They arrived at Oakwood and got out.
“Coffee?” Patricia said.
“Love some. Rolls, go home and send back Lincoln.” Mona patted his sleek gray flank.
“Aw, gee,” Rolls said.
“No. You’ll be grown up in a month and then there’ll be as much work as you want. Now move,” Mona said as she and Patricia walked up to the tree house.
“I’m going to have fun working with them,” Patricia said over coffee.
“You do seem to be enjoying yourself here in the valley.”
“I am, but I shouldn’t be.”
“Uncle Martin’s acting crotchety again?”
“Oh, there have been some little things. Like he wouldn’t wear the sweater I knitted him for his birthday. And sometimes he’s a little brusque—we went canoeing, and when I tried to sit next to him, he just sort of pushed me off and told me I was being ridiculous. But most of the time he’s awfully nice.”
“So what’s troubling you?” Mona asked.
“It’s just that I spent nine years working my way up in the broadcasting industry, and just when I was getting close to the top, I quit.”
“A lot of people are dropping out, Patty. Why work when you don’t have to?”
“But I liked my job. It was my whole life. Then I visited Martin and flushed my whole career down the absorption toilet.”
“Sounds like love, girl,” Mona said.
“Oh, Martin’s wonderful, of course, and I wouldn’t want anybody else. But we could have worked something out where I could have continued with my career.”
“Have you talked this over with Uncle Martin?”
“No. I don’t want to go back to New York. It’s just that I should want to.”
“Patty, stop me if I start sounding too much like my husband, but you were raised in a culture that said that a woman had to have a career outside of her family and friends just to prove that she was a full-blown person. You were programmed with that idea. In its time and place it was a good one. But here in the valley, nobody has to prove anything to anyone. There is no question of economic worth because there is no longer such a thing as economics. You are completely free to do anything you want, to grow in any direction that suits you.”
“That’s fine for the artists, but I’m a working girl.”
“Lord knows there’s enough work to be done around here! You should have caught on by now that the world out there is as obsolete as a dinosaur. The future is here! If you want to make a meaningful contribution, the place is here and the time is now,” Mona said.
“But that still doesn’t explain the sudden change I went through three months ago,” Patty said.
“I keep telling you, girl. You’re in love.” As Mona laughed, Guibedo walked into the kitchen and pretended he hadn’t heard the last line.
“Hi, Mona. Patty, you can’t use the pool unless you want to swim in salt water.”
“Salt water! What are you up to now?” Mona asked.
“Boats.” Guibedo grinned. “I figure we got everything we need to make living comfortable on land, but there’s the other three quarters of the world we ain’t doing nothing with. So I got some sailboats and a dirigible growing in the swimming pool.”
“A dirigible in the swimming pool?” Mona said.
“Well, it ain’t growed up yet. Bucky Fuller, he worked it out in the fifties, how if you make something big enough and only a couple degrees warmer on the inside than it is out, the problem gets to be holding it down, not up. It’s gonna need some special animals, so I got to talk to Heiny about it. You got them TRACs going yet?”
“We rode one over here,” Patricia said.
Mona turned to the I/O unit on the wall. “Telephone! Send back Lincoln and send Reo over instead. He’ll be here in ten minutes, Uncle Martin.”
“Good. I’ll get my tapes and drawings.
“Mr. Copernick? This is Lou von Bork. I’m calling from a pay phone in Washington.”
“Why are you still there? Didn’t you get my message?”
“I just got it. The courier got delayed. Permanently.”
“Oh, my God—who did it?” Copernick said.
“One of General Hastings’ goons. Luckily, I had one of our Rejuves in his steno pool. She got the message to me and split.”
“Well, then. Follow your instructions. Drop everything. Get yourself and your people out of D.C. and back here to Life Valley.”
“Don’t you think that you owe us an explanation?” von Bork said.
“No. I’m just trying to save your lives.”
“What about our contacts? Do I tell them, too?”
