Copernick's Rebellion

Chapter Seven MARCH 20, 2003

“I’m glad that you volunteered for this mission, Jack. If you hadn’t, I’d have to order you to go,” General Hastings said.

“I had that feeling, General.”

“It’s just that you’re the best field agent I have.”

“The best that you have left, you mean.”

“Breckenridge and Thompson were good men. But you will have some advantages that they didn’t. For one thing, you will have completely discretionary powers. Do you understand?” Hastings asked.

“Sure. I’m not allowed to kill anybody unless I want to.”

“Crudely put, but accurate. Also, your mission is not simply to spy. You are to seek out Heinrich Coper-nick and/or Martin Guibedo. We believe that they are in Death Valley. You are to find out as much as possible about their bioengineering techniques, then eliminate them. Arrest them if possible. Kill them if necessary. And in no event will you allow yourself to be captured.”

“You mean ‘captured alive.’ Okay. What about my modus operandi?”

“That is completely at your own discretion. You may sign for any materials and money that you feel appropriate,” Hastings said.

“Lovely. I’ve always hoped for orders like this.”

“This is the most important mission of your life. It is also the most dangerous.”

“What about the reporting procedure?”

“There isn’t one. It is quite possible that we have been infiltrated. Once you walk out of that door, you’re on your own.”

“Suits. See you in a few weeks, General.”

Patricia Cambridge stretched luxuriously between satin sheets on the huge bed. Her whole body tingled with a new awareness of itself. She never would have believed that the world could be so enchanting, that sex could be so totally satisfying.

“If you’re finally awake, Patty, come on in. The water’s fine!” Martin Guibedo called from the pool at the far end of the bedroom. Liebchen was sudsing down his pudgy body.

“Oh, Dr. Guibedo! Will Liebchen wash me, too? She’s got to be the prettiest thing your nephew ever made!”

“She is and she will, and please call me Martin.”

“After last night, I should call you lover!” Patricia splashed into the pool and swam over to them.

“Hooh! Nobody ever call me that before. I like it!”

They collided with exuberance and laughter near the center of the pool.

After having washed and dried and dressed her masters, Liebchen pranced through the branch to the kitchen. The water running off the blond fur on her legs left hoofprints on the carpet. “Two masters to serve, Dirk!” She giggled to the Labor and Defense Unit in the living room. “Isn’t it wonderful!”

Dirk raised his eye tentacles from the book of Oriental philosophy he was reading. “It is pleasant to see our Lord Guibedo happy. We owe him so much.”

After the usual excellent breakfast, Guibedo said, “Patty, it’s good to have you here for a bunch of reasons. For one thing, we got a fourth for pinochle.”

The CCU I/O unit on the kitchen wall said, “My Lord Guibedo, Lord Copernick requests your presence at his tree house.”

“Telephone, tell him I’m going to take a couple days off this morning. I see him maybe Tuesday.”

“He said it was important, my lord. My Central Coordination Unit has compiled some critical information.”

“So what’s the information? You’re the same animal, aren’t you?”

“I am, my lord, but I didn’t tell me what it was.”

“Some coordination you got there. Tuesday!” Guibedo turned away from the telephone. “Hey, Dirk! Bring some cards. With you here, Patty, we can play two teams, you and Liebchen against me and Dirk, so they gotta play fair. With playing three-hand cutthroat, they let me all the time win.”

“Never, my lord,” Dirk said, a pinochle deck in his hand. His lateral tentacles were holding a book in front of his starboard eyes.

“Ach! You know, Patty, Dirk never used to lie until he started into philosophy. Dirk, what are you reading now?”

“The Shih Ching, my lord,” Dirk said, shuffling and dealing, “a poetry anthology commonly said to have been edited by Confucious.”

“Twenty-one!” Patty said. “Martin, how can Dirk read and play cards at the same time?” She still didn’t feel comfortable around the LDU.

“He’s got six pairs of brains, Patty. Heiny made him so he could figure strategy, tactics, and where he was putting his foot all at the same time. So right now, one chunk of him is reading, another chunk is playing cards, some other chunk better be keeping score, and part of him is probably gabbing with his brothers. Twenty-two.”

“Gabbing?” Patty said. “How?”

“They’re telepathic with each other,” Guibedo said, “not with you and me. Your bid, Liebchen.”

“Oh, pass! Dirk, pull in your eyes. You’re cheating again.”

Dirk retracted his yard long eye tentacles, turned a page of the book, and said, “Twenty-four.”

“Twenty-five. Martin, if you have practical telepathy, what do you need with the telephone?”

“Thirty. Telepathy has only got one channel, Patty. We humans only use it for emergencies, and this isn’t one of them.”

