by Anthology
The Frightened Tree
The strip of indestructible fiber goes into a slot in one end of the machine. It passes between rollers, dips into chemical baths, is stamped, dyed, analyzed for flaws, and then run through a unit which is detached from the main body of the machine every night and locked in a guarded vault. Finally, the strip emerges, is chopped into convenient lengths, and delivered into a bin, from which it is carefully moved into armored cars and distributed. It is known as money.
Besides being non-defaceable, fireproof, immune to wear, weather and water, it has also had an electronic pattern impressed into the fiber by that top-secret unit. When you spend it, it is passed over a simple plate that reads the pattern. If serial number and pattern match, nothing happens. But if what you’re presenting as legal tender is homemade, so many bells go off you’d think you were in a penny arcade. The engraving, the chemical composition of the ink, and the fiber are difficult enough to duplicate, but the pattern snaps the clincher on it. Only the government’s got the equipment to put that in.
All of which may serve to explain why Saxegaard screamed when I spread the fourteen identical bills on his desk.
Besides being the Chief Inspector, United Galactic Federations Department of the Treasury, Investigation Division (Currency), Saxegaard is a short man with a big mouth. The kind of fellow who always waits ninety seconds between cigarettes so he won’t be accused of chain smoking.
“Baumholtzer, where’d you get these?” he asked after he climbed down off the drapes.
They’d come into the New York Clearing House from a branch on Deneb XI. The manager there had blown his top and called us the minute he spotted them. I told Saxegaard that, and he chewed at his thumb for a few minutes.
“Will he spread the word around?” he asked finally.
“I threw the fear of UnGalac into him.”
“Good. At least we won’t have any financial panics—for a while. Not until that manager gets himself out from financially under, anyway. You checked these through the lab?” he asked, probably hoping for a loophole.
“The ink and paper’s government stock, all right, and they match government plates. Beeper plates don’t even hum when they’re passed over them. In fact, you could spend them anywhere, as long as you only passed one bill at a time.”
“Probably wouldn’t even have to be that careful. How do you know all the bills in your wallet right now don’t have the same serial number?” Saxegaard asked.
I shook my head. “I checked.”
Saxegaard looked at the bills a while longer, then sank back into his chair. His mouth twisted into a sad little smile.
“Baumholtzer,” he said, “you know how much work this office has done up to now. It’s a joke, a sinecure. Nobody, nobody can logically expect to counterfeit a bill and get away with it. It’s only because throughout the Universe, there is a certain percentage of people who will try anything once, and a corresponding percentage of purblind idiots who will accept anything with engraving on it as currency of the realm, that this department exists at all. I have seen cigar coupons and crayon sketches come into this office. I have seen grocery store premium certificates and bus transfers, but only because those same microcephalic imbeciles have neglected to pass the stuff over a beeper plate.
“Do you think I’ve been happy in my job, Baumholtzer? I get paid a good salary, and nothing ever happens to make me sweat to earn it. I shouldn’t have any worries.” He sighed. “But I do, Baumholtzer, I do. For fifteen years I have sat in this office and waited for somebody to invent a matter duplicator.”
I’d thought of that, too, but our part-time lab technician had mumbled something about the conservation of matter and energy. He had a hard time making it stick, though, with those fourteen bills, identical down to a whisky stain in one comer, staring him in the face.
Still, one of the first things you learn in this racket is not to go off half-cocked. Saxegaard knew that, too, because he said, “All right, Baumholtzer, off to Deneb XI with you, and find out if anyone in that neighborhood has a matter duplicator, or if he hasn’t, what he has got that looks so much like it.”
He looked at his watch and lit another cigarette.
I lit a cigarette and wished I hadn’t. The hot fog that passes for atmosphere on Deneb XI washed out my lungs and made the smoke taste like well-decayed leaf mold. I dragged a sleeve across my face, removing the sweat from my brow and replacing it with sweat from my arm.
