“We’re cut off,” I said.
He bobbed his head again, seemingly as unconcerned as a man who faced nothing worse than an annoying equipment breakdown.
“We’re getting most of the incoming transmissions. The orders from Up Top—” he jabbed a finger toward the ceiling of the cave — “are reaching us just fine. And the weather maps. And the multispectral scans that show us where the brutes are massing their forces.”
He pointed to a video screen and tapped a few pads on its keyboard. The screen glowed to life, showing me a wild, sweeping circle of clouds, a gigantic cyclonic storm as seen from the cameras of an orbiting satellite.
“That’s us, that spot where the cursor is.” Marek tapped a flickering green dot on the lower left comer of the screen.
I could feel my eyes widening as I stared at the picture. The storm clouds covered about half the screen, but where the ground was clear, I could make out geography that looked tantalizingly familiar. A long peninsula jutted out into a large sea; it looked to me like Italy, except that the shape was subtly wrong and the “toe” of what I remembered as the Italian boot was definitely connected to what would someday be the island of Sicily. Above that one recognizable shape the ground was a featureless expanse of white. Glaciers covered most of Europe. This was truly the Ice Age.
Marek prodded me. “Seen enough? Ready for the bad news?”
I nodded.
He tapped at the keyboard again and the storm clouds disappeared from the screen, showing the ground — or rather the ice fields — beneath them. The view seemed to zoom down closer to the surface, until I could make out a few gray peaks of granite jutting above the snow.
“That’s our cave,” he said, gesturing at the flickering cursor again. “And here—” he touched a single key — “are the brutes.”
A forest of red dots sprang up against the whiteness of the ice and snow. There must have been at least a thousand of them, arranged in a ragged semicircle that faced our cave.
So we were cut off from the rest of our own forces and hugely outnumbered as we waited for the enemy — the brutes — to attack.
Young as they seemed to be, the soldiers around me were veterans of many battles. They wasted no time in worrying. They ate; they checked their weapons, and soon enough they began to stretch out on their wobbly cots and go to sleep.
“Might as well grab some sleep while you can,” Marek told me, as pleasantly as if he had not a worry in the world. “The storm won’t let up for another six hours, and the brutes won’t attack until it does.”
“Are you sure?”
His grin changed only slightly. “How long have we been fighting them? Have you ever known them to attack during a storm like this?”
I shrugged.
“Besides, we’ve got the field out there covered with scanners. When they start to make their move, we’ll have plenty of warning.”
But I noticed that he stayed by his equipment, fiddling with it, checking it over, searching for a way to break through the jamming and tell the commanders in orbit where we were and what we faced.
I saw Adena standing alone up by the entrance to the cave, already dressed in armor, her helmet masking her lustrous dark hair. Most of the others were either asleep or pretending to be. The cave was quiet except for the hum of electrical equipment and the louder, more ominous moaning of the storm wind outside.
Kedar was crouched beside a set of squat, heavy green cylinders. From the cryptic lettering stenciled on them, I knew they were the electrical power packs that supplied the energy to run the squad’s equipment. He cast a suspicious glance at me as I walked slowly toward Adena, but he said nothing and remained where he was, checking his power packs. Before I could say anything to her, Adena spoke to me. “You’d better get some rest.”
“I don’t need much sleep,” I replied. “I’m all right now.”
“Waiting is the worst part,” she said, her eyes peering out at the wind-driven snow. “If I had more troops, I’d go out now and attack them now, while they’re still getting themselves ready.”
“You don’t remember me?” I asked.
She turned to face me, her gray eyes troubled. “Should I? Have we met before?”
“Many times.”
“No.” She shook her helmeted head. “I would recall it if we had. And yet…”
“And yet I look familiar to you.”
“Yes,” she admitted.
“Think,” I urged her, feeling a burning intensity blazing inside me. “We have met before. Long ago — in the future.”
“The future?”
“A primitive hunting tribe, in the springtime that will follow this age of winter. The capital of a barbarian empire, thousands of years afterward. A giant metropolis, centuries later…”
She looked startled, troubled. “You’re insane,” she whispered. “Battle fatigue, or the shock of exposure to the storm.”
“ Think!” I insisted. “Close your eyes and see what comes into your mind when you think of me.”
She gave me an odd look, part disbelief, part distrust. But slowly she squeezed her eyes shut, and I concentrated with every ounce of my will power.
“What do you see?” I asked her.
For long moments she did not respond. Then: “A waterfall.”
“What else?”
“Nothing… trees, a few people… and… strange animals, four legs… I’m riding on its back… and… you! You’re riding next to me…”
“Go on.”
“One of the brutes. A big one. In a cave… No, it’s some kind of tunnel…” She gasped and her eyes flicked wide open.
“The rats,” I realized.
Adena’s trembling hands reached up toward her throat. “It’s horrible… they… they…”
“We both died in that era,” I said. “We have lived many lives, you and I.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Orion, the Hunter. I seek Ahriman, the Dark One, the one who turned the rats on you. I have been sent to all those different ages to find him, and kill him.”
“Sent? By whom?”
“Ormazd,” I answered.
She closed her eyes for the span of a heartbeat, and the air around us seemed to glow with a cold, silvery radiance. The cave, the storm outside, dimmed and almost disappeared. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Kedar frozen in time, his outstretched hand as still as a statue’s. Adena opened her eyes again, and all the knowledge of the continuum shone in them.
“Orion,” she said. “Thank you. The veil is lifted. I can see clearly now. I remember — more than you can.”
We were alone in a sphere of energy, beyond normal time, just the two of us in a place that she had created. My heart was hammering in my chest. “Adena, I lied to you a moment ago…”
She smiled, quizzically. “Lied? To me?”
“Perhaps not so much a lie, as not telling the full truth. I said I was sent to hunt down Ahriman.”
“That is true, I know.”
“But not the whole truth. The whole truth is that although Ormazd has sent me to kill the Dark One, the real reason I am here — the reason that drives me — is to find you. I’ve searched through a hundred thousand years to find you, and each time that I do, he takes you away from me.”
“Not this time, Orion,” she said.
“I love you, Adena… Aretha… whatever your true name is.”
She laughed, a low bubbling sound of joy. “Adena will do, for now. But you are always Orion, always constant.”
Shrugging, I replied, “I am what I am. I can’t be anything else.”
“And I love you, love what you are and who you are,” she said. “I will love you forever.”