“But I think we owe it to our families back home and the people we work for—and yes, the “huddled masses” crammed together for lack of living space and natural resources—to do everything we can to help humanity break the chains tying us to Mother Earth. And the best way to do that is with the alien technologies we’ve encountered. But we have to do it responsibly. If we unleash what we’ve learned on an unprepared planet, we risk doing untold harm. If we return home now, there’s no way we could hide all the computer data we’ve recorded, or all the helmet cam footage.
“I don’t see that we have any choice but to stay out here a bit longer, until we can find a way to do more good than harm with what we’ve learned. Ultimately, my decision has to come down to the greatest good for the greatest number. Sorry, guys.”
Cap and Sparks were pleased by my pronouncement. Tom and Guido weren’t as sanguine, but they nodded in agreement, if, perhaps, reluctantly.
Tom frowned. “Well, if we’re going to find a solution to the problem, how do you suggest we proceed? Where do we go for answers—the Seat of Power?”
I gave him a grateful smile. “That’s a good suggestion, and we may do that later, but I have another idea to try first. So far we’ve met three aliens and two of them have tried to kill us. But the other has already proved helpful once. Perhaps he can help us again.”
“Good idea,” Sparks agreed.
Cap nodded once sharply, settling the matter. “Drelx it is.”
At that, Sparks began whistling We’re Off to See the Wizard.
I could only roll my eyes, shake my head, and sigh.
* * * *
We suited up for the short trip back to the dome, and then once again shucked our gear in Grand Central Terminal. It occurred to me that it would only be polite to let Drelx know we were coming, rather than showing up on his doorstep, so to speak, unannounced.
“Computer, can you inform Drelx, on Stripi, that we’re coming to visit?”
“Drelx monitors your movements. He will know of your journey.”
“Of course.” I chuckled and turned to the others. “Drelx already told us that, didn’t he?” I raised my voice again for the computer’s benefit. “All right, then, please open the first portal.”
As before, we passed through the hubs of the crabfish and the furbirds. Tom glanced around apprehensively at each stop. I grew concerned that perhaps recent events had had a deeper impact on him than he was letting on. However, this time there were no curious denizens of those planets watching as we transited their terminals, and no bloodthirsty aliens jumped out of the hypothetical woodwork at us. Our trip to the final portal leading to the Progenitors’ home world was uneventful.
When I emerged, I expected to see either the red poppies and yellow brick road of our earlier visit, or the gray featureless wasteland that was the natural appearance of the planet. Instead, there was a dirt path leading off through a grassy plain toward what appeared to be a town in the distance. The houses were low and looked to be made of wood with straw-thatched roofs, but they were too far away for me to be sure. After we all arrived through the portal, we set off for the town.
It didn’t take long to notice something odd. We seemed to be approaching the town faster than we should have on foot, and the scale of the structures appeared…off somehow. When we got close enough, I realized why—the houses were miniature, only chest high. The steepled church was the only structure taller than we were.
“What the hell?” Guido stood there with hands on hips and his face knotted in puzzlement. “Toy houses? They look like something my daughter might play dolls in—well, once she’s old enough to play with dolls, that is.”
It was perplexing all right. The path we were on became the main road of the town, which seemed rather elaborate for a plaything. Many intersecting dirt roads complete with wagon ruts branched off from the main street, and there were houses, churches, and other types of single-story buildings that I couldn’t identify. Naturally, this had to be another of Drelx’s illusions, but of what and for what purpose?
Everything was neat and clean. There was a peculiar odor that I could almost place, but not quite. Not entirely unpleasant, but strong and earthy.
“Animal dung!” Sparks exclaimed. “I’d know that smell anywhere.” As he should, having grown up in horse country. The closest I’d ever come to a horse was in a zoo in Denver when I was a kid. There aren’t a lot of places left on Earth where large animals aren’t caged.
We looked all around us. Any sizable animal should be visible for kilometers in any direction, yet we saw nothing but the miniature village. Out of curiosity, I peeked in a few windows and saw tiny furniture, minuscule candle sticks, doll-sized dishware on a kitchen table, and even a petite broom leaning against a wall.
“The detail in these houses is incredible,” I announced. “They look like someone just stepped away and could return at any moment—like Goldilocks and the three bears. I’d swear I smell food cooking somewhere.”
Sparks looked around with feigned nervousness and said, “Shh! Not so loud. Drelx might hear you and send a trio of angry bears after us!”
I chuckled. “Wrong size houses. The bears, or even Goldilocks, would crush these.”
“So where is Drelx, and what’s this mini-town for?” Cap asked. “Even he’s not short enough to live in these houses.”
“Good question,” Tom said. I was glad to see him participating. He’d been unusually quiet since his attack. “We could fan out and search the area. Maybe we missed something.”
For want of any better ideas, we did as Tom suggested and explored the surrounding terrain. As we saw from the portal, there was nothing else within sight but a grassy plain. No hollows that might hide a structure; not even a gopher hole, as far as I could tell—just the village. But what was the point?
