MARVEL's Avengers: Infinity War: Thanos

by Barry Lyga

  “He always challenged you,” Gamora said with a tilt of her chin. She would someday be devastatingly beautiful, a trait that would make her task even easier. Few were perspicacious enough to perceive death behind a scrim of comeliness. “Why now?”

  With a great sigh, Thanos stood and clasped his hands behind his back, turning away from her to look out at the starless expanse of the Raven’s Sweep. “We are at a critical juncture in our mission. I need absolute obedience.”

  “Nebula and I don’t always obey you. When will you kill us?”

  He twisted just enough to peer back at her. There was no fear or concern in her expression. She masked her emotions well. “Cha was a friend. You are my children. There’s a difference. Children are supposed to be willful and disobedient on occasion.”

  An image of his father came to him for the first time in many years. Not of the synth that pretended to be him, but of A’Lars himself. Thanos had never asked him, in tones as blunt as Gamora’s, Why do you continue to tolerate me? Why do you suffer my existence? Why haven’t you locked me away next to Mother in a psychosylum? But he was certain that the answer would have been roughly the same as the one he gave to Gamora.

  “We’re not really your daughters,” she said, a note of sulking in her voice.

  “You are my children in every way that matters.”

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  THE KELDIM SORROW WAS AS BLEAK AND AS BLIGHTED AS Cha had described. For a full day of travel, Thanos did not even realize that they’d exited the Raven’s Sweep and entered the Sorrow, so black and desolate were the vistas outside Sanctuary’s pulsoglass portholes.

  But then the ship’s sensors detected a planet-size mass. The ship automatically compensated for the gravity well, shifting so as not to become trapped and collide with the dead world.

  And dead it was. Thanos had murdered billions but had left the worlds as untouched as war possibly could. Years after his assaults, trees still grew; grass carpeted the prairies. Predators stalked their prey through verdant jungles and over rolling veldts. The whole complex farrago of life still bloomed and clashed on those worlds.

  Here, the planets were utterly denuded, scoured clean of even microbes. They were rocks and sand, pillars of stone and frozen lakes of magma. Lifeless marbles scattered on the black felt of reality.

  And at the center of them, the axis on which they all turned, a crumbling, dying star, more shadow than light, noticeable mainly by the sparks that occasionally spat from its core out into the cold reaches of space.

  The KelDim Sorrow was as dead as anything could be. Thanos felt great sadness and great admiration in equal measure.

  There were fifteen planets in the KelDim Sorrow and threescore moons of sufficient size to merit examination. Thanos called up a three-dimensional chart of the system, then plotted the most efficient course that would take Sanctuary to within scanning range of each planet and moon.

  According to his calculations, he would need at most three weeks and six days to scan them all.

  He got lucky. Halfway through the second week, his scanners detected something on a large moon orbiting the fourth planet from the distant, dying sun. It was a heat signature, consistent with life. And it was so small in comparison to the surrounding gloom and cold that he almost missed it.

  A chill ran down his spine. What if he had missed it? What if he’d continued on his path, scanning every world, and had ended up finding—so he would believe—absolutely nothing? And then left the KelDim Sorrow without so much as a souvenir to mark his arrival, left without any of the information he so desperately needed?

  But, he reminded himself, that had not happened. He’d spied the heat signature and now had Sanctuary in a geosynchronous orbit above the spot.

  Cha would have said, When the universe is in harmony, all things wind up in their proper place, Thanos. Of course you found it.

  He reminded himself that Cha had been a superstitious fool and that it was for the better that he was dead.

  The girls joined him at the ship end of the shuttle drop portal. Sanctuary’s shuttles had an old-fashioned propulsion system that needed the assistance of a drop portal, like a pebble blown or sucked through a straw. The shuttlecraft would engage engines, and then the far end of the drop portal would open, and the change in pressure would suck the shuttle out into the vacuum of space.

  Thanos donned an environment suit, trying not to think of the last time he’d done so. Before his trip to the surface of Titan. He’d had to jerry-rig a suit by stitching together two normal-size ones. Now he had a bespoke environment suit crafted for him by the Chitauri, with his own special modifications.

