by Barry Lyga
Toward the top of the gullet, they found a protuberance of cartilage that had the rough shape of a table, with a figure sitting behind it. As they approached, the figure stood.
Like all Chitauri, the creature looked to be a hybrid of insect and reptile, with the steely mechanics of a cyborg added for good measure. It opened its mouth and hissed neutrally, as though merely proving it could. Something about its demeanor, though, struck Thanos as different from the other Chitauri he’d met. They had been bent to tasks, rarely meeting his eyes or pausing to speak to him. This one, though…
“What is it?” Thanos murmured to Cha.
“Not it,” Cha whispered back. “He.”
“Welcome, Thanos of Titan,” the Chitauri hissed. “I am called the Other.”
“The Other,” Thanos mused. “As opposed to what?”
The Other raised his hands, flexing the two opposable thumbs on each one. The Chitauri’s only significant natural evolutionary advantage. Their enhanced manual dexterity just barely made up for the bad luck of being born cold-blooded on a frigid world.
“There is no what,” the Other said. “I am simply Other. Apart. Distinct.” He hissed the s in distinct as though angry at it.
“He’s a mutation,” Cha said, “though they don’t have that word. He isn’t part of the hive mind.”
Thanos raised an eyebrow. “A deviant. A genetic misfit. Like me. Unique.”
The Other inclined his head in agreement. “As you say.”
“Then I will say that it is a pleasure to meet you.” Thanos extended his hand.
The Other stared at it until Cha prompted him with “We’ve practiced this, remember?”
The double thumbs wrapped strangely around Thanos’s hand, but it was a good first handshake on this new planet.
“I owe you a debt of gratitude,” Thanos said, “for saving my life and the life of my companion. I regret that we have nothing to offer except our thanks.”
“You have more than that,” the Other said. Without warning, he touched Thanos’s temple. Thanos resisted the urge to pull away.
“You have your brain,” the Other told him. “And we wish to use it.”
Thanos shot an alarmed glance at Cha, who shook his head minutely. It’s not what you think, that shake communicated. It’s okay.
“I am fond of my brain where it is,” Thanos said. “It serves me well there.”
The Other bowed ever so slightly. “My apologies. I am still unaccustomed to your tongue, and my meaning was not clear. You may keep your brain, Thanos. We wish you to use it on our behalf.”
“What for?” Thanos mused. “From what I’ve seen, your society runs well. Your people are fed, clothed, and safe. What more do you need?”
“Chitauri wish to conquer,” the Other said without inflection, as though discussing the weather. “Chitauri wish to leave this world and find other, warmer climes. We have weapons and skills. We have technology and power. But no leader. The warrior caste cannot adapt to combat situations because all decisions must go through the hive mind first. Too slow. The hive mind is a yoke.”
“So you need someone at the reins of the cart,” Thanos said, stroking his jaw. “Why not you? You have independent thought.”
The Other shook his head slowly. “I lack the experience. I can communicate directly with the hive mind, influence it, guide it. I can issue commands, but I do not know what those commands should be.” He paused here and tapped his four thumbs together in a complicated gesture. “You, Thanos, are a warrior. You have bested an Asgardian. You can lead us.”
Cha nodded to Thanos. “You said you wanted an army.”
Thanos touched his chin, feeling the ridges that fate and cruelty and genetics had put there. “Yes. Yes, I did.”
He made a pact with the Other that very day: He would bring the Chitauri to a new world, one more palatable to them, and in return they would be his soldiers, his intermediaries as he sought to save Titan.
“But these goals need not be consecutive,” Thanos told him. “We can achieve them mutually. We can work on them at the same time.”
The Other nodded. “Yes. This is sensible and acceptable. It will save time and bring us each our desires that much quicker.”
“Then we have an accord,” said Thanos.
It was mutual exploitation, and both parties were fine with it. The Chitauri would gain a new homeworld, and Thanos would gain an army that could impose his will on Titan. Each time the universe handed him a setback, he found a way to turn it around and reorient himself toward his ultimate goal. His flexibility was as important as his preplanning. He hadn’t been able to reach Hala. The Asgardians had bested him. Fine. No single plan was his only plan. His mind was fecund. He could adapt.
