Of Ants and Dinosaurs

by Cixin Liu

  ‘And if they aren’t what you think they are?’ Dadaeus asked darkly.

  ‘Then I will not tell you my secret. You can kill me or keep me here forever to protect your secret. In any case, you have nothing to lose.’

  Dadaeus was quiet for several seconds. Then he nodded to the science minister, who was seated on the left side of the table. ‘Tell her.’

  *

  Inside the control centre of the Ant Federation’s high command, Field Marshal Jolie put the phone down. With a grimace, she turned to Supreme Consul Kachika and said, ‘Joya has been located. Two soldiers in the 214th Division saw her enter the imperial palace of Gondwana as they were returning from the mine-laying operation. It seems our suspicions were correct. She has defected.’

  ‘The shameless traitor! I dread to think what she’s told the dinosaurs.’ Kachika began pacing up and down the control room, wracking her brain for the best way to respond to this unwelcome twist. ‘Weren’t listening devices installed in the skulls of all of the dinosaurs in the palace?’

  ‘Joya destroyed the repeater we erected outside the palace. A team has been sent to fix it, but for now we have no way to eavesdrop.’

  ‘No doubt she went in there to betray the Ant Federation’s war plans.’

  ‘I would imagine so. Which puts our entire operation in jeopardy.’

  ‘What is the status of the mine-grain-laying operations?’

  ‘Operation Disconnect is 92 per cent complete. Operation Decapitate stands at 90 per cent.’

  ‘Is it possible to detonate the mines ahead of schedule?’

  ‘Of course! All of the mine-grains can be detonated either with a timer or remotely. We have already established a network of repeater stations to extend the coverage of the interrupt signal across the dinosaur world, which means we can detonate the mines that have already been deployed at a moment’s notice. Supreme Consul, it is time for decisive action. Give the order!’

  Kachika turned to face the screen displaying the map of the world and gazed at the colourfully twinkling lights of the continents. After several seconds of silence, she said, ‘Very well. Let us turn a new page in Earth’s history. Detonate!’

  *

  The science minister had finished his account and Joya’s head was now awhirl with shock and dismay. For a long moment she felt as if she was on the point of collapse.

  ‘So, Professor, what’s it to be? Will you keep your promise and reveal your great secret to us, or will you be choosing… another route?’ Dadaeus bared his impressive fangs in a dangerous smile.

  ‘This is… This is just appalling,’ stammered Joya. ‘You’re monsters, all of you. But we ants are no better…’ She clasped a feeler to her quivering thorax. ‘You must act fast. Quick! You need to call the Supreme Consul of the Ant Federation immediately!’

  ‘You haven’t given us an answer—’

  ‘Your Majesty, there is no time to explain. They already know that I am here, and they may respond at any moment. The fate of the dinosaur world hangs in the balance, and with it the fate of the planet. You have to believe me! Make the call now. Hurry!’

  ‘Very well.’ The dinosaur emperor picked up the phone from the conference table. With an anxious heart, Joya watched as he flexed his thick finger and laboriously pressed one enormous button after the other. Then she heard the muffled sound of it ringing. After a few seconds the ringing stopped and she knew Kachika had picked up the rice-sized receiver at the other end of the line.

  The supreme consul’s voice came through the receiver. ‘Hello, who is this?’

  Dadaeus spoke into the phone. ‘Is this Supreme Consul Kachika? This is Dadaeus. Right now—’

  At that very moment, Joya heard a chorus of faint clicks all around her, as if all of the second hands on a wall of clocks were moving in unison. She knew it was the sound of mine-grains exploding in the dinosaurs’ skulls. The dinosaurs in the room stiffened, and time seemed to stand still. The phone receiver tumbled from Dadaeus’s claws, falling to the table near Joya with a deafening clatter. Then all of the dinosaurs came crashing down, leaving Joya’s horizon disconcertingly empty. The tabletop shuddered for several moments. When it stilled again, Joya crawled onto the receiver. Kachika was still on the line.

  ‘Hello? This is Kachika. What is this about? Hello?’

  Her voice caused the earpiece to vibrate, sending pins and needles through Joya’s body.