“I’m afraid it is, Uncle Martin,” Dirk said in Heinrich Copernick’s voice. “Please get over here as soon as you can.”

“But I wanted to show Patty around town this morning, Heiny. And I got a run and five aces and Dirk just gave me meld bid!”

“So play the hand later. Say, how about if I ask Mona to show Patty around, Uncle Martin? It’ll give the girls a chance to get acquainted.”

“Ach! Heiny, it better be good,” Guibedo said. “You gonna like Mona. Patty, we get together later on. I’ll call you.”

“How? I mean, if I’m going to be out all day—”

“The telephone knows where you’re at.”

“My mother doesn’t know where I am. Can I make a few calls?”

“It’s your house, too, Patty. If you call outside the valley, they get a telegram. Come on, Dirk, we go the low way,” Guibedo said, leaving.

Liebchen started cleaning up the kitchen, putting the cards away in four neat stacks and only peeking a little bit.

“Liebchen,” Patty said, “how do I, uh?…”

“The telephone, my lady? I’ll show you. Telephone, tell my sisters, Colleen and Ohura, that I think I have the day off, so I’ll be over to their house in an hour. And, telephone, be sure and warn me when Lord Guibedo starts home, so I can be here when he arrives.”

“Sure thing, Liebchen,” the local ganglia said.

“Just like that, Liebchen? How do you know its listening?” Patty asked.

“Oh, he’s always listening, my lady. He just isn’t allowed to speak unless spoken to. It’s rather a pity, he’s really very nice.”

“I’m sure. Telephone, please tell my mother that I’m in Death, I mean Life Valley, and that I’m having a wonderful time and I’ve met the nicest boy that she’s just got to meet. Uh, her address is…”

“Four ninety-one Seminole Drive, Boca Raton, my lady,” the telephone said.

“How did you know that?”

“When you moved in, my lady, I had your personal file loaded into my local ganglia from my Central Coordination Unit.”

“But how did it know?”

“The phone directory, obviously, my lady.”

“Oh. And could you tell my boss at NBC that everything is fine and I need another week’s vacation?”

“Happy to, my lady. Have a nice day,” the telephone said.

“Mother! This is Patty,” the CCU said. “Why, Patty! It’s so nice to hear from you.”

“Mother, it’s beautiful here in Acapulco. I wish you could come.”

“Well, not this time, dear. You aren’t lonely, are you?”

“Oh, no. Some of the girls from NBC are with me. The water is just wonderful.”

“That’s good, dear. Have a nice time.”

“Boss. Cambridge here,” the CCU said.

“Patty! Where the hell you been? I’ve been trying to find you for days.”

“Sorry, boss. Finding a telephone in Death Valley is like trying to find a telephone in Death Valley. Hey, this place is a dead end. Nothing but skid-row bums and blacks who can’t get on welfare. But I’ve got a definite lead on Guibedo. He’s in Minnesota. Okay if I track it down? I’ll need a couple more weeks.”

“Well, Patty, if you think it’s solid, go ahead. Take what time and money you need. But be careful. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“Thanks, boss. I’ll keep in touch.”

Guibedo was riding cross-legged on Dirk’s back, as Dirk trotted at thirty miles an hour down the tunnel that connected Guibedo’s Oakwood to Copernick’s Pinecroft.

“No offense, my lord,” Dirk said, “but I’ll be glad when Lord Copernick’s Transportation, Recreation, and Construction units grow up. I really wasn’t made for this sort of thing.”

“Me, too. I wasn’t either. Them TRACs will help. Can’t even keep a pipe lit. How do you read in this wind, anyhow?”

“With some difficulty, my lord. It’s just that if we LDUs had had a proper philosophical base earlier, certain… errors wouldn’t have taken place.”

“Yah. I know it troubles you, Dirk. Those eighty-five families and that boy hiker and all the rest. Those things were bad, and it’s good you should study so they don’t happen again. But don’t let it get you on the insides. The universe is a big place and all of us are just little people. We do the best we can, but it is impossible for us to know what all of the results of our actions will be, and some of our actions will be wrong. So sometimes we cause needless damage, suffering, and death.

“But if we waited until we were sure of the results before we took action, we would never take action at all. And when something must be done, it is better to do something wrong than to do nothing at all. Anyway, we’ve been able to fix up some of our mistakes.”

“I wish I could do something for the families we killed, my lord.”

“Look. We are out to change the world, Dirk. We have the power to do it. But whenever there is great power, there is also the possibility of great error. When we are done, the world will be a better place. In the meantime, we can only try to cause as little suffering as possible.”

Dirk trotted into Pinecroft’s subbasement. Heinrich Copernick was waiting for them.

“So what was so important, Heiny?” Guibedo asked as he got a leg down.

