THE END OF BEGINNINGS

THIRTY (Part 2)

Their time in the Terrace District quickly wained after that.  The tour of Atlantis soon led them back to the wide valley at the mouth of the long canyon.  They meandered slowly down the subtly curving streets of the crowded district.  It was a chance for Hasha to enjoy the view of the densely populated sector.  Here were the endless and varied towers that reached out of the ancient crater to scrape the cloudless sky.  He was no less awed by the sight stretching out before him from on the ground than he was seeing it from the air.
Moros watched his best friend hurry a few steps ahead of the group when a ship would pass, low and loud, overhead.  Before long, their idle trek had taken them farther up the rim of the valley and into a neighborhood Moros knew all too well.  He stopped walking altogether in front of a small, stone archway interrupting an otherwise smooth, stout wall.  Beyond the partition was a tree-lined meadow nestled within a small, boxy canyon.  The roof and walls of a modest house were just barely visible past a steep bluff sticking out into the meadow.  It was quiet here.  Moros had almost forgotten how quiet.  The din of the cityscape behind and below him was only a steady, subtle, and distant murmur.  The boom and roar of ships ascending and descending through the sky was barely a half-faded echo here.  There was the rush of the wind that gusted up the valley from the distant shore.  There was the whistled songs of boisterous birds.  More than anything else, there was the sounds Moros remembered that suddenly flooded his ears.
"I'm sorry, Moros," Ganos said softly.  "I didn't mean to lead us this far up here.  I wasn't thinking-"
"It's fine," Moros said without looking away from the arched entrance and the quiet, little estate.  "I wanted to see it."
"What is this place," asked Hasha, joining Moros and Ganos when he realize they weren't walking behind him.
"My old home," answered Moros.  "This is where I was born.  My family lived here until...until my mother..."  Moros blinked.  He finally looked away from the stout wall, his gaze landing on Hasha.  He suddenly realized he wasn't sure how to describe his mother's ascension to the boy from Agan.
"She was very sick," Moros said after a moment.  He felt Ganos wrap her arm around his own.  "Eventually, when I was still very young, she had fought that sickness as hard as she could.  But, she couldn't defeat it.  Not here.  Not in this place or this...life."
"Ohh," said Hasha.  "She joined the spirits."  It wasn't a question.  It was just a certainty he accepted as if it was the most natural and logical truth he knew.
Moros let himself smile a little.  "Yes," he said, turning is head to look into the yard of his childhood home.
"Where shall we go from here?  What do you think your friend would like to see next," Ganos asked.
"I want to see everything," Hash exclaimed in his language.  "You can show me the worlds!  All of them and all of the peoples and all of the great villages like this one!"
Moros laughed.  "What," asked Ganos.  "What did he say?"
"He wants to see all of the worlds," replied Moros.  "I don't think Father would like us traveling that far away from here," he told Hasha.  "Plus, that would be a very long trip."
"Look at all of those ships," Hasha said, pointing toward the sky above the glistening metropolis.  "We should fly like them!  We should go where they go!"
"Perhaps," said Ganos after watching Hasha, "we can show him something far more impressive than the ships."
"This sounds dangerous," quipped Ferrus.
"Nonsense," said Ganos.  "He's seen space ships.  Let's show him the true way a Lantean travels the galaxy."