  “What’s to stop us from taking the ship and leaving you here?” Nebula asked saucily.

  “Two things,” Thanos intoned, ticking them off on his right hand. “First: You haven’t the proper training to maintain the power balance in the engines, so you’d run out of power before you could get back to civilized space. Second: Without me as a counterweight around, at this point in your training you’d kill each other before you broke orbit.”

  They exchanged knowing glances. Gamora said nothing. Nebula snorted in a way that meant she’d been bested but couldn’t admit it. “Might be worth it,” she said.

  With a detached shrug, he turned to enter the shuttlecraft, then paused, as though remembering a long-buried memory, and turned back to them.

  “Oh, and one more reason,” he said. “There’s a modified sympathy circuit on this ship. If it travels more than a light-year from me, it will explode, killing everyone on board.”

  “Checkmate,” Gamora said. Despite herself, she was grinning.

  Thanos climbed into the shuttle and disengaged from Sanctuary. The last thing he saw was Nebula, scowling at him from the ship end of the drop portal. And then the space end opened, and with a lurch, he was yanked unceremoniously out into space, with only the thin alloy skin of the shuttle between him and vacuum.

  The shuttle fell more than flew to the surface of the moon. Its engines were relatively weak and were best for maneuvering. The moon was large, its gravitational pull strong—the shuttle careered toward it as though eager for a union.

  Thanos landed close to the structure he’d observed from orbit. It was a low building, no more than a story or two, assuming the inhabitant was roughly humanoid and standard-size. The structure seemed small, but he had no idea how big the occupant was.

  There was no appreciable atmosphere outside the shuttle. He locked down his environment suit and stepped outside, wary. Even with a genteel name like the Lorespeaker, there was no guarantee that Thanos would not be greeted with violence. Most beings who chose to live in such abject isolation protected their privacy with great jealousy and zeal.

  All around him, there was a sudden flash of light and a whooshing sound. He recognized it as an environment field snapping into place. According to his suit’s readout, the area around him was now habitable.

  Mindful of how he’d slain three Asgardians by shutting off such a field at just the right moment, he decided to keep his suit on and active. He started walking toward the building, whose entrance was shrouded in darkness.

  As he neared, a figure emerged from that darkness, walking with slow, steady steps toward him. It wore a cloak patterned in red and gray, with a hood over its head. A belted sash drew in the waist, and supple gray boots came to its knees, kicking up dust as it strode closer. It carried something that was either a short staff or a long scepter. Perhaps a meter in length, curved. Its top quarter was wrapped in frayed strips of hide.

  Thanos stopped in his tracks and decided to allow the figure to advance no closer than two meters. Any closer and he would need to attack.

  As though it could read his mind, the figure stopped at precisely two meters distant. After a slight pause, it peeled back the hood, and Thanos beheld a face like an upside-down triangle with rounded corners, a fringe of bluish hair above the ears, and a thin, pointed beard of the same bluish hue.

/>   Thanos had expected someone old and wizened, a wrinkled and broken-down ancient. The Lorespeaker, as best he could tell, appeared to be not much older than Thanos himself.

  Shorter, though. He grinned up at Thanos and spoke with a voice freighted with age and contemplation:

  “Welcome! I can tell by your expression that you were expecting someone a little older.”

  “Are you the Lorespeaker?” Maybe this was an assistant, a majordomo…

  “I am. You wonder about my age, I’m sure. I’m much older than I appear. My people are exceptionally long-lived.”

  “And who might those people be?”

  The Lorespeaker shrugged indifferently. “The others like me. Answer me this: Do you truly want to continue to stand outside? There’s little to see….” He swept an arm out to encompass the gray rocks and flat sand plains.

  Thanos conceded that this was so. He followed the Lorespeaker into the building.

  Inside, the place was cluttered with old, old technology. It took Thanos a while to identify some of the pieces and their purposes: a stove, a flat-screen entertainment/information appliance, a freezer. Thanos wondered exactly how long the Lorespeaker had been here.

