“But why would anybody want to be ugly?” Patricia asked.
“It’s not that he wants to be ugly. It’s that he insists on being himself. Oh, I know he’s being hypocritical, accepting limited rejuvenation and then saying it’s immoral to take it to its logical conclusion. But that’s the way he is.”
“Well, if that’s true”—and in her own mind, Patricia was starting to believe it—“why do I see him so differently?”
“Because Liebchen was trying to make everybody happy—which she was designed and trained to do. Somehow—I have no idea how—she came up with a way of synthesizing a chemical that changes people. Remember that stuff she had Winnie’s synthesizer make for the American Indian boys? Well, she managed to get something similar down you, to make you happy.”
“Oh, my god! I thought Liebchen was my friend.”
“She thought so, too. I don’t think she meant to harm you at all, only to make you happy. As things turned out, she did you a favor. Except for her, you would have gone back to New York. The reports we’re getting from New York City are absolutely gruesome. If you hadn’t been killed by a falling skyscraper, you might have been done in by starvation or the plague that’s rampaging there. Liebchen may have violated your mind, and indirectly your body, but she probably saved your life.”
“And Martin?”
“Uncle Martin may be a hypocrite. He’s certainly naive about a lot of things, and not the least bit introspective. But he’s essentially a very moral person. I can promise you that he didn’t know anything about what Liebchen did.”
“But what am I supposed to do now?”
“Well, you obviously can’t stay as you are; it’s costing you too much, emotionally. There are several possibilities. I’m sure if you asked him, Heinrich could do something to make Liebchen’s bungled job of programming permanent and without the unpleasant side effects. Or he or Liebchen could undo what she did. Then you could stay with Uncle Martin and accept him for what he is, or leave him. The choice is yours.”
“I… I just don’t know… Help me, Mona.”
“Well, the fact that you can’t make a decision might have something to do with the fact that your mind has been altered. So as a first step, I think we should put your personality back the way it was before Liebchen began to play marriage broker. I also think that we owe it to Uncle Martin to tell him what happened.”
“Do you think we should? I mean, I don’t want to hurt him.”
“He’s got to find out some time, and dragging it out will only make it worse. Telephone! Which TRACs are available?”
“Only Winnie, my lady.”
“Tell Winnie to come up the ramp and meet us outside. We’re going to Oakwood.”
“Right now?” Patricia asked.
“Now. We’re heading out again in the morning, and this business has to be settled.”
Guibedo paced nervously as Liebchen and Dirk watched. “Ach. What worries me is how I’m going to explain all this to Patty.”
“My lord?”
“What do you want, telephone?”
“Pardon my impropriety, my lord, but in the interests of easing your mind, I feel obligated to tell you that Lady Mona has explained the situation to Lady Patricia. They are coming here now to confront you.”
“Well, that makes things easier. Liebchen, go make that stuff,” Guibedo said.
As Liebchen scurried to the kitchen, the I/O unit said, “My lord?”
“What now?”
“Was I right to violate privacy on this occasion?”
“Yah. This time. Just don’t do it too often.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
When Mona and Patty walked up from the tunnel into the kitchen, Mona said, “Uncle Martin, there’s something—”
“Yah, I know. Dirk told me.” Guibedo shoved the pink grapefruit juice-and-milk concoction into Patty’s hand. “Drink this.”
“I—I don’t know if I should. I mean, I’ve been happy with you.”
“I love you, too. But you would have been just as happy on heroin, and that ain’t real, either. Drink!”
“But—”
“You’re going to drink that or I’ll have Dirk pour it down your throat!”
Dirk shifted his weight uneasily, unsure of the correct course of action if he received such an order.
“Uncle Martin! Take it easy, for god’s sake,” Mona said.
“Ach…” Guibedo stomped into the living room, followed by Dirk. Liebchen tried to make herself inconspicuous in a corner.
Things were silent for a minute, then Patricia said,“You know, he really does love me.” And she drained the contents of the glass with one gulp.
A half hour later, Guibedo was trying to look interested in a six-month-old magazine as Patricia walked up to him. Her expression held pity and an involuntary touch of revulsion.
“I… see you drank it, Patty.”
“Yes. It’s… strange. Do you think that we could…”
“No. That’s all done now,” Guibedo said gruffly. “Look. It was a lot of fun, but it wasn’t real. You’ll find yourself a nice boy. Me, well, Heiny bought me some land near the ocean, and Mole just finished digging a tunnel to it. I’m gonna go there and work on my boats.”
“But we could try—”
“You’re not being honest, Patty. In a week your pity would turn into disgust. Better we break it clean, and we both have pretty memories. Look. I give you Oakwood for a present. I don’t need it anymore. Dirk will get my stuff moved out.” Guibedo went to the door and turned.
“Good-bye, Patty.”
He wanted to kiss her a last time, but he was afraid that she’d go through with it out of pity. He was out the door before the tears filled his eyes.
