The Duplicators

“Get mounted!” roared Harl. “We’ ridin’ to that ship that come down today. What’s in it’s goin’ to Old Man Addison if we don’t get there first! Take y’spears! Get movin’! The uffts are goin’ too far!”

There was confusion. More men appeared and ran out of sight. Some of them came back riding unicorns. Some led them. The three animals that had been ringed in and whose tender feet had been bitten by the uffts now came limping back into the village. The two riders had somehow managed to subdue their own beasts, and then had overtaken and caught the riderless animal.

“A unicorn for Link!” roared Harl, in what he evidently considered a military manner. “Get him a spear!”

“Hold it!” said Link grimly. “That stun gun you took from Thistlethwaite! You were carrying it. I’ll take that, Harl! I know how to use it!”

“I ain’t had time to figure it out,” said Harl, agreeing.

He roared. “Get that funny dinkus the whiskery man was carryin’ this mornin’! Give it to Link!”

Confusion developed further. Since his first sight of Harl, riding up to the ship with five unicorn mounted men at his back, Link had made innumerable guesses about the social and economic system of Sord Three. Most of them had been wrong. He’d been sure, though, that the organization into Households was a revival or reinvention of a feudal system, in which a Householder was responsible for the feeding and clothing of his retainers, and in return had an indefinite amount of power. Harl had the power, certainly, to order strangers hanged.

But it became clear that whether it was feudal or not, the system was not designed for warfare. Harl was in command, but nobody else had secondary rank. There were no under-officers or non-commissioned ones. Harl’s howled and bellowed orders got a troop of mounted men assembled. Confusedly and raggedly, they grouped themselves. They carried spears and wore large knives. Harl bellowed additional orders and whoever heard them obeyed them more or less. With great confusion, the group of armed and mounted men got ready to start out in the moonlight.

Just as he was about to give the order to march, Thana’s voice came from the building which was the Householder’s residence.

“Harl! Harl! If you go off now, dinner will get cold!”

“Let it!” snapped Harl. “We got to catch that whiskery fella!”

He roared for his followers to march, and march they did in a straggling column behind him. Somebody confusedly searched for and found Link, riding next to Harl, to give him the stun gun which was the only weapon that had been aboard the Glamorgan. He felt it over in the darkness.

“It seems to be in working order,” he told Harl. “Thanks.”

“What—” Then Harl saw the stun gun. The starlight was moderately bright, but it was not possible to see the details of anything, whether of the armed party or the landscape. “Oh. You got that thing. I was layin’ off to figure out what it was, but I didn’t have time. What’s it do, Link?”

“It knocks a man or an animal out,” said Link curtly. “It shoots an electric charge. But you can set the charge not to stun him, but only sting him up more or less.”

“’Lectric? asked Harl. “That’s interestin’! How far does it throw?”

“That depends,” said Link.

“Mmmmm. Uh, Link, how did you find out that that whiskery fella is makin’ a deal with Old Man Addison?”

“Uffts told me,” said Link grimly. “Old Man Addison is going to pay three thousand bottles of beer for Thistlethwaite’s delivery to him. It’s a written contract. Thistlethwaite wouldn’t promise anything like that if he didn’t know his value to Old Man Addison!”

Harl shook his head.

“You spoiled a good hangin’ by not tellin’ me!” he said reproachfully. “He got away. But how d’you know he’s headin’ for the ship?”

“I told you!” said Link. “He wants pants. He wants a shirt. He wants clothes. He wants to be dressed like a business man when he does business with Old Man Addison!”

Harl considered.

“It looks reasonable,” he admitted. “Right reasonable!”

“I was offered a deal to escape, too,” said Link sourly. “The uffts wanted five thousand bottles of beer to take me to Old Man Addison’s Household.”

“You wouldn’t like him,” said Harl sagely. “He’s hardly got any more manners than an ufft. Anybody who’s mannerly like you are couldn’t get along with him, Link. You showed sense in stayin’ with me.”

“To be hanged!” said Link bitterly. “But—”

“Hold on!” said Harl in astonishment. “Didn’t I admire that shirt o’ yours? An’ didn’t I accept it as a gift? I could make a gift to a man I was goin’ to hang, Link. That’d be just manners! But I couldn’t accept a gift an’ then hang him! That’d be disgraceful!” He paused and said in an injured tone, “I’ve heard of Old Man Addison doin’ things like that, but I never thought anybody’d suspect it of me!”

Link waved his hand impatiently. It was remarkable that the discovery that plans for his hanging were changed should make so little difference in this thinking. But right now he was concerned with the prevention of a disaster vastly more important than any concern of his own.

“I doubt,” he said, “that we’d better go through the ufft city. We’d better circle it. We’d be delayed at best, and Thistlethwaite is in a hurry to settle his bargain with Old Man Addison. He’ll hurry.”

Harl cleared his throat and bellowed toward the skies. The trailing cavalcade of ungainly unicorns changed direction to follow him.

The mounted party was probably fifty men and animals strong. In the dimness of starlight alone, it was an extraordinary sight. The men rode in clumps of two or three or half a dozen, on steeds whose gait was camel-like and awkward. The unicorns wobbled as they strode. Their limp and fleshy horns swayed and swung. Link, looking back and observing the total tack of discipline, felt an enormous exasperation.

He didn’t like the situation he was in, even when immediate hanging was no longer included. In all his life before he’d been carefree and zestfully concerned only with doing things because they were novel or exciting, and on occasion because they involved some tumult. In anybody his age, that was a completely normal trait. But now he had a responsibility of intolerable importance. The future of very many millions of human beings would depend on what he did, but he’d get no thanks for his trouble. It went against the grain of Link’s entire nature to dedicate himself to a tedious and exacting task like this. If he were successful it would never be known. In fact, it was a condition of success that it must never be known anywhere off of Sord Three. And it mustn’t be understood there!

At least an hour after their starting out a high, shrill clamor set up, very far away.

“That’s uffts,” said Harl. “Somethin’s happened an’ they feel all happy an’ excited.”

“It’s Thistlethwaite,” said Link. “He got to the ship. He probably passed out some gifts to the uffts.”

The cavalcade went on. The faint shrill clamor continued.

“Uh, Link,” said Harl, in a tone at once apologetic and depressed, “I thought of somethin’ that might make the uffts feel good. If like you said he gave presents to the uffts, maybe it was unduplied things. They couldn’t use ’em, havin’ hoofs instead of hands. But they’d know us humans ’ud have to buy ’em. They like to bargain. They enjoy makin’ humans pay too much. It makes ’em feel smart and superior. He could ha’ made a lot of trouble for us humans! A lot o’ trouble!”

The long, somehow lumpy line of men and animals went on through the darkness. Harl said unhappily:

“The uffts were tryin’ to make me pay ’em for news of where there was a lot of bog-iron. You figure what they’d make me pay for somethin’ unduplied! If that fella’s passin’ out that kinda gifts, the uffts feel swell. They feel happy. But I don’t!”

Link said nothing. It would be reasonable for Thistlethwaite to feel that he had to get samples of his cargo aground to ensure his deal with Old Man Addison, and then to have a train of armed men and animals come to unload the Glamorgan and carry its specially purchased cargo away. If he opened a cargo compartment to get samples, the uffts could well have demanded samples for themselves. Or they could simply take them.

“And,” Harl fumed, “when they got something they’ll ask fifty bottles of beer for, they won’t bother bringin’ in greenstuff, and how’ll I get the beer to pay ’em? They’ll bring in knives an’ cloth and demand beer! And if I don’t have the beer, they’ll take the stuff to another Household.”

“Then you’ll probably have to pay it.”