Orion o-1

by Ben Bova

  I pushed him away from me. He stumbled off, then hesitated as I yanked open the door to the reactor room.

  “For god’s sake… don’t!” Wilson screamed.

  I ignored him and stepped inside.

  The room was round and domed, low and cramped, like a womb made of cement and steel and bathed in the hellish green fury of the laser light. The fetus in its center was a five-foot-wide metal ball surrounded by coiling pipes that carried lithium coolant to the spherical core. It looked like a bathysphere, but it had no portholes in it. There was no way to interrupt the laser beams from outside that sphere; they were linked to it by a thick quartz light pipe. I couldn’t break the pipe without tools, even if I had the time to try.

  There was one hatch in the core’s sphere. Without taking the time to think about it, I yanked it open. The overwhelming intensity of light and blazing heat slammed me back against the wall. A man-made star was running amok inside that chamber, getting ready to explode.

  My burning eyes squeezed shut, I groped for the searingly hot edges of the metal hatch and forced myself inside the chamber. I put my body in front of the laser beams.

  I learned what hell is like.

  Pain. Searing agony that blasts through your skull even after your eyes have been burned away. Agony along every nerve, every synapse, every pathway of your entire body and mind. All the memories of my existence stirred into frantic, terrified, gibbering reality. Past and present and future fused together. I saw them all melting and flowing in that single instant of soul-shattering pain, that eternally long, infinitesimal flash of time.

  I stood naked and burning, skin flayed from my flesh as my mind saw yesterdays and tomorrows.

  A newspaper headline blared ATTEMPT TO SABOTAGE FUSION LABORATORY FAILS.

  A puzzled team of F.B.I. agents and scientists searching for some trace of my body as Dr. Wilson is wheeled into an ambulance, catatonic with shock.

  Ahriman’s dark presence brooding over my horizon of time, his red eyes glowering with hate as he plans his revenge.

  Ormazd shining against the darkness of infinity, glowing in the depths of interstellar space, powerful, commanding, moving the chesspieces of an entire universe of space-time across the landscape of eternity.

  And me. Orion. The Hunter. I see all my pasts and futures. At last I know who I am, and what, and why.

  I am Orion. I am Prometheus. I am Gilgamesh. I am Zarathustra. I am the Phoenix who dies and is consumed and rises again from his own ashes only to die once more.

  From fifty thousand years in Earth’s future I have hunted Ahriman. This time he escaped me although I have thwarted his plans. Humankind will have fusion power. We will reach the stars. That nexus has been passed successfully, just as Ormazd told me it would be. It required my death, but the fabric of the space-time continuum has not been broken.

  I have died. Yet still I live. I exist, and my purpose is to hunt down Ahriman wherever and whenever he is.

  The hunt continues.

  INTERLUDE

  To mortal eyes the place might have looked like an impressionist’s view of Olympus, or Valhalla, or the Heaven that Christians prayed to reach.

  There were no visible limits to it; soft clouds and calm, sweet blue sky extended toward infinity in every direction. Straight overhead the sky darkened just enough to show a few scattered stars, unblinking pinpoints of light that never moved from zenith. Time itself was meaningless here. No planet rotated underfoot. No sun or moon swung across the changeless sky. Yet the air was bright, suffused with a soft light that had no visible source.

  If a human being ever saw this place, it would remind him or her of being at the peak of a high mountain, above the cares and needs of the world, above the clouds that bring storm and turmoil, looking out across the clean, still air of a realm of endless calm and beauty. A domain far beyond the world of ephemeral mortals who are born in pain, struggle all their brief years, and then are snuffed out like the flickering flame of a candle.

  Somewhere in this trackless realm of clouds and sky, a pinpoint star of light detached itself from the high heavens and moved downward, swelling into a globe of golden radiance until it almost touched the upper swirls of the clouds. It glowed brilliantly, but without heat, as it moved swiftly across the cloud tops and finally came to rest, for no outwardly discernible reason. Slowly the globe wavered, shimmered, contracted until it had formed the image of a man, a youthful, yet fully adult human being, handsome as a god, tall and broad-shouldered, with a thick mane of golden hair and eyes the color of a lion’s tawny coat. His robe was golden, trimmed with an intricate tracery of thin red lines, like a pattern of blood vessels.

  He sat on a billowing cloud, reclining like an emperor of old against cushions of cumulus, his majestic face set in intense concentration, as if he were watching something that no mortal eye could follow. How long he sat that way, it is impossible to say, for time had no meaning here…

  Presently a smaller glowing sphere appeared near him, shining silver and pulsating slowly. It contracted to form a human female, a woman of lustrous dark hair and deep gray eyes, as beautiful as the golden man was handsome. Her robe was of silver mesh, metallic and glittering.

  “You are becoming fond of the human form?” she asked.

  The man looked up at her, unsmiling. “It seems to help me to understand them, to feel the way they feel.”

  “You enjoy being a god.”

  The man said nothing.

  “Shall I call you by the name you have chosen to have them call you?” She seemed amused, almost. But beneath her words there was irony. Her lips smiled, but her gray eyes probed him coldly.

