Leo Frankowski

toward their assigned areas. Each was to watch
over the safety of ten thousand humans, and they had doubts as to the
possibility of doing the job well.
    Each platoon of one
hundred had with it two Betas with their observation birds and one mind-reading Gamma unit. The
birds were important to locate tree houses. All of the recent models had an
external spigot that gave out the food that the LDUs ate. They would need to find many of
these on the trek ahead.

Chapter Ten
    JULY 22, 2003
     
    I HAVE enlarged my memory
banks in order to better accommodate the influx of data on the
increasing number of
humans entering the valley.
    In future daily reports
on each human, you must pre fix each notation
with the code number which I have assigned to that human. Because of the
prejudices of the humans, it is imperative
that no human learns his own number,
or even that such numbers exist.
    These records will be useful in making
long-term prognoses; the data will will not be available to humans because of
our “right to privacy” directive.
    —Central Coordination Unit to all
local ganglia
     
    Hastings remembered
how a month ago he had awakened hot on the desert sand. He had lain there for minutes, trying to
figure out where he was and why he was there. His last memories had been of relaxing
in the F-38,
mentally preparing himself to drop his first atomic bomb.
    What did they hit me with? he thought.
    Cautiously he moved
the various parts of his body. Nothing broken. He got up and stripped off his
suit and parachute.
He found the standard-issue survival pack. Food. A .22-caliber handgun. Compass and
maps. A canteen
of distilled water. A manual. A radio that didn’t work.
    He drank deeply,
knowing that rationing the water was a bad idea. Better to drink now and get
the full cooling benefit of the water. He rigged the parachute into a sunshade and waited
for Air Rescue for a day and a half. It didn’t get there. He made an arrow with
rocks to show his direction of travel.
    The next evening, at
moonrise, he picked up his belongings and started walking southwest, toward
Death Valley.
    “Who was it
that said that the only way to stop a good man is to kill him?” he said to the
rocks. “Funny, I can’t remember.”
    He walked until sunrise
without seeing any sign of man, not even a plane. He found the shelter of an overhanging rock and
survived the day. At moonrise, he finished his water and walked on. The
only sign of life was a shiny mosquito that seemed to be in love with his belt buckle.
    The next morning his
urine looked like Bock beer and he started to worry.
    He woke to find a
larva eating a hole in the barrel of his pistol. He tried to scream, but his
throat was too dry to make a sound. He struggled to his feet, staggered a hundred yards,
and fell down. He knew then that he was a dead man. He rolled over, put himself in a
dignified posture,
and prepared his mind for death.
    He woke to find a
gourd of water being held to his mouth by a powerful tan hand. He gulped the
water.
    “Slowly at
first, sir.”
    Something was strange about the wrist.
Yes, there was a slot in it. He
jerked himself upright, spilling some of
the water.
    “You’re one of
them!” Hastings croaked.
    “I suppose so, sir.”
The LDU rescued the water gourd. “I’m Labor and Defense Unit Alpha 362729. My friends call me
K’kingee.”
    Hastings took another
drink of water.
    “What makes you
think that I’m your friend?”
    “I presumed
that you would feel a certain amount of gratitude, sir.”
    “I guess I do.
Thank you. Am I a prisoner of war?”
    “You are not a
prisoner of anything, sir.”
    “Are you going
to kill me?”
    “Had I intended
that, it would have been more efficient to have simply let you die.”
    “Don’t you
realize what I am?”
    “You are a human being, sir.”
    “I mean the
uniform.”
    “Your clothing indicates that you
were a general of ficer in the United States
Air Force.”
    “What do you mean
‘were’?”
    “The Air Force
no longer exists, sir. At least it no longer has aircraft capable of flight.”
    “How did you manage that?”
    “I didn’t manage
it, sir. Didn’t you notice the larva that is eating your pistol?”
    “I thought that
it was a hallucination. Is that another one of your creatures?”
    “If you mean ‘Is
it an engineered life form?’ the answer is no, sir.”
    “Then where did it come from?”
    “A natural
mutation, I suppose, sir.”
    “Do you really
expect me to believe