Orion in the Dying Time o-3

by Ben Bova

  There I released all the energy that had been pent up in me, like driving a knife into the heart of an ancient, dreaded enemy. Like putting to rest a soul tormented by endless cancerous suffering.

  Sheol exploded. And I died.

  Chapter 31

  It was at that final moment of utter devastation, with the star exploding from the energy that I had directed into its heart, that I realized how much more the Creators knew than I did.

  I died. In that maelstrom of unimaginable violence I was torn apart, the very atoms of what was once my body ripped asunder, their nuclei blasted into strange ephemeral particles that flared for the tiniest fraction of a second and then reverted ghostlike into pure energy.

  Yet my consciousness remained. I felt all the pains of hell as Sheol exploded not merely once, but again and again.

  Time collapsed around me. I hung in a spacetime stasis, bodiless yet aware, while the planets spun around the Sun with such dizzying speed they became blurs, streaks, near circles of colored lights, brilliant pinwheels whirling madly as they reflected the golden glory of the central sun.

  I watched millions of years unfold before my godlike vision. Without a corporeal body, without eyes, the core of my being, the essential pattern of intelligence that is me inspected minutely the results of Sheol’s devastation.

  With some surprise I realized that I had not completely destroyed the star. It was too small to explode into a supernova, the kind of titanic star-wrecking cataclysm that leaves nothing afterward except a tiny pulsar, a fifty-mile-wide sphere of neutrons. No, Sheol’s explosion had been the milder kind of disaster that Earthly astronomers would one day call a nova.

  Disaster enough.

  The first explosion blew off the outer layers of the star. Sheol flared with a sudden brilliance that could be seen a thousand light-years away. The star’s outer envelope of gas blew away into space, engulfing its single planet Shaydan in a hot embrace of death.

  On that bleak and dusty world the sky turned so bright that it burned everything combustible on the surface of the planet. Trees, brush, grasses, animals all burst into fire. But the flames were quickly snuffed out as the entire atmosphere of Shaydan evaporated, blown off into space by the sudden intense heat. What little water there was on the planet’s surface was boiled away immediately.

  The burning heat reached into the underground corridors that the Shaydanians had built beneath their cities. Millions of the reptilians died in agony, their lungs scorched and charred. Within seconds all the air was sucked away and those few who escaped the heat suffocated, lungs bursting, eyes exploding out of their heads. The oldest, biggest patriarchs died in hissing, screeching agony. As did the youngest, smallest of their clones.

  Rocks melted on the surface of Shaydan. Mountains flowed into hot lava, then quickly cooled into vast seas of glass. The planet itself groaned and shuddered under the stresses of Shed’s eruption. All life was cleansed from its rocky, dusty surface. The underground cities of Shaydan held only charred corpses, perfectly preserved for the ages by the hard vacuum that had killed even the tiniest microbes on the planet.

  And that was only the first explosion of Sheol.

  Thousands of years passed in an eyeblink. Millions flew by in the span of a heartbeat. Not that I had physical eyes or heart, but the eons swept by like an incredibly rapid stop-motion film as I watched from my godlike perch in spacetime.

  Sheol exploded again. And again. The Creators were not content to allow the star to remain. Bolts of energy streaked in from deep interstellar space to reach into the heart of Sheol and tear at it like a vulture eating at the innards of its chained victim.

  Each explosion released a pulse of gravitational energy that cracked the planet Shaydan the way a sledgehammer cracks a rock. I saw quakes rack that dead airless world from pole to pole, gigantic fissures split its surface from one end to another.

  Finally Shaydan broke apart. As Sheol exploded yet again the planet split asunder in the total silence of deep space—just as its reptilian inhabitants had always been silent, I thought.

  Suddenly the solar system was filled with projectiles whizzing about like bullets. Some of them were the size of small planets, some the size of mountains. I watched, fascinated, horrified, as these fragments ran into one another, exploding, shattering, bouncing away only to smash together once more. And they crashed into the other planets as well, pounding red Mars and blue Earth and its pale battered moon.