Eventually we resolved to wait until Drelx felt like making an appearance. The day was warm and sunny, the grass soft and convincingly real, so we stretched out on the lawn just outside of town and lunched on the food packs we’d brought along. With a full belly I closed my eyes and enjoyed the warmth of the sunshine—something we don’t often get to experience on an extended deepspace mission—even if it was artificial.
I awoke sometime later, yawned and started to stretch—except I couldn’t!
“Hey! What gives?” I tried to sit up and realized that I couldn’t do that either. Was I paralyzed? What had happened to me while I slept?
“What the hell?” Sparks’ voice came from my left.
I managed to turn my head slightly in that direction. At least I wasn’t totally paralyzed.
Sparks was tied down by hundreds, no, thousands of tiny threadlike filaments, binding his arms to his sides and his legs together. Other filaments were tied to ridiculously small stakes on either side of him, securing him to the ground, including his head. I assumed the same had been done to me, which is why I couldn’t look “down” to see my body. I could only turn my head slightly from side to side.
I heard high-pitched voices yelling “Kill them!” and “Kill the monsters!” and my blood ran cold. What in Heaven’s name had we gotten ourselves into? Then I saw them. Scurrying around between the two of us were dozens of people, half-meter tall people, some of them riding equally small horses.
“Drelx!” I shouted. “I don’t find this the slightest bit amusing. Untie us right now!”
I heard Cap’s voice coming from behind me. “What is it? What happened to us?”
“Damn Lilliputians!” was Tom’s comment from somewhere I couldn’t pinpoint.
“I’m sorry you didn’t find my interpretation of your delightful Gulliver’s Travels to be entertaining,” Drelx responded.
The illusion faded away, along with our bindings. Instead, we were lying on the floor of a pleasant-looking human-scale cottage, complete with gingham tablecloth on the kitchen table, the aroma of something vaguely like apple pie wafting from the oven, and the sounds of birds chirping outside the window ov
er the sink.
“Please be seated.” He waved us to five wooden chairs arrayed around the table. “I find your literature to be most refreshing. I had hoped you would enjoy a taste of it so far from home.”
“Maybe under other circumstances,” Guido replied, “but yesterday wasn’t the greatest day for us. We’re not really in the mood for surprises right now.”
“Ah, yes, the nasty business in the hub with the Stromvik. My apologies. Perhaps you will be comforted to know that they were executed a few hours ago by their government.”
“What?” “So soon?” “Did they even get a trial?” Our surprised reactions were all jumbled together.
“The Stromvik judicial system is strict, and what many would consider harsh, but it is their way,” Drelx responded calmly.
“Jeez, that was fast,” I mused. “I know they were vicious, but did they deserve to die? Couldn’t they have been locked up instead? They didn’t actually kill anyone.”
“Not for a lack of trying!” Tom snarled with surprising venom. Perhaps it shouldn’t have been so surprising, given some of his other recent comments. “Or did you forget what they did to us?”
“No, I didn’t forget, but we’re all safe and sound, aren’t we?”
“Safe, maybe….” Tom’s voice trailed off sullenly. “If not for Guido—”
“Well, they’re dead now,” I said, with some heat of my own. “So they won’t be bothering us anymore. You can relax.”
“Easy for you to say. Who knows what else we might run into out here?” It was clear that Tom wasn’t going to put his ordeal behind him easily.
“That was the first such incident in many years,” Drelx continued. “It is highly unlikely that you will be attacked again.”
“Maybe so, but once was more than enough for me!”
“Be that as it may,” I interrupted, “that wasn’t what we came here to talk about. Drelx, we have a problem that I’m hoping you can help us with. Given your people’s long experience with the portals and with the various races who encountered them for the first time—not to mention your own centuries of personal experience—we can use some advice. How do we reveal to our planet all that we know of advanced alien technologies without the culture shock destroying us?” I explained what we had discussed earlier.
“Ah, yes. That is indeed a familiar dilemma. And like the discovery of nuclear energy, it too is a turning point in every race’s development as a star-faring civilization. Some embrace the expanded possibilities, others retreat into a shell of isolationism, and still others are destroyed by the knowledge. I am afraid there is no one answer that applies to every species.”
“We understand that, Drelx. We were hoping that you might know of some strategies that other races have used to successfully introduce advanced technology to their people without destroying themselves. Perhaps if we know what methods worked for others, we can choose one that might work for us.”
“All I can offer you is the advice that you find a way to prepare your people for the knowledge that you bring.”
“Thanks, but we already knew that. What we were hoping for was a suggestion how to go about doing that.”
“There I cannot help you. I am sorry.”
I tried one last time. “Isn’t there anything else you can tell us?”
“I am afraid not. Each civilization must resolve this issue on its own. It is part of the maturation process.”
“Thank you for your time, then,” I finished.
Drelx just nodded.
We followed the path from the cottage back to the portal through a tranquil field of golden grain rippling in a gentle breeze. My thoughts were far less serene.
* * * *
We emerged into the furbird hub.
“Well, that was a bust,” Guido announced.
“So now what?” Sparks asked.
“I guess we take Tom’s suggestion and visit the Seat of Power again,” I replied. “Maybe I can find something helpful in the database.”
