Звезда Пандоры

When it was over, when every other immotile grouping had been reduced to a lake of radioactive lava, MorningLightMountain used the wormholes again. This time it sent connections through, microwaves or fiber-optic cable, inserting itself into the core-less communications networks of its vanquished rivals. Its thoughts and orders flooded into the minds of the surviving motiles, expelling their mental heritage, turning MorningLightMountain into the sole sentient entity in the star system. Every motile was enmeshed in its thoughts as it took control of the infrastructure and spaceships that remained. For over a week it sent its billions of new motiles out to survey the wreckage and list the mechanical systems that had survived unscathed. Most of the farms and food production plants had come through intact, as had a great many industrial facilities. The information was used to assemble a strategy for integration, bringing together every production center in a single unified organization. It began to amalgamate thousands of motiles into new subsidiary groupings of itself to cope with the huge demands of managing an entire star system. Without rivalries, and acting in conjunction, the combined industrial output of every manufacturing plant was greater than before.

Synergy,the Bose memories called it. The alien’s concepts and words still lingered and lurked amid MorningLightMountain’s system-wide thoughts, even though the coherent article had long been erased. It had even taken the precaution of physically eradicating the immotile unit that the Bose memories had been stored in. All that remained now were memories of memories, disseminated information that manifested in the odd alien phrase. There was no concern left of possible contamination. It was pure now, a single life that lived throughout this star system, and was now expanding into a second.

The effort to reach the Commonwealth resumed, with hundreds of ships flying daily through the interstellar wormhole to the staging post star system, carrying equipment that would build the next sequence of wormholes.

Out of all the hundreds of billions of motiles hurrying to perform their appointed tasks, one did not obey MorningLightMountain’s instructions. Because such individuality was impossible to a Prime, it moved where it wanted and saw what it needed. No other motile possessed the kind of independent thought structure that would question it; as long as it avoided the attention of MorningLightMountain’s main thought routines it was perfectly safe to come and go as it pleased.

For over a day it had been moving around the base of the giant mountain building that contained the original heart of the massive interlinked creature that was MorningLightMountain. It didn’t move as smoothly as all the other motiles, it wasn’t used to four legs, nor the strange way they bent and twisted. But it made progress.

In the background of its mind were the directives and thoughts of MorningLightMountain, emerging from the little communications device attached to one of its nerve receptor stalks. It ignored them because it wanted to, a mental ability that other motiles did not have. Although the images and information coming out of the communications device were a useful guide to what was happening across the Prime system.

High above it, dazzling lightning bolts lashed down repetitively against the protective force field dome, sizzling away to ground out along the top of the ancient valley. Clouds boiled along at a speed it had never seen before. They were thick and black, blotting out the sky as they unleashed monsoon-like downpours several times an hour. So heavy was the unnatural rain that rivulets formed across the force field, carrying away the water to the saturated ground beyond. Whole tides of mud were slithering around the protected, sacrosanct valley.

The motile regarded the new weather intently, with one thought starting to dominate its mind: Nuclear winter.

…

Paula Myo took the express from Paris direct to Wessex. She had a long wait in the CST planetary station there; the train to Huxley’s Haven only ran once a day. It was dark outside when she eventually went to platform 87B, which was situated in a small annex at the end of the terminal. The train she found standing there was made up from four single deck carriages being pulled by a steam engine that could have come straight out of a museum. She’d forgotten that the journey was on a historical throwback. On any other world such a contraption belching out thick black smoke from the coal it burned would have been prohibited under any number of antipollution laws; here on one of the Big15 nobody cared.

She climbed into the first carriage and sat on one of the velvet bench seats. A couple of other people came in, and ignored her. Just before their scheduled departure time a guard walked down the carriage. He was dressed in a dark blue uniform that had bright silver buttons down the waistcoat, and a tall peaked cap with red piping.