“I believe Orion is perfectly capable of surviving out here. He is, after all, a friend of the Silfen.”
“Yeah, but come on, he and Mellanie don’t have a brain cell to rub together.”
“It’s not their brain cells that they’re interested in rubbing together.”
Ozzie laughed. “No, it isn’t. I guess it’s going to take Tochee longer than it expects to get home.” He sighed. “Come on, let’s get going.”
They set off in the same direction as the others, to begin with. Ozzie could see them through the trees for quite a while. Orion and Mellanie would wave from time to time. He raised a hand in reply. Eventually, the undergrowth was too dense.
“Is this really a path?” the Bose motile asked. They were forcing their way through bushes and tall grasses, with the trees clustering close together. The ground was damp underfoot.
“Yeah,” Ozzie replied, knowing, feeling the ancient way stirring out of its sleep. “It just hasn’t been used for a long time, is all.”
***
It took them three more days, pushing through the forest as it turned from doughty pines to lush tropical vegetation that was really thick. On the morning of the third day, the trees began to shrink. They looked malformed, suffering from some kind of disease. Leafless stumps began to appear amid the living trunks, becoming prevalent. The undergrowth gave way to ribbons of slime that covered the ground. It wasn’t long before the dying jungle gave way to a field of boulders. Stone began to rise up on either side, forming gully walls. Thunder echoed around them, growing louder. They were walking into darkness now, with occasional flashes of lightning accompanying the thunder.
“I hear it,” the Bose motile said suddenly.
Ozzie nodded. He walked to the end of the gully, and peered down into the valley below. Overhead, a force field held off the thick black clouds. Lightning scraped across the translucent energy field.
The home of MorningLightMountain was laid out before him. The giant building that had consumed the conical mountain in the center of the valley. Vast rectangular congregation lakes, with their writhing bodies emerging onto ramps where they were marshaled into new regiments by motiles. Industrial buildings mushrooming everywhere.
“I can’t see a single living thing apart from it,” Ozzie said. “Nothing.”
“You won’t,” the Bose motile said. “Not here. There are farms elsewhere. Most of the continental land is given over to agriculture. But there is no wildlife.”
“What’s it doing?”
“Brooding. It thinks it is going to die. Not for millions of years, until the sun expands and fills up the inside of the barrier. But that is all it sees now. It doesn’t believe that any of its interstellar settlements will rescue it, should they survive our nova bombs. It knows they will devolve into independence and thus become its enemy just like all the other immotiles used to be.”
“Morbid son of a bitch, isn’t it? Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Of course. It is only fitting. I was the last thing to escape from Dyson Alpha, it is only right that I bring back a chance, some hope. MorningLightMountain cannot change now. Evolution here has ended. It cannot think differently, not by itself. Somebody must introduce change, for it will never come from within.”
“And you can do that?”
“I can try. I can insinuate questions into its thoughts. Questions it cannot conceive for itself.”
“Isn’t that a bit like making it in our own image?”
“I don’t think you need worry that MorningLightMountain will ever become human in its outlook. For myself, I will consider it simply developing a more rational outlook as a success. It needs to learn tolerance.”
“Good luck. That’s something we don’t do very well ourselves. We nearly killed MorningLightMountain in a knee-jerk reaction.”
“But we didn’t, did we, thanks to you.”
“And a few others.”
“It will take time, centuries I expect, and there’s no guarantee of success.”
“I’ll come back in a few hundred years, check up on your progress.”
“Please do. It will be interesting to see what you have become by then.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PETER F. HAMILTON is the author of numerous short stories and novels, including Pandora’s Star, Fallen Dragon, and the acclaimed epic Night’s Dawn trilogy (The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist, and The Naked God). Hamilton lives in England.
PREVIOUS WORKS BY PETER F. HAMILTON
THE NIGHT’S DAWN TRILOGY
The Reality Dysfunction
The Neutronium Alchemist
The Naked God
Fallen Dragon
THE GREG MANDEL TRILOGY
Mindstar Rising
A Quantum Murder
The Nano Flower
Misspent Youth
A Second Chance at Eden
The Confederation Handbook
Pandora’s Star
Judas Unchained is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by Peter F. Hamilton
All rights reserved.
