Leo Frankowski

telepathically from other species, such as
man.”
    “Well, I’m not
so sure I like that, uh—what was your name again?” Guibedo asked.
    “Alpha 001723,
my lord.”
    “Not your number. Your name.”
    “I have no other
designation, my lord.”
    “A nice guy like
you oughta have a name, not a number.”
    “Do you really
think I could, my lord? I mean, it would be permitted?”
    “Sure thing. Why not? Pick any name
you want.”
    “Well, my lord,
I think I would like to be called Dirk.”
    “Dirk, huh? I was
thinking maybe Rover, but if it’s Dirk you want, it’s Dirk you’ll get.”
    “Thank you, my
lord!”
    “Anytime. How
old are you, Dirk?”
    “I hatched
three months ago, my lord, although I was sentient before then.”
    “Three months
old. Well, I guess that explains it,” Guibedo mused. “So you were sentient
inside your egg. That must have been strange.”
    “It was, my
lord. Each of us thought he was Alpha 1, the first one hatched. And Alpha 1 thought
he heard echoes,
but he didn’t know that that was unusual.”
    “Hah! Hatching
must have been a shock. But I don’t see why you were so well developed at such
an early stage.”
    “It has to do
with our cell replication process, my lord. You see, we have four-stranded DNA,
which reproduces
very slowly. This results in a long gestation period, twelve months. But when
we do hatch, we have as many cells as a full-grown adult. With enough food, we can grow from a
two-pound eggling to a three— hundred-pound adult in a week, simply by increasing cell size.”
    “And here I been
using single strand DNA on all my trees,” Guibedo said.
    “My lord, that
certainly gives rapid growth and repair, but a combat troop needs resistance to heat
and radiation, and our
glandular redundancy makes up for our slow
repairability,” Dirk said.
    “You know,
Dirk, for a specialist in unarmed combat, you sure know your biochemistry.”
    “Oh, no, my
lord, I’m picking this up from Alpha 001256. He wants to be called Blade. May he
do so, my lord?”
    “Sure. Anything
to keep our boys at the front happy. Heiny sure did some nice thinking with you
guys.” LDUs were now returning to the end of the tunnel with loads of dirt. The
tunnel was wide enough for only two to pass, and Guibedo marveled at their
coordination as empty LDUs from behind alternated with loaded LDUs from in front to
pass the slower-moving Dirk.
    “It looks like
we’re a moving roadblock, Dirk.”
    “We’re not
seriously slowing progress, my lord,” Dirk said. “If I traveled much
faster, conversation would be difficult above the wind noise. My brothers and I are
enjoying this talk.”
    “Yah. I guess I
am talking to all of you,” Guibedo said. “What are they saying?”
    “My brothers are
mostly picking names for themselves, my lord.”
    “Anybody got
Black Bart yet?”
    “No, my lord. Thus far, each of my
brothers has wanted to be named after a
weapon.”
    Kids! Guibedo thought.
“You keep calling them ‘brothers.’ Ain’t you got no girls?”
    “No, my lord. We
don’t have sex.”
    “Such a pity. So
how do you reproduce?”
    “In the strictest
sense of the word, we don’t, my lord.”
    “Then how do you
get little LDUs?” Guibedo asked.
    “Lord Copernick worried that an
opponent might breed us for his own needs,
my lord, so he caused our eggs to
grow from a nonsentient mother being which lives on the ceiling of a vault below his tree house.”
    “I wondered why
Heiny wanted so much room,” said Guibedo. “How many eggs you got growing
down there?”
    “Approximately
three hundred thousand, my lord, a third of which are now available for
hatching.”
    “Why so
many?” Talking in a windstorm was making Guibedo hoarse.
    “My Lord
Copernick calls it his insurance policy,” Dirk said. “And, of course, the
large numbers don’t cost him anything in time or money.”
    So Heiny figures
things are gonna get real rough! Ach! The kid oughta know that it’s safer to
hide than to fight. Still, maybe it’s safer yet to be able to fight while you’re hiding.
    “You know, Dirk,
I can see how it could be kinda rough, being an LDU. No girls, no father, no
mother, no sisters—”
    “But a lot of
brothers, my lord. We feel rather sorry for you humans. You take so long to grow,
then die so soon.”
    “You guys don’t
die?”
    “We can die if
sufficiently injured, but we aren’t trou bled with diseases. We don’t age or have a
finite lifespan.
    “But you