The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle (89 page)

The alien had stopped its squeaking, now its orifice was emitting a sound like old wood snapping. Its body was straining up against the clamps. Red fluid continued to spray out of the cut. Through the scanner, MorningLightMountain saw a series of impulses flash between the electronic components. All activity between them stopped. A moment later the nutrient fluid circulation pump juddered to a halt. Electrical activity in the brain withered away.

MorningLightMountain instructed its motile to resume the cutting operation. Without the red fluid spray, it was a lot easier to move the cutting tool inward, exposing the thick nerve channel. Micromanipulator grippers were inserted into the opening, and carefully teased the components loose, breaking the minute and terribly fragile strands that connected it to the nerve junctions.

One by one they were subjected to detailed analysis. Three of the devices were for redirecting nerve impulses out into the complicated tracery of organic circuitry etched on the alien motile’s skin. One had a very low power electromagnetic transceiver built in. MorningLightMountain was pleased to find that it could well eliminate the need for a direct physical connection to the remaining alien motile. The final device was odd, an artificial crystal lattice that had conductive properties, with a small processor attached. It took the immotile a long time to understand its function. The crystal was a storage system, a highly sophisticated version of the ones it used to retain command instructions for the missiles. In this case, the theoretical information load was colossal; it could hold almost as many memories as an immotile brain. Unfortunately it was completely blank. As the alien motile died, it must have erased the information.

The adaptor arrived. MorningLightMountain worked quickly, connecting itself to the transceiver processor and feeding power into the tiny device. A deluge of binary pulses flooded into its mind. It used the thought routines it had developed to control its own processors, running the sequences through them, modifying them to handle the new mathematical arrangements. At the same time, it observed the device with the field resonance amplifier. The string of numbers made up from the binary sequences made little sense, but it did see where they originated from, which junctions they came from. It carefully began to return the sequences, seeing what the result was. Most had no effect, but occasionally a segment of the whole sequence would activate a portion of the processor. Slowly, it built up a set of crude control instructions. The processor seemed to have a lot of operation rules integrated into its design. When the immotile finally managed to switch the transceiver on, a list of possible transmission sequences flipped to semiactive status. By trial and error, MorningLightMountain learned how to order them to flow into the transceiver section for broadcast. Although the binary sequences themselves were horribly long and complex, there was an elegant logic behind the device that the immotile quite admired.

It used another adaptor to connect itself to a second processor. This one had even more inbuilt operational rules. Once again, MorningLightMountain patiently worked its way through the combinations, flipping functions to active status. It was rewarded by a deluge of output information. The most basic one was a steady signal that was repeated five hundred times a second. Other functions changed the signal minutely, although its main parameters remained constant.

The immotile flipped the additional signal functions off and considered the basic signal for a long while, working through possibilities before it realized what it might be. It constructed thought routines to run through all the prospective formats, to be rewarded by a simple cube of twelve billion specific points. At this moment over a thousand immotile unit brains were now devoted to interpreting the alien electronics and the binary number sequences they used. In all its history it had never devoted so much of itself to a single problem. It flipped the first additional function on, and was rewarded by a string of symbols appearing in the cube.

The remaining alien motile had become inert, lying on the floor of its pen. As MorningLightMountain worked through the transmission sequences, one made it twitch and raise its fat sensor stalk. The cell picked up a reply transmitted from its embedded transceiver processor that the one now attached to MorningLightMountain acknowledged automatically. The alien motile stood up and stared at the equipment that the motiles were operating. It noise-generated briefly, then turned to the immotiles. Its transceiver processor transmitted a long binary sequence, lasting several milliseconds. A whole series of inbuilt rules in MorningLightMountain’s device suddenly activated, opening up new junction connections and closing others. The immotile watched helplessly through the resonance amplifier as the processor unit effectively shut down. All the primary quantum wire routes making up the lattice of junctions were blocked out. Worse than that, the binary sequences used to accomplish the order were prime number based—those short enough for it to evaluate. Most of them were beyond its mental capacity to determine. It couldn’t reverse the instruction.

Over in its pen, the alien motile held one arm out level toward the immotile units sitting behind the crystal wall, and extended a single gripper vertically. MorningLightMountain knew defiance when it saw it, no matter how alien the species was. It used its own transmitter in the cell to replicate the sequence that had made the alien twitch and rouse itself. There was no response.

New and different symbols continued to appear within the visualized cube as MorningLightMountain flipped additional signal functions. At least that had been unaffected by the alien motile’s transmission. But without knowing the actual functions that the symbols represented, the immotile couldn’t begin a translation. Its chances of establishing communications with the alien had been reduced considerably.

The immotile reviewed its shrinking options. There were only two sources of knowledge left concerning the alien immotiles and what was happening outside the Prime star system: the alien motile’s brain, and its electronic information store. MorningLightMountain had clear evidence that the alien immotile would resist any attempt to establish contact and extract information from its brain. And the smaller alien motile had immediately wiped its information store when it realized what was happening. Logically, the information contained within the store device was valuable.

A soldier motile raised its arm, and shot the alien motile through the top of its fat sensor stalk with a high-velocity kinetic projectile. Red fluid, sticky strings of brain flesh, and splinters of bone exploded across the pen, splattering the transparent walls.

The second dead alien motile was placed on the bench underneath the narrow focus scanning equipment. Clamps held it in place as MorningLightMountain located the electronic systems embedded below the brain. They were all intact; the soldier motile’s shot had been perfectly aimed. The motiles began the extraction operation.

This time, the electronic information store was almost full.

