Orion in the Dying Time Part 18

"Anya, my love. Can you hear me?"

No response.

I concentrated harder. I brought up a mental picture of Anya, her beautiful face, her expressive lips, her strong cheekbones and narrow straight nose, her midnight black hair, her large gray eyes s.h.i.+ning and luminous, regarding me gravely with depths of love in them that no mortal had a right to hope for.

"Anya, my beloved," I projected mentally. "Hear me. Answer my plea."

I heard nothing, no reply whatever.

Maybe she's already dead, I thought bleakly. Maybe Set has raked her flesh with his vicious talons, torn her apart with his hideous teeth.

Then I sensed the tiniest of flickers, a distant spark, a silver glint against the all-encompa.s.sing darkness of my soul. I focused every neuron of my mind on it, every synapse of my being.

It was Anya, I knew. That infinitesimal spark of silver led me like a guiding star.

I felt almost the way I had when I had entered Juno's simple mind. But now I was projecting my consciousness into a mind infinitely more complex. It was like falling down an endlessly spiraling chute, like stepping from subterranean darkness into blinding sunlight, like entering an overpoweringly vast universe. I knew how Theseus felt in the palace of Knossus, trying to thread his way through a bewildering maze.

Anya said nothing to me, gave no indication even that she knew I had entered her mind. I thought I understood why. If she gave any hint at all that she recognized my presence, Set would immediately know that I was awake and active-at least mentally. The only way to keep me hidden was not to make any response to me at all.

Swiftly, wordlessly, I gave her the details of my contact with Zeus. No reaction from her, none at all. She was guarding her mind from Set with every defensive barrier she could maintain. I wondered if she really knew I was there, so completely did she ignore me.

Set was still lounging on his throne, horned face staring at Anya, tail twitching unconsciously behind him. Poor Juno's body had been removed and the bloodstains cleaned away. I wondered how long it had been since he had smashed me into senselessness. Perhaps only minutes had pa.s.sed. Perhaps days.

Anya was not in pain. Set was not torturing her or even threatening her. They were speaking together, almost as equals. Even the deadliest of foes have reasons to communicate peacefully, at times.

"You are prepared, then, to leave this planet forever?" I heard Set's voice in Anya's mind.

"If there is no alternative," she replied, also without speaking.

"What guarantee do I have that you will keep the agreement?"

"Agreement?" I asked Anya, but still there was no response from her. It was as if I did not exist, as far as she was concerned.

"You have won. Your power is too great, too firmly entrenched here, for us to dislodge you. If you permit us to escape with our lives and agree not to pursue us further, the planet Earth is yours forever."

"Yes, but how do I know I can trust you? In a thousand years or a thousand million, how can I be certain that you will not return to battle against my descendants?"

Anya shrugged mentally. "You will have destroyed the human race. We will have no means of fighting you then."

"You could create more humans, just as you created the one called Orion."

"No. That was an experiment that failed. Orion has been of no use to us against you."

I burned with shame at Anya's words. They were true, and it hurt me to admit it.

"Then you have no intention of trying to bring him with you when you leave the earth?"

"How could he accompany us?" Anya replied. "He is nothing more than a human. He cannot change his form. He cannot exist in the depths of interstellar s.p.a.ce, where we will make our new homes."

A shuddering horror filled me. Anya and all the Creators were indeed fleeing from Earth and abandoning the human race to extinction at Set's hands. Abandoning the entire human race. Abandoning me.

"Then you leave this creature Orion to me?" Set's words were half request, half demand.

"Of course," Anya replied carelessly. "He is of no further value to us."

Deep in my underground cell I screamed a shriek of agony like a wild animal howling with pain and fright and the utter furious agony of betrayal.

BOOK III: h.e.l.lI fled, and cri'd out Death Death;h.e.l.l trembl'd at the hideous Name, and sigh'dFrom all her Caves, and back resounded Death Death.

Chapter 23.

I did not withdraw from Anya's mind. I was driven out of it, repelled like an invading bacterium, thrown out like an unwanted guest.

For hours I howled like a chained beast in my dark coffin of a cell, unable to move, to stand, unable even to pound the walls until my fists became b.l.o.o.d.y pulps. I huddled there in a fetal position, wailing and bellowing to a blindly uncaring universe. Betrayed. Abandoned by the only person in the continuum whom I could love, left to my fate as callously as if I were nothing more to her than the husk of a melon she had tasted and then thrown away.

Anya and the other Creators were fleeing for their lives, reverting to their true physical forms, globes of pure energy that can live among the stars for all eternity. They were abandoning the human race, their own creations, to be methodically wiped out by Set and his reptilian brethren.

