But there seemed to be no such reptiles in the area. The pterosaurs had passed us by hours earlier, and I had seen no other reptilians in this open savannah, not even the tiniest of lizards. Nothing but small mammals—and we few humans.
I decided to risk a fire, just large enough for cooking our catch, to be extinguished as soon as the cooking was done.
Anya surprised me by showing she could light a fire with nothing more than a pair of sticks and some sweat.
The others gaped in astonishment as wisps of smoke and then a flicker of flame rose from Anya’s rubbing sticks.
Gray-bearded old Noch, kneeling next to her, said in an awed voice, “I remember my father making fire in the same way—before he was killed by the masters and I was taken away from Paradise.”
“The masters have the eternal fire,” said a woman’s voice from out of the flickering shadows.
But none of the others seemed concerned with that now, not with the delicious aroma of roasting meat making them salivate and their stomachs rumble.
After we had eaten and most of the tribe had drifted off into sleep I asked Anya, “Where did you learn to make fire?”
“From you,” she answered. Looking into my eyes, she added, “Don’t you remember?”
I could feel my brows knitting with concentration. “Cold—I remember the snow and ice, and a small team of men and women. We were wearing uniforms…”
Anya’s eyes seemed to glow in the night shadows. “You do remember! You can break through the programming and remember earlier existences.”
“I don’t remember much,” I said.
“But the Golden One wiped your memory clean after each existence. Or tried to. Orion, you are growing stronger. Your powers are growing.”
I was more concerned with our present problems. “How do the Creators expect us to deal with Set with nothing but our bare hands?”
“They don’t, Orion. Now that we have established ourselves in this era we can return to the Creators and bring back whatever we need: tools, weapons, machines, warriors… anything.”
“Warriors? Like me? Human beings manufactured by the Golden One or the other Creators and sent back in time to do their dirty work?”
With a tolerant sigh, Anya replied, “You can hardly expect them to come themselves and do the fighting. They are not warriors.”
“But you are here. Fighting. That monster would have killed me if you hadn’t been there.”
“I am an atavism,” she said, almost with pleasure in her voice. “A warrior. A woman foolish enough to fall in love with one of our own creatures.”
The fire had long been smothered in mud, and the only light sifting through the trees came from the cold white alabaster of the moon. It was enough for me to see how beautiful Anya was, enough to make me burn with love for her.
“Can we go to the Creators’ realm and then return here, to this exact place and time?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Even if we spend hours and hours?”
“Orion, in the realm of the Creators there is a splendid temple atop a crag of marble that is my favorite retreat. We could go there and spend hours, or days, or months, if you wish.”
“I do wish it!”
She kissed me gently, merely a brushing of lips. “Then we will go there.”
Anya put her hand in mine. Reflexively, I closed my eyes. But I felt nothing, and when I opened my eyes, we were still in the miserable little camp by the muddy bank of a Neolithic stream.
“What happened?”
Anya’s whole body was stiff with tension. “It didn’t work. Something—someone—is blocking access to the continuum.”
“Blocking access?” I heard my own voice as if a stranger’s: high-pitched with sudden fear.
“We’re trapped here, Orion!” said Anya, frightened herself. “Trapped!”
Chapter 4
Now I knew something of how the tribe of ex-slaves felt.
It was easy to feel brave and confident when I knew that all the paths of the continuum were open to me. Knew that I could travel through time as easily as stepping through a doorway. Certainly I could feel pity, even contempt, for these cowardly humans who bowed down to the terrifying reptilian masters. I could leave this time and place at will, as long as Anya was with me to lead the way.
But now we were trapped, the way was cut off, and I felt the deep lurking dread of forces and powers far beyond my own control looming over me as hatefully as final, implacable death.
We had no choice except to press on southward, hoping to reach the forests of Paradise before Set’s scouting pterosaurs located us. Each morning we rose and trekked toward the distant southern horizon. Each night we made camp in the best available protective foliage we could find. The men were learning to hunt the small game that abounded in this endless grassy veldt, the women gathered fruits and berries.
Each time we saw pterosaurs quartering the skies above us we went to ground and froze like mice faced with a hunting hawk. Then we resumed our march to the south. Toward Paradise. And the horizon remained just as flat, just as far away, as it had been the first day we had started.
Sometimes in the distance we saw herds of grazing animals, big beasts the size of bison or elk. Once we stumbled close enough to them to see a pride of saber-toothed cats stalking the herd’s fringes; the females sleek and deadly as they prowled through the long grass, bellies almost on the ground, the males massive with their scimitarlike incisors and shaggy manes. They ignored us, and we steered as far away from them as we could.
Anya troubled me. I had never seen her look frightened before, but frightened she was now. I knew she was trying each night to make contact with the other Creators, those godlike men and women from the distant future who had created the human race. They had created me to be their hunter, and I had served them with growing reluctance over the millennia. Gradually I was remembering other missions, other lives. Other deaths.
Once I had been with another tribe of Neolithic hunter/gatherers, far from this monotonous savannah, in the hilly country near Ararat. In another time I had led a desperate band of abandoned soldiers through the snows of the Ice Age in the aftermath of our slaughter of the Neanderthals.
Anya had always been there with me, often disguised as an ordinary human being of that time and place, always ready to protect me even in the face of the displeasure of the other Creators.
Now we trekked toward a Paradise that may be nothing more than a half-remembered legend, fleeing devilish monsters who had apparently taken total control of this aspect of the continuum. And Anya was as helpless as any of us.
Some nights we made love, coupling as the others did, on the ground in the dark, silently, furtively, not wanting the others to see or hear us, as though what we were doing was shameful. Our passions were brief, spiritless, far from satisfying.
It was several nights before I realized that the mother whom I had saved from the lizard’s punishment had taken to sleeping beside me. She and her baby remained several body lengths away the first night, but each evening she moved closer. Anya noticed, too, and spoke gently with her.
“Her name is Reeva,” Anya told me as we marched the following morning. “Her husband was beaten to death by the guard lizards for trying to steal extra food for her so she could nurse the baby.”
“But why—”
“You protected her. You saved her and her baby. She is very shy, but she is trying to work up the courage to tell you that she will be your number-two woman, if you will have her.”