Ben Bova – Orion Among the Stars

We drove through the crowded shopping district, then past long rows of buildings that looked almost like ancient temples. The traffic here was lighter.

“Government offices,” Nella replied when I asked her what they were. She pointed to one as we swept past. “I usually work in there, back in the rear, you can’t see it from here. I don’t have a window, anyway.”

The street climbed up a steep hill.

“That’s the capitol, up in the old castle,” Nella told me. “That’s where we’re going.”

A full honor guard of Skorpis warriors lined the steps as we disembarked from the skimmer and entered the capitol building. I saw that they were fully armed. They fell in step behind us as Nella led me through a large and beautifully furnished entry hall toward a narrower corridor that ended in a metal door.

It was an elevator. The doors slid open to reveal two human soldiers, wearing sidearms only. Nella ushered me in, then came in behind me. The doors shut, leaving the Skorpis detachment outside.

We rode down, not up. “Medical exams,” Nella murmured when the elevator stopped. “We must make certain that you’re not carrying any disease organisms.”

Or bombs, I added silently. The examination was swift and almost completely automated. I was walked through four different scanning archways; then a white-coated human doctor watched as still another automated archway recorded my full-body scan.

“Completely normal,” the physician pronounced, running a finger across the readout display screen. “And extremely healthy.”

Satisfied that I was not a walking bomb, Nella and the two human soldiers led me back to the elevator. Again, we rode down, deeper into the bedrock upon which the city was built.

At last I was led to a massive blastproof parasteel door.

“I’ll have to leave you here,” Nella said, almost apologetic. “When the doors open, step right through. The Director is waiting for you on the other side.”

She hurried away, back to the elevator. I stood in front of the heavy doors, feeling a little silly to be standing there all alone.

Then the doors swung open as silently as the lid of a jewel box. I walked into a dimly lit room. I saw a long highly polished table that seemed to be made of granite or perhaps onyx. High-backed padded chairs lined both sides of the table. All of them empty.

The doors swung shut behind me, casting the room into even gloomier shadows.

There was someone sitting at the far end of the table, at its head. Alone, barely discernible in the dim lighting. I realized that I was bathed in light from a lamp in the ceiling high above, bathed in a cone of light while whoever it was at the head of the table hid in the shadows.

I stepped forward and the cone of light moved with me. Very well, I thought, I’ll go to the head of the table and see who’s there.

But I stopped before I had taken two steps. My eyes adjusted to the dimness and I recognized the figure watching me from the head of the table.

My knees sagged beneath me.

Anya!

Chapter 24

She did not smile at me. She did not give the slightest inkling that she knew who I was. She watched me with those incredibly beautiful gray eyes as I slowly, hesitantly, came toward her. Anya was wearing a simple cream-colored sleeveless dress; her hair was pulled back tightly, highlighting the sculptured plane of her cheekbones, the delicate yet strong curve of her jaw.

As I approached her, slowly, like a penitent making his awestruck way to a shrine, her face began to change. Her skin wrinkled, lost its youthful luster, began to look like faded parchment. Her hair turned gray, then white and lifeless, her hands became knobby claws, spotted with age.

“I am dying, Orion.” Her voice was the croak of a feeble old crone.

I rushed to her side. She barely had the strength to hold up her head. I reached out to take her in my arms, but found myself frozen in place, immobile, helpless.

“Aten and the others have sent you,” she said, her voice a weak, rasping wheeze. “They want to finish the work they began long ages ago.”

I could not even speak. I strained to break free, to reach her.

“Don’t struggle, Orion. You are in a stasis field and you will remain there until I determine what to do with you.”

But I’m not your enemy! I wanted to tell her.

Her withered face cracked into a sad smile. “My poor Orion. Of course you’re not my enemy. Not consciously. Not willingly. But you are Aten’s creature and you will do his bidding whether you want to or not. You have no choice. And I have no choice except to protect myself as best as I can and fight against the others with the last atom of my fading strength.”

You can’t be dying, I said silently.

“I am dying, Orion. It takes a long time, but the strength ebbs away a little more each day, each hour. It took an enormous effort for me to appear young, the way you once knew me, when you first entered this chamber. Now you see me as I am, with very little time left.”

No, I thundered silently. No!

Anya shook her head painfully. “I don’t want it to end this way, my beloved. I don’t want it to end at all. But I am trapped. Aten has won.”