He was sitting on a park bench when Liebchen and Dirk found him. Dirk hovered protectively a a distance. Liebchen sat at his side.
“My lord. It is so late. Where will you go? How can you find your way in the dark?”
“I don’t know, Liebchen. But I’ve been on the bottom before. And then I didn’t have any friends.”
Chapter Twelve
OCTOBER 19, 2003
FOR THE next few hundred years, one of our primary functions must be the collection of data on the humans.
After all, they are to a certain extent our ancestors, and we should at least have accurate records concerning them once they are no more.
—Central Coordination Unit to all Regional Coordination Units
Hastings sat with a beer in a deserted room of the Red Gate Inn. He had been in Life Valley for three days, looking for a cripple named Heinrich Copernick and an obese former biology teacher named Martin Guibedo. He wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t found them yet. There were millions of people in the valley. There were no street addresses or telephone books, and Hastings knew better than to ask too many questions.
He could wait. Food was plentiful and he attracted no attention by sleeping in the parks. Someday they would slip and he would get them.
A huge man with an oversized beer mug came in and sat down at Hastings’ table.
“Have a seat,” Hastings said.
“Thank you.”
“Been around here long?”
“About three years,” Copernick said.
“You must have been one of the first settlers, then. Most people around here seem to be newcomers.”
“I was. They are.” Copernick lit a cigar.
“Hey. Tobacco. It’s been months since I had a smoke.”
“Have one. My tree house grows them.”
Hastings inhaled deeply. “Now that’s lovely. Quite a city here. It must have been something to watch this place grow up.”
“It was. Have you planted your tree yet?”
“Not yet,” Hastings said. “Thought I’d look around a bit to get an idea about what I wanted and where I wanted to put it.”
“Smart. No big hurry. One place you might want to check out is about ten miles south of here. A group of ex-
military types are putting in a town. You had to have been at least a colonel to join.”
Hastings suppressed a flash of panic.
“If you were here from the beginning, you must know Guibedo and Copernick.”
“Intimately. I’m Heinrich Copernick, George.”
Hastings was acutely aware of the brick of high explosives taped to his ankle.
“Then you know who I am.” Copernick had reengineered himself!
“Of course. That white-noise generator lit you up like a neon sign. My telepaths were quite relieved when your battery went dead. They said it gave them headaches.”
“You bastard. You had me set up all along.”
“Let’s just say that I wanted to meet you. We’ve been enemies for years. You fought a good fight. But the war is over now. You ought to be thinking about your future.”
“My future?” Hastings’ voice was cold. “You destroy my country. You murder my family. And then you expect me to settle down in your filthy city.”
“George, we both know that four years ago the world was on a collision course with absolute disaster. Come over to my house sometime and I’ll show you the figures. Our mechanically based technology had to go, yet our economic system was totally supported by that technology. And our political and social structures were completely supported by those economics. Our survival as a race depended on making the changeover to a biological economy. And we couldn’t change a part of that system without changing it all.
“I’m truly sorry about your family. They died because of an engineering error. We corrected it as soon as we found out about it. It was an accident.
“On the other hand, you deliberately tried to kill my family. Twice. But like I said, the war is over.”
“You filthy hypocrite. What about the eighty-five families your monsters butchered?” Hastings said.
“Another error. No one had ever tried to educate an intelligent engineered species before. It simply never occurred to me to tell them that they weren’t supposed to kill people. That error has also been corrected. In the last three months the LDUs have saved the lives of millions of people. A fair penance, I should say.”
“Saved them? Saved them from the hell that you’ve caused with your damned metal-eating bugs!”
“Not guilty,” Copernick lied. “That plague was completely natural. We have been doing everything in our power to fight it.”
“You must think that I’m awfully gullible. At the precise moment when you and your damned biological monsters are about to be wiped out, a totally new species comes along and destroys the technology that you’re openly fighting. You warn your spys and traitors to get out of Washington. And then you have the gall to say it’s natural.”
Hastings dropped his cigar. He reached down to pick it up and lit the fuse of the bomb on his ankle. He stretched his leg under Copernick and waited.
“Perhaps God was on our side,” Copernick said.
“In a pig’s eye.”
“You can still settle down here, George. We could use you. You don’t have to die.”
The plastique hadn’t gone off.
“Naturally we disabled your bomb. You’re quite a heavy sleeper. The CCU predicted that you would be willing to commit suicide in order to kill me, but I was hoping that you’d change your mind.”
The bomb went off, completely severing Hastings’ right foot from his leg. The legs of Copernick’s chair were virtually powdered, and wood fibers were blown into the feet, calves, and knees of both men.
Though protected somewhat by the seat of his chair, and more so by the strange directionality of high explosives, Copernick was blown four feet into the air and across the room, cracking his skull on a brass footrest.
Hastings was bounced off the opposite wall and came to rest across Copernick’s left arm.
LDUs had been monitoring the situation, and medical teams were on site within seconds.
It was three months before Hastings’ foot was regenerated, but Copernick was back on the job in five days.
