Copernick's Rebellion

Chapter Eleven AUGUST 30, 2003

From the point where Hastings was ejected from his plane to the outskirts of Life Valley was four hundred miles as the jet flies. It was more than twice that for a man who has to walk and live off the land.

Hastings was forced to consider fifteen miles a day to be good speed, and often he didn’t achieve it. But Hastings’ character and temperament were as solid as concrete. And like concrete, the more he was stressed, the more rigid he became. His small lean frame became thinner and harder from the continuous walking. His mind became narrower and harder as well.

Guibedo and Copernick had become for him the personification of all that was evil. They had murdered his family. They had destroyed his country. They had taken from him all that could possibly be good in the world.

Hastings had become something less than a human being. He had become a machine. A machine with only one function.

Vengeance.

Yet his intelligence never failed him.

He burned his uniform and dressed himself in rugged camping clothes that he found in Paradise, Nevada. He let his hair and beard grow long to blend into the crowds of refugees.

In an abandoned electronics repair store, he cobbled together a white-noise generator from a pocket radio. He took apart a choke coil and wove the fine copper wire into a tight-fitting skull cap. He spent hours fitting the cap so that his long hair went through it and the cap wasn’t noticeable at a distance. He put the radio in his shirt pocket and ran a wire under his arm to the skull cap at the back of his neck. Such a contrivance would have stopped a human telepath; it might work on the gene-engineered monsters, as well.

He found a strip of titanium in an abandoned workshop at Nellis Air Force Base, and painstakingly ground it into a gutting knife. He ripped the element from an electrical heater and fashioned the nichrome wire into a garrotte. In the explosives shed behind an abandoned air police office he found three bricks of C-4 explosive. Plastique. But the electrical detonators with them had had iron magnetos, and were useless.

Three weeks later at a construction site in Good Springs, he found some blasting caps with chemical fuses.

His confidence was starting to match his determination. The only way to stop a good man is to kill him.

And good men are damned hard to kill!

Dirk trotted into Guibedo’s workshop at Oakwood. Intent on his work, Guibedo was hunched over his incredibly ornate microscalpel.

“My lord.”

“Hi, Dirk.” Guibedo didn’t turn from his work. “I’ll be with you in five minutes. Such a beauty this one’s going to be, Dirk. It’s an eighty-foot Viking long boat with a square sail, oars, shields, and everything. Heiny’s gonna make an animal to work the oars and be the dragon’s head. It’s only got a ten-inch draft, so we can take it up the rivers and canals, but we can still take it on the ocean. Some fun, huh?”

“I’m sure it will provide considerable amusement, my lord,” Dirk said dryly. The frivolity of these humans!

“So, how did everything go?”

“In general, things are proceeding according to the plan, my lord, except that, for logistical reasons, the contingent heading for the eastern hemisphere has had to turn back.”

“So? What happened?”

“There are simply not a sufficient number of tree houses in Alaska and Kamchatka to support a meaningful number of LDUs in transit to Siberia. If we sent more than a thousand they would starve to death en route. Also, there is more work to be done in the western hemisphere alone than the LDUs assigned there can handle. The eastern seaboard of the U.S. is in far worse shape than we had anticipated. Therefore, Lord Copernick has delayed our entry into Asia for two months, when the food trees will be producing sufficiently to support us on the trip.”

“Well, if we got to, we got to.”

“We now cover the North American continent, except for Nova Scotia, and the first units have reached Columbia. We have suffered six hundred fifty-seven disabling casualities today, including seventy-two deaths…”

“Dirk, don’t treat your brothers like numbers,” Guibedo said, finishing up his work and turning to the LDU. “Someday when we have time, you can tell me each of their stories, so I can remember them.”

“Sorry, my lord. I didn’t mean to degrade their actions.”

“You didn’t, Dirk. It’s just that numbers are so cold. So how did the trip go? Everybody come back okay?”

“The original party came back in the same physical shape that they left in, my lord. We delivered nine tons of supplies to those who needed them and returned with forty-two sick and injured refugees. Winnie is loading up for another trip in the morning.”

“And the girls?”

“They’ll be along in an hour or so. I’ve been working for you now for three years, my lord. Besides being my boss, you’ve been my teacher and my mentor. And if I may be permitted the honor, you have also been my friend.”

“Well, I like you, too, Dirk. I think next to Heiny and the girls, you’re the only friend I’ve got. But what are you trying to say?”

“My lord—we have made another error.”

“So that’s troubling you? Look, Dirk. When you send out a lot of soldiers, you know that some things are going to go wrong. But the good your brothers have done is so much greater than the bad, that you have nothing to be ashamed of.”

“But it’s—”

“Look, Dirk. You got to understand that you’re really a bunch of kids. All of you. Your brothers, the telephone, the fauns, the TRACs. None of you are over four years old! Nobody expects perfection out of children. Making mistakes is part of growing up. If you’re still doing big things wrong when you’re twenty, you should worry about it then. But for now, be lenient with yourself a little bit, or you’re going to rot your guts out.”

