Leo Frankowski - Copernick's Rebellion

“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.”