英语小说网

This was Wu Yue's first thought as he faced Tang, the massive ship under construction in front of him, bathed in the flickering of electric arcs. Of course, this impression was simply the result of countless inconsequential smudges on the manganese steel plates of the ship's nearly completed body, left behind by the advanced gas-shield welding used on the hull. He tried unsuccessfully to imagine how sturdy and new Tang would look with a fresh coat of gray paint.

Year 3, Crisis Era, Distance of the Trisolaran Fleet from the Solar System: 4.21 light-years. It looks so old…

Tang's fourth offshore fleet training session had just concluded. During that two-month session, Tang's commanders, Wu Yue and Zhang Beihai, who was standing just beside Wu Yue, had occupied an uncomfortable role. Formations of destroyers, submarines, and supply ships were directed by battle group commanders, but Tang was still under construction in the dock, so the carrier's position was either occupied by the training ship Zheng He or simply left empty. During the sessions, Wu Yue often stared vacantly at an empty patch of sea where the surface of the water, disturbed by crisscrossing trails left by passing ships, undulated uneasily, much like his mood. Would the empty spot ever be filled? he asked himself more than once.

Afraid of pursuing these thoughts, Wu Yue turned his attention to Zhang Beihai next to him.

Zhang Beihai gently shook his head. "No. He's just holding on."

"I did when he first went to the hospital. Given the situation, I'll deal with it when the time comes."

"Is your father any better?" he asked.

"Ask for leave."

"Beihai, work isn't going to be like it was. Since we're sharing this position now, I think we ought to communicate more."

Looking now at the unfinished Tang, what he saw was not just age but the passage of time itself. It seemed like an ancient, giant, discarded fortress, its mottled body a stone wall, the shower of welding sparks falling from the scaffolding like plants covering the stones… like it was less construction than archeology.

"We've communicated just fine in the past. Our superiors put us together on Tang, no doubt thanks to our successful cooperation aboard Chang'an."

Then they went silent. Every social interaction between the two of them was like this. Where work was concerned they had more to say, of course, but something always lay between them.

Wu Yue adhered to one article of faith: Command of a warship was a dangerous position, so the two commanders must understand each other's minds. This presented Wu Yue with a knotty problem. At first, he thought that Zhang Beihai was somehow on guard, which offended Wu. In the tough post of captain of a destroyer, was anyone more forthright and guileless than he was? What do I have worth guarding against?

Zhang Beihai laughed as he said this, but it was the sort of laugh that Wu Yue couldn't read. Zhang Beihai's eyes could easily read deep into the heart of everyone aboard the ship, be they captain or sailor. Wu Yue was entirely transparent to him. But Wu Yue could not read what was inside Zhang. He was certain that the man's smile came from within him, but had no hope of understanding him. Successful cooperation does not equate to successful understanding. There was no question that Zhang Beihai was the most capable political commissar on the ship, and he was forthright in his work, exploring every last issue with complete precision. But his internal world was a bottomless gray to Wu Yue, who always felt like Zhang Beihai was saying: Just do it this way. This way's best, or most correct. But it's not what I really want. It began as an indistinct feeling that grew increasingly obvious. Of course, whatever Zhang Beihai did was always the best or most correct, but Wu Yue had no idea what he actually wanted.

When Zhang Beihai's father had briefly been their superior officer, Wu Yue had spoken with him about his difficulties talking to his commissar.

"Isn't it enough for the work to be done well? Why do you need to know how he thinks?" the general had said, gently, then added, perhaps involuntarily, "Actually, I don't know either."

"Let's get a closer look," Zhang Beihai said, pointing to Tang through the sparks. Then both their phones chirped at the same time: a text message recalling them back to their car. This usually meant an emergency, since secured communications equipment was only available in the vehicle. Wu Yue opened the car door and picked up the receiver. It was a call from an advisor at battle group HQ.

"Captain Wu, Fleet Command have issued you and Commissar Zhang emergency orders. The two of you are to report to General Staff immediately."

"General Staff? What about the fifth fleet training exercise? Half the battle group is at sea, and the rest of the ships will join them tomorrow."

"I'm not aware of that. The order is simple. Just that one command. You can look at the specifics when you get back."

Fort Greely, Alaska. Several fallow deer ambling along the snowy plain grew alert, sensing vibrations in the earth beneath the snow. Ahead of them, a white hemisphere opened. It had been placed there long ago, a giant egg half-buried beneath the ground, but the deer always felt it didn't belong to this frozen world.

The captain and commissar of the still-unlaunched Tang glanced at each other, then had one of the rare moments throughout the years where their thoughts aligned: Looks like that patch of water will remain empty.

The egg split open and issued forth thick smoke and flames, then, with a roar, it hatched a cylinder that accelerated upward, spurting flames from its bottom. The surrounding snowdrifts were thrown by the fire into the air, where they fell again as rain. When the cylinder gained enough height, the explosions that had terrified the deer were again replaced by peace. The cylinder vanished into the sky trailing a long white tail behind it, as if the snowscape was a giant ball of yarn from which a giant invisible hand had pulled a strand skyward.

"I figured it was nothing as soon as the system warning came up," Orbital Monitor Jones said, shaking his head.

"Then what's the system attacking?" asked General Fitzroy. Nuclear Missile Defense was just one of the duties of his new position, and he wasn't entirely familiar with it yet. Looking at the monitor-covered wall, the general attempted to locate the intuitive graphical displays they'd had at the NASA control center: a red line snaking across the world map, forming a sine wave atop the map's planar transformation. Novices found this inexplicable, but at least it let you know that something was shooting into space. But there was nothing so simple here. The lines on the screens were a complicated abstract jumble that was meaningless to him. Not to mention all the screens with swiftly scrolling numbers that had meaning only to the NMD duty officers.

"Damn it! Just a few more seconds and I'd have confirmed a launch interrupt!" said Target Screening Officer Raeder as he tossed aside his mouse. Raeder was thousands of kilometers away in the Nuclear Missile Defense Control Room at the NORAD Command Center, three hundred meters beneath Cheyenne Mountain near Colorado Springs.

"General, do you remember when they replaced the reflective film on the ISS multipurpose module last year? They lost the old film. That's what this was. It balls up and then unfurls in the solar wind."

"But… it ought to be included in the target screening database."

"The system ought to have searched the target database automatically. Human reaction times aren't quick enough. But data from the old system hasn't been reformatted for the new one, so it wasn't linked in with the recognition module," Raeder said. His tone was a little aggrieved, as if to say, I've demonstrated my proficiency by managing to pull this up so quickly in a manual search when the NMD supercomputer couldn't, but I still have to put up with your clueless questions.

"Major, since you've got this, why didn't you terminate the launch program?"

"It is. Here." Raeder brought up a page with his mouse. Below piles of complicated text, data, and forms, there was an inconspicuous photograph, probably taken with an Earth telescope, of an irregular white patch against a black background. The strong reflection made it difficult to make out details.

"General, the order came to switch over to actual operational state after the NMD moved its intercept headings into space, but before software recalibration was completed," a duty officer said.

Fitzroy said nothing. The chatter of the control room annoyed him. Here in front of him was humanity's first planetary defense system, but it was nothing more than an existing NMD system whose intercepts had been redirected from various terrestrial continents and into space.

"I say we should take a photo for a memento!" Jones said. "This has got to be Earth's first strike at a common enemy."

"Cameras are prohibited," Raeder said coldly.

"Captain, what are you talking about?" Fitzroy said, angry all of a sudden. "The system didn't detect an enemy target at all. It's not a first strike."

After an uncomfortable silence, someone said, "The interceptors carry nuclear warheads."

"Yeah, one point five megatons. So what?"

"You can see it on the monitor."

"It's nearly dark outside. Given the target location, we ought to be able to see the flash!"

"Mine too, General," Raeder said. This was just a courtesy. Fitzroy was a high-level coordinator with the Planetary Defense Council and had no command over NORAD and the NMDs.

"It's more fun from outside," Raeder said.

Jones stood up nervously. "General, I… my shift's over."

Fitzroy waved his hand: "I'm not your commanding officer. Do as you please. But let me remind all of you that in the future, we may be spending a lot of time working together."

Raeder and Jones headed topside at a run. After passing through the multi-ton antiradiation door, they were out on the peak of Cheyenne Mountain. It was dusk and the sky was clear, but they didn't see the flash of a nuclear blast in outer space.

"Maybe we've missed it," Raeder said. He didn't look upward. Then, with an ironic smile, he said, "Do they really believe the sophon will unfold in lower dimensions?"

"It should be right there," Jones said, gesturing skyward.

"Unlikely. It's intelligent. It won't give us that chance," Jones said.

"NMD's eyes are pointed upward. Is there really nothing to defend against on Earth? Even if the terrorist countries have all turned into saints, there's still the ETO, right?" He snorted. "And the PDC. Those military guys clearly want to chalk up a quick accomplishment. Fitzroy's one of them. Now they can declare that the first stage of the Planetary Defense System is complete, even though they've done practically nothing to the hardware. The system's sole purpose is to stop her from unfolding in lower dimensions near to Earth's orbit. The technology's even simpler than what's needed for intercepting guided missiles, because if the target really does appear, it'll cover an immense area… Captain, that's why I've asked you up here. Why were you acting like a child, what with that first-strike photograph business? You've upset the general, you know. Can't you see he's a petty man?"

The expression on Raeder's upturned face turned dreamy: "Yesterday, a Chinese colonel who just arrived at the center told me that in his language, she has the name of a Japanese woman, Tomoko."

The day before, Zhang Yuanchao filed his retirement papers and left the chemical plant where he had worked for more than four decades. In the words of his neighbor Lao Yang, today was the start of his second childhood. Lao Yang told him that sixty, like sixteen, was the best time in life, an age where the burdens of one's forties and fifties had been laid down, but the slowdown and illness of the seventies and eighties had not yet arrived. An age to enjoy life. Zhang Yuanchao's son and daughter-in-law had steady jobs, and although his son had married late, he would be holding a grandson before long. He and his wife wouldn't have been able to afford their current house except that they had been bought out when their old place had been demolished. They had been living in the new place for a year now…

"He's one of the best hype artists in the military. He's not going to announce at the press conference that this was a system error. Like the rest of them, he'll say it was a successful maneuver. Wait and see. That's how it's gonna be." As he was speaking, Raeder sat down and leaned back on the ground, looking up with a face full of yearning at the sky, where the stars had already emerged. "You know, Jones, if the sophon really does unfold again, she'll give us a chance to destroy her. Wouldn't that be something!"

"But… wasn't that a compliment?"

"What's the use? The fact is that they're streaming toward the Solar System right now. Who knows how many of them… Hey, why did you say 'she' rather than 'it' or 'he'?"

When Zhang Yuanchao thought about it, everything was completely satisfactory. He had to admit that as far as affairs of state were concerned, Lao Yang was right. Still, as he looked out from his eighth-story window at the clear sky over the city, he felt like there was no sunlight in his heart, much less a second childhood.

Lao Yang, first name Jinwen, was a retired middle school teacher who frequently advised Zhang Yuanchao that if he wanted to enjoy his waning years, he ought to be learning new things. For example: "The Internet. Even babies can learn it, so why don't you?" He even pointed out that Zhang Yuanchao's biggest failing was that he had absolutely no interest in the outside world: "Your old lady can at least brush aside her tears while sitting in front of the TV watching those trashy soaps. But you, you don't even watch TV. You should pay attention to national and world affairs. That's part of a full life." Zhang Yuanchao may have been an old Beijinger, but he didn't seem like one. A taxi driver could hold forth with cogent analyses of domestic and world situations, but even if Zhang Yuanchao knew the current president's name, he certainly didn't know the premier's. This was actually a point of pride for him. He lived the steady-going life of a commoner, he said, and couldn't be bothered to care about such irrelevant things. They had nothing to do with him, and ignoring them rid him of a significant number of headaches in life. Yang Jinwen paid attention to affairs of state and made a point of watching the evening news every day, arguing with online commenters till he was red in the face over national economic policy and the tide of international nuclear proliferation, but what had it gotten him? The government hadn't increased his pension by even a cent. He said, "You're being ridiculous. You think it's irrelevant? That it's got nothing to do with you? Listen, Lao Zhang. Every major national and international issue, every major national policy, and every UN resolution is connected to your life, through both direct and indirect channels. You think the US invasion of Venezuela is none of your concern? I say it's got more than a penny's worth of lasting implications for your pension." At the time, Zhang had merely laughed at Lao Yang's wonkish outburst. But now he knew that his neighbor was right.

"I was just looking for you. Where did you go off to?"

Zhang Yuanchao rang Yang Jinwen's doorbell, and Yang answered, looking like he had just gotten back home. He seemed particularly relaxed. Zhang Yuanchao looked at him like a man in the desert who has encountered a fellow traveler and won't let him go.

"I took a trip to the market. I saw your old lady shopping for food."

"That's right, I didn't use to care about the big issues, but they've gotten too huge. I never thought anything could get so big!"

"It's not a holiday today. That's all." He laughed. "Your first day of retirement. That feeling is totally normal. At least you weren't a leader. They've got it worse when they retire. You'll soon get used to it. Come on, let's check out the neighborhood activity center and see what we can do for fun."

"No, no. It's not because I've retired. It's because… how should I put it? Because of the country, or rather, the world situation."

Yang Jinwen pointed at him and laughed. "The world situation? I never thought I'd hear those words come out of your mouth…"

"Why is our building so empty? It's like a… mausoleum."

"Lao Zhang, it's actually really funny, but I've started to come around to your way of thinking. I don't care about those irrelevant issues anymore. Believe it or not, I haven't watched the news in two weeks. I used to care about the big issues because people matter. We could have an effect on the outcome of current events. But no one has the power to overcome this. What's the point of troubling yourself about it?"

"Hmph. You and I will be gone in forty-odd years."

"But you can't simply not care. Humanity will be gone in four hundred years!"

"What about our descendants? They'll be wiped out."

The AP reports that at 6:30 P. M. EST on the twenty-ninth, the US National Missile Defense System successfully completed the test destruction of a lower-dimensional unfolded sophon in near-Earth orbit. This is the third test of an NMD intercept since targets were shifted to outer space. The latest target was the reflective film discarded from the International Space Station last October. A Planetary Defense Council spokesman said that the warhead-equipped interceptor successfully destroyed the three-thousand-square-meter target. This means that well before the sophon's three-dimensional unfolding reaches sufficient area, and before it presents a reflective surface that is a threat to human targets on the ground, the NMD system will be able to destroy it…

"That doesn't concern me as much as it does you. My son in America is married but doesn't want children, so I don't really care. But the Zhang family will last another dozen generations, right? Isn't that enough?"

Zhang Yuanchao stared at Yang Jinwen for a few seconds, then looked at his watch. He turned on the television, where the news channel was airing the day's major stories:

"Watch it at home." Zhang Yuanchao gripped the remote and didn't let him have it. The news continued:

The physician at 301 Military Hospital in charge of the treatment of academician Jia Weilin confirmed that Jia's death was due to a hematological malignancy, also known as leukemia, the proximate cause of death being organ failure and loss of blood in the advanced stage of the disease. No abnormalities were present. Jia Weilin, a noted expert in superconductivity who made major contributions in the field of room-temperature superconductors, died on the tenth. Stories claiming that Jia died in a sophon strike are pure rumor. In a separate report, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health confirmed that several other deaths supposedly due to sophon strikes were in fact due to ordinary illnesses or accidents. The station spoke with noted physicist Ding Yi about the matter.

"What pointlessness. A sophon's not going to unfold," Yang said as he reached for the remote in Zhang's hand. "Change the station. There might be a repeat of the European Cup semifinals. I fell asleep on the sofa last night…"

Reporter: What's your take on the emerging panic over the sophons?

