Complete Venus Equilateral (1976) SSC

by George O. Smith

“Me, too,” she said to the bartender. “Cal, you are a queer duck. Your favorite liquors come from Venus and Mars. You seem to thrive on those foul-tasting lichens from Titan as appetizers. You gorge yourself on Callistan loganberry, and your most-ordered dinner is knolla. Yet you hate space travel.”

  “Sure,” he grinned. “I know it. After all, there’s nothing that says that I have to go and get it. Four hundred years ago, link, there were people who ate all manner of food that they never saw in the growing stage. And a lot of people lived and died without ever seeing certain of their meat animals.”

  “I know. Gosh. They used to kill animals for meat back then. Imagine!”

  Cal looked sour-faced, and silence ensued for a moment. Then Tinker’s face took on a self-horror.

  “Hey. That look isn’t natural. What’s up?” Cal asked.

  “Order me a big, powerful, hardy, pick-me-up,” said Tinker, “and I’ll tell you—if you really want to know.”

  “I do and I will,” said Cal, wonderingly.

  He ordered straight palan, which Tinker took neat. She coughed, and then brightened somewhat.

  “Now?” asked Cal.

  “Better order another one for you,” said Tinker. “Anyway, we had one of those jobs last night.”

  “What jobs?”

  “An almost-incurable.”

  “Oh,” said Cal with a shiver. He ordered two more straight drinks, in preparation. “Go ahead and tell, Tink. You won’t be free of it until you spill it.”

  “It was a last-resort case and everybody knew it. Even the patient—that’s what made it so tough. It’s distasteful enough to consider a duplicate when you’re well. But to be lying on the brink and then know that they’re going to make a duplicate of you for experimental surgery—I can’t begin to tell. The patient took it, though.

  “And even that wouldn’t be too bad. We made our duplicates and went to work on one immediately. We operated, located the trouble, and corrected it. The third duplicate lived. Then we operated on the patient successfully. I didn’t mind the first two dupes, Cal. It was the disposing of the cured duplicate that got me. It was like—No, it was disposing of an identity.” Tink shuddered, and then drained her second shot of palan simultaneously with Cal.

  “And you wonder why I dislike medicine,” he said flatly.

  “I know—or try to. But look, Cal. Aside from the distaste, look at what medicine has been able to accomplish.”

  “Sure,” he said without enthusiasm.

  “Well, it has.”

  “But at what a cost.”

  “Cost? Very little cost,” snapped Tinker. “After all, once one has the stomach to dispose of a duplicate, what’s the cost? Doctors bury their mistakes just as always, but the mistake is a duplicate. The sentience remains.”

  “How can you tell the real article from the duplicate?”

  “We keep track.”

  “I know that. What I mean is this: a man is born, lives thirty years as an identity. He is duplicated for surgical purposes at age thirty. All duplicates and the original are he—complete with thought and habit patterns of thirty years. They are identical in every way, right down to the dirt on their hands and the subconscious thoughts that pass inside of their brains. Their egoes are all identical. When you kill the duplicate, you might as well kill the identity. The duplicate is as much an identity as the original.”

  “True,” said Tinker. “However, once a duplicate is made, the identities begin to differ. One will have different experiences and different ideas and thoughts. Eventually the two duplicates are separate characters. But in deference to the identity, it is he that we must cure and preserve. For the instant that the duplication takes place, the character starts to differ. We cannot destroy the original. The duplicate is not real. It—how can I say it?—hasn’t enjoyed—Yes it has, too. It was once the original. Cal, you’re getting me all balled up.”

  “Why not let them both live?”

  Tinker looked at Cal with wonder. “Inspect your life,” she said sharply. “You and Benj. How do I know right now that you are not Benj?”

  Cal recoiled as though he had been struck.

  “You’re Cal, I know. That distaste was not acting. It was too quick and too good, Cal. But can you see what would happen? What is a dupe’s lot?”

  Cal nodded slowly. “He’s scorned, taunted, and hated. He cannot masquerade too well—that in itself is a loss in identity. Yes, it is a matter of mercy to dispose of the duplicate. The whole thing is wrong. Can’t something be done about it?”

