Devourer

by Liu Cixin

  “What is that? Is it …. a crack?” someone asked.

  “It is. A crack. A three thousand mile-long crack,” the Marshal said, nodding. “The Eridanians did not betray us. The data in the crystal was accurate. The acceleration limit is real, but as the Moon approached, the despairing Devourer decided to damn the consequences and to exceed it by four-fold, desperate to avoid the collision. This, however, had consequences: The Devourer has cracked.”

  Then they found more cracks.

  “Look, what's going on now?” someone shouted as its rotation brought another part of Devourer's surface into view. A dazzling bright light began glowing on the edge of its metal continent as if dawn were creeping over its vast horizon.

  “The rotational engine!” an officer called out.

  “Indeed. It is the rarely used equatorial rotational engine!” the Marshal explained. “It is firing at full power, trying to stop the Devourer's rotation!”

  “Marshal, you were spot on and this proves it!”

  “We must act now and use all available means to gather detailed data so that we can run a simulation!” the Marshal commanded. Even as he spoke, the entire Supreme Command was already executing the task.

  In the past century a mathematical model had been developed that precisely described the Devourer's physical structure. The required data was gathered and it ran very efficiently, and so the results were quickly produced: It would take nearly 40 hours for the rotational engine to reduce the Devourer's rotation to a speed at which it could avoid destruction. Yet, in only 18 hours the centrifugal forces would completely break it to pieces.

  A cheer rose among the Supreme Command. The big screen shone with the holographic image of the Devourer's coming demise: The process of the break up would be very slow, almost like a dream. Against the pitch-black of space, this giant world would disperse like milk foam floating on coffee, its edges gradually breaking off, only to be swallowed by darkness beyond. It looked like the Devourer was melting into space. Only the occasional flash of an explosion now revealed its disintegrating form.

  The Marshal did not join the others as they watched this soul-soothing display of destruction. He stood apart from the group, focused at another screen, carefully observing the real Devourer. His face betrayed no trace of triumph. As calm returned to the bridge, the others began to take notice of him. One after the other they joined him at the screen. There they quickly discovered that the blue light at the Devourer's aft had reappeared.

  The Devourer had restarted its engine.

  Given the critical state the ring structure was already in, this seemed like an utterly unfathomable mistake. Any acceleration, no matter how minute, could cause a catastrophic breakup. But it was the Devourer's trajectory that truly baffled the onlookers: It was ever so slowly retracing its steps, returning to the position it had held before its evasive maneuvers. It was carefully reestablishing its synchronous orbit and re-aligning its axis of rotation with Earth's.

  “What? Does it still want to devour the Earth?” an officer exclaimed, both shocked and confused.

  His question provoked a few scattered laughs. All laughter, however, soon fell silent as the others became aware of the look on the Marshal's face. He was no longer looking at the screen. His eyes were closed. His face was blank and drained of all color. In the past hundred years, the officers and personnel who had made fending off the Devourer a pillar of their soul had become very familiar with the Marshal's countenance. They had never seen him like this. A calm fell over the gathered Supreme Command as they turned back to the screen. Finally they understood the gravity of the situation.

  There was a way out for the Devourer.

  The Devourer's flight toward the Earth had begun. It had already matched the Earth in both orbital speed and rotation as it approached the planet's South Pole.

  If it took too long, the Devourer's own centrifugal forces would tear it apart; if it went too fast, the power of its propulsion would rip it to pieces. The Devourer's survival was hanging on a thin thread. It had to hold to a perfect balance between timing and speed.

  Before the Earth's South Pole was enveloped by the Devourer's giant ring, the Supreme Command could see the shape of the frozen continent change rapidly. Antarctica was shrinking, like butter in a hot frying pan. The world's oceans were being pulled toward the South Pole by the immense gravity of the Devourer and now the Earth's white tip was being swallowed by their billowing waters.

  As this happened, the Devourer, too, was changing. Many new cracks began to cover its body, and all of them were growing longer and wider. The first few tears were now no longer black seams, but gaping chasms glowing with crimson light. They could easily have been mistaken for thousands of miles-long portals to Hell.

  In the midst of all this destruction, a few fine white strands rose from the ring's massive body. Then, more and more of these filaments emerged, flowing from every part of the Devourer's body. It almost looked like the huge ship had sprouted a sparse head of white hair. In fact, they were the engine trails of ships being launched from the great ring. The Devourers were fleeing their doomed world.

  Half of the Earth had already been encircled by the Devourer when things took a turn for the worse: The Earth's gravity was acting almost like the invisible spokes of a cosmic wheel, bearing the disintegrating Devourer. No new cracks were appearing on its surface and the already open rips had ceased growing. Forty hours later, the Earth had been completely engulfed by the Devourer. The effect of the planet's gravity was stronger here and the cracks on the Devourer's surface were beginning to close. Another five hours later, they had completely closed.

  In the control ship, all the screens of the Supreme Command had gone black and even the lights went dark. The only remaining source of illumination was the deathly pale rays of the Sun piercing through the portholes. In order to generate artificial gravity, the mid-section of the ship was still slowly rotating. As it did, the Sun rose and fell, porthole to porthole. Light and shadow wandered, as if it were replaying humanity's forever bygone days and nights.