Deneb XI is a jungle world, with climate and insects to match. I leaned my tired and dripping body against a wall and slapped limply at a specimen of insect that could have given a Brazilian mosquito cards and spades. I cursed it with damp enthusiasm and enjoyed my view of the capital city of Deneb XI.
This jewel in the diadem of the UnGalac was a motley collection of structures that looked as if they had been deposited there by the last high tide. This capital city—whose name, take it or leave it, was Glub—was also the only city on Deneb XI, which was the one reason it had endeared itself to me.
I have my suspicions that the Denebians have yet to invent the wheel. At any rate, practically the only way to get around the planet is on foot. Not that checking every bank and electronic-supply shop in Glub was any Sunday promenade. My feet kept reminding me of that.
The insect got in between me and the wall at this point, and stabbed me in the back. I consigned matter duplicators, blankfaced store owners, and prissy bank managers to the same gooey hell, smashed the insect against the wall, and headed for a bar.
One nice thing about Deneb—the natives are too primitive to run things, so practically all the people who do anything important in Glub are Terrestrials, or at least members of the Terrestrial Federation, in whose territory Deneb XI lies. I not only found a bartender who spoke UnGalac, but one who knew what a Tom Collins was. It was a bright spot in an otherwise abysmal day.
I carried my glass over to a table and stretched out on the chair beside it. I would have been a more or less contented man if it hadn’t been for the knowledge that I’d have to be up and back to my fruitless clod-hopping in a few minutes. I had yet to discover anyone who was buying more than a normal amount of electronic parts, or who had bought same at any time in the recent past.
The banks were no better. Nobody had pushed large amounts of money across their plates recently, nobody had brought in any duplicate bills for investigation, nobody had deposited bills with identical serial numbers. If I asked a clerk how come fourteen duplicates had gotten through, the answer was that it must have been during Harry’s shift, or Moe’s, or Maxie’s. Anybody’s but theirs. I’d found seven defective beeper plates in five banks, but taking the wind out of the sails of caspetitious bank managers wasn’t helping me find my man.
I took one last drag on the Tom Collins and was about to leave when I looked up and saw an interesting individual standing over my table.
He was a Terrestrial, but he’d been on Deneb a long time, because he was wearing the flour-sack type of garment the natives have. His hair, which was potato-field gray, was parted in the middle and curled around his temples and led back behind his ears. The ears had little pieces of bone in them. His eyes were corniced with the biggest damned eyebrows I ever saw, and his ping-pong ball nose was thrust out of a clump of whiskers. He stood about six eight and must have weighed close to one hundred pounds, saturated.
I lay back and enjoyed the sight for a while. He stared right back, but I guess he got tired of playing look-me-in-the-eye, because the whiskers moved and the apparition spoke.
“Mr. Baumholtzer?” it queried in a disappointingly normal voice.
“True,” I confessed.
“The same Mr. Baumholtzer who has been going around asking all those questions about duplicate UnGalac notes?”
“Probably. What’s your trouble, Mr.—?” I let it trail off in the time-honored fashion.
“Munger,” he answered. “Duodecimus Munger.”
“This bids fair to become fascinati
ng,” I said, wondering whether it would be Moe or Maxie that was going to get the blame for letting my name and assignment leak out. “Won’t you pull up a chair, Mr. Munger?”
“I’m afraid I won’t have time,” he answered in a flustered voice. “Are you really the Mr. Baumholtzer that’s working on this case for the Treasury Department?”
“Yeah, sure,” I answered. “Why? You’re not the fellow that’s turning out these duplicates, are you?” Which stands as the leading question of the year, because Munger rummaged around in the folds of his toga and came up with a Mistral coagulator, which he then pointed at my head.
“I am,” he said.
The bartender hit the floor with a crash and I put my hands on the edge of the table. “Let’s not make any rash decisions, now,” I said, wondering if I could get to my own pacifier before he fused my brains solid.
Munger shook his head. “I can’t very well see how I could let you live.”
“Aw, come on, try,” I answered, and tilted the table into the pit of his stomach at the same time I dived for the floor.
