It pointed with a fore-hoof.
“Thanks,” said Link, with irony.
The ufft protested, complainingly:
“It’s all very well for you to say thanks after you’ve scared a person.”
Link moved forward, and the ufft fled. But Link’s intentions were not offensive. He was simply following instructions. He moved doggedly down the hallway. It was carpeted. But the carpet was worn and frayed, though once it had been luxurious. He noted that the plastering was the work of a less than skilled workman.
He came to a corner in the hallway wall. A flight of steps went downward, to the left. He went down them. He heard voices. One of them had the quality of an ufft’s speech.
“Now, we can do it. The fee will be five thousand beers.”
Thistlethwaite sounded enraged.
“Outrageous! Robbery! One thousand bottles!”
“Business is business,” said the other voice. “Four. After all, you’re a human!”
Link’s foot made a scraping sound on the floor. There was an instant scuffling and low-voiced whispers and mutterings of alarm. Link went toward the sound and came to a place where a wick burned in a dish of oil. The light played upon an oversized cage of four-by-four timbers elaborately lashed together with rope. Inside the cage, Thistlethwaite glared toward the sound of the interruption.
Beyond the cage there was a very neat pile of vision-receivers, all seemingly new and every one dusty. The combination of unused vision-receivers and a wick floating in a disk of oil for light was startling. The light was primitive and smoky. The vision-sets were not. But the light worked and the vision-sets didn’t. Evidently. There were electric-light panels. But they wouldn’t work either, or the oil lamp would not exist. Thistlethwaite didn’t see Link, as yet.
“You’d better tell your boss,” rasped Thistlethwaite to the sound that was Link, “that if he ever expects to do any business with Old Man Addison he’d better let me loose and give me back my clothes and—”
He stopped short. He and Link could see each other now. Thistlethwaite was bare and hairy and caged. At sight of Link he uttered a bellow of rage through the heavy wooden bars.
“You!” he roared. “What’ you doin’ here? I told you to keep ship! You go back there! You want the ship to be claimed as jetsam, an abandoned ship with no representative of the owner on board? You get there! Lock y’self in! You stay on board till I finish my business dealin’ and come an’ tell you what to do next!”
“There’s someone in charge,” said Link mildly. “One of Harl’s retainers is acting as watchman. For me. There’ve been developments since then, but that’s that about the ship. I’ve got a message for you from Harl.”
Thistlethwaite sputtered naughty words in naughtier combinations.
“It seems,” said Link, “that to offer to pay a Householder for something is insult amounting to a crime. That’s what you’re to be hung for. Offering to pay a Householder’s sister for something is a worse crime. It appears that doing business, except with uffts, is considered disgraceful. I don’t see how they make it work, but there you are. If you’ll apologize, I think there’s a chance.”
Thistlethwaite cried out, furiously, “How can you do business without doin’ business? You go tell him—”
“I’d like to get you off,” said Link mildly. “I’m supposed to be hanged, too. But if I get you a pardon I might get one for myself as a particept noncriminus. So—”
He heard faint sounds. He said, “If you’ve a better way of getting out of being hanged than apologizing, I’d like to join you. I have an idea that there are persons of larger views than… ah… the humans on Sord Three. I refer to that brilliantly intellectual race, the uffts. With their cooperation—”
He definitely heard faint sounds. There had been voices before he arrived at Thistlethwaite’s cage. He waited hopefully.
“Look here!” snapped Thistlethwaite, “I’m the senior partner in this business! You signed a contract leavin’ all decisions to me an’ you doin’ only astrogatin’! You leave this kinda business to me! I’ll tend to it!”
There was a slight scraping noise. An ufft came out from behind the pile of vision-sets. Other uffts appeared from other places. The first ufft said, “You said you are to be hanged. Would you be interested in a deal with us? We can do all sorts of jail deliveries, strikes, sabotage, spying and intelligence work, and we specialize in political demonstrations.” The ufft grew enthusiastic. “How about a public demonstration against hanging visitors from other worlds? Mobs shouting in the streets! Pickets around the Householder’s home! Chanted slogans! Marching students! And demonstrators lying on the ground and daring men to ride unicorns over them! We can—”
“Can you guarantee results?” asked Link politely.
