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"Is that how it went?" Red sounded honestly surprised. "We were a system malfunction? And it was all Dirn's fault?" He seemed to be taking comfort from the idea, grinning slightly.

  Purple, though not looking at his face, could sense this expression, and chuckled.

  "There is something nice in finding your worst enemy is responsible for your existence, isn't there? Nicer still that you know they realize it and it's been haunting them ever since."

  Red rolled his eyes. "Cut the poet talk already. Sheesh."

  "What poet talk?" Purple responded without hesitation. "It's called sounding intelligent. You should try it sometime."

  "Smart-ass."

Irk capital city
1.5 years later

  "Let me see if I have this right," the Almighty Tallest howled, bearing down on the female advisor, "You allowed both of them to continue growing in the tanks, even though you know full well there has never been, nor should there ever be, more than one candidate for the Irken throne since the nurseries were instituted. As a matter of fact, you went out of your way to hide their existence from me, to the point of blatantly lying about the condition of my heir!"

  Dirn was shaking. She was also in standard-issue advisor garments, and that wasn't helping matters. But it was a secondary concern. Rarg's voice penetrated her, and she knelt quivering with gloved hands braced on the floor, tears nearly in her eyes.

  "And what news do you bring me now? 'Gene codes indeterminate', is that it? You allow two Tallest-class Irkens to be grown, and then when they're born you have the nerve to tell me to let both continue to exist?!"

  "Sir... Sir... It was... I never meant to... It was the only..." Tears splatted noisily on the metal floor.

  "You put into the gene code what I asked, didn't you? Both of them will at least be an inch taller than me when they're grown. Why can't you simply kill one?!"

  "Sir!"

  Through his rage, the Tallest noticed the sincere distress in the advisor's voice. He swallowed down some of his anger and prompted her to continue.

  "We don't know if the gene code sent right, my Tallest," Dirn said, voice quavering. "We aren't sure if either of them are going to be according to your --and my-- specifications. The geneticists I talked to said there was a good chance at least one of them would be taller than you, but we won't know which one until--"

  "Until they're full-grown?" Rarg spat.

  "Y-yes sir." As an advisor, Dirn had never encountered what the soldiers spoke of as a sense of impending doom, the feeling experienced when you cower in the shadow of a fiercely equipped enemy and your utility pack is broken. Now she was wondering whether this was it, that feeling.

  There came a loud silence that went on for a long time.

  "Very well."

  The female snapped her head up. "Sir?!"

  Rarg turned away from Dirn, toward the windows again. There was anger in his voice running under the tone like a deep sea current. "It's the only safe way, isn't it? The only way we'll be sure to have my plan succeed is if both of them live. Isn't that right?"

  "Yes sir."

  "Assign the appropriate staff to look after them. Give me twice-yearly reports on their status. Once one begins to lag behind the other in height--"

  "With respect, sir," Dirn said hastily, before he could proceed, "growth rates are not perfected even with today's science. Although one or the other might go at a slower pace we still don't know which will be tallest until they're matured at six years."

  "Six years, too... If they're going at twice the development rate, what will happen to them later in life?"

  "It reverts back to the normal rate after maturity, my Tallest, that's what the geneticists say."

  "Good, I suppose." Rarg thought for a moment, considering what else needed to be said. "Thank you, Advisor Dirn. Don't let me detain you."

  The female Irken climbed shakily to her feet. If what she'd felt was a soldier's impending doom, now she was feeling was a soldier's belief in Mother for having survived. These were not proper feelings for an advisor. Advisors were all about instilling those feelings in others. But Dirn bowed, and shuffled out.

  Rarg the Tallest stood alone in his chamber, staring out at a city that was slowly falling apart.
 
 

  A two-fingered hand pawed the glass. The overseer's green eyes crinkled as he smiled.

  Hesitantly, the old Irken reached out and placed his own palm over the space of glass the other creature shared. Four fingers to two. Why did they make them with two fingers? What could be the point?

  And so frail. They looked like a normal Irken rolled out thin, like modeling clay. Everything was slender. Everything looked brittle. Everything looked... easy to destroy.

  These were Irken leaders, these fragile little things.

  Purple eyes. It was genetically male but it had purple eyes for some reason. Perhaps when the advisor had said any eye color he should have stopped the variable at male ones. Imagine what people will say, a male with purple eyes. Quasars, and his antennae curl a bit too...