Ding Yi: It's due to a lack of common knowledge about physics. Representatives of the government and the scientific community have explained this on numerous occasions: A sophon is just a microscopic particle which, despite possessing a high intelligence, has the potential for only a limited effect on the macroscopic world due to its microscopic scale. The primary threats they pose to humanity lie in their erroneous and random interference to high-energy physics experiments, and in the quantum entanglement network that monitors Earth. In its microscopic state, a sophon cannot kill, and it cannot engage in any other offensive attack. If a sophon wants to produce a larger effect on the macroscopic world, it can only do so in a lower-dimensional unfolded state. And even in that situation, its effects are highly limited, because a sophon unfolded in lower dimensions on a macroscopic scale is very weak. Now that humanity has established a defense system, sophons cannot do this without providing us with an excellent opportunity to destroy them. I believe that the mainstream media ought to do a better job of disseminating this scientific information to the public to rid it of a panic that has no basis in science.

Zhang Yuanchao heard someone enter the living room without knocking, calling "Lao Zhang" and "Master Zhang." He knew who it was from the footsteps he'd heard hammering up the staircase just before. Miao Fuquan, another neighbor on their floor, came in. A Shanxi coal boss who ran a fair number of mines in that province, Miao Fuquan was a few years younger than Zhang Yuanchao. He owned a larger home in another part of Beijing and used this apartment as a place to keep a mistress from Sichuan who was about the same age as his daughter. When he had first moved in, the Zhang and Yang families had basically ignored him save for an argument over the stuff he left strewn about the hallway, but they eventually discovered that although he was a little vulgar, he was a decent, friendly man. Once building management had smoothed over a dispute or two, harmony was gradually established among the three families. Although Miao Fuquan said he had turned over his business affairs to his son, he was still a busy man and rarely spent any time at this "home," so the three-bedroom place was usually only occupied by the Sichuan woman.

"Lao Miao, you haven't been around for months. Where have you struck it rich this time?" asked Yang Jinwen.

Miao Fuquan casually picked up a glass, filled it halfway from the water dispenser, and gulped down the water. Then he wiped his mouth and said, "No one's getting rich… There's trouble at the mine, and I've got to go clean it up. It's practically war time. The government really means it this time. The laws on wildcat mining never used to work, but the mines aren't going to be running for much longer now."

No one ever knew the man's true name, but eventually, they called him the Second Wallbreaker.

"Bad days are here," Yang Jinwen said, without taking his eyes from the game on television.

The man had been lying on the bed for several hours. The light shining through the basement window, the room's only source of illumination, was moonlight now, and the cool rays cast bright spots on the floor. In the shadows, everything looked like it was carved from gray stone, as if the entire room was a tomb.

The Second Wallbreaker had spent several hours looking back on his life. After confirming that there had been no omissions, he twisted the muscles of his numb body, reached under the pillow, and drew out a gun, which he slowly aimed at his temple. Just then, a sophon text appeared before his eyes.

"Hah! That doesn't matter. I'm about to meet them in a place where there's no darkness."

The Second Wallbreaker opened his eyes, put down his gun, and rolled out of bed, his lethargy completely wiped away. He groped for the light and then went over to look at the fishbowl on the small table. Five dragon eye goldfish were floating in the water, their white bellies at the surface, and in their midst was a half-smoked cigarette.

"Lord? Every night for a year I dreamt that you called, but the dreams went away recently. I figured I'd stopped dreaming, but that doesn't seem to be the case now."

Your goldfish are dead.

"Proof that there aren't dreams on that side?"

Proof that it's really me.

You require proof?

"Fine. Tell me something I don't know."

The Wallbreaker gave a chilly laugh. "Good. It's over, then. There definitely aren't any dreams on the other side."

This is not a dream. I am in real-time communication with you.

Don't do that. We need you.

You should really take a look. This morning when you were distracted, you flicked away a half-smoked cigarette and it landed in the fishbowl. The nicotine that leached into the water was fatal to your fish.

The Second Wallbreaker scrambled to retrieve his laptop, and as he waited for it to start up, tears streamed down his face. "Lord, my Lord, is it really you? Is it really you?" he choked out through his sobs. After the computer booted up, he opened the e-mail attachment in the Earth-Trisolaris Organization's proprietary dedicated reader. He entered the password into the pop-up box, and when the text was displayed he no longer had any mind to read it carefully. Throwing himself to his knees, he cried out, "Lord! It really is you, my Lord!" When he had calmed down, he raised his head and said, his eyes still wet, "We were never notified of the attack on the gathering the commander attended, or of the ambush at the Panama Canal. Why did you cast us aside?"

I'll perform an additional confirmation. Evans once gave you an encrypted letter, but the encryption has changed. He died before he was able to notify you of the new password, and you've never been able to read the letter. I'll tell you the password: CAMEL, the brand of cigarette you poisoned your fish with.

"Is it because our thoughts aren't transparent? That doesn't matter, you know. All of the skills that you lack -- deceit, trickery, disguise, and misdirection -- we use in your service."

We were afraid of you.

We don't know if that's true. Even supposing it is true, the fear remains. Your Bible mentions an animal called the snake. If a snake crawled up to you and said it would serve you, would your fear and disgust cease?

"If it told the truth, then I would overcome my disgust and fear and accept it."

That would be difficult.

"Of course. I know that you've already been bitten once by the snake. Once real-time notification became possible and you gave detailed answers to our questions, there was no reason for you to tell us quite a bit of that information, such as how you received the first signal from humanity, and how the sophons are constructed. It was hard for us to understand: We were not communicating via transparent display of thoughts, so why not be more selective in the information you sent?"

That option did exist, but it doesn't cover up as much as you imagine it might. In fact, forms of communication do exist in our world that don't require displays of thought, particularly in the age of technology. But transparent thought has become a cultural and social custom. This might be hard for you to understand, just like it's hard for us to understand you.

"That's unbelievable."

More than you do. It is about to be put into action. This is why we have come to you.

"Except for people's own minds."

"Romance of the Three Kingdoms. You won't understand that."

But our sophons can make everything in the human world transparent.

I understand a small part, like how an ordinary person who has a hard time understanding a mathematics monograph can make out some of it through enormous mental effort, and by giving full play to the imagination.

They exist, but they are far simpler than in yours. For example, in the wars on our world, opposing sides will adopt disguises, but an enemy who becomes suspicious about the disguise and inquires about it directly will usually obtain the truth.

"I can't imagine that deceit and scheming are totally absent in your world."

"Indeed, that book lays out the highest levels of human schemes and strategy."

You are equally unbelievable to us. You have a book on your bookshelf called A Story of Three Kingdoms.

Yes. The sophon can't read thoughts.

"You must know about the Wallfacer Project."

The same feeling you get when you look at the snake.

"My Lord, the way you express yourself is problematic. Clearly, it's determined by how you communicate through the display of transparent thoughts, but in our world, even if you express your true thoughts, you must do so in an appropriately euphemistic way. For example, although what you just said is in accord with the ideals of ETO, its overly direct formulation might repel some of our members and cause unanticipated consequences. Of course, it may be that you'll never be able to learn to express yourself appropriately."

"But the snake in the Bible helped humans gain knowledge. The Wallfacer Project will set up one or several mazes that will seem to you to be particularly tricky and treacherous. We can help you find your way out."

"What do you think of the project?"

This difference in mental transparency gives us all the more resolve to wipe out humanity. Please help us wipe out humanity, and then we will wipe you out.

It is precisely the expression of deformed thoughts that makes the exchange of information in human society, particularly in human literature, so much like a twisted maze. As far as I am aware, ETO is on the brink of collapse. "That's because you abandoned us. Those two strikes were fatal, and now, the Redemptionists have disintegrated and only the Adventists have maintained an organized existence. You're certainly aware of this, but the most fatal blow was a psychological one. Your abandonment means that the devotion of our members to our Lord is being tested. To maintain that devotion, ETO desperately needs our Lord's support."

The Wallbreaker was overjoyed. "My Lord, you have learned how to conceal! This is progress!"

"It's not too difficult. But is it truly that important?"

Simple enough to carry out, is it not?

"Why?"

"That won't be necessary, so long as you go back to transmitting information to us through the sophons."

Evans taught us much, but we are still at the very beginning, or in his words, only at the level of one of your five-year-old children. The order he gave you contains one of the strategies we can't learn.

It used to be important. Now, because of humanity's Wallfacer Project, it is incredibly important.

We can't give you technology.

The Wallbreaker remembered the letter he had just decrypted on his computer and read it over carefully.

The text did not show for a while. Evans knew why, but evidently he didn't tell anyone. He was right. This is fortunate. Now, we don't need to tell you why.

Naturally. But what ETO must do first is execute the critical order you just read. We issued it to Evans before his death, and he ordered you to execute it, but you never solved the encryption.

To us it is a complicated plan.

In one remote corner of the vast sea of information on the Internet, there was a remote corner, and in a remote corner of that remote corner, and then in a remote corner of a remote corner of a remote corner of that remote corner -- that is, in the very depths of the most remote corner of all -- a virtual world came back to life.

"Do you mean this stipulation: 'To avoid attention, you must not reveal that it was done by ETO'? This… well, if the target is important, then this requirement is only natural."

King Wen of Zhou came over the horizon. Wearing tattered robes, he carried a tarnished bronze sword, and his face was as filthy and wrinkled as the pelt he was wrapped in. But there was energy in his eyes, and his pupils reflected the rising sun.

"Fine. I will take care of it in accordance with Evans's wishes. My Lord, we will prove our devotion to you."

Under the strange, chilly dawn was no pyramid, UN building, or pendulum, just a broad and hard expanse of emptiness, like a giant slab of frozen metal.

"Is anybody here?" he shouted. "Anyone?"

Thirty army, navy, and air force officers fixed their eyes on the insignia on the deep-red screen, a silver star shooting rays in four directions. The rays, in the shape of sharp swords, were flanked by the Chinese characters for eight and one. It was the insignia of the Chinese Space Force.

King Wen's voice was swallowed up immediately by the wilderness. He shouted for a while, and then sat wearily on the ground and accelerated the passage of time, watching the suns turn into shooting stars, and the shooting stars turn back into suns, and the suns of the Stable Eras sweep across the sky like clock pendulums, and the days and nights of the Chaotic Eras turn the world into a vast stage where the lighting was out of control. Time sped by, but nothing changed. It remained the eternal, metallic wasteland. The three stars danced in the heavens, and King Wen turned into a pillar of ice in the cold. Then a shooting star turned into a sun, and when that fiery giant disc passed overhead, the ice on his body melted and his body became a pillar of fire. Just before turning entirely to ash, he let out a long sigh, and then exited.

With a smile, Chang Weisi said, "It's an odd ratio, isn't it? You can't use the scale of today's aerospace program to assess space forces of the future. Spaceships, when their day comes, will probably be even bigger and carry a larger crew than today's aircraft carriers. Future space warfare will be based on large-tonnage, high-endurance combat platforms, and engagements will resemble naval battles more than air combat, with a battlefield in three dimensions instead of two. So the military's space branch must be based upon the navy. I know, we all assumed that the foundation would be the air force, which means our naval comrades might be ill prepared. You've got to adapt as quickly as possible."

General Chang Weisi motioned for everyone to be seated. Then, placing his cap squarely down upon the conference table, he said, "The ceremony formally establishing the space force will be held tomorrow morning, at which time you will be issued uniforms and pins. However, comrades, as of this moment we belong to the same branch of the military."

They looked at each other, noting that among the thirty people there were fifteen dressed in navy uniforms, nine in air force uniforms, and six in army uniforms. When they turned their attention back to General Chang, they had a hard time disguising their confusion.

The mood of the room relaxed somewhat. He continued, "Comrades, at this moment, the thirty-one of us are all that makes up this new branch of the military. As for the future space fleet, basic research is being conducted in all scientific disciplines, with a particular focus on the space elevator, and on fusion engines for large-scale space ships… But this isn't the work of the space force. Our duty is to establish a theoretical framework for space warfare. It's a daunting task, since we have zero knowledge of this type of warfare, but the future space fleet will be built atop this foundation. In its preliminary stage, then, the space force will be more like a military academy. The primary task of those of us seated here is to organize that academy, and then invite a sizeable group of scholars and researchers to join up."

Chang Weisi nodded. "In fact, the navy's not all that far removed from space. Don't they call them 'space ships' rather than 'space planes'? That's because space and the ocean have long been linked together in the popular mind."

"Sir, we had no idea," Zhang Beihai said. Wu Yue sat ramrod straight and motionless beside him, but Zhang Beihai acutely sensed that something in his level eyes had been extinguished.

Chang stood up and walked over to the insignia, where he addressed the assembled officers with words they would remember for the rest of their lives: "Comrades, the space force has a tough road ahead of it. Initial predictions see basic research taking at least fifty years across all disciplines, with at least another hundred years before practical use of the technology required for large-scale space travel becomes possible. Then, after its initial construction, the space fleet will require another century and a half to achieve its planned scale. That means that full combat capacity will take the space force three centuries from its establishment. Comrades, I'm sure you all understand what that means. None of us sitting here will make it to space, much less have the chance to see our space fleet, and we may not even see a credible model of a space warship. The first generation of officers and crew won't be born until two centuries from now, and two and a half centuries from that, Earth's fleet will meet the alien invaders. Aboard those ships will be the fifteenth generation of our grandchildren."

"Haven't you heard?" Miao Fuquan said. "People were being trampled to death at the banks! There were people three deep on the floor at the counter."

The assembly fell into a prolonged silence. Ahead of them stretched the leaden road of time, terminating somewhere in the mists of the future, where all they could see were flickering flames and luster of blood. The brevity of a human lifespan tormented them as never before, and their hearts soared above the vault of time to join with their descendants and plunge into blood and fire in the icy cold of space, the eventual meeting place for the souls of all soldiers.

As usual, when Miao Fuquan returned, he asked Zhang Yuanchao and Yang Jinwen to have a drink at his place, where the Sichuan woman had laid out a sumptuous feast on the table. As they were drinking, Zhang Yuanchao brought up Miao Fuquan's visit to the Construction Bank that morning to withdraw some money.

"And your money?" asked Zhang Yuanchao.

"I was able to get some of it. The rest was frozen. It's criminal!"

Yang Jinwen said, "The news said that when the social panic eases a little, the government will gradually unfreeze accounts. Perhaps just a certain percentage at first, but the situation will eventually return to normal."

Zhang Yuanchao said, "I hope so. The government made a mistake in calling it a state of war so early on, putting people in a panic. Now people are only thinking of themselves. How many people are thinking about the defense of Earth four hundred years in the future?"

"The hair you shed is worth more than the rest of us have altogether," said Zhang Yuanchao.

"That's not the biggest problem," Yang Jinwen said. "I said it before and I'll say it again, China's savings rate is an enormous land mine. Am I right? High savings, low social security. People's life savings are in the bank, and then everyone goes into mass hysteria at the slightest gust of wind."

Zhang Yuanchao asked, "So this wartime economy, what do you think it'll be like?"

"It's too sudden. I don't think anyone has a full mental picture of it yet, and the new economic policies are still being drafted. But one thing's certain: Tough days are ahead."

"Tough days, my ass. It's nothing people our age haven't seen before. It'll be like the sixties all over again, I expect," said Miao Fuquan.

"I just feel for the kids," said Zhang Yuanchao, and drained his glass.

Just then a news fanfare drew their attention to the television. A familiar sound these days, the music had the ability to make everyone drop what they were doing and pay attention. It was the bumper fanfare for a breaking news announcement, which were being broadcast more often than ever these days. The three old men remembered how this sort of news was frequently broadcast over radio and television prior to the 1980s, but during the long period of prosperity and tranquility that came afterward, it disappeared.

According to this station's correspondent at the UN Secretariat, a UN spokesperson at a just-concluded press conference announced that a special session of the General Assembly will be convened in the near future to discuss the problem of Escapism. The special session will be co-facilitated by the permanent members of the Planetary Defense Council and will be aimed at pushing the international community to reach a consensus on Escapist attitudes and develop corresponding international laws.

