Orion in the Dying Time (13 page)

Anya overlooked my brooding silence. "It makes sense that Set's headquarters here would be very close to the place where we entered this spacetime. Maybe we can use his warping device in reverse and return to the Neolithic when we're finished here."

"Return to his fortress?"

She ignored my question. "Orion, do you realize that the tyrannosaurs left their usual habitat there in the lowlands, marched up to the duckbills' nesting area to slaughter them, and then returned immediately back to the swamps? They must have been under Set's control."

I agreed that it did not seem likely that the giant carnivores would trek all the way to the nesting site and back without some form of outside stimulus.

We camped that evening by a large, placid lake, on a long curving beach of clean white sand so fine it almost felt like powder beneath our feet. The beach was some twenty to thirty yards wide, then gave way to a line of gnarled, twisted cypresses festooned with hanging moss and, behind them, tall coconut palms and feathery fringe-leafed ferns that rose like gigantic swaying fans.

The sand was far from smooth, though. It was crisscrossed with the prints of innumerable dinosaurs: blunt deep hooves of massive sauropods, birdlike claws of smaller reptiles, and the powerful talons of carnosaurs. They all came to this shore to drink—and, some of them, to kill.

As the sun dropped toward the horizon, turning sky and water both into lovely pastel pinks and blue greens, I saw a streak of brilliant red and orange drop out of the sky and plunge into the lake. In half a moment it popped to the surface with a fish flapping in its toothy jaws.

The thing looked more like a lizard than a bird, with its long, toothed snout and longer tail. But it was feathered, and its forelimbs were definitely wings. Instead of taking off again, though, it paddled to the water's edge and waddled up onto the shore, then turned to face the setting sun and spread its wings wide, as if in worship.

"It can't fly again until it dries its wings," Anya surmised.

"I wonder how it tastes," I muttered back to her.

If the lizard-bird heard our voices or felt threatened by them, it gave no indication. It simply stood there on the shore of the gently lapping wavelets, drying its feathers and digesting its fish dinner.

Suddenly I realized that we could do the same. "How would you like to eat fish tonight?" I asked Anya.

She was sitting by a clump of bushes, feeding the little duckbill again. It seemed to eat all day long.

Without waiting for her to reply, I waded out into the shallow calm water, turning hot pink in the last rays of the dying sun. The lizard-bird clacked its beak at me and waddled a few paces away. It took only a few minutes to spear two fish. I felt happy with the change in our diet.

Anya had spent the time gathering more shrubs for our baby duckbill to nibble. And a handful of berries. The dinosaur ate them with seeming relish.

"If they don't hurt him, perhaps we can eat them, too," she said as I started the fire.

"Maybe," I acknowledged. "I'll sample one and see how it affects—"

The duckbill suddenly emitted a high-pitched whistle and scooted to Anya's side. I scrambled to my feet and stared into the gathering darkness of the woods that lined the lakeshore. Sure enough, I heard a crashing, crunching sound.

"Something heading our way," I whispered urgently to Anya. "Something big."

There was no time to douse the fire. We were too far from the edge of the trees to get to them safely. Besides, that was where the danger seemed to be coming from.

"Into the water," I said, starting for the lake.

Anya stopped to pick up the duckbill. It was as motionless as a statue, yet still a heavy armful. I grabbed it from her and, tucking its inert body under one arm, led Anya out splashing into the lake.

We dove into the water as soon as we could, me holding the duckbill up so it could breathe. It wiggled slightly, but apparently had no fear of the water. Or perhaps it was more terrified of whatever was heading our way from the woods. The lake water was tepid, too warm to be refreshing, almost like swimming in lukewarm bouillon.

We went out deep enough so that only our heads showed above the surface. The duckbill crawled onto my shoulder with only a little coaxing and I held him there with one arm, treading water with Anya beside me, close enough to grasp if I had to.

The woods were deeply shadowed now. The trees seemed to part like a curtain and a towering, terrifying tyrannosaur stepped out, his scaly hide a lurid red in the waning sunset.

The tyrant took a few ponderous steps toward our campfire, seemed to look around, then gazed out onto the water of the lake. I realized with a sinking heart that if it saw us and wanted to reach us, it had merely to wade out and grab us in those monstrous serrated teeth. The water that was deep enough for us to swim in would hardly come up to its hocks.

Sure enough, the tyrannosaur marched straight to the water's edge. Then it hesitated, looking ridiculously like a wrinkled old lady afraid of getting her feet wet.

I held my breath. The tyrannosaur seemed to look straight at me. The trembling package of frightened duckbill on my shoulder made no sound. The world seemed to stand still for an eternally long moment. Not even the lapping waves seemed to make a noise.

Then the tyrannosaur gave an enormous huffing sigh, like a blast from a blacksmith's forge, and turned away from the lake. It stamped back into the woods and disappeared.

Almost overcome with relief, we swam shoreward and then staggered out of the water and threw ourselves onto the sandy ground.

Only to hear an eerie hooting whistle coming out of the twilight on the lake.

