“Identify yourself!” said the larger of the two. Both of them were enormous, towering above my height and twice my bulk.
“Orion,” I said, trying to smile disarmingly. “I got separated from the others and just made it back.”
“I’ve never seen you before.”
“Just arrived a few days ago,” I said.
“There’s been no resupply mission here for months,” said the Skorpis. Both their rifles were pointed at my chest.
Drawing myself up on my dignity, I answered as haughtily as I could, “I was brought here on a special flight, at great expense. At least your superiors recognize the value of a scientist, even if you don’t.”
They looked at each other. It was difficult to read the expression on their feline faces, but to me they seemed uncertain, fully suspecting that I was lying through my teeth but unable to be sure. Then they did what all soldiers in every era do when in doubt: they marched me to their commanding officer.
Thus I was trooped from one giant Skorpis to another, from the pier to the command post at its base, from the command post to the quarters of the officer of the guard. From there to the offices of the chief of security, where a Skorpis wearing a chestful of ribbons on a cinnamon-colored uniform eyed me with enormous suspicion from behind an airport-sized desk. There were no obvious gender characteristics among the Skorpis, at least none that I could detect with their uniforms on, but I knew from my briefing information that this security chief was a female, as all Skorpis officers were.
“You come out of the sea with no clothes, no equipment?”
I must admit that I did feel slightly foolish standing in front of her with nothing but a pair of shorts that were still dripping wet. “I am with the human scientists,” I said with as much dignity as I could command. “I was simply swimming near the base to check the structures that have been built underwater.”
“And you claim that you arrived three days ago.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“There has been no flight into this base since the fleet departed after the battle several weeks ago,” she growled at me.
“Take me to my fellow scientists,” I insisted. “They’ll vouch for me.”
“There has been no flight in here for several weeks,” she repeated.
“There was one. Perhaps you were not informed about it.”
“That is impossible. Who are you and where are you from?”
I kept insisting that she take me to the other human scientists. She studied me the way a cat studies a bird chirping on a limb, just out of reach.
“The only other humans on this planet were the assault team that we wiped out. Perhaps we didn’t exterminate all of you….” There was a heavily gouged square of wood on her desktop. Unconsciously, she scraped the unsheathed claws of one hand along it. Or was it unconsciously? I got the impression she would like to use her claws on me.
I continued my bluff. “If you’ll simply let me see my fellow scientists, I’m certain that all this confusion can be cleared up.”
She shook her head in a very human negative.
“What harm could it do?” I coaxed. “One single human, unarmed, in the midst of a whole baseful of warriors?”
“You could be carrying an explosive device inside you. You could be an android. A walking bomb. The humans are very clever that way.”
I shrugged carelessly. “Examine me, then. Probe me with search beams.”
“You’ve already been probed,” she replied. “While you’ve been standing here.”
“Have you found any explosives? Anything at all but normal human organs inside a normal human skin?”
“You humans are very clever,” she muttered again.
After nearly an hour of stubborn intransigence, she finally decided to march me personally-with a squad of six fully-armed warriors escorting us-to the part of the base where the human scientists were quartered.
“They sleep at night,” she said disdainfully as we walked through the camp. It was bustling with activity, much as a human camp would in early morning. “This will disturb them.”
It seemed to me that she did not mind disturbing the humans. Not in the slightest.
The humans were in a compound separated from the rest of the base by a fence of energy beams. Two Skorpis guards snapped to spine-popping attention as the officer approached. They turned off a section of the fence for us to walk through. The officer ordered our escort to remain at the fence. “Come if I call you,” she commanded them. They saluted as one single organism.
It was quiet inside the human compound. Most of the buildings were dark, although lights showed through the windows of one long, low-roofed structure.
“The humans eat their meals together,” the officer muttered, from somewhere in the darkness over my head. “They eat plants and pastes made by machines.” Her voice reeked with distaste.
I was tempted to tell her that some humans hunt for their meals. But I refrained.