  He turned away from her unblinking gaze. “You will call me whatever you wish to, won’t you?”

  “Ormazd,” she said. “The God of Light. How modest you are with your toys.”

  “And what should I call you?”

  She thought a moment. “Anya. That’s a pretty name. As long as we are being human, you may call me Anya.”

  “You’re taking this all very lightly,” Ormazd said.

  “Not at all,” replied Anya, her bantering tone gone. “I know how serious it is. I have felt what they feel. The terror. The pain. The incredible fear of dying — of becoming… nothing.”

  “You didn’t have to go. I didn’t want you to go.”

  “No, you would have activated your warrior and flung him against the Dark One by himself, without a friend, without a hope, without even memories.”

  “None of them understand. Why should he have been different?”

  “But they do understand!” Anya said. “In their own dim way they perceive that a struggle is going on, that they are caught as pawns between powers far greater than they are.”

  Ormazd shook his golden-maned head. “They understand only what I want them to understand.”

  “Not so,” she insisted. “Look at their scientists, how they are organizing knowledge of the universe. They are on the verge of learning the true nature of space-time…”

  “Never. They still think of time as sequential. They still believe that cause must always precede effect.”

  She laughed. “Look more closely, O God of Light. Your toys are beginning to penetrate the mysteries that surround them.”

  “Then I’ll have to change things. They mustn’t learn too much. Not yet.”

  “No! Don’t! Let them learn. You can’t treat them so callously.”

  He stared at her. “I can treat them in whatever manner I like. I created them. They are mine.”

  “But you cannot control them.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Admit it,” Anya insisted. “They are slipping beyond your grasp.”

  “I control them.”

  “You built curiosity into them. The thirst for knowledge.”

  “That was necessary,” Ormazd said. “But I balanced it with fear of the unknown.”

  Anya’s eyes glittered angrily. “Balanced? Not so, my godlike one. You have create
d a terrible tension within them. They are driven by curiosity, yet afraid of anything unfamiliar. They live their lives in torment, in agony.”

  The one who called himself Ormazd began to contradict her, but stopped before he uttered a word. He saw what she would say. She had allowed herself to be a human being, briefly, and she had felt what the rest of his creations felt.

  With a sigh he took a different tack. “They believe that their gods are all-powerful, all-knowing. They blame me for their ills, for their own shortcomings.”

  “They also give you credit for being merciful,” said Anya. “They want to believe that you love them.”

  He sighed again, more deeply, wearily. “They realize that they have been created for a purpose,” she went on, “but they grope in darkness to discover what that purpose might be. They want to serve you, but they don’t know what you expect of them.”

  Ormazd rose to his golden-booted feet. The radiance of his energy made the clouds glow.

  “They served their purpose, ages ago. Now if the Hunter will accomplish his task…”

  “Then you will have won it all,” she said. “Then we will be safe.”

  “And then I can get rid of all of them, at last.”

  “You cannot eliminate them!”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Cannot? I cannot?”

  “Dare not,” Anya corrected. “You know that our fate is inextricably linked to theirs. Creatures and creator, we all share the same continuum. If they are eliminated, we will cease to exist also.”

  “Surely you don’t believe that.”

  “I know that it is true. Why would you have allowed them to remain, otherwise? You created them to defeat the Dark One. They did that ages ago…”

  “Not completely. He still exists.”

  “Yes.” She shuddered. “And as long as he does, you need the humans, don’t you? As long as the Lord of Darkness still eludes you, the humans arc necessary. Your army of warriors. Your bodyguard. Your suicide squad.”

  “I created them to be warriors. I made them for that purpose.”

  “Yes, and did the job so well that when they have no one else to fight, they fight each other. They slaughter each other endlessly.”

  Ormazd shrugged carelessly. “Of what matter is that? There are billions of them now. They breed constantly. I built that into them, too. I gave them pleasure to balance out their pain.”

  “Again you speak of balance.” Anya smiled bitterly. “I think you actually believe that you have been fair to them. Kind, even.”

  “They are only creatures. Toys, as you call them. I have no need to be kind or fair to them.”

  For long moments Anya said nothing, but her eyes showed that she was thinking furiously.

  Ormazd reached out a golden-skinned hand toward her. Gently, he said, “There was no need for you to become one of them. I never meant for you to be as vulnerable as they are.”

  “But I did,” she replied, as softly as he. “And now I can’t forget it.”

  “My dearest one…”

  “They’re so… fragile,” she said. “So full of hurt.”

  “They are very limited. You know that. I created them that way. I had to.”

  “Don’t you feel any responsibility toward them?”

  “Of course I do,” he said.

  “Do you know what they believe, some of them?” Before he could answer, she went on, “Some of their best philosophers believe that they created us. In their own dim, limited way, they are beginning to understand that we need them, that we cannot survive without them.”

  He gave a disgusted grunt. “Bah! Their philosophers have uttered every kind of wisdom and nonsense, in random order. They simply say everything that comes into their heads, and then call it intelligence.”

  “They are learning. And they try so hard, Ormazd! They create music, and paintings, and machines that will reach out to the stars.”