Looking around, I saw the enormous snaky neck of an aquatic dinosaur rising, rising up from the depths of the lake, higher and higher like an enormous escalator of living flesh silhouetted against the glowing pastel sunset. Our duckbill wriggled free of my arms and ran to worm his body as close to Anya as he could.

"The Loch Ness Monster," I whispered.

"What?"

Suddenly it all became clear to me. The damned tyrannosaur would have waded into the lake after us, except that the lake was inhabited by even bigger dinosaurs who had made it their territory. As far as the tyrannosaur was concerned, anything in the water was meat for the beastie who lived in the lake. That was why it had left us alone.

The lake dinosaur hooted again, then ducked its long neck back beneath the waves.

I rolled onto my back and laughed uncontrollably, like a madman or a soldier who becomes hysterical after facing certain unavoidable death and living through it. We had literally been between the devil and the deep blue sea without even knowing it.

CHAPTER 17

My laughter subsided quickly enough. We were truly trapped and I knew it. "I don't see anything funny," Anya said in the purpling shadows of the twilight.

"It isn't funny," I agreed. "But what else can we do except laugh? One or more tyrannosaurs are patrolling through the woods, one or more even bigger monsters prowling through the lake, and we're caught in between. It's beyond funny. It's cosmic. If the Creators could see us now, they'd be splitting their sides laughing at the stupid blind ridiculousness of it all."

"We can get past the tyrannosaur," she said, a hint of cold disapproval, almost anger, in her voice. I noticed that she assumed there was only the one monster lurking in the woods, waiting for us.

"You think so?" I felt bitterly cynical.

"Once it's fully night we can slip through the woods—"

"And go where? All we'll be accomplishing is to make Set's game a little more interesting."

"Do you have a better idea?"

"Yes," I said. "Transform yourself into your true form and leave me here alone."

She gasped as if I had slapped her. "Orion—you . . . you're angry with me?"

I said nothing. My blood seethed with frustration and fury. I raged silently at the Creators for putting us here. I railed inwardly at myself for being so helpless.

Anya was saying, "You know that I can't metamorphose unless there's sufficient energy for the transformation. And I won't leave you no matter what happens."

"There is a way for you to escape," I said, my anger cooling. "I'll go into the woods first and lead the tyrannosaurs away from you. Then you can get through safely. We can meet back at the duckbill nests—"

"No." She said it flatly, with finality. Even in the gathering darkness I could sense the toss of her ebony hair as she shook her head.

"We can't—"

"Whatever we do," Anya said firmly, "we do together."

"Don't you understand?" I begged her. "We're trapped here. It's hopeless. Get away while you can."

Anya stepped close to me and touched my cheek with her cool, soft hand. Her gray eyes looked deeply into mine. I felt the tension that had been cramping my neck and back muscles easing, dissolving.

"This is unlike you, Orion. You've never given up before, no matter what we faced."

"We've never been in a situation like this." But even as I said it, I felt calmer, less depressed.

"As you said a few days ago, my love, we still live. And while we live we must fight against Set and his monstrous designs, whatever they are."

She was right and I knew it. I also Knew that there was no way for me to resist her. She was one of the Creators, and I was one of her creatures.

"And whatever we do, my unhappy love," Anya said, her voice dropping lower, "we will do together. To the death, if necessary."

My voice choked with a tangle of emotions. She was a goddess, yet she would never abandon me. Never.

We stood facing each other for a few moments more, then decided to start walking around the edge of the lake, for lack of any better plan. The duckbill trotted after us, silently following Anya.

How can two human beings fight a thirty-ton tyrannosaur with little more than their bare hands? I knew the answer: They can't. Something deep in my mind recalled that I had killed Set's carnosaurs in the Neolithic with not much more than bare hands. Yet somehow the tyrannosaurs seemed far beyond that challenge. I felt hopeless, powerless; not afraid, I was so depressed I was beyond fear.

So we walked through the deepening night, the glistening froth of the gently breaking waves on our right, the sighing trees of the woods on our left. The moon rose, a crescent slim as a scimitar, and later that blood red star raised its eerie eye above the lake's flat horizon.

Anya was thinking out loud, in a half whisper: "If we can find one of Set's people, capture him and learn from him where Set's camp is and what he's trying to achieve here, then we could form a plan of action."

I made a grunting noise rather than saying out loud how naive I thought she was being.

"They must have tools, weapons. Perhaps we could capture some. Then we'd be better prepared. . . ."

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her what I really thought of her daydreaming.

"I haven't seen any weapons or tools of any kind on them," I muttered.

"Set has a technology as powerful as our own," she said. I knew that by "our own" she meant the Creators.

"Yes, but his troops go empty-handed—except for their claws." Then I realized: "And the reptiles they control."

Anya stopped in her tracks. "The tyrannosaurs."

"And the dragons, back in Paradise."

"They use the animals the way we use tools," she said.

Our baby duckbill snuffled slightly, just to let us know that it was there in the darkness, I think. Anya dropped to one knee and picked it up.

My mind was racing. I recalled another kind of intelligent creature who controlled animals with their minds. The Neanderthals and their leader, Ahriman. My memory filled with half-forgotten images of the suicidal duel he and I had fought over a span of fifty thousand years. I squeezed my eyes shut and stood stock still, straining every cell of my brain to recall, remember.