  “Not until you change human nature,” smiled Tinker.

  “It’s been done before.”

  “I know. But not a thing as ingrained as this.”

  “Ingrained? Look, Tinker Elliott, up to the Period of Duplication, three hundred years ago, twins and multiple-births used to dress and act as near alike as possible.”

  “Hm-m-m. That was before a duplicate could be made. Double birth was something exceptional, and unique. The distaste against duplicates bred the hatred between twins, I know. We might be able to change human nature, then.”

  “Not in our lifetime.”

  “I guess not. What was the big kicker, Cal?”

  “About duplication? Well, there was a war in Europe and both warring countries put armies of duplicates into the field. The weapons, of course, were manufactured right along with the troops. There were armies of about nineteen million men on each side, composed of about a thousand different originals. They took the best airmen, the best gunners, the best rangers, the best officers, the best navigators, and the best of every branch of fighting, and ran them into vast armies. It was stalemate until the rest of the world stepped in and put a stop to it. Then there were thirty-eight million men, all duplicates, running around. The mess that ensued when several thousand men tried to live in one old familiar haunt … It was seventy years before things ran down.”

  “That would send public opinion reeling back,” Tinker smiled. “But do you mind if we change the subject? I think that I’ve gotten last night’s experience out of my system. What was all this wild story you were telling me?”

  “Let’s stroll toward food,” he said. I’ll tell you then.”

  Cal dropped some coins on the bar to take care of the check and they went into the dining room. The waiter led them to their table and handed them menus.

  “This isn’t needed,” he told the waiter. “I want roast knolla.”

  “Please accept the apology of the management,” said the waiter sorrowfully. “Today we have no knolla.”

  “None?” asked Cal in surprise. “That’s strange. Every restaurant has knolla.”

  “Not this one,” the waiter apologized. “An accident, sir. The alloy disk containing the recording of the roast knolla dinner slipped from the chefs hands less than an hour ago and fell to the floor. It was thought to be undamaged, close inspection showed it all right. But it was tried, and the knolla came out with the most peculiar flavor. The master files haven’t replaced it yet. It will be four hours before they get to our request for transmission of the disk. The engineer there laughed and said something about molecule displacement when I mentioned the peculiar flavor. It was most peculiar. Not distressing, mind, but most alien. We’re keeping the damaged disk. It may be a real ‘unique’.”

  “Good eating?”

  “I’ll reserve opinion on that until we find out how we like it ourselves,” smiled the waiter. “I’d recommend something else, sir.” Cal ordered for both Tinker and himself. Then he leaned forward on his elbows and gave Tinker the high-lights of his life for the past few weeks. He finished with the statement: “It’s worthless, but somehow I can’t see letting Benj get it.”

  “Worthless? Murdoch’s Hoard?”

  “Shall I go into that again? Look, Tinker. Murdoch’s era was prior to the discovery of the matter duplicator, which followed the Channing-Franks matter transmitter by only a few weeks. Now, anything that Murdoch could cache away would be in currenc
y of that time. The Period of Duplication hadn’t come yet, and the eventual invention or discovery of identium as a medium of exchange had not arrived. So what good is Murdoch’s Hoard? It must be of some value. But what? I could discount everything as ignorance or hatred except Dr. Lange’s quick desire for it. Lange is no fool, Tint. He knew what he was getting. Darn it all, I feel like going out and running the Hoard down myself!”

  Tinker’s laugh was genuine and spontaneous.

  Cal bridled. “Funny? Then tell me why.”

  “You, who hate roistering, adventure, space, and hell-raising. Going after Murdoch’s Hoard! That, I want to see.”

  “So that you can laugh at my rumbling attempts?”

  Tinker sobered. “I’ve been unkind, Cal. But you aren’t equipped to make a search like that.”

  “No?”

  “You, with your quiet disposition and easygoing ways. Yes, Cal, I can be honest with you. Forgive me, but the idea of watching you conduct a wild expedition like that intrigues me.” Tinker became serious for a moment. “Besides, I’d like to be there when you open Murdoch’s Hoard.”

