Orion o-1

by Ben Bova

  “But somewhere, sometime, one of them must have done a thing for the first time. There has to be a first time for everything.”

  She looked sharply at me. I was challenging the safely ordered routines of her world, and she was not altogether happy about it.

  But her expression softened and she asked, “Do you really think we could reach the top?”

  “Yes, if we work together.”

  She turned back to look at the cliffs again. They were steep, all right, but even an amateur climber could handle them, I knew. With utter certainty within me, I was sure that Ormazd had programmed me with much more than an amateur’s strength and skill.

  Ava tore her gaze away from the looming cliffs and turned to look back at the golden fields of grain we had crossed. The afternoon breeze sent a swaying wave through them. She grinned at me.

  “Yes!” she said eagerly. “I want to see what’s at the top of the cliffs, too!”

  We used vines for ropes, and our bare, travel-hardened feet had to do without climber’s boots. But the cliffs were nowhere near as forbidding as they had seemed at first glance. It was a two-hour struggle, but we reached the top at last, panting, sweaty, weary.

  The view was worth it.

  Ava stood puffing, grinning broadly, and wide-eyed, as we looked far to the east and west and saw valley after valley, river after river, all running southward through golden fields. Above us loomed Ararat, towering high into the cloudless, brilliant sky, its snowy cap glistening in the sun, a thin stream of smoke climbing from the higher of its two peaks. And beyond, farther to the north, the land dazzled with ice, glittering like a vast diamond that hurt the eyes if you stared at it too long. That vast glacier still covered most of Europe, I knew, although it was retreating northward as the Ice Age surrendered to a more humane climate.

  “There’s so much to see!” Ava shouted. “Look at how small our valley seems from here!”

  “It’s a big world,” I agreed.

  She gazed down into the valley again and slowly her face lost its exultant happiness. She began to frown again.

  “What’s wrong, Ava?”

  Turning toward me, she said, “If we lived away from the others, if we found a valley for ourselves where no other clan lived… just you and I together…”

  I felt my jaw go slack. “What are you saying?”

  There were no words in her language for what she was feeling.

  “Orion,” she said, her voice low, trembling, “I want to be with you; I want to be your woman.”

  I reached out to her and she fled into my arms. I held her tightly and felt her strong, lithe body press against mine. For an eternity we stood there, locked in each other’s arms, warmed by the summer sun and our own passionate blood.

  “But it cannot be,” she whispered so softly that I could barely hear her.

  “Yes, of course it can be. This world is so large, so empty. We can find a valley of our own and make our home in it…”

  She looked up at me and I kissed her. I didn’t know if kissing had been invented yet by these people, but she took to it naturally enough.

  But when our lips parted there were tears in her eyes.

  “I can’t stay with you, Orion. I am Dal’s woman. I can’t leave him.”

  “You can if you want to…”

  “No. He would be shamed. He would have to organize the men of the clan to hunt us down. He would have to kill you and bring me back with him.”

  “He’d never find us,” I said. “And even if he did, he’d never be able to kill me.”

  “Then you would have to kill him,” Ava replied. “Because of me.”

  “No, we can go so far away…”

  But she shook her head as she gently disengaged herself from my arms. “Dal needs me. He is the leader of the clan, but how could he lead them if his woman deserts him? He is not as confident as you think; at night, when we are alone together, he tells me all his fears and doubts. He fears you, Orion. But he is brave enough to overcome that fear because he sees that you can be helpful to the clan. He places his responsibility to the clan above his fear of you. I must place my responsibility to the clan above my desire for you.”

  “And me?” I asked, feeling anger welling up inside me. “What about me?”

  She looked deep into my eyes. “You are strong, Orion, with a strength that no ordinary man has. You were sent among us to help us, I know that. Taking me from Dal, from the clan, would not be a help. It would destroy Dal. It could destroy the clan. That is not why you have come among us.”

  I could have replied. I could have simply picked her up and carried her off. But she would have run back to her clan the instant I relaxed my hold on her. And she would have hated me.

  So I turned away from her and glanced at the sun, low on the western horizon.

  “It’s time to start back,” I mumbled. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 29

  The grain grew taller than my shoulders, and the people of all the clans grew more excited and impatient to harvest it with each passing day.

  I stayed aloof from them. I had taught them all I could. Now I waited, just as they did. But not for the time of harvesting. I waited for Ahriman. He would return; he was planning his attack on these people, on me, on the whole future existence of the human race. I waited with growing impatience.

  I combed the valley, poked into the caves among the rocky cliffs, seeking the Dark One. All I found were snakes and bats, clammy, cold dampness and dripping water. And one cave bear that would have crushed my skull with a swipe of its mighty paw if I had not been fast enough to duck out of its way and scramble out of its cave before it could get to me.

  I knew he was there, somewhere, biding his time, picking his point of attack. All I could do was to wait. Ormazd did not appear to me again to give me more information or even the slight comfort of showing me that he still existed and still cared that I existed. I was alone, placed here like a time bomb on a buried mine, waiting to be triggered into action.