  One oblong mass of rock blasted through the thin crust of Mars, its titanic explosion liquefying the underlying mantle, churning up oceans of hot lava that streamed across that dead world’s face, igniting massive volcanoes that spewed dust and fire and smaller rocks that littered half the surface of the planet. Rivers of molten lava dug deep trenches across thousands of miles. Volcanic eruptions vomited lava and pumice higher than the thin Martian atmosphere.

  I turned my attention to Earth.

  The explosions of Sheol by themselves made little impact on the earth. With each nova pulse of the dying star the night skies of Earth glowed with auroras from pole to equator as subatomic particles from Sheol’s exploding plasma envelope hit the planet’s protective magnetic field and excited the ionosphere. The gravitational pulses that eventually wrecked Shaydan had no discernable effect on Earth; the nearly four hundred million miles’ distance between Sheol and Earth weakened the gravitational waves to negligible proportions.

  But the fragments of Shaydan, the remains of that dead and shattered world, almost killed all life on Earth.

  A million-year rain of fire sent thousands of stone and metal fragments from Shaydan plunging into Earth’s skies. Most were mere pebbles that burned up high in the atmosphere, brief meteors that eventually sifted down to Earth’s surface as invisible motes of dust. But time and again larger remnants of Shaydan would be caught by Earth’s gravity well and pulled down to the planet’s surface in fiery plunges that lit whole continents with their roaring, thundering passages.

  Time and again pieces of rock and metal would punch through Earth’s tortured air, howling like all the fiends of hell, to pound the surface with tremendous explosions. Like billions of hydrogen bombs all exploding at once, each of these giant meteors blasted the planet hard enough to rock it on its axis.

  Where they hit dry ground, they spewed up continent-sized clouds of dust that rose beyond the stratosphere and then spread darkness across half the world, blocking out sunlight for weeks.

  Where they hit the sea, they rammed through the thin layer of crustal rocks underlying the oceans and broke into the molten-hot mantle beneath. Centuries-long geysers of steam rose from such impact sites, clouding over the sunlight even more than the dust clouds of the ground impacts.

  Temperatures plummeted all around the world. At the once-temperate poles, salt water froze into ice. Sea levels dropped worldwide and large shallow inland seas dried up altogether. The shallow-water creatures who had lived in and around those seas perished; delicate algae and immense duckbills alike died away, deprived of their habitats.

  More of Shaydan’s fragments pounded down on Earth, breaking through the crustal rocks, triggering massive earthquakes as fissures the length of the planet widened, chains of new volcanoes thundered, and whole continents split apart. I saw the birth of the Atlantic Ocean and watched it spread, shouldering Eurasia and Africa apart from the Americas.

  Mountains rose from flatlands, continental blocks of land shifted and tilted, weather patterns were completely altered. High plateaus rose up to replace floodplains and swamps and more species of plants and animals were wiped out forever, totally destroyed by the incessant pounding the planet was suffering through.

  The climate grew cooler still as new mountain chains blocked old airflows and dry land replaced swamps and inland seas. Ocean currents shifted as new tectonic plates were created out of the fissures that cracked half the planet and old plates were pulled back into the hot embrace of the planetary mantle with shuddering fitful earthquakes th
at shattered still more habitats of life.

  If I had possessed eyes, I would have wept. Thousands upon thousands of species were dying, ruthlessly wiped out of existence because of me, because of what I had done. By destroying Sheol, by shattering Shaydan, I was killing creatures large and small, plant and animal, predator and prey, all across the face of the earth.

  Whole families of microscopic plankton were annihilated from pole to pole, entire species of green plants driven into extinction. The graceful shelled ammonites, which had withstood Set’s deliberate devastation of Earth more than a hundred million years earlier, succumbed and disappeared from the rolls of life.

