“Eventually, the Progenitors encountered a race of beings called the Hruk. The Hruk were a young race, relatively new to space. However, they were arrogant and covetous of the territory the Progenitors had colonized, and they chafed at the protection the Progenitors provided other races whose territories bordered the Hruk’s. Finally, they attacked the Progenitors. Naturally, they were quickly and soundly defeated. They attacked again and again over the millennia, but always were beaten back. The Progenitors were a kind people and though they easily could have exterminated the Hruk, the Progenitors saw them as troubled children in need of care and guidance.
“Unfortunately, rather than accept this guidance and mature as a race, the Hruk grew more and more resentful and determined to overthrow what they considered the Progenitors’ control over the galaxy—even though the Progenitors had never tried to conquer the Hruk. They merely thwarted the Hruk’s aggression against themselves and others. Eons passed and the attacks continued. The Hruk’s resentment and paranoia fueled their military creativity, and they began to catch up technologically to the Progenitors. One day, the Hruk scored a minor victory in battle; soon it was followed by another and then another. Emboldened, the Hruk initiated a major offensive.”
“Pardon me,” Guido interjected, “but if the Progenitors used ships to get around, where do the portals come in?”
“I was just coming to that. The portal network began as a peaceful means of travel across the Progenitors’ territory. As wise and powerful as they were, the Progenitors’ fatal flaw was that they believed in the fundamental goodness of all species. In their naiveté, the Progenitors included the sum total of their knowledge in the portal computer, available to all, and encouraged others to do the same, to the betterment of all sentients. You might call it an Encyclopedia Galactica.
“The Hruk, however, had little goodness in them. They cared nothing for art, or music, or beauty. To the Hruk, everything was either something to use, or someone to conquer. They used the Progenitors’ largesse against them, to enhance their own weapons technology. Eventually, as the Hruk pressed the attack and began pushing the Progenitors back, the portals were employed defensively for retreat. The larger hubs were built to help evacuate entire planets before the Hruk rendered them uninhabitable.
“The Hruk quickly realized that if they simply surrounded a planet with their warships and began bombarding it from space, the Progenitors would abandon the planet before suffering tremendous civilian losses from an extended conflict. This is why most of the Progenitors’ planets were conquered relatively intact, rather than scoured clean of life, as this one was. However, to keep the Hruk from using the captured portals to invade Progenitor-held systems, they destroyed or crippled most of the portals behind them when they fled.
“Eventually, the Progenitors realized the war was lost. They had no way to stop the Hruk, who were determined to exterminate the Progenitors. Any Progenitors the Hruk captured were executed. Finally, the Progenitors had retreated as far as they could. Their few hundred remaining core planets were packed with trillions of refugees from their former far-flung empire and they had no recourse but to try to escape. They took what they could and fled the galaxy for parts unknown, leaving the Hruk with the millions of planets they had captured, and the portal network.
“That wasn’t enough for the Hruk, however. In a fit of pique over being unable to exterminate the Progenitors, they bombarded the Progenitors’ home world—this one—and the other core planets from space for months on end with all the weapons at their disposal—dirty nuclear bombs; chemical, biological and photonic devices; and even tesserene bombs. They slaughtered the billions of Progenitors who were unlucky enough not to be able to escape in time, and rendered the core planets sterile. The very atmosphere was blasted away. Even now, more than a billion years later, not a plant grows on any of them. You and I can breathe only because of an energy field that surrounds the area around the portal to hold in the air.”
“My God, that’s monstrous!” Guido’s face was drained of blood. “They sound evil, pure and simple.”
“Indeed. The Hruk were the masters of the galaxy, but without the enlightened philosophy of the Progenitors or the ability to repair the portals or to create new ones—the Progenitors had deleted that information from the portal computer. The Hruk ruled with an iron grip, crushing younger races that sprang up across the galaxy—even those that had never given the Hruk any trouble—simply because they showed the potential to do so some day. The Hruk vanquished all who opposed them for more than three thousand years, committing genocide on countless sentient species along the way.
“Eventually, and inevitably, the Hruk received their comeuppance. One hundred and thirty-eight races allied for one purpose: to rid the galaxy of the Hruk. They rose against their oppressors, and fought for their very existence. The Hruk had superior weaponry and numbers, but not the ferocity of the younger races. The Hruk had grown complacent, sure of their superiority, and were finally vulnerable.
“Over the span of nearly a century, the Hruk were forced back, planet by planet, system by system. They fought furiously toward the end, but they battled on too many fronts. Unlike the Progenitors, they fought to the last. No Hruk survived the final days. They had originally used the Progenitors’ own technology to destroy them. Ironically, it was the same Progenitors technology, gained surreptitiously from the portal network, that the Coalition used to bring about the Hruk’s downfall.”
“Wow,” Tom said softly. “A few weeks ago, we thought we were alone in the universe. Now we find out that not only are we not alone, but trillions of sentient beings were killed in a billion year-old war. That’s a lot to absorb.”