“War, Uncle Martin. War against us within six months.”

“The Russians is getting uppity? I thought everything was going smooth there.”

“No problem in Russia. After the first year, when we were a capitalistic trick, Ivan noticed that he never had solved his housing problem. Now we’re the natural culmination of Marxism Leninism. Aliev is also claiming that you studied under Lysenko.”

“Hooh! That’s a good one! So, China?”

“No. China and all the eastern nations, except United India, are raising tree houses as fast as they can. We’re banned in India, of course.”

“I always figured they’d be on our side, for religious reasons. With a tree house, you don’t have to kill anything to live.”

“They would have been, if the Neo-Krishnas hadn’t found the birth control chemicals you were putting in the food. They figure they’ll need the excess population for their next holy war.”

“Heiny, it takes a half an acre of land for a tree house to support a family. India was so close to the edge, I had to do something.”

“Oh, I agree with you. But we’re still banned in India.”

“So who we gotta fight?” Guibedo asked, exasperated.

“The United States, and most of Western Europe.”

“Ach! So by ‘us’ you mean you and me! So why does our own country want to fight us?”

“We are upsetting too many apple carts, Uncle Martin. While only four percent of the U.S. population is living in tree houses, housing starts have been virtually zero for the past year. Property values have dropped over fifty percent in some areas. The average home owner owes sixty thousand dollars on his home. Right now he can only sell it for forty thousand. You can’t blame him for being upset.”

“So let him move into a tree house,” Guibedo said. “He won’t owe anybody anything on it.”

“People have been doing just that, Uncle Martin. But to get out from under their old debts, they have to declare bankruptcy. There were over two million bankruptcies in the last year, and there will be ten times that number in the next. The banking industry will collapse under the strain.”

“So what you need with money in the bank for, anyway, when you got a tree house?” Guibedo said. “It takes care of you.”

“What we are doing is great for the individual, Uncle Martin, but it’s death to the system. And the system is about to start fighting back.”

“System! You mean the big shots!”

“Call it anything you want,” Heinrich said. “But they’ll fight us until the last conscript soldier fires the last taxpayer’s bullet.”

“There’s got to be some way out of it, Heiny. It takes two sides to have a war.”

“But only one to have a massacre. There is a way out of fighting, but the cure is worse than the disease.”

“So what is it, Heiny?”

“Kill the trees. I’m sure we could come up with some kind of a blight.”

“Kill my trees! What about the people living in them?” Guibedo said.

“They’d mostly die. And that’s not the worst of it. The CCU has done a fifty-year analysis on present and potential world trends; he’s been on it for nearly a year. CCU! Give Uncle Martin the analysis you gave me.”

“Yes, my lord. The following analysis is based on the premise that bioengineering was never developed. It is also valid in the event that we take no aggressive action in the near future—as, if we don’t, no engineered life forms will exist three years from now.

“In the absence of any active role on our part, the probability of total nuclear war in the next fifty years is point seven two, due primarily to proliferation of atomic weapons among the smaller nations. Due to increased mobility between population centers, increased population in the underdeveloped nations, and a general lowering of living standards, the probability of devastating plague by 2050 is point eight eight. Extrapolating present demographic trends, by 2050 the population of the underdeveloped nations will outnumber that of the developed nations twenty-seven to one. The probability of the increased population’s resulting in famine and causing a conventional war which will mutate to an unsurvivable thermonuclear war is point nine three. Famine could be delayed by increased industrialization, but the resultant pollutants would render the world uninhabitable by 2090. The net probability of civilization surviving on Earth is point zero two at 2050, approaching point zero zero by 2100.”

There were no formal laws or rules in Life Valley, so there was no formal prohibition of mechanical transportation. However, the general layout of houses, parks, fields, and shops was such that anything larger than a bicycle would have a hard time getting through, and, in fact, most people walked.

Very few people considered it a hardship. Since the necessities were produced in each home, the only commerce was in luxury items, and such things are easily carried.

“It’s incredibly beautiful here,” Patricia said. What was once a horrid jungle to her now seemed a fairyland, yet she did not notice her own change in attitude. “It’s as though every path was asking me to walk down it.”

“Heinrich and Uncle Martin spent a lot of time on the design,” Mona said. “Notice that no matter what time of day it is, the trees and shrubs are arranged so that on any path you can walk in either the sun or the shade.”

“And the way everything curves, Mona. With every step, the view changes, something else shows up.”

“That was part of the plan, too.”

Clothing styles in the valley were varied and occasionally bizarre. A fair number of people followed Guibedo’s lead, wearing ethnic costumes, while others ranged from blue jeans to complete nudity. Mona wore a sarong around her hips and a smile.