  ‘Supreme Consul, it’s me, Joya!’ she shouted.

  But her pheromone speech was no longer being converted into sound, and Kachika could not hear her on the other end of the line. The palace’s translation system had been taken offline by the mine-grains. Joya said no more. She knew she was too late.

  Shortly thereafter, the lights in the hall went out. Dusk had fallen outside, and the room was thrown into semi-darkness. As Joya began the long hike across the conference table, the rumble of traffic from the distant city faded and a grim silence settled in its wake.

  By the time she’d reached the table’s edge and begun her descent to the floor, the soundscape had changed again. Now the hall began to fill with the shrill discordance of far-off panic, the frightful pounding of fleeing feet and the unearthly screechings of dinosaurs in pain. There came the intermittent wailing of police sirens. And then the first muted rumbles of faraway explosions. Inside the palace itself, however, all was eerily quiet, for every last imperial dinosaur had been exterminated by cranial mine-grains.

  When Joya finally reached the window, she stared out at the gargantuan metropolis of Boulder City, now shrouded in twilight gloom. Thin columns of smoke rose into the dusky sky, and more and more kept appearing, orange flames gleaming at their base. The city’s skyline flickered in and out of view. As the fires multiplied, an infernal glow filtered through the window, throwing shifting patterns of light and shadow across the high ceiling above Joya.

  17

  The Ultimate Deterrent

  ‘We did it!’ Field Marshal Jolie shouted excitedly as the world map flashed red on her screen. ‘The dinosaur world has been crippled. Their information systems have been comprehensively disrupted. All of their cities have lost power, all of their roads have been blocked by vehicles disabled by mine-grains, and fires are spreading widely and rapidly.’ Her antennae were vibrating at speed now as she enumerated the Federation’s successes. ‘Operation Decapitate has neutralised 4 million leading lights of the dinosaur world, and the ruling bodies of the Gondwanan Empire and the Laurasian Republic have ceased to exist. The two great powers have been paralysed and dinosaur society is in chaos.’

  ‘And this is just the start,’ added Kachika. ‘Dinosaur cities are already having problems with their water supplies, and their food stocks will soon run out. That will be the tipping point. Vast herds of dinosaurs will flee the cities, but with no functioning cars and with all the roads blocked, they will be unable to evacuate in time. Given their voracious appetites, at least half the population will starve to death before they find food. Their high-tech society will be in tatters. The dinosaur world is regressing to a primitive, pre-industrial era even as we speak.’

  ‘What is the status of their nuclear-weapons systems?’ someone asked.

  ‘As expected, all of the dinosaurs’ nuclear weapons, including their intercontinental missiles and strategic bombers, have been reduced to scrap metal by our mine-grains,’ replied Jolie. ‘There have been no nuclear accidents and no cases of nuclear contamination.’

  ‘Excellent! This is truly a momentous occasion,’ Kachika said. ‘Now we just need to wait for the dinosaur world to destroy itself.’

  Their celebratory mood was short-lived, however. A secretary ant now reported that Professor Joya had returned and was requesting an urgent meeting with Kachika and Jolie.

  The weary chief scientist had barely made it through the command-centre door before Kachika launched into an angry tirade. ‘Professor, you betrayed the great cause of the Ant Federation at its most crucial moment. There will be se
rious consequences for your actions.’

  ‘When you hear what I have to tell you,’ replied Joya coldly, ‘it will be quite clear which of us is the most deserving of censure for their… actions.’

  ‘Why did you go and see the Emperor of Gondwana?’ asked Jolie.

  ‘To learn the truth about Luna and Leviathan.’

  This immediately dampened the ants’ high spirits. All eyes – and parts of eyes – were now trained on the professor.

  Joya scanned the assembled company. ‘So, does anyone here know what antimatter is?’

  Every ant but Kachika remained silent.

  ‘I know a little,’ the supreme consul said. ‘Antimatter is a material that dinosaur physicists have theorised may exist. They say that its subatomic particles have the opposite electric charge to the matter in our world: its electrons carry a positive charge and its protons carry a negative charge. It’s purported to be a quantum mirror-image of the matter in our world.’