Without knocking she opened the door to the mess hall-for that is what it was-and stepped inside. Floorboards creaked under her mass. I came in behind her.
Twenty-two men and women, each of them in drab coveralls, stopped eating and turned to stare at us, spoons and forks in midair, mouths open and eyes wide with surprise.
The officer grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and nearly hauled me off my feet.
“This one says he belongs with you,” she said, loud enough to rattle the windows. “Does he speak truth?”
A bearded man at the head of the table swallowed hard enough for me to see his Adam’s apple work up and down.
“He belongs with us, yes,” he said in a high, surprised voice.
The officer let go of me.
“When did he arrive? How?”
Before they could give a story that contradicted mine, I rattled, “On the special flight several days ago, just as I told you.” Desperately I hoped that none of the other humans would give me away.
“I know of no special flight.”
“It was only here very briefly,” said the man at the head of the table.
“You might have been out at the perimeter,” one of the women added, in a voice that trembled slightly.
“I can check all incoming flights in our computer records,” said the officer. “If he is lying, he will die. If you help him lie, you will die with him.”
The bearded man at the head of the table got to his feet. “You can’t threaten us so easily. We were sent here by the Hegemony high command. The work we have to do here is too important to the progress of the war for us to be bullied by Skorpis warriors.”
The officer hissed at him, just like a spitting cat. Then she said, with murderous calm, “The Hegemony orders us to protect you. If this human is a spy or a saboteur, he must be dealt with. If you help him, you are working against the Hegemony and you will be dealt with also.”
“Let us take care of him,” the bearded man said. “He’s no threat to you or anyone else.”
“You vouch for him? He is a scientist, as you are?”
The man started to nod, but one of the women down the table burst but, “We never saw him before! We don’t know who he is!”
“Randa!”
“It’s no good, Delos,” she said to the bearded one. “What we’re trying to accomplish here is too important to allow some spy to wreck everything!”
“You say he is a spy?” the officer thundered.
“None of us ever saw him before!” Randa fairly screamed. “Take him away. Open up his brain and find out who he is and why he’s here!”
Chapter 10
Everyone in the mess hall froze, frightened, faces contorted with shock and uncertainty. Even the huge Skorpis security officer stood stock-still for a moment, just as stunned by Randa’s revelation as the other humans.
In that flash of a moment I acted. It was either move or die, and I had no intention of dying.
I spun on the ball of my foot and punched the security officer as hard as I could on her chin. She staggered backward, knees buckling. Before she could recover I bolted across the mess hall, vaulting clean over the table while several of the humans shrieked and hurling myself through one of the windows. I crashed through and landed head-first on the hard-baked ground outside. I could hear the security officer bellowing like a lioness in heat as I rolled to my feet and ran for the energy fence that enclosed the human compound.
It was more than two meters high, but I cleared it with room to spare. Fear augments athletic skills. Now I could hear shouting behind me as I raced through the square tents and more permanent structures of the Skorpis camp. There were plenty of the huge warriors in sight, working, digging, marching in the darkness of the night. They seemed more surprised than alarmed as I sprinted past them, heading for the beach and the sea.
I knew the officer I had slugged would radio her security detail to head me off. And sure enough, I could see teams of warriors bustling out of the buildings at the base of the twin piers up ahead. More shouts behind me and a laser bolt crackling bright red lanced past my ear. A warning shot. They won’t try to kill me, I reasoned. They want me alive for questioning. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t gleefully burn my legs off.
I dodged behind one of the metal prefabricated buildings and started running off at a tangent to the beach. The piers were out, too well guarded. But if I could get to the water perhaps I could wait awhile, then swim back to the place where I had stashed my flight pack and weapons. If the Skorpis did not find them first.
As I bolted around the corner of another building, angling off toward the beach once more, a team of six Skorpis suddenly loomed ahead of me. All of them armed with rifles. I gave them no chance to aim at me. I dived into them with a rolling block, barreling into their legs, knocking several of them down. My senses were in overdrive, and I saw them tangling each other’s arms and legs, cursing and snarling as they tried to pull themselves loose and get at me. I grabbed the rifle out of the hands of one of them, clubbed him to his knees with its butt, then flipped it around and fired into them point-blank.