Patty, still in businesslike microshorts and transparent top, felt a little out of place, and said so.

“No problem for now, Patty. Just take off your top if you’re hot. But you should have something formal for tonight. Perhaps a chiton, since they’re doing Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex at the bandshell tonight and Heinrich promised to take me. You can work on Uncle Martin at dinner.

“Anyway, next stop’s at Nancy Spencer’s. She’s the best seamstress in the valley.”

“Ach!” Guibedo’s face was white. “We knew it was going to be bad. That’s why we started the biological revolution. But I never thought it would be this bad. Heiny, have you double-checked all this? Is it really true?”

“I funded a research group with the Rand people six months ago. I got their report this morning. Their figures are substantially the same as the CCU’s.”

“Then we got no choice. We got to fight. You have a strategy worked out for it yet?”

“The CCU and I have been working on it for weeks. While the LDUs can hold their own against conventional troops, they are only marginally effective against armor. They are totally ineffective against air power. When I designed them, I was thinking in terms of a police force and a medical corps. I didn’t realize then that we would be facing a real war. No bird I could possibly come up with could stand a chance against aircraft, let alone orbital beam weapons.

“Our only possible strategy is dispersion, using basic guerrilla tactics over a wide area. Logistics must be handled locally, since we must presume that all of our strong points, including Life Valley, will be obliterated.

“What we need, Uncle Martin, is a tree that doesn’t require someone living in it. That merely provides food for people and the LDUs. Something that is more vigorous than natural plants, so it will supplant them. Something that reproduces with spores rather than seeds, so our opponents can’t stop their proliferation.”

“Sure, Heiny, I could do that. But maybe I better give the species a finite lifespan, so we get rid of them after the war.”

“Good idea, Uncle Martin. But this war could last fifteen years.”

“So long?”

“Guerrilla wars are like that.”

“But why does it have to be a guerrilla war, Heiny? They’ve got to be the worst kind. How about the socialist and communist countries? They’re growing my trees. Why can’t we just move there? If we go to China and they attack us, they’re attacking China, so we have an ally!”

“The Eastern Bloc is growing trees because it solves some of their short-term problems. They haven’t yet realized that when the means of production and distribution are in each man’s own home, he doesn’t need a central government any more. Eventually the commissars are going to realize that they are being put out of work. People who run governments like running governments. We don’t have any allies, Uncle Martin.”

“Yah. The big-shot problem. But still, there’s got to be a better way. So what are our chances of winning this war, anyhow?”

“Quite good, my lord,” the CCU said. “I estimate a point two two probability of success.”

“That’s good?”

“It is, my lord, compared to the probability that civilization will cease to exist within the next century if we do not fight this war.”

“You figured out how many people are going to die in this thing?”

The CCU said, “Best estimates are around two hundred million—two percent of the world’s population, my lord—assuming that we make preserving human life a major strategic objective.”

“So many! You say that so easy, sitting here,” Guibedo said.

“My lord, I am sentient. I do not want to die. But I am immobile, in the center of our opponent’s major target area. In none of the scenarios that we have examined do I have any chance of survival. The probability that I will be dead within two years is one.”

“Sorry, fella,” Guibedo said. “Don’t tell me what my own chances are.”

“My lord, throughout history, every major social, political, or religious upheaval has caused the death of from three to five percent of the population involved. The industrial revolution cost four point two percent of England’s population through starvation and disease. The Russian Revolution cost three point seven percent; the French Revolution, three point six percent; the American Revolution, one point one percent plus an equivalent two point three percent foreign troops. Even the ‘peace—fill’ division of India and Pakistan starved out or killed three point five percent of the population.

“The two percent estimate I gave you for the upcoming revolution was based on the assumption of the loss of one billion LDUs and similar beings. This time, perhaps we can do some of the dying for you.”

Heinrich Copernick and Martin Guibedo were silent for a long while.

Patricia and Mona walked through a series of meadows that dotted the sides of a clear brook, passing over a dozen small bridges. As they did so, the path wound and twisted past and over trout ponds, grottoes, and fountains; it was the antithesis of a superhighway, designed not to be efficient but to make each step of a journey pleasant and interesting.

The path eventually opened onto a long curving meadow. On both sides were tree houses fronted with shops. The owners evidently lived behind their shops, for the stores were small and the houses were large.

“We call this Craftsman Way,” Mona explained. “It wasn’t really planned this way, but most people have tended to move near others with similar interests.”

“Hey, Mona! You need anything today?” Jimmy shouted from the open-air metal shop in front of his tree-house. He was wearing a leopard-skin loincloth.

“I don’t, but Patty probably does!”

“I do?”

“Sure. Uncle Martin’s tableware is a disgrace, and Jimmy is the best silversmith in the valley.” Mona herded Patty over to the display case.