  Ava kept her distance from me. And the less I saw of her, the more I did of Dal. He came by my hut almost daily now. At first I thought he was trying to work up the nerve to pick a fight with me. But gradually, as he tried to strike up a conversation in his halting, pained way, I realized that he was trying to work up the nerve for something else, something that was far more difficult for him than merely fighting.

  “The grain will be ready to cut soon,” he said, late one afternoon. I was sitting on the ground in front of my hut, fitting a new flint blade to the stone hilt of my knife. One of the clan’s elders was an artist when it came to making sharp flint tools; that was why he was allowed to remain with the clan even though he was too old and slow to hunt.

  Dal squatted down on his haunches beside me, forcing a smile. “If it doesn’t rain in the next two days, then we can cut the grain.”

  “That’s good,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  I looked up at him. “What’s troubling you, Dal?”

  “Troubling me? Nothing!” He said it so sharply that it was clear he was deeply bothered.

  “Is it something that I’ve done?” I asked him.

  “You? No, of course not!”

  “Then what is it?”

  He traced a finger along the dirt, like an embarrassed schoolboy.

  “Is it about Ava?” I asked.

  His glance flicked up at me, then down to the ground again. I tensed.

  “It concerns her,” Dal said, “and the things you’ve been telling her. She thinks we should stay here in this valley… all the time.”

  I said nothing.

  “She claims that you said we could pen the animals against the cliffs and stay here even when the snows come,” he gushed out rapidly, as if afraid of stopping, “and next spring we can plant seed from the grain all across the valley and make more grain than anyone has ever seen before.”

  He looked at me almost accusingly. “I told you these things, too,” I replied. “I
told you both.”

  Dal shook his head. “But she really believes them!”

  “And you don’t.”

  “I don’t know what to believe!” He was honestly confused. “We live well here, that’s true. We could move into caves when the snow comes. As long as we have fire we can stay in the caves and keep them warm and dry.”

  “That’s true,” I said.

  “But our fathers never did this. Why should we stop living the way our fathers have always lived?”

  “Your fathers have not always lived this way,” I told him. “Long ages ago your ancestors lived far from here, in a land where it was always warm and they could pick fruit from the trees and live a life of ease and happiness all year long.”

  His eyes showed that he did not want to believe me. But he asked, “Why did they leave such a paradise, then?”

  “They were driven out,” I replied, “by a change in the climate. The trees withered. The land changed. They had to move elsewhere. They began to roam the land, as you do, following the herds of game.”

  “But each year the herds get smaller,” Dal said, his mind focusing on the present and dismissing old legends that he only half believed. “Each year we must travel farther and our kills are harder to make.”

  I gestured toward the fields. “But the grain grows high. And there are enough game animals here to feed all the gathered clans, if you keep them penned up and let them breed. They will provide you with all the meat and milk and wool you need, if you learn how to take care of them.”

  He was truly perplexed. It was a gigantic hurdle for him.

  “The grain is good,” he admitted slowly. “We make food from it — and a drink that makes you feel as if you’re flying.”

  Bread and beer, the two staples of farming. I wondered which offered the bigger lure in Dal’s mind and swiftly decided that beer would be more important to him than bread.

  “Then why not stay here, where the grain grows so well? You can store it in the caves after you’ve cut it. If you grow enough grain, you can even feed some of it to the animals you keep.”

  With a deepening scowl, Dal wondered aloud, “But what would the spirits of our fathers do if we stopped following the game trails? How would they feel if we turned our backs on their ways?”

  I shrugged. “They will probably rejoice that you have found a better way to live.”

  “The elders say that the grain won’t grow if we stay here all year long.”

  “Why wouldn’t it grow?”

  “Its spirit would wither if we watched the fields all the time.”

  I wondered if the elders were groping toward the idea of environmental pollution. But I said, “The grain grows just as the sun shines and the rain falls. It is all completely natural, and it will happen whether you are here to watch it or not.”

  “Hunting is good,” Dal muttered. “Hunting is our way of life.”

  And I’m going to destroy that way of life and turn you into farmers. In my heart, I could see that Dal’s every instinct was urging him away from the strange new ideas I had planted in his mind. For untold thousands of generations humankind had been hunters. Their minds and bodies were shaped for hunting; their societies were built around it. Now I was telling them that they could live fatter, easier lives by giving up their hunting ways and turning to farming and herding. It was true; farming would be the first step toward total domination of the planet by humankind. But they would have to turn their backs on the “natural” lives they now led; they would have to abandon the freedom they had, the rough democracy in which each clan member was as good as any other.

  For an instant I wondered if I was doing them any good. But then I realized that it was not a choice between lifestyles; the choice these people had was between farming and eventual extinction. They would have to pay a bitter price for survival, but it was either pay that price or die.

