When the Gods Aren't Gods: Book Two of The Theogony (8 page)

“Thanks for coming,
Steropes,” said Calvin as he invited the Psiclops into his office and gave him a seat.

Sterop
es looked around curiously. “Is this to be a meeting between just you and me?” he asked. “You certainly can’t be expecting to fit too many more people into this room.”

“Yes,” Calvin replied, “it’s just us. I figured that you
were the one Psiclops that I was most likely to get a straight answer from.”

“Thank you,” replied Steropes. “I think.”

“You have to admit that you guys haven’t always been completely forthcoming,” Calvin said. “Some people might even say that you haven’t always been entirely honest, either.”

Steropes shrugged. “We are constrained...” he said.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” interrupted Calvin, cutting him off. “You have rules, blah, blah, blah. I’ve been around you more than anyone else, and I’m starting to get a pretty good sense of when you are omitting details to stay within the rules and when you’re intentionally misleading us or bending the truth.”

Steropes turned up his palms and shrugged his shoulders again. “I’m not sure what you want me to say,” he finally offered.

“I don’t want you to say anything, other than the full truth and nothing but the truth,” replied Calvin. “If you don’t feel like you can tell me something, regardless of the reason, just say that you can’t tell me that, OK?”

“I will do my best,” answered Steropes.

“See?” asked Calvin. “One question, and you are already hedging your answers. Rather than giving me a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, you had to qualify that answer, giving you the ability to come back later and say, ‘well, I wasn’t able to answer that question at that time.”

“Yes,” replied Steropes, “I do see what you are saying. We have been in the habit of doing it for so long that it is second nature to us. What is it that you want to know?”

“A little while ago,” Calvin said, “Arges made the comment that I had the ability to be a telepath. Since then, he has avoided me. When he wasn’t able to dodge me, he changed the subject when I brought it up or found other ways to keep from answering the question. You are the Psiclops that I can most count on for a straight answer.
What did he mean?
”

“Did he say that it was too difficult for him to talk about?” asked Steropes in lieu of an answer.

“As a matter of fact,” replied Calvin, “he said almost those exact words.”

Steropes nodded. “I figured he would,” he said, “and that is
probably the truth, believe it or not.” He paused, obviously contemplating how to tell the story. “You are aware, of course, that Arges does not do well around conflict, correct?” he finally asked.

“Yeah,” Calvin answered. “Usually, he runs screaming from it.”

“Most Psiclopes do,” noted Steropes. “I am one of the few that are able to deal with conflict, mostly from close association with it in the past. Neither he nor Brontes would be able to tell this story.” He paused, considering. “Several thousand years ago, all humans were able to speak mentally,” he said. “It was a trait that helped them hunt and ensured their survival. The ability was dormant when a child was born, but when they reached adulthood, their parents could give them a psychic ‘nudge’ that brought them into full Awareness of everyone around them. This also let them speak telepathically with each other.” He paused again.

“Atlantis
was the largest city on the planet,” he continued looking down at his hands. Calvin could hear the anguish in his voice as Steropes’ relived the city’s final days. “It was home to tens of thousands of the brightest people in the world. When it was destroyed, all of them were killed. Their outcry as their lives were extinguished was horrible...simply horrible.”

With a sniff, he continued,
“The psychic trauma of such a large number of humans dying at the same time burned out the psychic ability of every human alive at that time and greatly affected all of us Psiclopes for a long time, as well. It caused us to have to go into an extended sleep cycle to repair the damage done to our brains. Succeeding generations of humans have had the telepathic ability, but haven’t had anyone to help ‘nudge’ them into Awareness. Unfortunately, our brains function differently, and we cannot do it for you. Eventually, the knowledge that the ability existed was lost. Since then, scientists have often wondered why so much of the brain seems unused; that is why.”

“So how do we activate it again?” asked Calvin.

“I do not know,” replied Steropes. “Perhaps a different race might be able to activate it within you. The ability runs more strongly in you than in all of the humans I have known since the fall of Atlantis. That is why you can sense us when we are around, even if we are cloaked. It is also why you hear a buzzing sound around us. You are catching a piece of our telepathic conversation although it isn’t enough for you to decipher.”

“What
is it that you are inquiring about?” asked Arges.

“As you are aware,” Masood Khalil, the
Secretary of State replied, “we are a small stellar nation that is largely unaware of its surroundings. We know of only one other culture, beyond our two planets, and that race attacked us without provocation. As Secretary of State, I would find it most helpful to know what other races we are likely to come in contact with as we journey further out into the stars. It would be nice to know which civilizations to avoid, and which might give us aid. Perhaps a brief history of the galaxy might be a good start so that we understand what is going on out there. It is time that we found out more about the galaxy.”