  And the dinosaurs. Every last one of them. Gigantic fierce Tyrannosaurus and gentle duckbill, massive Triceratops and birdlike Stenonychosaurus—all gone, totally, forever gone.

  I did not mean to kill them. Yet I felt a cosmic guilt. My rage against Set and his kind had resulted in all this suffering, all this death. My personal revenge had been won at the price of scrubbing the earth nearly clean of life.

  I looked again at the new earth. Ice caps glittered at its poles. The rough outlines of the continents looked familiar now, although they were still not spaced across the globe in the way I remembered. The Atlantic was still widening, red-tipped volcanoes glowing down the length of the fissure that extended from Iceland to the Antarctic. North and South America were not yet connected, and the basin that would one day be the Mediterranean was a dry and grassy plain.

  I saw a forest of leafy trees standing straight and tall against the morning sun. The sky was clear. The bombardment of Shaydan’s fragments had ended at last.

  A gentle stream flowed through the woods. Grass grew on the ground right down to its banks. Flowers nodded brightly red and yellow and orange in the breeze while bees busily attended them. A turtle slid off a log and splashed into the stream, startling a nearby frog who hopped into a waterside thicket.

  Birds soared by in fine feathery plumage. And up on a high branch sat a tiny furred ratlike animal, its beady black eyes glittering, its nose twitching worriedly.

  This is all that’s left of life on Earth, I thought to myself. After the catastrophe that I caused, the planet has to make a new beginning.

  I realized that just as Set had scoured the Earth to make room for his own kind of reptilian life, I had inadvertently put the planet through another holocaust that would eventually lead to my kind of life. That ratlike creature was a mammal, my ancestor, the ancestor of all humankind, the progenitor of the Creators themselves.

  Once again I realized that I had been used by the Creators. I had given my body, my life, not merely to destroy Shaydan but to scrub the Earth clean and prepare it for the rise of the mammals and the human race.

  “Just as I was going to do.”

  It was Set’s voice speaking in my mind.

  “I am not dead, Orion. I live here on Earth with my servants and slaves—thanks to you.”

  BOOK IV: EARTH

  Though much is taken, much abides; and though

  We are not now that strength which in old days

  Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are—

  One equal temper of heroic hearts,

  Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

  Chapter 32

  Set lived.

  That single thought burned through my consciousness like a hot branding iron searing my flesh. He had survived the destruction of his race, of his planet, of his star. He still lived. On Earth.

  I had destroyed Sheol and Shaydan, wiped out most of the life-forms on Earth. In vain. I had failed to kill Set.

  “I will find you,” I said silently. Bodiless, with nothing but my essential awareness, I threw out the challenge to my deadly enemy. “I will find you and destroy you for all time.”

  “Come and try,” came Set’s immediate answer. “I look forward to meeting you for the final time.”

  His consciousness shone like a beacon against the black void of spacetime. I knew where and when he was. Concentrating every bit of willpower I possessed, I focused on Set. I willed myself through the tangled skein of the continuum to the place and time where he existed.

  A flash of absolute cold, a moment of utter darkness and cryogenic chill, then I opened my eyes and took in a deep breath of life.

  I was lying on my back, my naked body resting on warm soft earth. Tall trees rose all around me and the soft breeze brought scents of flowers and pine. I heard the melodious trill of a bird. My hands clutched at the ground and I pulled sweet-smelling grass to my face.

  Yes. Paradise once again.

  I sat up and looked around. The ground sloped gently before me. A brown bear shambled in the distance, trailed by two balls of fur that were her cubs. She stopped and raised her head, sniffing the air. If my scent alarmed her, she gave no notice. She just resumed her slow pace away from me, the cubs trotting along behind.

  I am Orion the Hunter, reborn. Naked and alone, my mission is to find the monster Set and kill him. Kill him as he intends to kill me. Destroy him and his kind forever as he intends to destroy my kind, the human race, forever.

  Smiling grimly to myself, I got to my feet and started walking slowly down the gentle slope, through the tall straight trees that dappled the afternoon sunshine with their swaying leafy branches. If this truly was part of the forest of Paradise, then Set would be at his fortress by the Nile.

