Leo Frankowski

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.”
    “I’ll drop by
and keep them honest.”
    “I doubt that,
but drop by anyway. And have the incorporation papers ready to sign.”
     
    “Central
Coordination Unit?” Guibedo said. “You mean this big round thing you were
talking to when I came in? He
sounded pretty mixed up to me. You think he’s ready for any kind of a
job?”
    “Certainly. Oh,
just now there’s a slight problem with integrating the auxiliary ganglion I
told him to grow—”
    “You told him
to grow!” Guibedo yelled. “You’re letting an intelligent bioengineering
creation control its own growth?”
    “I wouldn’t
ordinarily, of course. But in this case it’s quite necessary. You see, once the
world’s economy is converted
from a technological to a biological base, com munications and a certain amount of central coordination are still
going to be necessary. It will be quite impossible to maintain the telephones, computers, et cetera,
without a factory system to produce
spare parts.
    “I plan to have
the Central Coordination Unit grow a ganglion into each of your tree houses,
with an input/ output unit in
each room. These ganglia, being part of a single
organism, will be in constant communication with each other, so sending a
message will be simply a matter of talking to your local ganglion.”
     
    “Schwartz and Company.”
    “Duffy? Heiny Copernick here,”
the CCU said.
    “Heiny! I ain’t seen you in six
months!”
    “Don’t you feel glad? What’s gold
selling at?”
    “Seven hundred and eighteen dollars
an ounce. How much you wanna buy?”
    “Not buy. Sell. I got sixty-six
thousand ounces to un load.”
    “Whee! How hot is it?”
    “Ice cold. Dug
it up myself. Let’s see… That’s just under fifty million.”
    “Well, there’s
my ten percent commission to figure in. But I ain’t got that kind of money, Heiny!”
    “Five percent.
Don’t get greedy. I’ll deliver it to you first thing Monday morning. You put a million
in my account
by noon, then a million a day until you’re paid up.”
    “You gonna
trust me for that kind of money?”
    “I can think of four good reasons why
I should. Want me to list them?”
    “Not over the
phone, for God’s sake!”
     
    *
    “So what you got
here is a telephone system. Well, at least it’ll stop the phone wires from being
ripped off when the tree house grows,” Guibedo said.
    “He’s not quite
a telephone, Uncle Martin, in that communication isn’t instantaneous. The
maximum speed I’ve been able to get in a nerve pulse is one hundred twenty meters per
second. But you will be able to send a message.
    “He more than
makes up for his lack of speed. My brainchild, if you’ll excuse the pun, has
twenty-two times the gray matter of a human brain. He is presently tied in with
the wire services, most of the larger computers in the country, and two other phone
lines. He’s already loaded a quarter of the Library of Congress into his memory.
    “While most of
his gray matter is used for input, output, and memory, his IQ is quite
unmeasurable. I’d guess perhaps four hundred.”
    “Well, if he’s
so schmart, what makes you think that you’re going to stay boss, Heiny?”
    “That’s hardly a
worry, Uncle Martin. In the first place, I’ve instilled a strong psychological
dependence into him. He could no more disobey me—or you—than a dog could attack
his master.”
    “That’s been
known to happen.”
    “In the second
place, he’s a hell of a nice guy.”
    “So was Hitler
when he wanted to be.”
    “And in the
third place, he eats a fluid that only your trees can produce. And your trees can survive only if they have a regular supply of human excreta in
their absorption toilets. He
requires humans for his very existence.”
    “Ach! If he’s
so schmart, he can figure a way around that one.”
    “You and I are
the only beings who can operate a microscalpel, Uncle Martin. I’ve instilled an
absolute mental
block in the CCU covering the fields of