Звезда Пандоры

The little sub-herd of twelve motiles was sent out by its birth immotile, seeking a place where a fresh herd could be established. Such a new neighboring territory would be advantageous to the founder immotile; with a joint personality origin their allegiance would be the strongest of all, at least for the initial years. After a while divergence crept in, it always did.

MorningLightMountain still retained the memory of itself before amalgamation and true thought began. The sub-herd had spent days carefully picking their way down the valley walls, dodging rockslides and clambering over sharp outcrops. Now they bunched together as they walked through the rainforest that sprang from the boggy ground along the valley floor. Every daybreak a mist would slither upward from the lush vegetation, a legacy from the nightly rains hazing the air and turning the mighty sunbeams a delicate orange-gold.

They saw it then, a symmetrical cone rising up out of the shadowed land ahead, the only feature of the entire valley to be struck by light, fluorescing a brilliant emerald against the roseate sky. Sunlight glinted off tiny streams that trickled down its sides. Small black specks circled far overhead, wings extended, idling in the thermals—one of the few remaining non-Prime life-forms left in the planet’s tropics.

The four largest herd members pressed up against each other, allowing their nerve receptors to touch so that their brains were linked together. Their individual thoughts were virtually identical, the simple memories and commands issued by their birth immotile, but joined like this their decision-making capability was significantly enhanced. Since reaching the valley floor they hadn’t encountered any other motile, or seen signs of a herd’s occupation. The valley with its difficult approaches was easy to defend. Its size was capable of supporting three or four herds. One immotile with its herd would have an abundance of water and land, giving it a strategic advantage over the surrounding immotiles.

As to the exact location the immotile should be placed… On each of the motiles, two upper sensory stalks twisted around so their eyes could all regard the conical mountain. With so many streams, there must be a spring of some kind at the top. Such a place would be ideal for an immotile. The water would always be clean, unlike those whose territories were bunched along rivers and had to make do with water contaminated from upstream.

They agreed, then: the mountain that was drenched with light. Their temporary linkage was broken as they moved apart. The other eight members of the sub-herd were summoned. Upper sensor stalks bent around so that nerve receptors could be touched, the instructions passed to all members. In unison they began to march toward the mountain.

Two-thirds of the way up, they found a large pool fed by several of the gurgling streams. The four large motiles fused their thoughts together again and examined the area with their extended intellect. One of them sucked up some of the water, and found it contained a satisfactory level of Prime base cells swarming inside. Their presence confirmed the site would be suitable for an immotile, subject to a few alterations. A host of new instructions were issued to their fellow herd members.

The type of motile that had come walking into the valley was the most simple of all the varieties that the immotiles birthed, and as such the most adaptive in the tasks it could perform. It had a pear-shaped torso of waxy white skin that measured over a meter in diameter across the base, with four tapering ridges of hard skin running vertically up its flanks. That quadruple symmetry was a constant within Prime life. The motile had four legs sprouting at the end of the skin ridges on the rim of its lower torso. Each of them had a flexible support “bone” running down the center, wrapped with bands of muscle tissue to provide a considerable range of movement. Each leg ended in a small hoof of tough ochre gristle that could dig in hard on soil or even wood—not that they often climbed trees.

Four arms protruded from the body, branching out sixty centimeters above the hip joints. They were similar to the legs in respect of their size and all-around flexibility; differing only at the tip that split into a neat quad pincer arrangement that was quite capable of snipping through medium-sized branches. On the top of the main body four gill-like vents were spaced equidistantly around the crest, drawing air down into its lungs. Between them were the food inlets, mini trunks of rubbery flesh that had some independent movement. Motiles grazed on specific vegetation for the chemicals they contained, but mainly they sucked up water saturated with base cells. Both were processed in a large double stomach. The pap could be semidigested before being regurgitated to feed an immotile; after full digestion the residue was excreted from a single anus at the base of the body.