uniforms.
“May I say a word or two?” Frede asked, from her station to one side of the table.
The politicians all turned to her, surprised to hear a military officer ask for permission to speak. Since the earliest days of this enforced conference, they had taken their guards for granted, as much a part of the background as the trees or energy bubble that protected us from the weather.
“I know that every soldier would be very grateful for the chance to start a new life, in peace. Maybe we don’t know anything except soldiering, but that includes a lot of survival skills, and we’d be happy for a chance to learn how to live normal lives. And—well, if you need us, we’d still be available.”
“You would leave your new homes and fight for the Commonwealth, if we called you?”
“If it’s necessary,” Frede said. “You’d have to tell us why it’s necessary.”
“The human armies of the Hegemony undoubtedly feel the same way,” I added.
It took further hours of debate. The humans asked to discuss the matter among themselves, and for the first time Commonwealth and Hegemony men and women walked off together, talking earnestly, trying to find a solution to a common problem.
The Tsihn reptilians seemed puzzled by my demand. “Why not freeze them if you don’t need them?” one of the lizards asked me.
“Because they are human beings,” I replied, “and entitled to all the rights that any other humans possess.”
A Skorpis commander shook her feline head. “Humans don’t understand the way of the warrior. They regard the warrior as an inferior person, a slave.”
“Regrettable,” said the Tsihn.
“That attitude is about to change,” I said.
“And we are all being held hostage here until it does,” the Skorpis commander replied.
“Regrettable,” the Tsihn repeated. I wondered if that was its idea of humor.
Neither the Commonwealth humans nor those of the Hegemony liked it, but at last they agreed to my demand: the existing human armies would remain alive and be resettled on unoccupied planets.
We had peace within our grasp. But only if I could make the Creators agree to it, I knew.
I returned the politicians to their homes, precisely to the times when I had kidnapped them. Frede and the other soldiers gaped when the whole group of them disappeared, together with their conference table and everything else.
“Matter transmission,” I told them.
They still shook their heads.
“I’m sending you back to Loris,” I told them. Before they could object, I added, “But not to your prison cells. You’ll be at the army base, in fairly luxurious quarters. If the politicians keep their word, the process of resettlement will begin soon.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Frede asked, with a veteran’s skepticism.
“I’ll come and get you,” I said.
She gazed into my eyes. “Who in the name of the seven levels of hell are you, Orion?”
“A soldier, just like you.”
“Dogshit you are.”
I grinned at her. “I’ve just been around longer. I know more tricks.”
“You’re not coming back to Loris with us?”
“No, I’ve got another problem to tackle,” I said.
She frowned slightly, then stepped up to me and, throwing her arms around my neck, gave me a very unmilitary kiss. “Thank you,” Frede said. “Thanks for our lives.”
I felt slightly flustered. The rest of the crew was grinning at us. I called them all to attention, then sent them back to Loris. They disappeared from the forest of Paradise as if they had never been there.
I took in a deep breath. The real test was facing me now. I translated myself to the city of the Creators.
This time I went right into the heart of the city, into its magnificent central square, bordered by temples from the highest human civilizations: a Sumerian ziggurat, a Mayan pyramid, the Parthenon in all of its original graceful beauty. The sun shone brightly through the shimmering golden energy dome that encased the Creators’ city; I could feel the breeze from the nearby sea wafting by.
They were all there, waiting for me, all of them in perfect glowing health. All of them in splendid robes, a pantheon of human physical perfection, the men handsome and grave, the women stunning and equally solemn. All except Anya.
“Where is she?”
The Golden One stepped forward, regarded me somberly.
“Where is she?” I repeated.
“All in due time, Orion. We have other matters to discuss first.”
My left hand snapped out and I seized him by the throat, pressing my thumb against his windpipe, forcing him to his knees.
“Where is Anya?” I thundered. “What have you done to her?”
The one I called Zeus snapped at me, “Release him at once!” I saw burly Ares and several of the others advancing upon me.
I tightened my grip on Aten’s throat. “Take another step and I’ll snap his neck.”
“What good would that do?” Zeus asked. “We will simply revive him.”
“You’ll copy him,” I said. “This one here will never know it. He’ll be dead.”
Aten’s eyes bulged up at me.
“Yes, I know your tricks. I know about matter transmission and the discontinuities you’ve created in the continuum. I know that you regard mortal humans as less than the dirt beneath your feet.”
“That’s not true, Orion,” said green-eyed Aphrodite. “We care for our creatures.”
I flung Aten to the ground. What was the point of killing him? They would simply make another.
But a murderous anger was surging through me. “Gods, you call yourselves? Liars! Imposters! Murderers! You’re nothing but a pack of ravening madmen.”
“You go too far,” Hera said. I remembered when she styled herself Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great, the woman who engineered the assassination of her husband, Philip, king of Macedon.
Aten glared up at me with a fury in his eyes to match my own. “If you want to find your precious Anya,” he croaked, rubbing at his throat, “you will have to settle with us first.”
“What is there to settle?” I demanded. “The war is over—unless you godly murderers start it up again.”
“The war is over,” Hermes agreed, his gray eyes flicking to Zeus before he added, “We have settled our own differences; there’s no need for further fighting among the humans.”
I looked at Hermes, then at Zeus and Hera and all the others. My gaze finally returned to Aten, climbing back to his feet, glowering pure hatred at me.
“You must speak to the Old Ones for us,” he said, his voice already healing from my throttling.
“Must I?”
Zeus said, “It is important that we establish friendly relations with them. Vital.”
“Why?”
“The ultimate crisis, Orion!” said Hermes urgently. “It’s here! There’s no time to waste.”
“You can travel across time and yet you say you have no time to waste? I don’t understand.”
The Golden One almost put on his old smugly superior sneer, but Zeus spoke before he could. “We are facing a crisis that may be beyond our power to solve. No matter how we move across the continuum, all the time tracks, all the geodesies are being warped beyond control.”
I recalled the Old Ones telling me that every passage through the continuum creates disturbances, ripples in the fabric of space-time. Now, looking into the Creators’ minds as they stood before me, I saw what they feared. They had torn that fabric with their meddling in the continuum, their egomaniacal desire to alter space-time to suit their own desires. Now those ripples were cascading, threatening a turbulence that could rip apart the continuum itself and shatter the universe into mangled shards of chaos. All the timestreams would be torn apart by a tidal
