Dragon's Egg

by Robert L. Forward

  The topside portion of the skin, hanging in a smooth dark red concave arc between the ends of the spikes, found that its shape shielded it from the glowing yellow surface crust, and it stared straight up into the cold sky. With its spike buried deep in the hot, neutron-rich crust, and its thinned upper surface area well coupled to a cold heat-sink, the heat-engine-plant that used to be Swift-Killer began to make food. It was oblivious to the fact that nearby were two other dragon plants, the first crop since before recorded cheela history. For many, many turns the dragon plants grew and prospered. They were massive, and slow-growing, and had to replace a lot of food reserves, so they took their time.

  After waiting in vain for the three climbers to return, the troop was finally taken over by the senior squad leader, who mustered out those who wanted to stay in this Bright-forsaken region, and moved the remainder of the troop back to the borders of Bright’s Empire, where he then had the unpleasant duty of reporting the deaths of Swift-Killer, North-Wind, and Cliff-Watcher to their clans.

  Time went on and Bright’s Empire grew and expanded its borders. Since the fort of Swift’s Climb existed, it was easy for the border to expand all the way to the foothills of the east pole mountains. However, no one really liked to climb unless they had to, especially in the hard direction, so there were no visitors in the mountain paths, and the dragon plants grew undisturbed.

  One turn there was a sharp quake as the massive overburden that the east pole mountains put upon Egg readjusted itself. A poorly formed joint in one of the three dragon plants failed. The spike fell instantly in the strong pull of Egg, tearing the skin and dumping the vital fluids onto the surface. For a while the dragon plant struggled to survive, but finally it gave up. After a dozen, dozen turns, there was nothing left but shiny spikes of dragon crystal, a few shreds of dried skin, a clan totem, and the double button of a squad leader.

  For a long while nothing happened. Then the dragon crystal spikes sparkled as a slowly pulsating beam of pure blue light shone down from the tiny center speck of the seven points of light in the sky. The pulsations went on for some time, bathing the mountains in a blue glow, but there were no eyes to see them. They finally stopped.

  Time continued on. The barbarians were driven further and further from Bright’s Empire, and grew smaller in number. The large volcano in the north became more active, and billows of smoke crowded against the east pole. The unbalance in the heat radiated from the star into the dark skies became so great that huge wind storms grew, and were strong enough occasionally to push smoke into the east pole region. The sky grew cloudy, the bottoms of the smoky clouds turned yellow with the heat reflected from the glowing surface. The heat engine that ran between the taproot in the crust and the skyward facing concave dish of skin in the dragon plants began to fail. With food reserves high, and growing efficiencies low, the plant forming genes began to lose their potency, and other enzyme mechanisms were triggered. Slowly the dragon crystal was dissolved, to reappear as firm muscle under a thick skin. The little photosensitive bud cups at the tips of the crystal spikes reformed their flaps, and new little eyes, still dormant, grew under those flaps.

  Swift-Killer woke up.

  She felt very strange, as if she had not moved a muscle in a long time. Fortunately, she was feeling no pain from her burned topside and eyes.

  “My eyes! I cannot see! How will I ever get down out of these mountains without eyes?”

  She then realized that she had all of her eyes tucked tightly underneath their flaps. She cautiously pushed out one after the other.

  “I can see light,” she said, “but everything is all blurry.”

  She tried to form a pseudopod to wipe off her eyes, and found that she was as weak and clumsy as a hatchling. She soon had the fluid wiped off her eyes, but it was a full turn before she could really see clearly.

  She knew that she must have been badly hurt by the blast of fire from the sky, but now she felt perfectly fine, except for her muscular weakness, her clumsy coordination and blurred vision. What amazed her was that she was no longer hungry.

  Being a good troop commander, her first thought had been for her troopers, and she had looked around for North-Wind and Cliff-Watcher, but could not see them. She was too weak to travel, so she concentrated on exercises until she felt ready to cope with the hazards of downhill travel in the vicious pull of Egg.

  After a tum she felt much better and started to examine her surroundings. As far as she could remember, she was still in the same valley where they had been when the flame struck, but she had not remembered the giant plant to one side, or the fabulous collection of dragon crystal lying on the crust on the other side. She might have ignored a plant, even if it were as big around as herself, but she would never have ignored a veritable treasure of shining dragon crystal. At the very least, she would have marked the spot and arranged to have a crew climb back up to retrieve it. She went over to the glittering spikes and picked them up, one after the other.

  “Strange,” she thought to herself, “these are amazingly shiny, as if they were brand new, or fresh cast. All the natural dragon crystals are weathered by the constant scrubbing of wind-blown dust.”

  She picked up another spike that had a shred of something sticking to it. She pulled the shred off the spike and suddenly dropped it in a horrified reflex action.

  “North-Wind!” she whispered in horror, her eyes tracing out the faded but unmistakable three-pointed scar pattern that had been North-Wind’s memento from their last fight with the barbarians.

