"Then we defend ourselves. But I don't expect he will. We're going to be in the dragons' home system, and we have one of their own kind onboard. In my book, that doesn't make us a likely target of opportunity."
"Fine, but I'm going to keep our weapons suite at level-one readiness status. If that bastard tries anything tricky I won't hesitate to use it"
"I know. But let's try not to forget what is going to happen after exodus. One way or another the human race will alter and diverge. It's important to me at least that those fresh starts aren't built on bloodshed."
* * *
On the last day inside the compression drive wormhole Denise woke early. She hadn't been this wired since the day the invasion fleet arrived over Thallspring. Today was what she'd dedicated almost all of her life to, and it wasn't happening the way they'd expected. So much time and preparation had been spent planning how to get the Arnoon dragon back here. Problems were supposed to be eliminated on Thallspring, giving her a clean run, not follow her here.
She was still tempted to scatter the weapons after exodus. But Lawrence was right, damn him. Killing people without warning wasn't the right way to go about this. Such a thing went against every dream she cherished for her own fresh start.
The whole notion was such a wonderful coda to the whole project of returning the dragon. Another human colony at some unimaginably vast distance across the galaxy. One that had full patternform technology to sustain it. She was going to bring the children up in a world where the old human ills of competition and jealousy had no part. A star where there would never be any danger of cultural contamination from Earth and its colonies, old and new. Just in case. Just in case the rest of the human race erased itself from galactic history. Just in case the people of Thallspring didn't blithely accept Arnoon's gift of knowledge, and turned it to less than benevolent ends. Just in case Earth obtained dragon knowledge to misuse. Which was now going to happen.
The concept of a New Arnoon depended on the dragons. She needed their patternform technology. Their starship drive. Their information about stars and habitable planets across the galaxy. She had expected to spend months, if not years, at Aldebaran, learning new wonders, helping the Arnoon dragon grow and develop into its adult form. Now she might have only ninety minutes.
Yes, scattering the weapons in an attack formation was extremely tempting.
Instead she had a shower and dressed in clean clothes, a Z-B-issue sweatshirt and trousers belonging to some small crewman. With sleeves and trouser legs rolled up, she went through the bridge into the small senior officer lounge that she and Lawrence used as their canteen. He'd had his late-night snack again. As usual there were a couple of plastic cups on the central table, rings of tacky tea on the surface. Doughnuts and remnants of doughnuts on and around a plate—he only ever seemed to eat the bits with jam on them. A media card was showing the end of some play on a bare stage, the actors frozen as they took the curtain call.
If nothing else, the voyage reminded her of the time in the bungalow with Josep and Raymond. She told Prime to clear the mess and started rummaging through mealpacks as the lounge's domestic robot trundled over.
Lawrence came through a couple of minutes later, his hair damp from the shower. "Couldn't sleep," he confessed.
"Me too." She gave him his breakfast—bagels with scrambled egg and smoked salmon.
He tucked in appreciatively. "Thanks."
Denise sat opposite him, sipping her tea. "Any last-minute flashes of genius how to avoid a confrontation?"
"'Fraid not. Sorry."
"Me neither."
"It all boils down to the dragons themselves. We just don't know enough about them. I've been reviewing the memories our dragon has of past dragon star civilizations. There aren't many. We're limited to generalizations, and not too many of them. They just seem to passively suck up information and filter out the useful chunks for their descendants to inherit. That does seem to imply they're relatively benign."
"I hope so." She watched him shoveling down his food. "Aren't you even nervous?"
"No point. It won't do us any good."
"I was never nervous in Memu Bay."
"That's because you knew what you were doing. You were in control. Welcome to being on the receiving end."
"Do you really think they're benign?"
"Yes. But don't equate that to being on our side. If we ask for their help against others of our race, that will mean them getting involved in human affairs and politics. We would have to justify our appeal. That could well mean they judge us."
"Where do you come up with all this philosophy from? Are you some kind of secret xenopsychologist?"
He drank down the last of his orange juice and produced his broad, annoying grin. "One day, remind me to tell you how I used to waste away my childhood. You don't spend three years traveling with the Ultema without learning something about the alien perspective."
They went into the bridge for exodus. Prime spent two hours readying the fusion drive for ignition as soon as they were out of the wormhole. Console screens came on as Lawrence and Denise prioritized external sensor imagery.
"Are you receiving all this?" Lawrence asked the dragon. During the voyage they'd increased the bandwidth to the Xianti with several hundred fiberoptic cables, linking it directly to the Koribu's network.
"Yes, thank you," the dragon replied.
"Thirty seconds," Denise said.
Lawrence watched the displays as the energy inverter powered down. Half of the camera images lost the vague nothingness of the wormhole interior to a blank carmine glare. The other half showed stars gleaming bright against ordinary space. Radar found no solid object within five hundred kilometers. Prime brought more sensors online. Lawrence used his optronic membranes to receive the imagery, with Prime giving him a perspective from the front of the compression drive section.
