Peter Hamilton - Fallen Fragon

"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 fraction 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.