The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle (88 page)

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.

MorningLightMountain’s priority was to establish a neural interface with the alien motiles so it could determine what kind of threat their immotiles posed to Prime. To do that, it had to discover the nature of their nerve receptors. Once that was ascertained it could manufacture an artificial interface unit and command them directly, as it had done with countless millions of motiles captured from other Prime territories. Their memories would then be drained out into MorningLightMountain so it could see exactly what it was facing.

Eight fully armored soldier motiles were in the cell with the aliens, along with eight standard motiles. MorningLightMountain ordered the soldiers to hold the alien motiles steady, while its own motiles applied various sensors. The alien motiles struggled briefly as they were grasped. The electromagnetic emissions from their suits began again. MorningLightMountain tried a transmission on the same frequencies, ordering them to be still. It had no effect.

Although there was considerable interference, the sensors were able to map out the basic layout of the suits. Their composition was an advanced shapeshifting polymer with various filaments woven through it to control temperature. The atmosphere inside the upper bubble was oxygen-nitrogen, regenerated by several small modules of intriguing design. Most surprising were the complex electronic patterns that covered the entire surface, indicating a great many components. MorningLightMountain couldn’t understand why something as simple as a pressure suit would require so many control circuits.

It ordered the motiles to remove the suits. Under its direction they applied cutting instruments to the surface, and began ripping the fabric apart. As the aliens motiles were exposed so MorningLightMountain heard strange sounds emerging from them. When the upper bubbles were broken open the sound grew to extraordinary levels, making the motiles wave their sensor stalks away in an attempt to lessen it. The single fat sensor stalk on the top of the alien motiles was the source, an orifice that flapped open and shut.

They also emitted a stench so strong that the motiles quivered in reaction. MorningLightMountain hurriedly reviewed the cell’s gas toxin sensors to see if it was a chemical attack. There were some strange nitrates effervescing off the alien motiles, but nothing lethal. It began to catalogue their profile. Even knowing they were alien didn’t adequately prepare it for things so strange. Their skin was a pale white-pink, with slim blue lines visible just below the surface. Thin fibers were sprouting from it seemingly at random and in different colors from brown to white; there were big patches of the stuff on the top of the sensor stalk, and smaller patches between the legs. One had tufts where its arms joined the torso as well as a fine grayish fuzz on the front of its torso, while the other had neither. Physically they had differences, odd limp appendages that dangled like half-filled bags; the larger one had a tiny trunk between its legs next to some kind of external sacs. MorningLightMountain could see no practical use for either set.

Lines of red fluid were leaking from the skin, corresponding to where the cutting implements had been applied. The smaller alien motile had stopped using its legs to support itself, and was hanging limply in the soldiers’ grip; while the larger one was shaking violently. It continued to make the curious sounds as yellow water discharged from its mini-trunk appendage.

Motiles collected samples of the red fluid and yellow water from the floor of the cell. The alien motile that had gone inert was placed in the large scanning unit. The image that arrived inside MorningLightMountain was tremendously complex; the alien motile was densely packed with organs. Lungs, heart, and stomach were obvious, but it couldn’t imagine what half of the other ones were for. The bone structure was odd, leaving some parts of the torso unprotected, although the joint system was innovative. Most interesting was the location of the brain, actually inside the sensor stalk. MorningLightMountain moved the scan focus, trying to track the nerve cords to a receptor membrane. Try as it might, it couldn’t find one. The bulk of the nerves left the brain to travel along the thick segmented bone running down the torso, but they all branched into a tributary network that was distributed throughout the muscle bands and thin skin. Could the entire skin be a nerve receptor? Then MorningLightMountain noticed strands of organic conductors wound through the skin. Many of them were integrated into the nerve cords, especially around the five-segment grippers on the end of its arms. Now it knew what to look for, MorningLightMountain gave the brain a more detailed survey. A cluster of minute electronic components were nestling inside the body at the base of the brain, with a multitude of connective threads joining them to the big nerve cord.

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.

The equipment to analyze the processors arrived. MorningLightMountain’s motiles began reassembling it. After several hours, it was powered up, and the first processor placed under a field resonance amplifier. MorningLightMountain was astonished by the complexity of the device, which was right on the edge of the amplifier’s resolution. There were millions of junctions arranged in a three-dimensional lattice of quantum wire, each strand just large enough to carry a single electron. The processing power it contained was enormous. One of these by itself was enough to control an entire salvo of missiles.

MorningLightMountain had a lot of trouble holding a full map of the junctions in its mind; the effort was taking up the brains of a dozen immotile units. That alone was enough to worry it. The aliens clearly had a powerful technology in such devices. It was intrigued with the reason for developing them. Clearly in this instance, the suit polymer must require an inordinate amount of control to hold its shape, presumably far beyond the capacity of the alien motile brain to govern.

In another part of the giant building, MorningLightMountain’s electronics workshop began to assemble an adaptor that could plug into the alien processor. There were several optical interface points, all it really needed was a module that would convert the processor’s output into its own style of nerve impulses.

Although useful, none of this gave the immotile a method of linking itself to the alien’s brain. The memory of their strange body and nervous system hung in its mind where it could be continually examined and analyzed. It simply could not see a natural way to access the brain. Given that, and the obvious lack of mental capacity (as shown by the lack of control over the suit) MorningLightMountain began to wonder just how far down the alien motile caste structure these particular motiles were. They could well be a lot less intelligent that its own motiles, although the similar size of the brain argued against that; and the grippers indicated a high degree of tool usage, for which they would need suitable aptitude.

Aliens, it acknowledged, were paradoxical in more ways than one.

Given its overwhelming need to establish direct control over the brain of an alien motile, and the only connection it had found to that valuable organ, it didn’t have a lot of choice. The small alien motile was clearly badly damaged; its eventual loss was inevitable. MorningLightMountain needed to analyze the electronic processors connected to its nervous system; if it could somehow interface itself with them, then it would have access to the alien brain.

Two soldier motiles carried the smaller alien motile over to a bench where narrow focus scanning equipment was poised overhead. Clamps were fastened around it, holding it in place. High-pitched squeaking noises pulsed out of its open orifice. The larger alien motile was hammering its clenched grippers on the wall of its pen, also emitting a lot of noise.

The scanners focused on the top section of the alien motile, and MorningLightMountain located the electronic systems clustered around the top of its main nerve channel. A motile with a small precision cutting tool began slicing through the intervening tissue. The alien’s noise emissions immediately increased to a much louder volume. Its red nutrient fluid jetted out of the cut. Even though the three-dimensional map of the alien’s biological functions was quite clear in MorningLightMountain’s mind, with the nutrient fluid pump organ beating away in a strong rhythm, it hadn’t appreciated the kind of pressure that the circulatory system operated at. The cutting tool was saturated in the red fluid, which went on to spray across the motile’s skin. Its heat was uncomfortable. The motile had to move away and stand under a small shower nozzle to wash it off. A different motile moved forward to continue the operation.