Leo Frankowski

most likely would have refused. But my main reason was that I agreed with
your basic motivation. You made Lord Guibedo happy. Here was a sentient being who
was ultimately responsible for saving his entire species from ex tinction. At the rate they were going,
humans would have wiped themselves out in a
century or so, but for Guibedo’s
biological techniques. Here was a being who was ultimately responsible for my
own existence, and both of yours.
Lord Copernick, after all, built on his technology. Yet he was lonely and lacked a mate. There are five billion human females on this planet, and
not one stepped up to comfort him.
    “The debt that
is owed him couldn’t be wiped out by a million females, let alone one.”
    “You love him,
too, don’t you,” Liebchen said.
    “Love?” the CCU said. “I’m
not sure I understand that concept. But I
do understand our obligation to him, and to the human race in general.
In a sense, they are our parents, and we
owe it to them to make their twilight years
as pleasant as possible.”
    “Twilight
years?” Dirk asked. “Are they having racial difficulties?”
    “It is difficult
to make accurate predictions beyond five or six hundred years,” the CCU
said. “But they are such an irrational and violent species that I would consider it unlikely
for them to be around in three or four millennia. Quite a short time span by our
standards.
    “Furthermore, we require them for our
own existence. We are symbionts; we require human feces to keep the trees alive.”
    “Now you’re being
silly!” Liebchen said. “Why, I can always have the synthesizers turn out shit if we ever need it.”
    “Interesting,”
the CCU said. “I wonder why I didn’t think of that. Probably one of my
mental blocks. But I still favor keeping them around.”
    “Oh, so do
I,” Liebchen said. “Taking care of people is kind of
fun.”
    About the Author
     
    Leo Frankowski was born on February
13, 1943, in Detroit. By the
time he was thirty-five, he had held more than a hundred different positions, ranging from
“scientist” in an electro-optics research lab to gardener to chief engineer. Much of
his work was in chemical, optical,
and physical instrumentation, and earned him a number of U.S. patents.
    Since 1977, he has owned and managed
Sterling Manufacturing &
Design, the only mostly female engineering company in the Detroit area. Sterling designs electrical and
fluid power controls for automatic special machines. It also produces Formital®, a stretchy metal that is useful in fixing rusty cars.
    Last week, he acquired Reluctant Publishing, Ltd., and is
now the editor of Stardate Magazine, because
it looked like fun.
    He is active in MENSA, the Society
for Creative Anachronism and science-fiction
fandom. He is an officer in two writers’ clubs, and his hobbies include reading, drinking, chess, kite flying, dancing girls, and cooking.
    A lifelong bachelor, he lives alone
in Sterling Heights, Michigan.
     
    A Del Rey Book
    Published by Ballantine Books
    Copyright © 1987 by Leo A. Frankowski
    All rights reserved under
International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United
States of America by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New
York, and simultaneously
in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
    Library of Congress Catalog Card
Number: 86-91592
    ISBN 0-345-34033-7
    Manufactured in the United States of
America
    First Edition: April 1987 Second Printing: July 1989
    Cover Art by Ralph McQuarrie
     
    ebook scan & proof by MOS1,
December 2004