"But the decadents and their battle machines weren't the only reason the Ring Empire fell—although they must take most of the blame. They represented only the physical aspect of its decline. Many societies had followed the Wilfrien, slowly regressing, even rejecting their technological society, seeking a more primitive existence in search of peace, withdrawing their participation and support from the Ring Empire. Then there were others, like the Outbounds and the Last Church, who had actually been quite successful in reaching their goals. They had attracted the most dynamic people, the brightest, the restless who relished challenge; all of these had found their cause and given themselves to it. In doing so, over the millennia, they had drained the Ring Empire of vitality, the very people who could have regenerated it "Among the factions and wars was one group who had predicted the fall. The Eternals, who were more academics than anything else, had studied civilizations from across the Ring Empire. They found one thing that remained constant among all biological species: the cycles of growth and decay. It might take only a century. It might take a million years. But life always follows that pattern. As the Decadence War raged and the Ring Empire fell apart around them they decided to save themselves. Many groups were desperately trying to do the same thing, with colonies and secret enclaves to keep their original ideals alive so that one day they could expand again, rekindling their former glory. In some instances entire kingdoms isolated themselves behind fortified borders so that they wouldn't be contaminated with the decay infecting their neighbors. All of them were attempting to resist that which the Eternals were convinced was inevitable. By doing so they would surely be doomed to failure, the Eternals thought. And they were right, for today there is no Ring Empire, only whispers and legends of the glory that was. But the Eternals are still here.
"Instead of making some futile stand against the decline, the Eternals embraced the cycle of life. They transformed themselves and their society so that it would live in harmony with galactic nature. Biological life and Ring Empire machine were fused at a molecular level. The Eternals became giant spaceborne creatures. Unlike starships, they didn't need artificial power and great industrial stations to maintain them. In many respects these creatures were profoundly simple. It is that simplicity that has allowed them to survive and spread across the galaxy.
"They live today in orbit above the galaxy's red giant stars, powered by the heat and grazing on the solar wind. They have enormous solid bodies like streamlined asteroids that sprout solar wings whose span is measured in kilometers. Because of their shape, and the fiery environment in which they thrive, we call them dragons. They are even hatched from eggs. Every solar system has them, dark cold globes circling among the outer cometry halo as they wait for the star's main sequence to come to an end. That's the cycle again. Stars grow old and die, swelling out to absorb their planets, and eventually expanding into red giants. That's when their warmth reaches the eggs, energizing them. They grow slowly, absorbing the heat and the thin gusts of ions, until they're fully fledged dragons. And then they listen to the universe. Their wings are threaded with elements that can pick up radio waves from the other side of the galaxy, and even far beyond that, allowing them to listen to planetary civilizations as they rise and fall. They listen to the cosmos itself, the death and birth of stars, the shriek of matter as it falls into black holes, quasars and pulsars crying out from the empty void. All this knowledge they spread among themselves, and think about it, and remember it. On rare occasions they even use it, for they can modify themselves at a molecular level. That is their physical nature, the legacy of the Ring Empire.
"Eventually, as the star shrinks back to a white dwarf before its final extinction, they are left abandoned in the dark and cease to be. In accepting their mortality they live with the cycle, with what's natural. They have served their purpose and advanced their species. Like any civilization, they acquire knowledge, they organize it and bestow it on their descendants. As they circle above their stupendous star they send their own eggs out into the universe, each one containing the memory of everything they consider important and relevant. These eggs fall through the darkness of interstellar space until the gravity of some bright new star pulls them in to a long distant orbit so the cycle can be started over."
"Except one of them fell to earth, or rather Thallspring," Lawrence said.
The children gasped and turned. Lawrence was leaning casually against the trunk of a snowbark, arms folded across his chest His grin was lopsided as he stared at Denise.
The children started whispering excitedly.
"That was over two thousand years ago," Lawrence continued. He grinned down at the expectant, slightly awed faces. "The dragon's egg streaked out of the sky like a splinter of sunlight and struck the plateau near the base of Mount Kenzi. The force of the blow was so powerful it gouged a crater out of the bare rock. Every tree for fifty kilometers was ripped out of the ground and smashed apart by the blastwave. Then the timber burned for days, filling the air with thick, black smoke. But the dust from the vaporized rock billowed up into the stratosphere and blotted out the sun for weeks. It brought the coldest winter the plateau has ever known, covering it in snow. Then, when the snow began to melt a few years later, it filled the crater with water. The trees started to grow again. And a hundred years later everything looked just the same, except now there was a new lake.
"Then people arrived and called this place Arnoon. They built themselves a village and began harvesting the willow webs. And one day—"
"One day," Denise said, "my grandfather was out prospecting when his survey sensors found a strange magnetic pattern in the rock under the lake. So he started to dig. It took months for his little robot to excavate a shaft down to the base of the island. But when it got there, my grandfather found fragments of the egg. He didn't know what they were, only that they were artificial solid-state matrices of some kind, unlike anything humans had ever built He began to excavate further, and eventually found the largest fragment of all, the one we call the dragon."
