by Ben Bova
Her smile broadened. “You have already shown them so much. Their children will create legends about you, Orion. You will become a god yourself. Is that what you want?”
“I want you,” I said, “in a land and a time where we can live together in peace.”
“For how long?”
“For a lifetime,” I replied.
“And then?”
I shrugged. She was not teasing me. Her smile was not one of amusement.
“Orion,” said Adena, “when you can live beyond death, you must try to see further than a single lifetime.”
“But I won’t live beyond my next death.” I knew. “Ormazd won’t revive me once I’ve killed Ahriman.”
Her gray eyes fixed on mine, pulled me to her. “Do you think, my beloved, that I would want to face eternity without you?”
“Then what…”
“I will see that you survive death. And if Ormazd prevents me from doing so, then I will live your one lifetime with you and die with you at the end of it, gladly.”
“I can’t ask you to give up…”
She placed a finger on my lips, silencing me. “You have not asked me. You did not need to ask. I make my own decisions.”
I took her in my arms and kissed her as if we would never be able to touch each other again, as if this night were the last night of the world, as if the stars were blinking out forever.
“Now lead them, Orion my love,” she whispered. “Lead them to a land where they can live in peace.”
The following morning we started our long trek southward, Kedar and the two other wounded forcing us to move slowly across the glittering fields of snow. No animals attacked us. If Ahriman were nearby, he did not show his presence in any way.
We became a band of primitive hunters, stalking game for food and furs. Piece by piece we discarded our useless equipment, replacing laser pistols with wooden spears, plastic armor with the hides of foxes, hares, and mountain goats.
Southward we trekked, away from the snow and ice. Within a week we found an open stream, gurgling toward the southwest, its glacier-fed water as cold as the dark side of the moon. We followed the stream through hilly, wooded country. The snow grew thinner on the ground, the sun brighter, the air warmer.
One of the wounded died, and we buried her in the bank of that unnamed stream. Kedar grew stronger, though, and we made better time despite his limp.
At last we entered a land of softly rolling hills, covered with grass, teeming with game. Trees tossed their leafy branches in the warm breeze. Huge, lumbering beasts trumpeted at us from the undulating horizon — mammoths, I guessed, from their size and their trunks.
I had no idea where we were, but we found a large, dry cave and made it our own. The ten of us had become quite skilled at survival by now. The men set off to catch meat; the women began gathering shoots and berries from the plants that grew in profusion all around us.
“We can stay here awhile,” I said as I started a fire. “This might be a good place to stay.”
Adena sat beside me and stared into the crackling flames. The sun was low in the west and the heat from the fire felt good, comforting.
“Now you can begin to search for Ahriman again,” she said, without turning her head from the flames.
I nodded wordlessly.
“Do you think he’s far from here?” she asked.
“No. He’s near us, I’m sure. He still wants to exterminate us. He hasn’t given up, not yet.”
“When will you leave?”
I squinted up at the setting sun. Thick clouds were gathering in the sky, turning the sunset into a blaze of reds and golds and violets.
“Tomorrow,” I answered, “unless there’s a storm.”
Adena smiled and leaned her head against my shoulder. “I’ll pray for rain.”
CHAPTER 41
It did begin to rain. As darkness fell and the men came straggling back to the cave, a strong wind arose and thunder boomed across the sky. Kedar, the last of the hunters to return, limped sullenly into the cave, wet to the skin, his hair plastered down over his head, grumbling to himself.
As we feasted on rabbit and woodchuck, the men began talking about the bigger game they had seen farther downstream — antelope and bison, from the sound of their descriptions. And, of course, there were mammoths and horses and all sorts of other animals abounding in this Ice Age landscape. I told them as much about them as I could, knowing that I would be leaving them soon.
“And there are wolves out there, too,” said Kedar. “I saw a pair of them as I was heading back, in the rain.”
“There must be bears, too.”
“They won’t bother us here in this cave as long as we have a good fire going,” I said.