  “There’s a persistent environment in here,” the Lorespeaker told him. “You can take off that suit.”

  The Lorespeaker seemed to be breathing fine, and the suit’s screen confirmed that the building had an atmosphere. Thanos peeled off the head covering of his environment suit and took a breath of slightly stale air.

  As though just remembering to do so, the Lorespeaker smiled. “May I offer you some tea?”

  The building made Thanos feel claustrophobic. The walls were too close, the ceiling too low. He agreed to the tea and tried to find a place to sit.

  “Sit anywhere,” the Lorespeaker told him as he set down his scepter on a counter and began rummaging through a cabinet. “I have a tea that I only open for guests. It’s been quite a while; let me find it.”

  Thanos found a sofa that seemed sturdy enough and wide enough to accommodate his frame. The entire place was meticulously clean, with shelves of orderly ranks of old datadisks, big, flimsy early-generation ChIPs, and a stack of things that—to his surprise—turned out to be actual bound-paper publications. He had only seen such things in a museum.

  Unless the Lorespeaker had access to some sort of galaxy-spanning teleportation technology, there was no way to replenish his stores. Where did his food come from, without replication technology… and no way to grow it? What did he do for new entertainment, for diversion, for information acquisition?

  Thanos began to feel unsettled. Something was wrong here. Something was very wrong. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it….

  “Ah! Got it!” The Lorespeaker held up a smallish tin, crowing. “I knew it was in here! Let me just put the kettle on….”

  As Thanos watched, the Lorespeaker activated the stove. A glowing red ring appeared there, and he placed a bulbous vessel atop it. “A nice cuppa,” the Lorespeaker said. “Just the thing for a chilly night, eh?” His expression brightened. “That’s my attempt at a joke, Thanos. It’s been a long time since I told one. Did I do it wrong?”

  Thanos blinked. “How do you know my name?”

  The Lorespeaker plucked up his scepter and settled into a chair across from Thanos. “My blessing and my curse is a sort of… cosmic awareness. It has its limits, though. To a distance of roughly three parsecs, I am aware of almost every occurrence and happening.”

  Thanos arched an eyebrow. It was as significant an expression of disbelief as he was willing to display.

  The Lorespeaker chuckled. “I understand if you don’t believe me. Allow me to prove it. In orbit above this planet is the ship you came here in. There are two young women aboard. One is a Zehoberei—”

  Thanos arched his other eyebrow, this time in surprise. “I know where they’re from.”

  “I have a significant storehouse of Zehoberei myth and history in my head. It would be a pleasure to—” He broke off for a moment and stared into the middle distance. Just when Thanos had decided to say something, the Lorespeaker shivered out of his reverie. “It would be a pleasure to share those with her.”

  “This is what you do?” Thanos asked. “You remember histories?”

  “Not histories—stories. Myths. Legends. Lore, Thanos. Some of it true, some of it false, some of it truer for being invented.”

  “Why here? Why so far from the people whose stories you tell?”

  “In any sort of civilized system,” the Lorespeaker explained, speaking slowly “there’s too much input. A constant awareness and a constant stream of information. I’m capable of sorting it and ordering it—barely. I would forget to eat, to bathe, to sleep…. And when I did sleep, I would dream the dreams of billions of souls around me.” He sighed. “It was untenable. I needed to go somewhere quiet.”

  “You needed to become a hermit.”

  “It’s not that I rejected civilization. I just couldn’t be around it. I’m more than happy to have visitors, if they can get here. The juxtaposition of the Sorrow to the Sweep was a perfect coincidence for me. Parsecs of silence in every direction. Absolute isolation.” He grinned and acknowledged Thanos with a slight raise of his hand. “Though with the possibility of guests who are determined enough.”

  Thanos returned the salute. “Do you have many visitors?”

  “Not often. A few years back, there was a ship lost out in the Sweep, right at the edge of my perception. I thought it might be headed this way, but it was not to be. I could tell you more, but I see by your expression that I’ve made my case. Tea?” The kettle, as he called it, was whistling, steam pouring from a vent at its top.

