by Ben Bova
“Your people, Orion,” he said, in his tortured whisper. “Why?”
I had no answer. There was nothing that I could say or do. I turned away from him, away from the carnage, and began walking into the darkness of the forest.
CHAPTER 47
The black night engulfed me completely. With each step I grew colder, shuddering with the horror within me. The forest was absolutely silent — not an owl’s hoot, not a cricket’s chirp. Nothing but silence, darkness, and cold.
I have no idea of how long I walked, alone, heading nowhere. I could not return to the village, to the accusing faces of the Neanderthals. I could not bear to see Ahriman, to watch him learn how to hate, how to kill, how to make vengeance the only thing he lived for.
I thought it was dawn, when I first saw the light glimmering up ahead of me. But as I walked toward it, miserable with remorse, I saw that the trees were fading away, literally disappearing, and the light was a golden, sourceless radiance that illuminated a flat, featureless expanse that stretched in all directions toward infinity.
In the distance I saw a lone figure standing, waiting for me, clad in gleaming silver. It was Anya, I knew. I walked steadily toward her, unable to quicken my step, unwilling to hasten the final moment.
As I approached, I saw another figure, darkly brooding: Ahriman, still encased in his prison of energy, his eyes blazing fury at me. He looked much older than the Ahriman I had just met. Hatred and pain had aged him more than time ever could.
I searched Anya’s face as I came up to her. I saw the sadness of eternity in her luminous eyes.
“Now you know,” Anya said to me.
Nodding, I replied, “I know everything except the most important answer of all — why?”
“For that you must ask Ormazd.”
“Where is he?”
She made a little shrug and smiled joylessly. “He is here; he can see us and hear us.”
“But he’s too ashamed to show himself, is that it?”
Anya looked almost startled. “Ashamed? Him?”
I lifted my head to the blank golden dome that shone above us. “Present yourself, Ormazd! It’s time for the final reckoning. Show your face, murderer!”
The emptiness seemed to gather in on itself, to contract into a golden bubble, a sphere of gleaming radiance that floated down toward us.
“I am here,” said a voice from that globe.
“In human form,” I demanded. “I want to see a face; I want to be able to watch your expression.”
“You presume much, Orion,” said the golden sphere.
“I’ve served you well enough. I deserve a little consideration.”
The sphere shimmered and faded into nothingness, leaving the tall, golden form of Ormazd standing before us. His smile was part amusement, part tolerance of a lower creature’s insolence.
“Does that please you, Orion?” he asked.
I glanced at Anya. There was nothing in her face but fear.
“Why?” I asked Ormazd. “Why slaughter the Neanderthals? They were harmless…”
“Precisely so. Harmless. Inoffensive. Beautifully adapted to their environment.” He spread his hands in an ancient gesture of resignation.
“Then why destroy them? Why start The War?”
“Because they were an evolutionary dead end, Orion. They would never progress beyond the stage in which you found them.”
“How can you know that?”
He laughed at me. “Orion, pitiful creature. I know! I have examined all the possible paths of the continuum. The Neanderthals would live their idyllic existence for their allotted time, and then be snuffed out like the dinosaurs were.”
Ahriman’s face was contorted with agony. He could hear what we were saying, even though he could not move a muscle to reach us.
“Believe me, Orion,” Ormazd went on, “I examined every possibility. I even transplanted some of the Neanderthals to a different planet, to see if they would evolve at a more efficient rate. The differences were negligible.”
“But that doesn’t justify… killing them!”
“Doesn’t it?” he snapped. “They would all die anyway, Orion. Sooner or later, the blind forces of nature would have wiped them out. I merely substituted a directed force. I hastened their demise. I helped them out of their misery. More efficiently than nature would have done.”
“They weren’t in misery.”
Ormazd gave me a coy grin. “Orion, allow me a metaphor, please!”
“Who gave you the right to perform genocide?” I demanded. “Who made you the giver of life and death?”
He raised a hand, and the golden radiance around us darkened and sparked with jagged bolts of lightning.
“I have the power,” he said, his voice thundering. “That gives me the right.”
Anya put up both her hands and the lightnings vanished. The featureless golden expanse reformed itself.
Ormazd made a little bow to her. “Of course, others have some power, also. Not as much as mine, but enough to do a few simple tricks.”
Anya looked from him to me. “Ask him why he decided to eliminate the Neanderthals, Orion. Don’t let him mislead you. Ask him why he did it.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “I want to know why.”
“Because I chose to.”
“That’s no answer,” I insisted.
“Your scientists argued about evolution for more than a century,” Ormazd said. “Well, I am evolution, Orion. I direct the comings and goings on your little world.”
I glanced at Anya; she gave me a small nod of encouragement.
Ormazd was not finished. “Take a promising little planet called Earth. It is populated by a race of bright, two-legged creatures. They can communicate with each other directly, mind to mind. They can control the lower animals around them and the plants. They have adapted themselves perfectly to their environment. Dull, Orion. Very dull and pointless. They will never progress.”