  The overseer's own antennae twitched as it sensed the presence of someone behind him. He moved his palm from the glass and, soon after, the little one did too. The adult Irken turned his head.

  "Are you allowed to do that?" asked the nurse, clad all in light purple. "Won't it... interfere with his development?"

  "I don't think so," said the overseer, although he wasn't sure. He vaguely remembered his predecessor's predecessor's predecessor getting executed for interacting with a baby Tallest, but it could have been just a story. Besides, "What harm could it do to something that's born sentient enough to start speaking and walking immediately?"

  "I suppose, but..." The nurse bit her lip and glanced at the two children beyond the glass wall. The room she and the overseer were in was pitch dark but for the computer console, but the room beyond the glass was brightly lit. In it sat, patient and silent, the two birthed heirs to the throne. The purple-eyed one was still looking up at where the overseer's hand had been. The other one sat against the wall, dozing; his rust red eyes --so very much like Rarg's-- barely visible.

  "They... look alike," said the nurse in surprise.

  The other Irken nodded. "Many of their predominant traits are the same. Not all of them, though. And this usually doesn't happen, this sort of thing, you know."

  "What's the term for it?"

  "There's no technical term for it, if that's what you mean. It never happened in a nursery. But in the old days we used to call this sort of thing 'twins'."

  "Twins..." the nurse said, trying out the word.

  The purple-eyed one got to its feet rather shakily. Even as a newborn it was as tall as the average full-grown Irken, but so very thin. It was an Irken reduced to skin and bone. It stumbled over to the wall and crouched down beside the other one and, very curiously and very hesitantly, poked it between the eyes.

  "Quasars, those things can scream," the nurse said above the wails, antennae twitching.

  After floundering for a moment, the overseer located a button on his console and pressed it. Inside the lit room, a compartment in the wall opened up and a robot arm bearing a Tentacle-Head Grishu teddy emerged. It lowered the toy to near the red-eyed one's face and squeezed it twice around the middle, causing it to emit gurgling squeaks. Then the robot arm opened its vicelike hand and the baby Irken, seeing this as an offering, grabbed it. The arm retracted back into the wall.

  There was one of those pleasing silences that's accompanied by the occasional toy squeak and a gurgle from the owner.

  "I remember," the nurse said distastefully, "being birthed at the same time as a pair of army-class females two columns down from my tank. And I remember one of them started crying after they were broken out of their capsules too. And I don't recall the Big Robot Arm giving that kid a stuffed toy."

  Squeaks and gurgles again, as the overseer considered what to say.

  "If they gave teddies to everyone that cried, it'd be an awful lot of teddies."

  "But for a Tallest it's okay to go that extra bit, is that right?"

  "Don't ask me," the overseer sighed, "I just work here."

  The nurse turned away, feeling ashamed. "I'm sorry. I know you're not the person to bring this up with." She fidgeted with a line in her robe. She was, the overseer thought, unusually mannered for a nurse. Nurses were usually tough as nails with everyone from soldiers getting legs sewn back on to little cadets sent in to get their squigglyspooch regrown because they'd been too careless with the last one. This one was... sensitive. Like she would, if prompted to it, be kind.

  The fears beginning to grow in the overseer's mind reached maturity when the nurse said, "I've come by order of the emperor to take these children. They're being moved to their schoolhouse."

  Fighting every urge to protest this, the overseer slowly nodded. Quasars, he thought. With this girl as a caretaker they're going to grow up with feelings.

  "Of course," he managed. "I'll just need to see the documents." He was presented with a roll-out backlit scroll, which he skimmed over to see if everything was in order.

  In the white room came screams of "Mine!" "No, mine! Leggo!" as each child had grabbed a tentacle and had started to pull.

  As the male Irken reached the end of the document there came a loud, thick sound of material being torn. The overseer just got in a sigh before the world seemed to explode in high-pitched shrieks.
 
 

  "You started it," Red accused, staring hard.

  "Did not."

  "Dammit. Yes you did. It was my toy."

  Purple appeared outraged. "Why should you only get the toy?! We should have shared!"

  "Oh, sharing. I suppose snatching it out of my hands and running to the far side of the room with it is your definition of sharing."

  "I was only getting you back for shoving me when I asked for it."

  "Yeah, whatever."

  "Sorun..."

  "Tell you what. Next time we're at a port I'll get you all the Grishu teddies you want."

  "That's not the-- You know it's not the-- I don't even--" Purple paused. "Well..."