Yi Yi, with glee, saw that it was perplexity and unease.
“I need to make some more things. They’re all… fragile goods. Be sure to catch them.” Li Bai pointed at the fabricator; the flames within, which had dimmed, grew bright once more. Just as Yi Yi and Bigtooth ran over, a tongue of blue flame pushed out a round object. Bigtooth caught it agilely. Upon closer inspection, it was a large earthen jar. Next, three large bowls sprang out of the blue flames. Yi Yi caught two of them, but the third fell and shattered. Bigtooth carried the jar to the desk and carefully unsealed it. The powerful fragrance of wine emerged. Bigtooth and Yi Yi exchanged astonished looks.
“There wasn’t much documentation on human winemaking in the Earth-related data I received from the Devouring Empire, so I’m not sure I fabricated this correctly,” said Li Bai, pointing to the jar of wine to indicate that Yi Yi should taste it.
Yi Yi took a bowl, scooped a little from the jar, and took a sip. Fiery heat ran past his throat down into his belly. He nodded. “It’s wine, albeit much too strong compared to the kind we drink to improve our meat quality.”
Li Bai pointed to the other bowl on the desk. “Fill it up.” He waited for Bigtooth to pour a bowlful of the strong wine, then picked it up and glugged the whole thing down. Then he turned and once again walked off into the distance, weaving a stagger here and there along the way. Once he reached the edge of the plane, he stood there and resumed his pondering in the direction of the stars, only this time his body swayed rhythmically left and right, as if to some unheard melody. Li Bai didn’t ponder for long before returning to the desk once more, and on the walk back he staggered every step. He grabbed the brush being proffered by Yi Yi and threw it into the distance.
“Fill it up,” Li Bai said, eyes fixed on the empty bowl….
An hour later, Bigtooth’s two immense claws carefully lowered a passed-out Li Bai onto the cleared desk, only for him to roll over and fall right off, muttering something in a language incomprehensible to dinosaur and human alike. He’d already vomited a particolored pile (although no one knew when he’d had the occasion to eat in the first place), some of it staining his flowing robes. With the white light of the plane passing through, the vomit formed some sort of abstract image. Li Bai’s mouth was black with ink: after finishing his fourth bowl, he’d tried to write something on the paper, but had ended up merely stabbing his ink-plump brush heavily upon the table. After that, he’d tried to smooth the brush with his mouth, like a child at his first calligraphy lesson….
“Esteemed god?” Bigtooth bent down and asked carefully.
“Wayakaaaaa… kaaaayiaiwa,” said Li Bai, tongue lolling.
Bigtooth straightened, shook his head, and sighed. He said to Yi Yi, “Let’s go.”
THE SECOND PATH
Yi Yi’s feedlot was located on the Devourers’ equator. While the planet had lain within the inner reaches of the solar system, this had been a beautiful prairie between two rivers. When the Devourers left the orbit of Jupiter, a harsh winter had descended, the prairie disappearing and the rivers freezing. The humans raised there had all been relocated to an underground city. After the Devourers received the summons from the god and returned, spring had come back to the land with the approach of the sun. The two rivers quickly defrosted, and the prairie began to turn green as well.
In times of good weather, Yi Yi lived alone in the crude grass hut he’d built himself by the riverside, tilling the land and amusing himself. A normal human wouldn’t have been allowed, but as Yi Yi’s feedlot lectures on ancient literature had edifying properties, imparting a unique flavor to the flesh of his students, the dinosaur breeder didn’t stop him.
It was dusk, two months after Yi Yi had first met Li Bai, the sun just tipping over the perfectly straight horizon line of the Devouring Empire. The two rivers reflected the sunset, meeting at the edge of the sky. In the riverside hut, a breeze carried faint, distant sounds of song and celebration over the prairie. Yi Yi was alone, playing weiqi with himself.
He looked up and saw Li Bai and Bigtooth walking along the riverbank toward him. Li Bai was much changed from before: his hair was unkempt, his beard even longer, his face sun-browned. He had a rough cloth pack slung over his left shoulder and a large bottle-gourd in his right hand. His robes had been reduced to rags; his woven-straw shoes were mangled with wear. But Yi Yi thought that he now seemed more like a human being.
Li Bai walked over to the weiqi table. Like the last few times, he slammed the gourd down without looking at Yi Yi and said, “Bowl!” When Yi Yi had brought over the two wooden bowls, Li Bai uncorked the gourd and filled them with wine, then took a paper package from his pack. Yi Yi opened it to discover cooked meat, already sliced, its aroma greeting his nose enthusiastically. He couldn’t help but grab a piece and start chewing.
Bigtooth only stood, a few meters away, watching them silently. He knew from before that the two of them were going to discuss poetry again, a topic in which he had no interest and no ability.
“Delicious,” Yi Yi said, nodding approvingly. “Is the beef made directly from energy too?”
“No, I’ve gone natural for a long while now. You might not know, but there’s a pasture a long distance away from here where they raise Earth cows. I cooked the beef myself in the Shanxi Pingyao style. There’s a trick to it. When you stew the meat, you have to add…” Li Bai whispered mysteriously into Yi Yi’s ear, “Urea.”
Yi Yi looked at him uncomprehendingly.
“Oh, that’s what you get when you take human urine, let it evaporate, and extract the white stuff. It makes the cooked meat red and juicy with a tender texture, while keeping the fatty parts from being cloying and the lean parts from being leathery.”
“The urea… it’s made from pure energy, right?” Yi Yi asked, horrified.
“I told you, I’ve gone natural! It took me a lot of work to collect the urea from several human feedlots. This is a very traditional folk cuisine technique, faded from use long before the destruction of Earth.”
Yi Yi had already swallowed his bite of beef. He picked up the wine bowl to prevent himself from vomiting.
Li Bai pointed at the gourd. “Under my direction, the Devouring Empire has built a number of distilleries, already capable of producing many of the wines famous on Earth. This is bona-fide zhuyeqing, made by steeping bamboo leaves in sorghum liquor.”
Yi Yi only now discovered that the wine in his bowl was different from what Li Bai had brought previously. It was emerald green, with a sweet aftertaste of herbs.
“Looks like you’ve really mastered human culture,” Yi Yi said feelingly to Li Bai.
“That’s not all. I’ve also spent a lot of time on personal enrichment. As you know, the scenery of many parts of the Devouring Empire is near identical to what Li Bai saw on Earth. In these two months, I’ve wandered the mountains and waters, feasting my eyes on picturesque landscapes, drinking wine under moonlight, declaiming poetry on mountain summits, even having a few romantic encounters in the human feedlots everywhere…”
“Then, you should be ready to show me your works of poetry.”
Li Bai exhaled and set down his wine bowl. He stood and paced uneasily. “I’ve composed some poems, yes, and I’m certain you’d be astonished at them. You’d find that I’m already a remarkable poet, even more remarkable than you and your great-grandfather. But I don’t want you to see the poems, because I’m equally certain you’d think they fail to surpass Li Bai’s. And I…” He looked up and far away, at the residual radiance of the setting sun, his gaze dazed and pained. “I think so too.”