“Why do they have to…”
He ignored me and continued. “So I wipe the slate clean. It may seem cruel, but it is necessary. I create a race of warriors, soldiers, to do the bloody work of eliminating the natives. You are of that race, Orion. You — all of you Sapients — were designed for killing. You all take delight in it; when you can’t find a reason to kill each other, you go out and slaughter the helpless beasts around you. Mighty hunters, Orion, all of you.”
I remembered how easily, how callously I had killed others of my own kind. And the hunts, where we had covered ourselves with the blood of helpless animals. I trembled with shame, and with anger at the god who made us this way.
“So I set you to the work of eliminating the Neanderthals. I had others of your kind build vast machines on a world you call Titan, a moon of Saturn, machines that can alter the output of the Sun enough to cause Ice Ages on Earth. The glaciers finish the job of scouring the planet clean of its natives — and of the murderous creatures whom I created.”
“But that’s not the way it happened.”
“No, Orion, it isn’t.” He seemed amused by it all. “You helped them to survive. You showed that final little squad of bloodthirsty warriors how to live on Earth. Instead of a self-destructing army of killers, I got a self-perpetuating race of Homo sapiens sapiens. Thanks to you, Orion.”
“We were supposed to die in the Ice Age.” The knowledge hollowed out my insides, made me feel as if I were falling from heaven to hell.
“Yes. Of course. I was going to create a truly superior race! You can’t even imagine the creatures that I would have fathered. Not in your most ecstatic dreams! The angels that your kind fantasize about are nothing compared to what I would have created!”
Anya interrupted his ranting with a voice as cool and hard as silver. “But the Sapients lived, and took over the Earth. And you made such excellent warriors of them that you could not dislodge them.”
“Yes,” Ormazd admitted, glaring at me. “And at the same time I became aware that this one—” he t
ilted his golden-maned head toward Ahriman’s dark, imprisoned form — “had survived the slaughter and somehow gained powers almost equal to my own.”
“So you created me,” I realized.
“I created you to hunt down Ahriman before he found the way to destroy all that I had built. Yes, I created you — too well.”
My head was spinning. “But if you knew all this, if you could examine all the pathways of the continuum and foresaw what would happen…”
“Linear thinking, Orion,” said Anya. “Events happen in parallel, not in sequence. What you experience as time, as a progression from past through present into future, is really all happening simultaneously. Cause and effect are interchangeable, Orion. Tomorrow and yesterday co-exist.”
“I still don’t understand…”
“It’s not necessary for you to understand,” Ormazd said. “In your own stumbling way, you have done what I wanted done. Ahriman is trapped here, forever. The continuum is safe.”
“You are safe,” Anya said to him.
“And you,” he countered.
She turned to me again. “You still have not found out why he has done all this, Orion. He constantly outwits you about the ultimate question.”
I felt utterly helpless.
“Shall I tell him?” she asked Ormazd.
He folded his arms across his chest. “You will, no matter what I say.”
Anya’s smile was bitter, rueful. “Orion, he created you — he created what you call the human race and used it to destroy the Neanderthals, because without the humans, we gods would never have come into being.”
I heard her words, but the meaning was just as opaque to me as if she had said nothing.
“Ormazd saw that the Neanderthals would eventually die away, leaving nothing. So he created the Sapients to eliminate them, to scour the Earth clean and prepare the way for a new race…”
“Better than angels,” I mumbled.
“But what actually has happened,” she went on, “is that you humans learned how to manipulate your own evolution, learned how to engineer the genes of your cells. You took control of your own destiny and eventually, after many millennia, you metamorphosed into — us.”
“We became gods?”
“You evolved into creatures such as we are,” Anya said. “Creatures of pure energy, who can control and manipulate that energy to take whatever form we wish. Creatures who understand the innermost workings of the continuum, who can move through time and space as easily as you walk through a forest.”
I turned back to Ormazd. “We became you.”
He frowned at the two of us.
“We created you!” I shouted.
“Now you understand why Ormazd determined to destroy the Neanderthals. If they lived, if you humans had never been created, we ourselves would never have come into existence.”
“But you do exist!”
“Yes, and we are bound by the same inexorable rules that bind all the continuum. Ormazd had to do what he did; otherwise, this continuum, this universe, would collapse and perish.”
They could both see the utter confusion that had my mind reeling. Past and future, life and death — it was all a vast dizzying whirl, the entire universe spinning wildly, galaxies forming like eddies in a swift stream, spawning stars and planets and creatures who struggle and die…
“It is the truth, Orion.” Anya’s calm voice cut through my agitation.
“You can see the necessity of it,” said Ormazd.
“The Neanderthals had to die so that we could live, and evolve into you.”
Ormazd nodded grimly. “That is not the way I had planned it, at first. But it worked out well enough.”
I could not look at Ahriman, not now. Instead, I asked Ormazd, “And what is to become of me?”
His expression lightened. He almost smiled at me, like a benign, generous creator. “I will grant you the gift of life, Orion. A full, rich, human lifespan in any era you choose.”
“And then death.”
His brows arched. “If you choose the right era, a human lifespan can be very long indeed. Centuries.”
“And you?” I asked Anya.
