by Ben Bova
Even as I lay there, it was beginning to happen. The water was lapping noisily below me, getting closer, rising to where I lay trapped in this prison of stone. I would be the first one to drown. Ahriman had planned well.
Going through death and being reborn does not make you eager to face death again. Ormazd was in control of my destiny, I knew, but the more I learned about the Golden One and his powers, the more I became aware of his limitations. If he had the power, he would have dealt with Ahriman directly, without need of me or any intermediary. He had power enough to pull me through death and project me into another time and place — at least twice. But what assurance did I have that he could do it again, or would do it again, or even that he knew where I was and what I was facing? I felt totally alone, facing the choice of waiting for the water to rise up and drown me or plunging down into it and trying to find a way back out to daylight. Time was vital. If I survived at all, it was crucial that I get to Dal and Ava in time to warn them of the flood.
I made up my mind, took a deep breath, and rolled over the edge of the rock and dropped like one of my tossed stones down toward the water. There was plenty of time for me to be frightened; the fall was a long one. I oriented my body feet downward, the best way to take such a dive. I found myself wondering how deep the water was; I might break my neck before I drowned.
The water felt like cement when I finally hit it, and then I was plummeting deep, deep down in icy black water, every nerve shocked numb, no sensory input except a painful bubbling in my ears.
I bobbed to the surface at last, took a deep, happy breath, and half swam, half rode the current wherever it was leading me. I had the feeling it was in the direction opposite to the one in which I had been crawling.
After what seemed like hours, I banged my flailing arms against solid rock. The river swirled and surged against a blank wall, but I could feel from the undertow that it dipped into a deeper tunnel and kept flowing on. There was no airspace in that tunnel, I realized, but I had no choice except to follow it. I filled my lungs and then dove under, letting the current carry me along.
The oxygen in my lungs was soon exhausted; yet the river still flowed in its natural tunnel. I began to squeeze oxygen from the spare cells of my body, consciously shutting down whole muscle systems and organs that I didn’t need, taking their stored oxygen to feed to my heart and brain and limbs. I began to die, bit by bit, like the lights of a city winking out in a power failure, one section after another. Desperate, I slowed down my heartbeat and brought myself into a virtual catatonic trance, passively flowing along the underground river, starving for oxygen, not knowing if I would ever see the light of day again.
It seemed like months went by, but finally the darkness around me began to brighten and I floated to the surface of the river.
Air! Real, breathable air. It tasted wonderful as my body returned to life and I gulped in huge lungfuls of the most precious substance on Earth.
The river was emptying itself into a huge cave, turning it into a vast underground cistern. I dragged myself up onto dry, rocky ground, every part of my body jangling from lack of blood circulation. Sunlight filtered from an opening in the vast cave, far overhead. I was much too weak even to try to reach it.
CHAPTER 31
For hours there was nothing I could do but lie there on the rock-strewn dirt and try to recover my strength. But every moment of that time, the water behind me rose higher, splashing and gurgling as it filled this natural underground cistern. Soon enough it began lapping at my feet as I lay stretched prone on the damp ground.
I forced myself to stand and began scrabbling up the sloping wall of the huge cave, toward the opening where the sun’s light streamed in. The bare earth was loose and pebbly, difficult to climb. With each step forward I was in danger of sliding all the way back. But I struggled upward and finally pushed myself through the narrow fissure of rock and out into the daylight.
Looking back, I saw that the underground river was filling up the cave. When it reached the rock ceiling, the water would have nowhere to go but outward, exploding through the rock that held it back, gushing down into the valley below with the force of a tidal wave that would sweep everything before it.
I staggered down the steep slope of the valley wall, my legs weak and rubbery from exertion. Through blurring eyes I could see the valley spread out below me in the late afternoon sun, beautiful, peaceful, vulnerable. I had to get down to Ava and Dal and warn the people.
Tottering with exhaustion, I made my way toward the grain fields. People were at work there, cutting down the long golden stalks with their flint knives. I made my way to them.
“Look!” came a shout from one of the men. “It’s Orion!”
“He’s come back from the dead!”
They dropped their work and gathered around me, keeping a respectful distance.
I raised my hand in greeting, but before I could utter a word to them, exhaustion and hunger took their inexorable toll. I blacked out.
Ava’s taut, lovely face was staring at me when I opened my eyes again.
“You are alive,” she said gravely.
“Yes,” I croaked. “And starving.”
Looking around, I saw that I was in my own hut, lying on the matted grass that we used for a pallet. I could see a crowd of clanspeople pressing at the doorway, peering in. Food of every description was piled high in the middle of the room — gifts from the people, I supposed.
Ava turned from me momentarily. Within seconds one of the other women had pushed her way into the hut, bearing a gourd of steaming broth. I sipped at it, burning my tongue. But it felt good and strengthening as it slid down my innards.
“Where’s Dal?” I asked, my voice more normal. “We’ve got to get the people out…”
“Eat first,” Ava crooned. “Get your strength back.”
I put the gourd to my lips and gulped down all of the broth. She tried to get me to lie back again, but I gently pushed her hands away.
