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Read Ebook: Baker's Dozens by Harmon Jim
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Ebook has 143 lines and 8610 words, and 3 pages
Baker's Dozens
"Mr. Street, you are the foremost xenologist on Earth," the director of Extraterrestrial Investigations said to the tall man.
"I know," Street said.
"What do you know about the infamous criminal, Baker, the so-called 'Robin Hood' who is actually a scarlet fiend?"
"Everything."
"Surely not how he died."
"Everything but that."
The director put his briefcase on his knees. "Mr. Street, my agency received numerous accounts of his death, or deaths, on various worlds. Can you tell me which, if any, of these stories is true by studying our intelligence reports?"
"Easily," Street said.
"I understand perfectly," Street assured him.
"Are there really space pirates?" Mrs. Fuljohn inquired of him, giggling furiously.
"Yes, Virginia, there really are space pirates," Baker assured her.
Mrs. Fuljohn lowered very long lashes over formidable eyes. "My first name is Christine. Will they come at us out of the void with all guns blasting?"
"I doubt it. They would want to rob the liner, not disintegrate it."
Baker excused himself and strolled toward the afterdeck of "A" class.
Double-dealing Earthmen with their devious schemes were daily robbing literal-minded extraterrestrials like the Ignatz swinoids blind. Sometimes it made him ashamed to be an Earthman. Let some call him a renegade! He was going to help these sentient beings.
Baker glanced at the dial of his watch--it showed no tell-tale color of listening devices within his area. Confident, he stepped over the chain separating him from the stairs to "B" Deck.
Wurmong was waiting for him as planned.
"I'll predispose the guards. Come right into Hold 7. Understand?"
The man on watch collapsed soundlessly at a beam of nerve pressure on the neck, and Baker slipped inside, immediately beginning to eject the first-grade readers through the escape hatch by the gross.
The mercenary, Wurmong, and his army of family arrived with experienced stealth and began dumping the new books from their privileged luggage.
His work done, Baker sadly regarded the precious jewels and the negotiable bonds from the registered mail. There was no way around it. This had to look like a robbery. It was necessary that he take them. Quickly, he stuffed everything into his synthetic appendix....
The heavy-jowled biped who greeted him at the smoky tavern was joyous. "You have done the next best thing for us to enabling us to tell your busybody missionaries to go home. We look upon you as one of our own and are hungry for the sight of you. May you remain with us long."
"Too much work," Baker said, gagging over the native beer. "But I must ask you a favor. You implied you'd give me your right arm."
"Anything we have is yours. But would not a cadaver's limb suit you as well as mine?"
"I must escape from this world. You can give a private citizen like me something only a sovereign government can. I want the jump drive."
"Not that!"
"Yes! I've earned it, haven't I?"
The swinoid nodded wearily. "You have. The device will be put in your spacer. Use it only in deep space."
He was now in orbit. That was far enough out. Earth patrols could still pick him up easily. The ETI spy pickup observed him as he reached out and put a finger to the button of the device given him by the Swinoids, as Earth ships closed rapidly. He pressed the button.
"Naturally, we lost contact after the ship went up in flames. If that man was the true Baker, he was undoubtedly destroyed. Of course, we have a report from our spies on Klondike II of events running just about concurrently."
"If you'll allow one interruption," Street interjected. "As a competent xenological ethnologist, I can assure you that Baker was, at least, not completely destroyed by the fire. His somewhat roasted remains would have been appropriated by the swinoids."
"How so?"
"These people are as similar to pigs as we are to apes. When one of their own wishes to die, as they thought Baker did, in their typical alien literal-mindedness, they dispose of his body in a special way. Remember how they said they thought of Baker as one of their own and were hungry even for the sight of him?"
Baker had been walking for two weeks across the primitive surface of the mining planet, Klondike II, to reach the shack in the gray shadow of the granite mountain. It wasn't gold he was after but escape. Unlike others seeking it, he had headed away from the saloons. But the peepbug's lens of air had followed him.
The door was cracked by a kind-looking old man. "You got five seconds to get, before thirty thousand volts of electricity go through those floorboards you're standing on," the old man said kindly.
"Professor Gentle," Baker said hastily, "I have many friends. One of them has told me you have established a major breakthrough in electronics, that you have in fact invented a machine to transmit matter as radio and television transmit sound and sight."
"Some loose-lipped electronics jobber found that out, did he? Step right in."
"Of course you can, my boy. But first perhaps you'd like to take a look at some of the things I have teleported so far."
"Like making the original adjustments on a video set," the old man explained. "Hard to get your focus, your horizontal and vertical interlineation just right. There's some distortion sometimes. Sort of--messy."
"On soul-searching consideration--" Baker began.
"Don't take another step toward that door. I've got the floor checkerboarded with electric grids where I can turn on the juice wherever you set your foot. Control's in my upper plate. Step in that coffin, boy. Just my little pet name for it; don't worry."
With some degree of reluctance, Baker stepped into the left of twin vertical boxes. The lid closed in his face and locked.
Before he could have time to begin worrying about his air supply, the cover sprang open, and he stepped out. "Test over?" There was an echo.
A man stood in front of the second coffin. Baker had entered the one on the left and he was still in front of the left box.
But he was also now in front of the cabinet on the right. He had been completely duplicated.
"That damned feedback again," Gentle grumbled.
In the first shock of this duplication and therefore seeming negation of his individual ego, Baker almost went mad.
"You did this to me!" said Baker and Baker to Gentle, each drawing a concealed weapon and shooting the old man in the heart.
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