The Duplicators

by Murray Leinster

  On another occasion he solemnly led an organization down the valley to where a vein of very familiar peach-colored rock showed in the valley wall. He picked up a fist-sized bit of it, fallen out of the vein, and carried it back to the Household. He placed it as the first stone in a six-foot-high cairn of peach-colored rocks to mark the place where the Ufftian National Bill of Rights would presently be adopted. It hadn’t been drawn up yet. Discussion of its details required much beer, and the self-appointed committee to compose it had to spend so much time hauling the necessary greenstuff that not much time was left for deliberation. It was already apparent to Link that in the absence of ufft-carts, the beer dragged to the duplier cost more time and effort per bottle than when it could be hauled on wheels and humans took a toll of it.

  But matters in households nearby had become serious. There were practically no uffts remaining as hangers-on about human villages in a very large area. A space roughly two hundred miles across was denuded of uffts. It extended from the sea to the eastward of Link’s headquarters, well beyond the mountains in which he commanded. In some of those households, men had actually been forced to gather greenstuff or go hungry. The fact caused anti-ufft feeling to run high. Already it had occurred to Link that if he could find another abandoned household with a duplier as readily repairable as this first one, he could start a new center of ufftian independence. Given dupliers and shirts or their equivalents to carry water in, uffts could have beer at will, or almost so. They gained no other tangible benefit from their association with humans.

  Paradoxically, it was Link’s own doing that counter-measures against the Revolution began. When Harl had spoken so bitterly in favor of the good old days, Link had agreed with him. He’d suggested that Harl call an assembly to bring about their return. It was a suggestion with infinite appeal. Everybody can think of good old days they’d like to recall. No two people will want to recall the same good old days, but the theory is attractive.

  Harl fumed at the desertion of the uffts who had made his household a livable place. He argued the matter with other householders forlornly traveling about trying to get food without working for it. They tended to agree more furiously as the number of uffts on their households diminished, and the conditions more nearly approached the real good old days when Sord Three was first colonized.

  Link continued depressedly to be the acting head of the Ufftian Provisional Government, the Ufftian Army of Liberation, the Coordinator of the War Effort, and a considerable number of other things. He drank a bottle of beer occasionally. For other subsistence he had to depend on duplied repetitions of the lunch Thana had made for him. It was a fair lunch, but it was a horribly monotonous diet. But there was nothing he could do about it. He was followed everywhere by devoted uffts who—it was irritatingly touching—seemed honestly to believe that they were getting somewhere.

  Perhaps they were. At any rate, by the fact of their absence they impressed the humans with the necessity for their presence. They made endless speeches to each other. They drank innumerable bottles of beer. And they stripped the valley of greenstuff. At the end of a week they were dragging branches two miles to get beer. In nine days the production and consumption of beer began to fall off. The work required was more than even beer was worth.

  Link envisioned a change in the food provision policies of human households on Sord Three. Given agricultural machines, and seed of modern breeding, one not-too-skilled man could plough, cultivate and make ready for harvesting an enormous acreage. Uffts could weed it. Uffts could harvest it. They could enter into a real symbiotic relationship with humanity. And he was beginning to think of a way to secure the alloy materials and rare element supplies needed for the restoration of lectric and vision-casts, synthetic fibers and fabrics, and probably means of transportation superior to unicorns. He grew wistful as he pictured it to himself. Sord Three could become a paradise, and dupliers could be used for a new purpose so effectively that their original function would become forgotten. The economic system of Sord Three could gently be diverted to something really intelligent.

  Link felt himself qualified to design an intelligent economic system. He’d have liked to talk to somebody about it. But the only suitable listener on Sord Three would be Thana. Making his plans, he imagined himself explaining them to her.

  When disaster came, Link was absorbed in the design of a flexible new economic order which would eventually be able to stand visitors without disturbance, and the visitors would not be disturbed by what they found. Dupliers would not be recognizable as such, and so would be harmless. Designing such a system was an appalling problem, but Link attacked it valiantly—until disaster arrived.

