Orion o-1

by Ben Bova

  I thought about Ahriman, and how Ormazd intended to keep him imprisoned in that shell of energy, alive in a timeless stasis, but trapped, smothered, helpless. Ormazd was doing the same thing to me, I knew it. And there was nothing I could do about it. Not a thing. Each night I searched every molecule of my mind for a way to escape this idyllic prison, and each dawn I admitted defeat. There was no escape. Not unless, or until, either Anya or Ormazd decided to allow me to return.

  I began to lose track of the days. They were all pretty much the same. A heaven of peace and plenty, without anger, without murder, without war. Yet I could not accept it; I could not rest content.

  Then one morning, after I had climbed down the vine ladder from Tohon’s dwelling and stepped out onto the open ground, Tunu came running up to me, breathless with excitement.

  “Ahriman!” he gasped aloud.

  I blinked with surprise. “Ahriman?” I asked. “He’s coming here?”

  Tunu bobbed his head up and down. “Yes, he is coming up the trail.” I was so excited that I did not realize he was speaking telepathically and I was understanding him clearly.

  He gestured for me to follow him. I saw that the whole village was pouring out of their tree homes and gathering in the clearing, jostling one another slightly, low whistles flicking back and forth, staring expectantly down the trail. I picked up enough of their telepathic vibrations to understand that they were all quite excited. Ahriman was one of their greatest leaders, a man of high intelligence and accomplishment, a poet and philosopher whose fame was known wherever the Neanderthals lived.

  It can’t be the same Ahriman that I have known, I told myself. The mental image I was getting from the crowd was very different from the dark, tormented, angry, vengeful Ahriman that I knew.

  But when I saw him, walking on the trail, smiling at the crowd that had gathered to greet him, I saw that it was indeed the same man.

  Ahriman. A younger Ahriman than the one I had known, but unmistakably the same one. Taller than any of the other Neanderthals, more powerful in physique, his eyes held the intelligence that I had seen in them in other ages. But they were not yet the reddened, hate-filled eyes of the Ahriman who sought to destroy the continuum. This was the face of a man in his prime, happy with life, content with his environment and his place in it. He had not learned to hate. He had no need for vengeance — not yet.

  The crowd gathered around Ahriman as he strode the final yards toward the center of the clearing. I could not make out specific words or meanings from their mental chatter, but I felt an urging from them, a pleading for him to do something — I did not know what — that would please them.

  He smiled and nodded his assent. The crowd immediately sat down on the ground, excited, anticipating. I remained standing.

  Ahriman’s eyes met mine. His smile did not change. His eyes betrayed no hint of anger or enmity. Nor surprise. Obviously, the others had already told him that there was a stranger in their midst. They must have told him my name as well. And, just as obviously, my name, my appearance, my presence meant nothing to him. He was not afraid of me. He was not enraged. The only emotion I caught from him was a gentle curiosity.

  Slowly I sat, too, between Tunu and another teen-aged boy. I closed my eyes and concentrated as hard as I could to catch whatever it was that Ahriman was going to say, telepathically.

  There was no need for me to work so hard. He was the most powerful telepathic “voice” I had encountered. I could understand him with almost no effort at all.

  He sang.

  Not with words or musical sounds as we Sapients use. Ahriman sang with thoughts, mental conceptions that released colors, shapes, memories, impressions in my mind. My eyes flew open and still my head filled with beauty and harmony that I had never known before. I could see the Neanderthals around me, staring blankly, enraptured by the beginning of Ahriman’s song.

  I closed my eyes once again, but this time it was only to shut out the conflicting view of the world around me, so that I might share more fully the vision that Ahriman was projecting directly into my mind.

  It was a song, a poem, a speculation, a history, a report — all in one. I saw the many places that Ahriman had traveled through since the last time he had been to this village. I realized that he was a wanderer, a nomad who linked the scattered settlements of the Neanderthals the way we Sapients eventually learned to link our communities with electronic circuitry.

