that had been built into me so that I would be a useful hunter, assassin, murderer—I broke free.
I tapped the energy of the stars, the energy of the continuum. Just as Aten and the others had sent me across space-time I reached out for Anya and leaped through the continuum, through the endless cold of absolute nothingness, across eons of time and parsecs of space.
And found the two of us standing in a forest. Tall trees dappling the warm high sun, colorful birds flitting through the foliage, squirrels scampering, insects buzzing.
“Orion!” Anya gasped. “How could you…”
Then she looked down at her hands and saw that she was young and strong again. I pulled her to me and kissed her tenderly.
“Do you know where we are?” I asked her.
She took in the entire world in a single glance. “On Earth,” she said. “In the forest of Paradise.”
The wide woodland that someday would become the Sahara Desert. We had lived here with a Neolithic band, happy and content once we had escaped Set and his reptilian invaders.
“You remember that we thought about staying here forever,” I said.
“Yes,” Anya replied. But she pulled slightly away from my arms. “Yet we decided that we could not enjoy Paradise when there were so many conflicts in the continuum that had to be resolved.”
“Perhaps we were wrong,” I said. “Why can’t we stay here and let the continuum solve its problems without us?”
She fixed me with those lustrous eyes of hers. “Because then Aten would solve the continuum’s problems. And he would take all this away from us. He hates you, Orion. He fears you. And he hates me for loving you.”
Aten fears me? That was a new concept for me to consider. “My powers are still growing,” I said. “Perhaps I could protect us, protect this whole segment of the continuum. We could be safe here.”
“Not from Aten. He’s robbed me of my power. He is deliberately killing me, and all the other Creators who sided with me.”
“But here you’re strong and young.”
“Yes,” she admitted, smiling sadly, “but that’s your doing, Orion, not mine. I can’t change form anymore; I’ve lost the power. Aten has stolen it from me. He wants me dead. Me, and all the other Creators who oppose him.”
“Why? What’s the reason for all this hatred and killing? Why the war? What’s this ultimate crisis?”
She almost laughed. “Orion, you’re like a little boy, asking so many questions. They’re not easily answered.”
I gestured toward a sunny glade where a swift stream burbled over rocks, hardly a few meters from where we stood. “Very well. Let’s go sit in the warmth of the sun and watch the deer come down to the stream and drink. And you can begin to explain it all to me.”
“I’m not sure that I can,” Anya said, but she walked along with me toward the grassy glade.
“Then tell me as much as my limited mind can understand,” I coaxed her.
“Your mind is not as limited as Aten thinks,” she told me. “He would be shocked to know that you can translate yourself across the continuum, and carry me along with you. And rejuvenate me, too.”
“If we go back to Prime and the era of the war, will you remain as youthful as you are now?”
“No,” she said ruefully. “I will be a dying old hag there, unless I exert almost all my failing strength to appear young for a few moments.”
“How did Aten do this to you?”
We had stepped out of the shade of the trees, into the welcoming sunlight. Walking to the edge of the stream, we sat oh the soft grass, our backs against a big sun-warmed boulder.
“This war between the Commonwealth and the Hegemony,” Anya said, “is really a continuation of the conflict we had over Troy.”
“But why—”
She hushed me with a finger on my lips. And began to explain as much as she could.
The human race had expanded through the solar system and out to the stars, not as a single unified species, but as a pack of squabbling, contending tribes. Humankind had not overcome its tribal animosities merely because we had achieved interstellar flight. The Creators had built that aggressive nature into us, and no amount of technology could remove it. Indeed, the more sophisticated our technology became, the more dangerous our weaponry. We could blast whole planets clean of all life. Now we were ready to shatter stars.
We had found other intelligent species among the stars. Some were far below us in technological and cultural development: cave dwellers or simple herders and pastoralists. By and large these were left alone by the expanding human species; they had nothing to offer us, neither trade nor knowledge nor competition. Scientists studied them, although now and again unscrupulous humans colonized their worlds and despoiled them.
We also found other species that were far beyond us and, like the Old Ones, wished to have nothing to do with humankind or its ilk. But there were several intelligent species among the stars, such as the Tsihn and the Skorpis, who were close to our own level of knowledge and power. With these we could trade. And fight.
Inevitably, the humans who colonized the stars polarized themselves into two competing groups: the Hegemony and the Commonwealth. Inevitably, they sought allies among the aliens of our own level. Inevitably, they went to war.
“Inevitably?” I asked Anya. “Aten told me that this war is actually a struggle to decide how the Creators will deal with the ultimate crisis.”
She bowed her head in acknowledgment. “I hadn’t realized he had revealed that much to you.”
“Have
“No, not all of them. The human species is ferocious enough to start its own wars, without our instigation.”
“But what is this ultimate crisis?” I wanted to know. “Why do we have to kill billions of people and destroy whole planets? Why is the Commonwealth preparing to use a weapon that can blow away a star?”
Her eyes blazed. “They’re ready to use it? How do you know…?”
“The Old Ones.”
“Aten has made contact with the Old Ones?” Anya looked frightened.
“No, they refuse to speak with either the Commonwealth or the Hegemony.”
“Then how—”
“They spoke with me. They told me to warn both the Commonwealth and the Hegemony that they will not allow a star-destroying weapon to be used. They said they would eliminate all of us—all of humankind and all our allies—if we tried to destroy a star.”
Anya leaned back against the boulder. “They spoke to you?” She seemed unable to believe it.
I assured her that they did and gave her every detail of my contacts with the Old Ones. She probed into my mind and confirmed that it was all true.
“Then the Hegemony is lost,” she said at last. “And me with it. Aten will win. We were hoping to develop the star-destroyer ourselves. It was our last chance, a desperation weapon that we hoped would be so terrible it would force the Commonwealth to accept a truce.”
With a shake of my head, I repeated, “The Old Ones won’t permit it. They’ll wipe out all of us instead.”
Anya’s eyes looked old again, weary and defeated. “Then you’d better bring me back to Prime. I must tell the other Creators before they decide to go ahead with the weapon.”
“Tell me first how Aten is killing you. How is it possible?”
She shook her head again, utterly weary. “It’s a disease, Orion, a biological weapon that feeds on my metabolism. Aten developed it and planted it in all the Creators.”
“All of them?”
“Every one of us, long eons ago. The microbe lies dormant for ages, then slowly awakes and becomes active. Little by little, it saps your strength, slows your powers. Gradually its effects accelerate, until at last you wither and age and finally succumb.”
“But Zeus and Hera and the others—they didn’t show any signs of aging.”
A wan smile. “That’s because Aten is keeping them alive. As long as they stay with him, support his side of this war, he keeps them healthy.”
“And there’s nothing you can do? No cure? No way to restore yourself?”
