Devourer (6 page)

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 about 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.

“Dino … saur …,” someone exclaimed in shocked whispers.

Fangs nodded. “The Dinosaur Civilization arose one-hundred million years ago on Earth, during what you call the Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic. At the end of the Cretaceous, our civilization reached its zenith, but we are a large species and our biological needs were equally great. In the wake of our population explosion, the ecosystem was stretched to its limit and the Earth was pushed to its brink as it struggled to support our society. To survive we completely consumed Mars' elementary ecosystem.

“The Dinosaur Civilization lasted twenty thousand years on Earth,” he continued, “but its true expansion was a matter of a few thousand years. From a geological perspective, its effects are indistinguishable from those of an explosive catastrophe; what you call the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event.

“Finally, one day all the Dinosaurs boarded ten giant generation ships and with these ships sailed into the vast sea of stars. In the end, all these ten ships were joined together. Then, whenever this newly united ship reached another star's planet, it expanded. Now, sixty million years later, it has become the Devourer Empire you know.”

“Why would you eat your own home world? Are Dinosaurs bereft of all sentimentality?” someone asked.

Fangs answered, lost in thought. “It is a long story. Interstellar space is indeed vast and boundless, but it is also different than you would imagine. The places that truly suit us, as advanced carbon-based life-forms, are few and far between. A dust cloud blocks the way to the center of the Milky Way just two thousand light years from here. There is no way for us to pass through it and no way for us to survive in it. And after it comes an area of powerful radiation and a large group of wandering black holes.” Fangs paused, before continuing, still speaking more to himself than the humans before him. “If we should travel in the opposite direction, we would just come to the end of the spiral arm and then, not far beyond, nothing but a limitless, desolate void. The Devourer Empire has already completely consumed almost all the planets that could be found in the habitable areas that exist between these two barriers. Now, the only way out is to fly to another arm of the Milky Way. We have no idea what awaits us there, but if we stay here we will certainly be doomed. It will be a journey of fifteen million years, taking us right through the void. To survive it we must build large stocks of all possible expendables.

“Right now, the Devourer Empire is just like a fish in a drying stream. It must make a desperate leap before its water completely evaporates. It realizes that the most likely end is a landing on dry land and death under the scorching Sun; but there is the slight chance that it may fall into a neighboring water hole and so survive.” Fangs lowered his gaze toward the humans to near eye-level. “As far as sentimentality is concerned, we have lived through tens of millions of arduous years and fought stellar wars beyond number. The hearts of the Dinosaur race have long since petrified. Now the Devourer Empire must consume as much as it possibly can in preparation for our million-year journey.” Fangs again paused, deep in thought. “What is civilization? Civilization is devouring, ceaselessly eating, endlessly expanding; everything else comes second.”

The Marshal, too, was deep in thought. Looking at Fangs, he questioned, “Can the struggle for existence be the universe's only law of biological and cultural evolution? Can we not establish a self-sufficient, introspective civilization where all life exists in symbiosis? A civilization like that of the Eridanians.”

Fangs answered without hesitation or pause. “I am no philosopher; perhaps it can be done. The crux is, who will take the first step? If one's survival is based on the subjugation and consumption of others and if that should be the universe's iron law of life and civilization, then whoever first rejects it in favor of introspection will certainly perish.”

With that Fangs returned to his spaceship, but he re-emerged, now carrying a thin and flat box in both talons. The box was about ten-foot square and it would have easily taken four men to carry. Fangs placed the box on the ground and opened its top. To the humans' surprise, the box was filled with earth and grass was growing on it. On this lifeless world, its green left no heart untouched.

As Fangs opened the box, he turned to the humans. “This is pre-war soil. After the war, I put all of its plants and all of its insects into suspended animation. Now, after more than two centuries, they have awoken beside me. Originally, I wanted to take this soil with me as a memento. Alas, I thought about it and I have changed my mind. I have decided to return it to where it truly belongs. We have taken more than enough from our home world.”

As they gazed upon this tiny piece of Earth, so full of life, the humans' eyes began to moisten. They now knew the dinosaurs' hearts had not turned to stone. Behind those scales colder and crueler than steel and rock, beat a heart that longed for home.

Fangs shook his claws, almost as if he wanted to cast off the emotions that had gripped him. Slightly shaken, he said, “All right then, my friends, we will go together, back to the Devourer Empire.” Seeing the expression on the humans' face, he raised a claw and continued. “You will, of course, not be food there. You are great warriors and you will be made citizens of the Empire. And there is still work that needs your attention: Build a museum of the human civilization.”

The eyes of every single Earth soldier turned to the Marshal. He stood deep in thought, then slowly nodded.