  “Hm-m-m. Well, it’s just an idea.”

  “You’ll get right back into your rut, Cal. You don’t really intend to do anything about it, do you?”

  “Well—”

  “Cal—would you give me the Key?”

  “What!”

  “I mean it.”

  “Tinker! What is Murdoch’s Hoard?”

  “Not unless you give me the Key,” Tinker teased.

  “Not a Chinaman’s chance,” said Cal with finality.

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “I’m going after it myself!”

  Tinker looked into Cal’s face and saw determination there. “I want to go along,” she said. “Please?”

  Cal shook his head. “Nope. I’m not going to have anyone laughing at me. Tell me what it is.”

  “Take me along.”

  Cal thought that one over. The idea of having Tinker Elliott along appealed to him. He’d wanted her for years, and this plea of hers was an admission of surrender. But Cal felt that conditional surrender was not good enough. He didn’t like the idea of Tinker’s willingness to be bought for a treasure unknown. What was really in the depths of her mind he could not guess—unless she were trying to goad him into making the expedition.

  “No,” he said.

  “Then you’ll never go,” she taunted him.

  “I’ll go,” he snapped. “And I’ll prove that I can take care of myself. I hate space-roving, but I’m big enough to do it despite my distaste. Now, will you tell me what Murdoch’s Hoard is that it is so valuable?”

  “Not unless you take me along.”

  Pride is always cropping up in the wrong place. If Cal or Tinker had not taken such a firm stand in the first place, it would have been easier for either one of them to back down. The argument had started in fun, and was now in deadly earnest. How and where the change came Cal did not know. He reviewed the whole thing again. The first pair were ignorant. Benj was vindictive enough to deprive his brother of a useless thing that interested Cal. Dr. Lange was enigmatic. He had neither personal view nor ignorance to draw his desire for Murdoch’s worthless Hoard. Tinker Elliott might be goading Cal into making an adventuresome trip for the purpose of bringing him closer to her way of living. He wouldn’t put h past her.

  But the more he thought about it, the deeper and deeper he was falling into his own bullheadedness. He was going to get Murdoch’s Hoard himself, if it turned out to be a bale of one-hundred-dollar bills of the twenty-first century—worth exactly three cents per hundredweight for scrap paper.

  -

  Tinker Elliott returned to the Association after the dinner with Cal. She worked diligently for an hour, and loafed luxuriously for another hour. It was just after this that Cal came into her laboratory and grinned sheepishly at her.

  “Now what?” she asked. “Changed your mind?”

  “Uh-huh,” he said.

  “Still squeamish about space?”

  He nodded.

  “Poor Cal,” she said, coming over to him. She curled up on his lap and put her head on his shoulder. “What are we going to do about it?”

  “I’m going to give you the Key,” he said.

  She straightened up. “You don’t mind if we use it—Tony and I?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I’m going to punish you,” she said. “I’m not going to tell what Murdoch’s Hoard is until we bring it back.”

  Cal looked surprised. “All right,” he said. “It’s worthless, anyway. I‘ll wait.”

  “You don’t want to go along?”

  “If I wanted to go at all, I’d go myself,” said Cal.

  “O.K. Then wonder about Murdoch’s Hoard until we get back. That’ll be your punishment.”

  “Punishment? For what?”

  “For not having the kind of personality that would go out and get it.”

  “All right. Do you want the Key?”

  “Sure. Where is it?”

  “At home.”

  “Thought you weren’t living at home,” said Tinker.

  “I haven’t been. The Key is there, though. You see, Tink, it takes the technique to make it work rather than the equipment. I’ll give you both the equipment and the technique as soon as we get there. I’ll demonstrate and write out the procedure. Now?”

  “The sooner the better.” Tinker graced her hair with a wisp of a hat and said: “I’m ready.”

  Putting her hand in his arm, she followed him to the street and they drove to his cottage. He led her inside, seated her, and offered her a cigarette.

  “Now, Tinker,” he said seriously, “where is it?”

  “Where is what?”

  “The Key.”

