The Duplicators

by Murray Leinster

  He’d been taken to the ship. The watchman left by Harl admitted him. He overpowered that watchman and put him in a cabin for crew members. He stuffed himself, because food was more urgent than clothing. He admitted uffts, because they were clamoring below. They wanted the extra fees they’d charged him. They announced that they were not interested in human artifacts. They wanted the usual currency, beer. The whiskery man didn’t have it. They suggested that they would accept cargo at a proper discount. The discount was for the fact that they’d have to trade human goods to humans for the beer they preferred. The discount would be great.

  Thistlethwaite had to yield, though he raged. He opened a cargo compartment and the uffts began to empty it. Thistlethwaite wept with fury because circumstances had put him at the mercy of the uffts. In business matters they were businesslike. They didn’t have any mercy. He was expressing his indignation at their attitude when they spoke of demurrage to be paid for the delay he was causing. Strangling upon his wrath, he took measures. He was still taking measures when the expedition of men and unicorns charged down into the hollow where the Glamorgan rested. Thistlethwaite got out among the first, and was well away before the stun gun was put into use. And then, back in the ufft city, the uffts demanded compensation for the injury of an exaggerated number of their fellows in his employ.

  Telling about it later, even returned to Harl’s Household and presumably the prospect of being hanged, even later Thistlethwaite purpled with fury over the ufft demands. They’d have stripped him of all the Glamorgan’s cargo if not the ship itself, and he’d have reached Old Man Addison without a smidgen of trade goods with which to deal. His entire journey would have been in vain. It was even unlikely that Old Man Addison would pay for his delivery, when he had nothing to offer that feudal chieftain in the way of trade.

  Listening to the account, Harl said safely:

  “Uffts haven’t got any manners. You shoulda known better then to deal with them! You did right to come back.” Then something occurred to him. “Why’d they chase you?”

  Thistlethwaite turned burning, bloodshot eyes upon Link.

  “Somebody,” he said balefully, “somebody painted a note on the Glamorgan’s fin. It was addressed to me! So the uffts read it an’ it said I’d brought guns for Householders to use on uffts to make ’em work for free! And the note said for me to lead the uffts into a ambush as previous arranged so’s they’d get shot up! So they decided that me gettin’ put in a cage an’ gettin’ them to escape me was a trick so’s you’d get a chance to try out that stun gun on ’em last night!”

  Link said mildly, “Now, I wonder who could have done such a thing!”

  Thistlethwaite strangled on his fury. He was speechless.

  “It begins to look,” said Link with the same mildness, “like the uffts are really wrought up. I doubt that they’re hanging around the Household just for the pleasure of calling us names. What do you think they want, Harl?”

  “Plenty!” said Harl gloomily. “Plenty!”

  “I suggest,” said Link, “that you find out.”

  “’Might as well,” said Harl, more gloomily still. “If they don’t bring in greenstuff, we don’t eat. You can’t duply what Thana grows unless you’ve got something to duply it with!”

  He rose and went morosely out of the room where the conference had taken place. Thistlethwaite said bitterly:

  “I’d ha’ done better if I’d astrogated here myself!”

  “Question,” said Link. “You say the uffts believe you brought guns for them to be enslaved with. Did you?”

  “No!” snapped Thistlethwaite.

  “Did the uffts mention me?” asked Link.

  Thistlethwaite practically foamed at the mouth.

  “They said y’were their friend!” he raged. “They said—”

  “I made them a speech,” said Link modestly. “It was about a barber who shaved everybody in his village who didn’t shave himself, and didn’t shave anybody who did shave himself. There’s been some trouble deciding who shaved the barber. They may like me for that.”

  Thistlethwaite made incoherent noises.

  “Tut tut!” said Link. “There’s one more question, but you haven’t got the answer to it. I’ll get Thana to help me find it out. I don’t think you’ll run away to the uffts again, and I don’t think they’ll hang you before I have a chance to protest. I shall hope not, anyhow.”