  A party of uffts brought a newcomer to the tumbledown building Link inhabited alone. The newcomer was abusive and rebellious.

  “Sir,” said a Security ufft in a stern voice, “here’s a spy, sir. He came from Old Man Addison’s Household. He was sent to spy out our military secrets.”

  “Yah!” snarled the spy. “You haven’t got any military secrets! There’s dozens of us, and we know all about everything you do! We’re a tight organization, and Old Man Addison knows every secret of every household and every ufft town, and if you hurt me he’ll know who did it and get even!”

  He glared defiantly about him.

  “He’ll know, eh?” said Link. “Maybe somebody’s already telling him about your capture, eh?”

  “That’s right!” snapped the spy. “You don’t dare hurt me!”

  Link reflected. This was in a way a court-martial, except that Link was the only judge. The great hall with its chair of state was dusty and littered. The plump and angry uffts who’d brought in the prisoner made indignant noises.

  “Now,” said Link pleasantly, “you have a chance to be a double-spy, a very high rank in your profession. You begin by telling us everything you know about what the Householders are planning in this war.”

  The spy-ufft made raucous noises of derision. So Link said sternly, “We’ll assemble the army. It will march past where you’re held fast. Every member of the army will take one nip at you. Just one. Nobody will kill you, but somewhere in the process of receiving some tens of thousands of nips—”

  The spy squealed. Link had expected it. There were not less than forty thousand uffts either in the Army of Liberation or the committees associated with it. The total might be as high as fifty thousand. The spy instantly agreed, shaking with terror, to tell everything, everything, everything.

  “Take him away and question him,” said Link in an official voice.

  An hour later he received the report. The spy had told everything. On demand, he’d identified other spies. They’d been questioned separately, under the same threat. Their stories checked. So far as the revolt was concerned, the disaster was absolute.

  Harl had begun the organization of Householders for the Restoration of the Good Old Days. There was great, grim approval and much disparity in the definitions of the good old days, but there was unanimity about present days. An ufftian army of liberation in being, equipped with a Household with a working duplier and able to supply beer with no benefit to humans, that could not be endured! Householders had mobilized their retainers. They were armed with spears. Some four or five hundred humans were gathered at Old Man Addison’s household. On the morrow they would march on the Provisional Capital of the Ufftian Provisional Government. They were prepared to kill uffts with spears. They would.

  That report to Link had not been completed when the Committee for Counter-Espionage clamored for his ear. Their operatives had reported substantially the same appalling facts. Members of G-1 and G-2 came galloping. The news had been brought to them. There was agitation. There was tumult. There was terror.

  “My friends,” said Link in stately sadness, “the cause for which we were prepared to suffer and die has had a setback. The immediate success of the Revolution is now questionable, but its final success is certain! It would not be intelligent for uffts, who are the most in
telligent beings in this galaxy, to throw away their lives with anything less than certainty of its sheer necessity. But this is not true of this moment. There is action by which the Revolution can continue. There is work to be done—organization, propaganda, planning! We shall… we shall go underground!”

  It was the most lucid and most convincing of all possible phrases. Uffts lived in burrows. Underground. They preferred them. They meant safety, uffishness, the familiar, the normal, and the most satisfying way of life. Underground? Uffts cheered. Spontaneously!

  “From this time on until the next occasion for rising,” said Link splendidly, “the Provisional Government will exist in secret. The Army of Liberation will exist in the hearts of its members! And all uffts, everywhere, will remember that time marches on, life is short but war is long, in union there is strength, and the uffts will rise again! The Army will scatter. Its members will hold close the secrets of its association. And presently—”

  He waved them out. Naturally, though privately, he was very much relieved. He knew that Harl, certainly, would not dream of trying to single out individual uffts for punishment for their part in the revolt. For one thing, it would be impossible. For another, if he did, the uffts would run away again. The other Households would have the same imperative reason for ignoring so far as possible the revolt of the uffts. It was even likely that they’d take some pains to keep from having much discontent among the uffts who at their own will could move from Household to Household or settle where they were best satisfied.