It was thirty minutes later when Moros, Ganos, Hasha, and Ferrus found themselves in the heart of the valley.  It was far noisier here than on the valley's rim.  The walkways were crowded from end to end, forcing the little group to stay close together as they pushed and squeezed their way through the endless throng.  Here were more sights, sounds, and beings than Hasha could have ever imagined.  No one back in his village was likely to ever believe all the things he had seen so far.  If only he had known what was about to come.
Ganos pointed toward the entrance of a large workshop she and Moros used to frequent as children.  They had loved visiting the place.  There were noisy corridors and open workspaces they never seemed to grow tired of exploring.  Moros recalled watching the skilled masters and apprentices hone their aged crafts as they toiled over advancements in metallurgy and chemistry.  Many of Ganos' favorite possessions came from that place.  It was the kind of setting where an apprentice fiddling with a simple child's toy would soon be creating the components of a star-seeding space station.
Not far from the large and busy workshop, the walkway the four were following soon led them to their destination.  A pair of tall, marble, pillared fountains marked the entrance of a vast and dazzling open plaza.  Two levels of rail-lined platforms connected by the wide, metal paths sloping gently downward overlooked a park of towering, narrow-pointed evergreen trees and lush, green grass.  The soft turf was divided into even, symmetrical sections by the pristine walkways and a network of shallow, shimmering canals.  Thin kiosks dotted the landscape at long, even intervals along the edges of the pathways.  Their interactive screens were ready to display any desired information from the annals of Lantean knowledge upon demand.
The picturesque space was flanked by the sky-teasing cityscape on three sides while its distant end beheld a view of the eastern coastline.  There, the tight cluster of aged towers that rose off the surface of Atlantis proper were just barely visible.  The faraway buildings had become needles of amethyst in the waining daylight.  The group took a moment to admire the distant sight and the setting immediately around them-especially Hasha.  But, they didn't linger near the park's entrance for long.  What Ganos had brought them there to see was down at the heart of the mammoth plaza.
"This is such a beautiful place," Hasha said in his own language as they followed the walkways down to the main, grassy level of the vast park.
"Yes," Moros agreed.
"What is that," asked Hasha when they had arrived at the center of the plaza.
"That," said Ganos, "is, very likely, the most important invention of our people's long history."
"That is very likely true," said Ferrus.
"But what is it," Hasha asked again.
"It's called an astral portal," said Moros.  "It is a gateway to places far away across the stars."
"A gateway?  But why would you need a gateway when you have so many of the ships?"
Moros smiled.  "The ships can only go so fast," he explained.  "Even in the fastest one it can take many days to reach a place very, very far away.  But, the gateway..."
"Is nearly instantaneous," Ganos added quickly.  She didn't notices the confused look on Hasha's face.  "You step through here and then, just a few moments later, step out into an entirely different world."
"Sounds...amazing," said Hasha.  "And always from this place?"
"No," said Moros.  "There are many portals.  Countless portals.  And they are all connected."
The stargate was below them at one end of an oblong amphitheater.  The steep, sloping walls all the way around it were covered in vivid, detailed murals.  A pair of wide, boxy tunnels on either side of the gate led out to the rest of the plaza.  It was a mostly resplendent area, though Moros remembered it being a far more awesome place.  Admittedly, nearly a decade had passed since he had last laid eyes on the wide, oval arena.  Yet, it seemed like an extra twenty years had passed in the pivotal spot amongst the gilded metropolis.  And they had not been gentle years.
A buzz of conversation from just below the group suddenly caught Hasha's attention.  Moros watched his best friend lean out over the railing, trying to see who was down there and what was going on.  A large, rounded pillbox capped off the amphitheater.  The busy dugout under the group's feet was the command and control center for the Atlantis stargate.  It was large enough to hold nearly thirty people at any given time, and was nearly filled to capacity that day.  A series of long, wide windows looked out across the oval toward the idle ring directly opposite the crowded bunker.
"It sounds like we may have arrived at just the right time," said Ganos.
Moros nodded his head.  He'd barely finished moving when the astral portal suddenly began to stir.  The polished facade of the vertical circle stayed motionless while a strobing light inside the gate raced around the symbol-lined inner track.  It made two quick, complete laps before stopping just as seven of the blue-white chevrons glowed simultaneously.  Hasha watched with baited breath as the empty circle inside the ring exploded with light.  He jumped a half-step back from the railing when a geyser of watery energy erupted outward from the center of the gate.  His mouth hung open as he watched the long, bubbling fissure stretch over the oval's floor and then spring back into the shimmering, standing pool a second later.
"Wow," Hasha mumbled breathlessly.
Moros glanced quickly between the stargate and his best friend.  He smiled at Hasha's unrestrained disbelief when the Aganni teen saw the first travelers emerge from the placid sheen of energy.  When those four were followed by two more, and then another four right behind them, Moros found his own attention ensnared by the scene across the amphitheater.  The cluster of ten became a stream of people stepping through the gate and onto the Atlantis soil.
"Refugees," Ganos said before Moros could ask.  "Probably not the first group today."
As the crowd of arrivals grew denser near the base of the stargate, a half dozen members of the city's security force emerged from inside the bunker.  There was a thin sheen of energy around each of the six Atlantis personnel.  The protective shields wrapped around their lightly armored uniforms were just barely visible as they moved across the oval toward the arriving crowd.
Moros lifted his eyes toward the sky just as the guards began ushering the people away from the gate.  A pair of transports descended out of the gradually darkening sky toward the floor of the plaza.  The noise of the extra-long portal ships quickly filled the air around the amphitheater.  The twin vessels landed side by side and a few seconds apart on the other side of the oval's wall.  For the first time, Moros spotted the tops of temporary shelters arranged in tight groups beyond the left side of the gate area.  Thin, glowing poles stood above the bizarre camp.  Moros counted nine of the thin, bright filaments.  They were shield emitters.  It took his eyes a moment to adjust and see the pale, energized bubble enveloping the four rows of assorted, pop-up structures.
The six, shielded guards stood together in a stretched-out line guiding the new arrivals toward the nearby tunnel in the oval's wall.  Behind the refugees, the glimmering pool within the stargate suddenly vanished.  With a snap, the energized ring instantly powered down.  Sixty-five solemn-looking travelers, carrying as many of their belongings as they could, had come through the portal.  Now, they would spend the next several minutes getting scanned by Atlantis medical personnel before being registered and dispatched to an awaiting camp on another part of the mainland.
"Does everyone who comes through the portal have to get checked," asked Moros.
"No," Ganos answered.  "Only those from what the guards call the 'hot list'.  However, nearly all travelers have to send word of their impending arrival before they can use the portal to enter the city."
Ferrus shook his head.  "This is a situation that will get out of control, one way or another."
Moros breathed deeply as he watched the last few refugees exit the amphitheater.  "And, likely much faster than anyone realizes."