One after the other, the Earth's soldiers boarded Fangs' spaceship. Because its ladder was intended for Dinosaurs, they had to pull their entire body up each rung to climb inside. The Marshal was the last human to board the ship. Holding to the lowest rung of the ship's ladder, he pulled his body off the ground. Just at that moment something in the ground beneath his feet caught his eye. He stopped in mid-pull, looking down. For a long time he hung there, motionless.

He had seen … an ant.

The ant had climbed out of that box of soil. Never losing sight of the tiny insect, the Marshal let go of the ladder and squatted down. Lowering his hand, he let the ant clamber onto his glove. Raising it to his face, he carefully studied the small creature. Its obsidian body glinted in the sunlight. Holding it, the Marshal walked over to the box. There he cautiously returned the ant to the tiny blades of grass. As he lowered his hand he noticed more ants climbing about the soil beneath the grass.

Raising himself, he turned to Fangs who was standing right by his side. “When we leave, this grass and these ants will be the dominant species on Earth.”

Fangs was at a loss for words.

“Earth's civilized life seems to be getting smaller and smaller. Dinosaurs, humans and now probably, ants,” the Marshal said, returning to his squat. He looked on, his eyes deep with love and admiration as he watched these small beings live their lives in the grass. “It is their turn.”

As he spoke, the Earth's soldiers reemerged from the spaceship. Climbing down to Earth, they returned to the box of living soil. Standing around it they, too, were filled with deep love.

Fangs shook his head. “The grass cannot survive. It might even rain, here at the seaside, but it won't do for the ants.”

“Is the atmosphere too thin? They seem to being doing just fine at the moment,” someone noted.

“No, the air is not the problem. They are not like humans and can live well in this atmosphere. The real crux of the matter is that they will have nothing to eat,” Fangs replied.

“Can't they eat the grass?” another voice joined in.

“And then? How will they live on? In this thin air the grass will grow very slowly. Once the ants have eaten all the blades, they will starve. In many ways their situation mirrors the destiny of the Devourer civilization,” Fangs mused.

“Can you leave behind some food from your spaceship for them?” another soldier asked, almost pleaded.

Fangs again shook his massive head. “There is nothing in my spaceship besides water and the hibernation system. On that note, we will hibernate until we catch up with the Devourer. But what about your spaceship, do you have any food onboard?”

Now it was the Marshal's turn to shake his head. “Nothing but a few injections of nourishment solution; useless.”

Pointing to the spaceship, Fangs interrupted the discussion. “We must hurry. The Empire is accelerating quickly. If we tarry, we will not catch up.”

Silence.

“Marshal, we will stay behind.” It was the young lieutenant who broke the silence.

The Marshal forcefully nodded.

“Stay behind? What are you up to?” Fangs asked in astonishment, turning from one to the other. “The hibernation equipment on your spaceship is almost completely depleted and you have no food. Do you plan to stay and wait for death?”

“Staying will be the first step,” the Marshal calmly answered.

“What?” the ever more perplexed Fangs asked.

“You just mentioned the first step toward a new civilization,” the Marshal explained.

“You,” Fangs could hardly believe his own words, “want to be ants' food?”

Earth's soldiers all nodded. Fangs wordlessly gazed at them for what seemed like forever, before turning and slowly hobbling back to his spaceship, heavily leaning on his walking stick.

“Farewell, friend,” the Marshal shouted after Fangs.

Fangs replied with a long, drawn-out sigh. “An interminable darkness lies before me and my descendants; the darkness of endless war and a vast universe. Oh, where in it could there be a home for us?”

As he spoke, the humans saw that the ground beneath his feet had moistened, but they could not tell if he could, or did, shed tears.

With a thunderous roar the Dinosaur's spaceship lifted off and quickly disappeared into the sky. Where it had disappeared, the Sun was now setting.

The last warriors of Earth seated themselves around the living soil in silence. Then, beginning with the Marshal, they all, one by one, opened their visors and laid their bodies on the sandy earth.

As time passed, the Sun set. Its afterglow bathed the plundered Earth in a beautiful red. As it faded, a few stars began to twinkle in the sky. To his surprise, the Marshal saw that the dusky sky was a beautiful blue. Just as the thin atmosphere began to deprive him of his consciousness, the Marshal felt the tiny movements of an ant on his temple, filling him with a deep sense of contentment. As the ant climbed up to his forehead, he was transported back to his so very distant childhood. He was at the beach, lying in a small hammock that hung between two palm trees. Looking up to the splendid sea of stars above, he felt his mother's hand gently stroke his forehead …

Darkness fell. The remnant ocean lay flat as a mirror, pristinely reflecting the Milky Way above. It was the most tranquil night in the planet's history.