Before she could reply, Ormazd said, “We have evolved out of humankind, Orion. We are not human, any more than you are a hominid ape.”
“So I would live on Earth without you,” I said to her.
“I can give you more than one lifetime,” Ormazd said. “You can live for thousands of years, if you desire to.”
My heart felt like a stone sinking to the bottom of the deepest ocean trench. “One lifetime or many — without you, Anya, what good is it?”
She took a step toward me, held out her hand.
But I turned toward Ahriman, glowering helplessly in his eternal prison. “For this I helped to annihilate his entire race. For this I’ve led him into this living hell.”
“You saved your own race,” Ormazd said.
“I saved you, and your kind.” Turning to Anya again, I said, “Free him! Use the power you have to set him free.”
She gaped at me.
“What are you saying?” Ormazd cried.
“Let Ahriman go free,” I said. “Kill me if I’ve outlived my usefulness, but give him back his life, his people.”
“Never!” Ormazd snapped.
But I was pleading to Anya. “Even if it means the end of everything, do it! Free him! Let him and his people have their time on Earth. Let him live.”
“That would mean the destruction of us all!” Ormazd roared. “I won’t allow it!”
“If we can’t live together,” I said to Anya, “then let us die together.”
Her gray eyes struck sparks off my soul. She looked from me to Ormazd, and then turned to Ahriman.
“No! Don’t!” Ormazd screamed. “Telepathy… he knows all that we know, now. He has seen what’s in our minds; he has taken in our knowledge of the continuum!”
“Yes,” Anya said. “He has.”
“He’ll use that knowledge to rip the continuum apart!” Ormazd’s voice was a frenzied shriek. His image was wavering, shimmering.
“Orion is right,” Anya replied, as calmly as if she were discussing abstract philosophy. “Ahriman’s people deserve their moment of life. We have existed long enough.”
“I won’t let you!” Ormazd bellowed. He became a shining globe of golden radiance again, but Anya remained in her human form and stretched her hands out toward Ahriman.
Lightning lashed blindingly. I heard Ormazd’s voice roaring as I squeezed my eyes shut and felt my flesh bubbling from the tremendous energy flow being released. The radiance burned through my closed lids, boiled my eyes away, seared so deeply into my brain that I sensed nothing but flaming hot light as the very atoms of my body exploded into showers of ephemeral bursts of energy.
Without eyes, without body, I could see the continuum collapsing in on itself, all the material and energy of the whole universe rushing together in one titanic, dark whirlpool of space-time, a convoluted multidimensional black hole into which Planets, stars, galaxies were sucked in, flayed, dismembered and digested into a primeval fireball.
And then it all exploded in a soundless, measureless spasm of new creation.
EPILOGUE
I am not superhuman.
I do have abilities that are far beyond those of any normal man’s, but I am just as human and mortal as anyone of Earth.
Yet I am a solitary man. My life has been spent alone, my mind clouded with strange dreams and, when I am awake, half memories of other lives, other existences, that are so fantastic that they can only be the compensations of a lonely, withdrawn subconscious mind.
As I did almost every day, I took my lunch hour late in the afternoon and made my way from my office to the same small restaurant in which I ate almost every day. Alone. I sat at my usual table, toying with my food and thinking about how much of my life is spent in solitude.
I happened to look up toward the front entrance of the restaurant when s
he came in — stunningly beautiful, tall and graceful, hair the color of midnight and lustrous gray eyes that held all of eternity in them.
“Anya,” I breathed to myself, even though I had no idea who she was. Yet something within me leaped with joy, as if I had known her from ages ago.
She seemed to know me as well. Smiling, she made her way directly to my table. I got up from my chair, feeling elated and confused at the same time.
“Orion.” She extended her hand.
I took it in mine, and bent over to kiss it. Then I held a chair out for her to sit. The waiter came over and she asked for a glass of red wine. He trundled off to the bar.
“I feel as if I’ve known you all my life,” I said to her.
“For many lifetimes,” she said, her voice softly feminine. “Don’t you remember?”
I closed my eyes in concentration and a swirl of memories rushed in on me so rapidly that it took my breath away. I saw a great shining globe of golden light, and the dark brooding figure of a fiercely malevolent man, a forest of giant trees and a barren, windswept desert and a world of unending ice and snow. And her, this woman, clad in silver armor that gleamed against the darkness of infinity.
“I… remember… death,” I heard myself stammer. “The whole world, the entire universe… all of space-time collapsed in on itself.”
She nodded gravely. “And rebounded in a new cycle of expansion. That was something that neither Ormazd nor Ahriman foresaw. The continuum does not end; it begins anew.”
“Ormazd,” I muttered. “Ahriman.” The names touched a chord in my mind. I felt anger welling up inside me, anger tinged with fear and resentment. But I could not recall who they were and why they stirred such strong emotions within me.
“They are still out there,” Anya said, “still grappling with each other. But they know, thanks to you, Orion, that the continuum cannot be destroyed so easily. It perseveres.”
“Those other lives I remember — you were in them.”
“Yes, as I will be in this one.”
“I loved you, then.”
Her smile lit the world. “Do you love me now?”