“I’ve got to see Dal.”
“Were you in the land of the dead?” asked the woman who had brought the gourd.
I shook my head, but her eyes were round with awe. “What was it like? Did you see my son there? His name is Mikka, and he was four summers old when he died of a fever.”
Ava shooed her away, then came back to me.
“You were in the land of the dead, weren’t you?” she asked softly.
I saw that the people cramming my doorway believed that, no matter what I said. Ava did too, with that mistaken simplicity of logic that says: Dead people are buried underground; Orion has been underground; therefore, Orion has been in the land of the dead.
“Dal,” I whispered urgently. “I must talk to Dal. We’ve got to leave this valley. Quickly!”
“Leave? Why…?”
“There is going to be a flood. We’ll all be drowned if we stay here. Find Dal and bring him here. Now!”
She turned and told one of the men to bring Dal. Looking back at me, Ava said, “Dal was wounded in the fighting three nights ago.”
“Badly?”
“His leg was slashed by a spear, just above the knee.”
Infection, I thought.
“It’s not a very bad wound, but I’ve made him stay on his pallet to rest. I’ve kept the wound covered with leaves and poultice.”
I got to my feet and headed for the doorway. The people melted away from me, almost in a panic. I had been in the land of the dead and then returned. There was fear in their eyes, and a desperate curiosity to know what lay beyond death. Grimly I strode through their midst toward Dal’s hut, thinking to myself that their primitive superstition was truer than they knew: I have been through the land of the dead, more than once.
In the slanting late-afternoon light I could see that the stream cutting through the valley was already broader, noisier, and moving faster than it ever had before. And its direction had reversed. It was flowing from the base of the cliffs out toward the waterfall at the ot
her end of the valley, where the two flows met to form a growing, frothing pool.
Off in the distance I heard a low rumble and felt the ground shudder. All the clanspeople looked toward Ararat’s smoking crest.
“Orion walks and the mountain speaks to him,” I heard a woman say.
The others mumbled agreement.
I said nothing. For the moment, their awe-stricken respect for me was useful; I was going to give them commands that they had to obey swiftly.
Two of the clan’s teen-aged boys were helping Dal to his feet when I stepped into his hut, Ava trailing a step or two behind me. His leg did not seem swollen, beneath the leaves that she had plastered over his wound. Perhaps he would survive, after all.
“Let him sit,” I told them, and they lowered Dal back onto his pallet.
He looked me over in the gloomy shadows inside the hut. “We thought you were dead. But we could not find your body.”
“I am still alive,” I said. “But we will all be killed if we don’t get out of this valley right away.”
Dal winced as if I had slapped his face. “What? Leave the valley? But I thought…”
“There is going to be a flood,” I said. “Soon. Very soon. Perhaps only a few hours from now. It will drown this whole valley and everything in it.”
“But the stream has never…”
“Dal,” I snapped, “have I ever lied to you? There will be a flood. I know! If we stay here, we will all be killed. We must leave. Now! ”
He looked up at Ava.
“There’s no time for argument,” I said. “We must tell all the people, all the clans, and move out now, this hour.”
“Up the steps of the waterfall,” Ava said.
I realized that would be impossible. The first stage of the flood was creating an ever-deepening pool at the base of the waterfall. We could not get out of the valley the way we had come in.
“No,” I said. “We must go up the cliffs along the side of the valley.”
Dal looked shocked. “No one can climb those cliffs!”
“I will show you how to do it,” I said.
“But it can’t be done. We’re only ordinary people; we can’t fly!”
“We can climb,” Ava said firmly. “Orion and I climbed the cliffs one day, more than a month ago.”
He stared at her, began to object, then shook his head. It was more new information than he could take in, I thought. But when he looked down at his leg, stiff and tender from the spear wound, I realized that Dal was worried about his own survival.
A roar of thunder shook the ground. But it did not come from the heavens. The sky to the north flared an angry red, and I could hear fearful moans from the people outside the hut. The volcano was smoldering, preparing to erupt. Ahriman was flexing his muscles.
“There is no time to lose,” I said. “We must leave now.”
With a nod, Dal said, “Go ahead. Ava, you direct the clan. Call the elders in here; I’ll tell them that you will be in charge until they can pick another leader.”
“But you’re coming too!” she said.
He pointed to his wounded leg. “How can I? I couldn’t even climb those cliffs when both my legs were whole.”
I was terribly tempted to agree with him. It would be difficult enough to get more than a hundred men, women and children, none of whom had ever climbed before, to make it safely up the face of the cliffs. A man with a bad leg could slow us down to the point where the flood waters would overtake us before we reached safety. And if Dal stayed behind, I would have Ava to myself once we had put the flood behind us.
My eyes locked on his. He was clearly afraid; he believed me and knew that if he stayed behind he would die. Yet he was willing to sacrifice his life for the safety of his clan. Bravery or stubbornness or just plain stupidity — whatever was driving him, I simply could not leave him there to die.