Patty walked from display to display closely examining the collection of jewelry, silverware, and serving pieces. Everything was individually crafted, with a rare combination of art and utility. “I haven’t seen anything this good since I left Pratt!”

“Your friend’s taste is impeccable, Mona.” Jimmy winked and bowed grandly to Patty. “James Sauton, Silversmith, at your service.”

“This is Patty Cambridge, Jimmy,” Mona said. “She’s looking for some things to go in Oakwood.”

“Oakwood? The professor’s house?” Jimmy said. “Hey, Patty, you don’t want none of this junk. Let me make you something special. You known the professor long?”

“About four years,” Patty said, holding a spoon in her hand. “These are lovely, and I think we’ve only service for four.”

“I’ll make you a service for twenty,” Jimmy said, “but not these. Can you come by day after tomorrow? I’ll have some samples to show you. I’ve wanted to do something for the professor for a long time.”

“How long have you known Martin?” Patty reluctantly let go of the spoon as Jimmy took it from her hand.

“A couple of years, but he did me a real good turn once, so when I heard he was in Death Valley, I gave my tree house to a couple of kids and hopped a freight out here.”

“You heard he was here?” Patty was surprised, remembering the difficulty she had finding Guibedo. “How?”

“The grapevine. Come back day after tomorrow, I’ll have something to knock your eyes out.” Jimmy turned and left.

As they strolled on, Patty said, “My goodness! I shouldn’t have done that. I mean, I don’t have any money with me.”

“Most people don’t carry money around here, Patty. You just tell the telephone about your purchases, and it keeps track of that sort of thing.”

“I mean I don’t have much at home, either.”

“Jimmy’s pretty reasonable, ordinarily. But in this case, I don’t think you could get him to accept money. He idolizes Uncle Martin so much, it gets embarrassing. I think Uncle Martin avoids him. But don’t worry about money. The telephone will just bill Uncle Martin, and Heinrich always covers his account, so the old dear won’t even know about it.”

“But I can’t do that!” Patty said.

“Do it. Didn’t you know that they own a gold mine?”

“My lords! Intruder alert in Sector Fifty-five!” the CCU said.

“Dirk! Tell your brothers to nail him! Unharmed!” Heinrich said. “How did he get past the Gamma Screens?”

“The surrounding sector guards are converging, my lord,” Dirk said. “Gamma LDU 1096 reports that the intruder was under heavy narcohypnosis. His primary programming is only now surfacing.”

“Well, get several Gammas on him. I want a complete probe,” Heinrich said. “Go transponder mode.”

“Yes, my lord.” Dirk’s voice became a monotone, relaying transmissions from the LDUs in the area.

“Sector Fourty-four. Wirka here. Converging.”

“Sector Fifty-four. Pacho here. Converging.”

“Sector Sixty-four. Kinzhal here. Converging.”

“Sector Fifty-five. Vintovka here. Converging. I can see the intruder with my bird. He is armed.”

Vintovka was a Beta series LDU in empathic contact with an observation eagle. This empathic contact was quite distinct from telepathy. It amounted to a wide-band communication circuit, but it was limited to only two nodes. That eagle and the LDU had hatched from the same egg; they were really two parts of the same being.

“ETA for nine LDU’s is eighty-five seconds,” Dirk said. “Gamma Units report that intruder is KGB. Weapons include AK-84 Assault rifle and fragmentation grenades. Intruder’s IQ is 126, Need Affiliation four percent, Need Achievement seventy-eight percent, Need Power ninety-nine percent. High sex drive converted to sadism.”

“Uck! He’s worse than the Air Force Intelligence type we stopped last week,” Copernick muttered. “Dirk! My earlier command to capture the intruder unharmed is rescinded—he’s a butcher. Stop him!”

“Acknowledged, my lord. Thank you,” Dirk said. “Perhaps ‘hunter’ would be a better term. He is after Lord Guibedo.”

Dirk returned to his monotone. “Vintovka here. Intruder is in sports arena. Children’s gymnastic class now in progress. I will attempt to lure intruder to the band shell, now vacant. Other units converge there.”

Vintovka charged, his easily camouflaged skin glowing international orange. He threw rocks at the intruder, and when one of them caught the man’s head, he opened fire. Vintovka retreated, throwing rocks, maneuvering to keep behind him an area clear of bystanders. Lead tore up the sod at his feet and chips of bark and wood flew behind him, but Vintovka kept himself in full view and retreated toward the band shell.

The children stopped and stared.

Mona and Patricia entered a wide rolling park that was bounded by a library, a band shell, two theaters, a dance hall, and a few bars and restaurants.