  ‘Yes, your definition is right. But the existence of antimatter is not merely theoretical,’ Joya said. ‘As a result of their extensive cosmological studies, the dinosaurs have proved that antimatter does exist.’ She tapped an impatient foot. ‘Surely someone else here has heard more about it?’

  Field Marshal Jolie now chipped in. ‘I heard that as soon as antimatter comes into contact with the matter in our world, the combined mass of the two materials is converted into energy.’

  ‘Correct!’ said Joya, dipping her antennae. ‘That process is called annihilation.’ She was in full pedagogic mode now. ‘When your all-powerful nuclear warheads detonate, only a fraction of 1 per cent of their mass is converted into energy, but the mass–energy conversion rate in matter–antimatter collisions is 100 per cent! It should therefore be evident to you all’ – she glared meaningfully at Kachika – ‘that there are things even more terrible than nuclear weapons. Per unit mass, the energy released by matter–antimatter annihilation is two to three orders of magnitude greater than that released by a nuclear bomb.’

  ‘But what does this have to do with Luna and Leviathan?’

  ‘Bear with me and I will tell you.’ Jolie began striding up and down, confident now that she had the undivided attention of every ant in the room. ‘Recently some of us were talking about the new sun that suddenly appeared in the night sky of the Southern Hemisphere three years ago. An event that few of us will ever forget, am I right?’

  A shiver of acknowledgement rippled through her audience.

  ‘Dinosaur astronomers observed that the flash we experienced here on Earth originated from a small celestial body that had entered the solar system with a comet’s trajectory. The object was less than thirty kilometres in diameter, seemingly a mere sliver of rock floating in space. But when they launched probes to observe it close up, they discovered that the celestial body was made of antimatter! While passing through the asteroid belt, it had collided with a meteoroid. The meteoroid and the antimatter were mutually annihilated, releasing a tremendous amount of energy and producing the flash we saw. The Gondwanans and the Laurasians arrived at this conclusion simultaneously, but it’s what they discovered next that’s of most significance to all of us here on Earth…’

  This was turning into a long and tortuous explanation, but the ants were nothing if not well versed in obedient attentiveness. They didn’t even fidget.

  ‘The annihilation had blasted a large hole in the antimatter body, scattering many antimatter fragments of varying sizes through space. Dinosaur astronomers quickly located several of these fragments, which apparently were not difficult to spot. In the asteroid belt, particles of solar wind were annihilated by the antimatter particles, giving the surfaces of the fragments a peculiar glow, and this intensified as they approached the sun.’

  The professor stopped pacing to and fro, lingered for a couple of nanoseconds, and then said, ‘Knowing the dinosaurs as we do, some of you may be anticipating what it is I’m about to say next. Would anyone care to tell me what that is?’

  Field Marshal Jolie waggled her feelers tentatively but decided not to share her thoughts publicly. The rest of the ants just waited patiently for the professor to enlighten them.

  Joya duly resumed her account. ‘This all happened at the height of the arms race between Gondwana and Laurasia. Consequently, both great dinosaur powers came up with a plan – plans that turned out to be identical, and completely insane. Independent of each other, the two powers both decided that they would collect some of the antimatter debris, bring it back to Earth and use it to create a super-weapon far more powerful than any nuclear bomb, in order to deter the other side—’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Kachika, interrupting Joya. ‘There’s an obvious flaw in the logic of that plan. If antimatter is annihilated on contact with matter, how did they store it and bring it back to Earth?’

  ‘Good question.’ Joya nodded. ‘The dinosaur astronomers discovered that anti-iron made up a substantial proportion of the celestial body. The debris they located in space was also made of anti-iron. Like ordinary iron, anti-iron can be affected by magnetic fields. This provided a potential solution to the storage problem. It made it possible for the dinosaurs to create a vacuum chamber and apply a powerful magnetic field to safely confine the antimatter to the centre of the chamber, preventing it from touching the interior walls. This would enable them to store, transport and deploy the antimatter. Of course, this was only a theoretical solution. To use such a container to bring the antimatter back to Earth would be an extraordinarily mad and dangerous endeavour. But, as we well know, dinosaurs are mad by nature, and their desire for global hegemony invariably trumps all other concerns. So they actually went ahead with it!’

