"So you created me," I realized.

"I created you to hunt down Ahriman before he found the way to destroy all that I had built. Yes, I created you-too well."

My head was spinning. "But if you knew all this, if you could examine all the pathways of the continuum and foresaw what would happen..."

"Linear thinking, Orion," said Anya. "Events happen in parallel, not in sequence. What you experience as time, as a progression from past through present into future, is really all happening simultaneously. Cause and effect are interchangeable, Orion. Tomorrow and yesterday co-exist."

"I still don't understand..."

"It's not necessary for you to understand," Ormazd said. "In your own stumbling way, you have have done what I wanted done. Ahriman is trapped here, forever. The continuum is safe." done what I wanted done. Ahriman is trapped here, forever. The continuum is safe."

"You are safe," Anya said to him.

"And you," he countered.

She turned to me again. "You still have not found out why he has done all this, Orion. He constantly outwits you about the ultimate question."

I felt utterly helpless.

"Shall I tell him?" she asked Ormazd.

He folded his arms across his chest. "You will, no matter what I say."

Anya's smile was bitter, rueful. "Orion, he created you-he created what you call the human race and used it to destroy the Neanderthals, because without the humans, we gods would never have come into being."

I heard her words, but the meaning was just as opaque to me as if she had said nothing.

"Ormazd saw that the Neanderthals would eventually die away, leaving nothing. So he created the Sapients to eliminate them, to scour the Earth clean and prepare the way for a new race..."

"Better than angels," I mumbled.

"But what actually has happened," she went on, "is that you humans learned how to manipulate your own evolution, learned how to engineer the genes of your cells. You took control of your own destiny and eventually, after many millennia, you metamorphosed into-us."

"We became gods?"

"You evolved into creatures such as we are," Anya said. "Creatures of pure energy, who can control and manipulate that energy to take whatever form we wish. Creatures who understand the innermost workings of the continuum, who can move through time and space as easily as you walk through a forest."

I turned back to Ormazd. "We became you."

He frowned at the two of us.

"We created created you!" I shouted. you!" I shouted.

"Now you understand why Ormazd determined to destroy the Neanderthals. If they lived, if you humans had never been created, we ourselves would never have come into existence."

"But you do do exist!" exist!"

"Yes, and we are bound by the same inexorable rules that bind all the continuum. Ormazd had to do what he did; otherwise, this continuum, this universe, would collapse and perish."

They could both see the utter confusion that had my mind reeling. Past and future, life and death-it was all a vast dizzying whirl, the entire universe spinning wildly, galaxies forming like eddies in a swift stream, spawning stars and planets and creatures who struggle and die...

"It is the truth, Orion." Anya's calm voice cut through my agitation.

"You can see the necessity of it," said Ormazd.

"The Neanderthals had to die so that we could live, and evolve into you."

Ormazd nodded grimly. "That is not the way I had planned it, at first. But it worked out well enough."

I could not look at Ahriman, not now. Instead, I asked Ormazd, "And what is to become of me?"

His expression lightened. He almost smiled at me, like a benign, generous creator. "I will grant you the gift of life, Orion. A full, rich, human lifespan in any era you choose."

"And then death."

His brows arched. "If you choose the right era, a human lifespan can be very long indeed. Centuries."

"And you?" I asked Anya.

Before she could reply, Ormazd said, "We have evolved out of humankind, Orion. We are not human, any more than you are a hominid ape."

"So I would live on Earth without you," I said to her.

"I can give you more than one lifetime," Ormazd said. "You can live for thousands of years, if you desire to."

My heart felt like a stone sinking to the bottom of the deepest ocean trench. "One lifetime or many-without you, Anya, what good is it?"

She took a step toward me, held out her hand.

But I turned toward Ahriman, glowering helplessly in his eternal prison. "For this I helped to annihilate his entire race. For this I've led him into this living hell."

"You saved your own race," Ormazd said.

"I saved you you, and your kind." Turning to Anya again, I said, "Free him! Use the power you have to set him free."

She gaped at me.

"What are you saying?" Ormazd cried.

"Let Ahriman go free," I said. "Kill me if I've outlived my usefulness, but give him back his life, his people."

"Never!" Ormazd snapped.

But I was pleading to Anya. "Even if it means the end of everything, do it! Free him! Let him and his people have their time on Earth. Let him live."

"That would mean the destruction of us all!" Ormazd roared. "I won't allow it!"

"If we can't live together," I said to Anya, "then let us die together."

Her gray eyes struck sparks off my soul. She looked from me to Ormazd, and then turned to Ahriman.

"No! Don't!" Ormazd screamed. "Telepathy... he knows all that we know, now. He has seen what's in our minds; he has taken in our knowledge of the continuum!"

"Yes," Anya said. "He has."

