Hold Up The Sky

by Liu Cixin

  As they approached, Yi Yi saw that the plane was the size of a soccer field. The spaceship descended upon the plane thruster side down, but the flames left no marks on the surface, as if the plane were nothing but an illusion. Yet Yi Yi felt gravity, and the jarring sensation when the spaceship touched down proved that the plane was real.

  Bigtooth must have come here before; he opened the hatch without hesitation and walked out. Yi Yi’s heart seized up when he saw that Bigtooth had simultaneously opened the hatches on both side of the airlock, but the air inside the chamber didn’t howl outward. As Bigtooth walked out of the ship, Yi Yi smelled fresh air from inside his pocket. When he poked his head out, a soft, cool breeze caressed his face. This was ultra-advanced technology beyond the comprehension of either humans or dinosaurs. Its comfortable, casual application astounded Yi Yi, in a way that pierced the soul more deeply than what humanity must have felt in its first encounter with Devourers. He looked up. The sphere floated overhead against the backdrop of the radiant Milky Way.

  “What little gift have you brought me this time, Emissary?” asked the god in the language of the Devourers. His voice was not loud, seeming to come from a boundless distance away, from the deep void of outer space. It was the first time Yi Yi had found the crude language of the dinosaurs pleasing to the ear.

  Bigtooth extended a claw into his pocket, caught Yi Yi, and set him down on the plane. Yi Yi could feel the elasticity of the plane through the soles of his feet.

  “Esteemed god,” Bigtooth said. “I heard you like to collect small organisms from different star systems, so I brought you this very entertaining little thing: a human from Earth.”

  “I only like perfect organisms. Why did you bring me such a filthy insect?” said the god. The sphere and the plane flickered twice, perhaps to express disgust.

  “You know about this species?” Bigtooth raised his head in astonishment.

  “Not intimately, but I’ve heard about them from certain visitors to this arm of the galaxy. They made frequent visits to Earth in the brief course of these organisms’ evolution, and were revolted at the vulgarness of their thoughts, the lowliness of their actions, the disorder and filth of their history. Not a single visitor would deign to establish contact with them up to the destruction of Earth. Hurry and throw it away.”

  Bigtooth seized Yi Yi, rotating his massive head to look for a place to throw him. “The trash incinerator is behind you,” said the god. Bigtooth turned and saw that a small, round opening had appeared in the plane behind him. Inside shimmered a faint blue light….

  “Don’t dismiss us like that! Humanity created a magnificent civilization!” Yi Yi shouted with all his might in the language of the Devourers.

  The sphere and plane again flickered twice. The god gave two cold laughs. “Civilization? Emissary, tell this insect what civilization is.”

  Bigtooth lifted Yi Yi to his eye level; Yi Yi could even hear the gululu of the dinosaur’s giant eyeballs turning in their sockets. “Bug-bug, in this universe, the standard measure of any race’s level of civilization is the number of dimensions it can access. The basic requirement for joining civilization at large is six or more. Our esteemed god’s race can already access the eleventh dimension. The Devouring Empire can access the fourth dimension in small-scale laboratory environments, and only qualifies as a primitive, uncivilized tribe in the Milky Way. You, in the eyes of a god, are in the same category as weeds and lichen.”

  “Throw it away already, it’s disgusting,” the god urged impatiently.

  Having finished speaking, Bigtooth headed for the incinerator’s aperture. Yi Yi struggled frantically. Numerous pieces of white paper fluttered loose from his clothing. The sphere shot out a needle-thin beam of light, hitting one of the sheets, which froze unmoving in midair. The beam scanned rapidly over its surface.

  “Oh my, wait, what’s this?”

  Bigtooth allowed Yi Yi to dangle over the incinerator’s aperture as he turned to look at the sphere.

  “That’s … my students’ homework!” Yi Yi managed laboriously, struggling in the dinosaur’s giant claw.

  “These squarish symbols are very interesting, and the little arrays they form are quite amusing too,” said the god. The sphere’s beam of light rapidly scanned over the other sheets of paper, which had since landed on the plane.

  “They’re Ch-Chinese characters. These are poems in Classical Chinese!”

  “Poems?” the god exclaimed, retracting its beam of light. “I trust you understand the language of these insects, Emissary?”