We returned to Grand Central Terminal to retrieve our suits. As cold and wet as Tral was the last time, we didn’t look forward to a three-hour slog through chilly rain, especially unprotected. Once again we stepped through the purple portal leading to the hub atop the plateau surrounded by mist, and then through the pink portal to Tral. From there, it was only a few steps to the blue portal leading to the Seat of Power.
We caught a break—it wasn’t raining. The ground was firmer and we managed the trek in little over an hour. As before, we shucked our gear at the entrance to the white marble-like building and walked inside.
Once in the central chamber I sat down on the bench. Before placing my hands on the console, I said, “You might as well get comfortable. I have no idea how long this might take.” Cap nodded and I slowly slid my hands around in the depressions until I made contact.
Unlike before, when I was assailed by swirling colors, shapes, sounds and smells as my mind attempted to make sense of the input it received, this time I went straight to the long door-filled hall with branching passageways. I started down the hallway, opening a door here and turning a corner there in my quest for knowledge. There were many false leads and dead-ends, but I was determined. Eventually I found my answer—and it wasn’t what I expected.
I opened my eyes and took a deep breath, and then everything went black.
When I awoke, I was sitting inside a medical cubicle similar to the one used to heal us after our last encounter with the Stromvik.
“Wha—what happened?” I croaked.
“Jesus, man, don’t scare us like that!” Guido almost shouted. “I wasn’t sure we were going to get you back this time.”
“What happened?” I repeated.
Guido responded, “You were hooked up to that…thing—that seat—for over a week! After three days we started to get worried. You hadn’t moved a muscle other than the occasional eye-twitch. By the fifth day without food or water, we tried to wake you, but we couldn’t even move you. It’s like you and the bench were carved from a single piece of stone. Eventually, I went back to the ship for medical supplies to get some glucose and water in your system, but the pneumodermic was unable to break the skin. You were like a rock!
“Finally, after nearly eight days, you suddenly awoke, smiled, and then keeled over. I thought you were dead. There was no detectable heartbeat or respiration. But after a few seconds, before I could do anything, your heartbeat returned, though faintly. I couldn’t do anything for you in the chamber, so the four of us carried you back to the terminal—why do you have to be so damn big? Then to the hub, where I hoped the medical facilities of the portal computer would do the trick.
“I honestly wasn’t sure even those capabilities would be enough. As badly as Tom was injured, it took only the box a minute or two to heal him. You were inside for over two hours!”
“I guess I overdid it a little…” I offered weakly. I smiled faintly at my worried compatriots, all of whom were gathered around the cabinet I was still slumped in, exhausted.
“‘A little?’” Guido repeated with exasperation. Then he sighed. “If that isn’t the biggest understatement I’ve heard all year…”
“It was worth it, though. I know now what we have to do.”
“Well, what is it?” Tom asked.
“Let’s get back to the ship and I’ll tell you. I could really use a meal and a bath.”
“You’re not the only one,” Cap chipped in. “All right, mates, let’s head back.”
As we returned through the portals, Guido said, “Swede? You’ve spent a fair amount of time connected to the Seat of Power. Maybe you can answer a question that’s been bothering me.”
“What’s that?”
“We know how sophisticated the portal computer is. Hell, it spans a large segment of the galaxy. So why did the Progenitors feel the need to create the Seat? Other than the user interface, isn’t it largely redundant?”
“Yeah. I wondered the same thing. I had a lot to se
arch for, so I didn’t spend a lot of time on the history of the Seat, but I did take a quick look while I was in there.
“It all goes back to the war with the Hruk. As Drelx said, the portal computer network was originally intended to share all the knowledge of the known worlds fairly among all the space-faring races. But once the Hruk began winning battles, the Progenitors knew they needed a secure computer network that the Hruk didn’t have access to, so they built Seats of Power on most of their core worlds, plus a few strategic outlying planets in their territory. The neural interface of the Seats gave them a strategic advantage, and the Seats kept up a one-way information feed from the portal computer, so that the Seats stayed current with all the new knowledge added to the portal computer. But in the long run it proved too little, too late.
“Eventually, as the Progenitors came to realize that they were going to lose the war, they made sure to supply the Seat network with all the blueprints for advanced weapons and other technologies that they’d withheld from the portal computer. They wanted to ensure that if their desperate plan to reseed the galaxy was successful we’d have access to the information, but not the Hruk.
“Ultimately, the Progenitors’ core worlds were slagged by the Hruk, destroying the Seats there. Now, only the ones on Tral and three other planets survive. We were lucky to find one.”
“So what does that do for us?” Guido asked.
“It gives us the answer to the dilemma of how to share what we know of the Progenitors and their technology with the rest of humanity without risking cultural destruction.”
“It does?”
“It does if everything goes according to plan.”
It took many hours of explaining, cajoling, demanding and pleading, but eventually I convinced everyone to go along with my plan. It certainly wasn’t foolproof, but the five of us working together were able to fine-tune it until it seemed to have a reasonable chance of succeeding.
The Imperative Chronicles, Books One and Two: The Mars Imperative & The Tesserene Imperative Page 58