“Unless the brutes control them.”
“There’s only one brute left,” I said to them as we sat around the fire. Their faces, lit by the flickering flames, were smeared with dirt and dinner. “And I’m going after him, as soon as the storm ends.”
For a moment no one said a word. Then Kedar began to talk about going out after antelope.
I glanced at Adena and let them make their plans. Already they were more concerned with their bellies than with continuing their war.
The storm grew in fury as the night wore on, its raging wind slashing into the cave, driving raw wet coldness and rain that nearly drenched our fire. We grabbed up burning firebrands and moved farther back into the cave, beyond the reach of the rain.
Thunder racked the night, and lightning flashed out in the darkness. The others tried to sleep on the cold rock floor, but something kept me staring out into the night, into the storm.
Ahriman, I realized. He is here. He is reaching for us. This is his storm, his doing.
Adena was stretched out on the ground, sound asleep. I smiled at her, my sleeping goddess who had taken on human form. Her breath was slow and regular, her beautiful face even more exquisite in repose. I wondered how she could make the transition to being so completely human. I wondered how Ahriman could make the transition to being superhuman.
He must have started life just like any other of his kind. Even now, here in this time and place, he had shown no evidence of superhuman powers. In other eras he had whisked himself — and me — through space-time as easily as a man steps through an open doorway. How did he acquire those powers?
When?
A flash of lightning lit the world outside the cave for a brief instant of time, and I saw something that startled me. It happened too quickly to be certain of it, but I closed my eyes for a moment and reviewed the scene in my memory.
Frozen in place by the lightning’s strobe glare, it was the hulking form of Ahriman I saw, not more than a hundred yards beyond the entrance of the cave. And beside him, standing on all four legs, a huge bear that dwarfed Ahriman’s powerful figure. He was facing the bear, one thickly muscled arm raised, a blunt finger pointing, as if he was giving the beast instructions.
Guided by Ahriman’s intelligence, driven by his hatred, that bear could kill us all. I scrambled to my feet and drew two blazing branches from the fire, one for each hand, and hurried to the cave’s entrance.
As I approached, a jagged fork of lightning streaked across the sky and the bear’s massive, fearsome form reared up in the cave’s entrance, blotting out the storm outside, its roar of rage blending with the boom of thunder to shake the ground itself.
It advanced toward me, forepaws raised, claws the size of hunting knives glinting in the light of the fire, gaping jaws armed with fangs that could tear off a limb with ease.
Instead of retreating, I yelled as loudly as I could and jabbed the burning end of one of my torches at it. The bear roared back and swung a mighty swipe that ripped the torch out of my hand. I feinted with the other torch, tossed it from my left hand to my right, and then drove it into the beast’s midsection. It bellowed with pain and anger, staggered back a step.
My body went into overdrive, every sense hyper-alert, every nerve reacti
ng faster than any normal human could move. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the others awakening, getting to their feet as if in slow-motion, taking up firebrands.
They circled to the bear’s left and right, dancing close and then away, jabbing at him with the blazing torches. The bear screamed fury at them but would not back out of the cave. Ahriman’s control was iron-bound.
I saw that we were at a stalemate that could end only with the bear’s killing one or more of us. Then a burning stick whistled over my head and hit the bear on the shoulder.
“Drive him out!” Adena shouted, and I knew it was she who had thrown the stick.
But the bear had other ideas. Instead of retreating it moved straight at me, utterly disregarding the others and the torches they jabbed at it. I could see the poor beast’s coat blackening from the flames, smell seared fur and flesh, yet still the bear forced itself forward, toward me.
It was like a nightmare where everything happens slowly, as if time itself was winding down; yet even so you cannot escape the terror that is relentlessly engulfing you. The torch in my own hand seemed puny as a matchstick as the bear’s eight-foot height towered over me, its bellowing roar blotting out the shouts and cries of the soldiers, its hate-reddened eyes fastened on mine.