  There was one matter in which Link was less than satisfied. He wasn’t sure that Householders like Harl would be moved to reestablish agriculture to the point where food could be had without dupliers. It was necessary for the faraway plans Link already debated. But he wasn’t sure it was going to happen. Yet.

  But he had one personal reason for overwhelming relief that he could resign as generalissimo of the revolt. He’d been living on duplied rations, replicas of the lunch Thana had prepared for him days ago. In the nine days since, that lunch had gotten deplorably stale. But it was worse than that. In nine days of the same eatables, Link had gotten almost hysterically sick of beans.

  He watched a ceremonial march past of the Army of Liberation before it dissolved into individuals and family groups headed for their home burrows and a vociferous denial that they’d been in the Army at all.

  But he’d reserved one unit of some two hundred uffts, privately asked to volunteer for a last item of military service against their oppressors, in case they should be needed. They were members of the Ufftian Diehard Regiment. They listened sternly and even devotedly when he gave them their instructions. They seemed to disperse like the rest. But—

  When they were gone, he was alone in the decaying Household. There was something that needed to be done, and only he could do it. He worked nearly all night by very indifferent torchlight. When dawn came he cleared away the evidence of his labor. He brought up the duplier from its pit for the last time. Painstakingly, he re-shorted a formerly shorted wire. Wires that had been broken he re-separated. Loose contacts he turned into no contacts at all. The duplier would duply no more.

  And in the early morning he rode to meet the army of householders and their retainers. In a sense, of course, he was going to surrender. But he felt sure that his explanation would satisfy Harl and therefore the rest. But as he rode, his mind was not on such matters. It dwelt hungrily upon pictures of food that would not be beans.

  He met the approaching army a dozen miles from his former headquarters. He was mistaken about his explanation satisfying the Householders, however. Harl was visibly distressed both by his explanation and its reception. Thana, riding with Harl—she was the only girl with the armed expedition—looked at Link inscrutably.

  The human army halted to pass upon Link’s behavior. Thistlethwaite glowered at Link and loudly disclaimed any association with him at all. He was no longer Thistlethwaite’s junior partner. He was—

  They made camp, to discuss the situation in detail. Then Thistlethwaite was astonished to be placed in the dock as Link’s fellow-criminal. The head of this court-martial would be Old Man Addison. He was not an amiable character, and Link took an instant dislike to him. His air was authoritative and offensive. His speech was very far from cordial. Link found that his objection to Old Man Addison could be summed up in the statement that he didn’t have any manners.

  But he knew what he intended the court-martial to do, and he plainly meant to see that it did it. Against Thistlethwaite’s arguments he said acidly:

  “You stuck me once. I gave you a spaceboat cargo on your promise to come back an’ pay me adequate for some dupliers. You’re back. Where’s the stuff you was to bring?”

  Thistlethwaite protested despairingly.

  “You’ goin’ to be hung,” said Old Man Addison, as acidly as before. “An’ I take your ship to pay me for what you cheated me out of. And any more strangers land on Sord Three get hung right off, no questions an’ no foolin’ around!”

  The court-martial convened. Link explained lucidly that the uffts around Harl’s household were already nearly in revolt, that they’d besieged Harl’s Household, and that with Harl’s approval he’d gone out to persuade them to go off somewhere and let pack-trains of unicorns relieve the food shortage. He pointed out that he had accomplished exactly that. He even pointed out that no human had been insulted or injured by uffts following his oratorical suggestions. He’d assumed leadership of the uffts as a favor to Harl.

  Harl cast the only vote in the court-martial in favor of Link. The decision was that Link and Thistlethwaite were to be hanged the next morning. The delay was to allow other householders, hurrying to the scene, to watch the pleasant spectacle.

