Orion in the Dying Time o-3

by Ben Bova

  That left only the third planet from the yellow sun. From earliest times it had been the abode of life, a safe harbor where liquid water—the elixir of life—flowed in streams and lakes and seas, fell out of the sky, thundered across planet-girdling oceans. And this watery world was massive enough to hold a molten core of metal at its heart, energy enough to warp spacetime again and again, energy enough to bend the continuum in response to Set’s will.

  The earth harbored life of its own, but Set saw this as a challenge rather than an obstacle. With enough energy and a central driving purpose, he could accomplish anything. Far back into the earliest time of the planet’s existence he traveled, sampling the millennia and the eons, studying, watching, learning. While the others of his kind watched Sheol shuddering and writhing in the beginnings of its death throes, Set pondered carefully and drew his plans.

  Reaching far back in time, to the point where life was just beginning to emerge from the waters and stake its claim on dry land, Set scrubbed the earth clean of almost every one of its life-forms and seeded the planet with reptilian stock. Long eons passed and those reptiles took command of the ground, the seas, and the air. They changed the planet’s entire ecosystem, even altered the composition of its atmosphere.

  Now they were marked for destruction. The time had come for the descendants of Set’s seed, the dinosaurs, to give way to Set’s own people, the inhabitants of Shaydan. Set began the elimination of the dinosaurs and thousands of other species, cleansing the Earth once again to prepare it for his own kind.

  A problem arose. From the distant future of the time where Set worked, the descendants of chattering inquisitive monkeys had evolved into powerful creatures who could also manipulate space time. Like monkeys, they busied themselves altering the continuum to suit themselves, even creating a breed of warriors to be sent to various points in spacetime to shape the continuum to their liking.

  I realized that I was one of those warriors. The Creators had sent me to deal with Set, underestimating his abilities so tragically that now they were scattering out to the stars, abandoning the Earth and all its life to Set’s merciless hand.

  Set had won a cosmic victory. The Earth was his. The human race was to be exterminated completely. I was to be exhibited around the planet Shaydan as proof of Set’s triumph and then ceremonially destroyed.

  I knew that there was no way I could avoid my fate. With Anya gone, her back turned to me, I hardly had the will to keep on living.

  I had died many times, but always the Creators had resurrected me to continue doing their bidding. I knew the pain that death brings, and the fear that comes with it every time, no matter how often. Is this the final destruction? Is the end of me? Will I be erased forever from the book of life?

  Always in the past the Creators had restored me. But now they themselves were fleeing across the stars in fear of their lives.

  I marveled that Set, as thorough and merciless as he was, would allow them to continue living.

  Chapter 25

  The ability to manipulate spacetime gives you control if the clock that counts out the hours, days, seasons, years. The ability to control time removes the frantic hurry from existence, teaches patience and prudence, allows the leisure to examine each step in life from every possible angle before proceeding further.

  Set had traveled across millennia, across eons, to prepare his plans for the migration of his people to Earth. He felt no need for haste, no urge to speed.

  Now he moved in a calm, deliberate manner to show me to his people even while Sheol seethed and writhed in the sky above.

  Most of the time I was as good as blind in the murky atmosphere of Shaydan. The planet was slightly more massive than Earth; its more powerful gravity pulled on me, dragged my feet, made me feel tired and strained all the time. The merciless wind whipped at me and drove stinging particles of grit against my flesh. I was constantly exhausted, half-starved, my skin red and raw as if I were being lashed every hour of the day.

  On rare occasions Set would allow me to see the world through the eyes of his people, and once again I saw a calm and beautiful desert world, severe but entrancing with its bold wind-sculpted rock mountains and bright yellow sky.

  Set never allowed me into his own mind again. Did he realize that I had learned from him things that he would rather I did not know?

  Slowly, as we traveled across the breadth of Shaydan, going from city to city in a seemingly endless round of visits and conferences, I began to understand the true nature of the people of Shaydan.

  The fact that reptiles could evolve intelligence had puzzled me since I had first stepped out into the Neolithic garden along the Nile. Obviously Set and his kind had developed large complex brains, as mammals had done on Earth. Yet intelligence is more than a matter of brain size. If size were all that mattered, elephants and whales would be the intellectual equals of humankind, rather than the mental equals of dogs or pigs.

  I had always thought that no matter what the size of their brains, reptiles who lay eggs the way the dinosaurs did and leave them to hatch on their own could never achieve the kind of parent-child communication necessary for the development of true intelligence. Yet obviously Set and his people had somehow overcome this obstacle.

  Intelligence, I was convinced, depended on communication. Apes learn by watching their elders. Human babies learn at first by watching, then later through speech and finally reading. Set continually complained about the human race’s constant monkeylike chattering. He derided our need to speak to one another, no matter whether the information being conveyed was monumental or trivial.

  The people of Shaydan did not speak. They communicated with one another in silence, mentally, just as Set communicated with me. That I understood. But how did this telepathic ability arise in the first place?