“There’s a sports area on the other side of the band shell,” Mona said. “Gymnastics, football fields, that sort of thing. Past that a lake’s going in, but it isn’t done yet.”

“And only two years ago, this was all a desert,” Patricia said.

“The worst hellhole in the world. But everything was here: the sunlight, the soil, the water.”

“The water?” Patricia asked.

“What do you think the white stuff on those mountains is? All Death Valley needed was a little reorganization, which Uncle Martin and Heinrich provided. In twenty years the whole world will be a park like this, only varied and different. When we get to Pinecroft, remind me to show you the plans they have for a town in the mountains east of here. Fantastic!”

“It’s all so perfect.” Patricia noticed that the grass they were walking on was like a putting green.

“It’s getting there. Nightlife is still sort of restricted. There’s no shortage of musicians, but the bars and restaurants are mostly serve yourself and clean up the mess,” Mona said, leading Patricia to an open-air cafe.

“There are two exceptions. One is the Red Gate Inn, which is run by a sort of social group. It’s kind of a fun place, most parts of it anyway,” Mona said.

“What’s wrong with the rest of it?”

“Nothing, really. It’s a matter of taste—the inn is divided up into about twenty different rooms, each with a different motif and each with its own form of entertainment. There’s always at least ten things going on. Like there’s one room for Irish folk songs—interspersed with bagpipes. And there’s a Whopper Room where telling the truth is considered bad form.”

“It sounds like fun,” Patricia said.

“On the other hand, Basin Street is men only. The only women there are waitresses and dancers. They don’t wear clothes. The Guardians of the Red Gate had the nerve to ask me to dance there,” Mona said.

“Did you?” Patricia giggled.

“Only once. Heinrich hit the roof.” Mona laughed. “The other exception is Mama Guilespe’s, over here.”

As they sat at a square table with a red-and-white checked tablecloth, Patricia suddenly realized how few straight lines she had seen all day.

Mama Guilespe bustled over wearing a peasant costume of Ciociaria, near Naples, a red-and-blue floor—length checked skirt, an embroidered purple apron, purple “leg of lamb” sleeves on a white blouse, a red-and-gold scarf, and heavy gold earrings. All of this was wrapped, despite the heat, around 250 pounds of fast—moving woman.

“Eh! Mona! I don’t see you for a week. Such a pretty friend you got!” Mama set down huge cups of coffee in front of them.

“Mama Guilespe, this is Patty Cambridge.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Guilespe.”

“So skinny! They don’t feed you enough?” She was already piling a vast mound of pastry in front of the women. “You got to be new here, and I was talking to such a nice boy only this morning—”

“She’s taken,” Mona got in edgewise.

“Such a pity…” Mama Guilespe was already on her way to the next group of customers.

“Whew!” Patricia said.

“You’ve got to love her,” Mona said. “I know it’s silly, but Mama Guilespe loves to cook. So she has her tree house make flour, sugar, and eggs, bakes these herself, and serves them out here.”

“They are good,” Patty said, munching a Danish, “and the place seems popular enough.”

“I think it really functions as a meeting place, Patty. Mama Guilespe is quite a matchmaker. Drop by here alone sometime if you ever get tired of Uncle Martin.”

“Impossible.”

“I feel the same way about Heinrich,” Mona said.

“You know, I haven’t seen him in five years,” Patty said.

“Well, have dinner with us tonight. But about Heinrich, well, expect some changes. He’s used his bioengineering on himself. He’s seven feet tall now, and gorgeous.”

“Just like Martin, huh?”

“Well, Heinrich has done a few changes to Uncle Martin. Those two are working on something secret. Probably a new auditorium, which we certainly need.”

“Dinner sounds great,” Patty said. “I’d love to come.”

“You’ll have to, unless you want to eat alone. Even Liebchen and Dirk are at Pinecroft,” Mona said.

“You know, we haven’t seen any of Heinrich’s things all day,” Patty said.

“You won’t, either. The TRACs are still kittens, and there are only twenty fauns right now, although they’re all due to have twins of their own in about a week. Fauns can’t take the heat out here anyway. The LDUs tend to stay out of sight. Most people don’t know that they exist until they need a doctor.”

“Doctors?” Patty said. “Is that what they are?”

“They’re just about anything that needs an organized group. Police, fire department, dog catchers, medical corps, construction gang. You name it, they do it. I know they’re hideous to look at, but they’re really fine people. You’ll get used to them.”

A series of sharp explosions sounded.

“What’s that?” asked Patty.

“Probably fire crackers from some damn chemistry class. I hope they don’t wake my babies,” Mona said.

“You have children?”

“Twins. Girls. Michelle and Carolyn.”

“I’d love to see them. But how do you get a babysitter when most things around here are free?”

