Murray Leinster - The Duplicators

“Here’s a piece of rock we call bog-iron,” she said absorbedly. “It has iron in it. Put this rock, with some wood, in the duplier, and a sample knife for it to duply, and the duplier takes iron out of the bog-iron and wood out of the wood and makes another knife. Of course the rock crumbles because part of it has been taken away. So does the wood, for the same reason. But then we have another knife. Only it’s only so good. So I thought that if an unduplied knife has something besides iron in it, like a stew has salt, maybe if I found the right kind of rock the duplier would take something out of it, and if it was the right kind of… of whatever-it-is, the duplied knife would be as good as the original because it had everything in it the original knife had.”

“Yes,” said Link, still dizzy. “It would. It should. If you get the right kind of rock.”

“Do you know what kind that would be?” asked Thana eagerly. “Can you show me the right kind?”

Link shook his head.

“Not I,” he said wryly. “It’s a special profession to know what rocks are ores and which aren’t. Some of these rocks I do recognize. That blue one may have copper in it. I’ve seen it but I’m not sure. This pink one I know. I spent months digging it out in mountain-size masses, looking for a place where a meteor might have struck it on a world where they used to have severe meteor-showers. But the rest, no.”

She looked distressed.

“Then there’s not much use in having guessed something right, is there? When you go away in your spaceship could you send somebody back who does know about rocks? We might even have lectric again!”

“I’m supposed to be hung,” said Link more wryly still. “And even if I could, I don’t think I’d do it. Because he’d go away again and tell the outside worlds that you have dupliers on Sord Three. And men would come here to take them away from you. They’d rob you at least, more likely murder you to get your dupliers and then they’d take them and destroy themselves.”

He made a rather absurd gesture. When one had been raised in a galaxy where every world has its own government, but they are so far apart that they can’t fight each other, patriotism as loyalty to a given place or planet tends to die out. It has no function. It serves no purpose. But Link knew now that when men no longer cherished small nations, whether they knew it or not they were loyal to mankind. And dupliers released to mankind would amount to treason.

If there can be a device which performs every sort of work a world wants done, then those who first have that instrument are rich beyond the dreams of anything but pride. But pride will make riches a drug upon the market. Men will no longer work, because there is no need for their work. Men will starve because there is no longer any need to provide them with food. There will be no way to earn necessities. One can only take them. And presently nobody will attempt to provide them to be taken.

Thana said interestedly, “There are stories about the fighting back on Surheil Two before our ancestors ran away. Everybody was trying to kill them because they had dupliers. They had to flee. It seems ridiculous, but they did run away, in spaceships, and they came here. There were only a few hundreds of them. The uffts made quite a fuss about their setting up Households, but the men had beer and the uffts couldn’t make it. They had no hands. So things got straightened out in time. But for a long, long while it was believed that nobody from any other world must ever be allowed to land here. I’m glad you landed, though.”

“To be hanged,” said Link.

But he understood the history of Sord Three better than she did. He could imagine the Economic Wars on Surheil Two, after the ancestors of Thana had fled. There were dupliers that weren’t taken away by the fugitives. A few. So men fought to possess them, and other men fought to take them away, and ultimately they’d be destroyed by men who couldn’t defend them. And then there’d be wholesale murder for food, and brigandage for what scraps were left. And at last civilization would have to start all over again with starving people and unplanted fields for a beginning. But no dupliers.

Here the disaster had taken a different form. While dupliers worked there was no need to learn useful things, such as the mechanical arts, and chemistry, and mineralogy. So such knowledge was forgotten. The art of weaving would vanish, too, when dupliers could make cloth to any demand. The composition of alloys. Electrical apparatus could not work without rare metals nobody knew how to find for the dupliers. So when the original units wore out there was no more electricity. And all cloth grows old and yellow and brittle, so old cloth, duplied, merely meant more old cloth, and alloy steel objects could not be reproduced, but only duplied, without the alloying materials, so there were only soft-iron knives and patched garments. And since the smallest of gardens, with any kind of vegetable matter for raw material, could have its produce duplied without limit, only the smallest of gardens were cultivated. Wherefore Harl’s Household was hung with rich drapery which was falling apart, the carpets on its floors were threadbare, and he was proud that his Household had one scrawny apple tree with wormy fruit on it. Because on Sord Three men were not needed to make things or grow things or do things. And Harl’s Household was ready to break apart.

“I begin,” said Link unhappily, “to agree with Harl. Since Thistlethwaite can’t hope to astrogate his ship if I’m hanged, he can’t report the state of things without me. So it’s probably wise to hang me. On the other hand I couldn’t run the ship’s engines, so I couldn’t take the news if he were hanged. But one or the other of us should be disposed of.”

Thana said sympathetically, “You feel terrible, don’t you? Let’s go see Harl. Maybe you’ll feel better. No, wait!” An idea had occurred to her. She surveyed a shelf of elaborately embroidered garments. She picked out one. “Do you think this is pretty?”

“Very,” said Link forlornly. There hadn’t been too many things he’d taken seriously, in his lifetime, but he did know that if dupliers got loose in the galaxy, there’d be no man certain of his life if he hadn’t a duplier, nor any man whose life was worth a pebble if he did.

“Fine!” said Thana brightly. “Come along!”

She picked up a bundle of what looked like ancient, yellowed, cloth scraps, plus a lump of bog-iron. She led the way into the great hall.

Her brother Harl was there, wearing an expression of patient gloom. There were two retainers, working at something which gradually became clear. A third man rolled in a large wheeled box from somewhere. It was filled to the brim with a confused mass of leaves and roots and branches and weeds. It was the mixture uffts had been dragging into the village in a wheeled cart some little while ago. As a mixture, it belonged on a compost heap or on a brush pile to be burned. But instead it was brought into the hall with the incredible, falling-apart, floor-to-ceiling draperies.

There was a stirring. The dais and the canopied chair moved. Together, chair and dais rose ceilingward. A deep pit was revealed where they had stood. And something rose in the pit, like a freight-elevator. It came plainly into view, and it was a complex metal contrivance with three hoppers on top which were plainly meant to hold things. One of the hoppers contained a damp mass of greenish powder in a highly irregular mound. One of Harl’s retainers began to brush that out into a box for waste. The middle hopper contained a pile of apples, all small, all scrawny, and each with a wormhole next its stem. It contained a bushel or more of lettuce heaped up with the apples. The rest of the hopper was filled with peas.