The trip through the wormhole at Alfheim had been impromptu. With the Blood Edda totaled on impact, Thanos had no way to determine at what angle they’d entered the wormhole or how long they’d traveled within it. The unique black sun in the Chitauri world’s sky made it difficult to reckon the precise placement of stars.
He spent the better part of another year on the Chitauri homeworld figuring out how to get back to Titan. During this time, he also inventoried the Chitauri’s supplies and weapons, as well as their fighting abilities. The Leviathans were capable of interstellar flight, it turned out—great, ghastly beasts that could live in the airless vacuum of space, bearing Chitauri safe within them.
Too, the Chitauri possessed a rudimentary teleportation technology. Thanos had never seen anything quite like it—it seemed to open mini-wormholes in space-time, creating portals that could transport a being from one spot to another without bothering to cross the distance between.
He spent a great deal of time experimenting with this technology. Many Chitauri died during his clinical trials, and many more lined up to participate. With so many corpses at his disposal, he also began a series of investigations into Chitauri anatomy and biology, scrutinizing them down to their bizarre, tripartite genetic structure. His father had taught him the elements of genetic manipulation, and soon Thanos was breeding a hardier warrior caste. The Chitauri were grateful. Once again, science delivered to them what nature could not.
His experience on the Blood Edda haunted him. On the Golden Berth, his intellect and size had been sufficient to win the day, but against a prepared, capable fighter, he’d been useless. With the Chitauri as sparring partners, he trained in a multitude of armed and unarmed fighting techniques. Many more Chitauri died as his skills improved. They didn’t seem to mind. They were a fertile, fecund species who shared a mind; individuals were fungible.
With his training came an appreciation for the capacity and capabilities of his body. He’d spent his life despising his physical form, retreating into intellect and reason. His had been a life of the mind.
But now he could hurl a spear a hundred meters and strike his target dead-on. He could fend off four trained Chitauri warriors, his body’s speed and resistance to harm a marvel to him. He learned how to anticipate his opponents’ moves and counter them, his body and mind—for the first time in his life—working in concert. His bulk, his broad shoulders, his height… These were advantages. And he couldn’t believe he’d ever allowed himself to think otherwise.
In time, he came to enjoy the training. The thrust and parry, the feint and dodge. He was becoming a fighter and a thinker. A warrior-intellect.
He felt joyously unstoppable.
Still, he knew he’d missed his opportunity to invade Asgard and claim the artifact, the thing Vathlauss had called the Aether, or the Infinity Stone. It was possible he didn’t need it, though. He could adapt to the new reality of his situation. No Asgardian weapon, true, but his original plan might still suffice. If he could return to Titan with an army, that would be persuasive.
Cha was at his side the whole time as he sparred and planned and recuperated, reminding Thanos to rest, exhorting him to take care of himself. “What good is it to return to Titan as a conquering hero and savior i
f you die yourself?”
Thanos didn’t bother explaining to Cha that dying on and for Titan had always been part of the plan.
“I’m surprised you’ve agreed to this accord at all, Cha. What does your particular brand of listless pacifism say about armies? Soldiers? Cannon fodder?”
“They’re only barely alive,” Cha said. “I’ve been among them much longer than you have. They don’t think the way we do. They don’t have independent, individual souls.”
Thanos couldn’t help remembering Robbo and what Kebbi had said about him. Some people lead. Some people want to be led. “Is that all that matters?” he asked Cha. “Soul, not mind?”
“If any one of them dies,” Cha pointed out, “there are a thousand others in the hive mind who have the same thoughts and memories and impulses. I don’t question their minds. But if thoughts are communally shared, where is individual liberty? Where is the individual’s ability to discern between right and wrong?”
They argued such issues long into the inky-black Chitauri nights, huddled in the maw of a Leviathan, warmed by its body heat. In time, Thanos grew used to the fetid odor of the beast.