I had no time to see how much damage I had done. Leaving them writhing on the ground, I dashed off toward the beach once again. To my left I could see a squad of Skorpis running along the sand in my direction. I had to get to the water before they saw me.
Too late. They saw in the dark much better than I did, and they quickly fired several rifle blasts at my feet, puffing up gritty pebbles and sand. I skidded to a stop and they ceased shooting and came running toward me.
I fired from the hip, one-handed, and knocked the closest two of them down. Then I flung myself face-first on the ground as the rest of them dropped to their knees and shot back at me.
There was no time for a firefight. If they pinned me down here for more than a few moments, the whole Skorpis base would be upon me. I had no choice. I leaped to my feet, firing as I ran, and raced for the water as fast as my legs would carry me.
My firing made them duck their heads a bit, but before I had taken a dozen strides a laser bolt seared my hip. I spun around, staggered, then drove on toward the water. Clamping down on the blood vessels, shutting off the pain signals, I limped toward the sea, only a tantalizingly dozen or so meters away now.
Another bolt hit my leg and I flopped down, rolled, and used my rifle to haul myself up again. I hopped, hobbled, staggered for the water as the Skorpis warriors came running toward me.
“Alive!” I heard one of them yell. “Take him alive!”
That was my one hope. I shot two more of the warriors as I tottered for the water. More laser blasts hit me, in the legs, in the chest. They were no longer worried about preserving me for interrogation; I was hitting too many of them.
I splashed into the surf, still firing, still being hit. Despite my rigid self-control I felt as if my legs had been burned off. Another bolt burned my shoulder so badly that I dropped the rifle. It hissed as its hot barrel struck the water.
The world was spinning. The surf surging against my bloodied legs, knocking me over as more laser blasts lanced past my head. They were shooting to kill.
I crawled into the waves, letting the water surge over me, cool and stinging with salt. Like a crab I scrabbled along the sandy bottom as the water flowed over my head, covering me, protecting me from their merciless lasers. I tasted salt water in my mouth, felt it filling my nose. I was deep enough now to float up off the bottom and let the current carry me out farther from the land.
There was not much skin on me that was unburned, I knew. Despite my control of the pain signals, my body was telling me that it was almost gone. Legs useless, one arm burned to the bone, another searing wound in my chest.
I floated to the surface and gulped cool night air. I did not have the strength to swim. I was going to die again, and this time I knew that the Golden One had no intention of reviving me. I had failed in my mission. Failed him. Failed myself.
I would never see Anya again. Never look into her gray solemn eyes. Never feel her touch, hear her voice.
The Golden One had abandoned me to die here on this miserable planet. They had all abandoned me, all the Creators. Even Anya.
A bitter torrent of regret surged through me. Somewhere deep in my mind I could hear Aten’s scornful laughter telling me that he knew I would fail him. I was merely a creature, after all. How dare I presume to love one of the Creators? I was made to be their tool, not their equal.
Regret. Love for Anya. Hatred for the Golden One. All these emotions flooded through me as I bobbed in the swells of that unnamed ocean, dying.
And something else. Something that I had never realized existed within me came to the front of my consciousness. Me. Myself. The individual who is Orion. Not the slave of the Golden One. Not even the lover of the goddess Anya. Myself. It did not matter how I was created or by whom. It did not matter who I loved or who loved me. I exist. I live and breathe and love and hate. I will not tamely die, mourning my failures, bemoaning my fate.
I pulled what little strength was left in my battered body and concentrated every atom of my will. There are paths through space-time, I knew. The continuum is like an ocean, and there are currents in it that can carry you from one place-time to another.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I thought back to all the times I had been translated through the continuum of space-time. Could I move myself voluntarily? Could I reach that city of the Creators, the city I had saved from Set’s destruction, the city that they kept safe in its own protective bubble of energy?
