Leo Frankowski

entered.
    “Thought you
should see this, sir.”
    It was a day-old National
Enquirer. On the front page was a color photograph of a desiccated
female corpse half absorbed by a tree-house bed. From a delicate web of roots, a wedding
band gleamed.
    It was out of his hands now; Hastings went
to his empty apartment to sleep and to cry.
     
    A week later Hastings
was back at his desk. He felt neither grief nor anger. Only a deadly emptiness that would never leave
him.
    A knock at the door
was immediately followed by Sergeant Pendelton. “They got him, sir.”
    “Got who?”
    “Martin Guibedo, sir. The Michigan
State Police picked him up north of
Kalamazoo.”
    “It took them
long enough.”
    “These people
with tree houses rarely need to use credit cards, sir. It makes them hard to
find. Here’s the report on tree-house occupation, sir.”
    “Give it to me
verbally.”
    “Yes, sir.
Basically, people have abandoned the Laurel series houses. But three other species
are in common use, and the people in them generally intend to continue using
them.”
    “Idiots.”
    “Yes, sir. The
consensus is that it was a technical malfunction in a single product line, and
that it does not cast discredit on the entire concept of bioengineering. It’s rather like the
public reaction to the Hindenburg disaster seventy years ago, when people ceased
using airships but continued to use airplanes.”
    “Huh. Anything
else?”
    “Yes sir.
Section Six requests that you visit them.”
     
    “What is it,
Ben?” Hastings said.
    “We’re out of business, George.
Nobody but Mike can pick up anything but a
loud roar. It gives you a headache.”
    “Somebody is
jamming you?”
    “We don’t know,
George. But if so, they’re jamming everybody. We just got a phone call— a
phone call, mind you —from Dolokov’s group at Minsk. Looks like the whole fraternity of
telepaths is out of work.”
    “Anything like
this ever happen before?”
    “We’ve picked
up tiny spurts of interference before, George. The sort of unintelligible stuff
you sometimes pick up near an
unborn child, only much louder and more
abrupt. There has always been a lot of static on the line, but nothing like
this.”
    “What about
Mike?”
    “He’s gone
insane, George. He keeps yelling about lords and alpha numbers and digging in the
ground and similar drivel. Nothing that makes sense.”
    “Have you
sedated him yet?”
    “No point to
it, George. With this racket going on, he can’t possibly affect the rest of us, and the
transcribers might find something of interest in his babble.”
    “Well, do as
you feel best. But I suggest that you keep someone posted by Mike in case the
jamming stops.”
    “Okay, George. We
don’t have anything else to do, anyway.”
     
    “Oh, yer that Professor Guibedo,” Jimmy Saunton said, trying to control his shakes. “The
guy with the tree houses. Somebody was telling me about ‘em. What do I have to do to get
one, Professor?”
    “Can you eat and
make shit?” Guibedo asked, looking past his cellmate to the iron bars that formed
the far wall.
“That’s all you got to do.”
    “Huh? Sure. But
what do I got to do to get one?” The little drunk was used to being ignored.
    “I just told
you!” Guibedo barked. “Ach. I ain’t really mad at you. But since
they arrested me, it’s been nothing but people, people, people, talking, talking, talking. I ain’t had no rest in three weeks.”
    The little drunk was
silent for a while. Then he said, “Sorry, Professor. Didn’t mean to rile
you.”
    “Well, I’m
sorry, too. This ain’t your fault. What were you asking about?”
    “About your
tree houses,” Jimmy said.
    “Oh, yeah. Well,
the important thing you got to remember is that a tree house is in a symbiotic
relationship with the people living inside it. It gives you a nice, comfortable
place to live and all the food and beer you want. You give it the
fertilizer it needs to stay alive and grow. That’s what caused all the trouble. Them big
shots I gave the Laurel trees to, they mostly used the tree just to show off with and
give parties in. Then they went and used the toilets in their regular
houses!”
    “Yeah, somebody
was saying that your trees ate a lot of people.”
    “I only made it
so that the tree would grow a new absorption toilet when the old one got
plugged up. The trouble was that a lot of them new toilets grew in the beds,” Guibedo
said.
    “Yeah, somebody
was saying that your trees ate a lot of