by Ben Bova
The land around me began to look familiar. I had walked this ground before. For much of a morning I followed the riverbank, recognizing a sturdy old beech tree that slanted out over the placid stream. I spotted a boulder half overgrown with tall fronds of grass and berry bushes. The charred remains of a campfire blackened the ground in front of it. Anya and I had camped here.
Stretching to my fullest height, I felt the breeze, inhaled the scent of flowers and pine trees. The soft blue sky was marred by a thin gray cloud wafting on the wind. I smelled the faint, distant charred odor of fire. Kraal’s village was no more than a couple of days from here, I realized.
I turned my steps away from the river, aiming for the village of Kraal and Reeva, the two who had betrayed me.
My usual procedure was to hunt down some game along toward sunset, when the animals came to the river to drink. Although the river was far behind me by the time the day’s shadows were lengthening, I found a pond, a natural water hole, and hunkered down in a clump of bushes next to a tough old hickory to wait for my dinner to appear. The wind was in my face, so not even the most sensitive doe could scent me. I remained quite still, an immobile part of the landscape, and waited.
Hundreds of birds were singing and calling in the branches above me in the final moments of the day as the first animals cautiously approached the water hole. Several squirrels appeared, their tails twitching nervously. Then they were joined by other little furry things, woodchucks or something of that kind.
Eventually deer came for their evening drink, stepping delicately, stopping to sniff the air and search the purpling shadows with their big liquid eyes. I tightened my grip on my spear but remained hidden and unmoving, not so much out of compassion for them as because they were on the opposite side of the pond and too fleet afoot for me to reach them.
I heard a grunting sound behind me, almost a growl. Turning only my head, I saw the bushes shaking. Then a heavy-sided brown boar waddled toward me, tusks the size of carving knives. He took no notice of me whatsoever except to grunt and grumble as he passed by and shambled to the water’s edge.
He was not afraid of humans. Probably he had never seen one before. He would never see another.
The boar bent his head and began noisily slurping at the water. In one fluid motion I rose to my feet and raised my spear high above my head. Using both hands, I rammed its fire-hardened point into the boar’s back just behind his shoulder blade. I felt it penetrate his tough hide and slide wetly through lung and heart.
The boar collapsed without a sound. The deer on the far side of the pond, startled by my sudden movement, leaped away a few yards but then soon returned to the water’s edge.
I congratulated myself on an easy kill as I started the grisly business of skinning the boar and slicing off the best meat with my stone tools.
I congratulated myself too soon.
The first sign of danger was when the deer suddenly looked up, then bounded off into the woods. I took no notice of it. I was kneeling over my kill, too busy hacking away at the boar’s carcass in anticipation of a pork dinner.
Then I heard a coughing growl behind me that could only come from the deep chest of a lion. Turning slowly, I saw a shaggy-maned saber-toothed cat staring at me with glowing golden eyes, saliva drooling from one corner of a mouth armed with twin curving gleaming daggers.
He wanted my kill. Like a latter-day mafioso he had let me do the work, and now he intended to help himself to the profits.
I glanced into the shadowy bushes, trying to determine if this male was alone or if there were females lying in wait to spring at me. He seemed alone. Looking more sharply at him, I saw that his ribs poked through his tawny pelt. He took a limping step toward me.
He was either sick or hurt or too old to hunt for himself. This lion had been reduced to scavenging kills made by others, bluffing them away.
Sick though he may be, however, he still had the claws and teeth that could kill. My senses went into hyperdrive as I realized that my spear rested on the ground slightly more than an arm’s reach away.
If I got up and walked away, chances were the saber-tooth would take the boar’s carcass and leave me alone. But if he decided to attack me, turning my back to him was a foolish thing to do. Perhaps it would invite his attack.
The beast took another step toward me and growled again. The limp was noticeable; his left rear leg was hurt.
I had no intention of letting this rogue take my meal away from me. If he could bluff, so could I. Slowly, as we faced each other with unblinking eyes, I reached for my spear. As my outstretched fingers touched the smoothed wood, the saber-tooth decided that he would have to do more than growl.
He sprang at me. I grabbed the spear as I flattened myself on the ground and rolled away from him. Hurt though he may have been, the lion landed on all fours atop the boar’s carcass and instantly whirled around to pounce on me.
I butted the spear against the ground and aimed its point at its throat. His own leap spitted him on the spear point, his own weight forced him down onto its shaft. Blood spurted and the saber-tooth gave a strangled gurgling roar, clawing at me with his forepaws. One swipe raked my chest before I could drop the spear and back away.
The beast screamed and thrashed, trying to dislodge the spear from its throat. I scuttled away, no weapons except my bare hands, unable to do anything but watch the saber-tooth rolling on the ground, pawing at the spear’s wooden shaft while his life’s blood gushed onto the ground.
It was an awful way to die. Insanely, I sprang to my feet and ran to the struggling beast. I pulled at the spear with all my might, yanking it out of the bubbling wound in his throat. We both roared with a combination of blood fury and savage love as I plunged the spear into his heart.
I watched the light in his tawny eyes glimmer and die, leaning on the spear, half-ashamed of myself, half-exultant. I had ended the lion’s life. I had ended his suffering.
