Copernick's Rebellion

by Leo A. Frankowski

  “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.

  Chapter Eight

  JUNE 17, 2003

  MAJOR GENERAL Hastings walked stiffly into the office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  “Good morning, George. Have a chair. What can I do for you?” General Powers said.

  “Good morning, sir. A number of strange and possibly interconnected events have been occurring over the last few years that I feel I should bring to your attention.”

  “Like what?”

  Hastings took a list from his attache case.

  “Item one. Despite the fact that the tree houses have directly killed thousands of people and have seriously disrupted the economy of the western world, no single major power—except for United India—has passed regulations concerning them.”

  “The same thing could have been said about the automobile a hundred years ago, George. I’m as sorry about your family as I can be, but you must not let that tragedy affect your judgment.”

  “Sir, I believe that my judgment is unaffected. May I continue? Item two. Because of the probable economic repercussions, work on rejuvenation was stopped— worldwide—about ten years ago.

  “The U.S. Congress contains almost six hundred members. More than half of them are over sixty-five years of age. Yet in the past four years, not one single congressman has died of old age.”

  “That seems statistically improbable,” Powers said.

  “It’s nearly impossible, sir. But it is a fact. It is also a fact that the members of the British House of Commons aren’t dying of old age, either. Nor are members of the Politburo. Nor the French National Assembly. Nor the Chinese People’s Council.

  “But the Grand Council of United India does have people dying of old age.”

  “So you are saying that somebody has secretly developed longevity and is using it to bribe our own government? That’s a serious accusation, George. Can you back it up?” Powers asked.

  “Yes, sir. I can. The process apparently requires repeated treatments. Thirty-two senators and one hundred fifty-five members of the House visit a single building in Crystal City at different times, but each on a given day of the month. They will reschedule overseas visits, even election rallys, to keep these appointments. And every one of them was previously quite ill but is now quite healthy.”

  “Interesting, but circumstantial. Have you gotten anyone inside the building?”

  “No sir. But I’ve lost five good men trying.”

  “So it is still circumstantial. Go on.”

  “Item three. Heinrich Copernick—the man who raised the fuss about rejuvenation seven years ago—is the nephew of Martin Guibedo, the man who designed the tree houses.

  “Item four. On the same day that Guibedo was imprisoned, my telepaths stopped functioning. One of them is able to receive somewhat—”

  “And is quite insane,” Powers said. “I’ve seen the report, and I’m really not impressed with a computer analysis of the ravings of a madman.”

  “Yes, sir. But to continue. Item five. Echo tracings show that Guibedo escaped from jail by means of a tunnel fifteen miles long. No engineering firm in the world could duplicate that tunnel in three weeks.

  “Item six. Within a mile of the tunnel opening, eighty-five families were killed during that time period. This atrocity has generally been accredited to a raid by the Neo-Krishnas, despite the fact that there was no supporting evidence. And despite the fact that all of those people were killed with knives and that they were given Christian tombstones.”

  “Come now, George. The tabloids have been working that weird incident for years. Don’t you try to tie it in,” Powers said.

  “It does tie in, sir. Item seven. We believe that Copernick and Guibedo are in Death Valley, that tree-house city. It is certain that Copernick owns the land. Over two hundred thousand people come and go freely in that valley, apparently without incident. People that we have questioned later report nothing unusual, and no security precautions at all.

  “Yet I have never been able to get an agent into it! I have lost nineteen trying. The FBI reports similar losses. I submit that there is a correlation between the jamming of my telepaths and Death Valley’s ability to identify and liquidate every one of our agents without having a visible security system.”

  “You say ‘liquidate.’ Were all these men killed?” Powers asked.

  “No, sir. That’s item eight. The majority of them seem to have defected, generally after sending back misleading messages. One of my agents did return to Washington. He reported in and then armed a grenade in the debriefing room. We lost eighteen people before we were forced to kill him.
I suggest that they have brainwashing techniques that are far superior to our own.”

  “George, you keep talking as though this were a military matter. Certainly you have turned up something here, but it is a civil matter best left to the FBI,” Powers said.

  “No, sir. This is a military matter. I received these satellite photos today.”

  “These are remarkably clear photos, George. The air must be very clean there. But what are these things?”