With my eyes tight closed I could not see the stars in the night sky. My body grew cold, numb. I no longer felt the bobbing of the sea. Colder I grew, cryogenically cold for an endless moment.
And then I felt the warmth of sunlight on my naked skin. I opened my eyes and found myself lying in a meadow on a hillside. And below me lay the magnificent city of the Creators beneath its radiant sphere of energy, rising beside a calm blue sea.
A city of monuments and heroic statues, all dedicated to the Creators themselves. Pyramids and temples from every era, every culture of Earth. A city empty of people, except for the handful of Creators, the self-styled masters of the human race who had allowed themselves to be worshipped as gods. They had translated the monuments that adoring humans had built to them, accumulating them into this glowing city devoted to their own gratifications.
I rose to my feet. My body was whole and strong. The breeze from the sea was cool, the sun high overhead warming. I walked through wildflowers down the hill toward the city. Deer bounded in the woods farther off to my right. Rabbits hurried through the grass at my feet, stopping now and then to stare at me, noses twitching.
The city was empty. I knew that there were robots and mechanical conveniences waiting to be summoned by mere thought. But the Creators were not there, not one of them. I felt disappointed, yet not surprised. Aten had told me that they were scattered among the stars, struggling to resolve this ultimate crisis that they faced. Yet, to beings who can come and go through space-time at will, why were none of them here in their home base at this particular nexus in the continuum?
I wandered on, asking myself what I expected of this visit and getting nothing but a vague sense of uneasiness by way of an answer.
Past the Mayan Temple of the Sun I strolled, alone in the ageless city. Past the Parthenon and the great golden reclining Buddha that seemed to be grinning at me, knowingly. I walked through the city from one side to the other until I was at the base of the massive pyramid of Khufu, out beyond the Colossus of Rhodes.
I turned the corner of the great pyramid and there was the ocean, clean and glittering beneath the sun, waves washing up on the beach with curls of froth as they broke gently against the sand. The sea called to me and I walked into it, wading up to my hips before I slid in and began swimming slowly out toward the distant horizon.
“Welcome, friend Orion,” said a dolphin that popped up beside me. “We are happy to see you back among us.”
“Back among you?” I asked.
I saw that I was surrounded by the grinning sea mammals, gray and sleek and each as big as five men or more. It was no surprise to me that I understood their clicks and whistles. But I was surprised that they understood my tongue.
“It’s been a long time since we hunted the fast-darting tuna together,” said the nearest dolphin.
“Or went diving to the lair of the giant squid,” said another.
“Where are the Creators?” I asked. “Do you know?”
“The other two-legs? They have been gone for long ages, Orion.”
“They aren’t much fun. They argue among themselves most of the time.”
“They forget that we can hear them. Our sense of hearing is very acute.”
“I know,” I said, grinning back at them as I treaded water.
“Come!” said the nearest one. “There’s a whole school of tuna not more than five kilometers from here. Let’s feast on them!”
“Wait!” I begged. “I can’t swim that far.”
“No need for you to swim, friend Orion. Ride on my back the way you used to so many tides ago.”
“If you don’t mind carrying me…”
“Of course not! One hunter to another, we are all friends here in the sea.”
So I slid one leg across his smooth back and clutched his dorsal fin with both my hands and off we went on a wild splashing ride, the dolphin racing powerfully, smoothly through the ocean, dipping down below the surface to run as fast as possible, then sliding up to blow steamy stale air through his vent and pull in a gulp of fresh air with a wet sucking noise. I did the same each time he popped to the surface. If the individual dolphins had names I never learned them; they seemed to know each other without the need for such tags.
They said I had gone hunting with them before, that we were old friends. I had no memory of it whatsoever, but I did not let that interfere with my enjoyment of this wild splashing ride through the ocean. The water was clear as air down to a considerable depth, with the sun lighting it up. If it weren’t for the bubbles and the swarms of colorful fish darting all around us, I would not have thought we were underwater.
And then would come the splashing, frothing moment of breaking the surface, taking a fresh gulp of air. And then down below we would go again, sliding along smoothly on the powerful strokes of their tails.