  I saw all the other Neanderthal villages, in ice cliffs far to the north, along balmy seashores, huts built of mud and straw clustered together in the open treeless steppes. I felt the oneness of all these communities, the linkage among their men and women, the common bonds of blood and affection that they all shared. And Ahriman showed us more; he began to tell us of his own thoughts, the ideas and questions that filled his mind when he gazed up at the star-filled night sky. He showed us the harmony of the stars, the rhythms of the planets as they swept among the fixed points of nighttime fire, the glory of the sun as it was created out of cold dust and gained its strength by bringing all the myriad motes together into one fiery, loving embrace.

  Ahriman took us among the stars and helped us to wander in realms of breathless beauty. Then, slowly, with enormous reverence and gentleness, he brought us back to Earth, to this clearing in the forest, to this moment in time.

  I saw, as I opened my eyes, that Neanderthals cannot weep. But the tears were streaming down my cheeks as Ahriman ended his song.

  CHAPTER 46

  The Neanderthals did not applaud. Such noisemaking was not their way. But I, with my dim telepathic ability, could sense the enormous wave of approbation and thanks that swept through the gathered villagers. A few low whistles and grunting mutters accompanied the telepathic appreciation. Ahriman nodded a few times, accepting their approval. Then the crowd broke up and everyone went back to their business.

  I got to my feet, after wiping away the tears that had blurred my vision.

  “You are Orion,” Ahriman said, silently.

  We were alone in the clearing now. All the others had dispersed. He looked at me without any emotion except curiosity. He had never seen me before this day. I was the one with the memories, not him. I recalled how I felt when I had first met him, in that chamber he had created deep underground in the twentieth century. How confused I had been then; he had known everything, and I, nothing. Now I knew of all our encounters, The War and its aftermath, and he was as innocent as a newborn. Yet I still felt confused, uncertain.

  “I enjoyed your song,” I said, aloud, knowing that he could understand the meaning of my sounds.

  “Thank you.”

  I wondered what I should say next. I wondered how deeply into my mind he could probe. The other Neanderthals had apparently been unable to read my thoughts, my memories. It had been difficult enough for me merely to communicate ordinary conversation to them. But Ahriman’s powers of telepathy were many times greater.

  “Where are you from?” he asked, and I felt genuine concern. Either he could not search my mind or he was too polite to try.

  “Far from here,” I answered. Then I added, “Farther in time than in distance. I come from the future, from thousands of years in the future.”

  His heavy brow knitted with puzzlement. “The future?”

  “You can see that I am not one of your kind.”

  “That is true.”

  “I came into being more than a hundred thousand years from now, and have been sent to this time.”

  I caught a vague, fleeting thought to the effect that I must be insane, but it passed quickly.

  “It is quite true,” I said. “I don’t know how it is done, but I have been sent to this time and place.”

  “Sent by whom? For what purpose?”

  Ignoring that, I went on, “Somehow you will learn how to transport yourself through time and space. We will meet many times, in different eras…”

  “I will travel into the future?” He seemed genuinely fascinated by the po
ssibility.

  “Yes.”

  “With you?”

  With a shake of my head, “We will not travel together, not as companions. But we will meet in the future, time and again.”

  His heavy-featured face broke into a wide smile. “Travel into the future! Can time be bent and turned the way a man can knot a length of vine?”

  “Ahriman!” I had to tell him. “In that future — in those times to come — we will be enemies.”

  His smile vanished. “What? How can…”

  “Whenever we meet in the future, I will try to kill you. And you will try to kill me.”

  “That’s impossible.” And I could feel that he really meant it. The thought of violence was so repugnant to him that I shared the shuddering revulsion he unconsciously broadcast.

  “I wish it were impossible,” I said, “but it has already happened. Many times. We have met; we have fought. More than once, you have killed me.”

  He stared into my eyes. In my mind I felt the gentlest questioning touch. I nodded and relaxed and allowed him to see what I had experienced: The War, the flood in the Neolithic, the barbaric splendor of Karakorum, the technological glory of the fusion reactor.