MorningLightMountain’s preliminary investigation revealed the information was protected from access by inbuilt rules that needed activation sequences even more complex than the ones that had been used to switch off the transceiver processor.

The tiny device was transferred to the electronics laboratory, and placed inside a quantum interface detector. It took a long time to read the stored information block by block; but weeks later the entire sequence was incorporated into MorningLightMountain’s memory.

At the same time as the reading, it had been experimenting with the input channels of the wiped device for the smaller alien motile. The overall purpose was quite simple: nerve impulses from the alien’s primary sensorium were transformed into binary sequences, compressed by a series of algorithms, and inserted into the storage lattice. It held a recording of everything that the alien had perceived.

MorningLightMountain derived an elaborate thought routine that would reverse the compression and transformation process, turning the stored information back into analog nerve impulses. It applied the routine to the alien’s information, and allowed the resulting data stream to flow into a single immotile’s brain. The unit was isolated from the MorningLightMountain group by a series of safety cutoffs in case anything went wrong, and the alien thought routines began to leak out and contaminate the group.

Dudley Bose struggled in the grip of armored monsters as the shimmering blade stabbed through the space suit, puncturing both the plyplastic and his right buttock. The tip slashed downward, ripping through flesh in an agonizing line of fire. Pain. PAIN!

MorningLightMountain wanted to throw its head back and scream as the unknown nerve impulse slammed through fifty thousand linked brains with the violence of a lightning bolt. Shock transfixed the immotile group as the naked slime-covered monsters tore and pulled away its coverings, inflicting brutal wounds across its belly and legs. It wanted to squirm loose, but its legs didn’t work. The memory was pushed away from conscious thought, dwindling into the past, becoming bearable as the safety systems reduced the intensity of the impulses delivered to the main group. MorningLightMountain’s lung intake gills fluttered in unison throughout its circular cloisters as it took a juddering breath. Billions of frozen motiles all across the territory reoriented themselves and resumed their tasks. In orbit above the Prime homeworld, MorningLightMountain’s ships returned to their correct flight paths, industrial machinery digesting asteroidal rubble belched and reset their refinery modules.

Pain. What an extraordinary concept. Prime motiles and immotiles had basic tactile senses, indicating pressure and touch against their skin. But
this
, this was a physical warning on a scale that took away rationality.

But then, it made sense in a way. Humans were individual. Astonishing though it was, they had no motile/immotile caste. It was a civilization of billions of full-sentience entities, all of them in mild conflict with each other. In some cases, not so mild.

>
memory
<

The sheer intransigent idiocy of the university board. Every month Dudley spent—wasted!—hours of his valuable time in meetings that accomplished nothing but the perpetuation of bureaucracy and the status quo. His department was always overlooked, always underfunded, always patronized by the larger science departments. Bastards.

>
explain
<

Because this is worthwhile. This is the expansion of knowledge that has a history back to the dawn of human time. This is pure science, driven not by greed but by nobility.

>
motivation not comprehended / memory
<

The vice chancellor spoke at length.

>
vocalization / aliens communicate via sound / selfmemory
<

“Fuck you!” the alien Bose screamed inside its pen as Emmanuelle Verbeke lay strapped down on the vivisection table, blood squirting out of her carotid artery. “Rot in hell you motherfucking bastards! We’ll nuke you to shit and kill your babies when they glow in the dark! We’ll wipe you from this whole fucking universe. Not even God will remember you existed!”

>
god / human ally / memory
<

Written books, hundreds of them, thousands, all multiplying out from a few ancient sacred texts. Stories of how the universe began, how its creator sent segments of itself to the human homeworld to promise salvation. Salvation that came in many forms for many different human alliances. Divine mythology that as a scientist Dudley Bose knew was fiction. Like the woodland elves, which had turned out to be real. The Silfen. What irony.

>
more aliens / classifications/ memory
<

Hundreds of worlds each containing tens of thousands of nonsentient aliens. Several sentient species had been discovered by the Commonwealth as it expanded, their status as hostile or allied could never quite be determined. And one non-life world, the SI planet.

>
SI / human immotile / explain
<

It’s not a human immotile. It evolved out of sophisticated programs. It’s artificial.

>
human thought transfer to SI / immotile function / confirm
<

No, it’s not like that, like you. Some humans download their memories into the SI when they don’t want to rejuvenate, when they’ve had enough of life.

>
paradox / explain
<

I can’t. It’s not something I would ever do. People are not the same, we all have different motivations.

>
SI involvement with starship flight / memory
<

Distant recollections of news reports, blurring into one. Politicians arguing about paying for the flight. Nigel Sheldon being interviewed; Vice President Elaine Doi claiming the SI supported the venture, wanting to know more about the barriers. Never confirmed directly because the SI didn’t talk to individual humans, at least not Dudley Bose.

>
clarification of status / inclusion on flight / memory
<

From nobody to somebody within an instant as he saw the enclosure. Triumph followed by months of cluttered thought of the striving, clawing his way to get selected for the crew of the
Second Chance
. Surprising himself with the degree of determination and political maneuvering he accomplished, the suppression of all conscience.

>
alienPrime involvement / explain
<

Never heard of them. Never heard of you before the barrier came down. We were an exploratory flight. Science only.

>
message from MorningLightMountain17,735 / explain
<

You’re wrong, there was no alien on board the
Second Chance.

>
paradox / explain
<

There was no alien on board. Our hysradar scan showed the barrier was still intact around their star.

>
barrier construction / memory
<

None. The barriers were in place before humans knew how to cross space. Humans did not build the barrier.