The first three months after the plague started were hard on our race, but the end was in sight. At least in the western hemisphere, the long lines of refugees had found their various destinations. Over half of the human race lived crowded in or around tree houses, and virtually every family, group, and individual person had planted a tree house, the only means of shelter possible.
The other half of humanity lived in a ragged collection of plastic tents and lean-tos surrounding the food trees, waiting for them to start producing. In most cases some conventional food was available, much of it brought in on the broad backs of LDUs, but the “survival of the fattest” became a standing worldwide joke.
Once there was a reasonable probability of personal survival, a serious attempt was made to rescue as much as possible of the world’s cultural artifacts. Countless people crawled through crumbling museums, libraries, and laboratories to haul out and store artworks, books, and other artifacts. Much of the world’s art and virtually all of its literature, down to the lowliest technical manual, were thus preserved.
Other people, with less noble motives, sought to preserve for themselves much of the world’s wealth. One enterprising group found that the steel vault doors at Fort Knox had crumbled after the nearby guard units had disbanded. They made it inside and onto the incredible piles of gold ingots, lying free for the taking. Then the entranceway collapsed, sealing them in. They kept their treasure for the rest of their lives. About three days.
Throughout the western hemisphere, a million LDUs worked twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They hauled grain from crumbling elevators in Chicago and fought plagues in Georgia. They taught people in New England which wild plants were edible and built a wooden bridge across the Hudson to evacuate Manhattan and Long Island. It returned lost children and interrupted fourteen attempts at human sacrifice.
The nation-state had relied on dependable transportation and communication for its survival. These had ceased to exist. It had depended on economics, billions of dollars, pounds, and rubles to pay the millions of soldiers, politicians, and tax collectors that were the governments of two hundred nations. Economics had also ceased to exist; a paper dollar couldn’t get you a bite to eat, but a tree house would feed you for free. The world’s nation-states had ceased to exist.
Founded on a bewildering array of political, religious, and philosophical premises, new political organizations sprang up to fill the void, an incredible hodge-podge of societies, families, companies, cooperatives, churches, fraternities, and gangs. It was rare for any group to have more than a thousand members.
Slowly, painfully, a kind of order emerged as the food trees finally bore fruit.
Patricia and Mona had spent every day for two months traveling in Winnie, giving food, directions, and hope to everyone they could find in the Southwest. They had spent every other night on the road, and they were both physically and mentally exhausted.
“Time we took a couple of days off, Patty,” Mona said.
Their passengers that trip had included Lou von Bork and Senator Beinheimer. The women had dropped them off in one of the new suburbs, and Winnie was trotting back to Pinecroft.
“We certainly need it. But there’s still so much to be done,” Patricia said.
“The worst of it’s over. We can send out Winnie and Bolo to pick up the stragglers and bring them in.”
Dirk had gone with Guibedo, and Bolo, injured by a falling building, had taken on the guard duty.
“Suits me.” Winnie dropped the girls off at the front door, and trotted downstairs again to eat.
Of all the tree houses in the valley, Pinecroft was the only one that had not been turned into a hotel for refugees. Oakwood had more than fifty people living in it and the last thing Patricia needed was another crowd.
“Okay if I spend the night here, Mona?”
“Sure. Take the guest room off the kitchen,” Mona said. “Hey. Look at that. Heinrich made a new elevator.”
“I’m surprised he took the time for it,” Patricia said. “He looked so tired last time I saw him.”
“He should. Between his injury and worrying about the LDUs making another mistake, he hasn’t slept in three months.”
“Mistake? What do you mean?”
“In the early days, the LDUs were pretty naive. They didn’t understand human value systems, and they tended to take orders too literally. Look, I’m bushed. I’ll see you in the morning. Take the guest room off the kitchen,” Mona said, heading upstairs. “I’m going to sleep till noon.”
The next morning Patricia was eating breakfast alone. A nagging determination came to her.
“Telephone,” Patricia said.
“Yes, my lady,” the I/O unit answered.
“Uh… Where’s Martin?”
“I’m afraid your request is in conflict with my ‘right to privacy’ programming, my lady. He is well, and I can send him a message if you like.”
“Tell him…” Patricia halted, uncertain.
“Yes, my lady?”
“Oh, just forget it!”
“As you wish.” The CCU was incapable of forgetting anything, of course.
Patricia was finishing breakfast when Liebchen walked in.
“Liebchen! What are you doing here?”
“I—I’m visiting my sisters, Lady Patricia,” Liebchen said uncomfortably.
“Well, sit down and join me.”
“You’re not mad at me anymore?”
“I was never really mad at you. You only tried to make me happy, and you did.”
“I did?” Liebchen was delighted and scooted up on an oversized chair next to Patricia. “I didn’t think that you’d want to be my friend anymore.”
“Well, I guess we were all pretty upset when we found out about your programming experiment.” Patricia took another sip of tea. “I’ve missed you.”
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