“Sorry. Somebody would notice that many congressmen leaving.”
“One other thing, boss. The Pentagon is like a beehive. I can’t find out what it is because I don’t have anybody high up in the military. Hardly anybody there is old enough to get a handle on. Even Senator Beinheimer is in the dark. Think I should stick around and work on it?”
“No, dammit! I want you to get your tail back here. Now!”
“Yes, sir,” von Bork said.
Lou von Bork had never heard Copernick so adamant, so naturally he disobeyed his orders. He went back to his office, pulled out the thick phone directory of all his friends and contacts, and started calling. He told everyone he could get hold of to leave the cities and head for the hills. Some of them did.
He worked for six hours before the news carried the story of the bombing of Life Valley.
At Pinecroft, Guibedo found his nephew in the simulations room.
“So what are you up to, Heiny?”
“Hi, Uncle Martin. Birds.”
“You mean some peacocks and flamingos, maybe, for decoration?”
“Of course not! There’s a war on, remember? I have two species about ready to go. One is a flying hypodermic needle that looks like a sparrow. It can synthesize either a stunning agent or a fast-acting poison.
“The other is an aerial defense unit designed to command the sparrows. I had to go to a twenty-foot wing span to support a brain net identical to an LDU’s but it should be able to communicate with them.”
“What for, Heiny? We already decided that there ain’t going to be any war. Those metal-eating bugs are going to eat up everybody’s weapons and that’s going to be the end of it.”
“They’re not proven yet, Uncle Martin. We don’t really know that they’ll work.”
“They worked well enough to eat the frame off my microscalpel,” Guibedo said. “Think of it! Just one viable cell I left sitting around, and two weeks later my microscalpel is a pile of circuits on the floor.”
“It should teach you not to be so careless, Uncle Martin. One viable cell plus a large pile of food equals a lot of viable cells. We’re just lucky those insects didn’t spread and tip our hand. Are you back in business yet?”
“Yah. Jimmy Saunton, he made me a new frame and cabinet. Only he went and made it out of silver.”
“So what’s wrong with that? It’s what he’s used to working with. Silver is a suitable metal and we have more of it than we need,” Copernick said.
“But somebody told him that my mother was Polish, so he designed the cabinet in something he calls Neo-Polski. You got to see this thing, Heiny! It took Jimmy and four apprentices a whole month to make. The display screen is supported by four silver fauns, and the whole panel has got little curlicues all over it. For lateral transverse I got to twist this little cherub, and the laser firing studs are shaped like little harps and beehives. All the labels are in Fraktur German.”
Copernick laughed. “It sounds great, Uncle Martin. Would you ask him to make me one?”
“You’re kidding, Heiny.”
“Not at all. I’m going to need a new one anyway, once we launch the insects. We can seal off the computers, but I hate to be without a microscalpel. Its dubious artistic value makes a good cover story. We can’t have word get out on what we’re doing.”
“Okay. You want it, you�
�ll get it. I wish I could give you mine, but that would hurt Jimmy’s feelings.”
“Just tell him that I’m a pure-bred Polack, and we’ll see what he comes up with.”
“Okay, okay,” Guibedo said. “So how is the bug project going?”
“It’s pretty much ready to launch right now. LDUs are finishing up implanting the food-tree seeds and the larvae into the vector birds. The CCU figures it will have completed their flight programming by tomorrow night. Actually, we can start launching any time, although I’d just as soon hold off until everything is ready.”
“Me, too, Heiny.”
“What are those disks and drawings, Uncle Martin?”
“Well, you ain’t going to like this, but I still don’t figure we need any more war animals. What I did was I worked out a biochemistry for floating plants on the ocean. I figured that’s three quarters of the world we ought to be doing something with. Anyhow, I got some sailboats and floating islands. And I got a dirigible.”
“A dirigible?”
“Sure. Bucky Fuller in the fifties, he—”
“The airborne cities. I’m familiar with his work. Go on.”