Koribu had emerged forty million kilometers above Aldebaran's nebulous photosphere. To Lawrence it looked as though the starship were soaring across an ocean of featureless luminous red mist. The horizon was so distant it appeared to be above them. There was no discernible curvature. Star and space were two-dimensional absolutes.
Indigo symbols flowed across the image. Most of them concerned the Koribu's thermal profile. Infrared radiation from the star was soaking into the fuselage. Prime fired the secondary rocket engines, initiating a slow barbecue roll maneuver so that the heat was distributed evenly around the structure.
"Heat exchangers are coping for now," Denise said. "It's warmer than we were expecting, though. We might need to raise our orbit at some point."
"Radiation is strong, as well. Solar wind density is high. There's a lot of particle activity out there. That's going to do us more damage than the heat."
When he shifted his perspective to look back down along the fuselage he saw lines of pale violet light flicker and dance across struts and foil insulation. Metal components gleamed the brightest as the phosphorescent shimmer writhed across them. "Hey, we're picking up some version of Saint Elmo's fire."
"I hope our insulation's up to it"
"Me too. Okay, long-range radar is powering up." Six multiphase antennae were unfolding from their sheaths around the middle of the cargo section, flat ash-gray rectangles measuring twenty meters down their long edge. They flipped back parallel to the fuselage and began probing the chaotic climate boiling around the Koribu.
Prime overlaid their sweep across the visual imagery. A point of solid matter appeared forty-three thousand kilometers away, in an orbit two thousand kilometers lower than the Koribu's. Another one was detected fifty thousand kilometers away. A third was over seventy-two thousand kilometers distant. The radar's focus shifted to produce a higher resolution return of the first. It was twenty kilometers across, roughly circular, although the edges had broad, curving serrations, and it thickened considerably toward the center.
"More like a flower than a dragon," Lawrence murmured.
The radar had detect
ed another seven points of mass out to 115,000 kilometers, all the same size as the first.
"Are they the dragons?" Denise asked breathlessly.
"I believe so," the dragon said.
"There must be thousands of them."
"Millions," Lawrence said. The idea was exhilarating. Until now they hadn't known for certain that the dragons existed. They could only assume that Aldebaran's gravity had attracted the eggs when the star was bright and adolescent, and that its expansion had hatched them. Now, here was the final proof. Humans were no longer alone in the universe, and the Ring Empire really had flourished when the galaxy was younger.
All his earlier daydreams and beliefs had been justified.
I CAN go home.
The Koribu's main telescope was swinging around to point at the first dragon. Against the uniform red glare it showed as a simple, dark speck. When the communication dish locked on it detected low emissions in several electromagnetic bands.
"Are you ready?" Denise asked. She sounded as if she were prompting a small child.
"I am," the dragon said.
"Then say hello."
The Arnoon dragon transmitted a pulse of data from the communications dish and began repeating at half-second intervals. It was a simple sequence of mathematical symbols in the language stored within its own memory.
The Aldebaran dragon answered with a much longer pulse, little of which could be translated. Lawrence and Denise yelled in delight, clapping their hands. He gave her a quick kiss and a hug, overtaken by the moment; then they settled back to observe the exchange.
The Arnoon dragon began sending the information they'd prepared. A translation dictionary for what little it had of its own language and the datapool English equivalent. After that there came a more complete English dictionary, with interconnected entries so that meanings and concepts would build into a cohesive whole. Syntax and communication protocols followed. Finally it sent a short, encyclopedic file on humans.
Less than three seconds after the last pulse was sent, the Aldebaran dragon said: "Welcome to our star. It is always pleasing to accept new information in any form."
Lawrence grinned. "Turing test," he said quietly to Denise. "Even if it isn't pleased, it understands the principle; it's trying to be polite."
Denise nodded and took a breath. "Thank you. We are happy to be here. My name is Denise Ebourn. Do you have a designation?"
"I am One."
She flashed Lawrence a perplexed glance. "Does that have any significance?"
"I am the first dragon you contacted. One."
"Ah, I see." Denise reddened slightly as Lawrence gave her a malicious sneer. "One, we have brought one of your own kind that has been damaged."
The Koribu's sensors suddenly reported a bombardment of radar-style pulses. The whole magnetic environment around the starship altered, oscillating rapidly. Their one neutrino scanner recorded emissions off the end of its scale.
"In what form are you carrying one of us?" One asked.
"Go ahead," Denise told the Arnoon dragon. It began transmitting a pulse containing a summary of its own history.
"I understand," One said. "You brought this fragment to us believing we would want you to. I thank you for your concern. Unfortunately, in this respect your voyage here has been fruitless." '
"What do you mean?"
"We have no interest in the fragment."
Denise couldn't believe what One had said. The translation dictionary must have glitched. "Do you mean you can't repair it?"
"No. We have no interest in repairing or re-forming it. Did you not comprehend what it was?"
"Yes. It's one of your eggs."
"It is. As such it is irrelevant. We release millions of eggs every year. Only a fraction of them are ever captured by a star's gravity. The others are simply lost. Or they crash as your fragment did. Some are even intercepted by biological species such as yourselves and mined for information. We do not concern ourselves with them. I would suggest the analogy that they mean as much to us as a single human sperm does to you."
