Orion in the Dying Time Part 30

I shook my woozy head, muttering. "It would have been better to kill him."

"Not so easily done, my love. Be satisfied that we have won."

"Lots of the dinosaurs got loose," I remembered.

"Good hunting for your Mongol friends," said Aten. He pulled his cloak tighter about him. It began to shimmer.

"Wait!" I called.

The Creators looked down at me, their faces curious or annoyed.

"What about Subotai? He is here with only his personal guard, less than a thousand men."

"Quite enough, I should think," said Zeus.

"I promised him that I would bring his entire army here. That means all his people, their women, their flocks and herds, their yurts and all their belongings."

"Why bother?" asked Aten scornfully. "The barbarian general accomplished nothing. He's useless to us."

Struggling up to a sitting position, I answered, "He is my friend. I promised him."

"Ridiculous." Aten sneered.

"That's not for you to decide alone," Anya snapped.

"I'm afraid I agree with Aten," said Zeus. "It would serve no useful purpose."

"It's difficult enough trying to keep the continuum from unraveling," said sharp-featured Hermes. "Why make a change that we don't have to make?"

"I'll do it myself," I said.

They all stared at me.

"You?" Aten laughed. "A toy that I created, acting like a G.o.d?"

"Which of you brought Subotai and his thousand men to this time and place?" I demanded.

They glanced around at one another, finally focusing all their glances on Anya.

She shook her head, smiling. "Not I. I was hiding deep underground, waiting for the moment to strike at Set's core tap. The rest of you were scattered among the stars."

"You can't mean that Orion did it himself!" Aten almost shouted.

Anya nodded. "He must have. None of us did."

"I did it myself," I said.

Zeus smiled without humor. "Orion, you are learning the powers of a G.o.d."

"There are no G.o.ds," I replied grimly. "Only beings such as yourselves-and Set."

They stirred uneasily.

"If Orion wants to bring Subotai's people here, I say he has earned that right," Anya said firmly.

No one contradicted her.

I closed my eyes, grateful for her in so many ways that I could not even begin to count them. In that one fleeting instant I saw history unreeling before me like a spool of film spinning at blurring speed.

I saw Subotai's people settling across this broad gra.s.sy savannah that stretched from the Red Sea to the Atlantic.

I saw Mongol warriors spitting carnosaurs on their lances, brown-skinned men in stained leathers and steel helmets, riding tough little Gobi ponies, who would give rise in later generations to splendid tales of knights in shining armor slaying fire-breathing dragons to save enchanted princesses.

I saw those Mongols learning agriculture from the natives of Paradise, intermarrying with them generation after generation as the glaciers retreated northward from Europe, taking the rains with them and turning the broad gra.s.slands into the parched desert called Sahara.

I saw the great-great-grandchildren of Subotai's army moving to the Nile valley, leaving the withering savannah, inventing irrigation and civilization. That made me smile: the so-called barbarian Mongols fathering the earliest civilization on Earth.

And I saw tortured Sheol breathe its final burst of flame and collapse at last into a gaudy ovoid of a planet, spinning madly, striped in brilliant colors, still heated from within by the energy of its final collapse, circled by dozens of fragments of the shattered Shaydan. I knew Zeus would be pleased to have the planet named after him.

And I saw, with a sinking heart, that all the slaughter I had done, the destruction of Sheol and the planet Shaydan, the time of great dying that I had rained upon the earth, the extinction of the dinosaurs and countless other forms of life-all this had been part of the Golden One's plan.

I heard his haughty laughter as I watched once again the reign of death that I had inflicted upon the earth.

"I am evolution, Orion," he boasted. "I am the force of nature."

"All that killing," I heard myself sob.

"It was necessary. My plans span eons, Orion. The dinosaurs were just as great an obstacle to me as they were to Set. They had to be removed, or else I could never have brought the human race into being. You You wiped them out, Orion. For me! You think you are almost a G.o.d, but you are still wiped them out, Orion. For me! You think you are almost a G.o.d, but you are still my my creature, Orion, my toy. Mine to use as I see fit." creature, Orion, my toy. Mine to use as I see fit."

Epilogue.

In the timeless city beneath the golden energy dome Anya healed me of my wounds, both physical and spiritual. The other Creators left us alone in that empty mausoleum of a city, alone among the temples and monuments that the Creators had built for themselves.

