“Lots of the dinosaurs got loose,” I remembered.
“Good hunting for your Mongol friends,” said Aten. He pulled his cloak tighter about him. It began to shimmer.
“Wait!” I called.
The Creators looked down at me, their faces curious or annoyed.
“What about Subotai? He is here with only his personal guard, less than a thousand men.”
“Quite enough, I should think,” said Zeus.
“I promised him that I would bring his entire army here. That means all his people, their women, their flocks and herds, their yurts and all their belongings.”
“Why bother?” asked Aten scornfully. “The barbarian general accomplished nothing. He’s useless to us.”
Struggling up to a sitting position, I answered, “He is my friend. I promised him.”
“Ridiculous.” Aten sneered.
“That’s not for you to decide alone,” Anya snapped.
“I’m afraid I agree with Aten,” said Zeus. “It would serve no useful purpose.”
“It’s difficult enough trying to keep the continuum from unraveling,” said sharp-featured Hermes. “Why make a change that we don’t have to make?”
“I’ll do it myself,” I said.
They all stared at me.
“You?” Aten laughed. “A toy that I created, acting like a god?”
“Which of you brought Subotai and his thousand men to this time and place?” I demanded.
They glanced around at one another, finally focusing all their glances on Anya.
She shook her head, smiling. “Not I. I was hiding deep underground, waiting for the moment to strike at Set’s core tap. The rest of you were scattered among the stars.”
“You can’t mean that Orion did it himself!” Aten almost shouted.
Anya nodded. “He must have. None of us did.”
“I did it myself,” I said.
Zeus smiled without humor. “Orion, you are learning the powers of a god.”
“There are no gods,” I replied grimly. “Only beings such as yourselves—and Set.”
They stirred uneasily.
“If Orion wants to bring Subotai’s people here, I say he has earned that right,” Anya said firmly.
No one contradicted her.
I closed my eyes, grateful for her in so many ways that I could not even begin to count them. In that one fleeting instant I saw history unreeling before me like a spool of film spinning at blurring speed.
I saw Subotai’s people settling across this broad grassy savannah that stretched from the Red Sea to the Atlantic.
I saw Mongol warriors spitting carnosaurs on their lances, brown-skinned men in stained leathers and steel helmets, riding tough little Gobi ponies, who would give rise in later generations to splendid tales of knights in shining armor slaying fire-breathing dragons to save enchanted princesses.
I saw those Mongols learning agriculture from the natives of Paradise, intermarrying with them generation after generation as the glaciers retreated northward from Europe, taking the rains with them and turning the broad grasslands into the parched desert called Sahara.
I saw the great-great-grandchildren of Subotai’s army moving to the Nile valley, leaving the withering savannah, inventing irrigation and civilization. That made me smile: the so-called barbarian Mongols fathering the earliest civilization on Earth.
And I saw tortured Sheol breathe its final burst of flame and collapse at last into a gaudy ovoid of a planet, spinning madly, striped in brilliant colors, still heated from within by the energy of its final collapse, circled by dozens of fragments of the shattered Shaydan. I knew Zeus would be pleased to have the planet named after him.
And I saw, with a sinking heart, that all the slaughter I had done, the destruction of Sheol and the planet Shaydan, the time of great dying that I had rained upon the earth, the extinction of the dinosaurs and countless other forms of life—all this had been part of the Golden One’s plan.
I heard his haughty laughter as I watched once again the reign of death that I had inflicted upon the earth.
“I am evolution, Orion,” he boasted. “I am the force of nature.”
“All that killing,” I heard myself sob.
“It was necessary. My plans span eons, Orion. The dinosaurs were just as great an obstacle to me as they were to Set. They had to be removed, or else I could never have brought the human race into being. You wiped them out, Orion. For me! You think you are almost a god, but you are still my creature, Orion, my toy. Mine to use as I see fit.”