Leo Frankowski

was after me to ‘take the cure’ for the last couple of years, and I
finally
decided that I was being pretty silly not to do it. As if what one person
looked like would make any difference to the human race.”
    “But that was so
important to you—being yourself, I mean.”
    “Talk to Dirk
about that one. I think some of his Buddhism is rubbing off on me. He claims that
there is no ‘self’; that every time you eat, you change the substance of your
body. That every minute the cells of your body die and are replaced, that you get a whole new body every
five or six years. And every person you meet, every
book you read changes your mind a little bit. I sure don’t have much in
common with that kid who walked out of
Germany in the winter of forty.”
    “No,”
Patricia said after a bit. “You did it for me. Because I was too
narrowminded to love you for what you were.”
    “Then I’m just
as narrowminded as you. I have my prejudices, too. Ach. Do you see me running
after Mama Guilespe? I like her, sure. But I don’t want her any more than you
wanted me six months ago.”
    “I—I tried to
get Liebchen to change me back,” Patricia said. “Isn’t that sad. I
begged her to change my own prejudices.”
    “Yah. But maybe
that’s the ticket, though.”
    “Having the
fauns reprogram everybody?”
    “No. That’s
phony. I was thinking maybe what if we let everybody look the way they wanted to
look. Think of the pain and suffering it would eliminate! Why shouldn’t Mama
Guliespe be as pretty as you and Mona? I got to talk this over with
Heiny.”
    “It’s a
beautiful idea, Martin. As it is, half of the human race is left out of things
because they’re not pretty or handsome.”
    “Yah. I think
maybe, in a couple of years, once things settle down, we do it.”
    “And their brains?
Could you make someone smarter if they wanted it?” Patricia asked
hopefully.
    “Sure. Same
thing. Why? Something wrong with your pretty head?”
    “It’s kind of
frustrating, being the dumbest kid on the block. It’s bad enough being lost when you
and Heinrich are talking, but I can’t even hold a candle to Mona.”
    “Well, that
figures. Heiny, he made Mona with an IQ of 160.”
    “Made her?”
    “Nobody told you?
Heiny was always a shy kid around girls, so as soon as he could, he made his own wife.”
    Patricia was silent
awhile. “He was that far along twenty years ago?”
    “No. Six years
ago. Mona is five. Heiny grew her full sized in a bottle and educated her with a
direct computer interface. Sent her to finishing school for a year and married her. Heh.
That Heiny.” Guibedo chuckled.
    “But she loves
him so much.”
    “And he loves
her. What does that have to do with making you a little bit smarter?”
    “You mean I
can?”
    “We can start
this afternoon if you want. Anything else you want changed? Maybe a little bigger around the…”
He reached for one of Patricia’s breasts.
    She slapped his hand
away. They sat in silence for a few minutes, then Patricia said, “Martin, do you really think that we can start over again?”
    “I think that
we can try.”
     
    Two weeks later
Guibedo, Patricia, and the Copernicks, along with the fauns and Dirk, were
sprawled out in Pinecroft’s enormous living room.
    “It feels so
good to relax,” Copernick said, working on a martini. “I think I’ll sleep
for about a week. We’re over the hump now. The food trees are finally producing, and the
cities have been pretty much evacuated. The plagues have been licked, and the western
hemisphere is fairly tranquil. The LDUs are massing to cross over into Asia, and with the
experiences they’ve had here, they shouldn’t have too much trouble getting the
eastern hemisphere
squared away.”
    “You’ve done
such a magnificient job,” Patricia said. “Without you and Martin, I don’t
think civilization would have made it.”
    “I haven’t much thought about it,
really. It’s been mostly a matter of beating
down one brush fire after another.”
    “The world will
never be able to properly repay you,” Patricia said.
    “I hope
not!” Guibedo said. “Don’t go building any statues to us; we
ain’t dead yet. The other reason I made this new body of mine was all the
little old ladies and dirty kids gushing all over me.” He turned toward Copernick.
“Heiny, you thought over that self— improvement plan I mentioned to you?”
    “Some. But I
think we ought to give the idea a year or two to gel before we do