That's the C runtime starting up and finishing. That amount of overhead is incurred by (nearly) any program; in fact, worse overhead is incurred using the Sun method of having an empty file, because you have to run the more complex /bin/sh (or equivalent) instead of just a trivial compiled program.

ltrace gives a better view of what the program itself (as opposed to the runtime) is doing.

I am aware. Still rather amusing however.