by Ben Bova
“We’re cut off,” I said.
He bobbed his head again, seemingly as unconcerned as a man who faced nothing worse than an annoying equipment breakdown.
“We’re getting most of the incoming transmissions. The orders from Up Top—” he jabbed a finger toward the ceiling of the cave — “are reaching us just fine. And the weather maps. And the multispectral scans that show us where the brutes are massing their forces.”
He pointed to a video screen and tapped a few pads on its keyboard. The screen glowed to life, showing me a wild, sweeping circle of clouds, a gigantic cyclonic storm as seen from the cameras of an orbiting satellite.
“That’s us, that spot where the cursor is.” Marek tapped a flickering green dot on the lower left comer of the screen.
I could feel my eyes widening as I stared at the picture. The storm clouds covered about half the screen, but where the ground was clear, I could make out geography that looked tantalizingly familiar. A long peninsula jutted out into a large sea; it looked to me like Italy, except that the shape was subtly wrong and the “toe” of what I remembered as the Italian boot was definitely connected to what would someday be the island of Sicily. Above that one recognizable shape the ground was a featureless expanse of white. Glaciers covered most of Europe. This was truly the Ice Age.
Marek prodded me. “Seen enough? Ready for the bad news?”
I nodded.
He tapped at the keyboard again and the storm clouds disappeared from the screen, showing the ground — or rather the ice fields — beneath them. The view seemed to zoom down closer to the surface, until I could make out a few gray peaks of granite jutting above the snow.
“That’s our cave,” he said, gesturing at the flickering cursor again. “And here—” he touched a single key — “are the brutes.”
A forest of red dots sprang up against the whiteness of the ice and snow. There must have been at least a thousand of them, arranged in a ragged semicircle that faced our cave.
So we were cut off from the rest of our own forces and hugely outnumbered as we waited for the enemy — the brutes — to attack.
Young as they seemed to be, the soldiers around me were veterans of many battles. They wasted no time in worrying. They ate; they checked their weapons, and soon enough they began to stretch out on their wobbly cots and go to sleep.
“Might as well grab some sleep while you can,” Marek told me, as pleasantly as if he had not a worry in the world. “The storm won’t let up for another six hours, and the brutes won’t attack until it does.”
“Are you sure?”
His grin changed only slightly. “How long have we been fighting them? Have you ever known them to attack during a storm like this?”
I shrugged.
“Besides, we’ve got the field out there covered with scanners. When they start to make their move, we’ll have plenty of warning.”
But I noticed that he stayed by his equipment, fiddling with it, checking it over, searching for a way to break through the jamming and tell the commanders in orbit where we were and what we faced.
I saw Adena standing alone up by the entrance to the cave, already dressed in armor, her helmet masking her lustrous dark hair. Most of the others were either asleep or pretending to be. The cave was quiet except for the hum of electrical equipment and the louder, more ominous moaning of the storm wind outside.
Kedar was crouched beside a set of squat, heavy green cylinders. From the cryptic lettering stenciled on them, I knew they were the electrical power packs that supplied the energy to run the squad’s equipment. He cast a suspicious glance at me as I walked slowly toward Adena, but he said nothing and remained where he was, checking his power packs. Before I could say anything to her, Adena spoke to me. “You’d better get some rest.”
“I don’t need much sleep,” I replied. “I’m all right now.”
“Waiting is the worst part,” she said, her eyes peering out at the wind-driven snow. “If I had more troops, I’d go out now and attack them now, while they’re still getting themselves ready.”
“You don’t remember me?” I asked.
She turned to face me, her gray eyes troubled. “Should I? Have we met before?”
“Many times.”
“No.” She shook her helmeted head. “I would recall it if we had. And yet…”
“And yet I look familiar to you.”
“Yes,” she admitted.
“Think,” I urged her, feeling a burning intensity blazing inside me. “We have met before. Long ago — in the future.”
“The future?”
“A primitive hunting tribe, in the springtime that will follow this age of winter. The capital of a barbarian empire, thousands of years afterward. A giant metropolis, centuries later…”
She looked startled, troubled. “You’re insane,” she whispered. “Battle fatigue, or the shock of exposure to the storm.”
“ Think!” I insisted. “Close your eyes and see what comes into your mind when you think of me.”
She gave me an odd look, part disbelief, part distrust. But slowly she squeezed her eyes shut, and I concentrated with every ounce of my will power.
“What do you see?” I asked her.
For long moments she did not respond. Then: “A waterfall.”
“What else?”
“Nothing… trees, a few people… and… strange animals, four legs… I’m riding on its back… and… you! You’re riding next to me…”
“Go on.”
“One of the brutes. A big one. In a cave… No, it’s some kind of tunnel…” She gasped and her eyes flicked wide open.
“The rats,” I realized.
Adena’s trembling hands reached up toward her throat. “It’s horrible… they… they…”
“We both died in that era,” I said. “We have lived many lives, you and I.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Orion, the Hunter. I seek Ahriman, the Dark One, the one who turned the rats on you. I have been sent to all those different ages to find him, and kill him.”
