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 cunning in the hunt. Instead, the Neanderthals ate mostly vegetables and eggs, nuts and berries, and drank fruit juices or clear water brought cold from the stream by the best runners among the youngsters. The little meat they had, which came from the animals they culled from their herds, was offered as a delicacy, a special treat in honor of their guest.

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.

They were firing pointblank into the Neanderthals, their beams ripping men, women, and children apart the way a honed razor would slice through a rag doll.

I learned that Neanderthals can scream. Pain and terror brings out the same wild animal screeches from them that it does from us.

There were only a dozen or so Sapient soldiers, but they were armed with laser rifles. The Neanderthals scrambled to their feet and ran in all directions, as those searing red beams slashed them apart. Tohon reached for his daughter as a soldier turned his visored, helmeted head toward us. He hesitated an instant, no doubt stunned to find a fellow Sapient among the brutes he had come to slaughter. I was empty-handed and, worse, my mind was a blank, too. I did not know what to do, where to turn.

Tohon began running with Yoki in his arms. The soldier snapped out of his hesitation. He gunned them both down. Their bodies sprawled to the ground, spurting blood.

"No!" I screamed. "Stop!" I waved my arms and ran toward the soldier, yelling and ranting like a maniac. He tried to step aside and get a clear shot at Huyana, who stood paralyzed beside the dead bodies of her husband and daughter. I grabbed for his rifle, and as he tried to pull it back from me, Tunu leaped at the soldier and knocked him off his feet.

I took the rifle as Tunu, his eyes wide and blazing with new-found hate, seized a rock in his two hands and smashed it down on the soldier's helmet. The plastic armor dented, then cracked, as Tunu pounded at it again and again. Blood oozed from the smashed visor and the trooper went rigid and inert.

I wheeled about and saw the carnage that the soldiers had created. Neanderthals lay sprawled grotesquely everywhere; the survivors were running toward the relative safety of the trees and darkness. The fire burned hot, casting glinting highlights off the white armor of the soldiers. I held a laser rifle in my hands, my finger curled around its trigger.

Yet I could not fire it. I could not shoot at those troopers. Behind those featureless visors might be Marek, or Lissa, or even Adena. I could not fire at them, even to save the defenseless Neanderthals.

Or were they defenseless? One of the troopers was on the ground, a pair of savage dogs viciously snapping at him. Ahriman had grabbed another from behind, pinning his arms to his sides with a mighty bear hug, while another Neanderthal ripped off the soldier's helmet and choked the life out of him. Then Ahriman took up the soldier's rifle and began firing at the other troopers.

The Sapients scattered into the shadows of the trees and disappeared as quickly as they had come. For several eternally long minutes we simply stood there, panting with fear and anger. I counted thirty-eight dead, their blood soaking the ground. Tossing the rifle away, I leaned down and took the smashed helmet off the trooper who lay dead at my feet. Her hair billowed out, blonde, matted with her own blood.

Tunu knelt at her side, his mind a keening, shuddering wail of grief and agony. I could not find Huyana at first; then I recognized her body, sliced neatly in two by a laser beam, at the edge of the clearing.

Ahriman strode through the field of dead, a rifle in one mighty hand, until he stood face-to-face with me. His eyes were red with pain.

"Your people, Orion," he said, in his tortured whisper. "Why?"

I had no answer. There was nothing that I could say or do. I turned away from him, away from the carnage, and began walking into the darkness of the forest.

CHAPTER 47.

The black night engulfed me completely. With each step I grew colder, shuddering with the horror within me. The forest was absolutely silent-not an owl's hoot, not a cricket's chirp. Nothing but silence, darkness, and cold.

I have no idea of how long I walked, alone, heading nowhere. I could not return to the village, to the accusing faces of the Neanderthals. I could not bear to see Ahriman, to watch him learn how to hate, how to kill, how to make vengeance the only thing he lived for.

I thought it was dawn, when I first saw the light glimmering up ahead of me. But as I walked toward it, miserable with remorse, I saw that the trees were fading away, literally disappearing, and the light was a golden, sourceless radiance that illuminated a flat, featureless expanse that stretched in all directions toward infinity.

In the distance I saw a lone figure standing, waiting for me, clad in gleaming silver. It was Anya, I knew. I walked steadily toward her, unable to quicken my step, unwilling to hasten the final moment.

As I approached, I saw another figure, darkly brooding: Ahriman, still encased in his prison of energy, his eyes blazing fury at me. He looked much older than the Ahriman I had just met. Hatred and pain had aged him more than time ever could.

I searched Anya's face as I came up to her. I saw the sadness of eternity in her luminous eyes.

"Now you know," Anya said to me.

Nodding, I replied, "I know everything except the most important answer of all-why?"

"For that you must ask Ormazd."

"Where is he?"

She made a little shrug and smiled joylessly. "He is here; he can see us and hear us."

"But he's too ashamed to show himself, is that it?"

Anya looked almost startled. "Ashamed? Him?"

I lifted my head to the blank golden dome that shone above us. "Present yourself, Ormazd! It's time for the final reckoning. Show your face, murderer!"

The emptiness seemed to gather in on itself, to contract into a golden bubble, a sphere of gleaming radiance that floated down toward us.

"I am here," said a voice from that globe.