"By then," Lawrence said, "he'd discovered that the molecular structure of the small fragments was storing data. After a lot of experiments he finally managed to access some of it. Once he knew how to do that, he started to mine the huge reservoir of information stored within the dragon."
"The dragon was still sleeping," Denise said. "It possessed nothing but disconnected memories. My grandfather wrote programs that linked them together. The dragon slowly began to wake. It learned how to think."
He looked straight at her, heedless of their audience. "And you found that it was actually a cohesive nanonic system capable of molecular engineering. You used it to adapt native plants to grow terrestrial food. You used it to make yourselves resistant to disease. You made it synthesize bits of technology that are orders of magnitude more advanced than anything humans can make. And you kept it all for yourselves."
"Because it can only change itself into what we ask for. It can't build anything new. It doesn't know how. That data was lost in the destruction of the impact. Every patternform sequencer particle in my body was a part of the dragon. It diminished itself to enhance me. It diminished itself further to heal you."
"Yeah," Lawrence said. His belligerence faded. "Makes righteous life kind of awkward, doesn't it?"
Denise turned back to the children. "So now you know why things are a little different here than on the rest of Thallspring. A very noble creature has sacrificed part of itself to make our lives easier. Our debt to the dragon is enormous. We must never forget what we owe. And we must pray that one day we can repay it."
The children filtered out past the snowbark trunks. Many of them crept up close to Lawrence, then dashed away giggling. Approaching the big bad Skinman was a seriously scary dare. He found it rather funny.
Jacintha came up to him, little Elsebeth cradled on her arm. The girl was shy, burying her face in her mother's neck.
"I do remember you now," Lawrence said.
She nodded a fracti
on reluctantly. "I'm sorry we became enemies again."
"Love and war. I guess that's part of the human cycle."
"We hope to break that. With the dragon's help."
"I know. It told me."
Jacintha glanced over at her sister, who was waiting for them, a disapproving expression on her elegant young face. "Try not to give her too hard a time. She has to do this."
"Don't worry. I know what I have to do, as well."
Jacintha gave him a mildly suspicious look, then walked away back to Lycor. Elsebeth gave him a little wave from the crook of her mother's arm. He shook his own fingers at the young girl, smiling.
"We have Grabowski," Denise said briskly. "I'm willing to offer you a deal. You can't go back to Zantiu-Braun, so if you cooperate with us the patternform sequencer particles will repair all Grabowski's damage, including his brain, and he can begin a new life here in the village."
Lawrence widened his smile until it became suitably irritating. "I don't need a deal. I'm going to help you anyway."
"What do you mean?" she asked slowly.
"You want to take the dragon fragment to Aldebaran, right? The closest red giant, where all the real dragons are."
"Yes." She said it as if admitting a fatal weakness. "They can make it whole again. If it stays here, then your kind will discover it one day. They'll take it from us and break it apart in their corporate labs to discover how patternform-sequencing systems work. I can't let that happen. It's a living entity that has given us so much, and we've never done anything for it. This is our only chance to return it where it belongs."
"My kind, huh?"
"Zantiu-Braun, or Thallspring's government. People who don't live out here like this. People who don't live real lives, who'll never care about anything but themselves."
"You know, there's more of your kind than you think. Everywhere I go, I keep bumping into idealists."
"A shame none of it rubs off on you."
"I'm helping you, aren't I?"
"Why? Why would you agree to help?"
"Raw altruism not good enough for you?" He wasn't about to tell her the shock he'd experienced on hearing about the Mordiff, nor its accompanying revelation.
"I don't believe it, not from you. You came here to steal the dragon. You wouldn't switch sides and morality this quickly."
"I didn't know the dragon existed before I arrived. I thought you'd got a big stash of gold or diamonds hidden away up here."
"But..." She gave him a troubled look. "Where did you get your Prime from?"
"A boy I knew once back on Amethi. A good kid. Little bit misguided and confused; but then, isn't everyone at that age?"
"So Earth has found a dragon."
"No. That's why I'll help you."
* * *
Michelle didn't know where she was, nor what time it was. She wasn't entirely sure what day it was.
After the Skins had dragged her from her room she'd been driven somewhere in a blacked-out van. The medical orderlies from the elevator went with her. They tore her T-shirt off so their probes could inspect and scratch her skin. Needles were inserted into her flesh along her limbs and belly, leaving small beads of blood welling up when they were extracted. She'd screamed and pleaded and struggled. It was all futile. A Skin pinned her down until their examination ended.
Her ruined T-shirt was thrown back at her, and she tried to wrap it round her breasts. Now that they'd finished, the men showed no more interest in her as she lay on the floor of the van, weeping pitifully. She half expected them to rape her, but that didn't happen either.
The trip lasted fifteen minutes. When she was hustled out of the van, it'd been parked in some anonymous underground garage. She was marched directly to a small cell and pushed inside. The door slammed shut.
