What did it matter? I wept bitterly, thinking of how foolish I had been ever to believe that a goddess, one of the Creators, could love a man enough to risk her life for his sake. Anya had been all fire and courage and adventure when she had known that she could escape whatever danger we faced. Once she realized that Set had the power to truly end her existence, her game of playing human ended swiftly.
She had chosen life for herself and her kind, and left me to die.
I lost track of time, languishing and lamenting in my cell. I must have slept. I must have eaten. But my conscious mind had room for nothing but the enormity of Anya’s betrayal and the certainty of approaching death.
Let it come, I told myself. The final release. The ultimate end of it all. I was ready to die. I had nothing to live for.
I don’t consciously recall how or when it happened, but I found myself on my feet once more, standing in Set’s audience chamber again, facing him on his elevated throne.
Blinking stupidly in the dull flickering ruddy light of the torches flanking his throne, I realized that I could move my arms and legs. I was not fettered by Set’s mental control.
His enormous bulk loomed before me. “No, there are no chains of any kind holding you,” his words formed in my mind. “We have no need of them now. You understand that I can crush you whenever I choose to.”
“I understand,” I replied woodenly.
“For an ape you show promising intelligence,” his mocking voice echoed within me. “I see that you have pieced together the fact that I intend to bring my people to this world and make Earth our new home.”
“Yes,” I said, while my mind wondered why.
“Most of my kind are content to accept their fate upon Shaydan. They realize that Sheol is an unstable star and will soon explode. Soon, that is, in terms of the universe’s time scale. A few million years from now. Soon enough.”
“You are not content to accept your fate upon a doomed planet,” I said to him.
“Not at all,” Set replied. “I have spent most of my life shaping this planet Earth to my purposes, fashioning its life-forms into a fitting environment for my people.”
“You travel through time, just like the Creators.”
“Better than your puny Creators, little ape,” he answered. “Their pitiful powers were based on the tiny slice of energy that they could obtain from your yellow sun. They allowed most of the sun’s energy to waft off into space! Unused. Wasted. A foolish mistake. A fatal mistake.”
He hissed with pleasure as he continued, “My own people have depended on the wavering energy from dying Sheol. I alone understood how much energy can be tapped from the molten core of a planet as large as Earth. Taken in its totality, a star’s energy output is millions of times stronger. But no one uses the total output of a star, only the miserable fraction that their planet intercepts.”
“But a core tap…” I muttered.
“Tapping the planet’s molten core gives me more energy, enormously concentrated energy, constant and powerful enough to leap across the eons of spaced me as easily as you can hop across a puddle. That is why I have won this planet for myself and your Creators are running for their lives, scattering out among the distant stars.”
I said nothing. There was nothing for me to say. My only question was when Set would put me to death, and how long it would take.
“I have no intention of killing you soon,” he said in my mind, knowing my thoughts without my speaking them. “You are my prize of victory over your Creators, my trophy. I will exhibit you all across Shaydan.”
I looked up into his red snake’s eyes and realized what he had in mind. Most of his kind did not believe that they could be saved by migrating to Earth. Set intended to show me to them, to prove that he was master of the planet, that there would be no resistance to their relocation.
“Good again, thinking ape! You perceive my motives and my intentions. I will be the savior of my kind! The conqueror of an entire world and the savior of my people! That is my accomplishment and my glory.”
“A glorious accomplishment indeed,” I heard myself answer. “Exceeded only by your vanity.”
“You grow bolder, knowing that I do not intend to kill you immediately.” I could sense anger in his words. “Be assured that you will die, in a manner and at a time that will not merely please me, but will convince all of Shaydan that I am to be obeyed by one and all. Obeyed and adored.”
“Adored?” I felt shock at his words. “Like a god?”
“Why not? Your bumbling Creators allowed themselves to be worshiped by their human spawn, did they not? Why should not my own people adore me for saving our race? I alone have conquered the Earth. I alone have opened the gates to Shaydan’s salvation.”
“By killing off billions of Earth’s creatures.”
Set shrugged his massive shoulders. “I created most of them, they are mine to do with as I please.”
“You didn’t create humankind!”
He hissed laughter. “No, I did not. Those who did are fleeing to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. The human race has lost its reason for existence, Orion. Why should they be allowed to last beyond their usefulness, any more than the dinosaurs or the trilobites or the ammonites?”
I will not be allowed to outlive my usefulness, either, I thought. Once I ceased being useful to the Creators they abandoned me. Once I cease being useful to Set he will kill me.
“Before you die, overgrown monkey,” Set went on tauntingly, “I will allow you to satisfy your apish curiosity and see the world of Shaydan. It will be the final satisfaction of your existence.”
Chapter 24
Set lumbered off his throne and led me down long dim corridors that sloped downward, always downward. The light was so deeply red, so dim to my eyes, that I might as well have been blind. The walls seemed blank, although I felt certain they were decorated with mosaics the way the upper corridors had been. I simply could not perceive them.
Set’s massive form marched in front of me, the scales of his broad heavily muscled back glinting in the gloomy light, his tail swinging left and right in time to the strides of his clawed feet. Those talons clicked on the hard floor. Absurdly, his swinging tail and clicking claws made me think of a metronome. A metronome counting off the final moments of my life.
We passed through laboratories and workrooms filled with strange equipment. And still we went on, downward, deeper. I tried to see these interminable corridors through Set’s eyes, but his mind was completely shielded from me. I could not penetrate it at all.
He felt my attempt, though.
“You find the light too dim?” he asked in my mind.
“I am nearly blind,” I said aloud.
“No matter. Follow me.”
“Why must we walk?” I asked. “You have the ability to leap across spacetime, yet you walk from one end of your castle to another? No elevators, no moving belt-ways?”
“Jabbering monkey, we of Shaydan use technology to help us do those things we could not do unaided. Unlike your kind, however, we do not have a simian fascination with toys. What we can accomplish with our unaided bodies we do for ourselves. In that way we help to maintain a balance with our environment.”
“And waste hours of time and energy,” I grumbled.
I sensed a genuine amusement from him. “What matter a few hours to one who can travel through spacetime at will? What matter a bit of exertion to one who is assured of feeding?”
I realized that it had been too long since my last meal. My stomach felt empty.
“One of your mammalian shortcomings,” Set told me, sensing my thought. “You have this absurd need to feed every few hours merely to maintain your body temperature. We are much more in harmony with our environment, two-footed monkey. Our need for food is modest compared to yours.”