  “No,” Ahriman whispered, in that labored, tortured, rasping voice that I had come to know so well. “No…”

  He trembled. This mighty hulk of a Neanderthal shook from head to toes, so repulsed and sickened was he by the scenes he saw in my mind. I heard his thoughts just as easily as if he were blaring at me through an electric bullhorn:

  “It can’t be… that can’t be me… not me… he’s mad, his mind sick and perverted… no one could possibly… the killing, the sick, sadistic horror… not me. Not me!”

  Ahriman turned his back to me and walked rapidly, almost ran, away from the clearing where I stood.

  I closed my eyes and tried to clamp down on my thoughts. When I looked again, Ahriman was nowhere in sight, but several of the Neanderthals — men and older boys — stood around the edge of the clearing, staring at me with troubled eyes. Had they caught my thoughts, or Ahriman’s reaction to them? What would they do to me if they knew that I was created to kill the best man among them?

  Slowly, reluctantly, I returned to Tohon’s house. Tunu was at the base of the tree, conversing with a few of his friends. He gave me the same cheerful smile as always, and with a few gestures told me that his father was down by the stream, where the fruit trees grew, gathering food for the feast that would honor Ahriman tonight.

  I nodded my understanding, then climbed up the vine ladder to the house. Huyana was humming softly to herself as she cooked a spicy-smelling brew over the small fire in the kitchen. The pot was a tough, hollow gourd, larger than any I had ever known to grow naturally. The fire pit was a hollow in the kitchen floor, lined with flat stones and ventilated through a narrow shaft overhead.

  Exhausted mentally and disgusted with myself, I barely nodded hello to Huyana. On rubbery legs I made my way through the short curving corridor to my own room and threw myself onto the spongy moss of my bed.

  I awoke to Tunu’s gentle shaking. He gave me a quick skirling whistle and pointed to my window. It was almost dark.

  “The feast,” Tunu said wordlessly.

  I wondered if Ahriman would show up for the celebration in his honor, or had the terrifying visions I had shown him driven him away?

  He was there, sitting cross-legged among the elders of the village as I arrived. The big ceremonial bonfire in the middle of the clearing bathed everything in a hot red flickering light. The massive trunks of the giant trees ringed us like the pillars of temples yet to be built, throwing their shadows back into the forest so that the clearing was a circle of light set in the midst of utter darkness.

  Unconsciously I had expected drumbeats, music, dancing figures leaping against the lurid light of the huge fire. Instead the Neanderthals were quiet, almost silent, except for a background murmur of mumbles and grunts and occasional low whistles.

  In their minds, though, they were laughing and chattering back and forth, exchanging stories, singing happily. I could catch the edges of their communications, like a man with a weak radio receiver catching fragments of broadcasts from a hundred different stations as he turns the dial.

  But when I tuned in to Ahriman, I got nothing but a vast and dark silence. I studied his face as he sat there in the firelight. He was as impassive as a statue made of granite. The elders on either side of him did not seem troubled, though. They respected his need for silence and privacy, I understood; they expected him to favor us with another song later in the night.

  The bonfire was strictly ceremonial. All the food had been prepared by the women in their individual kitchens. There was no roast venison, no suckling pigs on spits, no tales of bravery and cunning in the hunt. Instead, the Neanderthals ate mostly vegetables and eggs, nuts and berries, and drank fruit juices or clear water brought cold from the stream by the best runners among the youngsters. The little meat they had, which came from the animals they culled from their herds, was offered as a delicacy, a special treat in honor of their guest.

  Ahriman gazed at me from his place among the elders. I sat with Tohon and his family, a dozen yards away in the arc of Neanderthals who half-circled the bonfire. I felt the heat from the flames on my face, and I began to sweat — but it was not entirely because of the hot fire.

  Through the meal I caught fragments of conversations, back and forth, but nothing from Ahriman. Yet, every time I looked his way, his eyes were on me. The expression on his face was more than somber: it had the pall of death upon it. He had made up his mind about me. He knew that I was not insane, that I had told him the truth. The question now was, what would he do about it?