“I don’t have any guts, my lord. Merely an absorption cavity. But the point is—”

“Dirk, your brothers are doing a fine job. Now I don’t want to hear any more about this.”

“It isn’t that, my lord. This concerns your own family, Patricia and Liebchen.”

“What!” Guibedo lumbered to his feet.

“They are unharmed, my lord. But a situation has occurred which requires your advice and consent to resolve. I felt that, as your friend, I should be the one to explain it to you. Perhaps, if you would sit down, I should tell it all from the beginning.”

“Just so you get it all out.” Guibedo sat down heavily.

“Four months ago, my lord, you recall there was an unpleasant incident on Lady Patricia’s first night here.”

“I try to forget it.”

“Then you recall that you desired my Lady Patricia for purposes of friendship and mating…”

“That’s maybe a crude way to say it.”

“Sorry, my lord. The choice of words is difficult.”

“Just get on with it.”

“Yes, my lord. But she at first rejected you.”

“Well, I was pretty drunk and smelly. Anyway, a girl needs time to make up her mind.”

“There was more to it than that, my lord. It seems that with some human females, certain physical characteristics are required of a male to elicit a proper sexual response. Common among these characteristics are height, slenderness, and youth.”

“So you’re saying that I’m too old and fat and ugly to get a girl?”

“And short, my lord.” Dirk was trying to be precise.

“And short, damn it! Look. A lot of people don’t care what somebody looks like on the outside. And the fact that I’ve got one hell of a pretty girl proves it!”

“You’re right, of course, in many instances, my lord. But in this particular case, well, what my Lady Patricia thinks you look like is at considerable variance with your actual physical appearance.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“The morning after that night, my lord, Liebchen saw that Lady Patricia’s programming was causing both herself and you considerable pain. Therefore, in order to ensure the happiness of all concerned, Liebchen modified Lady Patricia’s perceptions and programming, to make her eager to stay here with you.”

‘“What? So how could Liebchen do such a thing? Liebchen controls trees, not people.”

“Liebchen can control a synthesizer, my lord. She doesn’t do it rationally, but intuitively. She has no real concept of the chemical compounds produced, but she can sense whether they are the right thing or not. In any event, Liebchen caused a substance to be produced that reduced Lady Patricia’s need-achievement index by thirty points, increased her need-affiliation by a similar amount, and modified her perceptions relative to your physical appearance.”

“Ach.” Guibedo was beginning to believe what Dirk was telling him. Little pieces were starting to fall together: the ridiculously small sweater she had knitted him for his birthday, the time she had tried to sit down beside him in a canoe. “So what does my Patty think I look like?”

“Six one, my lord, one hundred eighty-four pounds. Black hair graying at the temples. The physical build of an Olympic swimmer.”

“Son of a gun, shit! Does Patty know what happened?”

“No, my lord. We were hesitant to take any action without consulting you.”

“We?”

“Lady Mona deduced the truth on the trip, my lord.”

“And how long have you known about this, Dirk?”

“Since the modification occurred, my lord. Four months.”

“And you didn’t tell me about it?”

“My reasoning was the same as Liebchen’s, my lord. It seemed to increase the happiness of all concerned. It was only when I observed Lady Mona’s extreme emotional reaction to this form of chemical programming that I felt that it might be an error. After all, Lord Copernick has reprogrammed, by different means, most of the intruders that we have apprehended.”

“That was self-defense! When somebody is trying to kill you, you’ve either got to kill him back or do something that makes him not want to kill you any more. But to brainwash a pretty young girl just because a fat old man is horny! That’s terrible, Dirk.”

“I see my error, my lord. What course of action do you recommend?”

“That’s obvious, isn’t it? We try to put Patty back the way she was when she first got here. Tell me when Liebchen gets here.”

“Liebchen arrived with me, my lord. She has been waiting in the living room for your decision.”

“And worrying herself sick, huh?”

“Literally, my lord.”

Chikuto was the closest thing the LDUs had to an explosives expert. He had carefully read all of the manuals available on the subject, but he had absolutely no practical experience with them. Aside from fireworks, no one in Life Valley had any need or use for explosives, let alone a desire to actually make any.

Nonetheless, when General Hastings entered the valley with a half pound of plastic explosives taped to his right ankle, Chikuto was judged to be the one most competent to disarm the bomb.

It was two o’clock in the morning.

Screened by two dozen of his brothers, who had cleared the area of bystanders, Chikuto crept up to the park bench that served as Hastings’ bed. Flat on his back, Hastings snored loudly.

Hastings’ left ankle was resting on top of his right, and, working in almost complete darkness, Chikuto gently lifted it off the bomb. Hastings snorted but remained asleep.

Working carefully by touch, Chikuto removed the blasting cap and scooped the old, hot, and sticky C-4 out of its package. Since the manuals had said that plastique resembled gray modeling clay, he had brought a half pound of clay with him. His fingers were thick with C-4 as he gently pushed the kneaded clay into the package.