“Anyhow, I need some animals to go with them. Some kind of fish that will protect the boats and islands from other fish. And something to provide motive power for the dirigible.”
“Well, let’s see what you have.” Copernick inserted the disk into his control panel then spent a few minutes studying the display and Guibedo’s drawings.
“I’ve got to say I like your basic concept, Uncle Martin. But I’d like to make a few suggestions.”
“Like what?”
“Your anchored floating islands are fine, but they’re all one-family dwellings. Shouldn’t you make some bigger ones?”
“Ach. We’re going to need maybe fifty designs before we’re through. This is just a start. Anyhow, you want something bigger, you tie two little ones together.”
“Okay. These boats. You’ve designed them like conventional sailboats. Let’s do the standing rigging as part of the boat plant, but make the running rigging and rudder control parts of an animal sentient enough to handle navigation.”
“Heiny, you’ll take all the fun out of sailing.”
“The four you’ve done so far should satisfy the yachtsmen, but I think most people will want something that just goes where it’s told.”
“Okay. We build some your way and some mine, and people can take what they want. What else?”
“Motive power. They really ought to have some form of auxiliary power for getting in and out of harbors and for moving when becalmed.”
“So I’ll make the oars and you make the muscles for when we run out of wind. Anything else? You want maybe the decks should be orange and the sails pink?”
“They’ll have to stay green for photosynthesis.” Copernick ignored the jibe. “But as to size, you’ve made these four fifty-, one hundred-, one hundred twenty-five, and one hundred fifty feet long, which is fine, but we also ought to build some in the thousand-foot range.”
“So who’d want an ocean liner when he could sail his own yacht?” Guibedo said.
“Not ocean liners. Troop ships.”
“Are you on that again, Heiny?”
“I’ve never been off it. We are heading into a period with too many unknowns. The only thing I’m sure of is that revolutions are never easy. When you act with inadequate information, you inevitably make mistakes. Better to err on the side of security. If we end up with more military power than we need, we have wasted time and energy. If we have too little, we have wasted our lives and the lives of everyone we care about.”
“Okay. We call them troop ships now and ocean liners later.” Guibedo was getting worried about his nephew. Paranoia?
“Now about this dirigible. I really like it, but it’s going to require something pretty novel to power it. Wings that size are out of the question, and oars would be far too inefficient.”
“Well, this is just a first cut to see if the thing really will fly. No motive power and it can’t make seeds. On the next one I think maybe I can grow a big propeller. It grows rigid to its bearings until it’s full size, then it breaks loose. I give you a crank between two bearings, and you make muscles to it like the cylinders in a radial engine. Once it’s going, the propeller eats bearing grease that the dirigible makes to stay alive. I figure I can make it good for seventy-five rpm.”
“You really figure you can make an organic wheel?” Copernick looked surprised. “If it’s possible, why doesn’t the wheel occur in nature?”
“It does. You got to read Berg’s thing on bacteria flagella. The little beggars move by spinning a propeller that’s turned by an ion motor,” Guibedo said.
“Berg, huh. I’ll look it up. So why doesn’t it occur in higher animals?”
“Because there are no intermediary steps possible between a foot and a wheel, Heiny. Natural life forms had to evolve by small design increments. Nature can’t do a radical design like a committee can’t do original thinking.”
“Fascinating!” Copernick said, going over the readouts. “The musculature you describe is absurdly simple, of course. I should have thought of this myself, before I did the TRACs.”
“You leave those TRACs alone. For land travel, wheels are more efficient, but feet are more versatile. And feet don’t get stuck in the mud,” Guibedo said. “I came over here on Reo, one of your trucks. He’s got a real smooth ride. You did a nice job on those leg joints, Heiny.”
“Thank you. I’m proud of them myself. But for strictly tunnel traveling, a wheeled animal would be great.”
“Do it once we have enough tunnels. You had lunch yet?”
“No, thinking about it. Let’s go upstairs.”