“It’s well past time we found out,” disagreed the vice president. As the closest confidant of the U.S. president, he had known about the Psiclopes for almost as long as anyone. The fact that they had delayed passing on this knowledge was a constant source of irritation to him.

“Yes,” replied Arges, “it is past time for you to hear this, but there were excellent reasons for the delay. We can debate the efficacy of the reasons at another time.” He looked at Steropes. “Perhaps you would like to brief them on this topic?”

“I would be happy to,” answered Steropes. “Without going too far into it, I will start out by saying that there have been space-travelling civilizations for tens of thousands of years. Most of the races that currently exist came onto the galactic scene about
11,000 years ago. We know that there were civilizations that existed a long time before that, the Progenitors, but they vanished before the current races came to prominence. All we have are their artifacts, like the stargates, to tell their tale.”

“Around 11,000 years ago,” continued Steropes, “seven races came into contact with each other. Five of these races were generally peaceful in nature, while two of them were
not. The five banded together and were able to contain the advances of the two. One of the warlike races destroyed itself; the other is a race you have already met, the Ssselipsssiss that your forces fought on their first mission. They are a culture built on warfare; all they understand is force.”

“The
five original peaceful races saw that they were stronger together than apart, so they decided to form the Alliance of Civilizations. The Psiclopes were one of those founding races and agreed to host the alliance government on our home planet of Olympos. That was just over 10,000 years ago. At that time we had a thriving society. All of the races got along well, and we were at the height of our power. This arrangement worked out well for almost 6,000 years.”

“The
beginning of the end for the Alliance of Civilizations came just over 4,000 years ago. It didn’t happen because of the appearance of a new culture, or as a result of bad leadership or through any other cause that you might expect. The downfall of the Psiclopes society, and the alliance as a whole, was caused by the development of an anti-aging technology discovered by one of our scientists.”

“How is that?” asked the
speaker of the lower house of parliament. A model before becoming the Brazilian president, Amanda Silva remained ever-conscious of her looks. If an anti-aging process existed, she wanted it.

“Our scientists found a way to rejuvenate cells at the most basic level,” replied Brontes, taking up the story. “They didn’t just slow the effects of aging
; they stopped it completely. The process couldn’t reverse any aging that had already taken place, but it could stop it from proceeding. For all intents and purposes, we became immortal.” She didn’t sound happy about it.

“And that is a bad thing?”
prompted President Nehru.

“Yes,” Brontes
confirmed. “Becoming immortal might not be so bad by itself, but the side effects of the process weren’t known for some time. One of these effects is that the immortality process caused sterility in both males and females. Just one treatment of the anti-aging process, and a person was unable to have children. On that day, our race began to die. Most of the people got the treatment before the side effect was known; others decided that it was still worth having, and they got it even though they knew what it meant. A few decided not to have the treatment, but over the course of the intervening years, nearly all of them have died out or chosen to get the treatment. Our race is no longer producing new members. Although numbering in the tens of billions 4,000 years ago, our numbers are now down to less than 10 million, with eight million on our home world and other odds and ends scattered throughout the universe, like the three of us here. We don’t dare fight or do anything dangerous; to do so only hastens the extinction of our race.”

“Did the other races get the process?” asked President Nehru. “
Would it work for them?”

“Yes,” said Steropes, “it works for most, but not all,
of the other races. The side effects were known before it made it off planet, though, and most of the other races outlawed the process from the start. Although a couple of the minor races embraced it, the treatment only caught on in one other alliance culture; they are experiencing the death of their race just as we are.”

“It is ironic
,” noted the Secretary of State, “that the process that removes the specter of death from an individual causes the death of the race.”

“Who would
want that?” asked President Nehru. “To give up your race for a chance to stop your individual aging?”

“I would,” replied Speaker Silva. “Where do I sign?”

Brontes looked at Speaker Silva. “Be careful what you ask for,” she said. “It does not always work out the way you hope it will.”

“OK,” said President Nehru. “So where does that leave us? What is the state of the
alliance now?”

“The
alliance is finished,” replied Arges. “When the last of our politicians died about 800 years ago, the Psiclopes dropped out of the alliance, as did the other race that accepted the treatment, the Hooolongs. When we left, we ‘invited’ the alliance to move its headquarters off of our planet. No one cared anymore, and our society just didn’t want to be bothered with the alliance politicians’ comings and goings. Society got tired and bored with it all. I suppose that the three of us would have been the same had we stayed there; it is only by observing your race on a daily basis that we have stayed young at heart.”

“When the
alliance moved off of our planet,” Steropes said, “the other original members couldn’t agree on where to take the alliance headquarters. All of them wanted the increased trade and status that having it would bring. They fell to fighting amongst themselves. Years became decades and decades became centuries without resolution. Without the united front against aggression that the alliance provided, other races that had formerly been held in check began to get away with more and more. Instead of putting down their insurrections, the former members of the alliance began to practice a policy of appeasement. They traded away star systems with the hope that each would be the last system that the aggressors wanted.”