My burns healed quickly. The gulf between us caused by her seeming betrayal, less so. I realized that Anya had to make me think she had abandoned me, otherwise Set would have seen her trap when he probed my mind. Yet the pain was still there, the awful memory of feeling deserted. As the days quietly pa.s.sed and the nights, the love we felt for each other slowly began to bridge even that gap.

Anya and I stood on the outskirts of the city before the ma.s.sive bulk of the enormous pyramid of Khufu, its dazzling white coat of polished limestone gleaming gloriously in the morning light, the great Eye of Amon just starting to form as the sun moved across the sky toward the position that created the shadow sculpture.

I felt restless. Even though we had the entire empty city to ourselves, I could not overcome the uncomfortable feeling that we were not truly alone. The other Creators might be scattered across the universes, striving to maintain the s.p.a.cetime continuum that they themselves had unwittingly unraveled, yet I had the p.r.i.c.kly sensation in the back of my neck that told me we were being watched.

"You are not happy here," Anya said as we walked unhurriedly around the base of the huge, ma.s.sive pyramid.

I had to admit she was right. "It was better when we were back in the forest of Paradise."

"Yes," she agreed. "I liked it there, too, even though I didn't appreciate it at the time."

"We could go back there."

She smiled at me. "Is that what you wish?"

Before I could answer, a shimmering sphere of glowing gold appeared before us, hovering a few inches above the polished stone slabs that made up the walkway around the pyramid's base. The globe touched lightly on the paving, then contracted to form the human shape of Aten, dressed in a splendid military tunic of metallic gold with a high choker collar and epaulets bearing a sunburst insignia.

"Surely you're not thinking of retiring, Orion," he said, his tone just a shade less mocking than usual, his smile radiating more scorn than warmth.

Turning to Anya, he added, "And you, dearest companion, have responsibilities that cannot be avoided."

Anya moved closer to me. "I am not your 'dearest companion,' Aten. And if Orion and I want to spend some time alone in a different era, what is that to you?"

"There is work to be done," he said, the smile fading, his tone more serious.

He was jealous of me, I realized. Jealous of the love that Anya and I shared.

Then the old smug cynicism came back into his face. He c.o.c.ked a golden eyebrow at me. "Jealous?" he read my thoughts. "How can a G.o.d be jealous of a creature? Don't be ridiculous, Orion."

"Haven't I done enough for you?" I growled. "Haven't I earned a rest?"

"No. And no. My fellow Creators tell me that you have grown much like us in your powers and wisdom. They congratulate me on producing such a useful... creature."

He was going to say "toy" until he noticed my fists clenching.

"Well, Orion," he went on, "if you are going to a.s.sume G.o.dlike powers, then you must be prepared to shoulder G.o.dlike responsibilities, just like the rest of us."

"You told me that I was your creature, a tool to be used as you see fit."

He shrugged, glancing at Anya. "It comes out to the same thing. Either you bear responsibilities like the rest of us or you obey my commands. Take your choice."

Anya put her hand on my shoulder. "You have the right to refuse him, my love. You have earned that right."

Smirking, Aten replied, "Perhaps so. But you you, G.o.ddess, cannot evade your responsibilities. No more than I can."

"The continuum can struggle along without me for a while," she said, almost as haughty as Aten himself.

"No, it can't." Suddenly he was utterly serious. "The crisis is real and urgent. The conflict has spread across the stars and threatens the entire galaxy now."

Anya paled. She turned her fathomless silver-gray eyes to me, and I saw real pain in them.

I knew that we could escape to Paradise if we wanted to. To those who can control time, what matter days or years or even centuries spent in one era or another? We could always return to this exact point in s.p.a.cetime, this individual nexus in the continuum. The crisis that Aten feared would still be waiting for us.

Yet how could we be happy, knowing that our time in Paradise was limited? Even if we remained there for a thousand years, the task awaiting us would loom in our minds like the edge of a cliff, like a sword hanging over our heads.

Before Anya could reply I said, "Paradise will have to wait, won't it?"

She nodded sadly. "Yes, my love. Paradise will have to wait."

Acknowledgments.

The epigraphs that begin each section of this novel are from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam; "The City in the Sea" by Edgar Allan Poe; Paradise Lost Paradise Lost by John Milton; and "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. by John Milton; and "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

The legend of the Light-Stealer and the Punisher is adapted from ideas originally developed by Isaac Asimov in his essay, "Planet of the Double Sun," and is used here with his kind and generous permission.