“Heinrich made me raise the babysitters before he’d let me have the babies. We keep two fauns.”

“Fauns take care of children?”

“It’s what they were made for. You don’t really need a servant in a tree house, everything pretty much takes care of itself. But raising a child properly is a full-time occupation, and two gets impossible. Fauns are teachers, really—walking, talking, reading, writing, arithmetic. It’s really one of Heinrich’s plots. Fauns imprint language early, then have almost no language ability after that. It’ll be thirty years before every family in the world has a faun, but when that happens, every child will get a solid basic education and will speak English as a first language!. So poof! There goes the language barrier.”

“Every child?”

“So how many mothers are going to turn down a free, full-time babysitter?”

Vintovka was hit, and hit again. The pain was intense, but he didn’t think about the pain. Arteries constricted to cut blood loss, redundant systems came on line. Vintovka’s right hand was shot through, and hung by a shred. He continued to throw rocks with his left as he backed down the center aisle of the band shell. He took a sustained burst from the assault rifle and collapsed.

“Vintovka here. Mission complete. I have incurred extensive damage. Five hearts and four brains gone. I am now inoperative. I am sending in my bird for diversion.”

Tears streaked Heinrich’s face, but his expression didn’t change.

The eagle folded its wings and dropped like a Kama-kazi. Talons out and screaming defiance, its body jerked as slugs tore through. Feeling all of his bird’s pain, Vintovka’s prostrate body convulsed.

Langel and Pacho ran from opposite sides of the aisles as the intruder was firing upward. Knife-claws extended a foot beyond their knuckles, they hacked at the intruder’s arms, severing them cleanly above the elbows.

Immediately, Jawati and Dabba rushed in and applied tourniquets. They loaded the shocked body onto Jawati’s flat back, the lateral tentacles holding him immobile. Spear retrieved the arms and the weapons. Wirka and Kinzhal picked up Vintovka; Top picked up the dying eagle.

“Jawati here. We are returning to Pinecroft with inoperative LDU, bird, and intruder. All wounded but alive. Have three med teams ready.”

The other three LDUs quickly policed the area, picking up spent cartridges, cleaning up spilled blood.

Five minutes after the intruder alert was sounded, all was outwardly unchanged and tranquil.

Liebchen was trotting through the tunnel to Pinecroft when she heard an LDU behind her. She leaned against the support of a softly glowing lamp, crossed her legs, thrust out her breasts, and smiled sexily.

The LDU came to an abrupt halt. “Liebchen, what does that peculiar posture signify?”

“I saw a girl on television do it and somebody stopped to give her a ride. I think it’s a request for transportation. Are you going to Pinecroft?”

“Climb aboard. But lie down. I’m in a hurry.”

Liebchen added her seventy pounds to the LDU’s three hundred, snuggling her tummy against his back. The LDU strapped her down quickly and took off at a run.

“Is something exciting happening?” Liebchen shouted over the wind noise.

“Dirk is delivering a lecture on the teachings of Lao Tzu,” the LDU said. As he accelerated, the wind blast stopped all further conversation.

In the medical complex at Pinecroft three LDU teams were working under the direction of the CCU.

“They could have stopped him in the sports arena without getting any of themselves hurt,” Guibedo said.

“Yeah, and had that bastard spraying lead through a bunch of kids,” Heinrich said. “Well, so much for your idea about help from the Eastern Bloc.”

“Yah. I see that,” Guibedo said. “This kind of thing has happened before?”

“Third intruder this month. The preliminaries to war.”

As the med teams worked, Gamma LDUs were transcribing the intruder’s mind pattern into the CCU.

THIS IS KGB 501-12 TO CENTRAL, CODE 2297 SUB ALPHA. I HAVE MADE A THOROUGH SEARCH OF DEATH VALLEY AND CAN FIND NO INDICATION THAT HEINRICH COPERNICK OR MARTIN GUIBEDO IS PRESENT. I HAVE MADE CASUAL ACQUAINTANCE WITH SEVERAL LOCALS. MICHAEL SCOTT, NELSON HAYNES, AND ALLEN PRUES HAVE SEPARATELY STATED THAT THEY HAVE HEARD THAT MARTIN GUIBEDO IS IN NORTHERN MINNESOTA. PURSUANT TO MY INSTRUCTIONS, I AM NOW LEAVING FOR THAT LOCATION.

—DAVID JOHNSON

“The intruder’s arms are successfully replaced, Lord Copernick,” the CCU announced. “He will be fully functional in three weeks. Do you want him reprogrammed for life in the valley?”

“He doesn’t deserve it. Send him back with a compulsion to kill others of his type.”

