Free Dreamfall by Joan D. Vinge Page A

research, but the nanotech field had been stagnant for years.
Billions had been spent on research and resources by some of the most powerful
combines in the Federation, but their successes had been limited at best, and
the few useful tools and products they had developed were equally limited, no
more than mindless, semifunctional industrial “helpers.”
    proteins, especially enzymes, were nature’s own nanotech,
and the reefs were riddled with protoid matter so complex and bizarre that for
the most part nobody had ever seen anything like it. Tau sent their most
promising discoveries to specialized labs throughout Draco’s interstellar
hegemony, where researchers analyzed the structures and tried to reproduce the
folding. Draco found a way to synthesize the ones that had potential; or if no
technology existed that was sophisticated enough to reproduce a find, they
demanded more of the raw product from Tau’s mining operations.
    But the same matrix that had produced bio-based “machines”
stronger than diamond, and the hybrid enzymatic nanodrones that made ceralloy
production possible, was booby-trapped with unpredictable dangers.
    There were fragments of thought that did nothing but good;
far more that were totality incomprehensible. And then there were the ones you
could only describe as insane. The reef matrix kept them inert, Potential,
harmless.
    But complex proteins degraded rapidly when they were removed
from their stabilizing matrix; and there were “soft spots,” vacuoles inside the
reef itself where the matrix had begun to decay. The decaying material could
cause anything from a bad smell to a kiloton explosion. There were a thousand
different bio-hazard disasters just waiting for careless excavators ....
    The databox my brain had been marinating in folded shut and
shunted back into long-term memory, suddenly leaving my thoughts empty.
    I let them stay that way. My mind sidestepped into a silence
where no one else existed, where nothing existed for me but the reef along the
river course below us, layer on layer of monolithic dreamscape. In the deepest
part of my mind something stirred, and I knew why the Hydrans called these places
sacred ground .... I knew it. I knew it ....
    Something jolted me, and suddenly it was all gone.
    I started upright in my seat, crowded between bodies in the
transport’s humming womb.
    Ditreksen jabbed me again with his elbow. ‘Answer her, for
God’s sake,” he said. “Or were you talking in your sleep?”
    I leaned away from him, frowning.
    “Yes,” Kissindre murmured, but she wasn’t looking at either
of us. “That’s exactly what it’s like ... how did you describe i1—J” I realized
she was talking to me. Except that I hadn’t said anything.
    Something I’d been thinking had slipped out. Just for a
second, lost in awe, my mind had dropped its guard long enough for one stray
image to escape. I swore under my breath, because it had happened without me
even realizing it—the only way it ever happened anymore. The harder I tried to
control my telepathy, the less control I had. As soon as I believed in it, it
would be gone.
    “I forget,” I muttered. Wauno glanced back over his shoulder
at us, away again. I risked a look at the rest of the passengers: Protz, the
Feds. None of them were looking at me. At least the image hadn’t strayed far.
    I slouched down and closed my eyes, closing everyone out.
Their curiosity, their arrogance, their resentment, and their pity couldn’t
touch me, as long as I didn’t let them in ....
    I heard Kissindre shift in her seat, her attention drifting
away again. She began talking to Protz, asking him questions about how to
access Tau’s data on the reefs: where to find it, why there wasn’t more of it.
He muttered something that sounded apologetic and bureaucratic.
    “If you really want to know more about the reefs, You should
talk to the Hydrans,” Wauno said.
    I opened one eye.
    Protz made a snort that could have been a