"Cherryh,.C.J.-.Morgaine.4.-.1988.-.Exiles.Gate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cherryh C J)

Prologue



The qhal found the first Gate on a dead world of their own sun.
Who made it, or what befell those makers, the qhal of that age never learned.
Their interest was in the dazzling prospect it offered them, a means to
limitless power and freedom, a means to shortcut space and leap from world to
world and star to starЧinstantaneous travel, once qhalur ships had crossed space
at realtime, to carry to each new site the technology of the Gates and establish
the link. Gates were built on every qhalur world, a web of eyeblink transport,
binding together a vast empire in space.
That was their undoing . . . for Gates led not alone where but when, both
forward and backward along the course of worlds and suns.
The qhal gained power beyond their wildest imaginings; they were freed of time.
They seeded worlds with gatherings from the far reaches of Gate-spanned space .
. . beasts, and plants, even qhal-like species. They created beauty, and whimsy,
and leaped ahead in time to see the flowerings of civilizations they had
plannedЧwhile their subjects lived real years and died in normal span, barred
from the freedom of the Gates.
Real-time for qhal became too tedious. The familiar present, the mundane and
ordinary, assumed the shape of a confinement no qhal had to bear . . . the
future promised infinite escape. Yet once a qhal made that first forward
journey, there could be no return. It was too dangerous, too fraught with dire
possibilities, to open up backtime. There was the deadly risk of changing what
Was. Only the future was accessible; and qhal went.
Some went further than certainty, pursuing the hope of Gates which might or
might not exist where they were predicted to be built. More lost their courage
completely and ceased to believe in further futures, lingering until horror
overwhelmed them, in a present crowded with living ancestors in greater and
greater numbers. Reality began to ripple with unstable possibilities.
Perhaps some desperate soul fled to backtime, seeking origins or a lost life or
a memory; or perhaps at last the very weight of extended time and energies grew
too much. Might-have-been and Was were confounded. Qhal went mad, perceiving
things no longer true, remembering what had never been true in the worlds which
now existed.
Time was ripping loose about themЧfrom ripplings to vast disturbances, the
overstrained fabric of space and time undone, convulsed, imploded, hurling all
their reality asunder.
Then all the qhalur worlds lay ruined. There remained only fragments of their
past glory . . . stones strangely immune to time in some places, and in others
suddenly and unnaturally victim to it . . . lands where civilization rebuilt
itself, and others where all life failed, and only ruins remained.
The Gates themselves, which were outside all time and space . . . they endured.
A few qhal survived, remembering a past which had been/might have been true.
Last came humans, exploring that dark desert of worlds the qhal had touched . .