"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' 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 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."