FALLEN DRAGON (93 page)

* * *

The dragon's dreams were everything Lawrence had ever dreamed of. He embraced the irony with a kind of bitter humor as he learned of the Ring Empire. Once again, the universe had shifted around him, taking away the life he thought was real. Colorful, elegant facts slowly coalesced, merging with his own thoughts until they became revelation. Within this strange state of enlightenment he floated serenely after Mozark as the prince flitted from planet to planet. There were, Lawrence realized, huge segments missing from the story.

"Most of my memories are lost," the dragon said regretfully.

"This is real, then?" Lawrence asked as he gazed across The City, marveling at the silver-and-crystal palaces emerging in the rosy dawn light.

"This is history."

"How long ago?"

"Tens of millions of years, if not longer. Again, that information no longer exists within me."

If his eyes had been open, Lawrence was sure he would have wept. The dragon's knowledge was stupendous, its physical science tremendous. The potential was here to achieve ... anything. Lawrence wasn't just awed, he was humbled. His own goals seemed utterly inconsequential and petty compared to all this. Yet the dragon didn't judge him, which made his guilt all the greater.

"I hoped I would find wealth here," Lawrence said. "But I never expected to be this rich."

"The villagers never considered themselves rich."

"They are. Believe me. There could be no greater gift than knowing you. You are the kind of hope I had long since stopped believing in."

"Thank you. Though it is humans who must take the credit for resurrecting me this far. I would not exist if it were not for your endeavors."

"I would know one thing," Lawrence said, even though he felt ashamed at asking. "Are you sure about Mozark? Did those places and species he encountered on his voyage genuinely exist?"

"The memories are all I have. They are what I am. Does your past exist, Lawrence?"

"There are times when I wish it didn't"

* * *

Denise had risen soon after dawn, content to be in her own bed for what she sincerely hoped was going to be the last time. With the light growing outside she went onto the balcony of her parents' A-frame home. For once the sun was visible as a splendid copper crescent rising in the cleft between Mount Arnao and Mount Nallan. Denise took that as a good omen. It was rare for the cleft to be free of fog and cloud so early in the morning. Now she could lean on the carved wooden rail to look out across the marvelous crumpled valleys and craggy rock faces that composed Arnoon. A shallow layer of mist hung over the meandering slopes spread out around her, with only the tallest treetops poking out above its frayed surface. The sun's radiance fluoresced it a delicate rose-gold as it gently slid and slithered its way out of the foothills toward the plain below.

After a light breakfast with her parents she walked across the village to the big snowbark pavilion. The air up on the plateau was a lot cooler than the humid coastal climate that she'd grown accustomed to down at Memu Bay. She put on a willow wool sweater before leaving the house: a present from Jacintha, whose husband Lycor had designed it, as always incorporating bright colors without making them gar
i
sh. This one was midnight-black with curling flecks of sapphire, topaz and magenta looking as if they were being blown across the weave; its sleeves were flared at the wrists, with a small V-gap allowing her to roll them up. It kept her beautifully warm as the cold morning gusts drifted down from Mount Kenzi.

As she walked, friends she hadn't seen in an age came over to greet her and exchange pleasantries and words of encouragement. They all expressed their sorrow over Josep, as if she somehow suffered his loss more than they. It was wrong, she felt; they were treating her as if she'd achieved something, instead of nearly bringing ruination to them all. But to say so to their faces would be selfish. And there was still hope. Not that she could ever have imagined it would present itself in such a strange form.

Before the children arrived she walked around the inside of the pavilion, trailing her hand over the bark of each of the ten trees, reacquainting herself with them. So many hours of a pleasant childhood had been spent in or around the pavilion with her friends, playing games and listening to the adults tell their fantastical stories. It was fitting that she, the one who'd been chosen to seed their way of life on a new world, should be given a last opportunity to tell the new generation of their heritage.

The children began to arrive, little groups of them bounding over the central meadow, chattering and laughing. Denise smiled in reflex: something about happy children was just infectious, their smiles made the world a less painful place. Parents were bringing smaller children. She saw Jacintha and Lycor with little Elsebeth holding their hands as she toddled along between them.

Eventually, after some coaxing, the children were settled in a big semicircle around Denise.

"Have you all heard the stories of Mozark and Endoliyn?" she asked them.

"Yes!" they cried back.

"Well, today I'm going to tell you the last story of the Ring Empire. This is set long after the time of Mozark and Endoliyn. It's sort of a sad time, because the Ring Empire was starting to decay. Some of the inhabitants blamed the machines for this, because they were now so smart that they took care of people from the moment they were born until they died. This machine-pampered generation had nothing to do except live their lives chasing personal pleasure and satisfaction. They had become decadent, and not a little bit cruel. Now this generation, the final generation, had enormous resources at their disposal; their machines could dismantle the very planets and reshape their atoms to build whatever these people wanted. With that kind of ability you'd think they'd be totally content. But no. Even the number of planets is finite. They began to argue with each other about how many resources any one person should have and how these resources should be divided and supervised. At first it was just arguments. Then it grew into theft and hoarding. Eventually, fighting began and grew into what was known as the Decadence War. The individual kingdoms that had been so closely knit turned against each other. Battle machines were constructed, the most terrifying things ever built, equipped with weapons that could tear a planet to pieces and even extinguish stars. These battle machines fought each other over the division of entire solar systems. And it took an enormous amount of resources just to build them. That meant that any solar systems that the battle machines conquered were soon turned into more battle machines. The last generation was deprived of the one thing they had launched the war for. Without the resources they craved they soon dwindled into extinction amid the conflict. The battle machines continued fighting for thousands of years, wreaking havoc among the stars, until they had finished eliminating each other along with entire races.

"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 be
f
ore 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."