Ben Bova: Vengeance of Orion

“This… this is our payment?”

“For the day’s work. Exactly. Show me a thes with coin in his purse and I’ll show you a sneak thief.”

I took a deep breath.

“Lower than slaves, that’s what we are, Orion,” said Poletes, in a whisper that was heavy with overdue sleep. “Vermin under their feet. Dogs. That’s how they treat us. They’ll work us to death and let our bones rot where we fall.”

With a heavy sigh Poletes put his empty bowl down and stretched out on the sandy ground. It was getting so dark that I could barely see his face. The pitiful little fire had gone down to nothing but embers. The wind blowing in from the water was cold and sharp. I automatically adjusted my blood flow to keep as warm as possible. There were no blankets or even canvas tarpaulins among the sprawled bodies of the exhausted thetes . They slept in their loincloths and nothing else.

I lay down beside the old man, then found myself wondering how old he could truly be. Forty, perhaps. I doubted that anyone lived much past fifty in this primitive time. A pair of mangy dogs snarled at each other over some bones by the fire, then settled down side by side, better protected against the night than we were.

Just before I closed my eyes to sleep, I caught sight of the beetling towers of Troy bulking dark against the deepening violet sky.

Agamemnon. Troy. How did I get here? How long could I survive as something lower than a slave?

Falling asleep was like entering another world. My dream was as real as life. I thought perhaps it was life, a different life on a different plane of existence.

I stood in a place that had neither time nor dimension. No land, no sea, no sky. Not even a horizon. A great golden glow surrounded me, stretching away to infinity on every side, warm and so bright that it dazzled my eyes. I could see nothing except its radiance.

Without knowing why, I began to walk. Slowly at first, but soon my pace quickened, as if I knew where I was heading and why. Time was meaningless here, but I walked endlessly, my bare feet striking something firm beneath me, though when I looked down all I could see was the gleaming golden light.

And then, far, far off, I saw a brilliance that outshone everything else. A speck, a spot, a source of radiance that blazed pure gold and drew me forward like a magnet draws a sliver of iron, like the fiery sun draws a falling comet.

I ran, I flew toward that burning golden glow. Breathlessly I raced to it, my eyes painfully dazzled, my heart thundering wildly, the breath rasping in my throat.

I stopped. As if an invisible wall had risen before me. As if my body had suddenly become paralyzed.

I stopped and slumped to my knees.

A human form sat before me, elevated above my level, resting on nothing more substantial than golden light. He was the source of all the radiance. He shone so beautifully that it hurt my eyes to look upon him. Yet I could not look away.

He was splendid. Thick mane of golden hair, gold-flecked eyes. Skin that glowed with life-giving radiance. Utterly handsome face, masculine yet beautiful, calm and self-assured, the hint of a smile curling his lips. Broad shoulders and wide hairless chest. Bare to the waist, where draperies of gleaming gold enfolded him.

“My poor Orion.” His smile turned almost mocking. “You are certainly in a sorry state.”

I did not know what to reply. I could not reply. My voice froze in my throat.

“Do you remember your Creator?” he asked, tauntingly.

I nodded dumbly.

“Of course you do. That memory is built so deeply into you that nothing but final destruction can erase it.”

I knelt before my Creator, my mind whirling with faint half memories, struggling to find my voice, to speak, to ask him…

“Do you remember my name?” he asked.

Almost, I did.

“No matter. For the present you may call me Apollo. Your companions on the plain of Ilios refer to me by that name.”

Apollo. The Greek god of light and beauty. Of course. The god of music and medicine — or is it biotechnology, I wondered. But I seemed to recall that he had another name, another time. And there were other gods, as well. And a goddess, the one whom I loved.

“I am being harsh with you, Orion, because you disobeyed me in the matter of Ahriman. You deliberately twisted the course of the continuum, out of sentiment.”

“Out of love,” I replied. My voice was weak, gasping. But I spoke.

“You are a creature, Orion,” he sneered. “What can you know of love?”

“The woman,” I pleaded. “The goddess…”

“She is dead.”

His voice was as coldly implacable as fate. I felt ice freezing my veins.

“You killed her,” I said dully.

His sneering smile faded into grim solemnity. “In a sense, Orion, it was you who killed her. By daring to love a goddess, by tempting her to assume a human form, you sealed her doom.”

“You blame me…”

“Blame? A god does not blame, Orion. A god punishes. Or rewards. You are being punished — for the while. Accept your fate and your punishment will cease.”

“And then?”

His smile returned. “I have other tasks for you, my creature, after the Trojans have beaten off these Greek barbarians. Don’t be afraid, I don’t plan on letting you die again, not for a while. There is much work for you to do in this era.”

I began to ask him what he meant, but a sandaled foot prodded my ribs and I opened my eyes to see that I was on the beach among the Greeks who were besieging Troy, a thes , the lowest of the low.

“On your feet! There’s work to be done!” shouted the whipmaster.

I looked up at him but saw instead the blinding radiance of the morning sun. I winced and bowed my head.

WE were given a bowl of thin barley gruel and then set to work with wooden shovels on the earthworks defending the beach.

While the warriors ate a leisurely breakfast of mutton and flat bread, and their men-at-arms yoked horses to chariots and sharpened swords and spears, we lumbered out through one of the makeshift gates in the low rampart that had been heaped up along the beach. Our task this fine, windy morning was to deepen the trench in front of the mound and pile the diggings atop it. This would make it even harder for Trojan troops or chariots to reach the ships.

We worked a good part of the morning. The sky was a sparkling bowl of wondrously clear, cloudless blue, dotted by screeching white gulls soaring above us. The sea was an even deeper blue, restless with flecks of white-foamed waves. Grayish brown humps of islands rose above the distant horizon. In the other direction, Troy’s towers and beetling walls seemed to glower down at us from across the plain. Beyond it the distant hills were dark with trees and beyond them rose the hazy mountains.

The wind strengthened into a brisk gusting breeze as the sun rose higher, helping to keep us cool as we dug and emptied our shovels of sandy soil into woven baskets that were carried to the top of the mound by other thetes .

As I dug and sweated, I thought about my memories of the night. It was no dream, I was certain of that. The Golden One really existed, whether he called himself Apollo or some other name from an earlier existence. I dimly remembered knowing him from another time, another era — him, and a dark, brooding hulking presence. The one he called Ahriman, I thought. And the goddess, the woman I loved. The woman who was dead. The Golden One said I was responsible for her death. Yet I knew that he had set in motion the train of events that ended with our starship exploding. He had killed her, killed us both. Yet somehow he had revived me, placed me here in this time and place, alone and bereft of memory.