“Sent? By whom?”
“Ormazd,” I answered.
She closed her eyes for the span of a heartbeat, and the air around us seemed to glow with a cold, silvery radiance. The cave, the storm outside, dimmed and almost disappeared. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Kedar frozen in time, his outstretched hand as still as a statue’s. Adena opened her eyes again, and all the knowledge of the continuum shone in them.
“Orion,” she said. “Thank you. The veil is lifted. I can see clearly now. I remember — more than you can.”
We were alone in a sphere of energy, beyond normal time, just the two of us in a place that she had created. My heart was hammering in my chest. “Adena, I lied to you a moment ago…”
She smiled, quizzically. “Lied? To me?”
“Perhaps not so much a lie, as not telling the full truth. I said I was sent to hunt down Ahriman.”
“That is true, I know.”
“But not the whole truth. The whole truth is that although Ormazd has sent me to kill the Dark One, the real reason I am here — the reason that drives me — is to find you. I’ve searched through a hundred thousand years to find you, and each time that I do, he takes you away from me.”
“Not this time, Orion,” she said.
“I love you, Adena… Aretha… whatever your true name is.”
She laughed, a low bubbling sound of joy. “Adena will do, for now. But you are always Orion, always constant.”
Shrugging, I replied, “I am what I am. I can’t be anything else.”
“And I love you, love what you are and who you are,” she said. “I will love you forever.”
I wanted to leap out into the raging storm and outshout the wind. I wanted to howl my triumph to Ormazd, wherever and whoever he was, and tell him that despite all his powers I had found my love and she loved me. I wanted to take her in my arms and hold her and feel the warmth other love.
B
ut, instead, I simply stood before her, almost paralyzed with happiness. I did not even reach out to take her hand in mine. I was content to glow in the happiness of having found her.
“Orion,” she said, speaking low and swiftly, “there is much that you don’t yet know, much that is still hidden from you. The one you call Ormazd has his reasons for the things he’s done to you…”
“And to you,” I said.
She smiled briefly. “I insisted on coming here. I made myself human, mortal, on his terms. What has happened to me is my own doing.”
“And Ahriman? What of him?”
Her face grew somber. “Orion, my love, when you learn the entire truth, it will not make you happy. Ormazd may be right in keeping it from you.”
“I want to know,” I insisted. “I want to know who I really am and why I’ve been made to do these things.”
She nodded. “Yes, I can see that you do. But don’t expect everything at once.”
“Start me with something,” I half-begged.
She pointed out toward the storm. “Very well. We start with here and now. This squad of troops is part of an army of extermination. Our task is to annihilate the brutes, to rid this planet of them.”
“And once that is done?”
“One task at a time, my love. Before anything else can happen, before you and I can meet each other at the foot of Mt. Ararat or make love together in Karakorum, before we can meet in New York City — we must annihilate the brutes.”
I took a deep breath. “Ahriman is among them?”
“Yes, of course. He is one of them. One of their mightiest leaders. And he knows, by now, that if he can prevent us from achieving the task Ormazd has set before us, he can win the ultimate victory.”
I puzzled in silence for a few moments. “You mean that if we fail to annihilate the brutes, then we humans — you and I — will be the ones to be wiped out?”
“If we fail to annihilate the brutes,” she replied, “the human race — your species, Orion — will die out forever.”
“Then the continuum will be broken. Space-time will collapse in on itself.”
“That is what Ormazd believes,” Adena said. “There is some evidence that it is true.”
“Some evidence?” I snapped. “We’re neck-deep in a war of annihilation, based on some evidence?”
She met my angry question with a smile. “Orion, I told you that there is much you still don’t understand. Forgive the words I used. I wouldn’t ask you to fight this battle if it wasn’t necessary.”
My anger melted away, although the confusion in my mind remained. “Who are you?” I heard myself ask. “What are you? And Ormazd, what is he…”
She silenced me by placing a finger on my lips. “I am as human and mortal as you are, Orion. I was not always so, but I have chosen to be. I can feel pain. I can die.”
“But then you live again,” I said.
“So do you.”
“Does everyone?”
“No, not everyone,” she said. “The capability is there. Every human has the capability to live beyond death. But very few realize it; very few can succeed in actually bringing that capability to fruition.”
“You can.”
“Yes, of course. You cannot, though. Ormazd must intervene for you. Otherwise, you would live only one lifespan and die just like the others of your kind.”
“My kind. Then you’re not of my kind. You said you chose to make yourself human. That means you’re… something else.”
Adena’s smile was sad with the knowledge of eons. “I am what your people will someday call a goddess, Orion. They will build temples to me. But I want to be human; I want to be with you — if Ormazd will permit me to be.”
CHAPTER 36
I stood there gazing into her gray eyes and saw whirlpools within whirlpools, wheels within wheels, the entire continuum of stars and galaxies and atoms and quarks spinning in an endless cycle of creation and change. I did not understand, could not understand, what Adena was telling me. But I believed every syllable that she spoke.