I saw the blow coming, but I had backed up so far that I could not retreat any further without stumbling into the fire. I could feel its heat singing the backs of my legs as the bear’s mountainous paw swung slowly, inexorably, at me. I tried to duck under the blow, and almost made it.
The paw cuffed me on the back of the head as I ducked, hitting me like a boulder dropped from a great height. I went sprawling; everything went fuzzy and black spots danced before my eyes.
I don’t know how long I lay stunned, probably only a moment or two. I found myself on my back, my vision blurred. But I could see Adena leaping at the beast, both hands gripping firebrands, and the bear cuffing her away. It knocked down two more of the troop, then loomed over me. I saw those fangs reaching for me, and I was unable to move out of their way.
The first shock of pain went through me like a bolt of electricity. I could hear my bones crunching as the bear bit into my shoulder and roughly jerked me up off the floor. I pawed feebly at its snout with my free hand and saw, vaguely, dimly, the others still jabbing uselessly at it with their torches. The bear swatted another soldier to the ground and shambled out of the cave, into the night and the cold rain, with me dangling like a limp doll from its jaws.
The last glimpse of the cave I got, through eyes blurred by blood and pain, was of Adena clambering to her feet and starting out after us. But Kedar and another soldier restrained her. They held her there, struggling, and watched the bear carry me off.
The beast dropped to all fours as the rain pelted down on us. Lightning danced through the black sky. The fire-lit mouth of the cave became a distant glow, a speck of warmth as remote as the farthest star.
The bear dropped me, at last, unceremoniously, in a muddy puddle and then trundled off to lick its own wounds. I lay there on my back, the cold rain sluicing down my face and torn body. The pain had reached the point where numbness was setting in. I was too far in shock to even think of trying to control it. My right shoulder was useless, the arm dangling by a few ligaments and scraps of torn, bleeding flesh.
I coughed and shivered. So this is how Prometheus was created, I thought, half-delirious. The demigod who gives humankind the gift of fire only, in return, to be horribly punished by the gods. I think I must have laughed as I lay there bleeding to death. Not a dignified way for a demigod to die.
Another stroke of lightning split the darkness and I saw Ahriman’s brooding form hulking over me.
“I’ve beaten you,” he said, in that tortured whisper of his. I could barely hear him over the moaning of the storm wind.
“You’ve killed me,” I agreed.
“And them. They’ll die off soon enough, without their weapons and their energy generators.”
“No,” I said. “They will live. I’ve taught them how to survive. They have fire. They will master this world and populate the Earth.”
In the darkness I could not see the expression on his face, only the anger and hatred radiating from his red-rimmed eyes.
“I will have to strike elsewhere, then,” Ahriman muttered. “Find the weak points in the fabric of the continuum…”
It took all my strength to shake my head as I lay there in the mud. My voice was growing weaker; each breath I drew in was more difficult, more painful.
“Ahriman… it won’t do you any good,” I gasped. “Each time you try… I am there… to stop you.”
For long moments he said nothing, merely standing there, looming over me like a dark, ominous destiny.
Finally: “Then we will go back to the very beginning. I will kill you for all time, Orion. And Ormazd with you.”
I wanted to laugh at him; I wanted to tell him that he was a fool. But I had no more strength left in me. I could do nothing but lie there as my blood mingled with the rain and mud and the life seeped out of my body.
Ahriman raised his powerful arms to the stormy night sky, threw his head back, and gave out a harrowing, blood-chilling, howling cry, like a beast baying at the moon. Twice, three times, he cried out, his thick blunt fingers reaching toward the black clouds that blotted out the stars.
Lightning strokes flickered through those clouds and then began lancing down to the ground all around us. My failing eyes widened as one bolt after another sizzled to the ground, scant yards from us, and stayed there, crackling and blistering the air around us until we were surrounded with a cage of electricity. The rain-sodden ground bubbled where the lightning danced. The sweet, burning smell of ozone filled the air.