  Any doubts that North-Wind had died and that his body had decayed away were gone when she found his squad leader button and clan totem half buried in the fuzzy crust. She pouched them and looked around in bewilderment. But what were North-Wind’s remains doing mixed up with fresh dragon crystal?

  She looked over at the huge plant nearby. She then began to get the connection between the twelve spikes arching into the sky and the twelve spikes of dragon crystal spread out on the crust. She wandered over to the plant and circled all around it, looking at it closely. It looked somehow familiar, yet it was just a giant version of many types of plants all over Egg. On one side she saw a little lump in the thin skin. Just over it was a tiny pucker.

  “A plant with a carrying pouch?” she said to herself. Carefully—for she did not want to meet the same fate that had apparently met North-Wind when the heavy plant had fallen on him—she reached a slender tendril under the plant and forced the tip into the pucker.

  “It’s a pouch!” she exclaimed in wonder. Reaching further in, she grasped an object, and slowly withdrew it through the constricting orifice. It was the totem of Cliff-Watcher’s clan!

  Swift-Killer could not believe what her eyes were seeing. But soon she had identified other pouches and had removed a short knife and a dark detector from them. She was finally convinced that somehow, in some way, this giant plant in front of her was really Cliff-Watcher.

  “And if Cliff-Watcher is a living plant, then perhaps those slivers of dragon crystal over there used to be North-Wind,” she said to herself, “and …” She continued as the logic drove her on to the inescapable conclusion, “… I must have been one of these giant plants too! With large dragon crystal spikes in me!”

  At this thought, she remembered that she had been annoyed by a hard lump tumbling around in her body. She had paid it no attention, since it did not hurt and she had plenty of other things to worry about at the time, but now she concentrated, and soon the lump was ejected from an elimination orifice. Overcoming her natural distaste, Swift-Killer wiped it off. It was a shiny knob of dragon crystal.

  Swift-Killer looked at it with awe, and pouched it to use as evidence when the time came to make someone believe her fantastic story.

  Meanwhile, she had a problem. Although North-Wind was dead, and she had his totem to take back to his clan, Cliff-Watcher was very much alive, and she didn’t feel she should leave him.

  Swift-Killer finally decided to wait. She had ple
nty of reserve energy (she must have built that up when she was a plant), and it would be important for her sanity to have someone else to corroborate her story.

  The skies stayed cloudy, and soon the trigger that had revived Swift-Killer was activated in Cliff-Watcher. Swift-Killer watched in amazement as, turn after turn, the slender spikes grew shorter and shorter, and the thin skin began to thicken and become muscular once again.

  She was stroking Cliff-Watcher on the topside when he woke up. She treated him gently, and slowly coaxed his eyes out as she reassured him that he was going to be fine despite his blurry vision, and weak and clumsy state. After a few turns, they both felt well enough to travel and started down the mountain, carrying the crystallized remains of North-Wind with them.

  When they came to the highest base camp, Swift-Killer sought out the food cache. It was there and had not been disturbed by mountain animals, but the meat and pods were hard as crust. This puzzled Swift-Killer, since a well-wrapped piece of dried meat should be expected to be hard, but not rock hard, even after a great of turns.

  It was the same at each cache, although some had been broken into by animals long ago. Finally they reached the pass on the upper foothills where they could look down into the distance and see the trooper fort. As they came over the rise, both Swift-Killer and Cliff-Watcher stopped in shock. The fort was gone.

  “Bright’s Heaven!” exclaimed Cliff-Watcher.

  “No,” Swift-Killer said a moment later, “that is not Bright’s Heaven. It looks almost as big, but the arrangement is all wrong.”

  “You are right,” Cliff-Watcher said. “But where did it come from?”

  “I think that you and I were plants for longer than we thought,” Swift-Killer said. “There are going to be some very surprised people when we glide into that town.”

  “Provided they even remember us,” Cliff-Watcher said pessimistically as he followed Swift-Killer down the hill.

  Commander Swift-Killer led the way into town. When they passed the fields of crops, they both looked over the harvesters loaded down with pods, but didn’t see anyone either one of them knew.

  As they approached the town, the four-button insignia jutting out of Swift-Killer’s breast got them the proper respect from the passers-by; but at the same time, the obvious youthful appearance of the troop commander resulted in strange whispers as they passed. For the first time, Swift-Killer was beginning to feel unsure of herself.

  She paused on the outskirts of the town and said quietly to Cliff-Watcher, “I think we are going to have a difficult enough time convincing people that we are who we are, without antagonizing them. I think we had better just survey the whole town before I go and announce who I am.” Cliff-Watcher could only agree, and kept looking for a familiar profile, but found none.

  They stopped at a military food station at the outskirts of town, and quietly relaxed and ate their fill. They took their time and listened to the conversations between the couriers as they came and went on Combined Clan business. They had expected to hear that there was a new Leader of the Combined Clans, but were surprised to learn that the name of the town they were in was Swift’s Climb.

