Part 22 (1/2)

”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'tthinkthey'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 b.u.t.ton 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 b.u.t.ton. The duplier descended. The chair of state came down. She pressed the b.u.t.ton 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 disa.s.sembly 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 crus.h.i.+ng, ”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 ma.s.sacred. 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'

repeat 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 s.h.i.+rt and a duplied can of beans. Then he can have all the s.h.i.+rts 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 subst.i.tuted 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 s.p.a.ce 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.