  Thanos, who had never witnessed tea made in such a fashion, nodded. He watched as the Lorespeaker undertook a lengthy ritual. First, he placed dried leaves in a mesh. Then he poured the boiling water into a cup, over and through the mesh. When the cup was full, he dunked the mesh inside, then repeated the whole process with a second cup. It took forever.

  “Now we let it steep.” The Lorespeaker smiled at him and sat across from Thanos. He sighed contentedly and clapped his hands together. “What can I do for you?”

  Eyeing the two steaming mugs, Thanos asked, “How long does it steep?”

  “A few minutes. Is that what you came here to ask?”

  “No,” Thanos said drily.

  “I didn’t think so.” The Lorespeaker leaned over the mugs and inhaled deeply. “Ah! Jazzberry and hibiscus! Smell that, Thanos! Isn’t it delightful?”

  With a resigned sigh, Thanos did as he was bade, leaning forward and drawing in a breath.

  “It’s delightful,” he said. “May we speak?”

  The Lorespeaker stared at him for a protracted period. Just as Thanos was about to speak, the Lorespeaker shuddered and returned from whatever place his mind had gone to. “Of course we may speak. Was I preventing you from speaking? If so, I apologize. It’s been so long since I’ve spoken with someone that I may have forgotten the protocols. Or maybe they’ve changed. How are people talking these days?”

  Thanos regarded him quietly for a moment. “You’re asking the wrong person.”

  “Hmm.” The Lorespeaker nodded gently, considering. “Well, let’s see how this tastes.” Picking up both mugs, he held one out to Thanos, who accepted it.

  The tea was surprisingly sweet, with a buzzy sort of aftertaste.

  “Good, yes?” The Lorespeaker seemed highly invested in the answer.

  “Yes. Good.” Thanos sipped some more. “Now, if we could move on to the purpose of my visit…”

  “Of course. Perhaps I should explain first exactly how this all works.” With the word this, the Lorespeaker pointed at his own head. “The peculiar neurology of my brain is such that once I know something, I cannot forget it… but all of my information is recalled in the form of stories. Bards and tale-tellers and oracles throughout the universe are not particularly fond of me, needless to say. Alt
hough I suppose my exile here has diminished their animus somewhat.”

  Thanos coughed impatiently. He had become unaccustomed to waiting for his turn to speak.

  “Of course,” the Lorespeaker said quickly, getting the hint. “My apologies. As I said, I don’t get a lot of visitors. My small-talk skills are rusty at best.”

  “I never possessed them in the first place. Perhaps we should just skip ahead. I am seeking an artifact,” Thanos told him. “One of great power. Rumored to be in the possession of the ruler of Asgard.”

  The Lorespeaker frowned, for the first time evincing an emotion that was not glee or satisfaction. His bluish whiskers trembled ever so slightly at the terminus of his downturned lips.

  “Odin. You dabble with powers beyond your ken, Thanos. Very daring.”

  “I have cause to be daring. I seek the Infinity Stone.”

  The Lorespeaker shrugged. “Which one?”

  An image of Cha Rhaigor flickered momentarily, like a sudden sharp bite at the back of Thanos’s brain. “So there is more than one. I’ve heard Odin possesses one, called the Aether.”

  The Lorespeaker made a sound that Thanos thought was a giggle, but which quickly turned into a cough. “Your pardon,” the Lorespeaker said, and drank some tea before continuing. “Odin has many artifacts in his possession. There are stories of dwarven metal and hammers that only gods may lift and a box that contains winter. Are you certain about the information you’ve received?”

  “Truthfully? No. But I believe the Asgardians are hiding something.” He explained—as briefly as possible—his time on the Golden Berth with His Lordship and the information he’d gleaned from plundering the dead man’s data. For good measure, he also explained what he’d learned from Vathlauss…. And then, because the natural next question would be Why didn’t you follow up on that? he recounted the assault on the base near Alfheim and the battle against Yrsa on board the Blood Edda.

  At the Asgardian’s name, the Lorespeaker perked up, his lips twitching into a grin. “Ah, Yrsa! I know that name. The Goddess of Combat in Close Quarters.”