  He went in search of Thana. He found her ruefully regarding the plants in her kitchen garden.

  “There’s not been an ufft-cart of greenstuff come in today,” she told Link unhappily, “and the uffts are shouting such bad language I don’t know when they’ll start bringing carts in again!”

  “You’ve got food stored ahead?” asked Link.

  “Not much,” admitted Thana. “The uffts always bring in greenstuff, so there’s been no need to store food.”

  Link shook his head.

  “It looks bad,” he observed. “Will you duply that gun I used last night and see if it works? It might be a solution to the problem. An unwelcome solution, but still a solution.”

  “Of course!” said Thana.

  She led the way. To the great hall and across it, and into the room with innumerable shelves that served the purpose of a treasury. She lifted down the stun gun from a high shelf, which Link realized no uffts with hoofs instead of hands could ever climb to. She gave Link some large lumps of bog-iron. She brought out a ready-cut billet of wood.

  Into the great hall again. She pressed a button and the chair of state and its dais rose ceilingward. The contrivance which was the duplier came up out of the pit the chair and dais ordinarily covered. Thana put the bog-iron and the wood in the raw material hopper. She put the stun gun in the hopper holding the object to be duplicated. She left the third hopper empty. The duplicate to be produced should appear there.

  She pressed the button. The duplier descended. The chair of state came down. She pressed the button again. The chair of state went up and the duplier arose, at a different rate of rising. The bog-iron in the first hopper was visibly diminished and there was much sand on the hopper bottom. The sample, authentic, original stun gun remained where it had been placed, in the middle hopper. But a seemingly exact duplicate remained in the last hopper.

  Link took the duplied object. He examined it. He aimed it skyward and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, not even the slight hiccough which accompanies a stun gun’s operation.

  He twisted the disassembly screw and the gun opened up for inspection. Link looked, and shook his head.

  “No transistors,” he reported regretfully. “They’re made of germanium and stuff, rare metals at the best of times. We haven’t any. So the gun is incomplete. A duplied stun gun needs germanium and without it it’s no good, just like a duplied knife. No dice. I’m very glad of it.”

  Harl came in, indignant.

  “Link!” he said in a tone expressing something like shock at something appalling and outrage at something crushing, “I sent a coupla fellas to find out what the uffts wanted, and the uffts chased ’em back!”

  “Did they mention their reason?” asked Link.

  “They yelled I was a conspirator. They yelled that the whiskery man was goin’ to lead ’em into a ambush last night to be massacred. They yelled I was goin’ to try to make ’em work all the time without payin’ ’em beer! They yelled down with me. Me!” said Harl incredulously. “They said they were makin’ a general strike against me! No greenstuff! No carrying messages from me to anywhere! No anything! I got to get rid of the thing they say killed ’em by hundreds last night. Did it kill ’em, Link?”

  “Not a one,” said Link. “They got stung a bit, but that’s all. Nothing worse than a sting for the fraction of a second.”

  “They say,” finished Harl astonishedly, “that the strike keeps up till I hang the whiskery fella and get rid of the gun that was used on ’em, an’ let uffts search the whole Household to see if there are any more, an’ repea
t that search any time they please! They got to read all messages to me from anybody else, and from me to anybody! And I got to give ’em four more bottles of beer for each cartload of greenstuff they bring in from now on!”

  Link considered for a moment. Then he said, “What have you decided?”

  “I couldn’t if I wanted to!” said Harl. “Sput, Link! If I hung that whiskery fella because the uffts wanted it, I’d be disgraced! Not a fella in the Household would stay here! If I let the uffts search anybody’s house any time they wanted, not a woman would let her husband stay! If I agreed to that, Link, there wouldn’t be a livin’ soul here by sundown!”