No part of the CCU was permitted in a biolab, so Copernick stopped at the CCU’s I/O unit in the hallway. “CCU. Copernick here.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“I want you to buy at least ten square miles of land with at least two miles of ocean frontage, as close to here as possible. Have the mole dig a tunnel out to it. Set the earliest possible closing dates, and keep me posted.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Guibedo said, “That’s a handy guy you got there.”
“I’d be lost without him.”
The girls had eaten earlier and were working with the TRACs, so Guibedo and Copernick ate alone, served by Ohura, one of the Copernicks’ two fauns. Ohura was a black version of Liebchen, identical except for surface details.
“You know, I think this is the first time we’ve eaten alone together in a year,” Guibedo said as he began his second mug of beer.
“It’s strange to be without the girls, but I’m glad they’re taking an interest in their work.”
“How come you make Mona work so hard? Couldn’t Dirk or one of his buddies do it?”
“They could. LDUs are almost as intelligent as Mona, and they’re a good deal more consistent. But Mona wants to feel that she’s doing something important. And I think that it is important that each intelligent species is trained by a human being. They’ve got to remember that we created them, and that we’re boss. Otherwise, Uncle Martin, I’ve hatched a monster.”
“EMERGENCY!” the telephone barked. “Gamma LDUs report that a U.S. bomber is twelve minutes away. The crew has orders to accidentally drop an atomic bomb on Life Valley!”
“They start quicker than we thought, Heiny!” Guibedo said, but Copernick was already giving orders.
“Notifiy everyone in the valley that the bomber is out of control and heading this way. Get everybody into the basements.
“I want every bird in the air, except the insect spreaders. I want every TRAC loaded with water for fire fighting, dispersed around the valley and under cover. What’s the bomber’s altitude?”
“Twenty-two thousand feet, my lord.”
“Our birds can’t fly that high. Get every Gamma LDU on that plane’s commander. Try to turn him around, or at least get him to come i
n at five thousand feet.”
“Yes, my lord. They’re on it. But you know how unsuccessful the experiments with telecontrol have been. There is a good probability that the aircraft commander will resist or not even notice our probe.”
“Any suggestions?”
“None, my lord. Dropped from twenty-two thousand feet, that twenty-three hundred pound bomb will be graveling at supersonic speed. There is no chance of disarming it in flight or of significantly deflecting its course.”
“Then pray, my friend. Pray,” Copernick said, heading for the communications center four floors down.
“Just like a practice run, Colonel,” Captain Johnson had the B-3 in manual.
“That it is, Bill.”
“I thought I’d never get a chance to lay a nuke.”
“Just do it by the numbers.”
“And I never thought I’d be bombing Americans.”
“Look, son. You saw who gave the orders.”
“But still, our own countrymen?”
“That’s just it! They’re not our countrymen! These people have dropped out! They have abandoned America and everything it stands for! They are doing everything in their power to destroy our society! It’s a plot more insidious than anything the Communists or the Neo-Krishnas ever thought of! And it’s our job to stop them!”
“But still—”
“Bill, I’ll take the controls now!”
“Colonel?”
“It’s a commander’s job. Anyway, I don’t want you to do anything you’d feel guilty about.”
“But—”
“Enough! Kelly! Put a chute on that egg.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” the flight engineer said.
“Colonel, you’re losing altitude,” Captain Johnson said.
“This has to be precisely on target, Bill. Any error and we kill real Americans outside of Death Valley. We’ll do it with a paradrop from five thousand feet,” the colonel said.
They were thirty miles and three minutes from Life Valley when they spotted a thin black cloud ahead.
Then they were in it.
A twenty-pound Canada goose bounced off the windshield. Followed by another. And another. Ahead of them, like contrails in reverse, eight long lines of eagles, owls, and condors were flying into their jet intakes. One by one the engines choked and froze and died. The fourteenth Canada goose took out the windshield, spraying the cabin with broken plastic and blood. The colonel pulled back on the controls, but they were sluggish. The plane was losing altitude fast.
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