by Ben Bova
With the Creators permanently obliterated, all of the continuum was Set’s. He could colonize the Earth with his own species and destroy the human race at his leisure. Or enslave humankind, as he had been doing in the Neolithic.
There were depths here that I could not fathom. I remembered being told, more than once, that spacetime was not linear.
“Pathetic creature,” I heard the Golden One’s scornful voice in my memory, “you think of time as a river, flowing constantly from past to future. Time is an ocean, Orion, a great boundless sea on which I can sail in any direction I choose.”
“I don’t understand,” I had replied.
“How could you?” he had taunted. “I did not build such understanding into you. You are my hunter, not my equal. You exist to serve my purposes, not to discuss the universes with me.”
I am maimed in mind and body, I told myself. I was created that way. Set had spoken the truth.
And now I was going to be sent back to my Creators to end their existence. And my own.
Chapter 27
Lying in the blind darkness of my cell, waiting for Set to send me on my mission of murder, it seemed as if the heated stones beneath me were slowly cooling. The very air I breathed seemed not as hot as it had been moments before, as if my physical torment was being eased in reward for my capitulating to Set’s will.
I did not feel him in ray mind, yet I knew he must be there, watching, waiting, ready to control my body.
I felt a hollow sinking sensation within my chest, my belly. The floor seemed to be descending, very slowly at first, then faster and faster. Like an elevator plunging out of control. I sensed myself falling through the inky blackness, the stones beneath me growing colder as I descended.
Then came that wrenching moment of absolute cold, of nothingness, when all the dimensions of time and space seem to disappear. I hung suspended in nowhere, without form or feeling, in a limbo where time itself did not exist. A billion years could have passed, or a billionth of a second.
Brilliant golden radiance lanced through me like spears of molten metal. I squeezed my eyes shut and threw my hands over my face. Tears spurted down my cheeks.
I still could not see; first I had been blind from lack of light, now I was blinded by too much of it. I lay curled in a fetal position, head tucked down, arms across my face. Nothing stirred. Not a breeze, not a bird or a cricket or a rustling leaf. I listened to my own heart pulsing feebly in my ears. I began counting. Fifty beats. A hundred. A hundred fifty…
“Orion? Can it be you?”
Weakly I raised my head. The golden light was still blindingly bright. Squinting against the overpowering radiance, I saw the lean form of a man standing over me.
“Help me,” I pleaded in a hoarse whisper. “Help me.”
He hunkered down on his haunches beside me. Either my eyes began to adjust to the light or it somehow dimmed. My eyes stopped tearing. The world began to come into unblurred focus for me.
“How did you get here? And in such condition!”
Danger, I wanted to say. Every instinct in me wanted to scream out an alarm that would alert him and the other Creators. But my voice froze in my throat.
“Help me,” was all I could croak.
The man crouching beside me was the one I thought of as Hermes. Greyhound lean in body and limbs, his face was a set of narrow V’s: pointed chin, slanting cheekbones, pointed hairline above a smooth forehead.
“Stay where you are,” he told me. “I’ll bring help.”
He vanished. As if he had been nothing more than an image on a screen, he simply disappeared from my sight.
Weakly I pushed myself up to a sitting position. I remembered this place from other existences. An expanse of unguessable extent, the ground covered with softly billowing mist, the sky above me a calm clear blue darkening at zenith enough to show a few scattered stars. Or were they stars? They did not twinkle at all in this silent, motionless world.
I had met the Golden One here many times. And Anya too. That is why Set had returned me to this spot. As I looked around now, it seemed artificial to me, like a stage setting or an elaborately constructed shrine meant to overawe ignorant visitors. A bogus representation of the Christian heaven, a bourgeois Valhalla. The kind of setting that the Assassins of old Persia would have used to convince their drug-dazed recruits that paradise awaited them—except that the old Assassins would have stocked the place with graceful dancing girls and beautiful houris.