  This rather too literal bombshell came as a genuine shock to the ants, and there was an anxious stirring in the room. Even their in-depth knowledge of dinosaur behaviour could not have predicted such craziness.

  ‘It was the Gondwanan Empire that took the first step into the abyss. They built a magnetic confinement vessel comprised of a hollow sphere, split that in two and affixed the hemispheres to the mechanical arms of a spaceship. The spaceship then crept up on the antimatter fragment, slowly and with extreme caution, and trapped it between the two hemispheres. As soon as the hemispheres closed, a magnetic field generated by a superconductor was activated, confining the fragment to the centre of the sphere. The spaceship then flew back to Earth.

  ‘Had the Laurasian Republic known about this plan, they undoubtedly would have dispatched armed spaceships to intercept the Gondwanan transporter in space. But it was well on its way by the time they found out about it, and intercepting it at that point would have caused the fragment to annihilate in Earth’s atmosphere. The fragment weighed forty-five tonnes and its annihilation would have converted ninety tonnes of matter into pure energy. The resulting explosion would have wiped out life on Earth. Naturally, the Laurasians did not wish to perish alongside the Gondwanans, so they looked on helplessly as the spaceship splashed down in the ocean.’

  Hearing some mutterings from the floor, Joya stiffened her antennae and requested that the other ants sit tight until she’d told them all she knew. ‘There is more to say, I’m afraid – quite a bit more, actually – and it won’t be easy listening. So, if there are no objections, I’ll just get on with it and then we can have a discussion once I’m done. Are there any objections?’

  There were not.

  ‘Subsequent events escalated the madness to crisis point. After the Gondwanan spaceship landed, the containment vessel was transferred to a cargo ship. The name of the cargo ship was Leviathan and the dinosaurs came to call the antimatter fragment it carried by that name as well. The ship did not return to Gondwana but instead sailed for Laurasia, destined for the republic’s largest port!

  ‘Laurasia didn’t dare attack this ship of doom. They had no choice but to let it continue on its way, and when it did finally arrive, it might as well have been sailing into an empty harbour for all the resist
ance it met. Once Leviathan had docked, the dinosaurs abandoned ship and returned to Gondwana by helicopter, leaving their explosive load anchored in Laurasian waters.

  ‘The Laurasian dinosaurs treated Leviathan as if it were a bad-tempered deity. They didn’t dare disturb it in any way, because they knew the Gondwanan Empire could remotely deactivate the magnetic field at any time, causing the antimatter fragment to annihilate. If that happened, the entire world would be fireballed, and the first to go would be Laurasia, reduced to ashes in the blink of an eye by the flames of a lethal sun.’

  Joya was looking and sounding extremely tired now, unsurprising given the stress of her encounter with the Gondwanans and the huge burden of responsibility she’d been bearing as the keeper of this Earth-shattering news. But a burden shared was a burden halved, so she ploughed on, keen to give Supreme Consul Kachika all the details she’d need in order to decide what to do next.

  ‘This was truly the darkest day in the history of the Laurasian Republic. The Gondwanan Empire now had the reins of life on Earth firmly in its grasp and it grew increasingly wild and unrestrained, making claim after claim on Laurasia’s territory and repeatedly ordering the Republic to get rid of its nuclear arsenal.

  ‘Needless to say, this lopsided state of affairs did not last long. Just one month after Gondwana’s Operation Leviathan, Laurasia responded in kind. Using similar technology, they collected a second antimatter fragment from space, brought it back to Earth and gave the empire a taste of its own medicine. They loaded their antimatter onto a cargo ship called Luna and sailed it into Gondwana’s largest port. And so balance was restored in the dinosaur world. A balance born of the ultimate deterrent, a deterrent that pushed Earth to the brink of destruction.’

  ‘It’s so unfortunate that we knew nothing about all this,’ muttered Field Marshal Jolie.