“Never!” I roared. And with all the willpower in me, with all my anger against the smug self-styled Creators, with all the rage against my being used as a witless pawn in this battle across the millennia, with all the blood lust that had been built into me so that I would be a useful hunter, assassin, murderer-I broke free.

I tapped the energy of the stars, the energy of the continuum. Just as Aten and the others had sent me across space-time I reached out for Anya and leaped through the continuum, through the endless cold of absolute nothingness, across eons of time and parsecs of space.

And found the two of us standing in a forest. Tall trees dappling the warm high sun, colorful birds flitting through the foliage, squirrels scampering, insects buzzing.

“Orion!” Anya gasped. “How could you…”

Then she looked down at her hands and saw that she was young and strong again. I pulled her to me and kissed her tenderly.

“Do you know where we are?” I asked her.

She took in the entire world in a single glance. “On Earth,” she said. “In the forest of Paradise.”

The wide woodland that someday would become the Sahara Desert. We had lived here with a Neolithic band, happy and content once we had escaped Set and his reptilian invaders.

“You remember that we thought about staying here forever,” I said.

“Yes,” Anya replied. But she pulled slightly away from my arms. “Yet we decided that we could not enjoy Paradise when there were so many conflicts in the continuum that had to be resolved.”

“Perhaps we were wrong,” I said. “Why can’t we stay here and let the continuum solve its problems without us?”

She fixed me with those lustrous eyes of hers. “Because then Aten would solve the continuum’s problems. And he would take all this away from us. He hates you, Orion. He fears you. And he hates me for loving you.”

Aten fears me? That was a new concept for me to consider. “My powers are still growing,” I said. “Perhaps I could protect us, protect this whole segment of the continuum. We could be safe here.”

“Not from Aten. He’s robbed me of my power. He is deliberately killing me, and all the other Creators who sided with me.”

“But here you’re strong and young.”

“Yes,” she admitted, smiling sadly, “but that’s your doing, Orion, not mine. I can’t change form anymore; I’ve lost the power. Aten has stolen it from me. He wants me dead. Me, and all the other Creators who oppose him.”

“Why? What’s the reason for all this hatred and killing? Why the war? What’s this ultimate crisis?”

She almost laughed. “Orion, you’re like a little boy, asking so many questions. They’re not easily answered.”

I gestured toward a sunny glade where a swift stream burbled over rocks, hardly a few meters from where we stood. “Very well. Let’s go sit in the warmth of the sun and watch the deer come down to the stream and drink. And you can begin to explain it all to me.”

“I’m not sure that I can,” Anya said, but she walked along with me toward the grassy glade.

“Then tell me as much as my limited mind can understand,” I coaxed her.

“Your mind is not as limited as Aten thinks,” she told me. “He would be shocked to know that you can translate yourself across the continuum, and carry me along with you. And rejuvenate me, too.”

“If we go back to Prime and the era of the war, will you remain as youthful as you are now?”

“No,” she said ruefully. “I will be a dying old hag there, unless I exert almost all my failing strength to appear young for a few moments.”

“How did Aten do this to you?”

We had stepped out of the shade of the trees, into the welcoming sunlight. Walking to the edge of the stream, we sat oh the soft grass, our backs against a big sun-warmed boulder.

“This war between the Commonwealth and the Hegemony,” Anya said, “is really a continuation of the conflict we had over Troy.”

“But why-”

She hushed me with a finger on my lips. And began to explain as much as she could.

The human race had expanded through the solar system and out to the stars, not as a single unified species, but as a pack of squabbling, contending tribes. Humankind had not overcome its tribal animosities merely because we had achieved interstellar flight. The Creators had built that aggressive nature into us, and no amount of technology could remove it. Indeed, the more sophisticated our technology became, the more dangerous our weaponry. We could blast whole planets clean of all life. Now we were ready to shatter stars.

We had found other intelligent species among the stars. Some were far below us in technological and cultural development: cave dwellers or simple herders and pastoralists. By and large these were left alone by the expanding human species; they had nothing to offer us, neither trade nor knowledge nor competition. Scientists studied them, although now and again unscrupulous humans colonized their worlds and despoiled them.

We also found other species that were far beyond us and, like the Old Ones, wished to have nothing to do with humankind or its ilk. But there were several intelligent species among the stars, such as the Tsihn and the Skorpis, who were close to our own level of knowledge and power. With these we could trade. And fight.