"I think," I said shakily, "I might be able to control an animal the same way that the humanoids do."

Anya stepped closer to me. "No, Orion. That ability was never built into you. Not even the Golden One knows how to accomplish that."

"I've looked deeply into the mind of Ahriman," I told her. "Many times. I lived with the Neanderthals. I think I can do it."

"If only you could!"

"Let me try—on your little friend here."

We both sat cross-legged on the sand, Anya with the sleepy duckbill in her lap. It curled up immediately, tail wrapping over its snout, and closed its eyes.

I closed mine.

It was a simple mind, yet not so primitive that it did not have a sense of self-preservation. In the cool of the evening it sought Anya's body warmth and the sleep it needed to prepare itself for the coming day. I saw nothing, but a symphony of olfactory stimuli flooded through me: the warm musky scent of Anya's body, the tang of the lake's sun-heated water, the drifting odor of leaves and bark. My own mind felt surprise that there were no flowers to add their fragrances to the night air, but then I realized that true flowering plants did not yet exist here.

I opened the duckbill baby's eyes and saw its world, murky and indistinct, blurred with the need to sleep. An overwhelming reluctance to get up and leave the protection of Anya's mothering body welled through me, but I rose shakily to all fours and slithered off Anya's warm lap. I half trotted to the lapping edge of the water, sniffed at it and found no danger in it, then waded in until my tiny hooves barely touched the muddy bottom. Then I turned around and made my way gladly back to the motherly lap.

"She's all wet!" Anya complained, laughing.

"And sound asleep," I said.

For many minutes we sat facing each other, Anya with the little dinosaur sighing rhythmically in her lap.

"You were right," she whispered. "You can control it."

"It's only a baby," I said. "Controlling something bigger will be much more difficult."

"But you can do it," Anya said. "I know you can."

I replied, "You were right, too. Our little friend is a female."

"I knew it!"

Looking toward the darkened woods, I let my awareness sift in through the trees and mammoth ferns, swaying and whispering in the night wind. There were tyrannosaurs out there, all right. Several of them. They were asleep now, lightly. Perhaps we could make our way past them. It was worth a try.

"Are their masters with them?" Anya asked when I suggested we try to get away.

"I don't sense them," I said. "That doesn't mean they aren't there."

We waited while I sensed the tyrannosaurs drifting deeper into sleep. Crickets chirped in the woods, the slim crescent moon rose higher, followed by the baleful red star.

"When can we start?" Anya asked, absently stroking the baby dinosaur on her lap.

I rose slowly to my feet. "Soon. In a few—"

That eerie hooting echoed through the night. Turning toward the lake, I saw the long snaky neck of the enormous aquatic dinosaur silhouetted against the stars and the filmy white haze that would one day be the constellation of Orion. From far away came an answering call floating through the darkness.

A cool breeze wafted in from the lake. It seemed to clear my mind like a wind blows away a fog.

I helped Anya to her feet. The baby duckbill hardly stirred in her arms.

"Do you think," I asked her, "that Set could influence my mind the way his people control the dinosaurs?"

"He probed your mind there in his castle," she said.

"Could that have caused me to feel so"—I hesitated to use the word—"so depressed?"

She nodded solemnly. "He uses despair like a weapon, to undermine your strength, to lead you to destruction."

I began to understand the whole of it. "And once you realized it, you counteracted it."

Anya replied, "No, Orion, you counteracted it. You did it yourself."

Did I? Anya was kind to say so, perhaps. But I wondered how large a role she played in my mental revival.

With the blink of an eye I dismissed the matter. I did not care who did what. I felt strong again, and that terrible despair had lifted from me.

"The tyrannosaurs are sleeping soundly," I told Anya. "We can get past them if we're careful."

As I put a hand to her shoulder I heard a frothing, bubbling, surging sound from out in the lake. Turning, I expected to see one or more of the huge dinosaurs splashing out there.

Instead, the waters seemed to be parting far out in the lake, splitting asunder to make way for something dark and massive and so enormous that even the big dinosaurs were dwarfed by it.

A building, a structure, an edifice that rose and rose, dripping, from the depths of the lake. Towers and turrets and overhanging tiers so wide and massive that they blotted out the sky. Balconies and high-flung walkways spanning between slim minarets. Tiny red lights winked on as we watched level upon level still rising up out of the water, mammoth and awesome.

Anya and I gaped dumbfounded at the titanic structure rising from the lake like the palace of some sea god, grotesque yet beautiful, dreadful yet majestic. The water surged into knee-high waves that spread across the lake and broke at our feet, then raced back as if eager to gather themselves at the base of the looming silent castle of darkness.

I saw that one tower rose higher than all the others, pointing straight upward into the night sky. And directly above it, like a beacon or lodestone, rode the blood red star at zenith.

"What fools we've been!" Anya whispered in the shadows.

I glanced at her. Her eyes were wide and eager.

"We thought that Set's main base was back in the Neolithic, beside the Nile. That was merely one of his camps!"

I understood.

"This is his headquarters," I said. "Here, in this era. He's inside that huge fortress waiting for us."