“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 spaced 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 assured 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 god?”
“Why not? Your bumbling Creators allowed themselves to be worshiped by their human spawn, 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 massive 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 massive 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 passed 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 shielded 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 spacetime, yet you walk from one end of your castle to another? No elevators, no moving belt-ways?”