  Finally, when everyone had had enough to eat, the murmuring rose and they all turned toward Ahriman. In my mind I heard them asking, pleading, for another song. For many minutes he merely sat there, his head bowed, as if trying to avoid their demand. But they merely begged harder, even though it was all done in almost total silence. The mental chorus grew stronger, moment by moment; the villagers were not going to allow Ahriman to leave without performing again.

  He raised his head at last, and their silent importuning stopped as abruptly as if it had been chopped off with a guillotine. Ahriman looked at me bleakly, then slowly, painfully got to his feet.

  The villagers drew in a collective breath of anticipation. For many of them, it was the last breath they ever took.

  A pencil-thin red beam from a laser rifle lanced out of the darkness among the trees past Ahriman’s head. He threw his arms across his face and jumped sideways. More laser bolts flashed out from the trees, and I heard the yelling roar of attacking soldiers — Sapients — and saw their white-armored forms rushing toward the clearing.

  They were firing pointblank into the Neanderthals, their beams ripping men, women, and children apart the way a honed razor would slice through a rag doll.

  I learned that Neanderthals can scream. Pain and terror brings out the same wild animal screeches from them that it does from us.

  There were only a dozen or so Sapient soldiers, but they were armed with laser rifles. The Neanderthals scrambled to their feet and ran in all directions, as those searing red beams slashed them apart. Tohon reached for his daughter as a soldier turned his visored, helmeted head toward us. He hesitated an instant, no doubt stunned to find a fellow Sapient among the brutes he had come to slaughter. I was empty-handed and, worse, my mind was a blank, too. I did not know what to do, where to turn.

  Tohon began running with Yoki in his arms. The soldier snapped out of his hesitation. He gunned them both down. Their bodies sprawled to the ground, spurting blood.

  “No!” I screamed. “Stop!” I waved my arms and ran toward the soldier, yelling and ranting like a maniac. He tried to step aside and get a clear shot at Huyana, who stood paralyzed beside the dead bodies of her husband and daughter. I grabbed for his rifle, and as he tried to pull it back from me, Tunu leaped at t
he soldier and knocked him off his feet.

  I took the rifle as Tunu, his eyes wide and blazing with new-found hate, seized a rock in his two hands and smashed it down on the soldier’s helmet. The plastic armor dented, then cracked, as Tunu pounded at it again and again. Blood oozed from the smashed visor and the trooper went rigid and inert.

  I wheeled about and saw the carnage that the soldiers had created. Neanderthals lay sprawled grotesquely everywhere; the survivors were running toward the relative safety of the trees and darkness. The fire burned hot, casting glinting highlights off the white armor of the soldiers. I held a laser rifle in my hands, my finger curled around its trigger.

  Yet I could not fire it. I could not shoot at those troopers. Behind those featureless visors might be Marek, or Lissa, or even Adena. I could not fire at them, even to save the defenseless Neanderthals.

  Or were they defenseless? One of the troopers was on the ground, a pair of savage dogs viciously snapping at him. Ahriman had grabbed another from behind, pinning his arms to his sides with a mighty bear hug, while another Neanderthal ripped off the soldier’s helmet and choked the life out of him. Then Ahriman took up the soldier’s rifle and began firing at the other troopers.

  The Sapients scattered into the shadows of the trees and disappeared as quickly as they had come. For several eternally long minutes we simply stood there, panting with fear and anger. I counted thirty-eight dead, their blood soaking the ground. Tossing the rifle away, I leaned down and took the smashed helmet off the trooper who lay dead at my feet. Her hair billowed out, blonde, matted with her own blood.

  Tunu knelt at her side, his mind a keening, shuddering wail of grief and agony. I could not find Huyana at first; then I recognized her body, sliced neatly in two by a laser beam, at the edge of the clearing.

  Ahriman strode through the field of dead, a rifle in one mighty hand, until he stood face-to-face with me. His eyes were red with pain.