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.”
Copernick's Rebellion Page 11