After the first hour she thought they'd forgotten about her. She banged on the door. But nobody came. She started weeping again, hating herself for being so weak. She was just so frightened. Zantiu-Braun could do whatever they wanted to her. Anything. Nobody would know. If she could just see Josep... This horror could be endured if he was with her. Slowly she shrank into a fetal position on the cot, hugging her legs tight to her chest. Little bursts of sobbing came and went. Why didn't they just take her out and start their interrogation? Just get this over with. At some time she must have drifted into sleep.
The door thudding open woke her with a start. A Skin walked in. Michelle clutched the ragged T-shirt to her chest, staring fearfully at the dark, bulky figure. Suddenly she wasn't so keen for the interrogation to start after all.
"You. With me. Now." The Skin beckoned.
Michelle was led along cheerless basement corridors to an elevator. It brought her up to the main levels of the building. She thought it looked like an extremely high-class hotel, with luxurious gold carpeting and gloss-polished wood doors. Large, elaborate oil paintings hung on the walls. Delicate antique tables supported china vases full of big flower arrangements. Lighting cones were gilded in silver and cut crystal.
It wasn't a hotel. Open doors gave her glimpses into offices. The men inside, and hurrying along the corridor, all shared a tense, preoccupied air. Few of them even spared her a second look.
The Skin finally opened the door into an office with a single desk. A man was waiting for them, dressed in a smart gray-and-purple suit, styled differently from anything she'd seen on Thallspring. "I'll take her from here," he told the Skin.
Michelle barely heard. She was looking out of the window. The view showed her a swath of formal grounds sweeping away to a broad circular highway. Beyond that were the familiar sturdy public buildings that populated the center of Durrell. But to be seeing them from this angle, she'd have to be inside the Eagle Manor.
"I'm Braddock Raines," the man was saying. "Please." He took his jacket off and proffered it to her. "Sorry about the way you've been treated. The frontline boys tend to become slightly overenthusiastic, especially on an operation with such a high priority."
"Operation?" she asked blankly. She was still having trouble with what was happening.
"All in good time." He smiled reassuringly and gestured at a tall double door. "My chief would like a word."
There was a larger office through the doors. The man sitting behind its broad desk gave Michelle a pleasant nod as she was shown in, then returned his attention to a pane in front of him. It was difficult to tell how old he was. Mid-forties, she thought, though he had the kind of assured authority that was normally found in men a lot older.
Braddock steered her to a settee and indicated she should sit. She pulled the jacket around her as if it were a shield.
"My name is Simon Roderick," said the man behind the desk. "I'm in charge of Zantiu-Braun security on Thallspring. And you, Michelle, have been a very stupid young lady."
She dropped her gaze, praying she wouldn't start sniveling.
"One thing in your favor right now is that we know you're actually human."
"Excuse me?" she stammered.
"You're a human, unlike this gentleman." The sheet screen on the wall flashed up a picture of Josep's face. "Ah, you do recognize him."
"Yes."
"Thank you, Michelle. At least you have some understanding of how much trouble you're in."
"One day you'll be defeated," she said, amazing herself at such defiance.
"It's not only Zantiu-Braun that will be defeated by aliens that powerful. The entire human race could well be facing a terminal threat."
"What do you mean, aliens?"
"You didn't know, did you? Your comrade in arms was not entirely human."
"That's ridiculous." Nobody was more human than Josep. Only a human could bring another human so much pleasure and contentment.
"Is it?" Josep's image was replaced by a cluster of multicolored spheres. "Do you know what that is, Michelle?"
"No."
"That doesn't surprise me. We're not absolutely sure ourselves. It's a nanomachine that appears to have molecular-engineerin
g capabilities. It was extracted from your friend's blood."
"What have you done to Josep!" Tears threatened to burst down her face, but it was anger that pushed them this time, not fear.
"Josep?" Simon smiled. "Finally, a name."
Michelle's shoulders slumped. The anger burned out as quickly as it had flared. How stupid to be caught out like that. "You can do what you like to me," she said sullenly. "I won't help you."
Simon walked around the desk and sat on the settee next to Michelle. She tried not to shrink from him. He poured some tea from the silver pot on the low table.
"Do you know what we can do to you?" he asked. "Did Josep ever tell you?"
"You'll use drugs, I know that. And you'll probably rape me before you kill me."
"Good grief, what a repellent idea. We're not savages. My dear girl, you really must learn to distinguish between facts and your own side's somewhat lurid propaganda. Yes, we can use drugs, along with various hypnosis and deep-stimulus techniques, none of which are particularly pleasant. There is nothing you will be able to keep from us; you will confess your deepest secrets. Do you know why we're not doing that to you right now?"
"So you can trick me into giving you names," she said hotly.
"No. I want to appeal to you to give us the information voluntarily. Time, I'm afraid, is rather short. I really am not joking when I say Josep is an alien."