The broadcast began:

The doctrine of Escapism arose alongside the Trisolar Crisis. Its primary argument holds that given the locked state of humanity's advanced sciences, it does not make any sense to plan for a defense of Earth and the Solar System in four and a half centuries. Considering the extent to which human technology can develop over the next four centuries, a more realistic goal would be to construct starships to enable a small portion of the human race to flee to outer space, thereby avoiding the total extinction of human civilization.

Escapism has three possible destinations. Option one: a New World -- that is, searching among the stars for a world where humanity can survive. Without question, this is the ideal, but it requires extremely high navigation speeds and the voyage will be long. Given the level that human technology can attain during the Crisis period, this option is unlikely to be realized. Option two: a Starship Civilization -- that is, humanity will use their escape ships as a permanent abode, and human civilization will endure on an eternal voyage.

Let's take a brief look back at the emergence and development of Escapism.

This option faces the same difficulties as the New World, although it places a greater emphasis on the establishment of closed ecosystem technologies. A generation ship running a fully enclosed biosphere is far beyond humanity's current technical capabilities. Option three: Temporary Refuge. Once Trisolaris has completed settlement of the Solar System, there can be active exchanges between Trisolaran society and the humans that have fled to outer space. By pushing for a relaxation of policies toward residual humans in outer space, they will eventually be able to return to the Solar System and coexist on a smaller scale with the Trisolarans. Although Temporary Refuge is considered the most realistic plan, there are still too many variables.

Not long after the emergence of Escapism, news outlets worldwide reported that the United States and Russia, two leaders in space technology, had secretly started work on plans for fleeing into outer space. Although the governments of the two countries denied the existence of any plans, an uproar in the international community sparked a "socialized technology" movement. At the third special session, a host of developing countries demanded that the United States, Russia, Japan, China, and the European Union release their technology and provide all advanced technology, including aerospace technology, free of charge to the international community so that all nations of humanity would have an equal opportunity to face the Trisolar Crisis. The supporters of the socialized technology movement brought up a precedent: At the beginning of the century, several major European pharmaceutical companies exacted high license fees from African countries for the manufacture of state-of-the-art AIDS treatments, prompting high-profile litigation. Under pressure from public opinion and the rapid spread of the disease in Africa, the companies renounced their patent rights prior to trial. The ultimate crisis that Earth is now facing means that open technology is the unavoidable responsibility that advanced countries have to all humanity. The socialized technology movement found a unanimous response from developing countries and even won the support of some members of the EU, but all related initiatives were rejected at meetings of the UN-PDC. At the fifth special session of the UN General Assembly, a proposal by China and Russia of a "limited socialized technology" plan that advocated making technology open to all permanent members of the PDC was vetoed by the US and Britain. The US government said that no form of socialized technology was realistic, that it was a naïve idea, and that under the present circumstances US national security was a priority "second only to planetary defense."

The implications of the frustrated socialized technology movement are far-reaching, and people have been made aware that even in the face of the devastating Trisolar Crisis, the unity of the human race is still a distant dream.

The failure of the limited socialized technology proposal caused a split among technological powers and led to the bankruptcy of the plan to establish a United Earth Space Force.

This is the environment in which the UN special session is set to open.

"Oh, that reminds me," Miao Fuquan said. "The information I told you over the phone a few days ago is reliable."

The socialized technology movement was launched by the Escapists. Only when the international community reaches a consensus on Escapism will it be able to bridge the gap that has opened up between developed and developing nations, and between the developed countries themselves.

"Lao Miao, how can you believe that? You don't seem like an easy mark," Yang Jinwen said disapprovingly.

"What's that?"

"The escape fund."

"No, no," Miao Fuquan said, lowering his voice and looking back and forth between the other two. "The young guy's name is Shi Xiaoming. I checked out his background through various channels, and his father Shi Qiang works for the PDC's security department! He used to be chief of a municipal antiterrorism squad, and now he's a key person in the PDC in charge of combatting the ETO. I've got a number here for his department. You can check it out for yourselves."

"That's right. It's for you rich folks," Zhang Yuanchao slurred out.

Yang Jinwen suddenly grew excited: "And if it's really true, then the state's a pack of morons! If anyone's going to flee, it should be the cream of our descendants. Why the hell would you give it to anyone who can pay? What's the point of that?"

The other two looked at each other, and Yang Jinwen laughed as he picked up the bottle and poured himself another glass. "So what if it's true? Who cares if there's an escape fund? How can I afford it?"

Miao Fuquan pointed at him and laughed. "Fine, Yang. Let's get to your real point. What you really want is for your descendants to be the ones to go, right? Look at your son and daughter-in-law: Ph. D. scientists. Elites. So your grandsons and great-grandsons will most likely be elites too." He lifted his glass and nodded. "But if you think about it, everyone should be equal, right? There's no reason elites should get a, you know, free lunch, right?"

"What do you mean?"

"Everything has a cost. It's a law of nature. I'll spend to ensure a future for the Miaos. That's a law of nature, too!"

"Why is this something that can be bought? The duty of escaping is to extend human civilization. They'll naturally want the cream of civilization. Sending a bunch of rich dudes across the cosmos," he snorted. "What'll that do? Hmph."

"Who do you think you are?" asked Yang Jinwen, fueled by the alcohol.

Miao Fuquan slapped the table and stood up. "Yang Jinwen, I'm not going to stand for your bile. I'm gonna --"

Then Zhang Yuanchao slammed the table with a noise three times louder, knocking over two of the cups and startling a yelp from the Sichuan woman. He pointed his finger at the other two in turn. "Fine. You're an elite, and you've got money. That leaves me. What the hell do I have? I'm just a poor man, so it serves me right that my line will be wiped out?" With obvious effort he restrained himself from kicking over the table, then turned and stormed out. Yang Jinwen followed him.

The awkward smile on Miao Fuquan's face vanished, and he pointed a thick finger at Yang Jinwen. "I've always known you look down on me. No matter how rich I get, I'll just be a vulgar moneybags to you. Isn't that right?"

The Second Wallbreaker carefully put new goldfish into the bowl. Like Evans, he enjoyed isolation, but he needed the companionship of beings other than humans. He often spoke to the goldfish like he spoke to the Trisolarans, two forms of life whose long-term presence on Earth he was looking forward to.

The fleet has made adjustments to its Solar System deployment. It will detour in four directions at the Kuiper Belt and encircle the Solar System.

Just then the sophon's text appeared on his retina. I've recently been studying A Story of Three Kingdoms, and like you said, deceit and trickery are an art, just like the markings on a snake.

"Do you have a specific plan in mind?"

"My Lord, once again you bring up the snake."

The more beautiful the markings on a snake, the more fearsome it looks. We didn't use to care about humanity escaping, so long as they stopped existing in the Solar System, but now we have adjusted our plans and have decided to prevent humanity from fleeing. Letting an enemy whose thoughts are totally opaque flee into the cosmos is very dangerous.

"The greatest obstacle to flight is not technology."

That doesn't seem like a problem to us.

Then is it disputes among countries? This UN special session may resolve that problem, and if it can't, then developed countries are entirely capable of brushing aside the opposition of developing countries and forcing a plan through.

Even given the present, limited space for technological development, humanity might be able to build generation ships.

"The greatest obstacle to flight is not disputes among countries, either."

That is true, so we require your assistance. The next mission of the ETO is to halt or delay humanity's escape plans.

Then what is it?

"Disputes among people. The question of who goes and who stays behind."

"If humanity really flees, your fleet will be too late to do anything by the time they do."

"We thought so at first, but it turns out to be an insurmountable obstacle."

The Wallbreaker smiled. "My Lord, you really don't have to worry about that at all. No large-scale flight of humanity will ever happen."

"You may be familiar with human history, but you will probably find this hard to comprehend: Who goes and who remains involves basic human values, values which in the past promoted progress in human society, but which, in the face of ultimate disaster, are a trap. Right now, the majority of humanity has not realized how deep this trap is. Lord, please believe my words. No human can escape this trap."

Can you explain?

"Uncle Zhang, you don't have to decide now. You've asked all the necessary questions, and it's not a small amount of money, after all,"

Shi Xiaoming said to Zhang Yuanchao, his face a picture of serenity.

"Don't you mind what the TV says. Two weeks ago the government spokesperson said that freezing accounts was impossible, but now look what's happened…

"It's not that. Is the plan for real? The TV says --"

Think reasonably. You're an ordinary man, and you're thinking about the continuation of your family line. What about the president and the premier? Won't they be thinking about the continuation of the Chinese people? And the UN about the continuation of the human race? This UN special session is actually an international cooperative plan that will formally launch the Human Escape Plan. This is a pressing matter."

"Your grandson will see those ships take off."

"Then when will the ships head out?"

Lao Zhang slowly nodded. "It does seem that way when you think about it. But I still feel like escape is a long way off. Should I really be worrying about it?"

"You're about to have a grandson, right?"

"No, that's impossible. But his grandson could be."

"Uncle Zhang, you misunderstand. Escape can't be all that far off. Do you think the escape ships will only take off three or four hundred years from now? If that were true, then the Trisolaran Fleet could catch them easily."

"That's…" Zhang worked it out. "About seventy or eighty years."

"Uncle Zhang, think back to what things were like one hundred twenty years ago. It was still the Qing Dynasty! It took over a month to go from Hangzhou to Beijing, and the emperor had to spend days cooped up in a sedan chair to get to his summer retreat. Now it's less than three days from Earth to the moon. Technology develops fast, which means that the pace of development is always on the increase. If you add to that the fact that the whole world is pouring all its energy into space technology, then there's no question at all that spaceships can be created in about one hundred twenty years."

"Yes."

"That's pretty quick. Can they be built in time?"

"He'll be aboard one?"

"It'll be longer than that. The wartime government will tighten population controls and build delays into the birth restrictions, so it'll be forty years to a generation. The ships will take off in about one hundred twenty years."

"Isn't space travel pretty dangerous?"

"That's true, but won't Earth be dangerous then, too? Look at how things are changing now. The country's main economic force is being used to establish a space fleet, which is not a commercial good and will not bring in one cent in profit. People's lives will only get worse. Add to that the sheer size of our base population, and simply having enough to eat becomes a problem. And then take a look at the international situation. Developing countries don't have the ability to escape, and developed countries have refused to socialize their technology. But the poorer and smaller countries won't give up. Aren't they threatening to pull out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty? And they may take more extreme actions in the future. Who knows -- in a hundred and twenty years, before the alien fleet even arrives, the world might be engulfed in the flames of war! Who knows what sort of life your great-grandson's generation will lead. Besides, the escape ships aren't what you imagine. Comparing them to the Shenzhou spaceship and the ISS is ridiculous. The ships will be big, each of them a small city, and a complete ecosystem to boot. Just like a tiny Earth. Humanity can live on them forever without any outside supplies. And most importantly, there will be hibernation. We can do that now, even. The passengers on board will spend most of their time in hibernation, where a century feels like no more than a day, until they reach the new world or they reach an accord with the Trisolarans to return to the Solar System. Then they'll wake up. Isn't that a much better life than suffering back on Earth?"

Shi Xiaoming went on. "Of course, to be completely honest with you, space travel is indeed a dangerous thing. No one knows what sort of hazards they might encounter in space. I know you're mostly doing this for the continuation of your Zhang lineage, but don't let it worry you…"

Zhang stared at him as if he had been pricked. "How can you young people say things like that? Why wouldn't I worry?"

"Let me finish, Uncle Zhang. I don't mean it like that. I just mean that even if you don't plan on sending your descendants to flee in spaceships, this fund is worth buying, guaranteed. Once it's available for the general public to buy, the price will soar. There are lots of rich people, you know, and there aren't many other avenues for investment, and hoarding is illegal. Besides, the more money you have, the more you think about preserving your line, wouldn't you say?"

Zhang Yuanchao thought this over in silence.

"Uncle Zhang, I'm being totally honest here. The escape fund is currently in a preliminary phase and has only a small number of special internal salespeople. It wasn't easy for me to get in on the quota. At any rate, when you've thought it over, give me a call, and I'll help you fill out the paperwork."

"Right. I know that."

When Shi Xiaoming had gone, Lao Zhang stood on the balcony looking out at the sky, which hung a little hazily over the halo of the city, and said to himself, My children, will your grandpa really send you someplace where night lasts forever?

When King Wen of Zhou next set foot onto the desolation of Three Body world, a small sun was rising. Although it did not give much heat, it lit the wasteland quite clearly. The wasteland was completely empty.

"What are you shouting for? Who restarted this damned place?"

"Is there anyone here? Anyone?"

Then his eyes lit up as he saw someone riding a galloping horse from the horizon. Recognizing him at a distance as Newton, he ran toward him, waving wildly. Newton soon reached his side, reined in his horse, and, after dismounting, hurriedly adjusted his wig.

King Wen didn't answer his question, but took his hand and said urgently, "Comrade, my comrade, listen to me. The Lord has not abandoned us. Or, rather, Its abandonment was for a reason, and It will need us in the future. It…"

"Does the organization still exist?" Newton wiped away sweat with a handkerchief.

"I know that," Newton said, impatiently brushing aside King Wen's hand. "The sophons sent me a message too."

"So that means that the Lord sent a message to lots of us at the same time. Excellent. The organization's contact with the Lord won't ever be monopolized again."

"The strike purified the org. This is a good thing."

"Of course it exists. The Redemptionists totally collapsed after the global strike, and the Survivors split off and developed into an independent force. Only the Adventists are left in the org now."

"My only contact is with one other comrade, and he didn't tell me anything but this Web address. I barely escaped the awful global strike with my life."

"Since you're here, you must be an Adventist. But you seem to be out of the loop. Are you on your own?"

"Your escape instincts were ably demonstrated during the Qin Shi Huang era."

"Of course. We're at the bottom of a multilevel maze, and it's practically impossible to discover. Anyone who managed to storm their way in here wouldn't be able to trace user locations. For security reasons, after the strike, the org put every branch into isolation with mutual contact kept to a minimum. We need a place to meet, and a buffer area for new members. This is more secure than the real world."

Newton looked around. "Is it safe?"

"They're clever. They know the org is the only means of obtaining intelligence on the Lord, as well as the only opportunity of getting their hands on the technology that the Lord passes to us, even though there's only a minute chance of that happening. That's the reason they'll let the org continue to exist to a certain extent, but I think they'll come to regret it."

"The Lord isn't so clever. It doesn't even comprehend the ability to be clever."

"So It needs us. The existence of the org is valuable, and all comrades should know of this as soon as possible."

Newton mounted his horse. "Very well. I've got to go. I'll stay longer once I've verified that it's really secure here."

"Have you noticed that attacks on the organization in the real world have slackened considerably?"

"I guarantee to you that it's absolutely safe."

"If that's true, then there'll be more comrades gathering here next time. Good-bye." Saying this, Newton urged his horse off into the distance. By the time its hoofbeats had dissipated, the small sun had become a shooting star, and a cloak of darkness descended upon the world.

Luo Ji lay limp on the bed, watching the woman put on clothes after a shower through eyes still hazy from sleep. The sun, already high in the sky, shone through the curtains and turned her into a graceful projected silhouette, like a scene from a black-and-white movie he had forgotten the name of. But what he needed to remember now was her name. What was she called? Keep calm. First, her last name: If it was Zhang, then she would be Zhang Shan. Or was it Chen? Then, Chen Jingjing… no, those were previous women. He thought about looking at his phone, but it was still in his pocket and he had tossed his clothes on the carpet. Besides, they had only known each other for a little while and he hadn't entered her number into his phone yet. The important thing now was not to have it be like that one time he'd asked outright -- the consequences had been disastrous. So he turned to the television, which she had turned on and muted. On the screen, seated around a large round table, the UN Security Council was in session -- wait, it wasn't the Security Council anymore, but he couldn't remember its new name. He was really out of it.

"You really seem to be interested." She sat combing her hair but didn't adjust the sound.

"Turn it up," he said. His words sounded distant without a term of endearment, but he didn't care about that now.

"Look at you. You call yourself a scholar?" She watched his wriggling toes in the mirror.