  “You have it, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “You know better than that.”

  “You had it.”

  “No, you’re wrong. Cal had it.”

  “I’m wrong—Who had it?” Tinker exploded as the words took.

  “Cal,” he smiled.

  “You’re Benj.”

  “Brilliant deduction, Tinker. Now do you get the pitch?”

  “No. You’re trying to get Murdoch’s Hoard, too.”

  “I haven’t your persuasive charm, Tink. The illustrious cryptologist known as my twin brother wouldn’t go into space for anything. You want the Key, ergo, unless I miss my guess, you’ve been talking and using those charms on him. Don’t tell me that he didn’t give it to you.”

  “You stinking dupe.”

  Benj grew white around the mouth. “Your femininity won’t keep you alive too long,” he gritted.

  “I won’t steal anyone’s identity,” she retorted.

  “I’ll wreck yours,” he rasped. “I’ll duplicate you!”

  “Then I’ll be no better than you are,” she spat. “Go ahead. You’ll get a dead dupe—two or a million of ‘em. I can kill myself in the machine—I know how. I’d do it.”

  “That wouldn’t do me any good,” Benj snapped. “Otherwise I’d do it now. I may do it later.”

  “Keep it up—and I’ll see that one-half of this duplication is removed. Now, may I leave?”

  “No. If you don’t know where the Key is—or Cal—you may come in handy later. I think that I might be able to force the Key away from him. He’d die before he permitted me to work on you.”

  “You rotten personality stealer. You deserve to lose your identity.”

  “I’ve still got Cal’s.”

  “Make a million of you,” she taunted, “and they’ll still be rotten.”

  “Well, be that as it may. You and I are going to go to Venus. Murdoch’s Hoard is still hidden in the Vilanortis Country. We have detectors. We’ll just go and sit on the edge of the fog country and wait until we hear Cal’s signal.”

  “How do you know he’s going?”

  “Assuming that Tinker Elliott could get more out of him than a
ny other person, it means that he said, ‘No,’ and is now preparing to make the jaunt himself. That’ll be a laugh. The home-and-fireside-loving Cal Blair taking a wad ride through the fog country of Vilanortis. I’d like to be in his crate, just to watch.”

  “Cal is no imbecile,” said Tink stoutly. “He’ll get along.”

  “Sure, he’ll get along. But he won’t have fun!”

  Tinker considered the future. It was not too bright. The thing to do, of course, would be to go along more or less willingly and look for an escape as soon as Benj’s suspicions were lulled by her inaction.

  -

  Cal boarded the Lady Unique at Mojave Spaceport not knowing of Tinker’s capture at the hands of Benj. Benj was careful not to let Cal know of this development, since it would have stopped Cal short and would have possibly gotten him into a merry-go-round of officialdom and perhaps fighting, in which the Key would most certainly be publicized and lost to all. Courts were still inclined to view the certified ownership rather than the possessor of an object like the Key in spite of the nine points often quoted. This was a case of the unquoted tenth point of the law. Finders of buried treasure were still keepers, but the use of a stolen museum piece to find it might be questioned. So Cal took off in a commercial liner from Mojave at the same time that Tinker was hustled aboard Benj’s sleek black personal craft at Chicago.

  Cal, during the trip, underwent only a bit of his previous distaste. His feelings were too mixed up to permit anything as simple as mal-de-void to bother him. He was part curiosity, part hatred, part eagerness, and part amazement. He found that he’d had no time to worry about space by the time the Lady Unique put down at Northern Landing, Venus.

  With his rebuilt equipment in a neater arrangement, and the Key inserted, all packed into a small case, Cal went to the largest dealer in driver-wing fliers and purchased the fastest one he could buy. He then went to the most famous of all the tinker shops in Northern Landing and spoke with the head mechanic.

  “Can you soup this up?” he asked.

  “About fifty percent,” said the mechanic.

  “How long will it take?”

  “Couple of hours. We’ve got to beef up the driver cathodes and install a couple of heavier power supplies, as well as tinker with the controls. This thing will be hotter than a welding iron when we get through. Can you handle her?”