"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.