The Reality Dysfunction (Night's Dawn, #1)

by Peter F. Hamilton

The egg, Acetes, awoke in a blaze of wonder and exhilaration. Alive with racing currents of power, every cell charged with rapture and purpose and the urge to burst into immediate growth. Iasius filled space with its glee. Acetes found itself propelled out into the naked vacuum. Shattered fragments of Iasius’s hull were spinning away, a dark red hole set in midnight blue receding at a bewildering speed. Free! the egg sang. I’m free! A huge dark bulk hung above it. Forces it could sense but couldn’t understand were slowing its wild tumbling. The universe seemed to be composed entirely of tiny splinters of matter pervaded by glowing energy bands. Voidhawks flashed past at frightening velocities. Yes, you are free,Hyale said. I bid you welcome to life. What is this place? What am I? Why can’t I move like you?Acetes struggled to make sense of the scraps of knowledge fluttering around its racing mind, Iasius’s final gift. Patience,Hyale counselled. You will grow, you will learn. The data you possess will be integrated in time. Acetes cautiously opened its affinity sensitivity to cover the whole of Saturn’s environment, and received a chorus of greetings from the habitats, an even greater wave of acknowledgement from individual adult Edenists, excited trills from children; and then its own kind offered encouragement, infant voidhawks nesting within the rings. Its tumbling halted, it hung below Hyale’s lower hull, looking round with raw senses. Hyale began to alter their trajecto...