"A young scholar," he added, "with few accomplishments. But that's because I don't put in the effort. I'm actually full of inspiration. Sometimes, what other people might spend a lifetime working on, I can figure out with a moment's thought… Believe it or not, I was almost famous once."

"Because of that subculture stuff?"

Luo Ji reached over to the bedside table and picked up a lighter and a cigarette and lit it as he stretched his bare feet out of his towel and wiggled his big toes in satisfaction.

"What?"

She snickered, then tossed her comb aside and began putting on her makeup.

"It's the sociology of aliens."

"No, not that. It was another thing I was working on at the same time. I established cosmic sociology."

"Don't you know about the celebrity tendency in academia? I could've been a star."

She wasn't listening too closely to him, reading the subtitles on the television instead: "'We reserve all options in regard to Escapism…' What does that mean?"

"Alien researchers are a dime a dozen these days."

"That's only after all this new crap came out," Luo Ji said as he pointed at the mute television, which was still showing the large table and the people seated round it. The segment was awfully long. Was it live? "Academics didn't use to study aliens. They sifted through piles of old paper and become celebrities that way. But later the public got tired of the cultural necrophilia of that old crew, and that's when I came along." He stretched his bare arms toward the ceiling. "Cosmic sociology, aliens, and lots of alien races. More of them than there are people on Earth, tens of billions! The producer of that Lecture Room television program talked about doing a series with me, but then it all actually happened, and then…" He swept a circle with a finger, and sighed.

"Who's talking?"

"It looks like Karnoff."

"He's saying that Escapism needs to be treated as harshly as the ETO, and that a guided missile needs to be dropped on anyone making a Noah's Ark."

"That's kind of harsh."

"Right. I read it when I was a kid. Shanghai's about to fall into the ocean, and a group of people go house to house seizing life preservers and then destroying them en masse, for the sole purpose of making sure that no one would live if everyone couldn't. I remember in particular there was one little girl who took the group to the door of one house and cried out, 'They still have one!'"

"You're just the sort of asshole that always sees society as trash."

"Bullshit. The fundamental axiom of economics is the human mercenary instinct. Without that assumption, the entire field would collapse. There isn't any fundamental axiom for sociology yet, but it might be even darker than economics. The truth always picks up dust. A small number of people could fly off into space, but if we knew it would come to that, why would we have bothered in the first place?"

"I haven't. It's pretty old, isn't it?"

"No," he said forcefully. "It's the wisest strategy. I came up with it long ago. And even if it doesn't come to that, no one's going to fly away, anyway. You ever read a book by Liang Xiaosheng called Floating City?"

"Why would we have had the Renaissance? Why the Magna Carta? Why the French Revolution? If humanity had stayed divided into classes, kept in place by the law's iron rule, then when the time came, the ones who needed to leave would leave, and the ones who had to stay behind would stay. If this took place in the Ming or Qing Dynasties, then I'd leave, of course, and you'd stay behind. But that's not possible now."

"Bothered with what?"

"I wouldn't mind if you took off right now," she said.

Which was, in fact, the truth. They had reached a mutual parting of ways. He had been able to reach this point with all of his previous lovers, never early or late. He was especially pleased with his control over the pace this time. He had known her for just one week, and the breakup proceeded smoothly, as elegantly as a rocket discarding its booster.

He backtracked to an earlier topic: "Hey, it wasn't my idea to establish cosmic sociology, you know. Do you want to know whose it was? You're the only one I'm going to tell, so don't get scared."

"Come on and get up. I'm hungry." She picked up his clothes from the carpet and threw them on the bed.

"Whatever. I can't believe most of what you say anyway, apart from one thing."

"Uh… forget it. What one thing?"

They ate breakfast in the main restaurant of the hotel. Most of the occupants of the tables around them looked serious, and at times they could catch snatches of conversation. Luo Ji didn't want to listen, but he was like a candle on a summer night. The words, like insects crowding around the flame, kept working their way into his head: Escapism, socialized technology, ETO, transformation to a wartime economy, equatorial base, charter amendment, PDC, near-Earth primary warning and defensive perimeter, independent integrated mode…

"Our age has gotten really dull, hasn't it?" Luo Ji said. He stopped cutting his egg and set down his fork.

She nodded. "I agree. I saw a game show question on TV yesterday that was really moronic. Hands on buzzers." She pointed a fork at Luo Ji in imitation of the host. "One hundred and twenty years before the doomsday, your thirteenth generation will be alive. True or false?"

Luo Ji picked up his fork again and shook his head. "It's not going to be any generation of mine." He folded his hands as if in prayer. "My grand family line will die out with me."

So that's why she was leaving him? He didn't want to ask about it for fear of complicating the issue, but she seemed to read his thoughts, and said, "I'm that sort of person too. It's really annoying to see certain things about yourself in other people."

"Particularly in a member of the opposite sex," Luo Ji said, nodding.

"What behavior? Not having kids? Of course it is." Luo Ji pointed his fork at the people around them discussing economic transformation. "You know what sort of lives their descendants will be living? They'll be spending their days slaving away in the shipyards -- the spaceship yards -- and then they'll line up at the canteen, bellies rumbling as they hold out their lunch pails waiting for that ladle of porridge… and when they're older, it'll be Uncle Sam Wants… no, Earth Wants You, and it's off to find glory in the army."

"But if you need to justify it, it's perfectly responsible behavior."

She gave a dismissive snort. "You asked me which of your lines I believe. That's the one. You've said it before. That's the sort of person you are."

They left the hotel after their meal and emerged into the warm embrace of the morning sun. The air had a sweetness that was intoxicating.

"Neither of us is gonna learn," she said, her eyes searching for a taxi.

"It'll be better for the doomsday generation."

"I've got to learn how to live. If I can't swing that, it'll be a damn shame," Luo Ji said as he watched the passing traffic.

"Retiring to face doomsday. How miserable. And besides, that last generation's grandparents might not get enough to eat. Still, even that future's not going to come to pass. Just look at how stubborn the people of Earth are. I bet they resist till the end, at which point the real mystery is how they'll eventually die."

"Then…" Luo Ji looked inquiringly at her. Evidently there would be no need to remember her name.

"Good-bye." She nodded in his direction, and then they shook hands and shared a quick kiss.

"Maybe we'll meet again." He regretted this as soon as he said it. Everything had been fine up till this point, so why risk causing trouble? But his concern was unnecessary.

That fall saved his life.

"I doubt it." She turned quickly as she spoke, sending the bag on her shoulder flying into the air, a detail that Luo Ji repeatedly called to mind afterward in an attempt to determine whether or not it had been deliberate. It was a distinctive LV bag, and he had seen her send it swinging while turning around many times before. But this time the bag swung straight at his face, and when he took a step backward to dodge it, he stumbled over the fire hydrant behind him and fell flat on his back.

Meanwhile, the following was taking place on the street in front of them: Two cars collided head on, but before the noise of the impact had subsided, a Polo swerved to avoid the crash and came hurtling toward where the two of them were standing. Luo Ji's fall turned into a successful dodge. Only the front bumper of the Polo brushed one of his feet, the one that was still elevated, nudging his body into a ninety-degree turn on the ground so that he faced the back end of the car. He didn't hear the heavy thud of the other impact, but then he saw the woman's body soar over the top of the car and fall behind it on the road like a boneless rag doll. As it tumbled, the trail of blood it left behind on the ground seemed like it ought to mean something. As he stared at the bloody symbol, Luo Ji finally remembered her name.

Yang Jinwen came in. Zhang Yuanchao's first thought was that he was taking this opportunity to patch up their relationship, but Yang Jinwen's expression told him that wasn't the case. Without so much as a greeting, Yang Jinwen dragged him from the waiting room into the hallway. "Did you really buy into the escape fund?" he asked.

Zhang Yuanchao's daughter-in-law was about to give birth. She had been moved into the delivery room while the rest of the family gathered in the waiting room outside, where a television was playing a video of mother and baby wellness information. It all gave him a feeling of warmth and humanity that he had never felt before, a lingering coziness of a past Golden Age being eroded by the ever worsening era of crisis.

"Look at this," Yang Jinwen said, handing him a newspaper. "It's today's." The top headline stood out in black before his eyes:

Zhang Yuanchao ignored him and turned to go, as if to say, That's none of your business.

SPECIAL UN SESSION PASSES RESOLUTION 117, DECLARES ESCAPISM ILLEGAL

By an overwhelming majority, a special session of the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution declaring Escapism a violation of international law. In strong language, the resolution condemned the division and turmoil that Escapism has created within human society, and described Escapism as a crime against humanity in the eyes of international law. The resolution called on member states to enact legislation as soon as possible to put a stop to Escapism.

Zhang Yuanchao carefully read through the start of the article underneath:

In a statement, the Chinese delegate reiterated the stance of the Chinese government regarding Escapism and said that it firmly supports UN Resolution 117. He conveyed the Chinese government's pledge to take immediate action to establish and improve legislation, and to adopt effective measures to stop the spread of Escapism. He concluded by saying, "We must cherish the unity and solidarity of the international community in this time of crisis and uphold the principle, recognized by the international community, that all humanity has an equal right to survival. The Earth is the common home of its people, and we must not abandon her."

"Why… why are they doing this?" he stammered.

"Isn't it obvious? Put a little thought into it, and you'll realize that escape into the cosmos was never going to work. The critical question is who gets to leave, and who has to stay. This isn't ordinary inequality. It's a question of survival, and no matter who gets to leave -- elites, the rich, or ordinary people -- so long as some people get left behind, it means the collapse of humanity's fundamental value system and ethical bottom line. Human rights and equality have deep roots. Inequality of survival is the worst sort of inequality, and the people and countries left behind will never just sit and wait for death while others have a way out. There will be increasingly extreme confrontations between the two sides until there's world chaos, and then no one goes! The UN resolution is quite wise. How much did you spend, Lao Zhang?"

Zhang Yuanchao scrambled for his phone. He called Shi Xiaoming's number, but it was unreachable. His legs threatened to give out, and he slid down the wall to sit on the ground. He had spent 400,000 yuan.

In the thirty minutes that he had been waiting, ten thousand new babies had come into the world, babies whose combined cries formed a tremendous chorus. Behind them was the Golden Age, the good times that began in the 1980s and ended with the Crisis. Ahead of them, humanity's arduous years were about to unfold.

"Call the police! There's one thing that that Shi kid doesn't know: Lao Miao looked up his daddy's work unit. The scammer won't get away."

There was the sound of crying, and then a nurse shouted, "Number nineteen. It's a boy!" Zhang Yuanchao bounded off into the waiting room as everything else suddenly became insignificant.

Zhang Yuanchao just sat there shaking his head. He said with a sigh, "Sure, we can find him, but the money's long gone. What'll I say to my family?"

All Luo Ji knew was that he was locked in a tiny basement room. The basement was deep, and he had felt the descent of the elevator (one of those rare old-style elevators with a manually operated lever) even as the mechanism confirmed his sensations, counting backward to negative ten. Ten levels below ground! Once again he took stock of his small room. The twin bed, simple furnishings, and an ancient wooden writing desk gave the place the look of a guard room, not a prison cell. Clearly no one had been here for quite some time, and although the bedclothes were new, the rest of the furniture was covered in dust and gave off a dank, musty smell.

The door opened and a stocky middle-aged man entered. He nodded wearily at Luo Ji. "Dr. Luo, I'm here to keep you company, but since you've just come over I don't expect you're climbing the walls just yet."

Just come over. The phrase grated -- surely "sent down" would have been more accurate. Luo Ji's heart sank. His guess had been confirmed, it seemed: Although the men who had brought him here had been polite, it was clear he had been arrested.

"Are you a policeman?"

The man nodded. "Used to be. Name's Shi Qiang." He sat down on the bed and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. The smoke wouldn't have any place to dissipate in this sealed room, Luo Ji thought, but he didn't dare say anything. As if reading his mind, Shi Qiang looked around and said, "There ought to be a ventilation fan." Then he pulled a cord next to the door, and a fan started humming. It was pretty rare to see a pull-cord switch. Luo Ji also noticed an obsolete red rotary phone lying in a corner, covered in dust. Shi Qiang handed him a cigarette, which he accepted after a moment's hesitation.

When they had lit their cigarettes, Shi Qiang said, "It's early yet. Shall we chat?"

"Ask what?" Shi Qiang said, looking at Luo Ji in surprise.

"Ask away," Luo Ji said, head down as he exhaled a cloud of smoke.

Luo Ji jumped up from the bed and tossed the cigarette aside. "How can you suspect me? You've got to know it was just a traffic accident! The two cars collided, and then she was hit by the one behind them as it tried to avoid the crash. It's plain as day." He held out his hands, at a loss for words.

Shi Qiang raised his head and looked at him, his tired eyes suddenly alert, as if an invisible malice, honed with practice, were hidden behind the smile he usually wore. "You said that, not me. My superiors don't want me to say anything more, and I don't know anything more. To think I was worried we wouldn't have anything to talk about. Come, sit down."

Luo Ji didn't sit down. He got in Shi Qiang's face and continued: "I'd only known her for a week. We met at a bar next to the university, and when the accident happened I couldn't even remember her name. Tell me, what could there possibly have been between us to lead your thoughts in that direction?"

"Look at you, bringing up the issue on your own. Saying you may have killed her, even. We're just having a casual chat. What's your hurry? You're new at this, that much is clear."

"You couldn't even remember her name? No wonder you didn't care at all when she died. You're pretty much the same as another genius I know." He chuckled. "The wonderful life of Dr. Luo, meeting a new woman every time you turn around. And what women they are!"

"Is that a crime?"

"Of course not. I'm just jealous. I've got one rule in my work: Never make moral judgments. The guys I've got to deal with, they're the real deal. If I go and nag them, 'Look at what you've done! Think about your parents, and about society…' and so on, I might as well be slapping them across the face."

Luo Ji stared at Shi Qiang, and for a moment the hum of the fan was the only audible sound. Then he cackled and picked up his cigarette.

"Luo, my man," Shi Qiang said. "Luo, my boy. Destiny's brought us together. You know, I've been involved in sixteen cases that ended in the death penalty. I personally escorted nine of them."

There was a knock at the door, and then a keen-eyed young man entered and dropped a suitcase on the ground. "Captain Shi, it's been moved ahead. We're leaving now."

"Get going?" Again, Luo Ji stared at Shi Qiang.

"Excellent, my boy," Shi Qiang said, clapping Luo Ji on the shoulder. "Decisiveness is a trait I admire." Then he drew up close to him and said, through a cloud of smoke, "You can come across all sorts of things, but what's happened to you is really…" He trailed off. "Actually, I'm here to help. You know how the joke goes: On the way to the execution ground, a condemned criminal complained that it was going to rain, and the executioner said, 'What have you got to worry about? We're the ones who've got to go back through it!' That's the attitude you and I ought to have for what comes next. Well, then. There's still some time before we get going. Might as well get some sleep."

Luo Ji handed a cigarette to Shi Qiang. "I'm not going to let you escort me. So, if you'll be so good as to notify my lawyer."

"Just like you thought, they're building the space fleet on a naval foundation. They believe space warfare will be closest in form and theory to naval warfare."

"Dad, I've joined the space force."

Zhang Beihai gently pushed open the door to his father's hospital room. Half-reclining against a pillow on the bed, his father looked better than he had imagined. The golden rays of the setting sun that shone in through the window gave his face some color and made him look less like a man at death's door. Zhang Beihai set his hat on the coatrack by the door and took a seat beside his father's bed. He didn't ask about his condition, because the old soldier would give him a straight answer, and he didn't want a straight answer.

His father nodded but said nothing. For father and son, the silence conveyed more information than words. Growing up, his father had used silence rather than speech to educate him, and words were merely the punctuation between the silences. It was his silent father who had made him into the man he was today.

"So what should I do?"

His father nodded. "Very good."