But as I looked down on his once-noble carcass I knew that jackals and other scavengers would soon be tearing at his rotting flesh. There is no dignity in death, I told myself grimly. Only the living can have dignity.
Chapter 33
So it was that I wore a saber-tooth’s pelt over my head and shoulders when I approached the village of Kraal.
I followed the smoke cloud that stained the otherwise pristine sky, thinking at first that the village must have grown much larger than it had been when I had last seen it. By the second day I began to realize that the drifting gray cloud was too big, too persistent, to be from cooking fires. I began to fear the worst.
By noon I could smell death in the air: the greasy, charred odor of burned flesh. I saw birds circling high in the distance. Not pterosaurs; vultures.
It was midafternoon when I pushed through the thorny underbrush and saw Kraal’s village. It had been burned quite thoroughly, every hut reduced to smoldering ashes, the ground blackened, a heap of charred bodies in the middle of the village burned beyond recognition. The vultures circled above. They had their own kind of patience. They were waiting for the ground to cool and the dead to stop smoking before they landed to begin their feast.
Kneeling, I examined the three-clawed prints of dinosaurs and Shaydanians that were all around the village. They had left a clear trail heading off in the northeasterly direction of Set’s fortress by the Nile. There were human footprints among them. Not everyone in the village had been slaughtered.
I straightened up and turned toward the northeast. So this was the reward Kraal and Reeva had earned for their collaboration with Set. The monster had razed their village and killed most of the inhabitants. Those that had not been slaughtered had been marched off into slavery.
I found myself hoping that Kraal and Reeva were still among the living. I wanted to find them, wanted them to see me. I wanted to see how much they enjoyed dealing with the devil.
As I trekked toward Set’s fortress I wondered what had befallen Chron and Vorn and the other slaves that I had f
reed. Were they dead or back in slavery?
For the rest of that day and most of the next I followed the broad trail that the dinosaurs had trampled through the underbrush. At first I thought that I might catch up with them and their human captives, but I soon put that idea out of my mind. What good would it do to try to free them? It would merely alert Set to my presence, confirm to him that I had arrived here. I wanted as much surprise on my side as possible; it was just about the only weapon I would have when I finally went against him.
Toward sundown on the second day after the village I noticed a set of human footprints that diverged from the main trail. The dinosaurs had been leading their prisoners directly northeast, toward Set’s fortress; their trail through the forest as straight as a Roman road or the flight of an arrow.
But at least two humans had run off into the underbrush, trying to escape them. I turned off the dinosaur trail and started after them. Less than ten minutes later I saw that a single dinosaur’s tracks joined theirs; whoever was directing the raiders had sent one fighting dragon after the escapees.
The sun was setting behind a range of low hills when I saw them. In a clearing among the trees a man cowered on his knees while a woman holding an infant in her arms trembled behind him. One of Set’s clones stood before them, not much taller than the woman, his scales the salmon pink of a barely adult Shaydanian. Off to the edge of the clearing hunched a two-legged dragon, his fierce head nearly as tall as the young trees, his eyes glittering with hunger.
I saw that the Shaydanian was about to kill the man. He grasped him by the throat, drawing blood with his claws.
I shouted, “Leave him alone!” And raised my spear over my head.
The Shaydanian turned, hissing surprise, as I hurled the spear with all my strength. It struck him in the chest, knocking him over backward. He fell practically on top of the startled little family of humans.
The dragon turned toward me also. I focused on it and for a dizzying instant saw the scene through its slitted eyes: the human male still on his knees, gaping at the dead reptilian; the female looking shocked, clutching the baby to her breast; and the tall broad-shouldered Orion standing a dozen yards away, hands empty, weaponless.
I willed the dragon to go off and rejoin the others. I gave it the mental picture of chasing down goats and cows and even bears. It hissed like a teakettle and raised itself to its full height on its two powerful legs. Its head bobbed back and forth between the little family and me, as if uncertain of what to do. We certainly made an easy meal for it. I concentrated as hard as I could on directing it away from us. Finally it pranced off through the trees.
I let loose a breath I had been holding for what seemed like hours. The man climbed painfully to his feet. I saw that his back was crisscrossed with claw slashes oozing blood. I started toward the trio of humans and the dead Shaydanian to retrieve my spear.
I recognized Kraal and Reeva the same instant they realized who I was.
“Orion!” he gasped, dropping back to his knees.
Reeva’s eyes widened and she clasped the baby even closer to her. I saw that she was pregnant again.
I said nothing as I walked up to the dead reptilian and yanked my spear from its scaled hide.
“Spare her, Orion,” Kraal begged, still kneeling. “Take your revenge on me, but spare Reeva and the boy.”
“Where is my knife?” There was much that I wanted to say to this weak, sniveling traitor. Those were the only words that came out, though.
He fumbled under the filthy pelt that covered his middle and handed me the knife, its sheath and strap, with shaking hands.
“You must be a god,” Kraal said, lowering his face to the ground at my feet. “Only a god could kill those monsters. Only a god could wear the skin of a lion.”
