“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.
Copyright
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