What did it matter? I wept bitterly, thinking of how foolish I had been ever to believe that a G.o.ddess, one of the Creators, could love a man enough to risk her life for his sake. Anya had been all fire and courage and adventure when she had known that she could escape whatever danger we faced. Once she realized that Set had the power to truly end her existence, her game of playing human ended swiftly.

She had chosen life for herself and her kind, and left me to die.

I lost track of time, languis.h.i.+ng and lamenting in my cell. I must have slept. I must have eaten. But my conscious mind had room for nothing but the enormity of Anya's betrayal and the certainty of approaching death.

Let it come, I told myself. The final release. The ultimate end of it all. I was ready to die. I had nothing to live for.

I don't consciously recall how or when it happened, but I found myself on my feet once more, standing in Set's audience chamber again, facing him on his elevated throne.

Blinking stupidly in the dull flickering ruddy light of the torches flanking his throne, I realized that I could move my arms and legs. I was not fettered by Set's mental control.

His enormous bulk loomed before me. "No, there are no chains of any kind holding you," his words formed in my mind. "We have no need of them now. You understand that I can crush you whenever I choose to."

"I understand," I replied woodenly.

"For an ape you show promising intelligence," his mocking voice echoed within me. "I see that you have pieced together the fact that I intend to bring my people to this world and make Earth our new home."

"Yes," I said, while my mind wondered why.

"Most of my kind are content to accept their fate upon Shaydan. They realize that Sheol is an unstable star and will soon explode. Soon, that is, in terms of the universe's time scale. A few million years from now. Soon enough."

"You are not content to accept your fate upon a doomed planet," I said to him.

"Not at all," Set replied. "I have spent most of my life shaping this planet Earth to my purposes, fas.h.i.+oning its life-forms into a fitting environment for my people."

"You travel through time, just like the Creators."

"Better than your puny Creators, little ape," he answered. "Their pitiful powers were based on the tiny slice of energy that they could obtain from your yellow sun. They allowed most of the sun's energy to waft off into s.p.a.ce! Unused. Wasted. A foolish mistake. A fatal fatal mistake." mistake."

He hissed with pleasure as he continued, "My own people have depended on the wavering energy from dying Sheol. I alone understood how much energy can be tapped from the molten core of a planet as large as Earth. Taken in its totality, a star's energy output is millions of times stronger. But no one uses the total output of a star, only the miserable fraction that their planet intercepts."

"But a core tap..." I muttered.

"Tapping the planet's molten core gives me more energy, enormously concentrated energy, constant and powerful enough to leap across the eons of s.p.a.ced me as easily as you can hop across a puddle. That is why I have won this planet for myself and your Creators are running for their lives, scattering out among the distant stars."

I said nothing. There was nothing for me to say. My only question was when Set would put me to death, and how long it would take.

"I have no intention of killing you soon," he said in my mind, knowing my thoughts without my speaking them. "You are my prize of victory over your Creators, my trophy. I will exhibit you all across Shaydan."

I looked up into his red snake's eyes and realized what he had in mind. Most of his kind did not believe that they could be saved by migrating to Earth. Set intended to show me to them, to prove that he was master of the planet, that there would be no resistance to their relocation.

"Good again, thinking ape! You perceive my motives and my intentions. I will be the savior of my kind! The conqueror of an entire world and the savior of my people! That is my accomplishment and my glory."

"A glorious accomplishment indeed," I heard myself answer. "Exceeded only by your vanity."

"You grow bolder, knowing that I do not intend to kill you immediately." I could sense anger in his words. "Be a.s.sured that you will die, in a manner and at a time that will not merely please me, but will convince all of Shaydan that I am to be obeyed by one and all. Obeyed and adored."

"Adored?" I felt shock at his words. "Like a G.o.d?"

"Why not? Your b.u.mbling Creators allowed themselves to be wors.h.i.+ped by their human sp.a.w.n, did they not? Why should not my own people adore me for saving our race? I alone have conquered the Earth. I alone have opened the gates to Shaydan's salvation."

"By killing off billions of Earth's creatures."

Set shrugged his ma.s.sive shoulders. "I created most of them, they are mine to do with as I please."

"You didn't create humankind!"

He hissed laughter. "No, I did not. Those who did are fleeing to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. The human race has lost its reason for existence, Orion. Why should they be allowed to last beyond their usefulness, any more than the dinosaurs or the trilobites or the ammonites?"

I will not be allowed to outlive my usefulness, either, I thought. Once I ceased being useful to the Creators they abandoned me. Once I cease being useful to Set he will kill me.

"Before you die, overgrown monkey," Set went on tauntingly, "I will allow you to satisfy your apish curiosity and see the world of Shaydan. It will be the final satisfaction of your existence."

