Leo Frankowski - Copernick's Rebellion

“Uh, I’m Patricia Cambridge. Does Dr. Guibedo live here?”

“Yes, my lady. My Lord Guibedo has mentioned you. He is in his workshop. I shall tell him that you’re here. Please come in.”

Success!

The living room of the tree house was fabulous; comfort and beauty had been Guibedo’s only considerations when he designed it. Seated with a gourd of champagne by a waterfall, Patricia waited for an hour, reading old trade journals. It was cool in the cavernous room, and Patricia, dressed in businesslike microshorts and a transparent top, became chilly waiting for Dr. Guibedo.

Finally Guibedo bubbled in—talking rapidly, waving his thick arms. “Ach, Patty! Sorry to keep you waiting, but when you got a DNA loop stretched out, you don’t go away until you’re finished with it, by golly! Hey! It’s gonna be so pretty, Patty! This little seed is gonna be the theater and exercise room for the ballet society here. If those little girls had any idea what a time I had with that big mirror, hooh!” He smiled at the faun.

“Liebchen! I am so happy you take such nice care of our guest. I get more proud of you every day, by golly!” The faun glowed with happiness, wiggled her hoofs on the carpet, and waggled her tail vigorously.

“But anyway, Patty! What are you doing here and why didn’t you get here before? I haven’t seen you for three years! You don’t like me or what?” What a pretty girl this Patty is! Guibedo thought.

“Uh, why didn’t I… Dr. Guibedo, don’t you realize that every man in the FBI is looking for you? That every government in the world is screaming for your blood? I’m amazed that I found you so quickly, when none of those government men could. It’s the biggest manhunt since Patty Hearst.”

“Well, a lot of them did find me; then they looked the town over and decided that maybe staying here was nicer than playing cops and robbers. What do you think of my town? Pretty snazzy, huh?”

“It’s gorgeous, Dr. Guibedo! But I’d hardly call it a town—it covers half of Death Valley!”

“We paid for it fair and square. And now we call it Life Valley.” This Patty looks so much like my poor Hilde, before she died.

“But I still don’t see how you were so easy to find.”

“Simple. You didn’t come here looking to hurt nobody, and you didn’t bring your whole television studio along. We try not to get too much publicity.” With his new set of glands, Guibedo was feeling urges that he hadn’t felt in thirty years.

“Publicity! Dr. Guibedo, since your trees killed all those people, you’ve been one of the most sought-after men in the world!”

“Ach. That was an accident! I was only making it so the tree could fix its own absorption toilet. And when a plant thinks you don’t like it, it doesn’t grow so good, and some of the toilets grew in the beds and absorbed a few people.”

“A few people! You sent those seeds to some of the most influential people in the world. Thousands of them were killed!”

She even gets mad like my Hilde did. “That many people can starve to death in Africa, and nobody cares enough to give them a sandwich. No! The problem was that they were all big shots. And the worst crime that a big shot can think of is killing a big shot. Anyway, I got all that fixed now. The worst thing that can happen is if you hate your tree, the food gets not so good.

“Food! Hey, Liebchen! Would you get me some sauerbraten and some Boch beer, please? And maybe some strudel for Patty?”

“Yes, my lord!” Happy to be noticed at last, the faun pranced into the kitchen.

“Ach, Liebchen is so pretty.”

“Dr. Guibedo, what is she?”

“Liebchen is a faun. You see, my nephew, Heiny, he makes with the animals like I make with the plants. Fauns are sort of part of the tree. The brains of it. Liebchen is in empathic contact with Oakwood, my tree house here. She makes him grow the way I want, and she controls the food synthesizer. You just explain to Liebchen what you want, give her a couple of tries, and you got it. Liebchen and Oakwood will do anything to make you happy.”

“But I’ve been in Death, er—Life Valley half my vacation and I haven’t seen anything like her.”

“Well, you ain’t seen anything like my beautiful Oakwood who we’re sitting in now, either. You got to understand that the smarter animals have to grow up slow so they can learn. This Oakwood is eight months since I made the seed. Liebchen is four years old and is only now grown up. So we can’t make so many of them quickly. All of them so far had to be grown in bottles and educated by Heiny’s pretty wife.

“Oh, one thing you got to remember around Liebchen is to be all the time nice. Fauns get sick when you get mad at them. And they die if they think that nobody loves them. Heh! That’s about the only thing that can kill one. Well, that and radiation.”

Liebchen, her tail out proudly, pranced back in with a tray of food, put the tray on the coffee table, and curled up at Guibedo’s feet, her head against his lederhosen.

“You mean that all fauns are susceptible to radiation, Dr. Guibedo?” Partially because the food was in front of Guibedo and partially from Liebchen’s example, but mostly because, what with her scanty garments, she was cold, Patricia came around and sat very close to Guibedo.

“I mean that most of our engineered life forms are very susceptible to radiation, Patty. You see, with natural life forms, you got DNA in a double helix. Now, when a chunk of radiation hits it, it usually breaks only one strand, which usually grows back like it was but sometimes a little bit different which makes for mutation and, occasionally, improvement.”

Guibedo felt awkward being so close to Patricia, and he gulped his beer nervously. He would have moved away except that Liebchen was pressed tightly against his other side.

“But with an engineered life form, you don’t want it different. Mein Gott! What if some big shot would start breeding my pretty Liebchen to be soldiers in an army! Or worse yet, to sit behind some damn typewriter! No! What we use is single-strand DNA, a little bit like what they call RNA, so if some radiation hits it, the loop breaks and the cell maybe dies, but cannot be modified. This way my pretty Liebchen’s children will be absolutely identical to her, because she reproduces asexually.”

“Asexually! Do you mean that there aren’t any male fauns?” As Patricia talked, her pointed breast touched Guibedo’s arm. She wasn’t really conscious of it, but Guibedo was. Very.

Liebchen refilled the glasses.

Guibedo gulped nervously at his beer. This little girl could be my granddaughter. Might have been if them damn Nazi big shots hadn’t killed my Hilde. “That’s right. No need for boys. In nature, the boys is to mix up the genes so sometimes the kid gets the good parts of both his parents. And because, in higher animals, the kid and the mother can’t take care of themselves, the boys is to protect them.” Guibedo put his arm around Patricia. Sipping daintily at her glass, Patricia snuggled into the warmth of his pudgy side.

Liebchen filled their glasses again.

“But with engineered life forms, you designed it right the first time. And you got real humans around to protect the kids and pregnant girls, so you get a symbiotic relationship. And the other reason is that single-strand DNA can duplicate eighty times faster than double-strand, so they grow like blue lightning!”

“But, Dr. Guibedo, how can you have reproduction without sex?” Patricia said, trying to ask intelligent questions. This interview will make my career in broadcasting.

Hooh! This little one’s got sex on the brain, Guibedo thought.