CHAPTER 4
The others clustered around me, eyes wide, questioning.
"What is it, Orion?"
"Nothing," I said. "A bad dream, nothing more." But I was soaked with cold sweat, and had to consciously control my nerves to keep from trembling.
They asked me to relate the dream to them so they might interpret it. I told them I could not remember any of it and eventually they left me in peace.
But they were clearly unsettled. And Anya regarded me with probing eyes. She knew that it would take something much more than an ordinary nightmare to make me scream.
"Come on," I said to them all. "We must move deeper into these woods, away from the grassland." As far away from Set as possible, I meant, even though I did not say the words aloud.
Anya walked beside me. "Was it the Golden One?" she asked. "Or one of the other Creators?"
With a shake of my head I answered with one word: "Set."
The color drained from her face.
For several days more we traveled through the forest, following the brook as it led to a wider stream that seemed to flow southward. The men all had spears now, and I was teaching them to fire-harden their points. I wanted to find a place where there was flint and quartz so we could begin making stone tools and weapons.
Birds flitted through the trees, bright flashes of color in the greenery. Insects buzzed a constant background hum. Squirrels and other furry little mammals scampered up tree trunks at our approach and then stopped, tails twitching, watching until we hiked past them. My sense of danger eased, my fear of Set's lurking presence slowly diminished, as we moved deeper into this cool peaceful friendly forest.
It was peaceful and friendly by day. Night was a different matter. The world was different in the dark. Even with a sizable campfire to warm and light us the forest took on a menacing, ominous aspect in the darkness. Shadows flickered like living things. Hoots and moans floated through the misty gloom. Even the tree trunks themselves became black twisted forms reaching out to ensnare. Cold tendrils of fog hovered like ghosts just beyond the warmth of our fire, creeping closer as the flames weakened and died.
Our little band endured the dark frightening nights, sleeping fitfully, bothered by restless dreams and fears of things lurking in the shadows beyond our sight. We marched in the light of day when the forest was cheerful with the calls of birds and bright with mottled sunshine filtering through the tall trees. At night we huddled in fear of the unseeable.
At last we came to a line of high rugged cliffs where the stream—a fair-sized river now—had cut through solid stone. Following the narrow trail between the water's edge and the cliff, we found a hollowed-out area, as if a huge semicircular chunk of stone had been scooped out of the cliff by a giant's powerful hand.
I left Anya and the others by the river's edge while I went in to explore this towering bowl of stone. Its curving walls rose high above me, layered in tiers of ocher, yellow, and the gray of granite. Pinnacles of rock rose like citadels on either side of the bowl, standing straight and high against the bright blue sky.
Through the screen of brush and young trees that covered the boulder-strewn floor of the little canyon I saw the dark eyes of caves up along the bowl's curving wall. Water and woods near at hand, a good defensive location with a clear view of any approaching enemy.
"We will make this our camp," I called back to the others, who were resting by the river's edge.
". . . this our camp," came an echo rebounding from the bowl of rock.
They leaped to their feet, startled. Before I could go down to them they came rushing up to where I stood.
"We heard your voice twice," said Noch, fearfully.
"It is an echo," I said. "Listen." Raising my voice, I called out my own name.
"Orion!" came the echo floating back to our ears.
"A god is in the rock!" Reeva said, her knees trembling.
"No, no," I tried to assure them. "You try it. Shout out your name, Reeva."
She clamped her lips tight. Staring down at her crusted toes, she shook her head in frightened refusal.
Anya called out. And then young Chron.
"It is a god," said Noch. "Or maybe an evil demon."
"It is neither," I insisted. "Nothing but a natural echo. The sound bounces off the rock and returns to our ears."
They could not accept a natural explanation, it was clear.
Finally I said, "Well, if it is a god, then it's a friendly one who will help to protect us. No one will be able to move through this canyon without our hearing it."
Reluctantly, they accepted my estimate of the situation. As we walked along the narrow trail that wound through the jutting boulders and trees toward the caves it was obvious that they were wary of this strange, spooky bowl of rock. Instead of being exasperated with their superstitious fears I felt almost glad that at last they were showing some spirit, some thinking of their own. They were doing as I told them, true enough, but they did not like it. They were no longer docile sheep following without question. They still followed, but at least they were asking questions.
Noch insisted on building a cairn at the base of the hollow to propitiate "the god who speaks." I thought it was superstitious nonsense, but helped them pile up the little mound of stones nevertheless.
"You are testing us, Orion, aren't you?" Noch said, puffing, as he lifted a stone to the top of the chest-high mound.
"Testing you?"