"In human form," I demanded. "I want to see a face; I want to be able to watch your expression."

"You presume much, Orion," said the golden sphere.

"I've served you well enough. I deserve a little consideration."

The sphere shimmered and faded into nothingness, leaving the tall, golden form of Ormazd standing before us. His smile was part amusement, part tolerance of a lower creature's insolence.

"Does that please you, Orion?" he asked.

I glanced at Anya. There was nothing in her face but fear.

"Why?" I asked Ormazd. "Why slaughter the Neanderthals? They were harmless..."

"Precisely so. Harmless. Inoffensive. Beautifully adapted to their environment." He spread his hands in an ancient gesture of resignation.

"Then why destroy them? Why start The War?"

"Because they were an evolutionary dead end, Orion. They would never progress beyond the stage in which you found them."

"How can you know that?"

He laughed at me. "Orion, pitiful creature. I know! I have examined all the possible paths of the continuum. The Neanderthals would live their idyllic existence for their allotted time, and then be snuffed out like the dinosaurs were."

Ahriman's face was contorted with agony. He could hear what we were saying, even though he could not move a muscle to reach us.

"Believe me, Orion," Ormazd went on, "I examined every possibility. I even transplanted some of the Neanderthals to a different planet, to see if they would evolve at a more efficient rate. The differences were negligible."

"But that doesn't justify... killing them!"

"Doesn't it?" he snapped. "They would all die anyway, Orion. Sooner or later, the blind forces of nature would have wiped them out. I merely substituted a directed directed force. I hastened their demise. I helped them out of their misery. More efficiently than nature would have done." force. I hastened their demise. I helped them out of their misery. More efficiently than nature would have done."

"They weren't in misery."

Ormazd gave me a coy grin. "Orion, allow me a metaphor, please!"

"Who gave you the right to perform genocide?" I demanded. "Who made you the giver of life and death?"

He raised a hand, and the golden radiance around us darkened and sparked with jagged bolts of lightning.

"I have the power," he said, his voice thundering. "That gives me the right."

Anya put up both her hands and the lightnings vanished. The featureless golden expanse reformed itself.

Ormazd made a little bow to her. "Of course, others have some power, also. Not as much as mine, but enough to do a few simple tricks."

Anya looked from him to me. "Ask him why he decided to eliminate the Neanderthals, Orion. Don't let him mislead you. Ask him why he did it."

"Yes," I agreed. "I want to know why."

"Because I chose to."

"That's no answer," I insisted.

"Your scientists argued about evolution for more than a century," Ormazd said. "Well, I I am evolution, Orion. am evolution, Orion. I I direct the comings and goings on your little world." direct the comings and goings on your little world."

I glanced at Anya; she gave me a small nod of encouragement.

Ormazd was not finished. "Take a promising little planet called Earth. It is populated by a race of bright, two-legged creatures. They can communicate with each other directly, mind to mind. They can control the lower animals around them and the plants. They have adapted themselves perfectly to their environment. Dull, Orion. Very dull and pointless. They will never progress."

"Why do they have to..."

He ignored me and continued. "So I wipe the slate clean. It may seem cruel, but it is necessary. I create a race of warriors, soldiers, to do the bloody work of eliminating the natives. You You are of that race, Orion. You-all of you Sapients-were designed for killing. You all take delight in it; when you can't find a reason to kill each other, you go out and slaughter the helpless beasts around you. Mighty hunters, Orion, all of you." are of that race, Orion. You-all of you Sapients-were designed for killing. You all take delight in it; when you can't find a reason to kill each other, you go out and slaughter the helpless beasts around you. Mighty hunters, Orion, all of you."

I remembered how easily, how callously I had killed others of my own kind. And the hunts, where we had covered ourselves with the blood of helpless animals. I trembled with shame, and with anger at the god who made us this way.

"So I set you to the work of eliminating the Neanderthals. I had others of your kind build vast machines on a world you call Titan, a moon of Saturn, machines that can alter the output of the Sun enough to cause Ice Ages on Earth. The glaciers finish the job of scouring the planet clean of its natives-and of the murderous creatures whom I created."

"But that's not the way it happened."

"No, Orion, it isn't." He seemed amused by it all. "You helped them to survive. You showed that final little squad of bloodthirsty warriors how to live on Earth. Instead of a self-destructing army of killers, I got a self-perpetuating race of Homo sapiens sapiens Homo sapiens sapiens. Thanks to you, Orion."

"We were supposed to die in the Ice Age." The knowledge hollowed out my insides, made me feel as if I were falling from heaven to hell.

"Yes. Of course. I was going to create a truly superior race! You can't even imagine the creatures that I would have fathered. Not in your most ecstatic dreams! The angels that your kind fantasize about are nothing nothing compared to what I would have created!" compared to what I would have created!"

Anya interrupted his ranting with a voice as cool and hard as silver. "But the Sapients lived, and took over the Earth. And you made such excellent warriors of them that you could not dislodge them."

"Yes," Ormazd admitted, glaring at me. "And at the same time I became aware that this this one-" he tilted his golden-maned head toward Ahriman's dark, imprisoned form-"had survived the slaughter and somehow gained powers almost equal to my own." one-" he tilted his golden-maned head toward Ahriman's dark, imprisoned form-"had survived the slaughter and somehow gained powers almost equal to my own."