He spent hours poring over charts and plans, applying the same intellect that had led to his discovery of the flaw at Titan’s core to the problem of returning to his home. Within a few months, they’d established contact with some nearby trading routes. Shortly after that, they were able to contact Xandar and Hala, opening channels of communication that made it possible to begin plotting a star chart that would take them from the Chitauri homeworld to Titan.
And one night, Thanos was awakened from a deep sleep by Cha, who stood over him, trembling ever so slightly, his lips turned down and his eyes moist.
“What’s wrong?” Thanos asked.
“We finally re-established a line of communication across the arc tangent of the galaxy,” Cha said. “I got a message through to Titan. Or so I thought.”
Thanos sat up. He knew. Deep in his heart, deep in his gut, he knew. But he made Cha say it anyway.
“It’s happened,” Cha told him. “I’m so sorry, Thanos. It’s happened.”
He retreated to the hills over the Chitauri city. He wanted to be alone in his grief. None of them could understand. The Chitauri literally had no words in their language to describe the death of a loved one, since everyone’s thoughts were shared anyway. A dead Chitauri’s experiences lived on in all other Chitauri. And Cha…
He lay out on a field of hardy grass, staring up into the night sky. The Chitauri homeworld had three visible moons, two of which he could see tonight. From perturbations in the tides, Thanos had calculated that there had to be a fourth moon as well, this one locked into orbit with one of the other three such that it couldn’t be seen.
The sky was black and cold. His breath fogged the air. One moon glimmered redly, while the other shone a bright white. It made him think of His Lordship’s mismatched eyes.
But only for a moment. Because then his thoughts returned, inevitably, to Titan.
Titan, which had broadcast a signal into the universe, warning any and all travelers to stay away. A signal that had been amplified and retransmitted through the galaxy, eventually picked up by Cha.
Calamity had arrived. As he’d known it would. As he’d promised.
Until the very instant that Cha told him, Thanos had held out the tiniest hope, borne on a shard of self-doubt, that he’d been wrong all along. That he’d miscalculated and Titan would thrive.
Instead, he’d been proven right in short order.
Sintaa and Gwinth. The only people in the entire universe other than Cha who Thanos could call friends. It was possible that they were already dead. They had forsaken him at a crucial moment, yes, but he’d forgiven them almost effortlessly. They were scared. Fear spurred poor judgment. He hoped they still lived, even though he knew the odds were long. His dreams of Gwinth continued her decay—he held a foolish notion that since she was not completely rotted away in his dreams, that maybe she was still alive, waiting for him to rescue her.
He told no one of this thought. It was his and it was pathetic, and he concealed it greedily.
Then there was his mother…. How safe was she, locked away in that storehouse for mad Titans? Was that the best place for her, attended to by synths, who would most likely survive the initial wave of chaos? Or was being in the psychosylum like being handcuffed to a block as the water rose around you?
And his father…
He refused to think of his father at all.
He could not recall the last time he’d wept. As a child, certainly. He would not cry now.
He wished, however, that he could.
It took several more months to outfit a Leviathan to survive passage through the unstable wormhole. And then Thanos and Cha bid the Other farewell.
“When next we meet, Thanos,” the Other said, “the Chitauri will have a mighty army, ready for our mutual benefit.”
“Thanos looks forward to leading such an army,” Cha said smoothly. Thanos himself was too busy making the final calculations for travel through the wormhole. Too busy shunting memories of Titan to a place in his mind where they could not distract him.
His deal with the Other, the plans they’d made together… They didn’t matter anymore. He wanted only to get off this damned frigid planet. Back to Titan. Surely, there were survivors. Surely, not everyone had been killed….
He no longer needed an army. He needed a miracle.
Got any miracles on you, Thanos of Titan? Kebbi had asked him once. If not, don’t bother.
He had no miracles in his possession, but he had to do something anyway. He had to try.