  “Thank you for a century of dutiful service,” the Marshal said. “Thank you all.” He saluted the Supreme Command. Under the gaze of the officers and personnel, he calmly folded up his uniform. The others followed his example.

  Humanity had been defeated. The defenders of Earth had done their utmost to discharge their duties and as soldiers they had still done their duty gloriously. In spirit, they all accepted their unseen medals with clear conscience. They were entitled to enjoy this moment.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Epilogue: The Return

  “There really is water!” a young lieutenant shouted with joyous surprise. It was true; a vast surface of water stretched out before them. Sparkling waves shimmered under the dusky heavens.

  The Marshal removed the gloves of his spacesuit. With both hands he scooped up some water. Opening his visor, he ventured a taste. As he quickly closed his visor again, he said, “Hey, it’s not too salty.” When he saw that the lieutenant was about to open his own visor, he stopped him. “You'll suffer decompression sickness. The composition of the atmosphere is actually not the problem; the poisonous sulfuric components in the air have already thinned out. However, the atmospheric pressure is too low. Without a visor it is like being at thirty thousand was before the war.”

  A general dug in the sand at his feet. “Maybe there's some grass seeds,” he said, smiling as he raised his head to look at the Marshal.

  The Marshal shook his head as he replied. “Before the war, this was the bottom of the ocean.”

  “We can go have a look at New Land Eleven. It’s not far from here. Maybe we can find some there,” the lieutenant suggested

  “Any will have been long ago burned,” someone said with a sigh.

  Each of them scanned the horizon in all directions. They were surrounded by an unbroken chain of mountains only recently born by the orogenic movements of the Earth. They were dark blue massifs m
ade of bare rock. Rivers of magma spilling from their peaks glowed crimson, like blood oozing from the body of slain stone titan.

  The magma rivers of the Earth below had burned out.

  This was Earth, 230 years after the war.

  After the war had ended, the more than 100 people aboard the control ship had entered the hibernation chambers. There they waited for the Devourer to spit out the Earth; then they would return home. During their wait their ship had become a satellite, circling the new joint planet of Devourer and Earth in a wide orbit. In all that time, the Devourer Empire had done nothing to harass them.

  One-hundred-twenty-five years after the war, the command ship's sensors picked up that the Devourer was in the process of leaving the Earth. In response, it roused some of those in hibernation. When they woke, the Devourer had already left the Earth and flown on to Venus. The Earth had been transformed into a wholly alien world, a strange planet, perhaps best described as a lump of charcoal freshly out of the oven. The oceans had all disappeared and the land was covered in a web of magma rivers.

  The personnel of the control ship could only continue their hibernation. They reset their sensors and waited for the Earth to cool. This wait lasted another century.

  When they again woke from hibernation, they found a cooled planet, its violent geology having subsided; but now the Earth was a desolate, yellow wasteland. Even though all life had disappeared, there was still a sparse atmosphere. They even discovered remnants of the oceans of old.

  So, they landed at the shore of such a remnant, barely the size of a pre-war continental lake.

  A blast of thunder, deafening in this thin atmosphere, roared above them as the so familiar crude form of a Devourer Empire ship landed not far from their own vessel. Its gigantic doors opened and Fangs took his first tottering steps out, leaning heavily on a walking stick the size of a power pole.

  “Ah, you are still alive, sir!” the Marshal greeted him. “You must be around five hundred now?”

  “How could I live that long? I, too, went into hibernation, thirty years after the war. I hibernated just so I could see you again,” Fangs retorted.

  “Where is the Devourer now?” the Marshal asked.

  Fangs pointed into the sky above as he answered. “You can still see it at night; it is but a dim star now, just having passed Jupiter's orbit.”

  “It is leaving the solar system?” the Marshal queried.

  Fangs nodded. “I will set out today to follow it.”

  The Marshal paused before speaking. “We are both old now.”

  Fangs sadly nodded his giant head. “Old ...” he said, his walking stick trembling in his hand. “The world, now ...” he continued pointing from heaven to Earth.

  “A small amount of water and atmosphere remains. Should we consider this an act of mercy of the Devourer Empire?” the Marshal asked quietly.

  Fangs shook his head. “It has nothing to do with mercy; it is your doing.”

  The Earth's soldiers looked at Fangs in puzzlement.

  “Oh, in this war the Devourer Empire suffered an unprecedented wound. We lost hundreds of millions in those tears,” Fangs admitted. “Our ecosystem, too, suffered critical damage. After the war, it took us fifty Earth years just to complete preliminary repairs and only once that was done could we begin to chew the Earth. But we knew that our time in the solar system was limited. If we did not leave in time, a cloud of interstellar dust would float right into our flight path. And if we took the long way round, we would lose seventeen thousand years on our way to the next star. In that time the star's state will have already changed, burning the planets that we wish to eat. Because of this we had to chew the planets of the Sun in great haste and we could not pick them clean,” Fangs explained.

  “That fills us with great comfort and honor,” the Marshal said, looking at the soldiers surrounding him.