I've finally asked it, Dad. The question I spent a sleepless night gathering the resolve to ask. I hesitated just now when I saw you, because I know it's the question that will disappoint you the most. I remember when I finished grad school and joined the fleet as a cadet lieutenant, you told me, "Beihai, you've got a long way to go. I say that because I can still easily understand you, and being understandable to me means that your mind is still too simple, not subtle enough. On the day I can no longer read you or figure you out, but you can easily understand me, that's when you'll finally have grown up." And then I grew up like you said, and you could no longer so easily understand your son. I know you must have felt at least some sorrow at that. But your son is indeed becoming the kind of person you'd hoped for, someone not particularly likeable, but capable of succeeding in the complicated and dangerous realm of the navy. For me to ask this question surely means that the training you've given me for three decades has failed at the crucial juncture. But Dad, tell me anyway. Your son is not as great as you imagine. Tell me, just this once.

"Think some more," his father said.

Thank you, Dad. You've made it very clear, and I understand.

Fine, Dad. You've given me an answer. They've told me quite a lot, those three words, more than could be said in thirty thousand. Believe me, I'm listening to them with my whole heart, but I still need you to be clearer, because this is far too important.

Dad, forgive me. If I disappointed you the last time, then let me go further, go back to being a kid once more.

"Beihai, all I can say is to think long and hard first," his father replied.

Zhang Beihai let go of the sheet and grasped his father's bony hand. "Dad, I'm not going to sea anymore. I'll come and see you all the time."

"And after I've thought?" Zhang Beihai asked, gripping the bedsheet with both hands. His palms and forehead were laced with sweat.

His father smiled but shook his head: "This isn't anything serious. Concentrate on your work."

They spoke for a while longer, first of family matters, and then about the establishment of the space force, with his father contributing lots of ideas of his own, including advice for Zhang Beihai's future work. They imagined the shape and size of space battleships, debated the weaponry of space warfare, and even whether Mahan's theory of sea power applied to space battles… But there was little significance in their conversation, just father and son taking a verbal stroll together. The significance was in the three lines their hearts exchanged:

"And after I've thought?"

"Think some more."

Zhang Beihai said good-bye to his father. As he was leaving the room, he turned back at the door to look at him, shrouded in shadow now that the light of the setting sun had departed. His eyes pierced the shadows and noticed one last scrap of illumination on the wall opposite. Although it was about to fade, this was the time when the setting sun was at its most beautiful. The last rays of sunlight shone, too, on the waves that rolled endlessly on the angry ocean and in shafts of light that pierced the jumbled clouds in the west and cast enormous golden bands on the water's surface like petals fallen from heaven. Beyond the petals, dark clouds loomed over a world black as night as a thunderstorm hung between heaven and earth like the curtain of the gods, and only periodic lightning lit the snowlike spray thrown up by the waves. In one golden band, a destroyer struggled to lift its prow from the trough, and then broke through the wall of the wave with a thunderous crash, the spray greedily absorbing the light like a giant roc stretching enormous glittering wings to the sky.

"Beihai, all I can say is to think long and hard first."

"Bulletproof," the young man said.

"Put it on. It's comfortable and it breathes. Not like the old stuff we used to wear, which was sticky as hell," Shi Qiang said.

Zhang Beihai put on his cap, which bore the insignia of the Chinese Space Force. He said to himself, Dad, we think alike. This is my good fortune. I won't bring you glory, but I'll give you rest.

Who would want to kill me? Luo Ji thought as he changed jackets.

"Mr. Luo, please change into this," said the young man, who knelt down to open a suitcase upon entering the room. Though the man seemed entirely polite, Luo Ji couldn't shake a certain discomfort, like he had swallowed a fly. But when he saw the clothing the man took out, he realized that he wouldn't be wearing a convict's uniform: It looked like an ordinary brown jacket. He took it and inspected the thick material. Shi Qiang and the young man put on similar jackets in different colors.

The three of them left the room and followed the corridor to the elevator. The ceiling was lined with rectangular metal ductwork and they passed several heavy, sealed doorways. Luo Ji noticed a faint slogan on one of the mottled walls. Only part of it was visible, but he knew the whole slogan: "Dig deep tunnels, keep vast stores of grain, don't seek hegemony."

"So we're at… the Western Hills?" Luo Ji asked, but Shi Qiang and the young man did not reply. Luo Ji had heard stories about the secret command center. They entered the old-style elevator and began to ascend immediately, accompanied by a tremendous scraping. The operator was a People's Armed Police soldier armed with a submachine gun. This seemed to be his first time at this job, and he had to fiddle with the controls a bit before the elevator finally stopped at floor -1.

Exiting the elevator, Luo Ji saw that they were in a large hall with a low ceiling, like an underground parking garage. A number of different cars were parked here, some of them with engines on, filling the air with noxious exhaust. People were standing beside the lines of cars or walking among them. With only one light in a distant corner turned on, the place was dim and the people dark shadows. Only when they passed the lamplight did Luo Ji see that they were fully armed soldiers. Some were shouting into radios, trying to be heard over the engine noise. Their voices sounded tense.

"Civil Air Defense?" he asked.

"Not the ordinary kind. Defense against the atom bomb, but it's obsolete now. Back in the day, you had to be someone special to get in here."

Shi Qiang led Luo Ji to one car, opened the door, and had him get in. The car was roomy, but the edges of its abnormally tiny windows revealed the thickness of the car's body. A reinforced vehicle with tinted glass in its small windows, probably as an antibomb measure. The car door was ajar, and Luo Ji could hear Shi Qiang and the young man talking.

Shi Qiang led Luo Ji through the two lines of cars, with the young man close behind. The lamplight and red taillights shining though the gaps in the cars cast an ever-changing pattern of color on Shi Qiang's body and reminded Luo Ji of the dim bar where he had met the woman.

"Captain Shi, they called just now to say they've been over the route. All guard positions have been set up."

"The route is too complicated. We've only been able to do a couple of quick runs through the whole thing. Not enough for comfort. And about the guard positions -- it's like I said, you've got to think like them. If you were on their side, where would you be hiding? Consult with the experts from the People's Armed Police again. Hey, what's the plan for the handoff?"

Shi Qiang raised his voice. "Morons. They can't leave such an important part up in the air."

"Captain Shi, it looks like the brass want us to follow along the entire way."

"They didn't say."

"I can follow along my entire life, but since there's got to be a handoff once we're there, there needs to be a clear demarcation of responsibilities. There's got to be a line. Anything that happens before it is on us, and afterward on them."

"Zheng, I know you've been feeling sorry for yourself since Chang Weisi got promoted. Hell, it's like we don't even exist to his former subordinates. But we should have some self-respect. Who the fuck are they? Have they been under fire, or have they ever fired at anyone? That crew used so many high-tech tricks in the last operation it was like a circus. They even brought out the airborne early warning system. But in the end, who did they use to find the meeting place? Us. That won us some cred. Zheng, it took a lot of convincing to get the lot of you over here, but I wonder if that might not end up causing you harm."

"They didn't say…" The young man sounded uncomfortable.

"Captain Shi, you've really got to think about your illness. Didn't the higher-ups schedule you for hibernation?"

"Captain Shi, don't say that."

"I've got to get lots of things taken care of first. Family, work. And do you think I'm not worried about the lot of you here?"

"It's a troubled world. Do you get that? Morality isn't what it used to be. Everyone foists their bad luck off onto other people, so you've got to be on your guard… I'm going on like this because I'm worried about how long I'm going to last. I'm afraid that all of it's going to land in your lap."

"That's nothing. I've got good luck. You should know. Three of the guns I've been shot at with were duds."

The cars at one end of the hall were beginning to pull out. Shi Qiang got in and closed the door, and when the neighboring car started to move, their car followed. Shi Qiang pulled the curtains closed on either side, and the opaque divider between the back and front seats totally obscured Luo Ji's view of the outside. As they rode, Shi Qiang's radio chirped endlessly, but Luo Ji couldn't make out the comments Shi Qiang was replying to in clipped sentences.

"Don't worry about us. With your condition, you can't put it off. Your teeth were bleeding out again this morning."

When they had ridden a short way, Luo Ji said to Shi Qiang, "Things are more complicated than you said."

"That's right. Everything's complicated now," Shi Qiang said perfunctorily, his attention still focused on the radio. They spoke no more for the rest of the trip.

The ride was smooth and unbroken, and after about an hour they came to a stop.

When Shi Qiang got out of the car, he motioned to Luo Ji to wait inside, and then closed the door. Luo Ji heard a rumbling that seemed to come from above the vehicle. After a few minutes, Shi Qiang opened the door again and had Luo Ji get out, at which point he realized they were at an airport. The rumbling had turned thunderous. He looked up to see two helicopters hovering overhead, oriented in opposite directions like they were monitoring the open area. In front of him was a large aircraft that looked like a passenger plane, except that there was no insignia on any part he could see. An airstair stood in front of the car door, and Shi Qiang and Luo Ji took it up to the aircraft. When Luo Ji glanced back out the door after they entered, the first thing that caught his eye were the fighter jets lined up on a distant apron, which informed him that this wasn't a civilian airport. Closer in, he saw the cars from their convoy and the soldiers that had exited their vehicles in a ring around the plane. The sun was setting, casting a long shadow down the runway ahead of the plane, like a giant exclamation point.

Luo Ji and Shi Qiang entered the cabin. Three men in black suits welcomed them and took them past the forward cabin, which was totally empty but resembled a passenger plane with four rows of seats. In the middle cabin, Luo Ji saw a fairly spacious office, and another suite through whose half-open door he glimpsed a bedroom. The furnishings were unremarkable but neat and orderly, and apart from the green safety belts on the sofa and chairs you wouldn't have known you were on a plane. Luo Ji knew that there were very few charter planes of this kind in the country.

Two of the three men who led them in vanished through a door to the rear cabin, leaving behind the youngest one, who said, "You can sit anywhere you like, but you need to buckle up, not just on takeoff and landing but throughout the entire flight. If you sleep, then buckle the sleep-belt too. Nothing that's not fixed in place can be left out in the open. Stay in your seat or bunk at all times, and if you must move about, please inform the captain first. This is an intercom button. There's one at every seat and every bunk. Hold it down to talk. If there's anything you need, please use it to call us at any time."

After Xiao Zhang left, Luo Ji and Shi Qiang sat on the sofa and fastened their seatbelts. Luo Ji looked about him. Apart from the round windows and the slightly curved walls they were set into, the room seemed so conventional and familiar that it felt a little strange to be wearing seatbelts in an ordinary office. But soon the noise and vibration of the engine reminded him he was aboard a plane taxiing down the runway, and a few minutes later the engine noise changed and the two of them were pressed back into the sofa. Then the ground vibrations disappeared and the office floor took on a slant. As the plane climbed, the sun, which had already dipped below the ground, returned through the window, just as the same sun had sent the day's final rays of sunlight into the hospital room of Zhang Beihai's father just ten minutes before.

Luo Ji looked in confusion at Shi Qiang, who said, "The plane may execute some special maneuvers."

The man nodded. "Correct. Please let me know if you have any problems. Call me Xiao Zhang. I'll bring you dinner when we're in the air."

"What's that got to do with us?" Wu Yue said coldly, his eyes sweeping from Tang to the last bits of sunset in the west.

As on their previous visit, Tang's enormous frame was shrouded in the dim light of dusk. The showers of sparks on the hull didn't seem quite as plentiful, and the lamps illuminating the ship had dimmed substantially. And this time, Wu Yue and Zhang Beihai no longer belonged to the navy.

"I heard the General Armaments Department has decided to terminate the Tang project," Zhang Beihai said.

"You've been in a bad mood since joining the space force."

By the time Luo Ji's plane reached the coast, Wu Yue and Zhang Beihai were once again looking over the unfinished Tang, ten thousand meters below. This was the closest he would ever get to the two soldiers.

"You should know the reason. You can always read my thoughts, sometimes more clearly than I can, and then you remind me what it is I'm really thinking about."

Zhang Beihai turned to Wu Yue. "You're depressed about joining what's inevitably a losing war. You're jealous of that final generation that will be young enough to fight in the space force at the end and be buried in the cosmos together with their fleet. Devoting a lifetime of effort to a hopeless endeavor is hard for you to accept."

Wu Yue dropped his cold mask and met Zhang Beihai's gaze. "Beihai, you used to be a practical person. You opposed building Tang, and on multiple occasions, on the record, voiced doubts about building a blue-water navy, arguing that it was incompatible with our national strength. You believe that our naval forces ought to remain in coastal waters under the support and protection of shore-based firepower, an idea ridiculed as a turtle-shell strategy by the young hotheads, but you've persisted in it… So where do you get your confidence in a space victory from now? Do you really believe that wooden boats can sink an aircraft carrier?"

"No. Technofetishism and technological triumphalism are deeply rooted in your mind, and I learned long ago that I can't change you. I can only try to minimize the harm that sort of thinking can cause. Besides, I don't think it's impossible for humanity to win this war."

"After independence, the newly founded navy used wooden boats to sink Nationalist destroyers. And even earlier, there were times when our army used cavalry to defeat tanks."

"Do you have any advice?"

"You can't seriously think those miracles count as ordinary military theory."

Wu Yue nodded. "Not bad. People have tried it before. In the Second World War, the British did that as part of the effort to sink the Tirpitz, only they used a minisub. In the 1980s, during the Malvinas War, a few Argentine special forces soldiers took Italian limpet mines into Spain and attempted to blow up a British warship docked in the harbor at Gibraltar. You know what happened to them."

"On this battlefield, terrestrial civilization won't need to follow commonplace, ordinary military theory." Zhang Beihai held up a finger. "One exception is sufficient."

Wu Yue shot him a mocking smile. "I'd like to hear how you'll achieve this exception."

"I don't know anything about space warfare, of course, but if you want to compare it to a wooden boat versus a carrier, then I think it's just a matter of having the courage to act and the confidence in a victory. A wooden boat could carry a small squad of divers who'll wait in the carrier's path. When the enemy draws near, they'll dive in and the boat will leave. Then when the carrier comes close, they'll attach a bomb to the bottom of the hull and sink the carrier… Of course this would be exceedingly difficult, but it's not impossible."

"Sometimes you've got a fantastic imagination," Wu Yue said with a smile.

"But what we have is not just a small wooden boat. A one- or two-thousand-ton nuclear bomb can be made small enough for one or two divers to take underwater, and when it's attached to the underside of a carrier, it won't just sink it, it'll blow the whole carrier to smithereens."

"I've got confidence in our victory." Zhang Beihai looked out at Tang, the distant shower of welding sparks reflected in his pupils like two small flames.

Wu Yue too looked out at Tang, and a new vision took hold of him: The ship was no longer a ruined ancient fortress but a prehistoric cliff with a multitude of deep caves carved into it, and the scattered sparks were flickering firelight in those caves.

After takeoff and all through dinner, Luo Ji refrained from asking Shi Qiang anything about where they were headed, or what exactly had happened, reasoning that if Shi Qiang was going to tell him anything, he would already have come out with it. Once, he unbuckled his seat belt and got up to look out the cabin window, even though he knew he would see nothing through the darkness, but Shi Qiang followed him and pulled down the window shade, saying that there was nothing to see out there.

"Sleep? So this is a long flight?"

"Who cares? It's a plane with beds. I say we take advantage of them."

"What are you complaining for? We've still got to make the return trip!" Shi Qiang grinned broadly, as if immensely pleased with himself. Cutting humor seemed to give him pleasure. But then he turned more serious: "I don't know much more about your trip than you do. Besides, it's not yet time for me to tell you anything. Take it easy. There'll be someone at the handoff to explain things to you."

"I've been guessing for hours, but I've only come up with one possible explanation."

"Why don't we chat for a while longer, and then go to sleep. What do you say?" asked Shi Qiang as he drew out a cigarette, then quickly put it back, remembering he was on a plane.

"Let me hear it, and let's see if it's the same as what I'm thinking."

"You're only responsible for taking me to my destination, right?"

"The woman who died was an ordinary person, so that means her social or family connections had to be something special." Luo Ji didn't know anything about her family, just like his previous lovers. He wasn't interested, and forgot whatever they told him.

"Who? Oh, that lover of yours? Put her out of your mind, since you don't care anyway. Or, if you want, why not compare her name and face to some famous figures?"

