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."