  “Of course, esteemed god. Before the Devouring Empire ate Earth, we spent a long time living on their world.” Bigtooth set Yi Yi down on the plane next to the incinerator, bent over, and picked up a sheet of paper. He held it just in front of his eyes, trying with effort to distinguish the small characters on it. “More or less, it says—”

  “Forget it, you’ll distort the meaning!” Yi Yi waved a hand to interrupt Bigtooth.

  “How so?” asked the god interestedly.

  “Because this is a form of art that can only be expressed in Classical Chinese. Even translating these poems into other human languages alters them until they lose much of their meaning and beauty.”

  “Emissary, do you have this language in your computer database? Send me the relevant data, as well as all the information you have on Earth history. Just use the communications channel we established during our last meeting.”

  Bigtooth hurried back to the spaceship and banged around on the computer inside for a while, muttering, “We don’t have the Classical Chinese portion here, so we’ll have to upload it from the Empire’s network. There might be some delay.” Through the open hatchway, Yi Yi saw the morphing colors of the computer screen reflected off the dinosaur’s huge eyeballs.

  By the time Bigtooth got off the ship, the god could already read the poem on one sheet of paper with perfect modern Chinese pronunciation.

  “Bai ri yi shan jin,

  Huang he ru hai liu,

  Yu qiong qian li mu,

  Geng shang yi ceng lou.”

  “You’re a fast learner!” Yi Yi exclaimed.

  The god ignored him, silent.

  Bigtooth explained, “It means, the star has set behind the orbiting planet’s mountains. A liquid river called the Yellow River is flowing in the direction of the ocean. Oh, the river and the ocean are both made of the chemical compound consisting of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms. If you want to see further, you must climb further up the edifice.”

  The god remained silent.

  “Esteemed god, you visited the Devouring Empire not long ago. The scenery there is almost identical to that of the world known to this poem’s author bug-bug, with mountains, rivers, and seas, so …”

  “So I understand the meaning of the poem,” said the god. The sphere suddenly moved so it was right above Bigtooth’s head. Yi Yi thought it looked like a giant pupilless eye staring at Bigtooth. “But, didn’t you feel something?”

  Bigtooth shook his head, confused.

  “That is to say, something hidden behind the outward meaning of that simple, elegant array of square symbols?”

  Bigtooth looked even more confused, so the god recited another Classical poem:

  “Qian bu jian gu ren,

  Hou bu jian lai zhe,

  Nian tian di zhi you,

  Du cang ran er ti xia.”

  Bigtooth hurried eagerly to explain. “This poem means, looking in front of you, you can’t see all the bug-bugs who lived on the planet in the distant past. Looking behind you, you can’t see all the bug-bugs who will live on the planet in the future. So you feel how time and space are just too big and end up crying.”

  The god brooded.

  “Ha, crying is one way for Earth bug-bugs to express their grief. So at that point their visual organs—”

  “Do you still feel nothing?” the god interrupted Bigtooth. The sphere descended further, nearly touching Bigtooth’s snout.
>
  Bigtooth shook his head firmly this time. “Esteemed god, I don’t think there’s anything inside. It’s just a simple little poem.”

  Next, the god recited several more poems, one after the other. They were all short and simple, yet imbued with a spirit that transcended their topics. They included Li Bai’s “Downriver to Jiangling,” “Still Night Thoughts,” and “Bidding Meng Haoran Farewell at Yellow Crane Tower”; Liu Zongyuan’s “River Snow”; Cui Hao’s “Yellow Crane Tower”; Meng Haoran’s “Spring Dawn”; and so forth.

  Bigtooth said, “The Devouring Empire has many historical epic poems with millions of lines. We would happily present them all to you, esteemed god! In comparison, the poems of human bug-bugs are so puny and simple, like their technology—”

  The sphere suddenly departed its position above Bigtooth’s head, drifting in unthinking arcs in midair. “Emissary, I know your people’s greatest hope is that I’ll answer the question ‘The Devouring Empire has existed for eight million years, so why is its technology still stalled in the Atomic Age?’ Now I know the answer.”

  Bigtooth gazed at the sphere passionately. “Esteemed god, the answer is crucial to us! Please—”

  “Esteemed god,” Yi Yi called out, raising a hand. “I have a question too. May I speak?”