Luo Ji's mind flipped through comparisons, but nothing matched.

"Do I need to bluff against someone?"

"Luo, my man, can you bluff?" Shi Qiang asked. Luo had noticed a pattern in how he addressed him. When he was joking, he called him "my boy," but when he was a little more serious, it was "my man."

"Of course you do… So how about I teach you how to bluff? Of course, I'm not a master of it either. My work is more along the lines of breaking scams. Here, I'll tell you a few tricks for the interrogation room. You might find it useful later to figure out what's going on. Naturally, these are just the most basic, common ones. It's hard to explain anything more complicated. We'll start with the gentlest one, which happens to be the simplest: The List. That means drawing up a whole list of questions connected to the case, and then asking them one by one and recording the subject's answers, and then starting over again from the top and recording those answers too. Questions can be asked repeatedly if necessary, and then you can compare the transcripts of the answers and find out if the subject is lying about something, since the answers will be different every time. The technique is simple, but don't look down your nose at it. No one who hasn't undergone training in counter-interrogation techniques will be able to pass it, so the most effective way of dealing with The List is simply to remain silent." Shi Qiang fiddled unconsciously with his cigarette as he spoke, but then put it away again.

"The next technique is only half-gentle. You can reach the ashtray -- it's fixed in place, you've just got to pull it up. Right. This technique is called Black and White. It requires the cooperation of lots of people and is a little more complicated. First, the bad cops come out, at least two of them on most occasions, and they're really nasty to you. Some of them verbally and others physically, but they're all mean. There's a strategy to it: not just to make you afraid, but more importantly to make you feel alone, to make you feel like the whole world wants to consume you. Then the good cop comes out, just one, and he's got a kind face, and he stops the bad cops and tells them that you're a human being, that you've got rights, so how can they treat you that way? The bad cops tell him to beat it, that he's affecting their work. The good cop persists, and says, 'You can't do this!' The bad cops say, 'I always knew you didn't have the stones for this work. If you can't handle it, then get lost.' The good cop shields you with his body, and says, 'I'm going to protect his rights, and protect justice under the law!' The bad cops say, 'Tomorrow you're out of here, just you wait!' Then they leave in a huff. So it's just the two of you left, and the good cop wipes off your blood and sweat and tells you not to be afraid, and that you have the right to be silent! Then, as you can imagine, he becomes your one friend in the world, so when he draws you out, you aren't silent anymore… This technique is most effective against intellectuals, but it differs from The List in that it loses its effect when you're aware of it."

Shi Qiang had grown excited while speaking and seemed a little put out at Luo Ji's interruption. It occurred to Luo Ji that he might be serious, or else he had an odd sense of humor. Shi Qiang pressed the red intercom button beside the sofa, and Xiao Zhang told him he could do what he liked. So the two of them lit up.

"Ask them. It's a charter flight, so they ought to allow smoking," Luo Ji said.

He spoke animatedly and seemed about to take off his seat belt and stand up. Luo Ji was seized by dread and despair and felt as if he had fallen into an ice pit. Noticing his discomfort, Shi Qiang stopped.

"Well, then, let's not talk about interrogation, even if it might be useful to you. You can't take it in all at once. Besides, I was going to tell you how to trick people, so just remember this: Real shrewdness means not letting any shrewdness show. It's not like in the movies. The truly astute don't sit in the shadows all day striking a pose. They don't show off that they're using their brains. They look all carefree and innocent. Some of them are tacky and mawkish, others careless and unserious. What's critical is not to let others think you're a person of interest. Let them look down on you or dismiss you and they won't feel you're an obstacle. You're just a broom in the corner. The pinnacle of this is to make them not notice you at all, as if you don't exist until the moment right before they die at your hands."

In the bedroom, Luo Ji took off his bulletproof jacket and wrapped himself in the safety sleeping bag. Shi Qiang helped him tighten the straps holding it to the bed, and then set down a small vial on the bedside cabinet.

"Will I ever have the need or opportunity to become that sort of person?" Luo Ji broke in to ask.

Then they sat in silence watching the clouds of smoke curl upward to the ceiling, where they were sucked away into a crack.

"Like I said, I know no more about this than you do. But I've got a premonition that you need to become such a person. Luo, my man, you've got to!" Shi Qiang grew excited again and clapped him on the shoulder with enough force to make him wince.

"Sleeping pills. Take them if you can't sleep. I asked for alcohol, but they said there isn't any."

Shi Qiang reminded Luo Ji that he should notify the captain before getting out of bed, then turned to leave.

"Screw it. Let's hit the sack," Shi Qiang said as he ground out his cigarette in the ashtray. He shook his head with a smile. "I've been going on like an idiot. When you think back on this, don't laugh at me."

"Whatever it is, I've never seen someone who could stay calm in a situation like this. Forget all that stuff I said before. I just like to kid around about things."

At the door, Shi Qiang half-turned back to look at him. "I'm not any sort of cop. The police aren't involved in this thing. Everyone calls me Da Shi."

"Officer Shi," Luo Ji called after him.

"You're one of the calmest people I've ever met."

"Well then, Da Shi, when we were talking just now, I noticed the first thing you said. Or, I guess, the first thing you said in reply to me. I said, 'the woman,' and you didn't realize for a moment who I was talking about. That means that she's not a major part of this case."

"What do you think I should think about now?"

"The calmness comes from cynicism. There's not much in the world that can make me care."

"You're just looking for something to hold my attention so that you can smoothly complete your mission."

"In my experience, any thinking is liable to go off the rails. You should just go to sleep."

"If I've set your imagination going, I apologize."

Then Luo Ji felt that it wasn't an illusion, that the sound really was coming from some far-off place outside. He unbuckled the sleeping bag and crawled out, then pushed up the shade over the window by the bed. Outside, the moon was shining on a sea of clouds, a vast ocean of silver. Luo Ji realized that above the clouds were other things shining with a silver light, four ramrod-straight lines that caught the eye against the backdrop of the night sky. They were extending at the same speed as the plane, and their trailing ends faded out and blended into the night like four silver swords flying over the clouds. Luo Ji looked back at the tips and noticed that the silver lines were being drawn out by four objects with a metallic glint. Four fighter jets. It wasn't hard to guess that another four were on the other side of the plane.

Shi Qiang left. After he closed the door, the room was dark except for a small red lamp at the head of the bed. The ever-present background rumble of the engine was particularly conspicuous, as if the infinite night sky on the other side of the wall was emitting a deep hum.

"Commander, before we report on our work, I'd first like to share some of my own views. I believe that the military leadership has not paid sufficient attention to political and ideological work among the forces. For example, the political department is the last of the six established departments to present its report at this meeting."

In the dead of night, the space force work meeting was still in progress. Zhang Beihai pushed aside the notebook and documents that lay on the desk in front of him and stood up, scanning the tired faces of the officers before turning toward Chang Weisi.

Chang Weisi nodded. "I concur. The political commissars have not yet reported for duty, so it's fallen to me to oversee political work. Now that we've finally begun work in all areas, it's difficult to give it enough attention. For the bulk of the work, we'll have to rely on you and the others who are in charge of specifics."

Luo Ji pulled down the shade and burrowed back into the sleeping bag. He closed his eyes and willed his mind to relax. He didn't want to sleep, but to wake up from his dream.

"Commander, in my opinion, the present situation is dangerous." This remark drew the attention of several officers, and Zhang Beihai continued. "Please forgive me for speaking pointedly. For one thing, we've been in meetings all day and we're all tired, so no one will listen if I'm not blunt." A few people laughed, but the rest were still mired in their fatigue. "More importantly, I'm truly worried. The battle we are facing has a force disparity unprecedented in the history of human warfare, so I believe that for the indefinite future the greatest danger facing the space force is defeatism. Its threat can't be overstated. The spread of defeatism will not only result in an erosion of morale, but may lead to the total collapse of space-based military power."

Chang Weisi nodded again. "I agree. Defeatism is our greatest enemy at present. The military commission is acutely aware of this. It's why political and ideological work in the services will be critical. Once the basic units of the space force are in place, the work will become more complex."

"The source of this defeatism stems primarily from the worship of technology, and the underestimation or complete dismissal of the role of human initiative and the human spirit in war. It is a development and extension of techno-triumphalism and the 'weapons decide everything' theory that has cropped up in the armed forces in recent years. The trend is particularly pronounced among highly educated officers. Defeatism among the troops takes the following forms:"

Zhang Beihai flipped open his notebook. "The work report follows," he said, and began to read: "Since the establishment of the space force, our primary focus in political and ideological work among the troops has been to conduct a survey of the overall ideological status of officers and soldiers. Since the organization of this new branch is simple at the present time, with few members and few administrative levels, the survey was conducted through informal meetings and personal interaction, and a corresponding forum was set up on the intranet. The results of the survey are worrying. Defeatist thinking is prevalent and spreading swiftly among the troops. The mentality of a sizeable proportion of our comrades consists of terror toward the enemy and a lack of confidence in the future of war.

"One. Treating one's duty in the space force as an ordinary job: despite working with dedication and responsibility, lacking enthusiasm and sense of mission and doubting the ultimate significance of one's work."

"Two. Passive waiting: believing that the outcome of the war depends on scientists and engineers; believing that prior to breakthroughs in basic research and key technologies, the space force is just a pipe dream, and subsequent confusion about the importance of its present work; being satisfied simply with completing tasks related to establishing this military branch; lacking innovation."

"Three. Harboring unrealistic fantasies: requesting to use hibernation technology to leap four centuries into the future and take part in the Doomsday Battle directly. A number of younger comrades have already expressed this wish, and one has even submitted a formal application. On the surface, this is a positive state of mind, a desire to throw oneself onto the front lines, but it is essentially just another form of defeatism. Lacking confidence in victory and doubting the significance of our present work, a soldier's dignity becomes the only pillar sustaining work and life."

"Four. The opposite of the above: doubts about the dignity of the soldier, the belief that the military's traditional moral code is no longer suitable for the battlefield, and that fighting to the end has no meaning; the belief that a soldier's dignity only exists when there is someone to see it, and when a battle ends in defeat and no humans are left in the universe, then this dignity loses its significance. Although only a minority hold this notion, the abrogation of the very worth of the space force is exceedingly harmful."

The tiredness of the room was swept away and the attendees pricked up their ears. Everyone looked nervously at Zhang Beihai and then at Wu Yue, who gazed placidly back, the picture of calmness.

Here Zhang Beihai looked out at the assembly and saw that although his speech had attracted some interest, it still hadn't managed to shake the fatigue from the meeting hall. He was confident that what he had to say next would change the situation.

"I'll give you a specific example of a comrade who exhibits a typical form of defeatism. I am referring to Colonel Wu Yue." Zhang Beihai held out his hand in the direction of Wu Yue's seat at the conference table.

"Wu Yue and I have worked together in the navy for quite some time and we know each other very well. He has a strong technology complex, and as a captain he is a technical type, or, if you want, an engineer. This in itself isn't a bad thing, but unfortunately, his military thinking is over-reliant on technology, and while he doesn't come out and say it, he subconsciously believes that technological advancement is the primary and perhaps sole determinant of combat effectiveness. He completely neglects the human role in battle, particularly in his lack of understanding of the unique advantages formed in our army by difficult historical conditions. When he learned of the Trisolar Crisis, he lost all confidence in the future, and once he joined the space force, this despair only became more pronounced. Comrade Wu Yue's defeatist sentiment is so heavy and ingrained that we have no hope of pulling him out of it. We must adopt strong measures as soon as possible to arrest the spread of defeatism in the troops, and therefore I believe that Comrade Wu Yue is no longer suitable for work in the space force."

The atmosphere turned tense. Several officers looked at the notebook in front of Zhang Beihai, wondering who else its contents might concern.

All eyes were on Wu Yue, who was now looking at the space force emblem on his hat lying on the table. He remained calm as before.

Wu Yue raised a hand requesting permission to speak, and at a nod from Chang Weisi, he said, "What Comrade Zhang Beihai has said about my mental state is accurate, and I accept his conclusion: I am no longer fit to serve in the Space Force. I will abide by whatever the organization arranges."

One senior colonel in the air force got up and said, "Comrade Zhang Beihai, this is an ordinary work meeting. You ought to go through the proper organizational channels instead of bringing up issues like this. Do you think it's appropriate to talk about this openly?"

Throughout the course of his speech, Zhang Beihai had not even glanced in Wu Yue's direction. He continued: "Commander, Comrade Wu Yue, and the rest of you, I ask for your understanding. I say this only out of concern for the present ideological state of the troops. Of course, I also hope to engage Wu Yue in face-to-face, frank, and open discussion."

Zhang Beihai said, "I know that my remarks violate organizational principles, and I am prepared to accept all responsibility. However, I do believe that I must, by whatever means, bring the seriousness of our current situation to your attention."

Chang Weisi raised a hand to prevent any other replies. "First, the sense of responsibility and urgency that Comrade Zhang Beihai has shown in his work must be commended. The existence of defeatism amongst the troops is a fact, and we must face it rationally. So long as a technology gap exists between our two sides, defeatism will not vanish. It is not a problem that can be solved through simple methods but will require long and painstaking work, as well as more interaction and discussion. However, I also agree with the suggestion proposed by the colonel: matters concerning personal ideology should be resolved primarily through communication and exchange, and if a report is necessary, it should be made through the proper channels."

His words were immediately echoed by many of the other officers.

Imagining the boundless night sky above the cloud layer, Luo Ji struggled to collect his thoughts. Involuntarily, his mind drifted to thoughts of the woman: her voice and laughing face appeared in the dimness, and a sorrow he had never felt before weighed upon his heart. This was followed closely by self-reproach, a disdain he had felt on countless prior occasions, but never so intensely. Why was she on his mind now? Up to this point, his only reaction to her death apart from fear and astonishment had been self-absolution, and only now that he knew her role in the situation was negligible did he spare her any of his precious sorrow. What sort of a person was he?

The officers let out a sigh of relief. At this meeting, at least, Zhang Beihai would not be mentioning their names.

In his bed, the minute oscillations of the plane gave Luo Ji the feeling of being in a cradle. He had slept in a cradle as a baby, he remembered, and one day in his parents' basement he had seen, covered in dust under an old kid's bed, the rockers of a cradle. Now when he closed his eyes and imagined the couple rocking his cradle, he asked himself, From the day you left that cradle, have you ever cared about anyone else besides those two people? Have you ever made even a small, permanent bit of room in your heart for anyone else?

But what could be done? That's just the sort of person he was.

Yes, he had made room, once. Five years before, the golden light of love had inhabited his heart. But that had been an unreal experience.

Everything had started with Bai Rong, an author of young-adult novels. She wrote them in her spare time but had gained enough of a following to bring her more in royalties than she made in salary. Out of all the women he had met, he had spent the most time with Bai Rong, and had even reached the point of considering marrying her. Their relationship was the ordinary sort, not particularly intense or unforgettable, but they felt it suited them to be relaxed and happy together. Despite a certain dread of marriage, they felt giving it a try was the responsible thing to do.

At Bai Rong's behest, he had read all of her work, and while he wouldn't say he appreciated it, it wasn't as torturous as the other works in the genre he had flipped through. She had an elegant style, and a mature lucidity that her peers lacked. But this style was not complemented by the novels' content. Reading them was like looking at dewdrops on the undergrowth: pure and transparent, but distinguished from each other only by the way the light reflected and refracted through them and how they rolled about on the leaves, fusing together where they met and separating when they fell, until they evaporated entirely within the space of a few minutes after sunrise. Every time he read one of her books, beneath the graceful style he was left with one question: What do these people live on if they spend twenty-four hours a day in love?

"A whole novel?"

"That love you write about -- do you think it exists in the real world?" he asked one day.

On her birthday last year, she had asked him for a specific present: "Can you write a novel for me?"

"I do."

Sometimes he would give her suggestions for the novels she was working on, or even help her revise them.