  Cliff-Watcher inquired of the keeper of the food station about the name. After the keeper got over the oddness of his slang, he told them a capsule history of the naming of the town.

  “Almost three dozen greats of turns ago, this place was a barren plain,” the station keeper said, “when an expedition came to the east pole to try to talk to the Eyes of Bright. The expedition was led by a troop commander named Swift-Masher, or something like that, and he climbed up into those hills to talk to God’s Eyes and never came back. His troop stayed around for a few greats of turns, then finally they gave up. By that time some of them were old enough to muster out and they stayed here, while the rest of the troop went back to the border. Since then the border has come here to Swift’s Climb, and it is really a booming place, I tell you.”

  “Where can we find some of the old troopers?” asked Cliff-Watcher.

  “Where else?” the station keeper asked. “In the meat bins. Or if they kept healthy and were lucky, they are having the time of their lives tending hatchlings in the hatching pens.”

  Swift-Killer was initially pleased to hear that the town had been named after her exploit, but if the average cheela in the town knew as much about her as the station keeper, she was glad that she had kept her mouth shut and had let the four buttons of a Troop Commander speak for her. They asked the way to the hatching pens and headed off in that direction, hoping to see somebody—anybody—who might know them.

  The road to the hatching pens went past the face of a low cliff. As they approached the cliff, Swift-Killer noticed a bright blinking light coming from the top. A cheela was up there in front of some apparatus, and a bright blue-white beam was blinking its way across the crust to the distant horizon.

  Ever curious, Swift-Killer said, “Let’s go by way of the top of that rise. I want to see what is making that beam of light.”

  Cliff-Watcher shuffled his tread in annoyance, saying that he had had enough climbing for a whole lifetime, but his curiosity got the better of him too, and they slowly worked their way up to the top of the cliff, where they approached a soldier.

  Swift-Killer was bewildered to see the insignia of rank on the soldier operating the apparatus. Instead of a Trooper’s button, she had a horizontal bar. Swift-Killer couldn’t say anything without getting herself in trouble, since a troop commander should address a trooper by her proper rank, so she again decided to let her four buttons speak for her. Looking vaguely interested, she wandered up to the trooper as if she were a visiting inspector.

  The trooper heard the military tread as Swift-Killer approached; when Swift-Killer came within hailing distance, she quickly signed off her message and came to alert.

  “Troop Signaler Yellow-Crust, Commander,” she said, “Do you have a message to send?”

  “No, no,” Swift-Killer assured her. “But after you have finished, could you please show us your apparatus?”

  Yellow-Crust thought it strange that a troop commander would be interested in such a thing as a swift-sender, but perhaps she was an inspector out looking for trouble. If so, she would find nothing wrong with her equipment!

  In a short while Yellow-Crust was through with her messages and showed the two visitors how the swift-sender worked. Yellow-Crust decided that she would give them the full drill.

  Parroting her training officer, Yellow-Crust began: “The swift-sender is the troop’s method of maintaining contact with Headquarters and other troops. The most important element in the swift-sender is the expander, which must always be kept clean.” Yellow-Crust opened the side of the box to reveal a very shiny and very clean expander. Both Cliff-Watcher and Swift-Killer were awed by the size and surface finish on the strongly curved reflector.

  “We sure could have used one of those up in the mountains,” Cliff-Watcher whispered.

  “We never could have carried it up those hills,” retorted Swift-Killer.

  Yellow-Crust, ignoring the whispers, continued: “The light-juice vial is to be filled and pressurized before each message, and the signaling valve is to be checked for rapid action under pressure.”

  Yellow-Crust closed the door, filled a container on the outside with fluid, then placed a close-fitting plunger on top and added a weight. She then reached to the other side, and rapidly flicked a small lever. Short bursts of light flickered out over the crust.

  Yellow-Crust went on, “The flare should be renewed every shift, and the holder for it should be adjusted to give maximum beam brightness without focusing in the far field.” With these words, Yellow-Crust extended a tendril and moved a small lever back and forth and Swift-Killer could see the beam diverge and focus in the distance. Yellow-Crust, with a trained twist of her tendril, left the beam with parallel sides shooting off to the distance.

  Yellow-Crust’s t’trum dropped the training officer twang as she said, “T
here is more about message protocol, Commander. Would you like to have me recite that?”

  “No! No, thank you,” Swift-Killer said. “Very clean and well working machine you have there trooper.” She started to move away.

  “At Alert!” boomed a commanding tread through the crust.

  Yellow-Crust froze at alert, and Swift-Killer almost followed, but instead slowly returned to the swift-sender to await the arrival of a squad of well-armed troopers, led by none other than the local troop commander.

  It was obvious that the troop commander was flustered with Swift-Killer’s four buttons. Having expected to take action against meddling visitors that bothered his communication link, he found himself eye-to-eye with a stranger of equal rank.

  Equal rank or not, he was the troop commander of this town and still in command. “Who are you, Commander?” he asked. “I was not informed of any visitors.”