Afterward The story of Orion began in my mind many years ago when I first contemplated the concept that the myths and legends of ancient times must have been based on actual persons and events, at least in part.

Gilgamesh, Prometheus, the Phoenix that perishes in flames yet rises anew from the ashes-how much of these tales are fanciful elaborations and how much of them are real? We will never know, of course. The dusty debris of history has covered up the original events-whether they were actual adventures of living men and women or the total invention of some clever moralist.

Be that as it may, the true significance of a myth or legend lies not in its actuality but in its ability to instruct and inspire listeners (or readers). Over the course of time since the development of speech countless human beings have lived through uncountable adventures. Only a precious few have served as the nuclei for the myths that have moved all the generations that followed.

As Joseph Campbell and others have pointed out, some myths are universal to all human tribes. They have such a powerful statement to make that every known human society has adapted a variation of the same myth. For example, every culture has a Prometheus myth that tells how a G.o.d gave fire to a freezing, starving humankind and how, with fire, humans became almost G.o.dlike in their power while their benefactor was punished by his fellow G.o.ds.

As I wrote the continuing tale of Orion I found that the story moved between mythology and history, between legend and archeology. In this present volume, the saga moves into realms of natural history, both biological and astronomical.

Underlying all of that, however, is the deeper current of the novels, a level that I had no inkling of when I first began to write of Orion's fantastic adventures. That level is, of course, the relationship of humankind to its G.o.ds.

The original novel, Orion Orion, was driven by my curiosity about the Neanderthals. Paleontologists have found that there were two fully intelligent species of h.o.m.o sapiens on Earth some fifty thousand years ago: the Neanderthals and ourselves. The Neanderthals disappeared, and their disappearance is the subject of that first novel about Orion.

In writing it, however, the deeper theme arose from my subconscious. Given a far-future version of humankind, distant descendants of ours with vastly superior knowledge and technology at their disposal, they could invent the means to travel back through time and create the human race.

They would seem to their creatures as G.o.ds. What is more, given that possibility, we no longer need the supernatural G.o.ds that populate our religions. We have met our Creator, as Pogo would say, and he is us!

How apt and fitting. Many philosophers and modern-day psychologists have theorized that our G.o.ds are the creation of the human mind, an attempt to impose order and justice on a seemingly indifferent universe. Turn the concept full circle and we have human descendants from the distant future creating the human race itself. The G.o.ds that people worship have always seemed to have the same foibles and vanities that you and I have. The patriarchal G.o.d of the Old Testament appears to me very much like a spoiled, petulant nine-year-old boy. Perhaps that is because the G.o.ds are just as human as we.

All it takes is time travel.

Thus we have Orion, a human being purposely built by such a Creator to serve and obey, a hunter who was created to find and kill the enemies of his Creator. In time he begins to realize that the so-called G.o.ds are as human and fallible as he is himself. In time he begins to learn how to be a G.o.d himself. Or tries to.

Orion, then, is humankind's representative, attempting to understand what the G.o.ds demand of him. Each step forward in his understanding brings him a step closer to G.o.dhood-a progress that some of the "G.o.ds" approve of, while others do not.

So much for the underlying tensions that drive the saga of Orion. Now for the particulars of this novel.

Among the myths that every human culture seems to share there is the myth of supernatural beings who are entirely evil: devils, demons, the Satan and Beelzebub that Dante and Milton wrote of. Their descriptions have always seemed decidedly reptilian to me.

To create a satanic reptile for this novel meant that I had to deal with the possibility of a species of reptile that is fully as intelligent as H. sapiens. No, actually my Set-to give him his ancient Egyptian name-would have to be as intelligent as my fict.i.tious Creators, the G.o.dlike human descendants from our future.

For years I have been intrigued by the possibility of reptilian intelligence. Intelligent lizards are an old standby of science fiction, including my very first published novel of thirty years ago. Yet it always seemed unlikely to me that reptiles could be intelligent, regardless of their utility as "alien" creatures for science-fiction tales.

In the past decade several paleontologists have suggested that if the dinosaurs had not been extinguished in the great wave of extinctions that swept the earth some sixty-five million years ago, they might ultimately have given rise to an intelligent species. Dale A. Russell, of the Canadian National Museum of Natural Sciences at Ottawa, is the leading champion of this idea. He proposes that a small Cretaceous bipedal carnosaur, Stenonychosaurus inequalus Stenonychosaurus inequalus, might have evolved into a big-brained, erect-walking intelligent reptile, given time.