  Link remained composed. Especially after the number of uffts usually to be seen about a gathering of humans appeared, one by one, and moved casually about the encampment. Nobody bothered them. It was the habit of humans to tolerate uffts. By midday there were at least fifty uffts moving about among the men and tents and animals. Later there were more.

  Near sundown, Thana was admitted to the closely guarded place where Link and Thistlethwaite waited for morning and their doom. Thana looked at once indignant and subdued.

  “I’m… sorry, Link,” she said unhappily, “Harl’s still arguing, trying to get them to change their minds. But it doesn’t look like he’s going to! He’s even told them that you showed me how to duply a knife so it’s as good as an unduplied one! He’s promised to make them all presents of shirts and beans and unduplied knives! But they listen to Old Man Addison.”

  “Yes,” admitted Link. “He has a certain force of character. But his manners—” He shook his head. “Even Thistlethwaite doesn’t approve of Old Man Addison now!”

  Thana caught her breath as if trying not to cry.

  “I… I brought you a shirt, Link. I… guess you didn’t like that embroidered one. You took it off. This is duplied from the one you gave Harl.”

  “Hm,” said Link. “Fine! Thanks, Thana.”

  She wept. He patted her shoulder.

  “Is there anything…” she whispered, “is there anything I can do? Anything, Link!” She sobbed. “I… feel like it’s my fault, you being in trouble. If I’d had more food stored away you wouldn’t have had to lead the uffts away and… and—”

  Link said helpfully, “If you feel that way, why… a couple of unicorns up the valley at midnight—If you could manage that, I’d appreciate it a lot!”

  She was silent. Then she said bitterly, “You… you want to go back to Imogene!”

  Link stared at her.

  “Look, Thana, I didn’t tell you the end of the story! After I got on the spaceship, and that’s nearly a year ago, I looked at the receipt the florist had given me. And he’d written down Imogene’s address on the back of the receipt. So he couldn’t send the flowers or the note. So Imogene never heard from me again, and if I know her she’s married long ago!”

  She looke
d at him earnestly. “Honestly, Link?”

  “Of course,” Link said with dignity. “Have you ever known me to lie?”

  “Where shall I have the unicorns?” she asked. “And how?”

  “Influence,” said Link. “I’ve got influence. Now—”

  He told her a place it would not be easy to miss, perhaps a mile up the valley from the camp. She went away.

  He seemed absorbed in thought for a long time after that. He didn’t even pay particular attention to the uffts, which near sunset seemed to increase in number. But once an ufft winked reassuringly at him. Thistlethwaite was bitter, but Link consoled him as well as he could.

  “You,” he said kindly, “mistake the courtesies of business life for sentiments of deeper importance. You should reform.” Thistlethwaite swore despairingly at him.

  Darkness fell. Stars shone. The camp quieted. Then, at midnight, there was sudden and dithering uproar. Tents collapsed. Unicorns made dismal noises, tried to bolt, and finding their tethers bitten through by uffts, high-tailed it for the mountain slopes, with heel-nips to urge them on. Men swore, under blanketing canvas. Men tried to run after the unicorns and uffts ran between their legs and upset them. Those who tried to haul collapsed tents off their fellows suffered similarly irritating upsets. When swearing men crawled out to the open air, uffts nipped their legs and they leaped madly. There was a swarm of shouting uffts all about, ripping at any human or other heel within reach, biting through any ropes that remained intact, and bellowing contradictory orders in fairly good imitations of human voices. They turned the camp into something close to primordial chaos.

  Link grunted as one of his own guards was bowled over. He grabbed at Thistlethwaite. He led the way. A small party of uffts formed around them, clearing the path. Twice, householders or their retainers seemed about to blunder into them, but each time they toppled as running uffts hit their knees from behind. Then the entire escort ran zestfully over them in what they considered the fine tradition of the Die-hard Regiment. Before disbanding his army, Link had picked them out, dramatically, for possible secret military action. This was it.