Orion

“Where are you from?” he asked, and I felt genuine concern. Either he could not search my mind or he was too polite to try.

“Far from here,” I answered. Then I added, “Farther in time than in distance. I come from the future, from thousands of years in the future.”

His heavy brow knitted with puzzlement. “The future?”

“You can see that I am not one of your kind.”

“That is true.”

“I came into being more than a hundred thousand years from now, and have been sent to this time.”

I caught a vague, fleeting thought to the effect that I must be insane, but it passed quickly.

“It is quite true,” I said. “I don’t know how it is done, but I have been sent to this time and place.”

“Sent by whom? For what purpose?”

Ignoring that, I went on, “Somehow you will learn how to transport yourself through time and space. We will meet many times, in different eras…”

“I will travel into the future?” He seemed genuinely fascinated by the possibility.

“Yes.”

“With you?”

With a shake of my head, “We will not travel together, not as companions. But we will meet in the future, time and again.”

His heavy-featured face broke into a wide smile. “Travel into the future! Can time be bent and turned the way a man can knot a length of vine?”

“Ahriman!” I had to tell him. “In that future — in those times to come — we will be enemies.”

His smile vanished. “What? How can…”

“Whenever we meet in the future, I will try to kill you. And you will try to kill me.”

“That’s impossible.” And I could feel that he really meant it. The thought of violence was so repugnant to him that I shared the shuddering revulsion he unconsciously broadcast.

“I wish it were impossible,” I said, “but it has already happened. Many times. We have met; we have fought. More than once, you have killed me.”

He stared into my eyes. In my mind I felt the gentlest questioning touch. I nodded and relaxed and allowed him to see what I had experienced: The War, the flood in the Neolithic, the barbaric splendor of Karakorum, the technological glory of the fusion reactor.

“No,” Ahriman whispered, in that labored, tortured, rasping voice that I had come to know so well. “No…”

He trembled. This mighty hulk of a Neanderthal shook from head to toes, so repulsed and sickened was he by the scenes he saw in my mind. I heard his thoughts just as easily as if he were blaring at me through an electric bullhorn:

“It can’t be… that can’t be me… not me… he’s mad, his mind sick and perverted… no one could possibly… the killing, the sick, sadistic horror… not me. Not me!”

Ahriman turned his back to me and walked rapidly, almost ran, away from the clearing where I stood.

I closed my eyes and tried to clamp down on my thoughts. When I looked again, Ahriman was nowhere in sight, but several of the Neanderthals — men and older boys — stood around the edge of the clearing, staring at me with troubled eyes. Had they caught my thoughts, or Ahriman’s reaction to them? What would they do to me if they knew that I was created to kill the best man among them?

Slowly, reluctantly, I returned to Tohon’s house. Tunu was at the base of the tree, conversing with a few of his friends. He gave me the same cheerful smile as always, and with a few gestures told me that his father was down by the stream, where the fruit trees grew, gathering food for the feast that would honor Ahriman tonight.

I nodded my understanding, then climbed up the vine ladder to the house. Huyana was humming softly to herself as she cooked a spicy-smelling brew over the small fire in the kitchen. The pot was a tough, hollow gourd, larger than any I had ever known to grow naturally. The fire pit was a hollow in the kitchen floor, lined with flat stones and ventilated through a narrow shaft overhead.

Exhausted mentally and disgusted with myself, I barely nodded hello to Huyana. On rubbery legs I made my way through the short curving corridor to my own room and threw myself onto the spongy moss of my bed.

I awoke to Tunu’s gentle shaking. He gave me a quick skirling whistle and pointed to my window. It was almost dark.

“The feast,” Tunu said wordlessly.

I wondered if Ahriman would show up for the celebration in his honor, or had the terrifying visions I had shown him driven him away?

He was there, sitting cross-legged among the elders of the village as I arrived. The big ceremonial bonfire in the middle of the clearing bathed everything in a hot red flickering light. The massive trunks of the giant trees ringed us like the pillars of temples yet to be built, throwing their shadows back into the forest so that the clearing was a circle of light set in the midst of utter darkness.

Unconsciously I had expected drumbeats, music, dancing figures leaping against the lurid light of the huge fire. Instead the Neanderthals were quiet, almost silent, except for a background murmur of mumbles and grunts and occasional low whistles.

In their minds, though, they were laughing and chattering back and forth, exchanging stories, singing happily. I could catch the edges of their communications, like a man with a weak radio receiver catching fragments of broadcasts from a hundred different stations as he turns the dial.

But when I tuned in to Ahriman, I got nothing but a vast and dark silence. I studied his face as he sat there in the firelight. He was as impassive as a statue made of granite. The elders on either side of him did not seem troubled, though. They respected his need for silence and privacy, I understood; they expected him to favor us with another song later in the night.

The bonfire was strictly ceremonial. All the food had been prepared by the women in their individual kitchens. There was no roast venison, no suckling pigs on spits, no tales of bravery and cu

Ahriman gazed at me from his place among the elders. I sat with Tohon and his family, a dozen yards away in the arc of Neanderthals who half-circled the bonfire. I felt the heat from the flames on my face, and I began to sweat — but it was not entirely because of the hot fire.

Through the meal I caught fragments of conversations, back and forth, but nothing from Ahriman. Yet, every time I looked his way, his eyes were on me. The expression on his face was more than somber: it had the pall of death upon it. He had made up his mind about me. He knew that I was not insane, that I had told him the truth. The question now was, what would he do about it?

Finally, when everyone had had enough to eat, the murmuring rose and they all turned toward Ahriman. In my mind I heard them asking, pleading, for another song. For many minutes he merely sat there, his head bowed, as if trying to avoid their demand. But they merely begged harder, even though it was all done in almost total silence. The mental chorus grew stronger, moment by moment; the villagers were not going to allow Ahriman to leave without performing again.

He raised his head at last, and their silent importuning stopped as abruptly as if it had been chopped off with a guillotine. Ahriman looked at me bleakly, then slowly, painfully got to his feet.

The villagers drew in a collective breath of anticipation. For many of them, it was the last breath they ever took.

A pencil-thin red beam from a laser rifle lanced out of the darkness among the trees past Ahriman’s head. He threw his arms across his face and jumped sideways. More laser bolts flashed out from the trees, and I heard the yelling roar of attacking soldiers — Sapients — and saw their white-armored forms rushing toward the clearing.