Orion in the Dying Time

by Ben Bova

  The huge beast tried to stomp me beneath its ponderous feet and I had to jump back away from it. A bolt of flame sizzled past, close enough to singe the hair on my arm. I ducked back behind the enormous sauropod as it turned circling to find me and crush me to death. The Shaydanians were firing at me, tongues of flame lancing through the shadows.

  They hit the dinosaur instead and it hooted madly with pain. Then I saw one of the humans fire his rifle into the Shaydanians. It was Chron, risking himself to protect me. I felt Set's grip on the sauropod loosen momentarily as he turned his attention to his squad of clones. Ruthlessly I grabbed at the beast's dim mind and forced it to charge into the squad even as it began firing back at Chron.

  The massive dinosaur lunged at the source of its pain. I felt Set wrenching control of the animal away from me, but too late. Its enormous bulk was too much to turn or even slow down quickly enough. The clones saw nearly two tons of flesh hurtling at them and tried to scatter while they fired their blazing weapons at the beast.

  It smashed into the wall in a final fury of pain, screaming like a newborn as half a dozen tongues of flame roasted it from both sides.

  I dashed in right behind the sauropod and slashed the life from the first Shaydanian I could reach. The rebelling slaves cut down the part of the squad that had separated to their side of the fallen sauropod. I attacked the other half with my scimitar.

  Even in hyperdrive I could not kill them all unscathed. My sword was a blurred gleaming scythe of death, but by the time all the Shaydanians were dead I had taken burn wounds on my legs and chest.

  I slumped against the wall and slid down to a sitting position, my chest oozing blood like a rare steak, my legs charred and smoking. Automatically I clamped down on the messages of pain my nerves were screaming at my brain. I deliberately tightened all the blood vessels in the lower part of my body to prevent myself from going into shock.

  Inside my head I heard Set's hissing laughter and knew that it was only a matter of moments before he sent more of his clones to finish me off.

  The dinosaurs were still shaking the courtyard with their thunderously wild thrashings. The ground shook perceptibly.

  More than perceptibly, I realized. The ground was trembling, vibrating as if an earthquake had begun.

  "This is the moment I have been waiting for, my love.

  Now I strike at the devil's heart!"

  It was Anya's voice in my mind.

  The earth was quaking, heaving. The circular wall of the courtyard was swaying sinuously like a sheet of cloth caught in a high wind. All the dinosaurs seemed to stop their fighting at once, as if on cue or someone's direction, and made a furious charge for the main gate, the only gate that led out into the open.

  I saw the human slaves stand aside near the gate, petrified with terror, as the dinosaurs surged to the gate and smashed it open like cracking an eggshell and poured out into the open countryside.

  For an instant all was still. The courtyard was littered with the massive bodies of dead dinosaurs and the red corpses of Set's clones. Then the humans started running through the smashed-open gate to freedom. Most of them. A few dashed back to the dungeon where the others still lay cowering. Within moments the rest of them began to come out of the darkness of their captivity and run, haltingly, for the world outside the wall.

  Young Chron ran toward me but I waved him away.

  "Get out," I shouted to him. "Get out to the open country where you'll be safe."

  "But you—"

  "Go! Now! I'll be all right."

  He hesitated, then reluctantly turned toward the gate and followed the others out toward safety.

  Through all this the ground trembled, then stopped, trembled again and stopped again. Finally the courtyard was empty of every living creature except me. The ground stopped shaking. Silence returned. And the stars shone down out of a cloudless sky.

  "Anya," I called aloud. "Are you here?"

  "I will be soon, my love. Soon."

  I understood what she had done. While the other Creators had assumed their natural form as spheres of pure energy and scattered out among the stars, Anya had hidden herself deep within the earth, waiting.

  I wondered if time passed at the same rate for a goddess as it did for a man. She had projected herself back to this point in spacetime to wait for Set's command of his core tap to falter enough for her to seize control of it. My makeshift attack up here in the courtyard had given her the chance. While Set was concentrating on dealing with me, Anya took control of the energy bubbling up from the earth's molten core.

  Set himself had shown me how even the Creators could be destroyed once their source of energy was denied them. Anya had taken that lesson and turned it on the devil himself. She had taken over the core tap and was now in the process of dismantling it. His screen that blotted out starlight was already gone.

  The ground shook again, harder than before. I could hear the rumbling deep beneath me, like the muttering of some titanic beast. The courtyard was undulating, solid earth surging up and down like the waves of the sea. The circular wall swayed drunkenly. A section of it broke apart and came crashing to the ground.

  Still I sat there, trying not to bleed to death, unsure of whether or not I could get to my feet even if I tried. The ground beneath me shuddered even more. The wall at my back quivered and groaned.

  And then the middle of the courtyard erupted in a fireball that blinded me, it was so bright. Squinting so hard that tears coursed down my cheeks, I blurrily made out a fountain of red-hot lava erupting from the bowels of the earth, pulsing out waves of heat that seared my face even though I was a good hundred yards away.

  "The core tap is destroyed, my love," said Anya's voice. "I can join you now."