  Bigtooth glared resentfully at Yi Yi, as if he wanted to swallow him in one bite. But the god said, “Though I continue to despise Earth insects, those little arrays have won you the right.”

  “Is art common throughout the universe?”

  The sphere vibrated faintly in midair, as if nodding. “Yes—I’m an intergalactic art collector and researcher myself, in fact. In my travels, I’ve encountered the various arts of numerous civilizations. Most are ponderous, unintelligible setups. But using so few symbols, in so small and clever an array, to encompass such rich sensory layers and subtle meaning, all the while operating under such sadistically exacting formal rules and rhyme schemes? I have to say, I’ve never seen anything like it…. Emissary, you may now throw away this insect.”

  Once again, Bigtooth seized Yi Yi with his claw. “That’s right, we ought to throw it away. Esteemed god, we have fairly abundant resources on human civilization stored in the Devouring Empire’s central networks. All those resources are now in your memory, while this bug-bug probably doesn’t know any more than a couple of the little poems.” He carried Yi Yi toward the incinerator as he spoke.

  “Throw away those pieces of paper too,” the god said. Bigtooth hurriedly returned and used his other claw to collect the papers. At this point, Yi Yi hollered from between the massive claws.

  “O god, save these papers with the ancient poems of humanity, as a memento! You’ve discovered an unsurpassable art. You can spread it throughout the universe!”

  “Wait.” The god once again stopped Bigtooth. Yi Yi was already hanging above the incinerator aperture, feeling the heat of the blue flames below him. The sphere floated over, coming to a stop a few centimeters from Yi Yi’s forehead. Yi Yi, like Bigtooth earlier, felt the force of the enormous pupilless eye’s gaze.

  “Unsurpassable?”

  Bigtooth laughed, holding up Yi Yi. “Can you believe the pitiable bug-bug, saying these things in front of a magnificent god? Hilarious! What remains to humanity? You’ve lost everything on Earth. Even the scientific knowledge you’ve managed to bring with you has been largely forgotten. One time at dinner, I asked the human I was about to eat, what were the atomic bombs used by the humans in the Earth Defense War made of? He told me they were made of atoms!”

  “Hahahaha …” The god joined Bigtooth in laughter, the sphere vibrating so hard it became an ellipsoid. “It’s certainly the most accurate answer of them all, hahaha …”

  “Esteemed god, all these dirty bug-bugs have left are a couple of those little poems! Hahaha—”

  “But they cannot be surpassed!” Yi Yi said solemnly in the middle of the claw, puffing out his chest.

  The sphere stopped vibrating. It said, in an almost intimate whisper, “Technology can surpass anything.”

  “It has nothing to do with technology. They are the quintessence of the human spiritual realm. They cannot be surpassed!”

  “Only because you haven’t witnessed the power of technology in its ultimate stage, little insect. Little, little insect. You haven’t seen.” The god’s tone of voice became as gentle as a father’s, but Yi Yi shivered at the icy killing edge hidden deep within. The god said, “Look at the sun.”

  Yi Yi obeyed. They were in the vacuum between the orbits of Earth and Mars. The sun’s radiance made him squint.

  “What’s your favorite color?” asked the god.

  “Green.”

  The word had barely left his lips before the sun turned green. It was a bewitching shade; the sun resembled a cat’s eye floating in the void of space. Under its gaze, the whole universe looked strange and sinister.

  Bigtooth’s claw trembled, dropping Yi Yi onto the plane. When their reason returned, they realized a fact even more unnerving than the sun turning green: the light should have taken more than ten minutes to travel here from the sun, but the change had occurred instantaneously!

  Half a minute later, the sun returned to its previous condition, emitting brilliant white light once more.

  “See? This is technology. This is the force that allowed my race to ascend from slugs in ocean mud to gods. Technology itself is the true God, in fact. We all worship it devotedly.”

  Yi Yi blinked his dazzled eyes. “But that god can’t surpass this art. We have gods too, in our minds. We worship them, but we don’t believe they can write poems like Li Bai and Du Fu.”

  The god laughed coldly. “What an extraordinarily stubborn insect,” it said to Yi Yi. “It makes you even more loathsome. But, for the sake of killing time, let me surpass your array-art.”

  Yi Yi laughed back. “It’s impossible. First of all, you aren’t human, so you can’t feel with a human’s soul. Human art to you is only a flower on a stone slab. Technology can’t help you surmount this obstacle.”