“It’ll be known all over the planet!” said the ufft proudly. “Public opinion will be mobilized! There’ll probably be sympathetic demonstrations at other Households. There’ll be indignation, meetings! There’ll be petitions! There’ll be—”
“But what,” asked Link as politely as before, “just what will be the actual physical result? Will Thistlethwaite be released? And I’m supposed to be hanged too. Will I be pardoned? What will Harl actually do in response to all these demonstrations?”
“His name will go down in history as among the most despicable of all tyrants who tried to keep us uffts in bondage!”
“Not in human histories,” said Link. “Not in histories written by men! Actually, Harl will go his placid way and hang Thistlethwaite and me. And I hate to say it, but our ghosts won’t get the least bit of comfort out of even the most violent of public reactions after the event.”
The ufft made no reply.
“I have a thought,” said Link. “Everybody has a weakness. You have yours, Harl has his, I have mine. Hart’s is that he is hell on manners. Fix things so he’ll be unmannerly if he doesn’t pardon both of us, and he’ll be like putty. If Thistlethwaite apologizes elaborately enough, pleading ignorance of the local customs—”
Thistlethwaite protested bitterly, “Apologize for a straight business proposal? A sound business transaction? I offered to pay him liberal—”
“Exactly the point,” said Link. “Exactly!”
“Mobs in the streets, shouting to shame him,” said the first ufft, enthusiastically. “Pickets around his house, chanting slogans! Uffts lying in the streets, daring men to ride over them.”
“No,” said Link patiently. “Thistlethwaite apologizes. He didn’t know the local customs. He asks Harl to forgive him and permit him to make a guest-gift of the clothes and the stun rifle Harl has already taken. No expense there! Then he asks Harl to instruct me in local etiquette so he can observe it in future contacts with Harl, whom he hopes to make his guide, mentor, friend, and most intimate companion when he has made himself worthy of Harl’s friendship.”
“I won’t do it!” raged Thistlethwaite ferociously. “I won’t do it! I’m goin’ to run this in a businesslike way! That ain’t business!”
“It’s sense,” observed Link.
“You’re fired!” bellowed Thistlethwaite. “You’re fired! You ain’t a junior partner any more! Your contract with me says I can heave you out any time I want! You’re heaved! I’m runnin’ this my way!”
Link looked at him earnestly, but the little man glared furiously at him. Link shrugged and went away. He returned to the garden, where Harl paced up and down and up and down, and where his sister again watered a row of not over-prosperous plants.
“Thistlethwaite,” said Link untruthfully, “had an unhappy childhood, practically surrounded by people with the manners, morals, and many of the customs of uffts. It warped his whole personality. He is aware that he ought to apologize for having insulted you. But he’s ashamed. He feels that he should be punished. Also he feels that he should make reparation. At the moment he is struggling between a death-wish and an inferiority complex. He will offer no more insults unless the struggle goes the wrong way
.”
Harl scowled.
“But there is a reasonable probability,” added Link, “that he will end up by making the spaceship and its cargo his guest-gift to you. That would get you out of an unpleasant dilemma. It would be very mannerly to accept it. You’d have the ship and your manners in getting it would be above reproach.”
Harl said suspiciously, “How much time is he likely to take?”
“When were you planning to hang us?” asked Link.
“After the fellas get back,” said Harl. “They may be a while having their suppers. Then I was figurin’ we’d have the hangin’ by torch-light. It’ll make a right interestin’ spectacle, flamin’ torches an’ such and a hangin’ by their light. My fellas will talk about it for years!”
“Just take it easy,” advised Link. “Don’t hurry things. He’ll come around before anybody gets too sleepy to appreciate his hanging!”
He hoped it was true. It ought to be. But Harl paced up and down.
