Orion in the Dying Time Read Free Page A

forest and streams and game animals in endless abundance. But the area was forbidden to them. The masters would not let them return there.
    "You lived there once?" I asked.
    "Long, long ago," he said wistfully. "When I was even younger than Chron here." He pointed at the smaller of the two teenage boys.
    "How far away is it?"
    "Many suns."
    Pointing southward, I said, "Then we head for Paradise."
    They made no objection, but it was clear to see that they were terrified. The spirit had been beaten out of them almost totally. Yet even if they did not want to follow my lead, they had no real alternative. Their masters had frightened them so completely that it made no difference to them which way they went; they were certain that they would be caught and punished most horribly.
    My first aim was to get away from the carcass of the lizard. It would take a while for whoever was in charge of the garden—Set, I supposed—to realize that one of his trained animals had been killed and a crew of slaves was loose on the landscape. We had perhaps a few hours, and by then it would be nightfall. If we could move quickly enough, we might have a chance to survive.
    We climbed the cliff face. It was not as difficult as I had feared; the stone was broken and tiered into what seemed almost like stairways. They puffed and gasped and struggled their way up to the top with me leading them and Anya bringing up the rear.
    At the summit I saw that Anya had been right. An endless rolling plain of grass stretched out to the horizon, green and lush and seemingly empty of animal life. A broad treeless savannah that extended all the way across the northern sweep of Africa to the very shore of the Atlantic. To the south, according to the gray-bearded slave, was the forest land he called Paradise.
    Pointing with my left hand, I commanded, "Southward."
    I set as brisk a pace as I could, and the slaves half trotted behind me, gasping and groaning. They did not complain, perhaps because they did not have the breath to. But each time I glanced back over my shoulder to see if they were keeping up, they were glancing back over their shoulders in fear of the inevitable.
    I had hardly worked up a sweat despite the warm sun slanting down on us from near the western horizon. I associated the sun with the Golden One, the Creator who called himself Ormazd in one era and Apollo in another, the half-mad megalomaniac who had created me to hunt down his enemies across the span of the eons.
    "You must let them rest," Anya said, jogging easily beside me through the knee-high wild grass. "They are exhausted."
    I reluctantly agreed. Up ahead I saw a small hill. Once we reached its base I stopped. All of the slaves immediately sprawled on the ground, wheezing painfully, rivers of sweat cutting grimy streaks through the dirt that crusted their bodies.
    I climbed to the hilltop, less than thirty feet high, and scanned the view. Not a tree in sight. Nothing but trackless savannah in every direction. In a way it was thrilling to be in a time and place where no human feet had yet beaten out paths and trails. The sky was turning a blazing vermilion now along the western horizon. Higher up, the blue vault was deepening into a soft violet. There was already a star shining up there, even though we were far from twilight.
    A single star, brighter than any I remembered seeing in any era. It did not twinkle at all, but shone with a constant ruddy, almost brownish light, bright and big enough to make me think that I could see a true disk instead of a mere pinpoint of light. The planet Mars? No, it was brighter than Mars had ever been, even in the clear skies of Troy, thousands of years in this era's future. And its color was darker than the bright ruby red of Mars, a brooding brownish red, almost like drying blood. Nor could it be Antares: that great red giant in the Scorpion's heart twinkled like all other true stars.
    A shriek of fear startled me out of my astronomical