  Is this part of Ormazd’s plan? I wondered. Does Ormazd have a plan? Or is he merely determined to keep himself safe from the Dark One, no matter what it costs? As I sat there studying Dal’s face, so deeply etched with doubt and concentration, I was tempted to tell him to forget the whole thing and keep on living as he had always lived. But then I thought of the boy who had died of a simple infection. I thought of how lean and ragged these people were when they were following the game trails and living off what they could catch each day. I remembered that their elders were at an age that would be considered still youthful in later centuries. I realized that the clan’s hunting life kept them just barely alive; they lived constantly on the edge of extinction. Ahriman would not have to push hard to wipe out the human race.

  “Hunting has been your way of life, it is true,” I said to Dal, “and a good way of life for you and the clan. But it is not the only way. It is not the best way.”

  He looked unconvinced and very troubled. Dal was an honest, forthright man. He did not know what to believe, and he was too honest to make up his mind before he was convinced, one way or the other.

  “Ava wants to stay,” he muttered, “but the elders say we must not.”

  I put a hand on his shoulder. “Talk to the clan. Talk to all the people who have come to the valley. Tell them what I have told you. If you like, I will speak to them myself and tell them how the grain grows. The spirits of your fathers will not be angry with you; they will be pleased that you have found a better way to live.”

  He smiled slowly. “Do you really believe they will be pleased?”

  “Yes. I’m sure they will be.”

  Dal rose to his feet and stretched his cramped legs. Nodding his head, he told me, “I will talk to the clans. I will tell them what you have told me.”

  He felt relieved. He didn’t have to make the decision. He would put it to a vote. That lifted the burden from his shoulders. Or so he thought.

  Even in this simple Neolithic society, with fewer than a hundred adults to deal with, it took three nights before Dal could assemble all the people to listen to him. I was fascinated to watch a primitive bureaucracy at work. Each clan had to discuss the idea of such a meeting within itself, with the elders going into painstaking detail on how such clan conferences had been arranged in the past, where their clan sat in relation to other clans, who was responsible for building the fire, who would speak and in what order. For these supposedly unsophisticated folk, the occasion of a clan gathering was an event, an entertainment, as well as a serious time of decision-making. They savored the arrangements and the protocol, fussing over the details for the sheer enjoyment and excitement of having something to fuss over.

  At last the clans gathered around a big central bonfire that had been built closer to the Goat Clan’s huts than any other clan’s. The elders of each clan spent the first few hours of the night retelling their most important stories, each old man establishing his clan’s history and stature by sing-songing legends that each person sitting around the fire knew by heart, word for word. But they all sat through each tale of monsters and heroes, gods and maidens, bravery and cunning and seemed to enjoy themselves thoroughly, or at least as much as a twentieth-century family would enjoy spending an evening watching television.

  Finally it was Dal’s turn to put his proposition to the assembled multitude. It was fully dark now, the night well advanced. Overhead, despite the glowing fire, I could make out the stars that presaged autumn: my namesake Orion was climbing above the saw-toothed horizon, looking down at me. He seemed different from the way I knew him from other eras, still easily recognizable, but vaguely lopsided. And there were four bright stars in the Belt, instead of just three.

  Dal was no orator, but he spoke in a plain, clear way about the idea of staying in the valley through the winter. He hemmed and hawed a little, but he got across the basic idea that the clans could pen the animals against the cliffs and slaughter them at their leisure instead of tracking them down, that they could live off the grain which grew in the valley and could even grow more grain than sprang up naturally.

&nbs
p; Everyone listened patiently without interrupting, although I could see many of the elders shaking their heads, their gray beards waving from side to side in perfect stubborn unison.

  Finally, Dal said, “And if you want Orion’s words about it, he will be glad to tell you. This is all his idea, to begin with.”

  A man Dal’s age, from the Wolf Clan, jumped to his feet. “We are not meant to stay in one place! This valley is prepared for us each year by our spirit-fathers. How can they prepare the grain if we stay here watching all year long? The spirits will go away and the grain will die!”

  Dal turned uneasily toward me. I had been sitting to one side of the Goat Clan’s area, placed off at the end so that I was almost by myself, in a space between clans. I got to my feet and took a single step closer to the fire so that they could all see me well. I wanted them to see for themselves that although I was a stranger, I was a man and not one of the forty-armed monsters the elders had sung about earlier.

  “I am Orion,” I said, “a newcomer to this part of the world. I love to hunt as much as any man here. But I know that there is a better way to live, a way that will bring all of us much pleasure, much comfort — a way that will keep us well fed all year long. Babies will be fat and healthy even in the winter’s worst cold and snow. We will all be able to…”

  That was as far as I got. An explosion of bloodcurdling screams shattered the night, and flames seemed to burst all around us.

  Everyone jumped every which way. A spear thudded into the ground near my feet. Screaming and yelling erupted from everywhere as men and women toppled, spears driven through their bodies. The bonfire hissed as blood spattered onto it. The clanspeople ran for their huts, terrified.

  But not Dal. “They’re burning the grain!” he roared. “Get your weapons!”

  Through the flickering flames I saw naked men painted in hideous colors dashing toward the huts. Some held torches, others spears.

  “Demons!” Ava screamed. And they did look unhuman, the way they were painted, with the firelight glinting off their glistening bodies.