  “Technology can surmount this obstacle as easily as snapping your fingers. Give me your DNA!”

  Yi Yi was confused. “Give the god one of your hairs!” Bigtooth prompted him. Yi Yi reached up and plucked out a hair; an invisible suction force drew the hair into the sphere. A while later, the hair fell from the sphere, drifting to the plane. The god had only extracted a bit of skin from its root.

  The sphere roiled with white light, then gradually became clear. It was now filled with transparent liquid in which strings of bubbles rose. Next, Yi Yi spotted a ball the size of an egg yolk inside the liquid, made pale red by the sunlight shining through, as if it were luminous in and of itself. The ball soon grew. Yi Yi realized that it was a curled-up embryo, its bulging eyes squeezed shut, its oversized head crisscrossed with red blood vessels. The embryo continued to mature. The tiny body finally uncurled and swam frog-like in the sphere of liquid. The liquid gradually became cloudy, so that the sunlight coming through the sphere revealed only a blurry silhouette that continued to rapidly mature until it became that of a swimming grown man. At this point, the sphere reverted to its original opaque, glowing state, and a naked human fell out of it and onto the plane.

  Yi Yi’s clone stood up unsteadily, the sunlight glistening off his wet form. He was long-haired and long-bearded, but one could tell that he was only in his thirties or forties. Aside from the wiry thinness, he didn’t look at all like the original Yi Yi.

  The clone stood stiffly, gazing dully into the infinite distance, as if completely oblivious to the universe he’d just joined. Above him, the sphere’s white light dimmed, before extinguishing altogether. The sphere itself disappeared as if evaporating. But just then, Yi Yi thought he saw something else light up, and realized that it was the clone’s eyes. The dullness had been replaced with the divine gleam of wisdom. In this moment, Yi Yi would learn, the god had transferred all his memories to the clone body.

 
“Cold … so this is cold?” A breeze had blown past. The clone had wrapped his arms around his slick shoulders, shivering, but his voice was full of delighted surprise. “This is cold! This is pain, immaculate, impeccable pain, the sensation I scoured the stars for, as piercing as the ten-dimensional string through time and space, as crystalline as a diamond of pure energy at the heart of a star, ah …” He spread his emaciated arms and beheld the Milky Way. “Qian bu jian gu ren, hou bu jian lai zhe, nian yu zhou zhi—” A spate of shivers left the clone’s teeth chattering. He hurriedly stopped commemorating his birth and ran over to warm himself over the incinerator.

  The clone extended his hands over the blue flames inside the aperture, shivering as he said to Yi Yi, “Really, this is something I do all the time. When researching and collecting a civilization’s art, I always lodge my consciousness inside a member organism of that civilization, to ensure my complete understanding of the art.”

  The flames inside the incinerator’s aperture suddenly flared. The plane surrounding it roiled with multicolored light as well, so that Yi Yi felt as if the entire plane were a sheet of frosted glass floating on a sea of fire.

  “The incinerator has turned into a fabricator,” Bigtooth whispered to Yi Yi. “The god is performing energy-matter exchange.” Seeing Yi Yi’s continued puzzlement, he explained again, “Idiot, he’s making objects out of pure energy, the handicraft of a god!”

  Suddenly, a white mass burst from the fabricator, unfurling in midair as it fell—clothing, which the clone caught and put on. Yi Yi saw that it was a loose, flowing Tang Dynasty robe, made of snow-white silk and trimmed with a wide band of black. The clone, who had appeared so pitiable earlier, looked like an ethereal sage with it on. Yi Yi couldn’t imagine how it had been made from the blue flames.

  The fabricator completed another object. Something black flew from the aperture and thudded onto the plane like a rock. Yi Yi ran over and picked it up. He might not trust his eyes, but his hand clearly registered a heavy inkstone, icy cold at that. Something else smacked onto the plane; Yi Yi picked up a black rod. No doubt about it—it was an inkstick! Next came several brush pens, a brush holder, a sheet of snow-white mulberry paper (paper, out of the flames!), and several little decorative antiques. The last object out was also the largest: an old-fashioned writing desk! Yi Yi and Bigtooth hurriedly righted the desk and arranged the other objects on top of it.