  I tried to ferret out the answer to this puzzle as Set exhibited me across the length and breadth of Shaydan. I watched as best as I could in the dimness of my captivity. Listening did me no good at all because the reptilians did not speak. But whenever Set allowed me to view his world through the eyes of one of his people, I tried to pluck out as much information about them as I could.

  Our visits reminded me of a medieval king with his royal entourage touring his domain. We traveled on the backs of four-legged reptiles, not unlike compact versions of the sauropods of Earth. The civilization of Shaydan was apparently arranged into many distinct communities, each of them centered on a modest-sized city built of stone, baked clay, and other nonorganic materials. I saw no metals, or wood, in any of the buildings.

  We traveled from city to city in a procession, with Set at its head flanked by two of his people on their own mounts. I rode behind Set, and trailing me came a dozen more riders and pack animals carrying food and water for our journey. Each trip took nearly a week, as near as I could calculate in the murky, dust-filled air. For the planet kept its face always turned to its star, Sheol, and all the cities of this world were on the daylit side of Shaydan.

  Every moment of that endless day the remorseless grit-laden wind flayed my flesh, half-blinded my squinting reddened eyes. Set and his people had scales to protect their flesh and transparent lids to cover their eyes; he pointed this out to me as another proof of reptilian superiority over mammals. I had neither the strength nor the will to argue.

  There was no magnificent panoply, no gorgeous robes and billowing silks, no gleaming gold or silver among his entourage. The reptilians wore nothing except their scaly hides: Set deep carmine, his minions lighter shades of red. Our mounts were dusty dull tones of brown. I still dressed in my ancient leather kilt and vest; I had nothing else.

  Water was not abundant on Shaydan. It was a desert world, with meager streams and rare lakes. Nothing as large as a sea or an ocean. The food they gave me to eat consisted of raw leafy vegetables and occasional chunks of meat.

  “We keep herds of meat animals,” Set replied to my unspoken question. “We harvest them carefully and keep their numbers in
balance with the environment. When the time comes to slay them, we put them to sleep mentally and then stop their hearts.”

  “Very humane,” I said, wondering if he would understand my wordplay. If he did he gave no indication of it.

  The cities we entered were not walled. From the weathered looks of their sturdy, domelike buildings, the cities were very old. Even in the wind-whipped dusty atmosphere of this hellish world it must have taken millennia to wear down such solid stone structures to the smooth rounded shapes they now presented. I saw no new buildings at all; everything seemed to be of the same age, and extremely ancient.

  No blaring trumpets announced our approach to a new city, and no noble retinue came out to greet us. Still, crowds gathered at each city as we approached, lining the road to the city and the streets within it to bow solemnly as we passed and then stare wordlessly at us. More throngs clustered in the main city square where we invariably were met by the local leaders.

  All in total silence. It was eerie. The people of Shaydan neither spoke nor made noise of any kind. No applause, not even the snapping of fingers or the clicking of claws. They would watch in complete silence as we stopped in the main square and dismounted. Sometimes a reptilian would point at me. Once or twice I thought I heard a hiss—laughter? Otherwise it was in total silence that we would be led into the largest building on the square. No sound at all except the eternal keening of the stinging wind. In silence a quartet of guards would march behind me as I stumbled, drag-footed and exhausted, behind Set and the city officials who would come out to greet him.

  All of these people, Set’s entourage and the people of each city, looked to me like smaller copies of Set himself. Squinting in the gloomy dusty haze that passed for broad daylight among them, I began to notice minor variations from one city to another. Their scales were lime green here, shades of violet there. I even saw a whole city full of reptilians whose scales were patterned almost like a highlander’s tartan.

  In each city, however, all the people were the same color. It was as if they all wore the same uniform, except that this coloration was the natural pigment of their scales. There were some variations in tone; the smaller a reptilian, the lighter the tone of its coloring, I found. Were size and color indicators of an individual’s age? I wondered. Or did they show an individual’s rank?

  I received no answer from Set to my unspoken questions.

  Regardless of the local color, in every city, once we dismounted, we were led into the largest building on the main square. The rounded domes of the city structures were only a small part of their true extent. Most of the cities were underground, their buildings interconnected by broad tunnels and buried arcades.

  We were always brought to a large oblong room where a reptilian of Set’s own size sat on a raised dais at the far end. Obviously the local patriarch. The audience chamber would then be filled with smaller citizens of the city, lighter in color, lesser in rank. So I supposed.

  Set would stand before the patriarch with me at his side, feeling puny and tired in the heavy gravity. More than once I slumped to the floor, Set would ignore it and allow me to lie there, and I felt grateful for the chance to rest. To Set, of course, it was a perfect exhibition of the weakness of the native life-forms on Earth, an obvious proof that his plan was achievable.

  The chambers were as dimly lit as every other room I had been in; artificial light so deeply into the red end of the spectrum that it seemed to radiate darkness. And the heat. These reptilians basked in heat that made me almost giddy despite my efforts to keep my internal temperature under control.