“I wouldn’t want to do anything unmannerly,” he said grudgingly. “All right. I’ll give him until hangin’ time.” Then he seemed to rouse himself. “Thana, you pick the stuff for supper and I’ll get it duplied while you ask Link questions about the things you want to know.”
The girl plucked half a dozen lettuce plants. A handful of peas. She examined the apples on the tree and picked one. It was a small and scrawny apple. Link saw a worm-hole near its stem. She handed the vegetation to her brother. Then she said to Link:
“I’ll show you.”
He followed her. She went into the building, and they were in the great hall with the canopied chair. She led the way across the hall and into a smaller room. It was lined with shelves, and ranged upon them were all the objects a Householder could desire or feel called on to supply to his retainers. There were shelves of tools, but only one of each. There were shelves of cloth. Much of it was incredibly beautiful embroidery, but it was age-yellowed and old. There were knives of various shapes and sizes, plates, dishes, and glassware, bits of small hardware, and sandals, purses, and neckerchiefs, although these last categories were in poor condition indeed. In general, there was every artifact of a culture which had made vision-sets and now was used floating wicks in oil for illumination.
Link suddenly knew that this was in a sense the treasury of the Household. But there was only one of each object on display.
Thana pulled out a drawer and showed Link an assortment of rocks and stones of every imaginable variety. She searched his expression and said, “When you make a stew, you put in meat and flour and what vegetables you have. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” agreed Link. He was baffled again by his surroundings and, of all possible openings for a conversation, the subject she’d just mentioned.
“But,” said Thana uncomfortably, “it doesn’t taste very good unless you put in salt and herbs. That’s right too, isn’t it?”
“I’m sure it is,” said Link. “But—”
“Here’s a knife.” It was in the drawer with the rocks. She handed it to him. It was a perfectly ordinary knife; good steel, of a more or less antique shape, with a mended handle. It had probably had a handle of bone or plastic which by some accident had been destroyed, so someone had painstakingly fitted a new one of wood. She reached to a shelf and picked up another knife. She handed it to Link, too.
He looked at the pair of them, at first puzzled and then incredulous. They were identical. They were really identical! They were identical as Link had never seen two objects before. There was a scratch on the handle of each. The scratches were identical. There was a partly broken rivet in one, and the same rivet was partly broken in precisely the same fashion in the other. The resemblance was microscopically exact! Link went to a window to examine them again, and the grain of the wooden handles had the same pattern, the same sequence of growth-rings, and there was a jagged nick in one blade, and a precise duplicate of that nick in the other. Perhaps it was the wood that most bewildered Link. No two pieces of wood are ever exactly alike. It can’t happen. But here it had.
“This knife is duplied from that,” said Thana. “This one is duplied. That one isn’t. The unduplied one is better. It’s sharper and stays sharper. Its edge doesn’t turn. I…” She hesitated a moment. “I’ve been wondering if it isn’t something like a stew. Maybe the unduplied knife has something in it like salt, that’s been left out of the duplied one. Maybe we didn’t give it something it needs, like salt. Could that be so?”
Link gaped at her. She didn’t looked troubled now. She looked appealing and anxious and—when she didn’t look troubled she was a very pretty girl. He noticed that even in this moment of astonishment. Because he began to make a very wild guess at what might explain human society on Sord Three.
His limited experience with it was baffling. From the moment when he sat on the exit port threshold of the Glamorgan and chatted with an invisible conversationalist, to the moment he’d been told regretfully by Harl that he’d have to be hanged because of a speech he’d made about a barber, every single happening had confused him. It seemed that beer was currency. It seemed that a fifty-foot-square garden somehow supplied food for an entire village, though its plants seemed quite ordinary. Right now, dazedly surveying the whole experience, he recalled that there was no highway leading to the village. No road. It was not irrelevant. It fitted into the preposterous entire pattern.
“Wait a minute!” said Link, astounded and still unbelieving. “When you duply something you… furnish a sample and the material for it to something and it… duplicates the sample?”