  “They appear to be an intelligent, engineered life form. They are certainly deadly—the profiles of those daggers in their forearms correspond to the entry wounds in the corpses of eighty-five families. And the things must be numerous; Engineering guesstimates that it would have taken at least ten thousand of them to dig Guibedo’s escape tunnel.”

  “My God! An alien army on U.S. soil?” Powers summoned his aide. “Call an emergency meeting of the chiefs of the General Staff, and—”

  “Sir, wait! These creatures are fantastic tunnelers. Conventional military action would only result in their scattering. If their reproduction and growth rate are as quick as those of the tree houses, it could be fatal if even a few of them escaped. Sir, indications are that they are all concentrated in Death Valley.

  “Our planes have been carrying atomic bombs for sixty years without an accidental detonation. I think that it is time that we had one.”

  “That would take presidental approval.”

  “Yes, sir,” Hastings said.

  Powers paused for ten seconds.

  “Then let’s see if we can talk to the President.”

  Patricia spent a morning hiking out to the parking lot. She looked up Hank Dobrinski, who still had her car keys.

  “Well, ma’am. I had begun to worry about you. Even had the telephone check and see that you were all right.”

  “Thanks, Hank. I guess I should have called.”

  “I truly wish you had. As it is, you just missed Meg again, and she’s going to be hard to live with for a week. Now, what can I do for you?”

  “I need my car, Hank. There are a few things I’ve got to do.”

  “I’ll give you a lift out to it, ma’am. It might take a bit to get it started, after all these months. You heading back to New York?” They got into a shiny new four-wheel—drive pickup.

  “No, Hank, I’m dropping out and staying here. I’ve just got some loose ends to tie up. I’ve got to quit my job, do something about my apartment and bank accounts, and get the Lincoln back to the rental agency at the airport.”

  “Then I guess I’d better follow you into Shoshone.”

  “Shoshone? But—”

  “They got a bank there, and a rental agency and what not. You ain’t the first one doing this, ma’am. Seems like I drive four, five people out there and back each week.”

  “Thanks, Hank.”

  “My pleasure. Now as I remember, that’s yours over there.”

  Hank removed the tarp and shook out great billowing clouds of dust. The car windows were so dirty that you couldn’t see out of them, but Hank had a bucket and squeegee in his truck.

  The Lincoln’s engine fired up without difficulty and in a half hour Hank followed her into the small desert town. Patricia had to stand in line at the car rental agency and the bank, but armed with her NBC card, everything went quickly. She was doing what thousands before her had done, and the clerks had it down to a pattern. Her apartment phone was disconnected, her New York landlord satisfied, a trucking company engaged to move her belongings west. Her bank account was transferred to Shoshone. It was surprisingly large—for three months, her paychecks had been deposited and she hadn’t spent a cent of the money.

  Finally she rented a motel room for an hour so she could make a very private phone call. Most of her business had been taken care of in only two hours, but everything in town seemed so cramped, so tiny, so crowded. She was tempted to take a shower at the motel, but one look at the tiny shower stall dissuaded her.

  Finally, taking a deep breath, she called her boss, feeling guilty about not having contacted him in three months.

  “Oh, hello, Patty. It’s not Friday so it must be Tuesday.”

  “What?”

  “You always call on Fridays and Tuesdays. The calendar says Thursday so something is finally happening.”

  “I don’t.know what you’re talking about, boss.”

  “Patty, are you feeling all right?”

  “Well, maybe not. Anyway, well, I’m quitting.”

  “Are you on some kind of drugs, kid?”

  “No, I’m not on drugs, dammit! I’m quitting. Dropping out. Going away!”

  “Look, Patty, you can’t quit…”

  “The hell you say! I’m a free woman in a free country! I’ll quit if I damn well want to!”

  “What about your show, Patty? It’s still waiting for you.”

  “Let Mary handle it.”

  “She has been, and her ratings aren’t half what yours are.”

  “I told you so. And I’m still quitting.”

  “Patty, I’m worried about you. How about if I have some of the people from the Chicago office drop by to see you?”

  “Chicago?”

  “Well, you’re still in Wisconsin, aren’t you?”