  Now and then Set would allow me to see the chamber through the eyes of one of his entourage. I waited eagerly for such moments. Then I would see a splendid audience hall, its majestic walls ablaze with mosaics showing the ancient history and lineage of the patriarch sitting before us. And while my borrowed vision drank in the scene all around me, I busily delved into the mind of my temporary host, trying to learn as much as I could without alarming either him or his master, Set.

  Sometimes our audience took only a few minutes. More often Set stood before the patriarch’s dais for hours on end, silently conversing, hardly moving a muscle or twitching his tail. I knew he was exhibiting me as proof that the people of Shaydan could emigrate to Earth with impunity. I did not find out, however, what success he was meeting with. Did the brief interviews indicate quick agreement or adamant refusal? Did the long hours of mute discourse mean that Set and his host were arguing bitterly or that they were happily discussing every detail of the plan to colonize Earth?

  Gradually, as we trekked from city to city across the broad desiccated face of Shaydan, as I was granted glimpses into the minds of Set’s followers, I began to piece together a rudimentary understanding of these people and their civilization.

  Despite my physical weakness my mind was still active. In fact, I had little else to do except try to fathom as much as I could glean about my captor and his world. It helped me to forget my constant hunger and the pain of that remorseless lashing wind. My body was under Set’s control, but my mind was not. I probed whenever I could. I watched and studied. I learned.

  The beginning point, of course, was that they are reptiles. Or the Shaydanian equivalent of terrestrial reptiles. They do not actively control their body temperature as mammals do, although they maintain their body heat rather well and can be active and alert even during the chill of night.

  They reproduced by laying eggs, originally. Like the reptiles of Earth, virtually all of the species of Shaydan left their nests once the eggs were laid and never returned to see their young.

  What came out of those eggs were miniature versions of adult reptiles, fully equipped with teeth and claws and all the instincts of their parents. The hatchlings possessed everything their parents had except size. Successful offspring who made it into adulthood grew to great size, and the older the individual, the larger he grew and the deeper the color of his scales. The only limitations imposed on a Shaydanian’s size were the ultimate physical limits of bone and muscle’s ability to support increasing weight.

  This meant that Set and the other patriarchs that we met at each city must have been considerably older than the others around them. How old was Set? I began to wonder. Centuries, at least. Perhaps millennia.

  Newly hatched Shaydanians inherited all the physical characteristics of their parents—including not merely brain structure, but the ability to communicate telepathically. Eons earlier, this trait must have arisen as a mutation, and then was passed on to the following generations. Telepathic individuals lived longer and produced more offspring, who were also telepathic. As the generations went by, the telepaths drove their less-talented brethren into extinction. Perhaps they did it by violence, just as the Creators once drove the Neanderthals into oblivion, almost.

  Telepathic communication led the way to intelligence. While laying her eggs, a Shaydanian mother imprinted her unformed offspring with all the experiences of her life. Each generation of telepathic reptile imparted all the knowledge of every previous generation to its young. Once a new hatchling could learn, in the egg, all the experiences that every generation of its ancestors had lived through, it was armed mentally as well as physically to deal with the world around it.

  The civilization that these intelligent reptilians built on Shaydan had existed for millions of terrestrial years. Each community was led by its eldest member. Their ages ran to thousands of years. To creatures who could open their minds completely to one another, distrust was unknown. Disagreements between individuals were decided by the patriarch—indeed, that seemed to be his main reason for existence.

  Each community worked with the tireless self-effacing efficiency of an ant’s nest or a beehive. There were no wars because each community lived within the bounds of its environment. The children of Shaydan lived in harmony.

  Until they realized that their star, Sheol, would one day destroy them.

  The patriarchs consulted among themselve
s about how to face this dreadful certainty. Most of them felt that doom was inevitable and the only thing that could be done was to accept the fact. A few even recommended suicide, insisting it was better to die with dignity at one’s own choosing rather than wait for the cataclysm to strike them down.

  Yet the urge to live was strong among them. They began to dig in, to extend their cities and dwellings underground in the hope that the bulk of their planet would help to protect them from the worst of the radiation that Sheol would one day rain upon the surface of Shaydan. Even so, they knew that the lethal radiation would be merely the first stage of Sheol’s death throes. Ultimately the star would explode and destroy their world along with itself.

  Of all the patriarchs of Shaydan, only Set stood against the counsels of passivity and acceptance. He alone searched for a path to avert the doom that faced Shaydan. He alone determined to find a way to save himself, his people, his entire race. The other patriarchs thought him mad, at first, or supremely foolish to spend his remaining centuries trying to escape the inevitable. Set ignored them all.

  Now, more than a century after he first started out to do it, he was exhibiting me to his fellow patriarchs as proof that they could migrate to Earth and begin life anew beneath the warmth of the stable life-giving yellow Sun.

  I had no way of calculating how long we spent traveling from city to city. There was no way to count days, and there did not seem to be any noticeable seasons on Shaydan. Whenever I was permitted a glimpse into one of the reptilians’ minds and tried to ferret out such information, I could not understand how they reckoned time.