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 assemble the army. It will march past where you’re held fast. Every member of the army will take one nip at you. Just one. Nobody 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 associated 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.
That report to Link had not been completed when the Committee for Counter-Espionage clamored for his ear. Their operatives had reported substantially the same appalling facts. Members of G-1 and G-2 came galloping. The news had been brought to them. There was agitation. There was tumult. There was terror.
“My friends,” said Link in stately sadness, “the cause for which we were prepared to suffer and die has had a setback. The immediate success of the Revolution is now questionable, but its final success is certain! It would not be intelligent for uffts, who are the most intelligent beings in this galaxy, to throw away their lives with anything less than certainty of its sheer necessity. But this is not true of this moment. There is action by which the Revolution can continue. There is work to be done—organization, propaganda, planning! We shall… we shall go underground!”
It was the most lucid and most convincing of all possible phrases. Uffts lived in burrows. Underground. They preferred them. They meant safety, uffishness, the familiar, the normal, and the most satisfying way of life. Underground? Uffts cheered. Spontaneously!
“From this time on until the next occasion for rising,” said Link splendidly, “the Provisional Government will exist in secret. The Army of Liberation will exist in the hearts of its members! And all uffts, everywhere, will remember that time marches on, life is short but war is long, in union there is strength, and the uffts will rise again! The Army will scatter. Its members will hold close the secrets of its association. And presently—”
He waved them out. Naturally, though privately, he was very much relieved. He knew that Harl, certainly, would not dream of trying to single out individual uffts for punishment for their part in the revolt. For one thing, it would be impossible. For another, if he did, the uffts would run away again. The other Households would have the same imperative reason for ignoring so far as possible the revolt of the uffts. It was even likely that they’d take some pains to keep from having much discontent among the uffts who at their own will could move from Household to Household or settle where they were best satisfied.
There was one matter in which Link was less than satisfied. He wasn’t sure that Householders like Harl would be moved to reestablish agriculture to the point where food could be had without dupliers. It was necessary for the faraway plans Link already debated. But he wasn’t sure it was going to happen. Yet.
But he had one personal reason for overwhelming relief that he could resign as generalissimo of the revolt. He’d been living on duplied rations, replicas of the lunch Thana had prepared for him days ago. In the nine days since, that lunch had gotten deplorably stale. But it was worse than that. In nine days of the same eatables, Link had gotten almost hysterically sick of beans.
He watched a ceremonial march past of the Army of Liberation before it dissolved into individuals and family groups headed for their home burrows and a vociferous denial that they’d been in the Army at all.
But he’d reserved one unit of some two hundred uffts, privately asked to volunteer for a last item of military service against their oppressors, in case they should be needed. They were members of the Ufftian Diehard Regiment. They listened sternly and even devotedly when he gave them their instructions. They seemed to disperse like the rest. But—
When they were gone, he was alone in the decaying Household. There was something that needed to be done, and only he could do it. He worked nearly all night by very indifferent torchlight. When dawn came he cleared away the evidence of his labor. He brought up the duplier from its pit for the last time. Painstakingly, he re-shorted a formerly shorted wire. Wires that had been broken he re-separated. Loose contacts he turned into no contacts at all. The duplier would duply no more.
And in the early morning he rode to meet the army of householders and their retainers. In a sense, of course, he was going to surrender. But he felt sure that his explanation would satisfy Harl and therefore the rest. But as he rode, his mind was not on such matters. It dwelt hungrily upon pictures of food that would not be beans.
He met the approaching army a dozen miles from his former headquarters. He was mistaken about his explanation satisfying the Householders, however. Harl was visibly distressed both by his explanation and its reception. Thana, riding with Harl—she was the only girl with the armed expedition—looked at Link inscrutably.
The human army halted to pass upon Link’s behavior. Thistlethwaite glowered at Link and loudly disclaimed any association with him at all. He was no longer Thistlethwaite’s junior partner. He was—
They made camp, to discuss the situation in detail. Then Thistlethwaite was astonished to be placed in the dock as Link’s fellow-criminal. The head of this court-martial would be Old Man Addison. He was not an amiable character, and Link took an instant dislike to him. His air was authoritative and offensive. His speech was very far from cordial. Link found that his objection to Old Man Addison could be summed up in the statement that he didn’t have any manners.