“Reptiles replacing human beings?” I challenged. “That can never be.”
His amusement turned to acid. “So certain of your superiority, are you? Babbling mammal, the continuum in which you reign supreme on this planet is so weak that your Creators must constantly struggle to preserve it. Mammals are not strong enough to dominate spacetime for long, they are always swept away by truly superior creatures.”
“Such as yourself?” I tried to say it with a sneer and only half succeeded.
“Such as myself,” Set replied. “Frenetic mammals, running in circles, chattering and babbling always, your hot blood is your undoing. You must eat so much that you destroy the beasts and fields that feed you. You breed so furiously that you infest the world with your kind, ruining not merely the land but the seas and the very air you breathe as well. You are vermin, and the world is well rid of you.”
“And you are better?”
“We have no need to keep our blood heated. We do not need to slaughter whole species of beasts for our stomachs. We do not overbreed. And we do not constantly make those noises that you call intelligent communication! That is why we are better, stronger, more fit to survive than you over-specialized jabbering apes. That is why we will survive and you will not.”
“You’ll survive by killing the dinosaurs and planting your own seed here?” I asked.
I sensed amusement from him. “So…” he answered slowly, “the hairless ape is not so knowledgeable after all.”
Sensing my confusion, Set went on: “The dinosaurs are mine to do with as I please. I created them. I brought my—seed, as you put it—to this planet nearly two hundred million of your years ago, when there was nothing on this land but a few toads and salamanders, fugitives from the seas.”
Set’s voice rose in my mind, took on a depth and power I had not experienced before. “I scrubbed this miserable planet clean to make room for my creations, the only kind of animal that could survive completely on dry land. I wiped out species by the thousands to prepare this world for my offspring.”
“You created the dinosaurs?” I heard an astonished voice pipe weakly. My own.
“They are the consequences of my work from two hundred million years before this time. The fruits of my genius.”
“But you went too far,” Anya said. “The dinosaurs have been too successful.”
He shifted his slitted gaze toward her. “They have done well. But now their time is at an end. This planet must be prepared for my true offspring.”
“The humanoids,” I said.
“The children of Shaydan. I have prepared this world for them.”
“Killer!” Anya spat. “Destroyer! Blunderer!”
I could feel his contempt for her. And a cold amusement at her words. “I kill to prepare the way for my own kind. I destroy life on a planetwide scale to make room for my own life. I do not blunder.”
“You do!” Anya accused. “You blundered two hundred million years ago. Now you must destroy your own creations because they have done too well. You blundered sixty-five million years from now, because the human race will rise up against you and your kind. You will be their symbol of unrelenting evil. They will be against you forever.”
“They will cease to exist,” Set replied calmly, “once my work here is finished. And you will cease to exist much sooner than that.”
All through this conversation, with Anya and I speaking and Set answering in silent mental projections, I strained to break through his control of my body. I knew Anya was doing the same. But no matter how hard we tried, we could not move our limbs. Even Juno, cowering by Anya’s feet, seemed unable to move.
“You’ll never be able to wipe out the dinosaurs,” I said. “We foiled your attempt to slaughter the duckbills and—”
He actually hissed at me. I sensed it was a form of laughter. “What did you accomplish, oversized monkey? On one particular day you helped a few hundred dinosaurs escape the death I had planned for them. They will meet that death on another day, perhaps next week, perhaps ten thousand years from now. I have all of time to work in, yammering ape. I created the dinosaurs and I will destroy them—at my leisure.”