So I bent down and hauled him to his feet. Moving to the side of his bad leg, I grasped him firmly around the waist.
“Put your arms across my shoulders,” I commanded, “and lean your weight on me.”
“You can’t…”
“Don’t argue with me!” I snapped. “There isn’t enough time.”
Ava beamed at me as we hobbled out of the hut. Dal began shouting orders to the people. Teen-agers were sent scampering off to warn the other clans. Women collected whatever food they could from their huts. Men gathered their tools and weapons.
“The grain!” Ava realized. “What’s going to happen to the grain?”
“It will be swept away by the flood,” I said.
“No!” she said. And she ran off toward the field, gesturing two of the teen-aged girls to come with her.
Ararat grumbled again, making the earth tremble. Hot steam was boiling up from the volcano’s cone now, and I knew that worse would soon follow. The gentle stream that meandered through the valley was rushing and roaring now, already overflowing its banks here and there and edging into the grain field as it burbled the length of the valley and splashed into the lake that was growing at the base of the waterfall. The waterfall itself was angrier, more powerful, pouring an ever-stronger torrent down the stone terraces and into the widening lake. Mist rose from the lake and caught the slanting rays of the dying sun in a diabolically enticing rainbow.
“This way,” I shouted as the people began to gather around Dal and me; they were frightened, confused, casting terrified glances at the angry stream and the angrier volcano.
“Do as Orion commands!” Dal told them. “Only he can save us. Do not anger the spirits of the dead by failing to obey him.”
That calmed them a little. Tell us what to do; give us a direction, lead us — anywhere, just as long as you seem to know what you’re doing. That’s all it takes to stop a frightened crowd from turning into a panic-stricken, self-destructive mob.
We headed toward the cliffs, away from the flooding stream. I hauled Dal along, his weight dragging against me as he hobbled along on his good leg. Over my shoulder I saw the people of the other clans streaming after us, following blindly. But I could not find Ava’s face in the growing crowd.
We made it to the base of the cliffs at last, and I sat Dal down on a rock. Picking two of the wiriest teen-aged boys, I lashed us together with ropes made from vines and took the lead in scrambling up the cliff face. The boys were young enough so that they did not know what was impossible, unlike their elders. They followed me with barely a false step.
We made it to the top, where the setting sun was still above the horizon. Looking below, I could see that most of the valley was in shadow now. And the stream was spreading its growing fingers in all directions, rapidly flooding the grain fields and edging toward the huts the clans had built. The waterfall at the far end of the valley was lost in mist now, and I could hear its thundering roar even from this distance.
Working quickly, we tied the ropes to trees and dropped them down to the people waiting below. I ordered the boys to remain where they were, then rappelled down the cliff and started the others climbing upward.
Dal watched with unabashed admiration as the people hauled themselves up the steep rocky wall, pulling hand-over-hand along the ropes.
“Have you seen Ava?” I asked.
“No…”
“Here we are!” she called.
I looked up to see her and the two girls carrying big leather sacks on their backs, grinning wearily as they neared us.
“We’ve got as much of the cut grain as we could carry,” she said happily. “All the seeds that you told us about, Orion. And roots and berries, everything we could find. We’re bringing it with us. We’ll plant the seed next spring.”
I could feel myself smiling broadly. Glancing up at the smoldering volcano, I thought that Ahriman had lost. The idea of agriculture had found good soil here, and it had taken root. And the legends that would be handed down from generation to generation for hundreds of centuries before writing was invented would garble the story of Ararat: it was a
woman, not Noah, and she saved the species of grain and fruits that would feed the human race, not of animals who could escape the flood under their own power. Mythology was usually based on a kernel of fact, but what distortions the male-dominated tribes would make of this story!
All through the deepening twilight the clans people worked as they had never worked before. The volcano’s rumblings grew stronger, angrier, and it began to spout black smoke streaked with red flame. The sky turned black, and flashes of lightning strobed the darkness, frightening the people even more. By ones and twos and threes they climbed, scrabbled, groped, inched their way up the ropes we had set out along the cliff face, and hauled themselves up to the safety of the top. The sturdiest of the teen-agers and young men helped the older and less agile. Babies rode on men’s backs. I made the journey up and back down again several times, helping everyone I could.
Dal sat on the rock at the base of the cliff, keeping the people organized down there, calming their fears and holding their panic at bay.
Ararat was growling at us now, and its sullen red glow lit the evening hours for us. I could see boulders the size of a house flying up out of its crater, and burning tongues of lava spilling over the lip of the volcano’s cone. The ground trembled with each roar of the mountain, but there was no true earthquake — not yet.
Slightly more than half the people had made it to the top of the cliff when the flood burst upon the valley. The rock wall where the stream had been gushing forth exploded in a mammoth shower of water and steam, hurling boulders halfway down the valley. The cistern where I had been earlier that day had not only reached its overflow point, but the heat from the tectonic forces that Ahriman had unleashed had turned the cistern into a mammoth tea kettle. The water had finally come to a boil and the expanding steam blew open the side of the mountain like a kiloton charge of explosives.