  “You are most worthy of it. It truly was a great interstellar war. In the lengthy annals of the Devourer's wars, ours was one of the most remarkable battles! To this day, all throughout our world, minstrels sing of the epic achievements of the Earth's soldiers,” Fangs stated.

  “We would more hope that humanity would remember the war. So, how is humanity?” the Marshal queried.

  “After the war, approximately two billion humans were migrated to the Devourer Empire, about half of all of humanity,” Fangs answered, activating the large screen of his portable computer. On it pictures of life on the Devourer appeared. The screen revealed a beautiful grassland under blue skies. On the grass a group of happy humans was singing and dancing. For a while it was difficult to distinguish the sex of these humans. Their skin was a soft, subtle white. They were all dressed in fine, gauzy clothes and on their heads they all wore beautiful wreathes of flowers. In the distance one could make out a magnificent castle, its appearance clearly modeled on something from an Earth fairytale. Its vibrant colors made it look as if it were made of cream and chocolate.

  The camera's lens drew closer, giving the Marshal a chance to study these people's countenance in detail. He was soon completely convinced that they were truly happy. It was an utterly carefree happiness, pure as crystal. It reminded him of the few short years of innocent childhood joy that pre-war humans had experienced.

  “We must ensure their absolute happiness,” Fangs said. “It is the minimum requirement for raising them. If we do not, we cannot guarantee the quality of their meat. And it must be said that the Earth people are seen as food of the highest quality; only the upper class of the Devourer Empire society can afford to enjoy them. We do not take such delicacies for granted.” Fangs paused for a moment. “Oh, Marshal. We found your great-grandson, sir. We recorded something from him to you. Do you care to see it?”

  The Marshal glimpsed at Fangs in surprise, then nodded his head.

  A tender-skinned, beautiful boy appeared on the screen. Judging by his face he was only 10-years-old, but his stature was already that of a grown man. He held a flower wreathe in his feminine hands, having obviously just been called from a dance.

  Blinking his large, shimmering eyes, he said, “I hear that my great-grandfather still lives. Then I ask only one thing of you, sir. Never, ever come see me! I am nauseated! When we think of humanity's life before the war we are all nauseated! What a barbaric life that was, the life of cockroaches! You and your soldiers of Earth wanted to preserve that life! You almost stopped humanity from entering this beautiful heaven! How perverse! Do you know how much shame, how much embarrassment you have caused me? Bah! Do not come looking for me! Bah! Go and die!” After he had finished, he skipped to join the dancing on the grassland.

  Fangs was first to break the awkward silence that followed. “He will live past the age of sixty. He will have a long life and will not be slaughtered.”

  “If it should have anything to do with me, then I am truly grateful,” the Marshal said, smiling miserably.

  “It does not. After learning about his ancestry, he became very depressed and filled with feelings of hate toward you. Such emotions prevent his meat from meeting the standards,” Fangs explained.

  As Fangs looked at these last few humans before him, genuine emotions played across his massive eyes. Their spacesuits were extremely old and shabby and the many years past were etched into their faces. In the pale yellow of the Sun they looked like a group of rust-stained statues. Fangs closed his computer and, full of regret, said, “At first I did not want you to see this, but you are all true warriors, well capable of dealing with the truth, ready to recognize,” he paused for a long while before continuing “that human civilization has come to an end.”

  “You certainly destroyed Earth's civilization,” the Marshal said staring into the distance. “You have committed a monstrous crime!”

  “We finally have started to talk about morals again,” Fangs said with a laugh and a grin.

  “When you invaded our home and after you brutally devoured everything in it, I would think that you lost all rights to talk abo
ut morals,” the Marshal said coldly.

  The others had already stopped paying attention; the extreme, cold brutality of the Devourer civilization was just beyond human understanding. Nothing could have been less interesting to them than to engage them in an exchange about morals.

  “No, we have the right. I now truly wish to talk about morals with humanity,” Fangs said before again pausing. “‘How, sir, could you just pick him up and eat him?’” he continued, quoting the then Captain. Those last words left nobody unshaken. They did not emanate from the translator, but came directly from Fangs' mouth. Even though his voice was deafening, Fangs somehow managed to imitate those 300-year-old words with perfection.

  Fangs continued, returning to the use of his translator. “Marshal, three hundred years ago your intuition did not mislead you: When two civilizations – separated by interstellar space – meet, any similarities should be far more shocking than their differences. It certainly shouldn't be as it is with our species.”

  As all present focused their gaze on Fangs' frame, they were overcome with a sense of premonition that a world-shaking mystery was about to be revealed.

  Fangs straightened himself on his walking-stick and, looking into the distance, said, “Friends, we are both children of the Sun; and while the Earth is both our species' fraternal home, my people have the greater claim to her! Our claim is one-hundred-forty million years older than yours. All those millennia ago, we were the first to live on this beautiful planet and here we established our magnificent civilization.”

  The Earth's soldiers stared blankly at Fangs. The waters of the remnant ocean rippled in the pale of the yellow sunlight. Red magma flowed from the distant new mountains. Sixty million years down the rivers of time, two species, each the ruler of this Earth in their own time, met in desolation on their plundered home world.