All told, between the C-4 reintroduced into the package from Chikuto’s fingers and that which had remained stuck to the package, the “disarmed” bomb contained more than an ounce of plastique.

Chikuto’s last mistake was to replace the blasting cap. He hadn’t the slightest concept of what the cap alone could do.

Liebchen sat tiny in the huge living room, biting her lip, tears dropping from her chin, shivering as with fever. They’d throw her out, of course. They wouldn’t let anyone as wicked and evil as she was raise human children or even her own babies. They’d make her work in a restaurant and there’d be a lot of people, but none of them would love her. Even her sisters and Lady Mona wouldn’t want to see her again. Maybe they’d make her work with Mole in the tunnels, and Mole would hate her and it would be terrible. Maybe she should just die. Maybe that would be best.

Guibedo came in, his face expressionless, and Liebchen’s heart almost stopped. But when he saw her quivering, he softened and sat down beside her.

“It’s okay, little one.” Guibedo put a thick arm around her and held her to him like a father consoling his daughter. “Everything is going to be all right.”

Dirk came in and sat quietly at their feet, eager to be a part of their being together.

Guibedo said, “I guess maybe this is my fault, because I don’t explain what is happening, because I make easy things look hard and hard things look easy. You two, you see me or Heiny work with gene sequences and computer simulations for two or three months, and then spend ten or twenty hours at a microscalpel and presto! Life!

“What you don’t see is the four billion years that had to go by before I could sit at that chair. Four billion years of tiny random modifications, with only one in ten billion worth preserving. Ten billion organisms doomed to an early death so that one could be a little bit faster or stronger or smarter or more efficient. And when that one finally came along, it spread and multiplied at the expense of its own parents, forcing them out, taking their food, and, in the course of many painful years, completely eradicating all of its own species that don’t have that tiny modification.

“It was four billion years of killing and being killed, eating and being eaten. Until at last a single species, man, was evolved that was so smart and versatile and tough that after only a million years it attained a complete domination over its environment. Only when it became that strong could it have the time and the ability and the inclination to be gentle, to hope for a world where there would be room enough for all, a world bro-. ken away from the endless cycle of suffering.

“This is the world that we are now trying to build, and you two kids are part of that world. In a way, you are our children.

“Yet you are different. Neither of your species, or any species that we design, is capable of random genetic modification. This is my gift to you, because you will never have to undergo the pain that my ancestors did. But it is also a curse, for along with the suffering there was also a glory, a vision of eventual uplift and improvement that your species cannot participate in. You see, we do not want to be eaten up by our own children.

“But four billion years of experimentation cannot be treated lightly. The processes that produced us humans must continue. We can make life more pleasant and interesting, but we must not reject our destiny.

“Do you understand now why it was so wrong for you, our children, to modify us?”

“Yes, my lord,” Dirk whispered.

“And you, Liebchen?”

“I promise I’ll never do anything like that again, my lord. And I’ll make sure that none of my sisters ever do.”

“That’s good. But there is one thing you must do. You must undo the damage that you have done. Can you do that, Liebchen? Can you make Patty exactly as she was before she came here?”

“I think so. Exactly? Don’t you want her to remember what’s happened?”

“No, no. She should remember everything. What she did, what she saw, or thought she saw.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Mona and Patricia finished supervising the packing for the next trip out. More liquids, less solid food—thirst had been more important than hunger to the people they’d seen—and some euphorics to lift the refugees’ depression.

“Coffee?” Mona asked as they trudged up three flights of stairs to her own kitchen. The tree house had largely recovered from the fire, but the elevator was an animal that had never had a chance to reproduce. It had died in the fire, and a new germ cell would have to be cut, but that was low on Copernick’s list of priorities.

“Love to,” Patricia said, annoyed with herself for being annoyed at having to walk up seventy feet of stairs, after all the suffering they had seen that day.

Over the second cup of coffee, Mona said, “I think I know what the cause of your problem is.”

“You mean the strange flashes about Martin?”

“Yes. And the guilt you’ve felt about not feeling guilt about your old job, and all the rest.”

“So what’s your theory?” Patricia asked.

“First some facts. In the first place, Uncle Martin is not a handsome young athlete. He’s a ninety-four-year-old former biology teacher.”

“Well, I know that. I did a documentary once on his life.”

“I mean he doesn’t look the way you think he looks. He really looks the way he does in your flashes. He’s only five feet tall and weighs almost three hundred pounds. His hair is white and his mustache is ridiculous.”

“You’re lying.”

“Try to be rational,” Mona said. “How could anyone that old look anything like what you think he does?”

“Well, he couldn’t fit your description, either. I mean, they work with living things…”

“And could have modified themselves? The fact is they did. Do you remember what Heinrich looked like before he modified himself? He had rickets and pellagra before he was ten years old. He was stunted and crippled and afraid of the world. When he could, he totally modified and rejuvenated himself. Uncle Martin felt that this was morally wrong, and while he accepted a limited rejuvenation, he refused to let Heinrich go any further. He looks now just as he did when he was fifty.”

“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.”