Leo Frankowski - Copernick's Rebellion

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?”