"It's like you're more talented than I am," she said once. "You're not revising plot, but character, and that's the hardest thing to do. Every time, you're adding the touches that make the characters most vivid. Your skill at creating literary figures is first rate."

"You've got to be kidding. My background's in astronomy."

"With you as the protagonist?"

She squeezed his neck. "Either way, I'm telling you that it exists," she said cryptically into his ear.

"Something you've seen, or something you've experienced yourself?"

"Well, at least fifty thousand characters long."

"Wang Xiaobo studied mathematics, remember."

"No. I saw a really interesting exhibition of paintings by male artists of the most beautiful women they could imagine. The protagonist of your novel should be the same. You can leave reality behind and create an angel based entirely on your dream of feminine perfection."

So he began constructing a character. He first imagined her face, and then designed her clothes, and then thought of her environment and the people around her, and finally placed her in that environment and had her move about and speak, letting her live. But this soon turned tedious, and he told Bai Rong about the difficulties he had encountered: "She's like a puppet on a string. Every word and action arises from the design but lacks the spark of life."

To this day he had no idea of the motivation for her request. Maybe she didn't know herself. Thinking back now, it seemed her mood at the time had been a mixture of craftiness and ambivalence.

So he followed her advice. He threw out everything he wanted to write and instead imagined the character's entire life and every detail of it. He imagined her nursing at her mother's breast, her tiny mouth sucking energetically and burbling with satisfaction; chasing a red balloon tumbling down the street but making it just one step before falling to the ground, wailing as she watched the balloon drift away without realizing that she had just taken her first step; walking in the rain and impulsively folding up her umbrella to feel the raindrops; her first day at elementary school, sitting alone in a strange classroom, unable to see her parents through the windows or door, and nearly starting to cry, only to realize that her best friend from kindergarten was at a nearby desk, and crying in joy instead; her first night at college, lying on her dorm bunk and watching the shadows of trees thrown by streetlamps onto the ceiling… He imagined every one of her favorite foods, the color and style of every item of clothing in her dresser, the decorations on her mobile phone, the books she read, the music on her media player, the Web sites she visited, the movies she liked; but never her makeup, because she didn't need makeup… Like a creator outside of time, he wove the different stages of her life together and gradually came to discover the endless pleasure of creation.

She said, "Your approach is wrong. You're writing an essay rather than creating a literary figure. What a literary character does in ten minutes might be a reflection of ten years' experience. You can't be limited to the plot of a novel -- you've got to imagine her entire life, and what actually gets put into words is just the tip of the iceberg."

He was taken aback: Had he told her to smile? The smile had already imprinted itself on his memory like a stain on ice, never to be wiped away.

The real turning point came the following night. The snow and wind picked up, temperatures plummeted, and he watched from the warmth of his dorm the bluster that blanketed the other sounds of the city, the buffeting of the snowflakes on the widow like the patter of sand. A huge carpet of snow covered everything outdoors. The city seemed to no longer exist, leaving the faculty dormitory standing on an infinite snowy plain. He went back to bed, but before he drifted off to sleep he had a sudden thought: If she were outside in this awful weather, she would be terribly cold. Then he reminded himself: It doesn't matter, she won't be outside unless you put her there. But this time his imagination failed, and she continued walking outside in the blizzard like a blade of grass that could blow away at any moment. She still wore that white coat and that red scarf, which was all he could make out, vaguely, through the swirling snow, like a tiny flame fighting against the storm.

One day at the library, he imagined her standing by a row of shelves, reading. He put her in his favorite outfit, so her petite form would stand out more vividly in his mind. Suddenly, she looked up from the book and over at him, and flashed him a smile.

As his mind was sputtering to life, she came quietly, her small frame wrapped in a layer of cold from the outdoors, but with a breath of spring amid the chilliness. The snowflakes in her hair quickly melted into gleaming droplets as she unwrapped her scarf and put her hands to her mouth to blow on them. He folded her hands in his to warm the icy softness, and she looked at him with excitement and asked the question he was about to ask her: "Are you okay?"

It was impossible for him to sleep. He sat up in his bed, then threw on some clothes and sat on the sofa. He wondered if he should have a smoke but, remembering that she detested the smell, instead made a cup of coffee and drank it slowly. He had to wait for her. The blizzard and the cold night weighed on his heart. This was the first time he had felt such heartache for someone, or such yearning.

He could only nod dumbly. Then, as he helped her out of her coat, he said, "Come and get warm." He rubbed her soft shoulders and guided her to the fireplace.

"It's really warm. Wonderful…" She sat on the rug in front of the fireplace, laughing happily as she watched the firelight.

Damn it! What's wrong with me? he said to himself, in the middle of the empty room. Wouldn't it be enough to just come up with any fifty thousand words, print them on high-grade bond, Photoshop a gorgeous cover and flap, have it professionally bound, have it gift-wrapped, and then give it to Bai Rong on her birthday? Why had he fallen so deep into this trap? He was amazed to find that he had tears in his eyes. And then another realization: A fireplace? When the hell did I get a fireplace? Why would I think of a fireplace? But then he understood: What he wanted wasn't a fireplace, but the glow of the fire, for it is in firelight that a woman is most beautiful. He recalled how she had looked just then against the glow of the fire…

No! Don't think about her. It will be a disaster! Go to sleep!

Contrary to his expectations, he did not dream of her the entire night. He slept well, imagining the single bed as a small boat floating on a rosy sea. When he awoke the next morning, he felt reborn, like he was a candle that had been covered in dust for years before being lit by that tiny flame in last night's snowstorm. He walked excitedly down the road to the classroom building, and though the air was hazy after the snowfall, he felt like he could see a thousand miles. There was no snow on the poplar trees lining the road, their bare branches poking up toward the cold sky, but to him they were more alive than in springtime.

He took the podium, and just as he had hoped, there she was again, seated in the back of the amphitheater, the only one in an empty row, at a distance from the other students. Her pure white coat and red scarf were on the seat beside her, and she was wearing a beige turtleneck sweater. She did not have her head down, flipping pages in her textbook like the other students. Instead, she watched him, and flashed him another snowy-sunrise of a smile.

He grew nervous. His pulse increased, and he had to leave through a side door to stand on the balcony and calm himself in the cold air. The only other times he had been in a similar state were during his two doctoral thesis defenses. In his lecture he did his utmost to show off, and his extensive citations and impassioned language won a rare burst of applause from the auditorium. She didn't join in, but merely smiled at him and nodded.

After class, he walked side by side with her along the tree-lined avenue that offered no shade, listening to the crunch of her blue boots in the snow. The two lines of winter poplars listened in silence to their heartfelt conversation.

"You lecture quite well, but I didn't really understand."

"You're not in this major, are you?"

"No, I'm not."

"Do you often sit in on classes in other majors?"

"Only the past few days. I'll go into a lecture hall at random and sit for a while. I just graduated and will be leaving soon. I suddenly realized that it's great here, and I'm afraid of the outside…"

Over the next three or four days, he spent the majority of his time with her, although to others, it looked as if he was spending most of his time alone, strolling on his own. It was quite easy to explain to Bai Rong: He was thinking about her birthday gift. And indeed, this was no lie.

"Oh, look," she exclaimed, pointing at the wine bottle with childlike excitement.

"Look at it from here, where the candles shine through. The wine is lovely."

"What?"

On New Year's Eve, he bought a bottle of red wine, which he had never drunk before, returned to his dorm room, shut off the light, and lit some candles on the table next to the sofa. When all three candles were burning, she sat down wordlessly next to him.

He lay drowsily in bed and watched the candles still burning on the table. She had vanished from the candlelight, but he was not worried. So long as he was willing, she could reappear at any time.

"Why not the eyes of dawn?"

"Why?"

"Yes, that's right."

"When twilight fades, you can see the stars. When dawn fades, all that's left is…"

Shining through the wine, the candlelight was a deep, crystalline red, the stuff of dreams.

They spoke about everything, sharing a common language in even the most trivial of things, until the bottle that had contained the eyes of twilight had been emptied into his stomach.

"Like a dead sun," he said.

"Don't think like that," she said, with a sincerity that melted his heart. "I think it's like… the eyes of twilight."

"All that's left is the harsh light of reality."

"I like twilight better."

Then there was a knock on the door. He knew the knock came from reality and had nothing to do with her, so he ignored it.

The door opened and Bai Rong entered. When she turned on the light it was like switching on the gray of reality. She glanced at the table with the candles, then sat down at the head of his bed and sighed lightly. "It's still okay."

"You haven't gotten to the point of leaving a glass for her, too."

"What is?" He used a hand to block the harsh light.

He covered his eyes but said nothing. She pulled away his hands, and then, looking straight at him, asked, "She's alive, isn't she?"

He nodded and sat up. "Rong, I used to think that a character in a novel was controlled by her creator, that she would be whatever the author wanted her to be, and do whatever the author wanted her to do, like God does for us."

"Wrong!" she said, standing up and beginning to pace the room. "Now you realize you were wrong. This is the difference between an ordinary scribe and a literary writer. The highest level of literary creation is when the characters in a novel possess life in the mind of the writer. The writer is unable to control them, and might not even be able to predict the next action they will take. We can only follow them in wonder to observe and record the minute details of their lives like a voyeur. That's how a classic is made."

"So literature, it turns out, is a perverted endeavor."

"Just once," she said simply, and dropped the subject. She grabbed his neck, and said, "Forget it. I don't want that birthday present anymore. Come back to a normal life, okay?"

"So you mean that I've become a writer of classic literature?"

"It was like that for Shakespeare and Balzac and Tolstoy, at least. The classic images they created were born from their mental wombs. But today's practitioners of literature have lost that creativity. Their minds give birth only to shattered fragments and freaks, whose brief lives are nothing but cryptic spasms devoid of reason. Then they sweep up these fragments into a bag they peddle under the label 'postmodern' or 'deconstructionist' or 'symbolism' or 'irrational.'"

"Hardly. Your mind is only gestating an image, and it's the easiest one of all. The minds of those classic authors gave birth to hundreds and thousands of figures. They formed the picture of an era, and that's something that only a superhuman can accomplish. But what you've done isn't easy. I didn't think you'd be able to do it."

"Have you ever done it?"

"And if all this continues -- what then?"

She studied him for a few seconds, then let go of him and shook her head with a smile. "I knew it was too late." Picking up her bag from the bed, she left.

Then he heard people outside counting down, four, three, two, one. From the classroom building, which until then had been resounding with music, came peals of laughter. On the athletic field people lit fireworks. Looking at his watch, he saw that the final second of that year had just passed.

"It's a holiday tomorrow. Where should we go?" he asked. He lay on the bed, but knew his character had already appeared beside the nonexistent fireplace.

"You're not taking her?" she asked in all innocence, pointing toward the still-open door.

"Then we'll set out and see where we end up?"

"No. Just the two of us. Where would you like to go?"

She drank in the dancing flames in the fireplace and said, "It's not important where we go. I think it's a wonderful feeling just being on a journey."

"Excellent."

The next morning, he drove his Accord off campus and headed west, a direction he chose purely because it avoided the headaches of having to traverse the entire city. He felt for the first time the wonderful freedom of traveling with no destination in mind. As the buildings outside slowly thinned out and fields began to appear, he cracked his window to let the cold winter air in. He sensed her long hair catching the wind, and strands of it blew over to tickle his right temple.

"Look, mountains." She pointed off in the distance.

"A classic northern scene," he said.

"Visibility is good today. Those are the Taihang Mountains. They run parallel to this road, and then bend around to form a block in the west, where the road goes into them. I'd say that right now we're --"

"The green is buried in the fields and is waiting for springtime. The winter wheat will sprout while it's still very cold, then this will be a sea of green. Imagine, all this expanse…"

"This is the first time I've ever felt that land without the slightest bit of green could be beautiful."

"No, no. Don't say where we are! Once we know where we are, then the world becomes as narrow as a map. When we don't know, the world feels unlimited."

"Okay. Then let's do our best to get lost." He turned onto an emptier road, and before they had gone very far, turned a second time. On both sides of them were now endless fields where the snow had not yet melted completely, the snowy patches and snow-free ground roughly equal. No green anywhere, although the sunlight was brilliant.

"It doesn't need green. It's beautiful right now. Look, doesn't the land look like a big milk cow asleep under the sun?"

"What?" He looked in surprise, first at her and then through the windows at the patchy snow on either side of the car. "Oh, there really is a resemblance! So, what's your favorite season?"

"Autumn."

"Why not spring?"

"Spring… has so many sensations squashed together. It gets tiring. Autumn is better."

He stopped the car and went out with her to the edge of the field to look at the magpies, which foraged on the ground until they got quite close, at which point they flew off to some trees in the distance. Then they went down a riverbed that was practically dried up, with only a thin stream of water flowing down the center. But it was a northern river all the same, and so they picked up small chilly smooth stones from the riverbed and pitched them in, watching the cloudy yellow water gush out of the holes they broke in the thin ice. They passed a small town and spent a while at the market there. She knelt down by a goldfish vendor, the fish in their glass bowls like liquid flames under the sun, and wouldn't leave. He bought her two and put them, water and all, in plastic bags on the backseat of the car. They entered a hamlet, but found nothing that felt like the countryside. The houses and compounds were brand new, cars were parked outside of many of the gates, the cement roads were wide, and people were dressed no differently than in the cities -- a few girls were even stylish. Even the dogs were the same long-haired, short-legged parasites found in the cities. More interesting was the large stage at the entrance to the village -- they marveled at how such a small village could have such an immense stage. It was empty, so with some effort he climbed up and -- looking down at his lone audience member -- sang a verse from "Tonkaya Ryabina" about the slender hawthorn tree. At noon, they ate in another town, where the food was more or less the same as in the city, only the portions were about twice as large. After lunch, they sat drowsily in the warmth of the sun on a bench outside the town hall, and then drove onward with no direction in mind.

Before they knew it, the road had entered the mountains, which were plain and ordinary in shape and devoid of vegetation apart from withered grasses and vitex vines in the crevices of the gray rocks. Over the course of hundreds of millions of years, the mountains, weary of standing, had lain down, sunken into flatness amid time and sunlight, and turned anyone walking among them just as indolent. "The mountains here are like old villagers basking in the sun," she said, but they hadn't seen any of those old men in the villages they passed through; none more at ease than the mountains. More than once their car had been stopped by a flock of sheep crossing the road. Beside the road there at last appeared the kind of villages they had imagined, with cave houses and persimmon and walnut trees and stone-tiled low buildings, roofs piled high with stripped corn cob. Even the dogs were larger and more fierce.

They started and stopped as they went through the mountains, and before they knew it the entire afternoon was spent. The sun was setting, and the road had entered the shadows long ago. He drove along a dirt road pitted with potholes up onto a high ridge where the sun still shone, and they decided that this would be the terminus of their journey: They would watch the sun set and then head back. Her long hair blew in the light evening breeze, seemingly striving to seize hold of the last golden rays.

They had only just turned onto the highway when the car broke down. The rear axle had broken, meaning they had to call for help. A while later he was able to learn the name of the place from the driver of a small passing truck. He was comforted by the fact that his phone had a signal. When he gave his location to the person at the repair station, he was informed that the repair truck would take at least four or five hours to get there.

"No. Northern China is still in the interior. It just looks desolate, but it's actually one of the most densely populated regions. Look at the road. A car drives past every two minutes, on average."

The mountain air chilled quickly after sunset. After their surroundings began to grow dusky, he collected some corn stalks from a nearby terraced field and started a fire.

"Nice and warm," she said, gazing into the fire, as happy as she had been that first night in front of the fireplace. Again he was transfixed by her appearance in the firelight, drowned in emotions he had never felt before, as if he was a bonfire himself and the only purpose of his existence was to give her warmth.

"Are there wolves?" she asked, looking around at the growing darkness.

He paused and softly said, "Yes," and when he looked beside him, there she was, feeding straw into the fire and smiling at the flames that lit up the area where they sat.

Later -- he didn't know how much later -- his phone rang. Bai Rong.

"Now do you believe that the love I write about in my novels really exists?"

