any way of digesting animal matter, blood or meat. Human blood would be pure poison to them if they tried to swallow any. It would go down their gullet like a shot of acid.”

  “So they were telling the truth after all,” Harriman said quietly. “And all they had to do was let us examine one of them for ten minutes, and we’d be able to issue a full exoneration!”

  “They’re aliens, Neil,” said van Dyne. “They have their own ideas about pride. They just couldn’t bring themselves to let an Earthman go poking around their bodies with instruments.”

  “You haven’t done any harm to your patient, have you?”

  “Lord, no!” van Dyne said. “I ran a complete external diagnosis on him. When he wakes up he won’t even know I’ve touched him. By the way, what am I supposed to do with him when he wakes up?”

  “Does he show any signs of coming out from under the anesthetrin yet?”

  “He’s beginning to show signs of coming around.”

  “Give him another jolt and put him back under,” Harriman said. “Keep him hidden down at your place for a while, until I can figure out where to go next.”

  “You have any ideas? Now that we know definitely that the Nirotans didn’t pull the vampire stunt, how are we going to find out who did?”

  Harriman said, “That’s a damned good question. I wish I had an equally good answer for it.”

  Then his eye fell to the tape of Nirotan history, still open at the place where he had been reading when interrupted by the telephone call.

  He read: However, the Nirotans have been engaged in fierce economic competition with the artisans of Drosk for the past thousand years, and several times during this period the rivalry has become so intense that it has erupted into brief but savage wars between Drosk and Nirota—

  “I’ve got a hunch,” Harriman said. “It’s pretty wild, but it’s worth a try. Keep that Nirotan out of sight for the rest of the day. I’m going to make another trip to San Francisco.”

  The San Francisco Security Corpsmen knew exactly where to find Blen Duworn, attaché to the Drosk Trade Commission office. For one thing, all non-human beings were kept under informal surveillance during the emergency, for their own protection. For another, Blen Duworn was a material witness in the killing of Sam Barrett, and therefore was watched closely so he could be on hand in case authorities cared to question him again.

  Which they did. Early in the day, after his night flight to the West Coast, Neil Harriman was shown into a room with the Drosk and left alone. Blen Duworn was short, about five feet three, but sturdily built, with thick hips and immensely broad shoulders, indicating the higher gravitational pull of his home world. The Drosk was, at least externally, human in every way except for the half-inch stubs above each eye that provided a sixth sense, that of sensitivity to heat-waves. Internally, of course, the Drosk was probably totally alien—but non-terrestrial beings were not in the habit of letting Terrans examine their interiors.

  Harriman said affably, “I know you must be tired of it by now, Blen Duworn, but would you mind telling me just what you saw that morning?”

  The Drosk’s smile was equally affable. “To put it briefly, I saw a Nirotan killing an Earthman. The Nirotan had his fangs to the Earthman’s throat and seemed to be drawing blood out of him.”

  Nodding, Harriman pretended to jot down notes. “You were not the first one on the scene?”

  “No. The Earthman named Harkins was there first.”

  Harriman nodded again. “We of Earth know so little about the Nirotans, of course. We have some of their h
istory, but none of their biology at all. They claim to be vegetarians, you know.”

  “They’re lying. On their native worlds they raise animals simply to drink their blood.”

  Harriman lifted an eyebrow. “You mean they have a long history of—ah—vampirism?”

  “They’ve been blood-drinkers for thousands of years. Luckily for us, Drosk blood doesn’t attract them. Evidently Terran blood does.”

  “Evidently,” Harriman agreed. In the same level, unexcited tone of voice he went on, “Would you mind telling me, now, just how you managed to convince Harkins that he saw a Nirotan draining blood from Barrett—when it was really you he saw?”

  The antennae above Blen Duworn’s cold eyes quivered. “On my world, Earthman, a statement like that is a mortal insult that can be wiped out only by your death.”

  “We’re not on your world now. We’re on Earth. And I say that you killed Sam Barrett, not a Nirotan, and that you deluded Harkins into thinking it was a Nirotan he saw.”

  Duworn laughed contemptuously. “How preposterous! The Nirotans are known for their blood-drinking, while we of Drosk are civilized people. And you can yet accuse me of—”

  “The Nirotans are vegetarians. Human blood is poison to them.”

  “You believe their lies?” Duworn asked bitterly.

  Harriman shook his head. “It isn’t a matter of belief. We’ve examined a Nirotan. We know they couldn’t possibly have committed those murders.”

  “Examined a Nirotan?” Duworn repeated, amused. “How fantastic! A Nirotan wouldn’t let himself be touched by Earthmen!”

  “This one had no choice,” Harriman said softly. “He was unconscious at the time. We gave him a thorough going-over and found out beyond question that the Nirotans have to be innocent.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Believe as you wish. But who might be interested in seeing the Nirotans blamed for such crimes? For thousands of years Drosk and Nirota have been rivals in the galaxy, trying to cut each other out of juicy trading spots. Here on Earth we’ve allowed both of you to come peddle your wares, in direct competition with each other. But Drosk didn’t like that, did it? So an enterprising Drosk did some research into Terran folklore, and found out about the vampire legend—about the dreaded giant bats who drink human blood, and who happen to resemble the people of Nirota. And someone cooked up the idea of murdering a few Earthmen by draining out their blood, and letting us draw our own conclusions about who did it—knowing damned well that there would be an immediate public outcry against the Nirotans, and also knowing that the Nirotans were culturally oriented against defending themselves. You figured we’d never find out that the Nirotans couldn’t possibly have done it. But you didn’t count on the chance that we might violate Nirotan privacy, drag one of them off to a medical laboratory, and see for ourselves.”