Звезда Пандоры

As the vehicle carrying the alien motiles drove along the switchback road that led down into MorningLightMountain’s original valley it passed through the strongest force field on the planet, one capable of deflecting nuclear assaults and beam strikes. Rain beat down upon the sparkling energy plane, flowing into rivulets that ran away over the craggy granite ramparts. Light did still shine down into the valley in the morning, though now it was a bruised gray twilight that leaked through the planet-wide smog layers. At night, the smog fluoresced a funereal khaki from the vast lattice of fusion drives that caged the world.

Ahead of the vehicle, the conical mountain rose up from the valley floor. It was home to over fifty thousand immotile units now, still the true heart of MorningLightMountain, even though there were groupings dotted all over the planet, linked to it via secure landlines. The mountain had been transformed into a single building, with each immotile nesting at the center of its own chamber. None of them made physical nerve contact with the motiles anymore; their sensor stalk nerve receptors were all connected to an electronic network that connected them en masse to the herds as well as every mechanical segment of their territory. A battery of maser units perched above the valley ramparts extended the gigantic immotile group’s presence across the star system. Below the building floor, the mountain was riddled with pipes and sewers. The immotiles were bathed in a gentle shower of clean water produced in desalination plants north of the spaceport, and piped into the valley. Waste water carrying away body effluent was flushed straight back into the sea, while water carrying nucleiplasm batches was directed into the moat of congregation lakes around the base of the mountain.

The vehicle drove over a six-kilometer-long causeway between lakes. The alien motiles stood upright in their cage; the fat sensor stalks inside the transparent bubble on top of their suits were turned so the two eyes regarded the emerging herds. Below them, the lake surfaces writhed as tens of thousands of congregating motiles squirmed against each other. Not yet mature, their bodies were partially translucent, with great globules of transforming base cells clustered around limbs and torsos, as if they were surrounded by lumpy jelly. Big pipes poured a torrent of sluggish liquid into each lake: water saturated with base cells that were bred in a huge series of vats at the eastern end of the valley. At the edge of the lakes, motiles helped the newly formed up out of the water. Relay modules were attached to their nerve receptors, allowing MorningLightMountain to fill their brains with its thought routines and commands. On the wide concrete apron ringing the lakes, herds formed up in long ranks to be collected by vehicles that would drive them to their work destination. Over a million a day were transported out across MorningLightMountain’s territory.

At the base of the mountain building, a tall door opened in the clifflike wall of stone and concrete, and the vehicle drove inside. This was the primary research area, where the immotile units had built facilities to explore every scientific discipline. The alien motiles were put in the chemical warfare laboratory, where they were sealed up in a cell that had an independent air circuit. Force fields came on around it, capable of withstanding megaton blasts.

The cell was a broad rectangular room, measuring some fifty meters long, made out of high-density plastic, and completely insulated. MorningLightMountain had installed a lot of examination equipment inside, ranging from scanners that could review the creatures in their entirety, to analysis modules that could sift through their cellular structure molecule by molecule. There were pens where they could be held between examinations, transparent cubes three meters to a side containing water, various food bales, and receptacles for excretion. Lighting was full solar spectrum.

One wall of the cell was made from a sheet of transparent crystal. Three immotiles rested on the other side, sitting in pools of dark water, a gentle drizzle playing over their skin. One of them had a motile pressed up close, feeding it. All of them could observe the aliens directly with their own eyes as they supervised the examination process.

MorningLightMountain bent its sensor stalks over so it could gaze at the alien motiles as they entered the laboratory. It seemed to be a mutual arrangement. The alien motiles walked their lurching walk over to the crystal wall, and stared back at the immotiles.