Leo Frankowski

woman.
    A very confused
labor and defense unit abandoned the valley.
     
    Winnie found a
small, shady canyon a few hundred yards from the road and settled down for the
night. Liebchen
was sleeping normally, and Dirk, who never slept completely, but sequentially took his
brains offline, crouched near her.
    Dirk. Mukta here, an LDU in Utah
thought.
    Dirk here. What do you need?
    Mukta here. What is a soul and do we have
one?
    Dirk here. A soul is
supposedly a part of an entity that persists after physical death. Its existence is an interesting
question. Has it anything to do with the present emergency?
    Mukta here. I’m with
a religious community that is in obvious need of my assistance. But they’ll
refuse my help unless
I have a soul.
    Dirk here. The
existence of your soul depends on your socioreligious frame of reference. The western religions generally grant souls only to human beings.
They’ll be two hundred years
deciding on intelligent engineered life forms. The eastern religions, especially Buddhism and Hinduism, definitely grant souls to nonhumans. The
an swer to your question is yes and no.
    Mukta here. Not good enough. I need a
definite an swer. These people have a
western frame of reference.
    Dirk here. Well, in
the Norse religion, any being that died with a weapon in its hand went to
Valhalla, which logically presupposes a soul. Since each LDU always has a weapon in each hand, or at least
each forearm, we will logically die with it
there. Therefore all LDUs have souls.
    Mukta here. Thanks.
Out.
    Dirk. Birchi here. Got time for another
one?
    Dirk here. Shoot.
    Birchi here. I was in
a successful action two hours ago, but I don’t understand why I was
successful.
    Dirk here. So?
    Birchi here. In a marble quarry, I encountered
two groups of young adult human males
fighting. The negro group, being
larger, was inflicting serious damage on the Caucasian group. I broke up the
conflict quickly, there being only
forty-six humans involved, but I was forced
to do considerably more damage to the numerically superior negro group than to the Caucasians.
    I attempted to resolve
the conflict by speaking with them but the negroes were quite irrational and verbally abusive,
referring to me as “whitey.”
    Now, as I had been
fighting on a white marble surface, I had naturally turned my skin a light gray for pro tective coloration. Therefore, in an attempt to
placate the negroes, I changed my
coloration to an off-brown, the arithmetical average of the negroes’
skin coloration, and again attempted to open
a conversation.
    At this point, the Caucasians became
abusive, calling me “nigger” and other color-related terms. I
therefore turned the side facing the Caucasians to a pinkish tan in imitation
of their skin coloration, keeping the side facing the negroes brown, and attempted to enter into a meaningful dialogue with both groups as to the cause of
the original conflict.
    Both groups then
broke into convulsive and abusive laughter, picked up their wounded, and went
away.
    Dirk here. Indeed?
    Birchi here. Now, my
question is: What did I do right?
    Dirk here. Beats me,
but I suggest that the next time an LDU encounters a similar situation, he
should try repeating your actions.
    Birchi here. Sounds reasonable. Out.
     
    “Well, Mona, I
guess we’ve helped out a little today,” Patricia said, looking at the full
moon over the desert.
    “More than a
little. We’ve distributed enough food and water to keep a thousand people alive for
a week. And
tomorrow we should be able to bring thirty-five or forty of them back
with us,” Mona said.
    “But it’s
nothing compared to the job that has to do be done.”
    “It’s what we can do,” Mona said. “And don’t forget, we’re not alone. Almost every TRAC we
have is out doing the same thing we are. Add to that all the LDUs with three hundred
pounds of supplies each, and you have a force capable of rescuing everyone in
the Southwest.”
    “I suppose
so,” Patty said.
    “Dirk,”
Mona said, “how are your brothers doing?”
    “Most of them
are still en route to their assigned sectors, my lady. Thus far we have spread
north to Vancouver, east to St. Louis and south to Mexico City. About forty thousand
are now in their duty areas.”
    “Continue,”
Mona said.
    “We have
suffered two hundred eighteen disabling casualties today, including twenty-three
deaths. Most of these injuries were caused by collapsing structures, although some were
caused by humans. There is a