The Mistral belched and mummified a potted plant behind me. The table smashed against the floor.
Munger said, “Oh, drat!” and landed with a sound like a pool cue bouncing on linoleum. I scrambled over the table and managed to raise an arm and swipe at his jaw. I missed, but I hit the Mistral, which flew across the room and broke open, immolating every bug in that vicinity, but rendering itself obsolete at the same moment.
Munger made an annoyed sound and clubbed me on the jaw. I started to pass out, and he put his hands around my neck, but right about then the bartender let out a yelp that must have attracted some attention, because feet came running toward the bar from out in the street.
Munger repeated his expression of annoyance and smacked me another one. This time I went under.
Something wet was dabbing my face. I opened my eyes, and there was the bartender with a wet rag.
“All right, where is he?” I asked.
The bartender gave me a frightened look. “He’s gone. He ran out when I yelled. I came right over and started to bring you to. You haven’t been unconscious for more than a minute. That’s because I came right over and started to bring you to. He ran out when I yelled, you know.”
“Which way did he go, Galahad?”
“I—I don’t know. I didn’t have time to notice after I yelled and came over to——”
“Stuff it!” I said, threw him off, and ran out the back door.
Naturally, there wasn’t a trace of Munger. I tried the front, but there was a small crowd out there, and he hadn’t gone that way.
I walked back to the bar. “All right, bright eyes,” I said, “feed me another Collins. And don’t put any little sprigs of mint in it.”
“Well, you don’t have to get huffy about it!” he said.
“Really, Mr. Baumholtzer, there’s no need to be excited about this unfortunate occurrence,” the police inspector said. He leaned back in his chair and gazed at the end of his cigar. “This man was an obvious maniac. We’ll pick him up on your complaint in a day or two, and he’ll eventually wind up in a psycho ward.”
I sighed. I was getting worse than nowhere. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my buzzer. I flung it on his desk.
“This badge says I’m a Treasury Agent, so don’t go treating me like an ordinary taxpayer. I’m here investigating a counterfeiting case and this guy’s in it up to his conspicuous ears. Now let’s see some action!”
I wasn’t supposed to let anyone in on my job, but the news was already all over town, so the cops might as well be enlightened, too.
The inspector’s eyebrows went up. “Counterfeiting?” I could hear the wheels running around loose inside his head. “Alaric!” he yelled all of a sudden. “Alaric! Get me the Munger file!” He turned back to me with a pie-eating grin on his face. “I’m sorry, Mr. Baumholtzer, I’m afraid I was telling you something of a white lie.
“You see,” he went on, “we get a number of complaints about Munger, but he’s apparently a very wealthy man. He’s a trader or something at a native village in the interior, and once or twice a year he comes out and raises a little hell. He scares people sometimes and I thought this was one of those cases. But counterfeiting? Well!”
“Yeah,” I said.
I had a hunch the inspector was kind of worried that some of Munger’s money might have found its way to him. I wouldn’t have any real trouble with the inspector, though. He could be bought, but he wouldn’t stay bought. Not if any big trouble came up, anyway.
“You say he was a trader?” I asked, trying to pass time until the file came up. “How does this tie in with a matter duplicator?”
“Matter duplicator!” The inspector turned pale. “You mean those counterfeits of his are identical copies of the real thing?”
“That’s the idea.”
“You don’t say!”
He was fighting hard not to dig into his wallet and take a thorough, nervous look.
Fill your bathtub full of mud. Build a fire under it, turn on the hot shower, and crawl in. Wallow. Do that and you’ve got a fair idea of the Denebian jungle.
Never mind the trees. The inspector and I had been plowing along for half a day and I hadn’t seen a tree yet—the rain was too thick. I ran into them and I still couldn’t see them, maybe because there was mud all over me every time I picked myself up. I’d stumble on until the rain washed me off, and then I’d hit another tree, and ploppo!
The inspector led the way, stopping to consult a compass and a map once in a while. He was all eagerness.
