Copernick's Rebellion

The CCU I/O unit on the kitchen wall said, “My Lord Guibedo, Lord Copernick requests your presence at his tree house.”

“Telephone, tell him I’m going to take a couple days off this morning. I see him maybe Tuesday.”

“He said it was important, my lord. My Central Coordination Unit has compiled some critical information.”

“So what’s the information? You’re the same animal, aren’t you?”

“I am, my lord, but I didn’t tell me what it was.”

“Some coordination you got there. Tuesday!” Guibedo turned away from the telephone. “Hey, Dirk! Bring some cards. With you here, Patty, we can play two teams, you and Liebchen against me and Dirk, so they gotta play fair. With playing three-hand cutthroat, they let me all the time win.”

“Never, my lord,” Dirk said, a pinochle deck in his hand. His lateral tentacles were holding a book in front of his starboard eyes.

“Ach! You know, Patty, Dirk never used to lie until he started into philosophy. Dirk, what are you reading now?”

“The Shih Ching, my lord,” Dirk said, shuffling and dealing, “a poetry anthology commonly said to have been edited by Confucious.”

“Twenty-one!” Patty said. “Martin, how can Dirk read and play cards at the same time?” She still didn’t feel comfortable around the LDU.

“He’s got six pairs of brains, Patty. Heiny made him so he could figure strategy, tactics, and where he was putting his foot all at the same time. So right now, one chunk of him is reading, another chunk is playing cards, some other chunk better be keeping score, and part of him is probably gabbing with his brothers. Twenty- two.”

“Gabbing?” Patty said. “How?”

“They’re telepathic with each other,” Guibedo said, “not with you and me. Your bid, Liebchen.”

“Oh, pass! Dirk, pull in your eyes. You’re cheating again.”

Dirk retracted his yard long eye tentacles, turned a page of the book, and said, “Twenty-four.”

“Twenty-five. Martin, if you have practical telepathy, what do you need with the telephone?”

“Thirty. Telepathy has only got one channel, Patty. We humans only use it for emergencies, and this isn’t one of them.”

“I’m afraid it is, Uncle Martin,” Dirk said in Heinrich Copernick’s voice. “Please get over here as soon as you can.”

“But I wanted to show Patty around town this morning, Heiny. And I got a run and five aces and Dirk just gave me meld bid!”

“So play the hand later. Say, how about if I ask Mona to show Patty around, Uncle Martin? It’ll give the girls a chance to get acquainted.”

“Ach! Heiny, it better be good,” Guibedo said. “You gonna like Mona. Patty, we get together later on. I’ll call you.”

“How? I mean, if I’m going to be out all day—”

“The telephone knows where you’re at.”

“My mother doesn’t know where I am. Can I make a few calls?”

“It’s your house, too, Patty. If you call outside the valley, they get a telegram. Come on, Dirk, we go the low way,” Guibedo said, leaving.

Liebchen started cleaning up the kitchen, putting the cards away in four neat stacks and only peeking a little bit.

“Liebchen,” Patty said, “how do I, uh?…”

“The telephone, my lady? I’ll show you. Telephone, tell my sisters, Colleen and Ohura, that I think I have the day off, so I’ll be over to their house in an hour. And, telephone, be sure and warn me when Lord Guibedo starts home, so I can be here when he arrives.”

“Sure thing, Liebchen,” the local ganglia said.

“Just like that, Liebchen? How do you know its listening?” Patty asked.

“Oh, he’s always listening, my lady. He just isn’t allowed to speak unless spoken to. It’s rather a pity, he’s really very nice.”

“I’m sure. Telephone, please tell my mother that I’m in Death, I mean Life Valley, and that I’m having a wonderful time and I’ve met the nicest boy that she’s just got to meet. Uh, her address is…”

“Four ninety-one Seminole Drive, Boca Raton, my lady,” the telephone said.

“How did you know that?”

“When you moved in, my lady, I had your personal file loaded into my local ganglia from my Central Coordination Unit.”

“But how did it know?”

“The phone directory, obviously, my lady.”

“Oh. And could you tell my boss at NBC that everything is fine and I need another week’s vacation?”

“Happy to, my lady. Have a nice day,” the telephone said.

“Mother! This is Patty,” the CCU said. “Why, Patty! It’s so nice to hear from you.”

“Mother, it’s beautiful here in Acapulco. I wish you could come.”

“Well, not this time, dear. You aren’t lonely, are you?”

“Oh, no. Some of the girls from NBC are with me. The water is just wonderful.”

“That’s good, dear. Have a nice time.”

“Boss. Cambridge here,” the CCU said.

“Patty! Where the hell you been? I’ve been trying to find you for days.”

“Sorry, boss. Finding a telephone in Death Valley is like trying to find a telephone in Death Valley. Hey, this place is a dead end. Nothing but skid-row bums and blacks who can’t get on welfare. But I’ve got a definite lead on Guibedo. He’s in Minnesota. Okay if I track it down? I’ll need a couple more weeks.”

“Well, Patty, if you think it’s solid, go ahead. Take what time and money you need. But be careful. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“Thanks, boss. I’ll keep in touch.”

Guibedo was riding cross-legged on Dirk’s back, as Dirk trotted at thirty miles an hour down the tunnel that connected Guibedo’s Oakwood to Copernick’s Pinecroft.

“No offense, my lord,” Dirk said, “but I’ll be glad when Lord Copernick’s Transportation, Recreation, and Construction units grow up. I really wasn’t made for this sort of thing.”

“Me, too. I wasn’t either. Them TRACs will help. Can’t even keep a pipe lit. How do you read in this wind, anyhow?”

“With some difficulty, my lord. It’s just that if we LDUs had had a proper philosophical base earlier, certain… errors wouldn’t have taken place.”

“Yah. I know it troubles you, Dirk. Those eighty-five families and that boy hiker and all the rest. Those things were bad, and it’s good you should study so they don’t happen again. But don’t let it get you on the insides. The universe is a big place and all of us are just little people. We do the best we can, but it is impossible for us to know what all of the results of our actions will be, and some of our actions will be wrong. So sometimes we cause needless damage, suffering, and death.

“But if we waited until we were sure of the results before we took action, we would never take action at all. And when something must be done, it is better to do something wrong than to do nothing at all. Anyway, we’ve been able to fix up some of our mistakes.”

“I wish I could do something for the families we killed, my lord.”

“Look. We are out to change the world, Dirk. We have the power to do it. But whenever there is great power, there is also the possibility of great error. When we are done, the world will be a better place. In the meantime, we can only try to cause as little suffering as possible.”