Chapter 24.

Set lumbered off his throne and led me down long dim corridors that sloped downward, always downward. The light was so deeply red, so dim to my eyes, that I might as well have been blind. The walls seemed blank, although I felt certain they were decorated with mosaics the way the upper corridors had been. I simply could not perceive them.

Set's ma.s.sive form marched in front of me, the scales of his broad heavily muscled back glinting in the gloomy light, his tail swinging left and right in time to the strides of his clawed feet. Those talons clicked on the hard floor. Absurdly, his swinging tail and clicking claws made me think of a metronome. A metronome counting off the final moments of my life.

We pa.s.sed through laboratories and workrooms filled with strange equipment. And still we went on, downward, deeper. I tried to see these interminable corridors through Set's eyes, but his mind was completely s.h.i.+elded from me. I could not penetrate it at all.

He felt my attempt, though.

"You find the light too dim?" he asked in my mind.

"I am nearly blind," I said aloud.

"No matter. Follow me."

"Why must we walk?" I asked. "You have the ability to leap across s.p.a.cetime, yet you walk from one end of your castle to another? No elevators, no moving belt-ways?"

"Jabbering monkey, we of Shaydan use technology to help us do those things we could not do unaided. Unlike your kind, however, we do not have a simian fascination with toys. What we can accomplish with our unaided bodies we do for ourselves. In that way we help to maintain a balance with our environment."

"And waste hours of time and energy," I grumbled.

I sensed a genuine amus.e.m.e.nt from him. "What matter a few hours to one who can travel through s.p.a.cetime at will? What matter a bit of exertion to one who is a.s.sured of feeding?"

I realized that it had been too long since my last meal. My stomach felt empty.

"One of your mammalian shortcomings," Set told me, sensing my thought. "You have this absurd need to feed every few hours merely to maintain your body temperature. We are much more in harmony with our environment, two-footed monkey. Our need for food is modest compared to yours."

"Regardless of the environmental fitness of my kind," I said, "I am hungry."

"You will eat on Shaydan," Set answered in my mind. "We will both feast on Shaydan."

At last we entered a large circular chamber exactly like the one at the heart of his fortress in the Neolithic. Perhaps the same one, for all I could tell, although now it showed no signs of the battle Anya and I had put up there.

At the thought of Anya, even the mere mention of her name, my entire body tensed and a flame of anger flared through me. More than anger. Pain. The bitter, racking anguish of love that had been scorned, of trust that had been shattered by deceit.

I tried to put her out of my mind. I studied the chamber around me. Its circular walls were lined with row after row of dials and gauges and consoles, machines that controlled and monitored the t.i.tanic upwelling energy rising from the core tap. In the center of the chamber was a large circular hole, domed over with transparent shatterproof plastic, I saw, not merely the metal railing that had been there in the Neolithic fortress.

The chamber pulsated with energy. Set's entire castle was hot, far hotter than any human being would feel comfortable in. But this chamber was hotter still; some of the heat from the earth's molten core leaked through all the machines and safety devices and s.h.i.+elds to make this chamber the anteroom of h.e.l.l.

Set reveled in it. He strode to the plastic dome and peered down into the depths of the core tap, its molten energy throwing fiery red highlights across the horns and flaring cheekbones of his red-scaled face. Like a sunbather stretching out on a beach, Set spread his powerful arms around that scarlet-tinged dome in a sort of embrace, soaking up the heat that penetrated through it.

I stood as far from it as I could. It was too hot for my comfort. Despite my efforts to control the temperature of my body, I still had to allow my sweat glands to do their work, and within seconds I was bathed in a sheen of perspiration from head to toe.

After several moments Set whirled back toward me and pointed to a low platform on the other side of the circular chamber. Its square base was lined by a series of black tubular objects, rather like spotlights or the projectors used to cast pictures against screens. Above the platform the low ceiling was covered with similar devices.

Wordlessly we stepped onto the platform. Set stood slightly behind me and to one side. He clamped a taloned hand on my shoulder; a clear sign of possession for any species that has hands. I gritted my teeth, knowing that I was no match for him either physically or mentally. Not by myself. A human being without tools is not a n.o.ble savage, I realized; he is a helpless naked ape, soon to be dead.

Halfway across the room I could see our reflection in the plastic dome that topped the core tap. Distorted weirdly on its curving surface, my own grim face looked pale and weak with Set's powerful shoulders and expressionless reptilian head rising above me. And his claws clamped on my shoulder.

Suddenly we were falling, dropping in utter darkness as if the world had disappeared from beneath our feet. I felt a bitter cryogenic cold as I whirled in nothingness, disembodied yet freezing, falling, frightened.