  “Wisconsin? Boss, this conversation is just too weird. Look. I’m quitting! Going away! Saying bye-bye!” She slammed the phone down. The man had to be drunk or stoned or insane or all three!

  She found Hank in the saloon and drove with him back to Life Valley. On the way, she borrowed his jack—knife and cut her NBC credit card into very fine shavings.

  The next day, Patricia decided she needed to be useful, so she volunteered to help Mona run the training room and kennel for the Transportation, Recreation, and Construction units in one of Pinecroft’s huge subbasements.

  “As you can see, all the TRACs are variations on the same basic theme,” Mona said.

  “Really?” Patricia turned her head slowly to take in all the TRACs in the room. Forty huge animals were frisking around, ranging in size from a one-person speedster, barely larger than a horse, to things as big as a gravel truck.

  “Oh, there are minor differences in size and function,” Mona said, “but the basic design is similar. Two eyes in front plus one in the cockpit. Internal and external ears. Voice membranes inside and out. They all use the same sort of double-ended lung structure that permits continuous breathing. And take a close look at the legs. The jointing on all of them is such that the body has a smooth motion at any speed.”

  “They all have two arms near the doors,” Patricia said, looking for similarities among the bizarre animals.

  “Yes, and they can reach any part of their bodies with them,” Mona said. “Let’s give one a workout. Rolls! Here, boy!”

  A twenty-footer broke off from playing with something that resembled a flatbed truck and trotted over to them. It had eight legs, four across in front and four in back. Its streamlined, rigid body was six feet wide and five high, and was covered with sleek gray fur.

  “Rolls, I want you to meet Patty. She will be working with us from now on.”

  “Hi, Patty.” For all his size, Rolls had a young boy’s voice.

  “Open up, Rolls. We’re going for a ride,” Mona said.

  “Oh, goodie!” Rolls opened both doors in his side. Patricia sat comfortably in a seat designed for two, but Mona, with her large frame, was somewhat cramped inside.

  “They’re all only about three quarters of their adult size,” Mona said, “and their speed and endurance are only half of what they will be. When he grows up, Rolls will be able to hold eight people. Rolls, do a few laps.” The animal began a graceful lope for the perimeter of the cavernous subbasement.

  “He certainly makes up for it in enthusiasm,” Patricia said.

  “With good reason. Heinrich tied the pleasure centers of the TRACs’ brains in with the pressure sensors under the seats. They’re only really happy when they’re running somebody around.”r />
  “Well, it works both ways.” Patricia ran her fingers through the thick fur on the seat next to her. “It feels like chinchilla.”

  “Heinrich says that if you are going to do something, you might as well do it right. Not that it costs anything extra. We have twenty-five variants of passenger animals, from Vet, who’s a single seater, to Greyhound, who will be able to seat sixty-four. And Winnie’s an animal version of a motor home, for vacationing.

  “The others here are for heavy transportation, like Reo and Mack, or construction, like Le Tourneau.”

  “You certainly gave them cute names,” Patty said.

  “They picked their own after Uncle Martin talked with them,” Mona said. “Mole over there is for tunneling. The plan is to build an underground road system, for practical, aesthetic, and safety reasons.”

  “What’s safe about a tunnel?” Patricia asked.

  “A hollow root lines the thing, so there’s little danger of a cave-in,” Mona said. “The safety comes from a clean, dry roadbed without any children playing on it.”

  “Rolls, run us over to Uncle Martin’s house.”

  Without slowing, the TRAC ran up a circular ramp, then headed down the tunnel to Guibedo’s house.

  “TRACs have an excellent sense of direction and an amazing ability to remember maps. Not that it’s needed yet. The few tunnels we have had to be dug by the LDUs.”

  “I thought the LDUs were designed for construction work,” Patricia said.

  “Yes and no. They’re certainly efficient, and they’re good sports about it. But an LDU has an IQ of 150, and it isn’t healthy for any being to work too far below his abilities. Once the moles get going, we’ll eventually have a tunnel entrance to every tree house in the world.”

  “How long is that going to take?” Patricia asked.

  “About thirty years. TRACs reproduce in a fashion similar to fauns, except that since their function is simpler, training is quicker and they can reproduce more rapidly. A typical litter will be a dozen until there are enough of them to go around.”