There were a lot of people out, and in western fashion, they all seemed to have time to stop and chat. But nobody had ever met Dr. Guibedo.
At noon she had lunch with a tall bachelor who was disappointed when she wouldn’t stay, and she went on, talking to people, asking questions.
By five she decided it was time to head back and asked directions.
“The parking lot? Well, it’s in that direction. About eight miles as I recollect.”
By six it was in this direction, and about ten miles away. The walls pressed in on her, a horrid green jungle.
By seven she knew that she was hopelessly lost. She sat down, exhausted, on a park bench and fended off three pickup attempts in the growing dusk. She started to drift off into sleep.
“Land sakes, child! Are you sick?”
Patricia looked at the tiny, shriveled old woman in front of her. “What? Oh, no. I’m not sick. I’m just tired. Tired and lost.”
“Lost, huh? Well, you shouldn’t be out here in the dark. Ain’t proper, not for a young woman of any breeding.” The woman’s dress was thirty years out of date.
“Is it unsafe?”
“Unsafe? Well, I don’t recollect anybody being hurt. But there’s boys in this neighborhood who are downright rambunctious! Singing and carrying on till all hours! You just come along with me. My house is just around the corner, and there’s a spare room hasn’t been used in months. Well, up, child!”
Patricia obediently followed the old woman home.
At the end of the second day, she was told that she was sixteen miles from the parking lot.
On the third day, she hired a twelve-year-old boy to guide her back. Children had plenty of uses for money, and no social security checks.
She spent a day recuperating and cursing her boss at NBC. Then she went out again.
Patricia Cambridge parked her bicycle in the growing dusk by the largest private tree house she had ever seen. She was very unsure of herself as she knocked on the door. Two weeks of dead ends and false leads were telling on her. It opened.
“Can I be of service to you, my lady?”
Patricia was shocked by the creature’s appearance. While transparent blouses were in that season, going about bare-breasted was not. It was a minute or two before she noticed that while from the waist up her greeter looked like a well-developed adolescent, from the waist down she was more goat than human. And her ears were pointed.
“Uh, I’m Patricia Cambridge. Does Dr. Guibedo live here?”
“Yes, my lady. My Lord Guibedo has mentioned you. He is in his workshop. I shall tell him that you’re here. Please come in.”
Success!
The living room of the tree house was fabulous; comfort and beauty had been Guibedo’s only considerations when he designed it. Seated with a gourd of champagne by a waterfall, Patricia waited for an hour, reading old trade journals. It was cool in the cavernous room, and Patricia, dressed in businesslike microshorts and a transparent top, became chilly waiting for Dr. Guibedo.
Finally Guibedo bubbled in—talking rapidly, waving his thick arms. “Ach, Patty! Sorry to keep you waiting, but when you got a DNA loop stretched out, you don’t go away until you’re finished with it, by golly! Hey! It’s gonna be so pretty, Patty! This little seed is gonna be the theater and exercise room for the ballet society here. If those little girls had any idea what a time I had with that big mirror, hooh!” He smiled at the faun.
“Liebchen! I am so happy you take such nice care of our guest. I get more proud of you every day, by golly!” The faun glowed with happiness, wiggled her hoofs on the carpet, and waggled her tail vigorously.
“But anyway, Patty! What are you doing here and why didn’t you get here before? I haven’t seen you for three years! You don’t like me or what?” What a pretty girl this Patty is! Guibedo thought.
“Uh, why didn’t I… Dr. Guibedo, don’t you realize that every man in the FBI is looking for you? That every government in the world is screaming for your blood? I’m amazed that I found you so quickly, when none of those government men could. It’s the biggest manhunt since Patty Hearst.”
“Well, a lot of them did find me; then they looked the town over and decided that maybe staying here was nicer than playing cops and robbers. What do you think of my town? Pretty snazzy, huh?”
“It’s gorgeous, Dr. Guibedo! But I’d hardly call it a town—it covers half of Death Valley!”
“We paid for it fair and square. And now we call it Life Valley.” This Patty looks so much like my poor Hilde, before she died.
“But I still don’t see how you were so easy to find.”
“Simple. You didn’t come here looking to hurt nobody, and you didn’t bring your whole television studio along. We try not to get too much publicity.” With his new set of glands, Guibedo was feeling urges that he hadn’t felt in thirty years.
“Publicity! Dr. Guibedo, since your trees killed all those people, you’ve been one of the most sought-after men in the world!”
“Ach. That was an accident! I was only making it so the tree could fix its own absorption toilet. And when a plant thinks you don’t like it, it doesn’t grow so good, and some of the toilets grew in the beds and absorbed a few people.”
“A few people! You sent those seeds to some of the most influential people in the world. Thousands of them were killed!”
She even gets mad like my Hilde did. “That many people can starve to death in Africa, and nobody cares enough to give them a sandwich. No! The problem was that they were all big shots. And the worst crime that a big shot can think of is killing a big shot. Anyway, I got all that fixed now. The worst thing that can happen is if you hate your tree, the food gets not so good.
“Food! Hey, Liebchen! Would you get me some sauerbraten and some Boch beer, please? And maybe some strudel for Patty?”
“Yes, my lord!” Happy to be noticed at last, the faun pranced into the kitchen.
“Ach, Liebchen is so pretty.”
“Dr. Guibedo, what is she?”
“Liebchen is a faun. You see, my nephew, Heiny, he makes with the animals like I make with the plants. Fauns are sort of part of the tree. The brains of it. Liebchen is in empathic contact with Oakwood, my tree house here. She makes him grow the way I want, and she controls the food synthesizer. You just explain to Liebchen what you want, give her a couple of tries, and you got it. Liebchen and Oakwood will do anything to make you happy.”
“But I’ve been in Death, er—Life Valley half my vacation and I haven’t seen anything like her.”
“Well, you ain’t seen anything like my beautiful Oakwood who we’re sitting in now, either. You got to understand that the smarter animals have to grow up slow so they can learn. This Oakwood is eight months since I made the seed. Liebchen is four years old and is only now grown up. So we can’t make so many of them quickly. All of them so far had to be grown in bottles and educated by Heiny’s pretty wife.
“Oh, one thing you got to remember around Liebchen is to be all the time nice. Fauns get sick when you get mad at them. And they die if they think that nobody loves them. Heh! That’s about the only thing that can kill one. Well, that and radiation.”
Liebchen, her tail out proudly, pranced back in with a tray of food, put the tray on the coffee table, and curled up at Guibedo’s feet, her head against his lederhosen.
“You mean that all fauns are susceptible to radiation, Dr. Guibedo?” Partially because the food was in front of Guibedo and partially from Liebchen’s example, but mostly because, what with her scanty garments, she was cold, Patricia came around and sat very close to Guibedo.