Squeezing my eyes shut, I thought back to all the times I had been translated through the continuum of space-time. Could I move myself voluntarily? Could I reach that city of the Creators, the city I had saved from Set’s destruction, the city that they kept safe in its own protective bubble of energy?
With my eyes tight closed I could not see the stars in the night sky. My body grew cold, numb. I no longer felt the bobbing of the sea. Colder I grew, cryogenically cold for an endless moment.
And then I felt the warmth of sunlight on my naked skin. I opened my eyes and found myself lying in a meadow on a hillside. And below me lay the magnificent city of the Creators beneath its radiant sphere of energy, rising beside a calm blue sea.
A city of monuments and heroic statues, all dedicated to the Creators themselves. Pyramids and temples from every era, every culture of Earth. A city empty of people, except for the handful of Creators, the self-styled masters of the human race who had allowed themselves to be worshipped as gods. They had translated the monuments that adoring humans had built to them, accumulating them into this glowing city devoted to their own gratifications.
I rose to my feet. My body was whole and strong. The breeze from the sea was cool, the sun high overhead warming. I walked through wildflowers down the hill toward the city. Deer bounded in the woods farther off to my right. Rabbits hurried through the grass at my feet, stopping now and then to stare at me, noses twitching.
The city was empty. I knew that there were robots and mechanical conveniences waiting to be summoned by mere thought. But the Creators were not there, not one of them. I felt disappointed, yet not surprised. Aten had told me that they were scattered among the stars, struggling to resolve this ultimate crisis that they faced. Yet, to beings who can come and go through space-time at will, why were none of them here in their home base at this particular nexus in the continuum?
I wandered on, asking myself what I expected of this visit and getting nothing but a vague sense of uneasiness by way of an answer.
Past the Mayan Temple of the Sun I strolled, alone in the ageless city. Past the Parthenon and the great golden reclining Buddha that seemed to be grinning at me, knowingly. I walked through the city from one side to the other until I was at the base of the massive pyramid of Khufu, out beyond the Colossus of Rhodes.
I turned the corner of the great pyramid and there was the ocean, clean and glittering beneath the sun, waves washing up on the beach with curls of froth as they broke gently against the sand. The sea called to me and I walked into it, wading up to my hips before I slid in and began swimming slowly out toward the distant horizon.
“Welcome, friend Orion,” said a dolphin that popped up beside me. “We are happy to see you back among us.”
“Back among you?” I asked.
I saw that I was surrounded by the grinning sea mammals, gray and sleek and each as big as five men or more. It was no surprise to me that I understood their clicks and whistles. But I was surprised that they understood my tongue.
“It’s been a long time since we hunted the fast-darting tuna together,” said the nearest dolphin.
“Or went diving to the lair of the giant squid,” said another.
“Where are the Creators?” I asked. “Do you know?”
“The other two-legs? They have been gone for long ages, Orion.”
“They aren’t much fun. They argue among themselves most of the time.”
“They forget that we can hear them. Our sense of hearing is very acute.”
“I know,” I said, grinning back at them as I treaded water.
“Come!” said the nearest one. “There’s a whole school of tuna not more than five kilometers from here. Let’s feast on them!”
“Wait!” I begged. “I can’t swim that far.”
“No need for you to swim, friend Orion. Ride on my back the way you used to so many tides ago.”
“If you don’t mind carrying me…”
“Of course not! One hunter to another, we are all friends here in the sea.”
So I slid one leg across his smooth back and clutched his dorsal fin with both my hands and off we went on a wild splashing ride, the dolphin racing powerfully, smoothly through the ocean, dipping down below the surface to run as fast as possible, then sliding up to blow steamy stale air through his vent and pull in a gulp of fresh air with a wet sucking noise. I did the same each time he popped to the surface. If the individual dolphins had names I never learned them; they seemed to know each other without the need for such tags.
They said I had gone hunting with them before, that we were old friends. I had no memory of it whatsoever, but I did not let that interfere with my enjoyment of this wild splashing ride through the ocean. The water was clear as air down to a considerable depth, with the sun lighting it up. If it weren’t for the bubbles and the swarms of colorful fish darting all around us, I would not have thought we were underwater.
And then would come the splashing, frothing moment of breaking the surface, taking a fresh gulp of air. And then down below we would go again, sliding along smoothly on the powerful strokes of their tails.
Soon enough we came to the tuna school, big silver-gray sleek speedsters who turned and fled at the approach of the tribe of dolphins. Fast as the tuna were, though, the dolphins were faster. We split up into several smaller groups, circling around the school of tuna to set up a trap, much as the Mongols did on their great hunts each year. I slid free of my mount and hovered with a few of the older dolphins, treading water as I waited for the circlers to drive the prey toward us.
“Don’t let them get past you!” my friend clicked gleefully as he dashed off. Underwater, I could not reply to him.
The tuna panicked and tried to evade the trap. The dolphins snapped them up in their grinning jaws by the dozens, by the hundred, gulping them down one after another. I grabbed one, more than enough for me to handle, bit through its spine to kill it and then let myself float to the surface with the big fish in my hands.
“Only one, friend Orion?” my friend teased. “This is the mighty hunter?”
I laughed as I tore at the clean fresh meat of the tuna. “How many deer can you chase down, legless one? How many rabbits can you outrun?”
I saw the dark fins of sharks circling in the distance, attracted by our slaughter of the tuna, but they kept away from the dolphins. As the sun began to slide toward the sea, we swam back to the beach by the Creators’ city, with me riding my friend’s back again.
Finally I was wading toward the beach. I stopped while still waist-deep in the water and shouted a farewell to the dolphins.
“Thanks for the hunt,” I called.
“The sea is good, friend Orion. Too bad you aren’t a dolphin, or at least a whale. You are a good companion, for a two-leg.”
“And you are good friends, all of you. Thanks for sharing your hunt with me.”
“The sea will always be your friend, Orion. It is good in the water.”
With that, they turned and headed out to the deeper waters, leaving me to stagger back up the beach and throw myself on the warm sand for the lowering sun to dry me.
The sea will always be my friend, they said. Yet there was a place in space-time where I was floating helpless in the sea, wounded and dying.
I returned to that place.
Chapter 11
I had hoped that I could somehow return with my body repaired, strong and healed of my wounds. But that, I could not do.
I opened my eyes and saw the starry dark night and felt pain, wave after wave of agony throbbing through every part of my body. Even as I consciously damped down the pain receptors in my brain I could feel it sullenly glowering beneath my deliberate self-control.
I was floating on my back in the deep, dark ocean, just as battered and helpless as I had been before my