Ahriman stood outlined against the blue-white glare of the lightning, his arms still straining upward, reaching, his baying, yowling cry the only sound I could hear over the simmering blaze of electricity.
Then a tremendous stroke of lightning shattered the world, engulfing Ahriman, turning him into a glowing demon of pure energy, overflowing onto me, screaming along every nerve in my body until there was nothing in the universe but pain.
And then darkness.
PART FIVE: THE CYCLE OF ETERNITY
CHAPTER 42
I never lost consciousness. I felt nothing, as if my body had gone numb, encased in a cocoon of transparent gossamer that held me immobile and perfectly protected from everything outside. Neither heat nor cold, pain nor pleasure, joy nor fear penetrated the cladding that covered me.
But I could see. The night storm and the Ice Age landscape wavered and slowly dissolved, like a castle of sand being washed away by the incoming tide. Beside me stood Ahriman, still encased in the bluish-white shimmer of energy from the lightning bolt, frozen immobile just as I was. His red eyes glared at me, and in them I could see not only hate and anger, but fear as well.
Slowly, by degrees, it grew darker and darker until vision was useless. I could see nothing. I was alone in a well of darkness, suspended in time and space, not knowing where I was or where I was heading.
Strangely, I felt no fear — not even apprehension. Even though I could no longer see him, I knew that Ahriman was beside me. I knew that Adena and her tiny band of remaining soldiers would survive the cold of the Ice Age and raise their children to tell them of the demigod who taught them how to make fire. I realized now that Dal’s hunting clan and all the other humans of every age were the descendants of those few soldiers lost and abandoned after the last battle of The War.
And I knew that Ormazd was near. And with him would be the goddess whom I loved when she deigned to take human form.
The darkness began to pale. Faint flickers of light, almost like stars in the night sky, began to show themselves. Then, like a slow, reluctant dawn, the blackness around me softened, became a pearly gray, a softer pinkish hue.
Light and warmth slowly washed over me, thawing the cocoon that held me. I could flex my fingers, move
my arms. Gradually I felt all constraints melt away from me. I could move and feel once again.
But Ahriman remained trapped in an invisible web of energy — glowering at me, but unable to move. I should have felt glad at that; instead, I felt something close to pity.
“There’s nothing I can do,” I said aloud, knowing that he could not hear me. I shrugged elaborately to show him that I was helpless. His baleful stare never left me.
I turned away from him to examine the place where we stood. It was a featureless expanse of clouds. Not a hill, not a tree, not a blade of grass in sight. Nothing but a cloudscape extending in every direction as far as the eye could see. Not even a horizon, in the usual sense of the word; merely soft, puffy white clouds drifting slowly, one after the other, endlessly.
My feet seemed to be standing on something solid; yet, when I looked down, I saw nothing more substantial than wisps of cloud tops. Overhead the sky was clear, and far up at zenith the blue was dark enough to show a few twinkling stars.
I remembered flying in jet airliners through cloudscapes such as this, where no trace of the ground could be seen and there was nothing below except the tufted tops of a thick, soft carpeting of dazzling white clouds.
I grinned to myself. “So this is heaven, is it?” Raising my hands to cup my mouth, I shouted as loudly as I could, “I don’t believe it, Ormazd! You’ll have to do better than this!”
I looked back at Ahriman. He stood like a statue of implacable enmity, the only substantial landmark in this fairyland of cloud and sky.
Something drew my eyes up toward the zenith, where those few stars looked down at us. One of them seemed to burn brighter than the rest. It glowed and shimmered and seemed to grow as I watched it. Like a bubble of light it expanded and blazed brighter until it was too brilliant to look at. I threw my arm over my eyes as the glare from that golden sphere flooded everywhere.
The glare subsided, and I looked up again to see the human form of Ormazd, splendidly adorned in a uniform of gold, his thick golden mane framing his handsome, smiling face.
