Part 24 (1/2)

When he stopped, up he popped Pa.s.sing out bottles of beer!”

Link went to sleep with various uncoordinated choruses chanting it. But he wasn't easy in his mind.

In fact, he had nightmares.

Chapter 9.

Link made a speech next morning. He'd hammered out, very painfully, the only possible action he could advise or command his followers to take. Essentially, it was to take no action at all. But he couldn't put it that way. It was obvious that if the culture of the human inhabitants of Sord Three had deteriorated because of the lack of contact with the galactic civilization, the status of the uffts had diminished, too. But it was also absolutely certain that if there had been contact with the rest of the galaxy, there'd have been h.e.l.l to pay.

At the least, every duplier on Sord Three would have been taken forcibly away by adventurers landing with modern weapons and no scruples whatever. As a side line, such s.p.a.ce-rovers would have come upon the uffts. They'd have kidnapped them and sold them as intelligent freaks on a thousand worlds while one planet after another collapsed into chaos as a result of the dupliers. Ultimately, in fact, the citizens of Sord Three would have starved for the lack of dupliers while the rest of the galaxy went hungry because it possessed them. Transported and enslaved uffts would have been involved in the collapse of human civilization, and the galaxy at large would have gone to h.e.l.l in a handbasket.

It was still a strong probability. Link was the only person anywhere who realized it. If it was to be prevented, he had to do the preventing. The responsibility was overwhelming.

Therefore he made his speech.

”My friends!” he said resoundingly, from an extremely rickety balcony in the outer wall of the householder's crumbling residence. ”My friends, it is necessary to decide upon a policy of action for the realization of the objectives of the Ufftian Revolution. Let me say that when I came here to ask your help in the solution of an abstract question, I did not realize the emergency that existed here. I urge that the problem, my problem, of the barber and who shaves him be put aside for the duration of the emergency.

All the resources of the ufftian race, including its unbelievable intellect, should be devoted to the single purpose-freedom!”

There were cheers. They were more prompt and louder than the day before, because Link had appointed a Committee for Emphasizing the Unanimity of Ufftian Opinion, and they cheered whenever he paused in the course of an oration.

”You are here as an army,” said Link, oratorically, ”and an army you should remain. But you are the most intelligent race in the galaxy. Therefore it is natural for you to adopt the most intelligent strategy for the achievement of your ends. Your master strategists have undoubtedly discussed that cla.s.sic of military doctrinePower in s.p.a.ceand have determined to apply the principle of the s.p.a.ce fleet in being to the basic problem of this war, so ensuring ufftian victory.”

He paused, and cheers rose confusedly in the morning sunlight.

”An army in being,” announced Link profoundly, ”is an undefeated army. By the fact that it is in being, it has proved that it is undefeatable. To be an army in being is to be a victorious army, because if it were not victorious it could not continue to be! Therefore the first item of Ufftian policy is to keep the army in being and therefore to keep it undefeated and victorious, an inspiration of uffts everywhere, drawing them to join it and share in its glory and its triumph!”

Cheers. The Committee for Emphasizing the Unanimity of Ufftian Opinion took its cue more promptly, and there was a high, shrill tumult of approval, much greater than before.

”Specifically,” said Link with a fine precision, ”the policy of the Ufftian Provisional Government is to maintain its army in being, to spread propaganda everywhere to cause uffts everywhere to join and increase that army, to cause its enemies to realize the futility of conflict, and ultimately to make a generous and equitable peace which shall realize all Ufftian national aspirations and establish the Ufftian Nation in permanent, unquestioned, and unquestionable solidity!”

Cheers now echoed and reechoed from the walls of the valley. Link held up his hand for attention.

”In pursuance of this policy,” he said valiantly, ”we shall immediately organize the Committee for Propaganda upon a new scale. We shall enlarge the organization of G-1 and G-2, our intelligence and counter-intelligence groups. More volunteers for this necessary work are needed. We shall need volunteers to explain the policies of the Ufftian National Const.i.tution to the uffts who will shortly join the Ufftian Revolutionary Army. We must have volunteers for security services, for communications, for espionage, for education, and for a survey of the cultural monuments and purposes to be preserved and obeyed, and for the preparation of a history-a detailed history-of this epoch-making and unanimous uprising of all uffts for the realization of these traditional aims! And-”

It was an admirable speech. When he'd finished, his hearers were almost hoa.r.s.e from their cheering. He retired into the tumble-down Householder's residence with a forlorn kind of satisfaction. He was still the leader of the revolution. The uffts believed they were going to accomplish something unique under his guidance. It was conceivable that they might. No ufft could possibly topple him from his post as leader, because all uffts knew thattheywere inexorably restricted in achievement by the fact that their hands were hoofs. They could only believe in accomplishment a.s.sociated with hands. There could be uffts wrought up to sabotage or crime by a purely ufftian leader, but Link alone could be the nucleus around which a genuinely large number of uffts would gather.

There were two main reasons for it. One was his psychological advantage in that he could make speeches and had hands besides. The other was discretion. He'd asked for volunteers for innumerable committees and high-sounding boards and councils. But he hadn't even referred to the organization of combat units. The Ufftian Revolutionary Army was prepared for propaganda, espionage, education, counter-espionage, and probably social services and psychoa.n.a.lysis. But Link had at no time suggested that anybody get ready to fight.

An important but subsidiary reason was the free beer issued by the Quartermaster Corps to any ufft or group of uffts who came into the great hall of state, dragging a reasonable amount of greenstuff and a sufficient number of water-soaked s.h.i.+rts, ready-duplied for the transport of water required in beer.

Unquestionably, the free beer helped.

Its appeal showed up on the second day of the revolutionary movement. A little knot of traveling uffts, some twenty in number, were halted by security uffts as they crossed the mountains on private business of their own. They were questioned, given beer, and turned loose. Half of them did not leave. The rest went on to tell their friends and bring them back. Various of the original marchers appointed themselves recruiting officers of glamorously named organizations and went home after new members. They got them.

By the third day there was a steady trickle of volunteers for the army and especially the civil service of the provisional government. They came through mountain pa.s.ses or across the rolling foothills toward the formerly human household. By the fourth day, the loss of ufft-power was noticeable in human households as much as fifty miles in every direction. Harl's household reposed in a vast tranquility. Groups of pack-animals could go and come between neighboring households without even a shouted”Murderers!”

flung at them along the way. But all the householders were faced with the need to go guesting to get needed foodstuffs. There were no more ufft-carts coming in with greenstuff. There was no general strike, of course, but the result was the same. Uffts were gathering at the Ufft Future World Capital up a rather steep small valley, where anybody could have all the beer he wanted for the greenstuff required to make it. Link had started out with perhaps two or three thousand followers. Four days later there were twenty thousand about the former human settlement. Some of the uffts, females, no doubt, disapproved of the bivouac idea. Permanent burrows began to appear here and there.

From time to time Link performed some ritual to remind the uffts that they were a revolutionary army.

On one occasion he presided over a marching-recitative compet.i.tion, when small bands of uffts marched past his residence chanting vainglorious doggerel for inspirational purposes. The slogans, of course, stressed loyalty to the principles of the Provisional Government, the National Const.i.tution, the Declaration of Freedom, the Appeal to Intellects, and so on.

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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.h.i.+rts or their equivalents to carry water in, uffts could have beer at will, or almost so. They gained no other tangible benefit from their a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sembly 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 repet.i.tions 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 a.s.semble the army. It will march past where you're held fast. Every member of the army will take one nip at you. Just one. n.o.body 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 a.s.sociated 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.