  Link somehow felt relieved. The human economy here on Sord Three had defects, even to his tolerant eyes. The humans were utterly dependent upon the uffts for the food they ate and the clothes they wore, in the sense that they depended on ufft-cart loads of raw material. At any time the uffts could shut down and starve out a human household. It was a relief to discover that humans would not submit.

  ’What’ll you do?”

  “Send a messenger to my next neighbor,” said Harl angrily. “I’ll say I’m comin’ guestin’. I’ll take half a dozen men an’ forty or fifty unicorns. I’ll go to his household. I’ll make him a guest-gift of a duplied new shirt and a duplied can of beans. Then he can have all the shirts an’ beans he wants from now on. That’s a right grand gift, Link! So he’ll be anxious to make a mannerly host-gift to me. So I’ll admire how much ready-duplied food he has stored away. So he’ll duply enough food to load up my train of unicorns and I’ll bring it back here!”

  “And then what? Suppose the uffts stage a political demonstration in the street while you’re gone?”

  Harl scowled.

  “They better not!” he said darkly. “They… uh… they’d better not! I’ll go send my messenger.”

  He hurried away.

  Thana said, “You don’t think that’s going to work out.”

  “It might,” said Link. “But it needn’t.”

  Thana said in a practical tone of voice, “Let’s see what we can do with that unduplied knife, Link.”

  She went into the room Link considered the Household treasury. She came back with the alloy steel knife, of which duplied copies so far had been only soft iron. She had her collection of variegated rocks.

  She duplied the knife with bog-iron alone in the raw materials hopper. The contrivance went down in the pit, the canopied chair descended and covered the pit, then rose again and the contrivance came up once more. There was a second knife in the products hopper. She handed it to Link. He tested its edge. It turned immediately. It was soft iron. He handed it back. She cleaned out the materials hopper of sand and bog-iron, and put the just-duplied, soft-iron knife in for raw material. She added a dozen of the stones and pebbles of which some might be ores.

  The duplier descended and rose. The knife had again been duplied. Its edge was still useless. The duplier had not been able to extract from the rock samples the alloying elements the original knife contained in addition to iron, and which a true duplicate would have to contain. They weren’t in the rocks. Thana cleared out the useless rock specimens with a professional air.

  “I’m afraid you’re right, Link, about the uffts.”

  “How?” asked Link.

  “Harl thinks about manners all the time. He’s not practical, like you.”

  “I’ve never been accused of being practical before,” said Link dryly.

  Thana put the re-duplied knife in the materials hopper.

  She added more rocks. When the chair descended she said, “What did you do with yourself before you came here, Link?”

  “Oh, I went hither and yon,” said Link, “and did this and that.”

  The chair rose and the duplier reappeared. There was again another knife. It, also, was soft iron. Thana cleared away these unsatisfactory rock samples also. She shifted the soft iron knife to the first hopper and put in more pebbles. When the duplier went down and came up again, the re-duplied knife had vanished from the materials hopper and reappeared in the third hopper where duplied products did appear. There was no crumbling among the pebbles which might be ores. She replaced them with still others and the duplication cycle began again.

  “Where’s your home, Link?”

  “Anywhere,” said Link. He watched the duplier descend and the chair-of-state come down to cover the pit. It rose again to disclose a re-re-re-duplicated knife. This time, too, the edge was not good. She substituted still other pebbles and sent the duplier down to do its duplying all over again.

  “Where’s anywhere?” asked Thana. She looked at him intently.

  He told her. As the duplier went through the process of making and re-making the knife according to the provided sample, but without the alloy material that would turn it to steel, he answered seemingly idle questions and presently was more or less sketching out the story of his life. He told her about Glaeth. He told her about his two years at the Merchant Space Academy on Malibu. He found himself saying:

  “That’s where I met Imogene.”

  “Your girlfriend?” asked Thana with possibly exaggerated casualness.