  “So much the better,” he snapped. “That will make them more useful.”

  “But the knowledge they are gaining is bringing them great powers. They have weapons now that can wipe out the entire race.”

  “That will never happen,” he said quickly.

  “You are afraid it will.”

  “No. I will see to it that they do not kill themselves off completely.”

  “You built that aggressiveness into them. You made them a race of fighters, of killers.”

  Nodding, Ormazd admitted, “Of course. That is what I needed. Their aggressive nature is all-important.”

  “Even though it leads them to slaughter one another?”

  “Even if they destroy their so-called civilization in nuclear war. So what? Some of them will survive. I will see to that. Their petty little civilizations have tumbled down before. The race survives. That’s what is important.”

  “And the Dark One? I suppose, if you call yourself Ormazd, the God of Light, then he should be called Ahriman, the God of Darkness.”

  Ormazd bowed his head slightly, acknowledging her reasoning.

  “Does he truly have the power to make an end of us?” she asked.

  “He believes he does. He believes that if he can annihilate the humans, we will die along with them.”

  For the first time, Anya looked afraid. “Is that true? Can that happen?”

  And for the first time, Ormazd appeared troubled. “I am not certain. The humans want to believe that they are the center of creation, the crux upon which the entire universe depends.”

  “Are you saying that they may be right?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know!” Ormazd shouted, his fists clenched in helpless anger. “How can anyone know? So much is hidden from us, so much is beyond our understanding!”

  Strangely, Anya smiled. She stood before the gleaming, golden, angry God of Light, her smile widening until she threw her head back and laughed aloud.

  “Then the humans are right! They don’t need us. What have we given them except pain and grief?”

  “I created them!”

  “No, no, my would-be god. They created us. You may have molded them out of clay and breathed life into them, but you were doing it because they demanded it of you. They insisted on being created and you, and I, and all the would-be gods and goddesses are merely their servants.”

  “That’s insane!” Ormazd insisted. “I created them! To serve me!”

  Anya’s laughter filled the air like the tinkling of a silver bell. “And you blame them for insisting on strict causality! Yes, you created them. But they created you, too. Cause and effect, effect and cause. Which came first?”

  Ormazd stood there, stunned into silence.

  “Does it matter?” Anya asked. Without waiting for an answer, she said, “Their struggle is our struggle. If they die, we die. We must help them. We have no choice.”

  Ormazd finally regained his voice. “I have been helping them,” he insisted.

  “Yes, by creating warriors to do your fighting for you, while you remain here, safe from all the pain and turmoil, pulling strings like a puppeteer.”

  “What would you have me do, go to them and make myself human?”

  “Yes!”

  “Never.”

  “I have done it.”

  “And died for it. Felt their agony and fear. Experienced death, just as they do.”

  “Yes, and I will do it again. And again. As often as necessary.”

  “Why?”

  “To help them. To help us.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “I love them, Ormazd.”

  He stared at her. “But they’re only creatures!”

  “Yes, but they’re alive. Along with the pain and the grief and the frightening uncertainty of their lives, they also experience love and joy and kinship and adventure. They’re alive, Ormazd! You made them better than you know. And I want to be one of them.”

  “Even though you’ll have to experience death?”

  “Even though I go through a hundred deaths. Or a thousand. Life i
s worth the price. Try it!”

  “No.” He took a step back away from her.

  “You’ll remain here while the rest of us struggle for the final victory?”

  “I’ll stay here,” he said.

  “The puppeteer.” Her tone was mocking.

  He drew himself to his full height. “The creator.”

  Anya laughed and, shimmering into a silver radiance, slowly faded from his view. He remained alone, suspended beyond space and time, wondering if the creatures he had made on that tiny world called Earth really bore the crux of the continuum on their shoulders.

  Even the gods can weep, and as Ormazd stood there thinking about Earth and the strange convolutions that cause and effect can take, he began to feel very old and very much alone.

  PART TWO: ASSASSIN

  CHAPTER 9

  I opened my eyes and found myself standing in the Middle of a flat, empty wasteland. The soil was sandy, with scrubby patches of grass scattered here and there. The sky was cloudless, although a pall of smoke rose far off on the horizon to my right, climbing into the clear blue sky and spreading its dirty fingers outward. Something was burning. Something the size of a city, judging from the huge bulk of the smoky cloud.

  The sun burned hotly on my bare shoulders. I was wearing a short skirt and a pair of sandals, nothing more. Not for an instant did I marvel that I was still alive. I remembered dying in the fusion reactor. I knew that I had not survived that inferno. This was another life. I felt strong, totally in command of myself, although my knees trembled when I thought of what I had gone through during those last few seconds back in the twentieth century.

  Back in the twentieth century? Somehow I was certain that I was in a different era, an earlier time. Ahriman had said that I was proceeding through time in reverse, back from The End to The War. Although I knew he was the Prince of Lies, somehow I believed him about that.

  Where was I? The desert scrubland all about me gave me no clue. The only sign of human activity was that immense pyre smoldering on the horizon. I started walking toward the tower of smoke, the hot sun at my back throwing a lengthening shadow before me as the weary hours wore on.