Orion in the Dying Time by Ben Bova Read Free Book Online Page B

slaves.
    "They left me for dead," he said, pulling up his tunic to show a long brutal scar carved across his ribs. In the firelight it looked livid and still painful. "My wife they did kill." One by one the men told their tales, and I learned that Set's "dragons" periodically raided into these forests of Paradise and carried off men and women to work as slaves in the garden by the Nile. And undoubtedly elsewhere, as well.
    My first notion about Set's garden had been almost totally wrong. It was not the Garden of Eden. It was this thick forest that was truly the Paradise of humankind, where men were free to roam the woods and hunt the teeming animals in it. But the people were being driven out of the forest by Set's devilish reptilian monsters, away from the free life of Neolithic hunters and into the forced labor of farming—and god knew what else.
    The legends of Eden that men would repeat to one another over the generations to come would get the facts scrambled: humans were driven out of Paradise into the garden, and not by angels but by devils.
    Obviously the reptilian masters allowed their slaves to breed in captivity. Reeva's baby had been born in slavery. I learned that night that Chron and most of the other men of my band had also been born while their parents toiled in the garden. Noch, I knew, had been taken out of Paradise in early childhood. So had the remaining others.
    "We hunt the beasts of field and forest," said Kraal, his voice sleepy as the moon's cold light filtered through the trees, "and the dragons hunt us."
    "We must fight the dragons," I said.
    Kraal shook his head wearily. "No, Orion, that is impossible. They are too big, too swift. Their claws slice flesh from the bone. Their jaws crush the life from a man."
    "They can be killed," I insisted.
    "Not by the likes of us. There are some things that men cannot do. We must accept things as they are, not dream idle dreams of what cannot be."
    "But Orion killed a dragon," Chron reminded him.
    "Maybe so," Kraal replied with the air of a man who had heard tall tales before. "It's time for sleeping now. No more talk of dragons. It's enough we'll have to fight each other when the sun comes up."
    He said it matter-of-factly, with neither regret nor anticipation in his tone.
    "Fight each other?" I echoed.
    Kraal was settling himself down comfortably between the roots of a tree. "Yes. It's a shame. I really enjoyed listening to your stories. And I'd like to see this place of your talking god. But tomorrow we fight."
    I glanced around at the other men: their dozen, our nine, including me.
    "Why must we fight?"
    As if explaining to a backward child, Kraal said patiently, "This is our territory, Orion. You killed our bear. If we let you go away without fighting you, others will come here and kill our animals. Then where would we be?"
    I stood over him as he turned on his unscarred side and mumbled, "Get some sleep, Orion. Tomorrow we fight."
    Chron came up beside me and stood on tiptoes to whisper in my ear, "Tomorrow they'll see what a fighter you are. With you leading us, we'll kill them all and take this land for ourselves."
    Smiling in the moonlit shadows, he trotted off to a level spot next to a boulder and lay down to sleep.
    One by one they all dropped to sleep until I stood alone among their snoring bodies. At least they did not fear treachery. None of them thought that someone might slit the throats of sleeping men.
    I walked down to the shore of the lake and listened to the lapping of the water. An owl hooted from the trees, the sacred symbol of Athena. Anya was the inspiration for the legends of Athena, I knew, just as the Golden One, mad as he is, inspired the legends of Apollo.
    And me? The so-called gods who created me in their distant future called me Orion and set me the task of hunting down their enemies through the vast reaches of time. In ancient Egypt I would be called Osiris, he who dies and is reborn. In the barren snowfields of the Ice Age my