“God or man, you betrayed me.”
“And what have you done for us?” Reeva snapped, her eyes flashing fire. “Since we have known you we’ve had nothing but death and destruction.”
“You were a slave when I first saw you. I made you free.”
“Free to be hunted by Set and his devils! Free to be killed and tortured and see our villages burned to the ground!”
“You decided to serve Set. That is your reward. You betrayed not merely me, you betrayed all of your own people. And Set betrayed you. That is justice.”
“What will you do with us?” Kraal asked, still groveling.
I reached down and yanked him to his feet. “I will do battle with Set. I will try to kill him and all his kind so that you can inherit this land and live in freedom.”
His jaw dropped open. Reeva, suspicious, asked, “Why would you do that for us?”
I made a small smile for her. “I don’t want that little boy to grow up in slavery. I don’t want any human being to be the slave of that inhuman monster.”
I camped with them that night. It was clear that they were afraid of me, thoroughly mystified about my motives in allowing them to live and trying to battle against the seemingly all-powerful Set. The baby’s name, they told me eventually, was Kaan.
As I had feared, Set was methodically, determinedly wiping out every tribe of humans he could find. Shamefaced, stammering, Kraal told me that at first Set’s minions treated them well as he and Reeva helped the demons to round up entire villages of people and march them off into slavery. Chiron, Vora, and all the others I had known had been taken away in that manner.
“But when the red star began to flash and shake in the sky, Set became very angry. His demons started to slaughter whole villages and burn them to the ground. At last they surrounded our village with dragons and killed almost everyone. Then they burned the village and took us away with them into slavery.”
I nodded in the evening shadows. “And you tried to escape.”
“Reeva ran away from them and I followed her,” Kraal told me. “We ran as fast as we could but still one of the devils found us with his dragon. And then you appeared, like a god, to save us.”
Through all this Reeva said nothing, though I could feel her eyes on me.
“Set is evil,” I said to Kraal. “He intends to kill every one of us. Some he will use as slaves, but death is the final reward he has waiting for us all.”
“You intend to fight him?” Kraal asked.
“Yes.”
“Alone?” asked Reeva. The tone of her question made me realize that she feared I would force them to help me.
“Alone,” I replied.
“And the priestess? Anya? Where is she? Will she not help you?”
“No, she can’t help me,” I said. “I must face Set by myself.”
“Then he will kill you,” Reeva said, matter-of-factly. “He will kill us all.”
“Perhaps,” I admitted. “But not without a battle.”
In the morning I wished them well, told them to live as best as they could.
“Someday,” I said, “when young Kaan is big enough to walk and speak, when the new baby you are carrying is weaned, you will meet other people like yourselves and know that Set has been destroyed. Then you will at last be free.”
“What if Set kills you, instead?” Reeva asked.
“Then one day much sooner his demons and dragons will find you and kill you.”
I left them with that fearful thought and started off again toward the northeast.
Day after day I walked alone through the forest of Paradise toward my rendezvous with Set. I passed the hollowed rock cliff where I had invented the god who speaks. I passed two other villages, as burned and dead as Kraal’s. I saw no other human being anywhere in Paradise.
Set’s demons had visited all the villages, burning and killing, carrying off a few people to serve as slaves, slaughtering all the rest. He was wiping this world clean of humanity, except for a few slaves. He was making the Earth the home of his own reptilian kind.
I reached the edge of the forest at last and looked out from between the trees to the broad undulating plain of grass that stood between me and
Set’s fortress.
Pterosaurs glided through the sunny sky high above. On the horizon I saw the lumpy dark shape of a sauropod. Set had his scouts out looking for me. He knew I was coming after him and he was waiting for me, alert and ready.
I sat myself on the ground, my back against the rough bark of a massive maple, thinking hard about my next move.
It was lunacy to try to reach Set’s fortress by myself, armed with nothing more than a wooden spear and a few stone implements. I had to have help. That meant that I had to return to the Creators.
For hours I resisted the idea. I had no desire to go back to them. I wanted to be free of them for all time. Or at the least, I wanted to meet them as an equal, a man who had defeated their most dangerous enemy with his own strength and wits, not a maimed toy that did not work correctly and was in constant need of help.
But there was no alternative. I could not face Set alone and unarmed. I needed their help.
Yet I knew that once I tried to make contact with the Creators, Set would home in on my mental beacon like a serpent gliding through the darkness is guided by its prey’s body heat. If I tried to make contact with the Creators and failed, Set’s demons would be upon me within hours.
That meant I could not merely seek out contact with the Creators and hope that they would bring me across spacetime to them. I had to make the leap myself, with my own power.
Night was falling. Crickets chirruped and winged insects whined through the shadows. I climbed up the maple’s trunk and flattened myself prone on one of its sturdy branches. Somehow I felt safer up in the tree than on the ground.
My monkey heritage, Set would have called it. Yet I truly did feel safer.
Closing my eyes, I tried to recall all the times I had been shifted through the continuum from one point in spacetime to another. I recalled the pain of death, repeated over and over. Concentrating, forcing myself to see through that pain, beyond it, I sought the memory of translating myself across the continuum.