"But... It's alive now. It thinks. It's a rational, sentient being."
"It was not. It was a fragment that was slowly decaying until you discovered it and implanted this awareness."
"Are you saying we shouldn't have done that?"
"No. Each of our eggs is a hostage to chance. It is only a tiny fraction of the total that grow into a civilization such as this. Others contribute to the galactic knowledge base by more diverse means. The fragment you found has enhanced your species' understanding of the universe. In that respect it has been a success. We can add to our knowledge of you."
"Did you already know about us?" Lawrence asked.
"We are only sixty-five light-years from your world," One said. "We have been receiving your radio transmissions for centuries."
Lawrence rolled his eyes in dismay. "Great."
"Maybe this fragment means nothing to you," Denise said. "But it does to us. Could you repair it for us?"
"That is a null question. The fragment could never become one of us. It is not just its physical structure that is fragmented, its memory is also diminished. The two together make us what we are. We do not have a genetic code. It is information that enables us to evolve and adapt according to circumstances. To do this, we must have a complete set of memories. What you are asking for is for me to provide a new set of full memories and to integrate the fragment back into a whole egg. In which case it will become an egg again, nothing more. It would be released back out into the universe to take its chances again. If that is what you wish I can disassemble the fragment and use the molecules within a new egg."
"No," Denise said quickly. "Isn't there some way it can grow from what it is into something like you?"
"Not without abandoning what it is now."
Denise bowed her head until it almost touched the console. She was close to weeping. The village had risked so much to bring their dragon back here. People had died to achieve it. Now, doing what they believed in had been exposed as a particularly human folly, children getting sentimental over an injured puppy.
A curious sound roused her. Lawrence was chortling.
"What?" she snapped.
"Hubris always hits hard. Especially to an idealist like you. Because of your convictions, everybody else is wrong; mostly they're not even allowed to have different opinions. And now you have to face up to the fact that what you've done is wrong. You've been proved guilty of anthropomorphism."
"I am not. Our dragon is a sentient creature who deserves respect. Its origins don't matter. What it is now is what counts. We did the right thing bringing it here. The fact that it's unique makes it even more deserving. I would do the same thing all over again. It deserves the chance to evolve; it has a right to life."
"A human right?"
"Yes," she growled. "A human right. It's also a universal right. We rescued the dragon from nonexistence, we took from it, and now we have to give it back. I don't care what you think, I know I'm right, and to hell with you."
"Fate, you are stubborn." He activated the communication link. "One, can you tell me if you share knowledge with other species?"
His tone was so sharp that Denise gave him a suspicious glare. He just gave her his annoying broad smile.
"We do," One replied.
"Any knowledge?"
"Yes. It is our existence."
"Then you wouldn't object if we use patternform sequencers to try to enhance our dragon in a way we and it consider appropriate?"
"No."
Denise smiled her thanks at him. It wasn't what she'd wanted, but at least it gave them a chance to help their dragon grow into something other than an inert mass.
"Does it worry you that other species might misuse such knowledge?" Lawrence asked. "For example, if they use your knowledge to build weapons?"
"If you know how to interpret and understand the data, then you already have the capability to build weapons of a similar natu
re. Weapons are not a technological problem. They result from the nature of a species' society."
"In other words, we have to be responsible for ourselves."
"Of course," One replied.
"Can we ask for your help in that respect as well?"
"In what context?"
"Other members of our species will be arriving soon. Don't give your knowledge to them."
"Knowledge is universal. It cannot be denied."
"I don't want it denied. Just withheld for a short time, at least. Your knowledge could be very dangerous to our species if it is not shared universally. One of the people following us wishes to acquire a monopoly, so he can exploit it to impose his ideals on others. Do you view that as wrong?"
"In the context you have stated, it is wrong. But how do I know that those following you seek to dominate others of your species? How do I know it is not you who favor this course?"
Lawrence gave Denise an awkward shrug. "Damn, I've gone and triggered its paranoia. Any ideas?"
"Our dragon can tell you all about our intentions," Denise said.
"I would be willing to do that," the Arnoon dragon confirmed.
"That would not be acceptable," One told them. "The fragment's processing routines are derived from your genetic algorithms. It is your creature."
Denise cursed at the pane showing One's visual image, a tiny black splinter lost against the irradiated fog. "Now what?"
"Rely on human nature," Lawrence said. "May we approach you?" he asked One. "Our ship is being strained by this environment. Your umbra would provide shelter. And we'll be safer there."
"Safer relative to what?"
"Open space. The human following us may be violent. He will not risk using weapons close to you."
"Very well."
"After that, could you wait until a third ship arrives? The information could then be given to all of us simultaneously. That would achieve a balance, wouldn't it?"
"I will wait."
Simon had spent the entire voyage in the Norvelle's sickbay. After the first fortnight, the two doctors onboard had begun his dermal regeneration treatment. New skin was now growing successfully over the deeper burns. He found the whole process extremely tiring; the new growth seemed to devour energy from the rest of his body. Fortunately the pursuit of the Koribu didn't require his attention.