“Thanks.” Guibedo stepped into the elevator and thought,
Heinrich Copernick sat back, talking to two hemispherical mounds on his workbench. One was a meter across, the other a third of that.
“You both realize that, though parts of a multinodal communications net, you are really a single multiperson—ality organism. Refusing to talk to each other is extremely adolescent behavior. Now go on with what happened.”
“Yes, my lord,” the larger mound said. “So I said to myself, ‘What is your conception of spaciotemporal reality?’ And I answered me, ‘What?’ Now, how can I communicate with myself when my mental facilities are so different from my own?”
“Just keep working on it,” Heinrich said. “Oh, Uncle Martin! So good to see you. What do you think of my latest?”
“Well, he is schmarter than the other one what you made, Heiny.”
“Which other one?”
“You know. That big dummy what all the time dragged his knuckles in his shit.”
“You must mean the simian-variation labor and defense unit,” Heinrich said. “I’ve pretty much given up on that whole series. Redesigning existing bioforms turned out to be considerably more difficult than I had originally estimated.”
“Yah. Told you so. Putzing around with natural—growed life forms is like trying to build a wristwatch in a junkyard. You is better off in a machine shop. It takes maybe a little bit longer, but you know what you got.”
“It was just that my initial experiments with existing bioforms were so successful, Uncle Martin.”
“Well, if you want to call making yourself look like a gladiator in an Italian movie a successful experiment, you go ahead.”
“I can see nothing wrong with increasing my own strength and stamina.”
“Sure. That’s fine. But the green eyes and the wavy black hair and the baby-smooth complexion, Heiny? Kid stuff! You’re seventy years old and you oughta be above that kind of thing.”
“I’m entitled to a little fun.”
“And what do you need with being seven feet tall for, anyway?”
“For one thing, it hides the size of my head,” Copernick said. “How is your end of it going, Uncle Martin?”
“Just fine and ahead of schedule. My tree houses are getting real popular. Eleven separate species are in public use, with nine more in the advanced experimental stage. My best estimates are one point five million inhabited tree houses and eight million more growing up. Seven million people are living in them right now!” Guibedo glowed with pride.
“Excellent! That’s almost one tenth of one percent of the world’s population.”
“The progression is a geometrical one,” Guibedo said. “We’re almost there, in a coupla years.”
“I wasn’t being facetious, Uncle Martin. I’m genuinely proud of you. How about the heavy-metal extraction project?”
“That’s what I came over here to tell you about. Those kidney trees we planted over the old mines are all growed up.”
“Kidney trees?”
“Yah. I call them that because the extraction glands work just like a human kidney, getting rid of poisonous substances.”
“Like gold, silver, and platinum.” Heinrich laughed. “But are they working?”
“So-so. I think maybe I should have made the mercury come inside of cherries instead of grapefruits. When they fall off the tree, they go schpritzing all over the place. And the mercury gets absorbed by the roots and goes up to the top of the tree, and comes schpritzing down again. Son of a gun, shit. If that mercury was orange paint, I’d look like a pumpkin.”
“You know, Uncle Martin, I could take care of your weight problem pretty easily.”
“What problem? I like being me. And the ground is covered with grapefruit rinds.”
“Nothing serious, we can rig nets or something. But what about the other metals?”
“Oh, that’s pretty good, even if the trees are overworked with the mercury. I got a lot of golden apples and platinum pears out in the truck. I didn’t have room for the silver pinecones or the osmium cherries.”
“Blade! Attention! Central Coordination Unit here.”
A multicolor LDU laid aside the history text that he was reading and trotted over to the CCU’s Input/Output unit in his barracks. “Sir!”
“Blade, take your platoon and unload Lord Guibedo’s truck. Assay the contents and report. Build a smelter and convert the gold into standard twenty-pound bars. Store the platinum for the time being.”
“Sir!”
“A truckload of gold and platinum!” Heinrich said. “Great! Now we can afford to exercise our option to purchase on the land we planted the trees on.”
“And you better do it in a hurry, kid,” Guibedo said. “And get a big fence around it. I saw a troop of boys out hiking, maybe two miles from the main grove.”
“Vintovka! Attention! Central Coordination Unit here.”
“Sir!”
“Vintovka, a troop of boys is on the march two miles north of the heavy-metal extraction grove. I want them under continuous observation. Launch four observation birds, different species, rotation at ten-minute intervals. If the boys come within one mile of the grove, notify me.”
“Sir!”
“I’ll get a lawyer right on it, Uncle Martin. Or better still, this would be a good project for the Central Coordination Unit.”
“Crockett and Felderstein.”
“Mark? Heinrich Copernick here,” the Central Coordination Unit said. “I’ve decided to exercise my option on the old Golden Hoard mines. Can you arrange a closing for next Tuesday morning, say ten a.m. at your office?”
“That’s only six days away, but my clients have a clear title. Sure. You figure there’s some life in those old mines?”
“I think it’s worth a try. I’ll bring a certified check for $950,000 with me. You can handle the title insurance, prorations, and so on.”
“My usual two percent?”
“Bullshit! Fifty dollars per hour. Take it or leave it.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Kemper, Lodge, and Smith.”
“Barry? Heinrich Copernick here,” the CCU said.
“How are you, Heinrich?”
“Great. Barry, I’m reopening the old Golden Hoard mines. Would you file incorporation papers for a general mining company. Call it Golden Hoard, Inc., if you can.”
“Sure. Who are the incorporators and what’s the stock split?”
“You, Mona, and myself, with one share, ten thousand shares, and twenty thousand shares, respectively.”
“I only get one lousy share?”
“So what do you want for nothing?”
“My usual. Fifty bucks an hour.”
“Done. Crockett and Felderstein are handling the closing.”
