Orion and King Arthur by Ben Bova Read Free Book Online Page B

Athena, the only one of the Creators who dared to oppose Aten openly.
    Suddenly a fireball of light blasted mysenses, a glare of golden radiance so bright that I flung my arms across my eyes.
    “I know your thoughts, creature.”
    I was no longer at Amesbury fort. I had been wrenched out of that point in spacetime, translated into a vastly different place, the ageless realm of the Creators.
    I could feel the brilliance of his presence. Aten, the Golden One, the self-styled god who created me.
    “Get up, Orion,”the Golden One commanded. “Stand before your Creator.”
    Like an automaton I climbed slowly to my feet, my arms still covering my eyes, shielding them from his blazing splendor. The radiance burned my flesh, seared into the marrow of my bones.
    “Put your hands down, Orion, and face the glory of your master,” he said, his voice sneering at me.
    I did as he commanded. I had no choice. It was as ifI were a mere puppet and he controlled my limbs, my entire body, even the beating of my heart.
    It was like staring into the sun. The glare was overpowering, a physical force that made my knees buckle and forced my eyes to squint painfully. After what seemed like an eternity the blinding radiance contracted, compressed itself, and took on human form. My eyes, watering with pain, beheld Aten, theGolden One who had created me.
    He was glorious to look upon. Wearing splendid robes of gold and gleaming white, Aten looked every inch the god he pretended to be. To the ancient Greeks he was Apollo; to the first Egyptians he was Aten the sun god who gave them light and life. I first knew him as Ormazd, the fire god of Zoroaster in ancient Persia.
    I loathed him. Aten or Apollo or whatever hechose to call himself, he was an egomaniac who schemed endlessly to control all of the spacetime continuum. But he is no more a god than I am. He—and the other Creators—are humans from the far future, or rather, what humans have evolved into: men and women of incredible knowledge and power, able to travel through time and space as easily as young Arthur rides a horse across a grassy meadow.
    He had sent me to be with Arthur in the darkness of an era where a few brave men were trying to stem the tide of barbarism that was destroying civilization all across the old Roman world.
    I looked into Aten’s haughty leonine eyes, gleaming with vast plans for manipulating the spacetime continuum, glittering with what may have been madness.
    “You hate me, Orion? Me, who created you? Who has revivedyou from death countless times? How ungrateful you are, creature. How unappreciative.” He laughed at me.
    “You can read my thoughts,” I said tightly, “but you cannot control them.”
    “That makes no difference, worm. You will obey me, now and forever.”
    “Why should I?”
    “You have no choice,” he said.
    I remembered differently. “I disobeyed you at Troy,” I told him. “I refused to annihilate the Neandertals,back in the Ice Age.”
    His flawlessly handsome face set into a hard scowl. “Yes, and you came close to unraveling the entire fabric of spacetime. It cost me much labor to rebuild the continuum, Orion.”
    “And you have cost me much pain.”
    “That is nothing compared to the agonies you will suffer if you dare to resist my commands again. Final death, Orion. Death without revival. Oblivion. But muchpain first. An infinity of pain.”
    “I will not murder Arthur,” I said.
    Almost he smiled. “That may not be necessary, creature. There are plenty of Saxons available for killing him. Your task is merely to stand aside and let it happen.”
    “I can’t,” I said. “I won’t.”
    He laughed again. “Yes, you will, Orion. When the moment comes you will do as I command. Just as you assassinated the High Khanof the Mongols.”
    I blinked with the memory. Ogatai. He had befriended me, made me his companion, his trusted aide—just as young Arthur has.
    “You can’t make me—”
    But I was in the darkness and stench