They lifted off from the Chitauri homeworld at midnight, passing through the dark atmosphere and into the darker reaches of space. It was the first time Thanos had seen the planet from above; he had been unconscious and near-dead when they’d arrived on the exploding remains of the Blood Edda. The entire globe looked like a grimy black pearl, coruscating dirty light refractions from the useless sun.
“What’s our plan?” Cha asked quietly, so as not to be overheard. The Leviathans weren’t intelligent, but they were connected to the hive mind, and Thanos hadn’t yet figured out how great a distance the hive mind could project over.
“We enter the wormhole at a thirty-two-degree angle against the plane of the elliptic,” Thanos told Cha, showing him a quickly rendered hologram of their flight path. He had had to install special controls that bonded with the Leviathan’s cortex in order to be certain the beast could maintain the proper approach angle. “That should take us back to civilized space. Where, hopefully, we can sell this monstrosity for enough money to rent a space ark with medical facilities.”
The garbled message from Titan that Cha had received was actually a repeating warning from a beacon placed in orbit around the planet:
“ATTENTION, LOCAL TRAVELERS: Avoid landing on Titan. REPEAT: Avoid landing on Titan. Environmental Hazard and pandemic. Set course for Ceti Prime instead.”
“An environmental disaster brought on by overcrowding,” Thanos said. “Just as one of the outcomes my models predicted. And the resulting deaths must have overwhelmed the mortuary and funereal systems. There would have been bodies in the streets for days, more than likely leading to an outbreak of antibiotic-resistant pathogens. A global pandemic.” He buried his face in his hands. “I warned them, Cha. I warned all of them, and they didn’t listen!”
Cha rested a hand on Thanos’s shoulder. “I know, my friend. The universe sought to speak through you, and they ignored its wise counsel.”
“Enough!” Thanos growled, slapping Cha’s hand away. “I see no balance in children dead in the streets! I see no harmony in innocents choking to death on poison air!”
Cha backed away slowly. “Of course. I’m sorry.”
He left, leaving Thanos, grief-stricken, to retreat deeper into the gullet of the Leviathan.
They entered the wormhole at precisely thirty-two degrees.
The Leviathan shook and twisted and roared, but the additional plating they’d grafted to its outer carapace sufficed, and it survived the trip.
They wound up in Kree space. Thanos smiled grimly at the irony. At the onset of his exile, he’d intended to go to Kree space, marshal his forces, and return to Titan. Now he was doing precisely that, though far too late.
Fortune smiled upon them, and on one of the Kree rimworlds, they found a trader who was fascinated by the Leviathan’s intermingling of insect, reptilian, and mechanical parts. They walked away with enough money to rent a medium-size cargo ship and install dozens of auto-medical bays. Cha spent the better part of a week fine-tuning the bays to respond to Titanian physiologies while Thanos retrofitted the ship’s loading shuttles to serve as ambulances from the surface to the ship.
He was going home. He was going home at last. The thought, the reality, the truth, struck him at odd, random times. Particularly when he was trying his best to concentrate on the task at hand, it would assail him from nowhere, and he would be forced to step away from his work for a moment, to bask in it, to process it, to let the intermingled joy and grief wash over him.
He could not hope that Gwinth or Sintaa had survived. The odds were long against them. But he would take whomever he could. He would load them into his shuttlecraft and bring them to the cargo ship-cum-hospital, which he had already—appropriately—renamed Sanctuary. Once aboard, he and Cha would succor those who could be saved and ease the pain of those who could not. They would give comfort to the dying and life to the rest.
And then…
And then they would find a new world. A ship full of refugees was rarely welcome in most parts of the galaxy, but Thanos would find a place. A new world. A final sanctuary for the survivors of Titan.
They blasted off from the Kree rimworld more than a year and a half after the initial message from the Titan beacon had reached them on the Chitauri homeworld. In Kree space, they no longer had to rely on the haphazard and dangerous placement of wormholes. There were transport gates in every system, sometimes more than one. With the last of their monetary reserves from the sale of the Leviathan, they paid the gate toll to Titan and received an automated warning: