That was when he recognized what the structures were.
"Open a link to the Koribu," Simon ordered the AS. "Lawrence Newton, can you hear me?"
"Loud and clear. Is this Simon Roderick?"
"It is."
"Your clone told us about you."
"I don't suppose he was very flattering."
"He made some strong claims. Your attack on the Clichane would seem to validate them."
"If you know about me, you know why I had to do that."
"I know your rationale for the attack. That doesn't mean I agree with it."
"I've seen your file, Newton. You gave up everything, a whole world, for the chance to fly explorer starships. You know there is more to the human condition than what we are today. And now we can realize that goal for everyone."
"Whether they want it or not."
"It is the underclass that prevented you from making those flights you dreamed of. They restricted you more than they ever did me."
"I'm not arguing with you. I'm telling you, I will not allow you to impose change on people. You and your clone may have the information together."
"Is it yours to give?"
"Yes."
"I think not. This isn't a habitat, is it, not some artifact? This is the alien itself. How utterly magnificent. A creature of pure space."
"Yes, this is the alien."
"One of them crashed on Arnoon, didn't they? That's what made the crater next to the village."
"Your research is very competent."
"It made no sense at first. Why an alien with nanonic technology would enlist human allies and steal a starship. It was damaged, it didn't have all of its abilities."
"And now we've brought it back to its own kind."
"What were you going to do with the technology, Newton?"
"Nothing. I'm going home."
"I don't believe that, either. You're from a Board family. You would use it to your advantage, just like me."
"Wrong. I suggest you go back to the Clichane and help its crew. Once you've done that the technology will be made available."
"Have you really convinced the aliens to cooperate with you already? Or are you hiding something from me? Why don't you go back and help the Clichane?"
"This ship is in no condition to help anybody. We barely made it here."
"Then how were you planning to get home? Can the alien nanonics repair your ship? I suppose they can."
"They can."
"How interesting. In that case, I think I will remain with you and observe them in action." It was an almost perfect solution, he realized. If he parked the Norvelle in the alien's umbra his proximity to the Koribu would provide him with the greatest possible opportunity to obtain a physical sample of the nanonic technology. He began to wonder just how much of an ally the alien was to Newton. How would it react to any attempted interdiction of nanonic systems? Certainly there had been no repercussions from his attack on the Clichane. Before he took such an overt course of action he must at least try to establish communications with the alien. It could be that Newton was actually bluffing.
The Norvelle's fusion drive matched velocity with the vast alien, then slowly eased the starship into the umbra. It cut off, and the AS began firing the chemical rockets to refine their attitude. At that moment they were five kilometers from the surface of the alien, and twelve kilometers from the Koribu. Neither Newton nor the alien had responded to Simon's repetitive calls.
The Norvelle's magnetometer booms were still observing the titanic flux lines warping around the alien. Their pattern began to change, contracting like petals at sunset. But fast.
"What—" Simon managed to ask.
Lawrence had gone over the lifecycle of the dragons many times during the hundred-day voyage. Naturally, the creatures fascinated him. Then actually seeing them through the starship's sensors thrilled him even more. He loved their elegance. He even admired their philosophy, despite how frustrating it was to his situation.
Each dragon must have taken centuries to grow to its full size. Like Simon Roderick, he watched the magnetic field gather up wisps of solar wind, ingesting them for the active patternform system to alchemize—a slow, laborious process given the quantity involved. Some of the molecules were used to replenish and sustain the dragon's own body, but once it had reached its full size, most were given to the production of eggs. Each one took a long time to convene. Not only did its physical structure have to be put together a particle at a time, but those particles had to be loaded with data from the ever-shifting tides of knowledge possessed by the dragon star civilizations.
Once an egg was complete it would be sent off into interstellar space, to fall aimlessly through the galaxy. But the dragons were in orbit around Aldebaran, tied to the star by gravity. The eggs couldn't just be detached from the adult; they would simply drift around the same orbit. So the center of every dragon was a magnetic cannon, capable of accelerating an egg up to solar escape velocity.
The Norvelle was parked five kilometers from the muzzle when One fired. The egg, a solid sphere of matter seventytwo meters in diameter, struck the starship's complex and delicate compression drive section at over forty kilometers per second.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Every bed in the CLICHANE'S sickbay was occupied, mostly with victims of radiation burns sustained during the attack. Surrounding cabins had been converted to hold the overspill. The doctors walked around, checking vital signs, making sure their patients were comfortable. They didn't have a lot else to do. Prime, improved with genuine dragon routines, was orchestrating the patternform systems that had twined themselves through the flesh of each patient. This was a much more active application than the Arnoon dragon had ever achieved. The patternform had grown what resembled a network of veins over each man's skin; tubules infiltrated the body, multiplying around the organs and muscles inside. Particles roamed through the damaged tissue, repairing cells and resequencing DNA smashed apart by the X-ray barrage. The computing power required to control the operation in each person was phenomenal; patternform had grown the processing nodules as well. They hung under each bed like leaf-green wasp nests, their root tendrils connecting them to the parallel vein network.
Lawrence looked through a couple of the doors as he and Denise walked through the section. The men were all sleeping.
"They look peaceful," he said.
"So did you," she told him.
The converted cabins were split with the Norvelle crew members who had received more physical injuries when the dragon's egg struck. Their starship's axis had snapped from the egg impact, with two of the life support wheels being flung off into space as the broken sections tumbled away from One. Over a hundred crew had ejected in lifeboats. Those remaining in the two intact wheels had waited for the Koribu to rendezvous, then transferred over for the short journey to the Clichane.
Now the two remaining starships were parked in One's umbra as pattemform strands began to creep across them.
Simon Roderick was waiting for Lawrence and Denise outside a cabin with a closed hatch. The locks disengaged, and he pushed it open. They followed him in.
There was a single bed inside; the SK2 lay on it, also encased in pattemform systems. His legs and hand were being grown back. A Skin sustainer cabinet that had been brought into the cabin was smothered in a lacework of pattemform veins; they were harvesting the organic components and blood reserves for raw material to generate new tissue. Flaccid translucent sacs the shape of legs already extended from his stumps, with glutinous fluids circulating inside.
Denise's expression tightened as she looked down at the unconscious man. "What do you intend to do with him?"
"For the immediate future, he will be excluded from the Board, and most of his executive privileges will be revoked. House arrest, essentially. After that, who knows? I suspect it depends on what form Earth's society chooses to follow."
"Good enough," Lawrence said. He ignored the dirty look Denise threw him. "None
of us exactly came out of this as saints."
"No," Simon agreed. "But then I never claimed to be."
"How will your clone siblings react to all this?"
"The same as we did. Not that it will really matter." He gave both of them a pointed look. "The captains will make sure the dragon knowledge is given to everybody when we return. They're already making plans to transfer the memories directly into Earth's datapool before Z-B even notices there's something different about their old starship. It'll be protected by this upgraded Prime, which should ensure equal access."
"You sound as though you disapprove."
"I almost do." Simon gestured at his clone sibling. "We're a chaotic race. His method would have given us a smooth transition."
"Where's the fun in that?" Lawrence said. "Tear down the uniculture, open your eyes, give people their identity back."
"Ah." Simon's eyebrows rose in modest censure. "I might have guessed."
"How long before the Clichane is flightworthy?" Denise asked.
"Another fortnight," Simon said. "Quite remarkable, really. Fortunately there's plenty of spare mass to restructure missing components. After all, we hardly need the weapons, or all that asset cargo now. Are you sure you don't want to come back with us? It will be an interesting time to live in."
"No," Denise said curtly.
Lawrence just smiled.
The Clichane's compression drive powered up, and the immense starship flashed out of space-time with a dizzying twist. The Koribu was left floating alone in the dragon's umbra. It was never going to fly again. Instead it was giving birth. Patternform had plaited the fuselage in a gridiron of crystalline stems that suckled at the minerals and compounds of the structure. From a distance it looked as though the starship was covered in a harlequin patchwork of gem frost; millions of slender amber, ruby and emerald facets flashed and glinted in the haze of warm light that spilled around the edge of the alien. Wider sapphire proboscises had penetrated tanks, siphoning out the liquids to contribute to the semiorganic growths sprouting on opposite sides of the cargo section. As the weeks progressed, they swelled out into chrysalids wrapped in a tight skin of diamond strand silk.
The Arnoon dragon, too, was metamorphosing. The Xianti's payload bay doors had been opened to space. Inside the bay, the cargo pod had split apart, exposing the dragon. Crystals threaded their way across the floor of the maintenance bay and encrusted the spaceplane. Their tips meshed with the particle structure of the dragon and began feeding it molecules and information.
Denise spent hours every day thinking with it. As there was no place for it within the Aldebaran dragon civilization, it had decided to go with her, to become a part of whatever society flowered from the genetic package. Dragon memories were reviewed and analyzed for templates of the abilities they sought. They began to incorporate functions that would allow it to be free-flying, to sense in every spectrum, to power itself with sunlight, to absorb solid cold matter, to retain its original personality. Dozens of notions taking on solid form.
After the Clichane left, Lawrence spent ten days undergoing extensive patternform treatment, transforming his body and resetting his DNA. He emerged as his teenage self, without Skin valves.
Denise looked him up and down and pursed her lips. "Very cute," she observed coyly.
The chrysalid cases split open and peeled back, revealing the Ring Empire-era starships that patternform had gestated—streamlined silver and magenta ellipsoids, with a necklace of drive fins and forward-swept power shields rising smoothly from the rear quarter. Lawrence gazed at his with a reckless enthusiasm that matched his new adolescence.
"I guess this is good-bye," Denise said.
He gave her an awkward grimace. "Yeah." Then his smile returned. "No, it's bon voyage. The way things are shaping up, it's not impossible that we'll meet again."
"All right, Lawrence, bon voyage it is." She gave him a soft kiss. "What are you going to name yours?"
"That's easy. Fool's Errand."
Denise laughed. "Mine's the Starflower."
"Sounds good."
The interior of the Fool's Errand comprised three circular lounges with concave walls. In their neutral state the cream-colored surfaces had the same texture as soft leather. Human-styled fittings could distend out of it as required. The lounges also made perfect auditoriums, capable of providing a 360-degree image that could show either sensor images or any of the i's that he'd loaded from the Koribu's multimedia library.
Lawrence walked into the forward lounge, enjoying the novelty of a standard gravity field. A single luxurious chair rose up out of the center of the floor. He settled himself in it and called up a visual sensor image. The front of the lounge melted away, showing him the Koribu's crystal gilded fuselage dead ahead.
In his mind, a broad crown of the starship's system icons burned a willing gold. He selected several, and the Fool's Errand slowly backed out of the inert chrysalis. An idiot's grin spread over his face as the ship's elegance and power became apparent. And he alone commanded it. The Starflower rose into view from the other side of the Koribu. He watched as Denise flew around to the drastically mutated maintenance bay. The Arnoon dragon waited at the center, elegant semi-organic segments closed against the main body, solar wing-sheets furled tight. Watching the Starflower touch it was like seeing two drops of water merging; the dragon was absorbed through the shimmering hull, leaving only a slight bulge to betray its presence. Then the Starflower moved out into clear space beyond One's umbra. Lawrence could see the strange forces gathering around the drive section as the power shields and fins shone like fragments of a blue-white star. It flung itself into the nullvoid.
"Thank you for your help," Lawrence told One.
"We will learn what you become," the dragon replied. "And we will remember you. This is what we are."
Lawrence selected his course, delving deep into some of the oldest memories the dragons possessed for the information. The engines gathered up their colossal strength and impelled the Fool's Errand into the nullvoid.
Nebulas are among the most beautiful objects in the sky, revered by astronomers across the galaxy. Fluoresced by stars hidden deep inside, they shade parsecs with the most magical patterns of shifting primordial light. Yet for all their grandeur they are transient. The stars that provide their ethereal beauty also blow out a hard wind of ions that slowly disperses the gas and dust. Gravity, too, plays its part, inexorably thinning out the streamers and clouds. Protostars perform the opposite function, their great glowing whorls sucking in the spectral tides, compressing them down to a central spark.
Their lifetimes are measured in millions of years only—negligible in galactic timescales.
Even the Ulodan Nebula, one of the thickest and darkest ever to form in the galaxy, was waning when the Ring Empire archaeologists came across the planet of the Mordiff. By the time of the Decadence War it was just a zone of interstellar space with a slightly higher than average gas density. Even then the Mordiff sun was cold and shrunken, no more than a glimmering red ember. Just a memory within the newborn dragon civilizations.
It took Lawrence Newton and the Fool's Errand a long time to find the cool star-husk with its single lonely planet. But eventually the beautiful starship fell from the sky and landed beside the one remaining relic of the Mordiff.
Lawrence put on a spacesuit and stepped down onto the planet's surface. There was no air left: it had bled away millions of years ago. The sand under his boots had frozen to a crust harder than iron. But there was still light. High above the horizon, the galactic core formed a lambent white swirl that occupied nearly a tenth of the sky. It cast a sharp shadow behind him as he walked.
This was a landscape bleaker than any he had ever known. Rock outcrops were sharp and fractured: even the stones that littered the ground were jagged. Over millions of years, cold had drawn the very color from the land. He knew this planet had no future left. That knowledge didn't bother him; he had come for its past.
He
paused on a low ridge and looked up at the terminus. It was strange, he thought, that a race so warlike and terrible could build a machine so much greater than themselves.
The terminus was a broad toroid, snow-white in color, its inner aperture measuring three kilometers in diameter. Five giant buttress towers supported it a kilometer off the ground. Outcrops of rock rested against the base of each one, as if they were waves breaking against a cliff. Neither cold nor entropy had affected the titanic artifact; even geology had been defeated by it. The Ring Empire archaeologists weren't even sure it was made from matter in the normal sense. Nothing else of the Mordiff remained, no ruins, no monuments. Only the terminus, their failed bid for immortality.
Harsh turquoise light shone down out of the center, illuminating the frozen sand underneath. Lawrence was vaguely disappointed he couldn't actually see the wormhole, but the blue light acted like a veil across the aperture.
After a while Lawrence walked back to the Fool's Errand.
He sat on his seat in the forward lounge and guided the star-ship under the toroid. It rose slowly into the blue haze. For a second the sensors could see nothing; then they were inside the wormhole. A tube of pale violet light stretched away from the starship. Ahead lay the future, billions of years stretching out to the end of the galaxy, when even the terminus fell into the black hole. In the other direction lay the past. Fool's Errand flew back into history.
The three sister planets were moving into their major conjunction. It was a spectacular sight as the bright crescents lined up above the gentle rolling hills of New Arnoon. Denise was sitting in the shade of a big cigni tree as they slid together, its ginger leaves casting a broad dapple over the grass around her. The cluster of seven-year-olds sitting on the ground sighed and cooed at the astral exhibition. If they squinted really hard, they could just make out hair-thin lines cutting across the distant planets. The silver threads of the world web spun out by the dragon in geostationary orbit were becoming more complex as the englobing progressed. Soon the whole world would be caged. These were exciting times for the children.