“My dearest one…”

“They’re so… fragile,” she said. “So full of hurt.”

“They are very limited. You know that. I created them that way. I had to.”

“Don’t you feel any responsibility toward them?”

“Of course I do,” he said.

“Do you know what they believe, some of them?” Before he could answer, she went on, “Some of their best philosophers believe that they created us. In their own dim, limited way, they are beginning to understand that we need them, that we cannot survive without them.”

He gave a disgusted grunt. “Bah! Their philosophers have uttered every kind of wisdom and nonsense, in random order. They simply say everything that comes into their heads, and then call it intelligence.”

“They are learning. And they try so hard, Ormazd! They create music, and paintings, and machines that will reach out to the stars.”

“So much the better,” he snapped. “That will make them more useful.”

“But the knowledge they are gaining is bringing them great powers. They have weapons now that can wipe out the entire race.”

“That will never happen,” he said quickly.

“You are afraid it will.”

“No. I will see to it that they do not kill themselves off completely.”

“You built that aggressiveness into them. You made them a race of fighters, of killers.”

Nodding, Ormazd admitted, “Of course. That is what I needed. Their aggressive nature is all-important.”

“Even though it leads them to slaughter one another?”

“Even if they destroy their so-called civilization in nuclear war. So what? Some of them will survive. I will see to that. Their petty little civilizations have tumbled down before. The race survives. That’s what is important.”

“And the Dark One? I suppose, if you call yourself Ormazd, the God of Light, then he should be called Ahriman, the God of Darkness.”

Ormazd bowed his head slightly, acknowledging her reasoning.

“Does he truly have the power to make an end of us?” she asked.

“He believes he does. He believes that if he can annihilate the humans, we will die along with them.”

For the first time, Anya looked afraid. “Is that true? Can that happen?”

And for the first time, Ormazd appeared troubled. “I am not certain. The humans want to believe that they are the center of creation, the crux upon which the entire universe depends.”

“Are you saying that they may be right?” she whispered.

“I don’t know!” Ormazd shouted, his fists clenched in helpless anger. “How can anyone know? So much is hidden from us, so much is beyond our understanding!”

Strangely, Anya smiled. She stood before the gleaming, golden, angry God of Light, her smile widening until she threw her head back and laughed aloud.

“Then the humans are right! They don’t need us. What have we given them except pain and grief?”

“I created them!”

“No, no, my would-be god. They created us. You may have molded them out of clay and breathed life into them, but you were doing it because they demanded it of you. They insisted on being created and you, and I, and all the would-be gods and goddesses are merely their servants.”

“That’s insane!” Ormazd insisted. “I created them! To serve me!”

Anya’s laughter filled the air like the tinkling of a silver bell. “And you blame them for insisting on strict causality! Yes, you created them. But they created you, too. Cause and effect, effect and cause. Which came first?”

Ormazd stood there, stunned into silence.

“Does it matter?” Anya asked. Without waiting for an answer, she said, “Their struggle is our struggle. If they die, we die. We must help them. We have no choice.”

Ormazd finally regained his voice. “I have been helping them,” he insisted.

“Yes, by creating warriors to do your fighting for you, while you remain here, safe from all the pain and turmoil, pulling strings like a puppeteer.”

“What would you have me do, go to them and make myself human?”

“Yes!”

“Never.”

“I have done it.”

“And died for it. Felt their agony and fear. Experienced death, just as they do.”

“Yes, and I will do it again. And again. As often as necessary.”

“Why?”

“To help them. To help us.”

“You’re mad.”

“I love them, Ormazd.”

He stared at her. “But they’re only creatures!”

“Yes, but they’re alive. Along with the pain and the grief and the frightening uncertainty of their lives, they also experience love and joy and kinship and adventure. They’re alive, Ormazd! You made them better than you know. And I want to be one of them.”

“Even though you’ll have to experience death?”

“Even though I go through a hundred deaths. Or a thousand. Life is worth the price. Try it!”

“No.” He took a step back away from her.

“You’ll remain here while the rest of us struggle for the final victory?”

“I’ll stay here,” he said.

“The puppeteer.” Her tone was mocking.

He drew himself to his full height. “The creator.”

Anya laughed and, shimmering into a silver radiance, slowly faded from his view. He remained alone, suspended beyond space and time, wondering if the creatures he had made on that tiny world called Earth really bore the crux of the continuum on their shoulders.

Even the gods can weep, and as Ormazd stood there thinking about Earth and the strange convolutions that cause and effect can take, he began to feel very old and very much alone.

I opened my eyes and found myself standing in the Middle of a flat, empty wasteland. The soil was sandy, with scrubby patches of grass scattered here and there. The sky was cloudless, although a pall of smoke rose far off on the horizon to my right, climbing into the clear blue sky and spreading its dirty fingers outward. Something was burning. Something the size of a city, judging from the huge bulk of the smoky cloud.

The sun burned hotly on my bare shoulders. I was wearing a short skirt and a pair of sandals, nothing more. Not for an instant did I marvel that I was still alive. I remembered dying in the fusion reactor. I knew that I had not survived that inferno. This was another life. I felt strong, totally in command of myself, although my knees trembled when I thought of what I had gone through during those last few seconds back in the twentieth century.

Back in the twentieth century? Somehow I was certain that I was in a different era, an earlier time. Ahriman had said that I was proceeding through time in reverse, back from The End to The War. Although I knew he was the Prince of Lies, somehow I believed him about that.

Where was I? The desert scrubland all about me gave me no clue. The only sign of human activity was that immense pyre smoldering on the horizon. I started walking toward the tower of smoke, the hot sun at my back throwing a lengthening shadow before me as the weary hours wore on.

It was difficult to control my thirst. If I prevented myself from sweating, my internal body temperature climbed to the point where I grew dizzy and faint. But if I let my sweat glands do their job and cool me, my body began to dehydrate. To some extent I could draw moisture from the plasma in my blood and from water stored in the cells of my visceral organs, but that was a dangerous game that could lead to further, fatal dehydration. Like any ordinary human being caught in the merciless heat of the desert, I needed water. And more desperately with each passing hour.

Off to my left I saw birds circling high in the brazen sky. Vultures. Something, somebody, was either dead or dying off in that direction. Animal or human, whatever it was might have water — or its corpse might be a source of it. I am no less squeamish than the next man, but the desert squeezes the fastidiousness out of you. A man dying of thirst gives up pity before his own life.