  "Not before I do," came Set's implacably hate-filled voice.

  And out of that bubbling fountain of molten hot lava boiling up from the earth's core stepped the huge red form of Set, looking like evil incarnate, a horned demon whose reptilian eyes glittered with fury and hatred for me.

  I grasped the scimitar at my side and tried to push myself up to a standing position. No use. I was too weak to stand, I had lost too much blood.

  Set's taloned feet paced closer to me, closer, until he loomed above me, silhouetted against the darkness by the glowing red-hot lava of the molten fountain in the center of the courtyard.

  "You have destroyed my world, Orion," his words burned through my mind. "But you have not destroyed me. I will destroy you."

  He reached down and clenched his clawed fingers around my throat. Lifting me completely off my feet, he began to choke the life out of me. His claws cut into my flesh, my blood flowed over his hands and arms.

  I slashed at him with the scimitar, but I was too weak to harm him. His mighty arms protected his chest against my feeble swipes, and his scaly armor was proof against my blade's edge.

  Turning with me dangling between his crushing hands, Set paced slowly back to the fountain of fire. My vision was blurring, I could not breathe. The world was going dark.

  "You will roast in the flames of agony for all eternity, Orion. I still have enough control over the forces of spacetime to give you the most painful death of all. Burn in hell, Orion! Forever!"

  He raised me high above the boiling fountain of lava. I could feel my flesh roasting, bubbling, the pain burning to the core of my mind.

  I still held the curved sword in my right hand. Raising it with the last of my strength, I plunged its point into Set's eye and rammed it deep into his brain as hard as I could. I felt the blade grating on the bone of his eye socket, heard him howl with agony and rage.

  He tottered but did not ease his grip on my throat. The hot lava seethed against my skin, all I could see was red burning molten lava and Set's even redder face, lips pulled back in a hate-filled snarl, the curved blade of the scimitar sticking out from his eye socket, blood streaming across the glittering red scales of his cheek.

  And then a flash of silver blazed before my
clouding eyes. Set screamed again and I felt myself whirling through the air. Suddenly the lava was no longer broiling my skin. A gleaming silver globe hovered in midair, a jagged blue-white lightning bolt crackling from its glowing spherical surface, writhing and hissing like an electrical snake clamped to the broad back of Set's scaly body.

  A golden globe appeared, and then a pure white one. And one of deepest ruby red, all of them firing twisting, sputtering shafts of electricity into Set's body. He dropped me, screeching and hissing, his tail lashing wildly, his hands clutching at empty air. He staggered backward toward the fountain of lava, his body wrenching and thrashing as his screams pierced through me like hot knives.

  More globes appeared, copper and emerald green, bronze and gleaming brass, each of them adding its lightning blast to Set's tortured form, pushing him bodily into the seething fountain of fiery lava.

  With a final shriek of agony and despair Set plunged into the bubbling molten metal, the red scales of his body disappearing in the blazing, searing fountain of hell that he himself had created.

  CHAPTER 37

  I lay on my burning back, more dead than alive.

  The globes of energy hovered around me and took on human forms: Anya, Zeus, red-haired Ares, beautiful Aphrodite, dark-eyed Hera. And the Golden One, of course, looking as smug as ever.

  He stepped forward, smiling, his golden mane glowing against the night, a long cloak of gold and white wrapped around his muscular body.

  "We've done well," he said cheerfully. "That devil will never bother us again."

  "Orion has done well," Anya countered, kneeling beside me on the blood-soaked ground of the courtyard. I felt dizzy, weak. I was consciously suppressing the pain from my burns, yet I knew that my wounds were deep, perhaps fatal. But once she touched my grimy brow with her cool fingers I felt new strength flowing into me.

  "Oh, he played his part. It all went according to my plan."

  Zeus cocked an eyebrow. "Come now, Aten, if it hadn't been for Orion, We would never have been able to penetrate Set's defenses."

  With some vehemence in her voice, Anya added, "Orion distracted the monster long enough for me to take control of his energy source and destroy it."

  I looked around the shattered courtyard. Dead carcasses of sauropods and carnosaurs lay like small hills. Bodies of slain Shaydanians sprawled among them. The curving fortress wall was half smashed down. The searing fountain of lava had disappeared.

  "It was a time stasis," Anya said to me softly. "Set intended to plunge you into that fountain of hell and leave you in it forever."

  "Instead . . ." My voice was a strangled dry croak.

  "Instead we pushed him into his own hell," she said. "While you distracted him, we were able to shut off his energy source and return from our hiding places to attack him."

  "He's dead."

  "He is in stasis," said Zeus. "Roasting for eternity."

  Alarmed, I propped myself up on one elbow. "Then he could be released?"

  Aten made a sneering smile. "None of us will release him! Would you, Orion?"

  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 god?"

  "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 god."

  "There are no gods," 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 grassy 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 grasslands 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 wiped them out, Orion. For me! You think you are almost a god, but you are still my 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 seemin
g 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 passed 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 massive 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 spacetime continuum that they themselves had unwittingly unraveled, yet I had the prickly 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, massive 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?"