Patricia and Mona wandered into a flatter and shadier section of town where most of the tree houses were one—story affairs. Facilities were laid out for the less athletically inclined, with chessboards and trout streams instead of bridle trails and canoe streams. Quite a few older people were around.

“Most of our senior citizens have moved out this way,” Mona said.

“Wouldn’t they want to be nearer the medical center at Pinecroft?” Patricia asked.

“That was the original plan. But when a group of doctors formed a clinic out this way, most of the seniors moved near it. I guess they prefer a human doctor to an LDU.”

“LDUs do take some getting used to,” Patricia said.

“Hi, Mom!”

“Bobby! What are you doing at this end of town?” Mona said.

“There’s a new physics teacher who just moved in. I want to see if he’s any good. Who’s your friend?”

“Patty, this is my son, Bobby. Bobby, Patricia Cambridge. Patricia is staying with Uncle Martin.”

“Pleased to meet you, Patty. I’m glad to see Uncle Martin isn’t living alone anymore.”

“Uh, it’s good to meet you, Bobby.” Patricia tried not to act as flustered as she was. For one thing, Bobby looked fifteen and Mona looked twenty. And Mona was all red hair and freckles while Bobby was pure ebony. But mostly, you don’t tell your son who’s sleeping with whom!

“Ma, why don’t you come over to my house tomorrow afternoon. Ishtar has been talking about you—that’s my faun, Patty—and I want you to meet my new girlfriend.”

“I’d love to, Bobby. About three?”

“Great, Mom. But I’ve got to run. The introductory seminar starts in ten minutes. Bye!”

“Bye, Bobby!” Mona said. “The schools here function something like those of the old Moslem culture. If there is something you’re interested in, you find someone who can teach you whatever it is you want to know. Then you make a private deal with him. You stay with it until you’ve learned all you want. No grades, no diplomas. But it works.”

“He’s very nice, your, uh, son,” Patty said.

“Adopted, of course. How old do you think I am? Bobby was injured on our land, and Heinrich felt pretty bad about it. The doctors in L.A. couldn’t help Bobby, but of course Heinrich could. When we found out that Bobby was an orphan, the easiest thing was to adopt him.

“He stayed with us for a year, mostly to get his bearings, but he’s fifteen now, so he moved into his own tree house a few weeks ago.”

“He moved out at fifteen?”

“Yes. A bit late, of course, but then the lack of a proper home during his formative years slowed him down a bit. He’s doing all right now.”

“But leaving home at fifteen?” Patty said.

“The age of consent around here is puberty, Patty. Uncle Martin feels that if nature says you’re an adult, who are we to argue?”

“I guess so,” Patty said. Life Valley was going to take some getting used to.

Vintovka and his eagle died on the operating tables.

“You know, Heiny. This man didn’t kill Vintovka. His gun did it.”

“Same difference,” Heinrich said. “He pulled the trigger.”

“Yah, he’s guilty. But without weapons, he couldn’t have done any real damage to us,”

“You have an idea, Uncle Martin?”

“I am thinking about my kidney trees, that take metal out of the soil. I think we can do that backward.”

“A metallic fungus?”

“Too slow. I’m thinking maybe little iron mosquitoes whose larvae eat up the iron in guns and tanks. If we take their guns away, they can’t hurt anybody. We can win the war without having to kill people.”

“You’re going to have to brief me on metallic biochemistry, Uncle Martin, but I think we can do it. How about an aluminum eater to kill aircraft?”

“Sure. That’s easier than iron.”

“We’ll have to hit the entire world simultaneously, or we’ll upset the balance of power,” Heinrich said, thinking hard. “I’ll come up with a bird for a vector… You know that this will knock out more than weapons—the world’s economy, especially transportation and communication, will be destroyed.”

“That had to go anyway,” Guibedo said. “We make it happen a couple years early, is all. I’ll do that food tree you wanted to feed people until everybody’s got a tree house.”

“We’d better get on it now, then, Uncle Martin. It’s got to be ready in about three months.”

“I thought you said the war was in six months.”

“Probably. But with this, we’ve got to hit them first. Say two months for forced production. That gives us a month for design time.”

“A month for a bird, a tree, and two mosquitoes? Impossible, Heiny.”

“I can fix it so we don’t have to sleep, and I can have my simulation do a lot of the work. We can do it, but it’s going to be a little rough on your love life.”

“That Patty’s a good girl; she’ll understand,” Guibedo said.

“We’d better keep this to ourselves, Uncle Martin.”

“Yah. We do a lot of that around here.”

The CCU recomputed the human fatalities in the upcoming “peaceful” revolution and came up with 375 million dead. But he was programmed not to speak unless spoken to, so he didn’t mention it. Besides, he was ecstatic with the knowledge that now he wasn’t going to have to die.