THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST
Fritz Leiber
“I wish,” said the Young Captain, police chief of High
Chicago, the turbulent satellite that hangs over the merid-
ian of the mid-western groundside city, “I wish that some-
times the telepathic races of the Galaxy weren’t such
consistent truth-tellers and silence-keepers.”
“Your four suspects are all telepaths?” the- Old Lieu-
tenant asked.
“Yes. I also wish I had more than half an how to
decide which one to accuse; But Earth-side has muscled
into the case and the pressure is on. If I can’t reason it
out, I must make a guess. A bare half-hour they give
me.”
“Then perhaps you shouldn’t waste it with a pensioned-
off old louey.”
The Young Captain shook his head decisively. “No. You
think. You have time to now.”
The Old Lieutenant smiled. “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t.
And I doubt if I can give you any special angles on tele-
paths, Jim. It’s true I’ve lately been whiling away the
time on informal study of alien thought systems with
Khla-Khla the Martian, but—”
“I didn’t come to you looking for a specialist on tele-
pathy,” the Young Captain asserted sharply.
“Very well then, Jim. You know what you’re doings
Let’s hear your case. And give me background. I don’t
keep up with the news.’
The Young Captain looked skeptical. “Everyone in High
Chicago has heard about the murder—not two furlongs
from here—of the representative of the Arcturian peace
party.’
“I haven’t,” the Old Lieutenant said. “Who are the
Arcturians? I tell you, for an oldster like me, the Now
is just one more historical period. Better consult someone
else, Jim.”
“No. The Arcturians are the first non-related humanoid
race to turn up in the Galaxy. Non-related to Earth
humans, that is. True, they have three eyes, and six fin-
gers on each hand, but they are hairless mammalian
bipeds just the same. One of their females is the current
burlesque sensation of the Star and Garter.”
“The police found that a good spot to keep their eyes on
in my day too,” the Old Lieutenant recalled, nodding.
“Are the Arcturians telepaths?”
“No. I’ll come to the telepathy angle later. The Arcturi-
ans are split into two” parties: those who want to enter the
Commerce Union and open their planets to alien star-
ships, including Earth’s—the peace party, in short—and
those who favour a policy of strict non-intercourse which,
as far as we know, always intimately leads to war. The war
party is rather the stronger of the two. Any event may tip
the balance.”
“Such as a representative of the peace party coming
quietly to Earth and getting himself bumped before he
even gets down from High Chicago?” <^"Exactly. It looks bad, Scan. It looks as if we wantedwar. The other member peoples of the Commerce Unionare skeptical enough already about the ultimate peace-fulness of Earth's intentions toward the whole Galaxy.r. They look on the Arcturian situation as a test. They saythat we accepted the Polarians and Antareans and all therest as equals simply because they are so different fromus in form and culture—it's easy to admit theoreticalequality with a bumblebee, say, and then perhaps do himdirt afterward."But, our galactic critics ask, will Earthmen be soready or willing to admit equality with a humanoid race?It's sometimes harder, you know, to agree that your ownbrother is a human being than to grant the title to ananonymous peasant on the other side of the globe. Theysay—I continue to speak for our galactic critics—thatEarthmen will openly work for peace with Arcturus whilesecretly sabotaging it.""Including murder.""Right, Sean. So unless we can pin this crime on aliens—best of all on extremists in the Arcturian war party(something I believe but can in no way prove)-—therumour will go through the Union that Earth wants war,while the Arcturian Earth-haters will have everythingtheir own way.""Leave off the background, Jim. How was the murderdone?"Permitting himself a bitter smile, the Young Captainsaid wistfully, "With the whole Galaxy for a poison cabi-net and a weapon shop, with almost every means availableof subtle disguise, of sudden approach and instantaneousgetaway—everything but a time machine, and some crookwill come along with that any day now—the murder hadto be done with a blunt instrument and by one of fouraliens domiciled in the same caravansary as the Arcturianpeace-party man."There's something very ugly, don't you think, in thevision of a blackjack gripped by the tentacle of an octo-poid or in the pincers of a black Martian? To be frank,Sean, I'd rather the killer had been fancier in his modusOperandi. It would have let me dump the heavy end of thecase in the laps of the science boys.""I was always grateful myself when I could invoke thephysicists," the Old Lieutenant agreed, "It's marvellouswhat coloured lights and the crackle of Geiger counters doto take the pressure off a plain policeman. These fouraliens you mention are the telepaths?""Right, Scan. Shady characters, too, all four of them,criminals for hire, which makes it harder. And each ofthem takes the typical telepath point of view—Almighty,how it exasperates me! That we ought to know which oneof them is guilty without asking questions! They know wellenough that Earthmen aren't telepathic, but still they hidebehind the lofty pretence that every intelligent inhabitantof the Cosmos must be telepathic."If you come right out and tell them that your mind isabsolutely deaf-dumb-and-blind to the thoughts of others,they act as if you'd made a dreadful social blunder andthey cover up for you by pretending not to have heardyou. Talk about patronizing—! Why, they're like a womanwho is forever expecting you to know what it is she'sangry about without ever giving you a hint what it is.They're like—""Now, now, I've dealt with a few telepaths in my time,Jim. I take it that the other prong of your dilemma is thatif you officially accuse one of them, and you hit it rightsthan he will up and confess like a good little animal.using the ritual of speech to tell you who commissionedfee murder and all the rest of it, and everything win berosy.“But if you hit it wrong, it will be a mortal insult tohis whole race—to all telepaths, for that matter—andthere will be whole solar systems moving to resign fromthe Union and" all manner of other devils to pay. Because,continuing the telepath's fiction, that you are a telepathyourself, you must have known he was innocent and yetyou accused him.""Most right, Sean," the Young Captain admitted rue-fully. *'As I said at the beginning, truth-tellers and silence-keepers—intellectual prigs, all of them! Refusing to be-tray each other's thoughts to a non-telepath, I can under-stand that—though just one telepathic stoolpigeon wouldmake police work ten mountains easier. But all theseother lofty idealistic fictions do get my goat! If I wererunning the Union—""Jim, your time is running short. I take it you wanthelp in deciding which on& to accuse. That is, if you dodecide to chance it rather than shut your mouth, loseface and play for time.""I've got to chance it, Sean Earth-side demands it. ButAs things stand, I'll be backing no better than a three-to-one shot. For you see, Sean, every single suspect of the(our is just as suspect as the others. In, my book, they*refour equally bad boys.""Sketch me your suspects then, quickly." The Old lieu-tenant closed his eyes."There's Tlik-Tcha the Martian," the Young Captainbegan, ticking them off on his fingers. "A nasty blackbeetle, that one. Held his breath for twenty minutes andthen belched it in my face. Kept printing 'No Comment'white-on-black on his chest to whatever I asked him. InGaramond type!""Cheer up, Jim. It might have been Rustic Capitals.Next.""Hlilav the Antarean multibrach. Kept gently waving histentacles all through the interrogation—I thought he wastrying to hypnotize me! Then it occurred to me he mightbe talking in code, but the interpreter said no. At the end,h& gives a long insulting whistle, like some shamelessswish. Whistle didn't signify anything either, the inter-preter said, beyond a polite wish for my serenity."Third customer was Fa the Rigelian composite. Tookoff a limb—real, of course, not artificial—and kept fid-dling with it while I shot questions at him. I could hardlykeep my mind on what I was saying—expected bun totake his head off next! He did that too, just as he startedback to his cell.""Telepaths can surely be exasperating," the Old Lieu-tenant agreed. "I always had great trouble in keeping in