  “No,” said Link. “Oh, for a while I suppose you’d say she was. I wanted to marry her. I don’t know why. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But she asked me businesslike questions about did I have any property anywhere and what were my prospects, and so on. She said we were congenial enough, but marriage was a girl’s career and one had to know all the facts before deciding anything so important. Very pretty girl, though,” said Link.

  Thana removed the assortment of stones that still again had been proved to contain no metalliferous steel-hardening alloy. She put in more. Among the ones to be tested this time there was a sample of a peach-colored rock he’d noted earlier as familiar. Link stiffened for a moment. Then he reached inside his shirt and into a pocket of his stake-belt. By feeling only, he selected a small, gritty crystal. He placed it beside the sample knife.

  The dais and the chair-of-state descended. He waited for it to rise up again.

  “What happened?” asked Thana. Again she was unconvincingly casual.

  “Oh,” said Link, “I went back to where I was lodging and counted up my assets. I’d been toying with the idea of going to Glaeth to get rich. I had enough for that and about two thousand credits over. So I bought the necessary tickets and stuff, and reserved a place on a spaceship leaving that afternoon. Then I went to a florist.”

  Thana said blankly:

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to put her on ice.”

  The duplier came up. An irregular lump of grayish-black rock had visibly disintegrated. It was not all gone, but a good tenth of its substance had disappeared. There were glittering scales to prove its crumbling. The peach-colored stone had dropped a fine dust, too.

  “This looks promising!” said Link.

  He tested the edge of the duplied knife. It was excellent, equivalent to the original. It should have been. Tungsten steel does take a good edge, and hold it, too. He handed the knife to Thana, and fumbled in the bottom of the product hopper. There was a small, very bright crystal there. He picked it up, together with the other sample crystal from his stake-belt. Very, very calmly he put two gritty crystals into the stake-belt pocket from which he’d extracted one. Thana held the duplied but this time tungsten-steel knife. She should have been enraptured. But instead she asked, almost urgently:

  “Why did you go to a florist?”

  “I bought two thousand credits worth of flowers,” said Link. “I ordered them delivered to Imogene. They’d fill every room in her parents’ home with some left over to hang out the windows. I wrote a note with them, bidding her good-bye.”

  Thana stared at him with a remarkable amount of interest.

  “She wanted a rich husband and I hated to disappoint her,” he explained. “And also, there was a chance that I might get rich on Glaeth. So I told her in my note that my multi-millionaire father h
ad consented for me to roam the galaxy until I could find a girl who would love me for myself alone, not knowing of his millions. And I’d found her. And she was the only woman I could ever love. It was a fairly long note,” Link added.

  “But… but—”

  “I said I was going away for a year to see if I could live without her. If I couldn’t—even though she considered my father’s millions—I’d come back and sadly ask her to marry me though my father’s millions counted. If I could, I said, I’d spend the rest of my life exploring strange planets and brooding because the one woman I could love could not love me for myself, as I loved her. A very nice piece of romantic literature.”

  Thana said blankly, “Then what?”

  Harl appeared for the second time in the doorway. He wad enraged. His hands were clenched. He scowled formidably.

  “They wouldn’t let my fella ride through,” he said in an ominous tone. “They bit his unicorn’s heels. They’d ha’ pulled it down and him too! So he came back. Uffts never dared try a trick like that before! Not in this household! An’ they never will again!”

  “What—”

  “I’m going to duply that gun you used last night, Link,” said Harl ferociously, “and me and a bunch of my fellas will go out an’ sting them up like you did, only plenty! When uffts say a man’s got to be hung and a householder can’t send a message, that ain’t just no manners! That’s… that’s—”

  He stopped, at a loss for a word to express behavior more reprehensible than bad manners. Link noted that on Sord Three “manners” had come to imply all that was admirable, as in other places and other times words like “honor” and “intellectual” and “piety” and “patriotic” had become synonyms for “good.” And, as in those other cases, something was missing. But he said, “Thana and I already tried duplying it, Harl. The duplied one doesn’t work, just as duplied knives don’t hold an edge.”