  The sun was too high in the sky to judge directions, so I merely followed the first stream I came to, figuring that it would eventually lead to the Nile. I knew I had a long walk ahead of me, but I had learned from Set that time means little to one who can catapult himself through the continuum at will. Patience, I counseled myself. Patience.

  For days on end I walked alone, seeing neither another human being nor any of Set’s reptilians. This was a sparsely populated time, I recalled. There were probably fewer than a million humans living in the early Neolithic; their first great population explosion would not take place until they developed agriculture. How many of his own kind had Set been able to bring from Shaydan, I asked myself? Hundreds? Thousands?

  I knew he had transported dinosaurs from the Mesozoic Age to this time and place: the giant lizards and fighting dragons I had met earlier were sauropods and carnosaurs from the Cretaceous.

  The forest of Paradise was far from empty, however. The woods teemed with life, from tiny burrowing mice to growling, roaring lions. Using nothing but stones and wood, I quickly fashioned myself a serviceable spear and hand ax. By the second day I had a raw pelt of deerskin to wear as a loincloth. By the second week I had added a vest and leg wrappings tied with beef gut.

  I felt completely alone, of course. Yet I did not mind the solitude. It was a relief, a welcome respite from the turmoil I had been through and the dangers I knew lay ahead of me. I did not try to contact the Creators, remembering that such mental signals served as beacons that allowed Set to pinpoint my location. I wanted to remain hidden from him as much as I could. For the time being.

  He knew I was here. Day after day I saw long-winged pterosaurs gliding high in the bright blue skies. As long as I remained in the forest I was safe from their prying eyes, I reasoned. They could not see me through the leafy canopy of the trees.

  I wondered where the Creators were, if they knew what I was up to. Or were they scattering across the galaxy in this spacetime, still fleeing Set after Anya’s capitulation to him?

  I thought of Anya, of how she had betrayed me at one point in time yet swore she loved me at another. Was she watching over me now or running for her life? I had no way of knowing and in truth I did not care. All that would be settled later, after I had dealt with Set. If I survived, if I succeeded in killing him once and for all, then I could confront Anya and the other Creators. Until then I was on my own, and that’s the way I wanted it.

  Try as I might, I could not understand how the Creators could be running for their li
ves in one era and yet living peacefully in their mausoleum of a city in the distant future. Nor how Set’s home world could be utterly destroyed and yet he alive and burning for revenge against me here in the Neolithic.

  “How could you understand?” I once again heard the mocking voice of the Golden One in my memory. “I never built such understanding into you. Don’t even try, Orion. You were created to be my hunter, my warrior, not a spacetime philosopher.”

  Limited. Maimed from the instant of my conception. Yet I ached for understanding. I recalled the Golden One telling me that the spacetime continuum is filled with currents and tides that shift constantly and can even be manipulated by conscious effort.

  I gazed down the stream I had been following for many weeks. It was a fair-sized river now, flowing smoothly and silently toward some distant rendezvous with the Nile. To me, time was like a river, with the past upstream and the future downstream. A river that flowed in one direction, so that cause always came before effect.

  Yet I knew from what the Creators had told me that time was actually more like an ocean connecting all points of the spacetime continuum. You could sail across that wide ocean in any direction, subject to its own inherent tides and currents. Cause did not necessarily precede effect always, although to a time-bound creature such as myself who senses time linearly, it always seems that way.

  Each night I scanned the heavens. Sheol was still in the sky, but it looked sickly, dull. Except one night when it flared so brightly it cast bold shadows on the ground. It still shone bright enough to be seen at high noon the following day. Then it faded again.

  The Sun’s companion star was still exploding, blowing off whole layers of plasma, peeling itself like an onion until there would be nothing remaining except a central core of gases too cool to produce the fusion reactions that make a star shine. The Creators were still directing its destruction from the safety of the far future.