I realized that I was seeing this place of the Creators through Set’s cynical mind. He was within me as truly as my own blood and brain. He had prevented me from crying out a warning to Hermes.
The air seemed to glow again, and I squeezed my eyes shut once more.
“Orion.”
Opening my eyes, I saw Hermes and two others with him: the grave, dark-bearded one I called Zeus, and a slender breathtakingly beautiful blonde woman of such sweetness and grace that she could only be Aphrodite. All three of the Creators were physically perfect, each in their own way. The men were in glittering metallic suits that fit their forms like second skins, from polished boot tops to high collars. Aphrodite wore a softly pleated robe of apricot pink, fastened at one shoulder by a golden clasp. Her arms and legs were bare, her skin flawless, glowing.
“Anya should be here,” she said.
“She is coming,” replied Zeus.
No! I wanted to shout. But I could not.
“The Golden One is on his way, also,” said Hermes.
Zeus nodded gravely.
“He’s in a bad way,” Aphrodite said. “Look at how emaciated he is! His skin seems burned, too.”
They stood solemnly inspecting me, their creature. They did not touch me. They did not try to help me to my feet or offer me food or even a cup of water.
A sphere of golden light appeared to one side of them, so bright that even the Creators stepped back slightly and shielded their eyes with upraised hands. The sphere hovered above the misty ground for a moment, shimmering, pulsating, then contracted and took on the form of a man.
The Golden One. I had served him as Ormazd, the god of light, in the long struggle against Ahriman and the Neanderthals. I had fought against him as Apollo, the champion of ancient Troy.
He was my creator. He had made me and, through me, the rest of the human race. And the human race, evolving through the millennia, had ultimately produced these godlike offspring who called themselves the Creators. They created us; we created them. The cycle was complete.
Except that now I was a weapon to be used against them. I would kill the Creators, and begin the destruction of the entire human race, through all spacetime, through all the universes, expunging my own kind from the continuum forever.
My creator stood before me, proud and imperious as ever. Golden radiance seemed to glow from within him. He was tall and wide of shoulder, dressed in a robe of dancing winking lights, as if clothed in fireflies. His unbearded face was broad and strong, eyes the tawny color of a lion, a rich mane of golden hair falling thickly to his shoulders.
I hated him. I adored him. I had served him through the ages. I had tried to kill him once.
“You were not summoned here, Orion.” His voice was the same rich tenor I remembered, a voice that could thrill a concert audience or a mob of fanatics, a voice tinged with taunting mockery.
“I… need help.”
“Obviously.” His tone was scornful, but I saw something more serious in his eyes.
“He seems to be injured,” said Aphrodite.
“How did he get here if you didn’t summon him?” asked Hermes.
Zeus’s eyes narrowed. “You did not give him the power to translate through the continuum at will, did you?”
“Of course not,” the Golden One answered, irritated. Turning back to me, he demanded, “How did you get here, Orion? Where have you come from?”
Instantly I wanted to obey him. With instincts he himself had built within me, I wanted nothing more than to
tell him everything I knew. Set. The Cretaceous. I spoke the words within my mind, but my tongue refused to form them. Set’s command over me was too strong. I simply stared at the Creators like a stupid ox, like a dog begging its master to show some love even if it failed to follow his commands.
“Something is definitely wrong here,” Zeus said.
The Golden One nodded. “Come with me, Orion.”
I tried, but could not get to my feet. I floundered there on that ridiculous cloud-covered surface like a baby too weak to stand erect.
Aphrodite said, “Well, help him!” Without taking a step toward me.
The Golden One snorted disdainfully. “You are in a bad way, my Hunter. I thought I had built you better than this.”
He made a slight movement of one hand and I felt myself being buoyed up, lifted as if by invisible hands, and held in a half-reclining position in midair.
“Follow me,” said the Golden One, turning his back on me. The three other Creators winked out like candles snuffed by a sudden gust of wind.