Finally, he put out a hand and stopped me. I looked up and realized there was no rain coming down on me at about the same time I saw the leaf-thatched roof.
“Rain shelter,” he explained. “The natives build them. This one’s not too far from Munger’s village. We’ll rest a while and—” The inspector’s mouth hung open.
I turned around and there, in the far comer of the shelter, stood Munger and a couple of natives armed with spears.
“Coincidence, what?” Munger asked, grinning nastily. He turned to the natives and said something that I swear sounded like “Itchy scratchy,” but it must have meant “Take care of ’em for me, boys,” or something like that, because they moved in on us.
One of the lads had the point of his spear right in my middle or I would have tried to break for it, but the inspector was luckier.
“I’ll get help!” he yelled, and took off into the mud like a big-bottomed turtle.
The native that was supposed to handle him took off after him, but the inspector had the advantage of feet developed through years of pounding beats. The native realized almost immediately that he was up against superior talent, tried a perfunctory cast of his spear, and then came sloshing back to our little tableau.
“Well, Mr. Baumholtzer, your companion’s action has saved your life, for a while,” Munger said. “Now we’ll have to hold you as a hostage in case help should arrive.”
“Thanks,” I said.
I was looking at my native’s loincloth. It was composed of tastefully arranged thousand-credit notes.
“Itchy scratchy pretty damn quickie,” Munger said, and this time it obviously meant “Let’s get this jerk to the village, fellows,” because that’s what they did.
The jungle echoed to the thunder of a huge drum. In the flickering firelight, naked figures swayed and leaped, and bare feet thudded on a log platform in the center of the village. The rhythm vibrated through the platform until the air seemed to shudder, and the tremors shook my trussed-up body.
“Brr-room! Boom!”
A strident keening rose from the savage throats and distant huts sent back the echo of the primal wail. The firelight gleamed from the polished skin of Duodecimus Munger, who had doffed the formal toga and assumed the simple loincloth of the jungle. He stood impassively beside me, his arms folded, staring out with brooding eyes over the people he ruled. In the fire
’s gleam, he was as much a savage as they, and the majesty of his bearing spoke more loudly than words that he was their king.
He inclined his head toward me and spoke.
“It’s amazing, the nonsense you have to take with these people,” he said. “This clambake, for instance. They’re propitiating the spirit of the tree. Why? I don’t know. Damn tree’s never failed yet.” He indicated a majestic giant of the jungle with a nod. “But no, they’ve got to go into this marathon every night before I do my stuff. This’ll keep up to dawn and I’ll be dead on my feet tomorrow, but we got to have the stinkin’ dance.” He shook his head in disgust. “Jesus, I wish I had a fifth handy. I’ve been drinking this native bilge for too long.”
Then he went back into his cigar store Indian act.
He was right. We were up until the sun rose and that racket didn’t knock off for an instant. I had all that time to sit there, trying to figure out where Munger was making those duplicate bills, and what was so important about that tree. Needless to say, I didn’t reach any illuminating conclusions. That drum kept pounding away like crazy. If I could have gotten loose somehow, I would have grabbed my gun, which Munger now had strapped to his waist, and shot that berserk drummer before even thinking about making a break for it.
Finally the sun came up and the Denebians quit howling. Neither Munger nor I were in a mood for small talk or pleasant conversation by that time. He picked me up and put me on my feet.
“Let’s go, Baumholtzer,” he said. “Now you’ll discover just how it’s done.”
“Good of you to show me,” I said. “I suppose this means I’ll never live to tell about it.”
“That’s very sensible of you. I like a man who can face facts.”
We walked across the log platform to the base of the tremendous tree in whose honor the recent brawl had been held. I still couldn’t see the connection but I was willing to wait.
I didn’t have to. Not very long, anyway. Munger reached into a pouch on his loincloth and pulled out a bill. I looked at it. It was either another of the duplicates I’d brought into Saxegaard’s office, or else it was the parent bill.