Chapter 5 is short on sex but 6 makes up for it.
CHAPTER 5
4:21 PM Sunday on a high ridge overlooking U.S. Rte. 6
Mmrrrrowwww. The noise the ground vehicles' wheels made on the hardened pavement below dopplered in and then out again as they passed—overwhelming all other sounds. Processing it out to collect useful data on other vibration sources would take cycles the alien did not care to devote just now.
Other inputs had priority just now from the top of the bluff.
It was wonderful.
The wind blew across its naked upper surface in a steady stream, bringing a cacophony of chemical noise to its sensor arrays. The scents ranged from simple burnt hydrocarbons to what could only be sophisticated chemical messengers. It already recognized some of them from its decade spent in the forest floor. Many more were brand new. It set a sub-array to cataloging them for future reference, possibly to replicate useful ones at need. It rippled in anticipation of all the future fun that might bring.
But the view, oh, the view.
Even with the precipitation it could see farther and wider than ever before. It could not possibly take it all in at once. After a quick scan for danger the alien deliberately gave its light sensors a restricted aperture to stop sensory overload. Near at hand it studied the the sandstone bluff and came to the conclusion it was artificial. The regularly spaced grooves that appeared to be the remnants of bore holes was pretty convincing. This told it things about the local sapients. Just what it could spend a lovely time at some later point deducing. Another shiver.
Below the bluff, between it and the pavement, was a plant choked drainage ditch. This would be a wonderful place to more closely observe the passing vehicles. Getting down there was was going to be a bit of a problem it hadn't figured out yet.
The pavement itself appeared to have multiple vehicle lanes, two for ascending but only one descending. It wondered at this until it saw small vehicles passing a larger, obviously laboring one, on the ascending side. Ah, very practical these sapients. It also explained the patterns in stripes dividing the lanes one from another.
On the other side of the pavement was something so interesting the alien deliberately looked away and saved it for last.
To the left, high in the air, long cables descended into the valley below. The gave off an electromagnetic hum bespeaking great power. Power transmission lines, obviously. Curiously there were red balls on each line midway on the descent into the valley. It wondered if that was to prevent small creatures from using the cables as a path. If so, why not put them closer to the endpoints? Were they that cruel to frustrate or even kill small creatures by causing them to fall from the greatest height? This bore some thought cycles. A shiver of an entirely different kind.
Ahead and to the right, in the distance was a great green valley. Wending through it was a giant stream that appeared to meander naturally. Superimposed on the landscape was a geometric pattern of shorter vegetation and paved pathways obviously arranged by he sapients. There were also a great many artificial structures each individually distinct within a limited number of broad categories. More cataloging fun. Yum.
Through gaps in the traffic noise it heard a buzzing noise in the sky. Somewhere above the clouds something was moving and having various electromagnetic conversations with more than one ground station. The inhabitants here had flying vehicles.
Finally the alien allowed itself to concentrate on the most interesting thing in sight. In the wide space between the pavement and the precipice was a disabled vehicle. Its front cover was open and its symmetry was seriously compromised.
The swarm saw great promise in the situation. Obviously the ones who had left it there, or others acting as their agents, would have to come and repair it or haul it away. This was such a ready made opportunity to interact with a host it spent many thought cycles on the possibility it was a trap. It concluded this was unlikely but decided to observe for a while to catalog the dangers.
Another vehicle pulled up to the disabled one. It was of a neutral color with broad markings and flashing lights on top. The flashing lights, of two different colors, caused interesting conjecture about the visible spectrum of the the sapients. One of these got out of the left side of the vehicle. The swarm studied it closely.
They were upright bipeds, bilaterally symmetrical like their vehicles. The upper and lower limbs moved at distinct joints implying some form of endoskeleton since the surface layers seemed soft and pliable. The movement of the upper limbs seemed restricted to the anterior. From this it hypothesized that they were evolved from quadrupeds. The surface layers of this particular creature were obviously arranged to shed the precipitation. Was this a permanent feature? Particularly fascinating was the round disk on the upper sensory pod that kept water out of its eyes.
The biped surveyed the disabled vehicle from both ends and then placed a brightly colored rectangle on the side window where it adhered. The creature then re-boarded its own carrier and sped away.
Fascinating. But there was no time for contemplation. Marking the disabled vehicle like that meant others might soon come to deal with it. It had to move now or risk losing this wonderful opportunity. The swarm devoted its thought cycles entirely to just how to get to the disabled vehicle to await its first host.
Besides the obvious need to avoid discovery until it could choose and enter a host, there was the significant danger of the descent from the bluff itself and then the terrifying prospect of trying to cross the pavement.
The drainage ditch below was obviously there to keep water cascading off the bluff from flowing across the pavement, interfering with vehicle traction. Logically, that meant there had to be some other way for the liquid to escape. The alien searched and spotted what looked the opening of a culvert. Just the thing. Now how to get down?
The swarm was a pretty rugged assembly. By its nature it could deal with amazing amounts of compression and shear forces—as long as its parts were not separated by too great a distance it could survive as a coherent group being. But it also lacked tensile strength, its pieces, its mites, could only cling together with so much strength. They could not pull or be pulled at very hard without being separated. Against sheering force it was even weaker.
Flattening out and going down would bring certain exposure. Thinning itself out into a long string would create coordination issues from end to end. Staying bunched up would expose it's outer layers to gravitational shearing of a disconcerting sort. Gobs of it would drop off to splatter on the pavement below. Besides the chance of exposure that way, if too much broke lose it might lose coherence.
In the forest it had observed many small creatures generated fibers from within their own bodies for their own purposes. These were quite efficient and fascinating. It particularly liked watching as the eight legged ones used their fibers to create open nets to snare other creatures. It wondered for the thousandth time why only the eight legged ones did this then forced itself back to the problem at hand.
A close knit mesh might be just the thing. Spinning its own fibers would be no problem given a sufficient supply of carbon. But would the principle scale up? It did not see any large scale nets about unless... could the power cables double as such? Could those red balls be bait for the fliers? Curiouser and curiouser.
Focus.
Back to the problem of descending the bluff. Not far off was a fallen tree trunk. That should provide sufficient carbon. Oozing over and sampling the log revealed the wood actually consisted of ready made fibers glued together. With something approaching glee the swarm began rearranging these into a ladder-like mesh it envisioned as optimal to its needs.
In no time at all it was easing down the bluff in a giant rock colored version of the yummy worms it had occasionally amused itself by hunting them in the forest floor.
The swarm hurried, hardly bothering to catalog the various materials and microscopic biology it encountered in its trek. Down the face of the stone it went, along the ditch to the culvert, ooze through the iron mesh cover, down the pipe and out the other end, back up the slope and through a drain hole in the low stone wall.
