Ben Bova - Orion in the Dying Time

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

Raising my hands above my head, I called into the night, “O god who speaks, tell us what we should do!”

My voice echoed off the bowl of rock, “…tell us what we should do!”

For several heartbeats there was nothing to hear except the chirping of crickets in the grass. Then a low guttural whisper floated through the darkness: “I am the god who speaks. Ask and you shall receive wisdom.”

All the men, mine included, jumped as if a live electrical wire had touched their bare flesh. Kraal’s eyes went so wide that even in the dying firelight I could see white all around the pupils. None of them recognized Anya’s voice; none of them could even tell that the rasping whisper they heard came from a woman.

I turned to Kraal. “Ask the god.”

His mouth opened, but no sound came out. Most of the other men had gotten to their feet, staring toward the looming shadow of the hollowed rock. I felt some shame, tricking them this way. I realized that an unscrupulous person could easily make the “god” say whatever he or she wanted it to say. One day oracles and seers would use such tricks to sway their believers. I would have much to answer for.

But at this particular instant in time I needed Kraal to accept the idea of merging our two tribes.

To my surprise, it was Noch who spoke up. His voice quavering slightly with nervousness, he shouted toward the rock wall, “O god who speaks, would it be a good thing for our tribe to merge with Kraal’s tribe?”

“…merge with Kraal’s tribe?”

Again silence. Not even the wind stirred. The crickets had gone quiet.

Then the whispered answer “Are two men stronger than one? Are twenty men stronger than ten? It is wise to make yourselves stronger.”

“Then we should merge our two bands together?” Noch wanted a definite answer, not godly metaphors.

“Yesss.” A long drawn-out single syllable.

Kraal found his voice. “Under whose leadership?”

“…whose leadership?”

“The leader of the larger of your two tribes should be the leader of the whole. Kraal the Hunter shall be known from this night onward as Kraal the Leader.”

The man’s chest visibly swelled. He broke into a broad, gap-toothed grin and turned toward the other men, nodding approval at the wisdom the god displayed.

“But what about Orion?” Noch insisted.

“…Orion?” the echo repeated.

“Orion will remain among you for only a little while,” came the answer. “He has other tasks to undertake, other deeds to accomplish.”

My satisfaction at having conned Kraal and the others melted away. Anya was speaking the truth. We could not remain here much longer. We had other tasks ahead of us.

I watched Kraal and Noch embrace each other, watched the relieved looks on all the men’s faces when they realized they would not have to fight each other. How the women would take to embracing strange men, I did not know. Nor did I particularly care. Not at that moment. I had forced these people on the first step of resistance against Set and the reptilian masters. But it was only the first step, and the immensity of the task that lay before me weighed on my shoulders like the burdens of all the world.

I made my way back to the cave I shared with Anya, achingly weary. As the moon set, that blood red star rose above the treetops, glaring balefully down at me, depressing me even further.

Anya was eager with excitement as I crawled into the cave and dropped down onto our pallet of boughs and hides.

“It worked, didn’t it! I saw them embracing one another.”

“You did a fine job,” I told her. “You have real worshipers now—although I’m not certain how they would react if they knew they were obeying a goddess instead of a god.”

Kneeling beside me, Anya said smugly, “I’ve had worshipers before. Phidias sculpted a marvelous statue of me for all of Athens to worship.”

I nodded wearily and closed my eyes. I felt drained, demoralized, and all I wanted was to sleep. Anya and I would never be free to live as normal human beings. There would always be the Creators to pull my strings, never leaving us alone. Always a new task, a new enemy, a new time and place. But never a time and place for happiness. Not for me. Not for us.

She sensed my soul’s exhaustion. Stroking my brow with her cool, smooth fingers, Anya soothed, “Sleep, my darling. Rest and sleep.”

I slept. But only for the span of a few heartbeats. For I saw Set’s satanic face, his red eyes burning, his sharp teeth gleaming in a devil’s version of a smile.

“I told you I would send you a punishment, Orion. The hour has come.”

I sat bolt upright, startling Anya.

“What is it?”

There was no need to answer. A terrified shriek split the night. From one of the caves.

I grabbed at the spear lying near the cave’s entrance and dashed out onto the narrow ledge of rock that formed a natural stairway down to the canyon floor. Others were spilling out of their caves, screaming, jumping to the rocks below. Kraal’s men among them, running and shrieking in absolute terror, stumbling down the rough stone steps, leaping to certain injury or death in their panic to escape…

Escape from what?

“Stay behind me,” I muttered to Anya as I started climbing up the steep stairway of rock.

Reeva came screaming toward me, nearly knocking me over the edge in her wild-eyed terror. She was empty-handed. Her baby was still in the cave up above.

I clambered up the uneven stones, sensing Anya right behind me, also armed with a spear. The dreadful gloomy light of the strange star bathed the rock face with the color of dried blood, making everything look ghastly.

The cave Reeva shared with several other women looked empty, abandoned. Below us I could still hear shrieks and screams, not merely fright now, but cries of pain, of agony. Men and women running, thrashing wildly, as if trying to beat off some invisible attacker.

It was darker than hell inside the cave, but my eyes adjusted to the minuscule light level almost instantly. I saw Reeva’s baby—disappearing into the distended jaws of a huge snake.

Before I could even think I flung myself at the serpent and slashed at its head with my dagger. It coiled around my arm, but I had it at its most vulnerable, with a half-swallowed meal between its teeth. I hacked at the snake, just behind its skull. It was as thick as my leg at the thigh, and so long that its body twined almost the full circumference of the cave and still could wrap half a dozen coils around my flailing arm.

Anya rammed her spear into its writhing body again and again while I sawed through its spinal cord and finally cut off its head. Dropping my dagger I pried at its jaws and worked the baby free of its fangs. The baby was quite dead, already cold, its skin blue gray in the dim starlight.

“It’s poisonous,” I said to Anya. “Look at those fangs.”

“There are others,” she said.

They were still screaming outside. I rose to my feet, burning hot fury seething within me. Set’s punishment, I knew. Snakes. Huge venomous snakes that come slithering silently in the darkness of night to do their work of killing. Death and terror, those were the hallmarks of our adversary.

I strode to the lip of the cave. “Up here!” I bellowed, and the rock amplified my voice into the thunder of a god. “Come up here where we can see them! Get away from the floor of the canyon.”

Some obeyed. Only a few. Already I could see dead bodies stretched out on the grass, twisted among the boulders and brush that formed natural hiding places for the snakes. Up here on the rocks, at least we would be able to see them. What we could see, we could fight.

Most of the people had fled terrified into the night, their only thought to get away from the sudden silent death that struck in the shadows. A woman lay down among the stones on the floor of the canyon, broken by her panicked leap away from the caves. I could see a long writhing ghastly white snake gliding toward her, jaws spread wide, fangs glittering. She screamed and tried to scrabble away from the snake. Anya threw her spear at it and missed. The snake sank its deadly fangs into her flesh and the woman’s screams rose to a hideous crescendo, then died away in a gurgling, strangling agony.