“There’s something I don’t understand, Drelx,” I said. “If the Progenitors crippled or destroyed the portals as they retreated, how are we able to use the network now? Was someone able to repair them or build new ones?”
“Eventually, yes. The victors gained control of the portal network. But, like the Hruk they lacked the technical expertise of the Progenitors and were unable to repair the portals. Only a few hundred out of tens of millions were still usable. This state of affairs remained for over a billion years. Races came and went, empires rose and fell, and the portals remained dormant.
“At long last, my people came along. We were fortunate that one of the early systems we colonized contained a portal terminal. For many millennia we puzzled over the ancient artifact. Over time, it became a religious icon to some and a symbol of cultural and racial inferiority to others. But through it all we continued to study the terminal. It drove our study of the sciences and propelled us forward technologically.
“Eventually, we solved some of its puzzles—enough to repair the terminal and make use of it to travel to other working terminals. We were the first race to repair a terminal since the days of the Progenitors. This gave us some prestige among the other space-faring races. We became specialists, itinerants traveling the galaxy to repair portals held by other peoples. In retrospect, this situation may have stunted the growth of other races, as instead of solving the mysteries of the portals themselves, they merely hired us to do it for them.
“As I said, we were able to solve some of its secrets, but not all. To this day, we still cannot create a portal larger than the size you have seen. The Progenitors evidently wanted to limit the network’s use as a military tool.”
Tom looked puzzled. “If your people didn’t come along until a billion years after the Progenitors and the Hruk died out, how do you know all this about them?”
“Just as the Progenitors’ technology was capable of surviving that long, so were many of their records of events, in the portal computer and elsewhere. Oddly, no one has ever found a record where they refer to themselves by name, nor have we found any images of how they appeared. They were the first great race of this galaxy, the originators of the portals; thus we call them the Progenitors.”
“So, you’re telling us that your race has been in space f
or nearly a billion years, and that some of these portals have been operating continuously for over two billion years?” Sparks asked, open-mouthed.
“Yes. Fourteen have been in operation for that long, and several hundred others nearly as long, except for a few brief interruptions for repairs. As I said, most of the portals were inoperative for close to a billion years, until my people learned how to repair them.” Drelx’s statement seemed to be made with a complete lack of guile or boastfulness.
As far as I could tell, Drelx was being open and honest with us. It was hard not to trust the little guy. But I still had one nagging doubt. “Drelx, we use tesserene to power our ships, as the other space-faring races have done; but as powerful as the mineral is, it doesn’t last for billions of years. Given its rarity, how is it that the Progenitors were able to keep millions of portals going for hundreds of millions of years without running out of tesserene?”
Drelx smiled softly at me, as if speaking to a favorite toddler. “You are young yet, as are your people, and new to space. You will discover ways, in time, to make your devices more efficient and lessen their need for tesserene. A few micrograms can last for millennia when used properly. More importantly, tesserene can be fashioned into a…a lens, I suppose you could call it, that concentrates the energy of the cosmos—x-rays, gamma rays, sunlight, and so forth—for use as a nearly unlimited power source.
“That sounds familiar,” I said, looking at Sparks and recalling the dome. He nodded back.
“This is how the portals are powered. The tesserene is used only as a facilitator, not as the actual power source for the portals. Compare your own peoples’ early experiments with atomic energy to the fusion reactors you use today to supply power to your entire planet. That progression took you barely a century. Imagine how much further your research would take you given another billion years.”
I was mortified at my naiveté. “I guess we do still have a few things to learn.”
“Do not be embarrassed, or ashamed of your seeming lack of advancement in this area. Your people have made commendable progress in the brief time you have had space flight. Numerous species have taken many centuries—even millennia—to discover and harness the power of tesserene, something you accomplished in only decades.”
“That brings us back to our earlier questions, Drelx. How do you know so much about humanity, or what the five of us specifically have been doing the last few days?”
“Ah, yes.” Drelx flashed what might on a human be called a shy smile. “As a Gatekeeper, it is my calling to keep the portals on this planet and others operating at the peak of efficiency. I have been doing so for more than a thousand of your years—1,194 to be exact.”
“You’re over twelve hundred years old? Tom interrupted, incredulously. So much for Drelx looking “childlike.”
“Actually, I am more than fifteen hundred of your years in age. It takes nearly three centuries of training before one is qualified to act as Gatekeeper.”
Guido’s gulp was clearly audible.
“To return to Swede’s question, because the equipment rarely requires repair I have much time on my hands. This is despite being responsible for the terminals on more than four hundred worlds. We gatekeepers are itinerants, moving from planet to planet as our services are needed. Frequently, many days go by without any need for my skills. Consequently, I am forced to entertain myself. Through the portal computer I have access to the collected works of history, the arts, the sciences and other disciplines of several million sentient species, both past and present. I study, I create simulations of other planets, I read, I admire great works of art from all over the galaxy, and I absorb all that I see and hear and taste and smell.