Steropes shook his head. “Unfortunately,” he continued, “just like your
countries found in between the world wars, you can’t appease aggression. Giving territory to emperors only makes them want more. One hundred years ago, the remaining good races said, ‘no more’ and refused to cede any more systems. That lasted about two years before the Ssselipsssiss attacked the Mrowry, one of the former alliance members. The Mrowry called to the rest for aid, but none came. Had the others helped, the war would have probably been over quickly. As it was, it lasted over 30 years and resulted in the destruction of the societies on several planets. While the Mrowry were entangled with the Ssselipsssiss, several other races attacked other former members of the alliance. Within a few years, there was warfare across most of the galaxy. Trade came to a near standstill, and most of the nations began focusing solely on fortifying the systems they had to try to protect them from attack. Twenty years ago, several of the former members decided to try to re-implement the alliance. We know this because they invited the Psiclopes to participate.”

“Olympos, our home world, chose not to join them,” said Arges. “We do not know what happened after that, because the other nations decided to shun our society. They expected us to take up the leadership mantle that we had held for thousands of years. When we did not, they were most disappointed with us.”

“Disgusted would probably be a better word,” noted Steropes. “I believe the final communication that Olympos received was, ‘Look to your own borders then, oath breakers, because we will no longer come to your aid.’ We still had communications with Olympos then so we knew what was going on. We also heard that one of the other alliance members, the Depsips, had been attacked by a Drakul force. We thought that the Drakuls had been annihilated in one of the last joint actions of the alliance, but apparently, they were not. When the Depsips last saw the Drakuls, they were moving in the general direction of Olympos. We have never had a fleet, so there was nothing in their way to stop them.”

“
Shortly after that, we lost communications with our home world,” said Arges. “We don’t know what happened, whether someone found one of our communications beacons back to Olympos or whether Olympos was attacked and destroyed. We just don’t know. We believe that some of the former alliance members are continuing the fight, and they may even be trying to resurrect the alliance, but they are in retreat in most places and on the defensive.”

“So you’ve pretty much been lying to us the whole time about the state of affairs in the galaxy,” commented the vice president
, glaring at Arges. “You’ve only told us what you thought would get us to do what you wanted us to do. You’ve been manipulating us all along.”

“
From one point of view, perhaps,” said Arges. “We did what we thought we needed to in order to get your aid. It is important to understand, though, that the things we asked of you were necessary to help your civilization advance and become better prepared to protect itself. When Solomon forecast that he expected the Solar System to be discovered by an aggressive race within the next 25 years, we knew we had to act. Trying to find out what happened on Olympos was just a serendipitous byproduct of helping you to prepare for the dangers that may be coming.”

“Call it what you will,” growled the vice president
; “you still lied to us. How do we know that what you’re saying now is true? How will we ever know what you say is true?”

“I guess you never will,” replied Arges. “That is to be expected,
of course. Unfortunately, the situation is so dire now that you don’t have any choice but to believe us. If you don’t, we will all be destroyed.”

“What advice would you give us then?” asked President Nehru.

“You need help,” replied Arges. “Regardless of whether you believe us about anything else, you must understand that much is true. The last time we were out, we ran into a Ssselipsssiss base. If we are close to their territory, we are also close to the Depsips civilization as well. Their civilization was relatively close to the lizards. If we scout around the lizards’ systems, we may be able to find it.”

“We also might find more lizards than we’re able to handle on our own,” noted the vice president.

“That is true,” agreed Steropes. “Before we lost contact with our society, we heard that several of the Depsips’ systems had been lost to the lizards. They did, however, still have a manufacturing center in a pocket star system, and that is where I think we need to go. If we could link up with them, we might be able to work together to push back the lizards and then get their aid against the Drakuls if they come.”

“I am not aware of any better plans,” said President Nehru. “I will contact our military leaders and have them get in touch with you. If they do not have any better ideas, we will make that the next mission of the
Vella Gulf
.”

“I have a question,” interjected the vice president into the silence that followed. “With all of these civilizations looking to take over other civilizations’ planets and races, how come none of them have come to take over
ours before now?”

“There are several reasons for this,” replied Steropes. “First of all, when we first found your planet, civilization was already in decline. We decided at that time not to mention Earth to the other races,
to keep you from being one more bargaining chip for the advanced races to throw around.”

“So, you’re saying that we actually have you to thank for our lack of visibility?” asked President Nehru.

“In a manner of speaking,” replied Brontes, “yes, you do.”

“Second,”
continued Steropes, “it is incorrect to believe that no other civilizations have found this planet. In fact, at least six different civilizations have landed on this planet, besides our own. You are lucky in that either they weren’t able to get word of your existence to their home worlds or that we were able to fight them off for you.”