Chapter 13

The planets population was as diverse as the builders could make it. Or at least it assumed so. The planets mind and memory was vast, but some of the most interesting mind archives was closed to it. When the planet thought about it, which it very seldom did, it was with the greatest difficulty. As it, or someone, had created a very strong inhibition whenever that question raised itself. Somewhat like a suppressed memory in a human, things you really didn’t need, or wanted, to remember.

Then again, the planet had taken in refugees too, more so in the beginning although now slowly petering out. For the last millennia it had been content, and happily closed its eyes to the outside universe’s. Which made it even more troubling for it, when it considered how those suits and humans had succeed to arrive, almost without notice.

In some ways the planet was as a paradise, a natural habitat containing everything from glaciers to deserts, wide stretches of open plain, mountains, valleys and an abundant wild life. But with every new settlement it had forced an agreement on them, those ‘outside ones’, now given dominion on what technology they could use, or had already. The most important being that it was not to be exported or transferred to another dominion. And so it was with trade too, the caravans that sometimes moved between those dominions was devoid of technology, using native lifeforms for transportation.