“Of course,” said Thana. Her forehead wrinkled a little as she watched his expression. “I want to know if the reason some duplied things aren’t as good as unduplied ones is that we leave something out of the material we give the duplier to duply unduplied things with.”
His expression did not satisfy her.
“Of course if the sample is poor, the duplied thing will be poor quality too. That’s why our cloth is so weak. The samples are all old and brittle and weak. So duplied cloth is brittle and weak too. But,” she asked unbelievingly, “don’t you have dupliers where you come from?”
Link swallowed. If what Thana said was true—if it was true—an enormous number of things fell into place, including Thistlethwaite’s scornful conviction that wealth in carynths was garbage compared with the wealth that could be had from one trading voyage to Sord Three. If what Thana said was true, that was true, too. But there were other consequences. If dupliers were exported from Sord Three, the civilization of the galaxy could collapse. There was no commerce, no business on Sord Three. Naturally! Why should anybody manufacture or grow anything if raw material could be supplied and an existent specimen exactly reproduced. What price riches, manufactures, crops,… civilization itself? What price anything?
Here, the price was manners. If someone admired something you owned, you gave it to him, it or a duplied, microscopically accurate replica. Or maybe you kept the replica and gave him the original. It didn’t matter. They’d be the same! But the rest of the galaxy wouldn’t find it easy to practice manners, after scores of thousands of years of rude and uncouth habits.
“Don’t they have dupliers where you come from?” repeated Thana. She was astonished at the very idea.
“N-no,” said Link, dry-throated. “N-no, we d-don’t.”
“But you poor things!” said Thana commiseratingly. “How do you live?”
For the first time in his life, Link was actually terrified. He said the first thing that came into his mind.
“We don’t,” he said thinly. “At least, we won’t live long after we get dupliers!”
Chapter 5
There was movement in the great hall next door, but Thana paid no attention. She put one knife back on the shelf from which she’d taken it. She began to show Link the collection of small rocks and stones she’d accumulated.
“Here’s a piece of rock we call bog-iron,” she said abso
rbedly. “It has iron in it. Put this rock, with some wood, in the duplier, and a sample knife for it to duply, and the duplier takes iron out of the bog-iron and wood out of the wood and makes another knife. Of course the rock crumbles because part of it has been taken away. So does the wood, for the same reason. But then we have another knife. Only it’s only so good. So I thought that if an unduplied knife has something besides iron in it, like a stew has salt, maybe if I found the right kind of rock the duplier would take something out of it, and if it was the right kind of… of whatever-it-is, the duplied knife would be as good as the original because it had everything in it the original knife had.”
“Yes,” said Link, still dizzy. “It would. It should. If you get the right kind of rock.”
“Do you know what kind that would be?” asked Thana eagerly. “Can you show me the right kind?”
Link shook his head.
“Not I,” he said wryly. “It’s a special profession to know what rocks are ores and which aren’t. Some of these rocks I do recognize. That blue one may have copper in it. I’ve seen it but I’m not sure. This pink one I know. I spent months digging it out in mountain-size masses, looking for a place where a meteor might have struck it on a world where they used to have severe meteor-showers. But the rest, no.”
She looked distressed.
“Then there’s not much use in having guessed something right, is there? When you go away in your spaceship could you send somebody back who does know about rocks? We might even have lectric again!”
“I’m supposed to be hung,” said Link more wryly still. “And even if I could, I don’t think I’d do it. Because he’d go away again and tell the outside worlds that you have dupliers on Sord Three. And men would come here to take them away from you. They’d rob you at least, more likely murder you to get your dupliers and then they’d take them and destroy themselves.”
He made a rather absurd gesture. When one had been raised in a galaxy where every world has its own government, but they are so far apart that they can’t fight each other, patriotism as loyalty to a given place or planet tends to die out. It has no function. It serves no purpose. But Link knew now that when men no longer cherished small nations, whether they knew it or not they were loyal to mankind. And dupliers released to mankind would amount to treason.
The Duplicators Page 6