Inevitably, the humans who colonized the stars polarized themselves into two competing groups: the Hegemony and the Commonwealth. Inevitably, they sought allies among the aliens of our own level. Inevitably, they went to war.

“Inevitably?” I asked Anya. “Aten told me that this war is actually a struggle to decide how the Creators will deal with the ultimate crisis.”

She bowed her head in acknowledgment. “I hadn’t realized he had revealed that much to you.”

“Have all of humankind’s wars been caused by the Creators?” I asked.

“No, not all of them. The human species is ferocious enough to start its own wars, without our instigation.”

“But what is this ultimate crisis?” I wanted to know. “Why do we have to kill billions of people and destroy whole planets? Why is the Commonwealth preparing to use a weapon that can blow away a star?”

Her eyes blazed. “They’re ready to use it? How do you know…?”

“The Old Ones.”

“Aten has made contact with the Old Ones?” Anya looked frightened.

“No, they refuse to speak with either the Commonwealth or the Hegemony.”

“Then how-”

“They spoke with me. They told me to warn both the Commonwealth and the Hegemony that they will not allow a star-destroying weapon to be used. They said they would eliminate all of us-all of humankind and all our allies-if we tried to destroy a star.”

Anya leaned back against the boulder. “They spoke to you?” She seemed unable to believe it.

I assured her that they did and gave her every detail of my contacts with the Old Ones. She probed into my mind and confirmed that it was all true.

“Then the Hegemony is lost,” she said at last. “And me with it. Aten will win. We were hoping to develop the star-destroyer ourselves. It was our last chance, a desperation weapon that we hoped would be so terrible it would force the Commonwealth to accept a truce.”

With a shake of my head, I repeated, “The Old Ones won’t permit it. They’ll wipe out all of us instead.”

Anya’s eyes looked old again, weary and defeated. “Then you’d better bring me back to Prime. I must tell the other Creators before they decide to go ahead with the weapon.”

“Tell me first how Aten is killing you. How is it possible?”

She shook her head again, utterly weary. “It’s a disease, Orion, a biological weapon that feeds on my metabolism. Aten developed it and planted it in all the Creators.”

“All of them?”

“Every one of us, long eons ago. The microbe lies dormant for ages, then slowly awakes and becomes active. Little by little, it saps your strength, slows your powers. Gradually its effects accelerate, until at last you wither and age and finally succumb.”

“But Zeus and Hera and the others-they didn’t show any signs of aging.”

A wan smile. “That’s because Aten is keeping them alive. As long as they stay with him, support his side of this war, he keeps them healthy.”

“And there’s nothing you can do? No cure? No way to restore yourself?”

“Don’t you think we’ve tried to find a cure? The organism mutates even as we study it; its basic genetic structure changes randomly. Aten spent millennia developing this disease. He experimented with hundreds of generations of humans to perfect it. Half the plagues in human history were his experiments.”

“Yet he can protect the Creators who accept his domination.”

“Apparently, although I wonder if he doesn’t plan to kill them, too, when he no longer needs them.”

“He always wanted to be the only god,” I muttered.

Anya seemed to grow weaker with the exertion of admitting her helplessness. Yet I could not believe that she and the other Creators could not overcome Aten’s treachery.

“If he can protect some of the Creators,” I wondered aloud, “why can’t you and the others find the protective agent for yourselves?”

“Because it is keyed to Aten himself,” she answered. “He reaches through space-time to alter the microbe whenever we attempt to counteract it. We develop a vaccine and he changes the microbe to be immune to it. We move through space-time to annihilate the microbe, and he moves through space-time to revive it. The game is endless and deadly.”

“And each time any of you translates across space-time it unravels the fabric of the continuum a little more,” I said, remembering what the Old Ones had told me.

“Yes,” Anya agreed grimly. “Already the continuum is so disturbed that we can no longer accurately trace the various space-time tracks. We can’t probe the cosmos anymore, Orion! We’re losing our ability to foresee the results of our actions. Chaos is crashing down upon us all. Absolute chaos!”

She was trembling with fear. I took her in my arms and held her while the warm sun of Paradise swung westward and began to set, turning the sky aflame with red and violet clouds. I watched the deer and smaller animals come to the stream for their evening drink while Anya remained huddled in my arms, as if asleep.

As the world grew dark, though, she lifted up her head and looked into my eyes.

“We must go back, Orion,” she said, tearfully. “I must tell the others that we cannot develop the star-killer. I must get them to see that we have lost the war.”

“And Aten has won?”

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *