Leo Frankowski

and I can send him a message if you like.”
    “Tell
him…” Patricia halted, uncertain.
    “Yes, my
lady?”
    “Oh, just forget
it!”
    “As you
wish.” The CCU was incapable of forgetting anything, of course.
    Patricia was finishing
breakfast when Liebchen walked in.
    “Liebchen! What
are you doing here?”
    “I—I’m visiting my sisters, Lady
Patricia,” Liebchen said uncomfortably.
    “Well, sit down and join me.”
    “You’re not mad
at me anymore?”
    “I was never
really mad at you. You only tried to make me happy, and you did.”
    “I did?” Liebchen was delighted
and scooted up on an oversized chair next to
Patricia. “I didn’t think that you’d
want to be my friend anymore.”
    “Well, I guess we
were all pretty upset when we found out about your programming experiment.”
Patricia took
another sip of tea. “I’ve missed you.”
    “Oh, I missed
you, too!” Liebchen was grinning and her tail was wagging furiously. “I was afraid that you’d
never want to see me again!”
    “Well, we’re
friends again, Liebchen.” Patricia poured herself another cup of tea. “How’s
Martin?”
    “He’s
fine.” Liebchen’s tail stopped wagging.
    “Is he
happy?”
    “He’s… happier
than he was, but not as happy as he used to be. With you, I mean.”
    “I’d like to see him again,”
Patricia said seriously.
    “He’d like to see
you, I think.”
    “Is he here?”
    Liebchen thought a
second. “Here” could mean any territorial subdivision that the speaker was
in. This house,
this continent, this city. Liebchen decided that the proper context was “this
room” and said, “No.”
    “Liebchen?”
Patricia stared at the table. “—I haven’t been celibate since… that night. I’ve
had a lot of guys. But I never wanted to see any of them the next day. Do you understand
what I mean?”
    Liebchen, of course,
didn’t understand at all. But she said, “You found them to be unsuitable, my lady?”
    “Sort of. You see, the four months I
had with Martin were the happiest months in
my life. You gave them to me. You
helped take it away. Can I have it back? Please?”
    “I … don’t know what you
mean, my lady.”
    “I mean, make me
some more of that pink stuff.”
    “I don’t think I
can. I mean I’m not allowed.” It was hard for Liebchen to deny any
request.
    “But wasn’t that because you did it
without my per mission?”
    “I don’t know!
Lord Guibedo talked for a long while about how it took four billion years to
make people and it was wrong to change them. I didn’t understand it all, but I promised not to do it again.”
Liebchen wasn’t sure what was right.
    “I’m sure he
meant ‘without permission.’ Can’t you just make me some and not tell anybody about
it?” Patricia
pleaded. “I can keep a secret. You could make me some right now, and my unhappiness
would all be over.”
    “Well, I couldn’t
do it here, my lady.” Liebchen couldn’t face Patricia. “This isn’t my
tree house. I couldn’t work the synthesizer.”
    “Well, how about Colleen or
Ohura?”
    “They don’t know
how.”
    Much to Liebchen’s relief, Mona walked in
just then. “Morning, Patty. Liebchen,
Colleen was asking about you.”
    Liebchen scurried
out, happy to leave an awkward situation.
    “Well, you did sleep till noon,”
Patricia said.
    “And I feel
great! Let’s go see how the valley is doing.”
    “You haven’t had
breakfast yet.”
    “We can catch a bite at Mama
Guilespe’s.”
    They wandered through
the valley, winding their way through the people.
    “It’s so crowded,” Patricia
complained. “It’s as bad as Manhattan Island was.”
    “‘As bad as,’
huh. It’s good to see you developing some taste. The telephone says that the
population of Life Valley is now over ten million, and the valley was only designed to hold
two-hundred-fifty thousand. It’ll be five months before the population density
gets down to something
reasonable again.”
    “Look at that! The mountains are
green!”
    “Tree
houses,” Mona said. “Heinrich has forbidden any tree houses to
crowd out the Sequoias, but it’s solid tree houses growing right up to them.
And they’re solid all the way
to Lake Mead. Once they’re mature, it’ll take the
pressure off of us here. I just hope that while the refugees are here, they pick up some of our life
style.”
    Patricia had adopted
Mona’s daytime clothing style, topless with a sarong wrapped around her hips, but most
of the