Ben Bova - Orion and the Conqueror

Or did I? If one can truly master time, then I could leave this place in the continuum, seek out the Creators in their city by the sea, and return to this cell with no real time elapsed.

If I could truly master time.

For long hours I paced my cell, wondering if I could do it, trying to remember those other times when the Creators had moved me through the continuum to do their bidding. Their blocks against my memory were strong but I had a powerful motivation to break through: Anya had told me, on Ararat, that she was in danger. I wanted to be with her, facing whatever it might be at her side, ready to fight for her as she had fought for me so many times. Hera and the Golden One and perhaps the other Creators as well were all trying to keep us apart. Raw anger flamed through me. I would break through their control. I would do it even if it cost me my body, my life, my existence.

As I laid myself down on the damp, smelly straw, I smiled inwardly at the thought of Ketu and his Eightfold Path. Perhaps this time the Creators would end me forever. Almost, I felt glad of that possibility. Almost. But in my deepest soul I had no desire for final oblivion. I wanted to find Anya and know her love again.

I closed my eyes and willed myself to sleep. The last thing I sensed was the squeaking jabber of the rats.

I ignored them and concentrated on translating myself through the continuum to the city of the Creators. What were the physical sensations that I had felt those other times? A wave of infinite cold, as if my body had been displaced into the deepest reaches of empty space, out beyond the farthest galaxies, out where no star had ever shone. A falling sensation, weightlessness, and then—

I felt the warmth of golden sunlight seeping into my flesh. My eyes were still closed, but instead of blackness I saw a red glow brightening my lids.

Opening my eyes, I sat up and found myself on a grassy hillside dotted with wildflowers. White puffs of cumulus clouds dotted a deeply blue sky. A warm breeze made the flowers nod their colorful heads, the distant trees sway and murmur.

But there was no city. No ocean. No Creators. Nothing but an empty land stretching out to a rolling hilly horizon.

Slowly I climbed to my feet, looking for some sign of them. The Creators had to be here. Otherwise why would I have come to this placetime?

“Because you’re something of a clod, Orion.”

I whirled and there stood the Golden One with the sun at his back. He wore a short-skirted robe that seemed to gleam with a radiance of its own. His handsome face was frowning with annoyance.

“Orion, what are you trying to do? Don’t you realize that every time you disturb the continuum like this we have to work to repair the damage you’ve done?”

“Where is Anya?” I asked.

“Far from here.”

“What’s going on? Why am I being held in Pella if there’s a crisis so grave—”

“Stop this chatter!” Aten snapped. “You’ve been told more than once, Orion: your task is in the placetime where you’ve been sent. Do as Hera commands. Is that clear?”

“Not clear enough. I want to know what you are trying to accomplish.”

His narrow nostrils flared angrily. “You want to know, do you? All right, I’ll tell you. You ruined my plans for Troy. Do you remember that?”

He had wanted Troy to beat the Achaian Greeks and go on to establish an empire that would link Asia and Europe. I had thwarted him out of spite.

“That little game of yours unravelled the continuum so badly that we had to exert all our efforts to bring things back together again.”

Good, I thought. Aten had gone insane then; he neglected to recall that little fact.

“We are still trying to repair the damage you’ve done. There must be an empire that unites Europe and Asia, even if it lasts only for a few generations. It is important. Vital!”

“So Alexandros—”

“Must succeed. If you ever expect to see Anya again, you must do as Hera commands. Do you understand that?”

I bowed my head and heard myself mutter, “I understand.”

Aten shook his head and grumbled, “I must say, Orion, that you’ve been more trouble than you’re worth. But you’re strong, I’ll grant you that much. I sent you to the Mesozoic again, back among the dinosaurs, just to get you out of our way until we needed you again. But somehow you showed up at Pella.”

“Anya did that,” I replied, with a certainty that surprised me.

He gave me a sharp look. “Perhaps she did,” he mused. “Perhaps she did. When I wanted to put you in suspension, she insisted that I let you live out a life somewhere in the continuum.”

“So I was to be stored away like a toy that you had grown tired of playing with.”

“Like a tool that I wanted to keep available until I needed it again,” the Golden One corrected.

“And now?” I asked.

“Now we face the gravest crisis of all, thanks in part to your infernal meddling.”

“That is what Anya is doing, fighting against this crisis?”

“Orion, that is what we all are doing. We have no energy to spare on your antics.”

“And Hera is manipulating the events in Macedonia?”

“That is her part of the crisis. Again, because of your stubborn resistance to our will.”

“So what am I to do?”

He smiled thinly. “Nothing at all, Orion. You should have been put in cryonic storage, but I think your cell in Pella will do almost as well. Enjoy your new playmates.”

He meant the rats, I knew.

I opened my eyes in the darkness of my cell and saw the red hateful eyes of the rats surrounding me. Only a few heartbeats of time had elapsed since I had lain myself down on the moldy straw pallet, I reckoned. The rats were approaching me warily, sniffing at the odor of fresh meat but not yet excited into a feeding frenzy.

I sprang to my feet and they scattered to the corners of the cell, chittering with fear and disappointment.

Thus I spent my days, pacing the narrow confines of the cell, not daring to sleep. The only mark of elapsed time came when the jailor slid my gruel through the slot in the door and collected my chamberpot. Gradually I began to look on the rats as companions.

Using the skill I had learned long ago from the Neanderthals, I tried to put myself into the consciousness of the rats. Gradually I learned to see my cell through their eyes. I felt the gnawing hunger that drove them, so much so that I started to leave my miserable bowl of gruel unfinished and let them lap up the remains.

Day after day I perfected my rapport with them, to the degree that I could sit on the floor of my cell and go with them through the cracks between the cell walls, into their nests, along the tunnels that honeycombed the palace’s cellars. Through the eyes of the pack’s leader I visited the guard room and saw the giant humans lounging carelessly, dropping crumbs of bread and scraps of meat onto the floor—a feast for the pack, once the humans had left the chamber.

I even listened to the guards’ conversations, although their voices sounded strangely deep and booming in the ears of my rats. It took some while for me to learn how to transduce the tones they were capable of hearing into words of understandable human language.

Another royal wedding was drawing near, I learned. But the more they spoke, the more bawdy jokes they made about the impending nuptials, the more confused I became. Alexandros was marrying Kleopatra, they said. Those were two of the most common names among the Macedonians. Did they mean Alexandros, the king’s son? The Little King himself? And Kleopatra was the name of Philip’s most recent wife, although he called her Eurydice.

It was Pausanias who cleared up the puzzle for me.