“So now we live on this world,” she said as we sat in the energy bubble, speeding high above a deep blue ocean striated with long straight combers that were traveling from one side of the earth to the other in almost perfect uniformity.
“And manipulate the continuum,” I commented.
“We’ve been forced to,” she admitted. “There’s no way we can stop without having the whole fabric of spacetime come crashing down on us.”
“And that would mean…?”
“Oblivion. Extinction. We’d be erased from existence, along with the whole human race.”
“But they’ve spread throughout interstellar space, you said.”
“Yes, but their origin is here. Their world line begins on Earth and then spreads throughout the galaxy. Still, it’s all the same. Expunge one part of that geodesic and it all unravels.”
Our invisible craft was winging toward the night side of the planet. We reclined in utter physical comfort while racing higher and faster than any bird could fly across the breadth of Earth’s widest ocean.
“Do you maintain contact with the other humans, the ones who went out to the stars?”
“Yes,” Anya replied. “They still send their representatives back here to check the genetic drift of their populations. We have established a baseline in the Neolithic, just prior to the development of agriculture. That is our ‘normal’ human genotype, against which all others are measured.”
I thought of the slaves I had met in Set’s garden, of crippled Pirk and scheming Reeva and the pliable, cowardly Kraal. And I heard Set’s hissing laughter. Normal human beings, indeed.
I fell silent and so did Anya. We were returning to the city; as far as I could tell it was the only populated city remaining on Earth. We had glided over the mute, abandoned ruins of ancient cities, each of them protected from the ravages of time by a glowing bubble of energy. Some of them had already been thoroughly destroyed by war. Others were simply empty, as if their entire population had decided one day to leave. Or die.
More than one sprawling city had been inundated by the rising seas. Our energy sphere carried us through watery avenues and broad plazas where fish and squid darted in the hazy sunlight that filtered down from the surface.
As our journey ended and we approached the only living city on Earth, the vast museum-cum-laboratory where the Golden One and the other Creators labored to hold their universe together, I tried to work up the courage to ask Anya the question that was most important to me.
“You… that is, we…” I stuttered.
She turned those lustrous gray eyes to me and smiled. “I know, Orion. We have loved each other.”
“Do you… love me now?”
“Of course I do. Didn’t you know?”
“Then why did you betray me?”
The words blurted out of my mouth before Set could stop them, before I even knew I was going to say them.
“What?” Anya looked shocked. “Betray you? When? How?”
My entire body spasmed with red-hot pain. It was as if every nerve in me was being roasted in flame. I could not speak, could not even move.
“Orion!” Anya gasped. “What’s happened to you?”
To all outward appearances I was in a catatonic state, rigid and mute as a granite statue. Inwardly I was in fiery agony, yet I could not scream, could not even weep.
Anya touched my cheek and flinched away, as if she could sense the fires burning within me. Then she slowly, deliberately, put her fingers to my face once again. Her hand felt cool and soothing, as if it were draining away all the agony within my body.
“I do love you, Orion,” she said, in a voice so low it was nearly a whisper. “I have taken human form to be with you because I love you. I love your strength and your courage and your endurance. You were created to be a hunter, a killer, yet you have risen beyond the limits that Aten placed on your mind.”
Set’s broiling anger seethed through me, but the pain was dying away, easing, as he spent his energies shielding his presence from Anya’s probing eyes.
“We have lived many lives together, my darling,” Anya said to me. “I have faced final destruction for your sake, just as you have suffered death for mine. I have never betrayed you and I never will.”