“The equipment left behind by the Progenitors, deep underground where even the Hruk’s weapons couldn’t reach them—even on devastated worlds such as this one—creates fantasies that are every bit as real to me as they are to you. These chairs are real, as is the food—culinary masterpieces from millions of planets. In a lifetime, I could not possibly taste one dish from every planet.”
“Wait a minute!” Cap said, being the next to interrupt. “Not so fast. How did you make the chairs appear out of thin air like that?”
“That, much like the castle, was simply a manifestation of the same technology as the portals. The chairs, food, castle, flowers—everything—was created molecule by molecule by the computer, using the information in its database. Naturally, there was no information in the computer about the complex chemical structure of the poppies, or what the castle was made out of in The Wizard of Oz, so the computer extrapolated from other flowers and building materials it had information on. I think it did a rather good job, myself—at least, judging by your reactions when you saw them.”
“Oh,” Cap replied with a sheepish grin. “Please continue with your explanation.”
“I became acquainted with your planet even before you developed space flight. There are many sentients who still explore the galaxy by ship, and one of them discovered your planet more than two centuries ago, not long after you began broadcasting radio and television. It is fortunate that you were not discovered by one of the more…aggressive races. The Grompph are a peaceful species, dedicated to exploration and intellectual advancement.
“As is their way, they left a probe in your system to monitor your transmissions. Those transmissions were captured, analyzed and stored in the computer network that runs the portals. Thus any creature with access to the portals can tap into this database of knowledge about all known species. This is how the computer understands Universal and dozens of your other languages. As I said, I have a lot of free time; thus I learned several of them myself.
“I came across the recordings of some of your music purely by accident and I was entranced—especially by what you call opera.”
“You’re kidding,” Sparks said. “Opera?”
“Indeed. I have never heard anything like it. That is what got me interested in your race. I began studying humans and was dismayed when you nearly destroyed yourselves. The discovery of nuclear power is a turning point for most sentients—either they use it beneficially or they annihilate themselves. Your people came very close to destroying yourselves and yet achieved fusion power in the end. I was pleased to see you reach outer space.
“Then I was thrilled when you discovered tesserene and harnessed it to explore the stars. I knew that eventually you would encounter a portal and come a-calling. Although I had never met your kind, I began to view humans almost as my responsibility to watch over. I rejoiced in your successes and felt sorrow at your tragedies.
“When you began exploring nearby star systems, I set the computer to monitor for human activity in the vicinity of the portals. Yes, there are several others in nearby systems besides the one you found. When you reached the moon you call P5M2, I knew it immediately. As you discovered, the dome absorbs all energy emissions that strike it, including radio waves. I used that effect to my advantage.
“I listened in when you began transmitting between ship and landing party. I was pleased to see how quickly you determined how to gain entrance, although, to be honest, I helped you a bit. You had the right approach, but with the equipment you had it might have taken you months to solve the riddle—which is by design, I might add. Only those sophisticated enough to figure out how to gain entrance are permitted to use the portals. I knew you would find the way in soon, but possibly not soon enough. I did not want you to give up and return to Earth empty-handed, so I interfaced with your computer and fed it some shortcuts to speed up the process.”
“Damn!” Sparks exclaimed. “And I thought I was so clever, figuring out how to get in so quickly.”
“As I said, you did have all the necessary algorithms for finding the key to the portal; only the speed of your computer was the limiting factor. I merely reduced the number of dead-ends it had to work through. You would have reached the same conclusion eventually on your own.”
I interrupted. “So, I t
ake it you watched and listened when we entered the dome and progressed through the portals—that’s how you knew how long we were exploring, and what we talked about, including the Creators—I mean the Progenitors.”
“Correct. I was impressed with how quickly you grasped the concepts of the portals and the hubs, and how easily you figured out how to use the computer to acquire food and to access the network map.”
“Well, the food was more of an accident than anything else,” Tom said sheepishly. “I was just kidding around.”
“At first, yes, but it did not take long for you to make use of your discovery. Some races have taken months of constant study to accomplish what you did in hours. Your species is quite clever and adaptable.”
Perhaps Drelx was a terrific actor and was luring us deeper and deeper into his web of lies, but damn it, I liked him! Nothing he had said sounded like anything but the utter truth. I felt it was time to find out for sure. I reached for the release to my faceplate.
Guido’s eyes went wide. “What are you doing?”
“I believe Drelx about the Progenitors, and about the air. I’m putting that belief to the test.” For a moment, I thought Cap was going to object; then he nodded. The others watched as my faceplate slid open.
I took a tentative breath. Nothing. “I don’t smell anything, and it seems breathable.” After a few moments of hesitation, perhaps to see if I keeled over after all, the others followed suit, Guido last of all.
The Imperative Chronicles, Books One and Two: The Mars Imperative & The Tesserene Imperative Page 52
