“Six months! They grow that fast?” Jimmy said.
“Sure. Engineered life forms are a lot more efficient than natural ones. Or maybe I should say they’re a lot less inefficient. Let me give you some ‘for instances.’
“To get a pound of wood, a natural tree has got to soak up fifteen hundred pounds of water with its roots, run it through its trunk, and evaporate it in its leaves. The only good that all that water did was to haul up a few ounces of trace elements that were dissolved in it. The tree has to do this because transpiration is the only mechanism it has to get those trace elements to the leaves. A simple pump, like your heart, is a million times more efficient.”
“Heh. So all your trees got hearts?”
“Sure. In more ways than one. Another ‘for instance.’ At high noon in the desert, you get about a hundred watts of solar power on each square foot of land. Now just sitting there, Jimmy, your body is burning up a hundred watts to keep you alive. If you were a hundred percent efficient, you could survive without eating just by lying in the sun. But the way nature does it, it takes more than one hundred thousand square feet of land to support a human being.
“Now, I’ve managed to make my tree houses ten percent efficient, about as good as a car engine.”
“You sold me, Professor. Where do I buy a seed?”
“Well, you used to be able to buy one from me for five dollars, but that’s all over now.”
“A house for five dollars?”
“I had to pay for the postage and the advertising. And I had to get some people to help me with the mail. And the boxes cost me twenty-eight cents each! But now I guess you got to get somebody to give you one.”
“I got to panhandle a house? Professor, if you had any idea how hard it is to come up with a fifth of Gallo port…”
“No, no. They promised to give you one. That was the deal when I sold the seed. Once their house was grown up, they had to give a seed to anybody who asked for one. And they had to make that person promise to do the same thing when their house was growed up. Just be sure you pick a model you really like. It ain’t nice to abandon a tree house.”
The scratching got progressively louder until an oval hairline crack, perhaps seven feet by four, suddenly formed on the concrete floor. One end of the slab rose five inches and a snakelike tentacle a yard long slid out. There was an eyeball at the end of it.
“Oh, sweet Jesus, Professor, I never should have touched that sterno! You can’t imagine what I think I see!”
A second eyeballed tentacle joined the first. In unison, they made a 360-degree scan.
“Take it easy, Jimmy, I ain’t had a drink in three weeks, and I’m seeing it, too!”
“My Lord Guibedo,” a voice said from below the concrete. “I am a friend. Please speak softly. May I come up?”
“Nobody up here but us scaredy-cats,” Guibedo whispered. “Come on up and make yourself at home.”
The concrete slab slid to one side. A black creature ascended. It had a rigid oval body six feet long by three wide, but only six inches thick. The eyeballed tentacles extended from the front of its body. It walked on four skinny, muscular legs and held two long humanoid arms close to its body. As it rose from the pit, it changed color like a chameleon, from black to the gray of the prison walls.
“Oh, sweet Mother of Mercy!” Jimmy was cowering in a corner. “I’ve seen orange crocodiles even, but nothing like this!”
“Son of a gun, shit!” Guibedo muttered. “Who are you?”
“My lord, I am Labor and Defense Unit Alpha 001723.”
“Yah, sure. Nice low number you got there. I guess I should have said ‘What are you?’”
“My lord, I am a labor and defense unit. Would you please accompany me. We have very little time.”
“You’re maybe something my nephew, Heiny, came up with?” Guibedo noticed that the thing had at least eight additional fixed eyes, scattered around its circumference.
“Yes, my lord. Lord Copernick created me. He sent me here to facilitate your escape. Please accompany me.” The LDU was backing down into the pit.
“Well, if Heiny says so, let’s go,” Guibedo said, following.
“Hey!” Jimmy said. “What about me?”
“Sir, your presence would constitute a security risk. I must insist that you stay here,” the LDU said.
“He’s right, Jimmy,” Guibedo said. “This could get rough. They’re gonna throw you out in the morning, anyhow.”
“Yeah, Professor, but what am I going to tell them?”
“If you tell them the truth, Jimmy, they’ll throw you in the funny house. Just tell them you went to sleep and when you woke up, I was gone.”
“Yeah, okay. Take it easy, Professor! I’ll get me that tree house like you said.” Jimmy shook Guibedo’s hand.
Guibedo was already waist deep in the pit. “And when you get your tree house, talk to it. They like that. Bye, Jimmy.”
“Bye, Professor.”
“My lord, has the leave-taking ceremony been completed?” the LDU asked.
“Uh, yeah, sure.”
The LDU slid the concrete slab back into position over the pit. When the floor was sealed, lights in the tunnel went on. A long line of LDUs stood patiently waiting. Each was carrying a load of wet cement on its broad back.
“My lord. Once we have you out of here, our plan is to seal up the first one hundred feet of the tunnel with cement to slow down pursuit, then to fill the balance with dirt.”
“That’s a lot of work!”
“We were made for work, my lord. My Lord Copernick ordered it.”
“Well, let’s get walking.”
“That’s quite impossible for you, my lord. This tunnel is fifteen miles long.”
“Fifteen miles! You dug this for me?”
“Yes, my lord, that’s why we were three weeks in getting here.” The LDU crouched to the height of a chair. “Would you please get on my back.”
Eyeing the LDU’s spindly legs, Guibedo cautiously put his portly bottom on its back. The LDU stood up easily to its normal tabletop height and took off at a smooth trot with the man riding sidesaddle. Guibedo soon found it was more comfortable to ride facing forward with his legs crossed.
“Curves ahead, my lord.” Tentacles that Guibedo hadn’t noticed slid from the LDU’s sides and fastened themselves around the man’s waist and legs. Several others provided an acceptable back rest. The LDU’s speed increased to thirty mph and they were still passing concrete-laden LDUs.
“A lot of you guys here.”
“We are ten thousand in the zero-zero division, my lord. Ten brigades of a thousand each with ten platoons of a hundred, each with ten squads of ten LDUs.”
“Just like the army,” Guibedo said, his white hair flapping in the breeze. “Who’s the general?”
“No one, exactly, my lord. Or whichever one of us you talk to. You see, we’re all in telepathic contact with each other. When one of us knows your desires, we all do, and therefore comply.”
“Telepathy! I didn’t know that Heiny was that far along.”
“I don’t believe he designed for it, my lord,” the LDU said above the wind. “But you see, we’re all identical and we have quite extensive and widely distributed redundant neural systems. I have twelve major ganglia, and I can function properly on six.”
“Like the thing with human identical twins…” Guibedo said. “So Heiny just got lucky! Well, that’s nice. Things went bad for him for too long there. I guess it made you guys pretty easy to educate.”
“Yes, my lord. Once he discovered our abilities, he only had to teach one of us to read and write. The rest of us picked it up from Alpha 1. Now, each of us has his own field of expertise, based on our individual reading, with the information available to all.”