Soon enough we came to the tuna school, big silver-gray sleek speedsters who turned and fled at the approach of the tribe of dolphins. Fast as the tuna were, though, the dolphins were faster. We split up into several smaller groups, circling around the school of tuna to set up a trap, much as the Mongols did on their great hunts each year. I slid free of my mount and hovered with a few of the older dolphins, treading water as I waited for the circlers to drive the prey toward us.
“Don’t let them get past you!” my friend clicked gleefully as he dashed off. Underwater, I could not reply to him.
The tuna panicked and tried to evade the trap. The dolphins snapped them up in their grinning jaws by the dozens, by the hundred, gulping them down one after another. I grabbed one, more than enough for me to handle, bit through its spine to kill it and then let myself float to the surface with the big fish in my hands.
“Only one, friend Orion?” my friend teased. “This is the mighty hunter?”
I laughed as I tore at the clean fresh meat of the tuna. “How many deer can you chase down, legless one? How many rabbits can you outrun?”
I saw the dark fins of sharks circling in the distance, attracted by our slaughter of the tuna, but they kept away from the dolphins. As the sun began to slide toward the sea, we swam back to the beach by the Creators’ city, with me riding my friend’s back again.
Finally I was wading toward the beach. I stopped while still waist-deep in the water and shouted a farewell to the dolphins.
“Thanks for the hunt,” I called.
“The sea is good, friend Orion. Too bad you aren’t a dolphin, or at least a whale. You are a good companion, for a two-leg.”
“And you are good friends, all of you. Thanks for sharing your hunt with me.”
“The sea will always be your friend, Orion. It is good in the water.”
With that, they turned and headed out to the deeper waters, leaving me to stagger back up the beach and throw myself on the warm sand for the lowering sun to dry me.
The sea will always be my friend, they said. Yet there was a place in space-time where I was floating helpless in the sea, wounded and dying.
I returned to that place.
Chapter 11
I had hoped that I could somehow return with my body repaired, strong and healed of my wounds. But that, I could not do.
I opened my eyes and saw the starry dark night and felt pain, wave after wave of agony throbbing through every part of my body. Even as I consciously damped down the pain receptors in my brain I could feel it sullenly glowering beneath my deliberate self-control.
I was floating on my back in the deep, dark ocean, just as battered and helpless as I had been before my trip to the Creators’ realm. Had I really been there, cavorting with dolphins? Or was it all an illusion, a self-imposed dream, a feverish attempt at escapism?
My self-questioning quickly ended. I felt something brush against my badly burned leg. Just a touch, enough to make me twitch with alarm and get a mouthful of salt water in return. Then it was gone. But it would be back, I knew.
I remembered those tentacled horrors in the swamp, and wondered what predators this ocean harbored. Alone, half-dead, weaponless, I was going to be easy prey for some hungry hunter.
The sea will always be my friend, the dolphins had told me. I doubted it.
Another touch, making me flinch again. I remembered that sharks will often nudge their prey, bump it, almost play with it like a cat with a mouse before snapping it up in those horrendous tearing teeth.
Should I play dead or try to swim away? Would it make any difference?
It was no shark. This time I felt a tentacle delicately wrapping itself around the burned remains of my ankle. I shook my leg and it let go.
But not for long. The tentacle came back at precisely the same spot. This time it held fast. Quickly another slithered across my chest. I could feel its suckers attaching themselves to my burned flesh, delicately, almost tenderly.
I knew it was hopeless but I gulped down a big swallow of air as the tentacles pulled me below the surface. Bubbles gurgled in my ears. We sank down into the cold inky depths of the ocean.
Do not be afraid, friend Orion, I heard in my mind. We will not hurt you.
Now I’m hallucinating, I told myself. First I dream about dolphins and now I hallucinate that I can hear their voices in my mind. While I’m being pulled down to the bottom of the sea by some tentacled monster. If I don’t drown the pressure will cave in my ribs soon enough.