I hung in midair, helpless as a child, with the Golden One’s swirling cloak of lights before me. He began walking, yet it seemed to me that we did not truly move—the view around us shifted and shimmered and changed. I felt no sense of motion at all. It was as if we were on a treadmill and the scenery on all sides was rolling past us.
We descended from the cloud-covered area as if we were going down a mountain slope. But still there was no real sense of motion. I simply sat on my invisible sedan chair and watched the world flow past me. Down a long trail we went and out onto the grassy floor of a broad valley. Tall spreading shade trees followed the meandering course of a river. The water gleamed in the light of the high sun, shining warmly yellow in the blissfully blue sky. A few chubby clumps of cumulus cloud floated serenely overhead, throwing dappled shadows across the tranquil green valley.
I searched that peaceful blue sky for a dark red point of light, the color of dried blood. Sheol. I could not find it. Did it exist in this time? Or was it merely below the horizon?
In the distance I saw a shimmering golden dome, and as we neared it I realized that it was gauzily transparent, like looking through a fine mesh screen of gold. Under its beautifully elegant curve there was a city, but a city such as I had never seen before. Tall slender spires stretching heavenward, magnificent colonnaded temples, steep ziggurats with stairs carved into their stone sides, wide plazas flanked by gracefully curved arcades, broad avenues decorated by statuary and triumphal arches.
My breath caught in my throat as I recognized one of the magnificent buildings: the Taj Mahal, set in its splendid garden. And a giant statue that had to be the Colossus of Rhodes. Facing it, the green-patinaed Liberty. Further on, the main temple of Angkor Wat gleaming in the sunlight as if newly built.
All empty. Unpopulated. As I rode my invisible chair of energy through the immaculate city with the Golden One striding unceremoniously ahead of me, I could not see a single person. Not a bird or cat or any sign of habitation whatever. Not a scrap of paper or even a leaf drifting across the streets on the gently wafting breeze.
At the farther end of the city stood towers of gleaming chrome and glass, straight-edged blocks and slabs that rose tall enough to look down on all the other buildings.
Into the tallest of these the Golden One led me, through a wide atrium of polished marble and onto a gleaming steel disk that began ascending slowly the instant he stepped onto it. Faster and faster it rose, whistling through the open atrium toward the glassed-in roof. The atrium was ringed with balconies whizzing past us at dizzying speed until all of a sudden we stopped, without a jerk or bump, without any feeling of deceleration at all.
The disk drifted to a semicircular niche in the balcony that girdled this level and nestled up to it. The Golden One stepped onto the balcony without a word, and I followed as if carried by invisible slaves.
He led me to a door, opened it, and stepped inside. As I followed him through the doorway a tingle of memory flickered through me. The room looked like a laboratory. It was crowded with vaguely familiar machines, bulky shapes of metal and plastic that I half remembered. In its center was a surgical table. The invisible hands that held me lifted me to its surface and laid me out upon it.
Whether I was too weak to move or held down by those invisible hands of energy, I could not tell.
“Sleep, Orion,” commanded the Golden One in an annoyed tone.
My eyes closed immediately. My breathing slowed to the deep regular rhythm of slumber. But I did not fall asleep. I resisted his command and remained alert, wondering if I was doing this of my own volition or if Set was controlling me.
It seemed like hours that I lay there unmoving, unseeing. I heard the faint hum of electrical equipment now and then, little more. No footsteps. No sounds of breathing except my own. Was the Golden One still in human guise, or had he reverted to his true form while his machines examined me?
I felt nothing during all that time except the solidity of the table beneath me. Whatever probes were being put to my body were not physical. The Golden One was scanning me, examining me remotely atom by atom, the way an orbiting spacecraft might examine the planet turning beneath it.
As far as I could tell he stayed out of my mind. I felt no mental probes. I remained awake and aware. My memories were not being stimulated. The Golden One was staying away from my brain.
Why?
“He is here!”
Anya’s voice! Concerned, angry almost.
“I can’t be disturbed now,” snapped the Golden One.
“He returned of his own volition and you tried to keep me from seeing him,” Anya said accusingly.
“Don’t you understand?” the Golden One retorted. “He is unable to return by himself. Someone has sent him here.”
“Let me see… oh! Look at him! He’s dying!”
Anya’s voice quivered with emotion. She cares about me! I exulted to myself. Immediately a voice answered, As she would care about a pet cat or a wounded deer.
“He’s weak,” the Golden One said. “But he won’t die.”
“What have you put him through?” she demanded.
At first he did not reply. Finally, though, he admitted, “I don’t know. I don’t know where he’s come from or how he got here.”
“You’ve questioned him?”
“Briefly. But he made no reply.”
“He’s been tortured. Look at what they’ve done to his poor body.”
“Never mind that! We have a serious problem here. When I tried to probe his mind, I got nothing but a blank.”
“His memories are completely erased?”
“I don’t think so. It was more like hitting a barrier. His mind has been shielded, somehow.”
“Shielded? By whom?”
Exasperated, the Golden One snapped, “I don’t know! And I can’t find out unless I can break through the shielding.”
“Do you think you can?”
I could sense him nodding. “With enough power I can do anything. The problem is that if I have to use too much power, it might destroy his mind totally.”
“You mustn’t do that!”
“I don’t want to. Whatever is stored inside his skull, I’ve got to recover it.”
“You don’t care about him,” Anya said. “He’s merely a tool that you use.”
“Exactly. But now he’s a tool that someone else might be using. I’ve got to find out who. And why.”
Deep within me, raging torrents of conflict were tearing at my guts. Anya wanted to protect me while the Golden One wanted only what was locked within my mind. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to love her and have her love me. Yet smothering those emotions, burying them in layers of molten iron, was Set’s unrelenting control over me. I saw a vision of my nightmare again. Horrified, I knew that I would kill them all.
Chapter 28
“Let me have him,” Anya said.
A long pause, then the Golden One answered, “You ar
e emotionally attached to this creature. It wouldn’t be wise to let you—”
“How can you let jealousy cloud your judgment at a time like this?”
“Jealousy!” The Golden One sounded astonished. “Is the eagle jealous of the butterfly? Is the sun jealous of its planets?”
Anya laughed, like the cool tinkling of a silver bell. “Let me take care of him, bring him back to his strength. Then perhaps he can tell us what has happened to him.”
“No. I have the equipment here—”
“To destroy his mind with your brute-force methods. I will bring him back to health. Then we can question him.”
“There isn’t time.”
Her tone became taunting. “Not time? For the Golden One, who claims he can travel across the continuum as if it were an ocean? No time for the one who tells us he understands the currents of the universes better than a mariner understands the sea?”
I heard him puff out a heavy sigh, almost a snort. “I will compromise with you. I can restore his physical health much more quickly with my methods than you can by spoon-feeding him. Once he is strong enough to walk and talk, you can begin his interrogation.”
“Agreed.”
“But if you don’t get him to tell us how he got here within a few days,” the Golden One warned, “then I will revert to my methods.”
More reluctantly Anya repeated, “Agreed.”
I heard her leave, then felt myself being lifted on cushions of energy again and carried off the surgical table. I tried to open my eyes a little, just to peep out at where I was being taken, but found I had no control over my eyelids. I could not move my fingers, either, or even wiggle my toes. Either the Golden One or Set was controlling my voluntary muscular system. Perhaps both of them, working inadvertently together for the moment.
I sensed my body being slid into a horizontal vat of some sort, a cylindrical tube that felt cool to my bare scorched skin. The hum of energy. The soft gurgling of liquids. I fell truly asleep, my mind drifting into a deep darkness, more relaxed than it had been in ages. It was like returning to the womb, and my last conscious thought was that perhaps this cylinder of metal and plastic had actually been my womb. I knew I had not been born of woman, any more than Set’s minions had been hatched from natural eggs.