I was in love with a goddess, a goddess who would someday be worshipped by human beings, human beings who were created by the gods. The cycle of creation, the wheel of life, the continuum of the universe.
And this was the continuum that Ahriman sought to destroy.
The silver aura surrounding us faded away, and a blast of icy wind sent a shudder through me. I heard its howl, then the muted voices of the soldiers inside the cave. Kedar’s hand closed around the tool he was reaching for. We were back in normal space-time.
“The wind has shifted,” she said. “The storm will be passing by in another few hours. They’ll attack then.”
I focused my attention on her, on the here and now. “Can we hold out against them?”
“As long as our power holds. Once the battery packs are drained, though…” She let the thought dangle.
“There are others,” I probed, “other units in the area, aren’t there? Can we get help?”
Adena hesitated a moment, then said, “This is the last battle, Orion. The brutes that are gathering out there are all that’s left of them.”
“And us? You mean that we’re all that’s left of the human army?”
“We’re all the humans there are,” she said.
“What about the commanders, up in the orbiting ships?”
With a single small shake of her head, Adena replied, “There are no ships, no commanders. The transmissions that Marek is receiving come from Ormazd. He doesn’t want us to know it, but we are quite alone here. There will be no help for us.”
“I don’t understand!”
That bitter smile touched her lips again. “You’re not supposed to understand, Orion. I’ve already told you far more than Ormazd wants you to know.”
She stepped past me, no longer the goddess now, but the human commander of a lost, trapped, expendable detachment of human soldiers. I stood at the cave’s entrance, letting the icy wind slice through me, almost enjoying its bitter cold. The thoughts spinning around in my head led nowhere, but out in that waning storm, I knew, waited the ultimate enemy. This tiny group of men and women carried the fate of the continuum in their hands. Soon the battle would begin, and the victor would inherit the world, the universe, all eternity.
“Orion?”
I turned and saw Rena standing there, an apprehensive little frown on her elfin face.
She tried to smile. “The commander says we should all get into our armor now and check weapons.”
I nodded and followed her back to the area where the cots floated in ragged rows. The others were pulling on their armor suits. I found mine and followed Rena’s example: the bodyshell first, then the legs, the boots, the arms, the magically thin gloves, and finally the equipment belt. I hefted my helmet; it had a two-way communicator built into it and a visor that could slide down to cover the face completely. The visor was completely transparent from the inside but opaque from the outside. Once the troops had them on, I could not see their faces. Only the insignias emblazoned on their shoulders and the names stenciled on their chests told me who they were.
Once we had checked out the suits, Rena led me to the power packs that Kedar was nursing so tenderly and we charged up our suit batteries. Then we joined the others as they lined up for weapons issue.
Adena watched as Ogun, the squad’s burly, sour-faced armorer, grimly handed each soldier a pair of weapons: a long-barreled, rifle-like gun and a pistol that plugged into the suit’s battery pack.
When I stepped up before him, Ogun scowled at me and turned to Adena. “Give him a pistol,” she said. “He will work the heavy gun, with me.”
The pistol was like the one I had found on me when I had been stranded here out in the storm. I hefted it in my gloved hand.
“It has its own battery,” Rena said, “but regulations are that you plug it into the suit. That extends its range and duration.”
I glanced down at her and nodded. She looked str
ange in armor and helmet, almost like a child playing at war. But this was no game, as I could tell from the sober expressions on the faces around me.
They were an experienced squad. Once armed, they moved out toward the cave’s mouth and took up positions where they could cover each other with protective fire while at the same time raking the sloping field of snow that led up to the cave.
I stood uncertainly in the middle of the cave, watching the soldiers and not knowing what I should do. Rena gave me a fleeting smile and hurried to a large metallic crate that rested at the side of the cave. She touched a few buttons on its top and it levitated several inches from the floor and followed her like a dutiful pet dog as she joined the others at the cave’s entrance.
“You can help me,” Ogun said. His voice, like his looks, was surly. He headed back toward the deeper recesses of the cave. I followed him.
“Rena’s biowar,” he told me, without my asking a question. “Her equipment checks what the brutes are throwing at us in the way of viruses and microbes. We lost a lot of good people before we realized what they could do with those little killers. Instant poisons. Paralyze you, tear your guts inside out, make you blind, choke you — they got some beauties.”
“They work instantly?” I asked.
“Faster than you can blink your eyes,” he said as we ducked through a low passageway worn in the rock. “That’s why you got to keep your visor down and locked and breathe nothing but the suit’s air until Rena gives us the all-clear. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
His face contorted in what might have been a grin. Despite his sour looks and demeanor, Ogun was a man who cared about the others around him. “Well,” he huffed, “there it is. Let’s get it into position.”
Itwas a heavy-looking mass of tubes and coils that looked to me vaguely like a cannon. Ogun activated its gravitic lifters and it floated up off the cold rock floor. We nudged it down the shadowy passageway toward the front of the cave, with him warning me every other step of the way to be careful not to bang it against the stone wall.
“Are you sure that there’s only one entrance to this cave?” I asked as we guided the heavy weapon toward the entrance.