The other men were gathered around, watching, now that we had completed the primitive monument.
"You are a god yourself. Our god."
I shook my head. "No. I am only a man."
"No man could have slain the dragon that guarded us," said Vorn, one of the older men. His dark beard showed streaks of silver, his head was balding.
"The dragon almost killed me. I needed Anya's help, or it would have."
"You are a full-grown man, yet you grow no beard," Noch said, as if proving his point.
I shrugged. "My beard grows very slowly. That doesn't make me a god, believe me."
"You have brought us back to Paradise. Only a—"
"I am not a god," I said firmly. "And you—all of you—brought yourselves back to Paradise. You walked here, just as I did. Nothing godly about that."
"Still," Noch insisted, "there are gods."
I had no answer for that. I knew that there were men and women in the distant future who had godlike powers. And the corrupted egomania that accompanies such powers.
They were all staring at me, waiting for my reply. Finally I said, "There are many things that we don't understand. But I am only a man, and the voice that comes from the rock is only noise."
Noch glanced around at the others, a knowing smile on his lips. Eight ragged, dirty Neolithic men—including Chron and the other beardless teenager. They knew a god when they saw one, no matter what I said.
If they feared me as a god, or feared the echo that they called "the god who speaks," after a few days their fears vanished in the glow of well-being. The caves were large and dry. Game was abundant and easy to catch. Life became very pleasant for them. The men hunted and fished in the stream. The women gathered fruits and tubers and nuts.
Anya even began to show them how to pick cereal grains, spread the grain on a flat rock, and pound it with stones, then toss the crushed mass into the air to let the breeze winnow away the chaff. By the end of the week the women were baking a rough sort of flat bread and I was showing the men how to make bows and arrows.
Chron and his fellow teenagers became quite adept at snaring fowl in nets made from vines. We used the birds' feathers for our arrows after feasting on their flesh.
One night, as Anya and I lay together in a cave apart from the others, I praised her for her domestic skills. She laughed. "I learned them a few lifetimes ago, just before the flood at Ararat. Don't you remember?"
A vague recollection flitted through my mind. A hunting tribe much like this one. A flood caused by a darkly dangerous enemy. I felt the agony of drowning in the lava-hot floodwaters.
"Ahriman," I said, more to myself than Anya.
"You remember more and more!"
The cave was dark; we had no fire. Yet even with nothing but starlight I saw that Anya was suddenly filled with a new hope.
Propping herself up on one elbow, she asked urgently, "Orion, have you tried to make contact with the Creators?"
"No. If you can't, then how can I?"
"Your powers have grown since you were first created," she said, her words coming fast, excited. "Set is blocking me, but perhaps you can get through!"
"I don't see how—"
"Try! I'll work with you. Together we might be able to overcome whatever force he's using to block me."
I nodded and rolled onto my back. The stone floor of the cave was still warm from the day's sunlight. Just like the rest of the tribe, we had constructed a bed of boughs and moss in a corner of the cave. I had covered it with the skin of a deer I had killed, the largest animal we had caught in this abundant forest. There were wolves out there, I knew; we had heard their howling in the night. But they had not come anywhere near our caves, high up the steep rock face and protected by fire.
"Will you try?" Anya pleaded.
"Yes. Of course." But something within me was hesitant. I liked this place, this time, this life with Anya. I felt a real aversion to reestablishing contact with the Creators. They would force us to resume the tasks they wanted us to carry out, their endless schemes to control the continuum, their petty arguments among themselves that resulted in slaughters such as Troy and Jericho. Our pleasant existence in Paradise would end the moment we reached them.
Then I remembered the implacable evil of Set. I saw his devil's face and burning eyes. I heard his seething words: I will destroy you all, including the woman you love, the self-styled goddess. She will die the most painful death of all.
I grasped Anya's hand and closed my eyes. Side by side, we concentrated together and strained to touch the minds of the Creators.
I saw a glow, and for an instant thought we had broken through. But instead of the golden aura of the Creators' distant spacetime, this radiance was sullen red like the dark flames of hell, like the unblinking baleful eye of the blood red star that hung above us each night.
The glow contracted, pulled itself together like an image in a telescope coming into focus. Set's remorseless hateful face glowered at me.
"Soon, Orion. Very soon now. I know where you are. I will send you the punishment I promised. Your doom will be slow and painful, wretched ape."
I bolted up to a sitting position.
"What is it?" Anya asked, startled, sitting up beside me. "What did you see?"
"Set. He knows where we are. I think we revealed ourselves to him by trying to make mental contact with the Creators. We've stepped into his trap."