Звезда Пандоры

The inert alien motile was taken out of the scanner, and the active one placed inside. Soldiers had to hold it down as the bulbous scan tips moved across it. Where there was no bone beneath the skin, its flesh bowed inward below the probing tips. It started making noise again, a loud burst of high-frequency sound every time the tip pressure increased. MorningLightMountain withdrew a tip, then pushed it forward again. The alien noisegenerated again. It was an interesting correlation, but MorningLightMountain couldn’t understand why it did that.

This larger alien motile had a similar network of organic conductors and electronic components embedded within its body. MorningLightMountain had memories of the alienPrime cybernetics, fusing machines with bodies; but they had all been used to amplify physical functions. These seemed to have no external purpose; they were joined to the brain but nothing else, they weren’t links in a chain. MorningLightMountain’s trouble was that it had little experience of microelectronic systems. It produced simple processors to help govern its own technology, but its own mind always directed the operation of any complex piece of machinery with appropriate thought routines through its nerve linkages. Automation was not a familiar concept; seventy percent of its group brain capacity was involved in controlling technology, from simply driving a vehicle to regulating the plasma flow in fusion reactors. There were few independent machines within its territories. The most advanced were the missiles carried by spaceships, which couldn’t contain an immotile. They used processors that had flexible algorithmic instructions, which were given specific orders just before launch. Otherwise MorningLightMountain ran everything. Machines served life, it could not be otherwise.

MorningLightMountain ordered the soldiers to release the alien motile. It did have the kind of equipment capable of analyzing the processors inside the aliens, but it was all in the physics laboratories. A batch of instructions was issued to motiles. They began dismantling the appropriate units, ready to transfer them to the secure cell. In the meantime the immotile instructed the motiles to extract all the processors from the pressure suits while it observed the aliens.

The soldiers had placed both of them in their pens. The larger one had folded its legs, so that it was resting on the floor. It was knocking its gripper on the wall between it and the smaller alien, which was still inert and leaking red fluid onto the floor. Every few minutes it would noise-generate. The fat sensor stalk at the top twisted, and it stared at MorningLightMountain’s three immotiles again. Both of its arms moved, the grippers forming shapes in the air. It did that for several minutes, then sank back on its folded legs again. The fat sensor stalk rocked about for no apparent reason. Eventually it began to examine the food bales. Small crumbs were broken off by the grippers, and it brought them up to the small twinned orifices at the front of its fat sensor stalk. MorningLightMountain decided there must be olfactory sensors inside the little cavities. Some of the crumbs were discarded, while others were held in front of the larger orifice. A strip of flexible wet tissue extended to touch the crumbs one after the other. They were all dropped on the floor. Next it turned to the plastic cylinder filled with desalinated water. After dipping its gripper in, it pushed one of the segments into its large orifice. There was a short pause, then it lifted the plastic cylinder and poured almost half of the water into its orifice.

MorningLightMountain completed its analysis of the red fluid. As it suspected, the substance was a nutrient, with a high protein and oxygen content. The yellow water appeared to be a waste defecation.

An hour later, the smaller alien motile began to move. The response from the larger one was immediate. It hurried over to the wall between them and began to noise-generate in short loud bursts. The smaller one was emitting a long single sound. It flattened its gripper, and pressed it over the long rip on its side where the red fluid was still seeping out.

MorningLightMountain began to wonder if it was badly damaged. On a Prime, such a rip would seal up and the flesh knit together quickly. That didn’t seem to be happening to the alien motile. Instead the red fluid was undergoing a double transformation, coagulating and then crystallizing into dark flecks. It didn’t think much of that as an integral repair function.

The small alien held its body parallel to the floor, and used both its arms and legs to walk over to the cylinder of water. It ingested some, and then fell back onto the floor, its joints losing stiffness.