"He'll use that knowledge to rip the continuum apart!" Ormazd's voice was a frenzied shriek. His image was wavering, shimmering.

"Orion is right," Anya replied, as calmly as if she were discussing abstract philosophy. "Ahriman's people deserve their moment of life. We have existed long enough."

"I won't let you!" Ormazd bellowed. He became a shining globe of golden radiance again, but Anya remained in her human form and stretched her hands out toward Ahriman.

Lightning lashed blindingly. I heard Ormazd's voice roaring as I squeezed my eyes shut and felt my flesh bubbling from the tremendous energy flow being released. The radiance burned through my closed lids, boiled my eyes away, seared so deeply into my brain that I sensed nothing but flaming hot light as the very atoms of my body exploded into showers of ephemeral bursts of energy.

Without eyes, without body, I could see the continuum collapsing in on itself, all the material and energy of the whole universe rushing together in one titanic, dark whirlpool of space-time, a convoluted multidimensional black hole into which Planets, stars, galaxies were sucked in, flayed, dismembered and digested into a primeval fireball.

And then it all exploded in a soundless, measureless spasm of new creation.

EPILOGUE.

I am not superhuman.

I do have abilities that are far beyond those of any normal man's, but I am just as human and mortal as anyone of Earth.

Yet I am a solitary man. My life has been spent alone, my mind clouded with strange dreams and, when I am awake, half memories of other lives, other existences, that are so fantastic that they can only be the compensations of a lonely, withdrawn subconscious mind.

As I did almost every day, I took my lunch hour late in the afternoon and made my way from my office to the same small restaurant in which I ate almost every day. Alone. I sat at my usual table, toying with my food and thinking about how much of my life is spent in solitude.

I happened to look up toward the front entrance of the restaurant when she came in-stunningly beautiful, tall and graceful, hair the color of midnight and lustrous gray eyes that held all of eternity in them.

"Anya," I breathed to myself, even though I had no idea who she was. Yet something within me leaped with joy, as if I had known her from ages ago.

She seemed to know me as well. Smiling, she made her way directly to my table. I got up from my chair, feeling elated and confused at the same time.

"Orion." She extended her hand.

I took it in mine, and bent over to kiss it. Then I held a chair out for her to sit. The waiter came over and she asked for a glass of red wine. He trundled off to the bar.

"I feel as if I've known you all my life," I said to her.

"For many lifetimes," she said, her voice softly feminine. "Don't you remember?"

I closed my eyes in concentration and a swirl of memories rushed in on me so rapidly that it took my breath away. I saw a great shining globe of golden light, and the dark brooding figure of a fiercely malevolent man, a forest of giant trees and a barren, windswept desert and a world of unending ice and snow. And her, this woman, clad in silver armor that gleamed against the darkness of infinity.

"I... remember... death," I heard myself stammer. "The whole world, the entire universe... all of space-time collapsed in on itself."

She nodded gravely. "And rebounded in a new cycle of expansion. That was something that neither Ormazd nor Ahriman foresaw. The continuum does not end; it begins anew."

"Ormazd," I muttered. "Ahriman." The names touched a chord in my mind. I felt anger welling up inside me, anger tinged with fear and resentment. But I could not recall who they were and why they stirred such strong emotions within me.

"They are still out there," Anya said, "still grappling with each other. But they know, thanks to you, Orion, that the continuum cannot be destroyed so easily. It perseveres."

"Those other lives I remember-you were in them."

"Yes, as I will be in this one."

"I loved you, then."

Her smile lit the world. "Do you love me now?"

"Yes." And I knew it was so. I meant it with every atom of my being.

"And I love you, too, Orion. I always have and I always will."

"But I'm leaving soon."

"I know."

Past her shoulder, I could see through the restaurant's window all the gaudy crescent of Saturn hanging low on the horizon, the thin line of its rings slicing through its bulging middle. Higher up, the sky of Titan was its usual dull orange overcast. The starship was parked in orbit up there, waiting for us to finish our final preparations and board it.

"We'll be gone for twenty years," I said.

"To the Sirius system, I know."

"It's a long voyage."

"Not as long as some we've already made, Orion," she said, "or others that we will make someday."

"What do you mean?"

"I'll explain it during the voyage." She smiled again. "We'll have plenty of time to remember everything then."

My heart leaped in my chest. "You're going too?"

"Of course," she laughed. "We have endured the collapse and rebirth of the universe, Orion. We have shared many lives and many deaths. I'm not going to be separated from you now."

"But I haven't seen you at any of the crew briefings. You're not on the list of..."

"I am now. We will journey out to the stars together, my beloved. We have a long and full lifetime ahead of us. And perhaps even more than that."

I leaned across the table and kissed her lips. My loneliness was ended, at last. I could face anything in the world now. I was ready to challenge the universe.