"No, I'm alone," he said as he looked up. He wasn't lying. He truly was by himself, next to a bonfire along a road in the Taihang Mountains. The firelight revealed stones around him, and overhead was only a starry sky.

"I know you're alone. But are you with her?"

When he said those four words, he immediately realized how great the distance between the two of them really was. They were silent for a long time, during which radio waves spun their gossamer strands through the mountains to sustain this final contact.

They said nothing more, but sat silently before the fire, occasionally feeding it another bunch of straw.

"Yes, I believe it."

"Are you with her?" she asked gently.

"I was hoping you'd say there were wolves," she said with a sweet smile, then looked off at the cloud of sparks flying off like stars into the night.

"Okay. There are wolves, but I'm right here."

He could hear her laugh softly. "Where else would he be?"

"Well. Take it easy. Good-bye." Bai Rong hung up, snapping the thread that stretched across the night sky and leaving the people at the two ends a little saddened, but nothing more than that.

"Where is he now?"

He laughed too. "Yes, where else?"

"You have one of your own, don't you?" he asked.

"Yes. For a long time."

"It's too cold outdoors. Let's sleep in the car," he said to her.

Rather than returning to school, he drove straight to the psychologist.

It was midnight by the time the repair truck arrived from Shijiazhuang. The repairmen were surprised to find him sitting beside a fire. "Sir, you've gotta be freezing. The engine's not busted. Wouldn't it be warmer to sit in the car with the heat turned on?"

After the car was repaired, Luo Ji dashed home through the night, out of the mountains and back onto the plain, reaching Shijiazhuang by dawn. It was already ten in the morning by the time he got back to Beijing.

She gently shook her head. "I want to be with you here. You like me by the fire, right?"

"Are you under the impression that the object of everyone else's love actually exists?"

"You may need a bit of adjustment, but it's nothing serious," the doctor said, after listening to his lengthy narrative.

"Nothing serious?" Luo Ji opened his bloodshot eyes wide. "I'm madly in love with a fictional person from a novel of my own creation. I've been with her, I've traveled with her, and I've even broken up with my real-life girlfriend over her. Is that nothing serious to you?"

The doctor smiled tolerantly.

"Don't you get it? I've given my most profound love to an illusion!"

"Sure. For the majority of people, what they love exists only in the imagination. The object of their love is not the man or woman of reality, but what he or she is like in their imagination. The person in reality is just a template used for the creation of this dream lover. Eventually, they find out the differences between their dream lover and the template. If they can get used to those differences, then they can be together. If not, they split up. It's as simple as that. You differ from the majority in one respect: You didn't need a template."

"Is that even a question?"

"Only in the way your girlfriend pointed out: You've got natural literary talent. If you want to call that a sickness, go right ahead."

"So this isn't a sickness?"

"But isn't imagining to this degree a little excessive?"

"There's nothing excessive about imagination. Especially where love is concerned."

"So what should I do? How can I forget about her?"

"It's impossible. You can't forget her, so don't make the effort. That will only lead to side effects, and maybe even mental disorders. Let nature take its course. Once more, for emphasis: Don't try to forget about her. It won't work. But as time passes, her influence on your life will decrease. And you're actually quite lucky. Whether or not she really exists, you're fortunate to be in love."

This was Luo Ji's most deeply felt romantic experience, a love that only comes around once in a man's life. After that, he took to an insouciant lifestyle, going where life took him, just like the day they had set out in the Accord. And like the psychologist had said, her influence in his life decreased. When he was with a real woman, she didn't appear, and eventually she rarely appeared even when he was alone. But he knew that the most secluded part of his soul belonged to her, and she would be there for life. He even saw clearly the world she inhabited, a still snowscape where the sky was forever graced with silver stars and a crescent moon, the snow falling steadily. In the silence you could practically hear the snowflakes coming to rest on the ground like smooth white sugar. In her exquisite cabin in the snow, the Eve that Luo Ji had formed out of one of his mind's ribs sat before an ancient fireplace quietly watching the dancing flames.

Now that he was alone on this ominous plane flight, he wanted to have her companionship, to guess with her what lay at the journey's end. But she didn't appear. He could still see her in a far-off region of his soul, sitting silently before the fireplace, never feeling lonely, because she knew her world was within him.

Luo Ji reached out a hand to the medicine bottle by the bed with the thought of using a sleeping pill to force himself to sleep, but the instant his fingers touched the bottle it flew off the cabinet and up to the ceiling, as did the clothing that he had flung onto the chair. They remained on the ceiling for a couple seconds. He felt himself leave the bed, but since the sleeping bag was attached, he didn't fly away, and when the bottle landed, he fell heavily back into the bed. For a few seconds his body felt like it was being pressed down by a heavy object, and he couldn't move. The sudden weightlessness and hypergravitation made him dizzy, a condition that continued for less than ten seconds before everything returned to normal.

He heard the soft swish of footsteps on the carpet outside the door. A number of people were in motion, and then the door opened and Shi Qiang poked his head in. "Luo Ji, are you okay?"

"Not even close. In the chaos just now, seven of the escort planes jettisoned their secondary fuel tanks."

When Luo Ji said he was fine, he closed the door without coming in. Outside, a dialogue continued in low voices.

"It looks like a misunderstanding during the escort change. Nothing to worry about."

"How are we supposed to sleep in a state like this?"

"What did the higher-ups say on the call earlier?" That was Shi Qiang's voice.

"The plan doesn't mention this interruption, does it?"

"They said that the escort formation would require a midair refueling in half an hour, and that we shouldn't be alarmed."

"Leave someone on watch. What good are you if you're tired out? They may try to keep us on high alert all the time, but I maintain my own opinion of security work: When you've thought of everything you should, and done everything you need to, then let whatever happens happen. There's nothing more anyone can do, you know? Don't psych yourselves out."

"Why all the jumpiness? Forget it. You should go back to sleep. Don't get too worked up."

At the mention of "escort change," Luo Ji reached over, opened the cover to the window, and looked outside. There was still a sea of clouds in the night sky. The moon was inclining toward the horizon, and he could see the trails of the fighter formation, now with an additional six lines. He inspected the tiny aircraft heading up those trails and noticed that they were a different model than the four he'd seen earlier.

"There's still time to sleep? How many hours have we been flying?"

"We've still got a few more hours. Go to sleep." He closed the door and left.

When Shi Qiang woke Luo Ji up, he had been sleeping dream-free for more than six hours and was feeling pretty good.

Luo Ji turned over in the bed and picked up the pill bottle. Shi had been thorough: It contained just one pill. He took it, looked at the small red light beneath the window, imagining it was the light of a fireplace, and drifted off to sleep.

The bedroom door opened and Shi Qiang poked his torso in to say, "Luo, my man, just a small issue. Don't worry. Nothing else from now on. Go back to sleep."

Shi Qiang had Luo Ji wait in the office and went out himself. He brought back a man with a European face who was tall and immaculately dressed, and who seemed like a high-level official.

"We're nearly there. Get up and get ready."

"Is this Dr. Luo?" the official ventured as he looked at him. Noticing Shi Qiang's difficulty with English, he repeated his question in Chinese.

Luo Ji went to the washroom to wash up, and when he returned to the office for a simple breakfast, he became aware of the plane's descent. Ten minutes later, after a flight of fifteen hours, the charter plane was resting on the ground.

When they shook hands, Luo Ji sensed that the man was incredibly experienced. So much was hidden behind his decorum, but the gleam in his eyes betrayed the presence of secrets. Luo Ji was fascinated by the man's gaze, like a devil and an angel, like an atom bomb and an identical-size precious stone… In the complex information conveyed by those eyes, Luo Ji could make out just one thing: This moment was immensely important to the man's whole life.

"He's Luo Ji," answered Shi Qiang, and then briefly introduced the man to Luo Ji. "This is Mr. Kent. He's here to welcome you."

"I am honored," Kent said with a bow.

"We've cut it that close?"

"When does the session start?"

Kent turned to Shi Qiang. "You've done very well. Your segment was the most cleanly done. The others had a bit of trouble on their way over."

"In one hour."

"Absolutely correct. In the present circumstances, minimizing the stages makes for maximum security. And now we'll follow the same principle and head straight for the conference hall."

"We listened to our superiors. The principle we observed was to minimize the total number of stages," Shi Qiang said.

"That's pretty good. Shall we hand off, then?"

"The start of the session is set by the arrival of the final candidate."

Shi Qiang was silent for a second or two as he looked at Luo Ji. Then he nodded. "As we've been getting acquainted with the situation over the past few days, our people have run into quite a few obstacles."

"I guarantee that nothing of the sort will happen from now on. You have the full cooperation of the local police and military. Well then," Kent said, looking at the two men. "We can set off."

"No. You are still responsible for the security of this one. Like I said before, you are the best."

It was still nighttime, Luo Ji realized as he stepped through the door of the aircraft. Thinking back to their takeoff time, he had a pretty good idea of which general area of the globe they were in. The fog was thick, and the lights shone a dim yellow as events from their takeoff seemed to be replaying before their eyes: the patrol helicopters in the air, only dimly visible through the fog as shadows with glowing lights; the plane quickly surrounded by a ring of military vehicles and outward-facing soldiers; and several officers with radios clustered in a group discussing something and occasionally throwing a glance in the direction of the airstair. A buzzing from somewhere overhead set Luo Ji's scalp on fire, and even the imperturbable Mr. Kent covered his years. Looking up, they could see an indistinct light flying low overhead: the escort formation, still circling above them, its exhaust tracing a large circle in the air that was hazily visible through the fog, as if a cosmic giant had tagged the Earth with chalk at this very spot.

When Kent said they had arrived, Luo Ji could make out a shape through the curtains, backlit by the even light from the building to its rear that cast its silhouette onto the curtain. He could never mistake such a distinctive shape: a giant revolver with a knot tied in its barrel. Luo Ji knew exactly where he was: the United Nations building in New York.

The four of them boarded an obviously bulletproofed car waiting at the end of the airstair and sped off. The window curtains were drawn, but judging from the light that came in, Luo Ji knew that they were smack in the middle of a convoy. Silence reigned on the ride, a road to the ultimate unknown. Although it took only forty minutes, this part of the journey felt terribly long.

He was surrounded as soon as he got out by people who seemed like security personnel: they were tall, and many of them wore dark glasses despite the night. He couldn't make out his surroundings, but was pushed forward by the cluster, squeezed with such force that his feet practically left the ground, the scraping of footsteps the only sound that broke the silence. Just as the bizarre tension had pushed him almost to the breaking point, the men in front of him gave way. Light flashed before his eyes, and then the rest of them halted in their steps, leaving him, Shi Qiang, and Kent to continue forward. They were walking in a large quiet hall, empty but for a few black-clothed guards who spoke quietly into a handheld radio each time the three of them passed one of them. They crossed a hanging balcony in the direction of a stained-glass panel whose riot of colors and intricate lines described the distorted shapes of humans and animals. Turning left, they entered a small room. After the door closed, Kent and Shi Qiang exchanged a smile, and a look of relief came over them.

Luo Ji glanced around him and discovered that the room was fairly peculiar. The wall at one end was entirely covered by an abstract painting made up of yellow, white, blue, and black geometric shapes, which overlapped randomly and seemed suspended atop an ocean of pure blue. But the strangest thing was the large stone in the shape of a rectangular prism sitting right in the center of the room and illuminated by several weak lamps. A closer look revealed that the stone bore rust lines. The abstract painting and the stone were the only furnishings, and apart from them the room was empty.

"Dr. Luo, do you need to change clothes?" Kent asked in English.

"No," said Shi Qiang with another shake of his head.

"The hall is only open to national representatives, not the media. It should be fairly secure."

"I said no. If I've understood correctly, I'm in charge of his safety now."

"But this is a formal occasion," Kent struggled out in Chinese.

"What's he saying?" Shi Qiang asked, and when Luo Ji translated, he shook his head firmly. "No, just wear this."

Kent said, "Dr. Luo, all I can tell you is this: You are about to take part in an important meeting at which there will be an important announcement. And at this meeting, you do not need to do anything."

"Just say anything," Shi Qiang said with a laugh.

Kent relented. "Very well. It's not a big issue."

"You really should give him a general explanation," Shi Qiang said, jerking his head in Luo Ji's direction.

"I'm not authorized to explain anything."

Then they were silent. The room was completely quiet. Luo Ji could clearly hear the beating of his heart.

Kent turned toward Luo Ji, his dignified face suddenly tense, and subconsciously adjusted his tie. Luo Ji then realized that he had been avoiding looking directly at him. He also noticed that Shi Qiang seemed like a different person. The ever-present smirk was gone, replaced by a solemn expression, and he looked at Kent in a rare posture of attention. Then Luo Ji knew that everything Shi Qiang had said to him before was correct: He really had no idea of the purpose of the visit.

Shi Qiang nodded, then waved a hand at Luo Ji with a smile: "I'll wait for you outside." It warmed his heart. Right then Shi Qiang was his sole spiritual support.

This, he realized, was the Meditation Room. The centerpiece was a six-ton rock made of the purest raw iron, symbolizing timelessness and strength. It had been a gift from Sweden. But right now, far from wanting to meditate, he tried as hard as possible to think of nothing, convinced of what Shi had said: Any thinking is liable to go off the rails. He counted the shapes in the painting.

The hall was full and the people seated in it buzzed with conversation. He didn't attract attention at first when Kent led him up along the aisle, but heads began to turn once they got close to the front. Depositing him in an aisle seat in the fifth row, Kent went on ahead and sat down in the second row.

The door opened, and the head that poked in signaled to Kent, who then turned to Luo Ji and Shi Qiang: "Time to go in. No one knows Dr. Luo, so there won't be any disruption if he and I go in together."

Then he followed Kent out of the Meditation Room and into the United Nations General Assembly Hall.

Turning his attention away from the distant wall, he heard two people talking next to him. He couldn't make out their nationality, but they were speaking idiomatic English.

Luo Ji looked around him at the place he had seen countless times on television. Based on these glimpses, he had been wholly unable to appreciate the meaning the building's architects wanted to express. Straight ahead of him, the tall yellow wall inset with the UN insignia that served as a backdrop for the podium was tilted forward at an acute angle, like a cliff face that was liable to collapse at any time. The dome, built to resemble a starry sky, was structurally separate from the yellow wall and did nothing to stabilize it, acting instead as an immense weight bearing down from above, adding to the wall's instability and lending the whole environment the overpowering feeling of being ready to tumble down at any moment. Under the present circumstances, however, it seemed as if the eleven architects who had designed the building in the mid-twentieth century had wonderfully predicted humanity's present predicament.

"Do you really believe in the decisive role of the individual in history?"

"Well, I think it's a question that can't be proven or disproven, unless we restart time, kill off a few great men, and see how history proceeds. Of course, you can't rule out the possibility that the course of history was determined by the rivers carved out and dammed up by those great figures."

"But there's another possibility: Those great figures of yours might be no more than swimmers in history's river. They may have left their names in history because of the world records they set and the praise and renown they won, but they had no effect on the river's flow… Ah, with things the way they are, what's the point of thinking about all that?"

"The problem is that throughout the entire decision-making process, no one thought about issues on this level. The countries are all tangled up in stuff like candidate equality and resource rights."

The hall grew quiet as Secretary General Say walked to the podium. The administration of this Filipino politician had straddled the pre- and postcrisis eras. If the vote had come just a little bit later, she never would have been elected, because a refined Asian lady didn't project the sense of power the world was looking for in the face of the Trisolar Crisis. Now her small frame seemed tiny and helpless against the sloping cliff wall. As she was ascending the podium, Kent stopped her and whispered something in her ear. She looked down, nodded, and then continued walking.

On the rostrum, she surveyed the assembly, and then said, "The nineteenth meeting of the Planetary Defense Council has arrived at the final item on its agenda: the disclosure of the Wallfacer candidates and the announcement of the start of the Wallfacer Project.

"Before we move on to that agenda item, I believe it is necessary to take a brief look back at the Wallfacer Project.

"At the start of the Trisolar Crisis, the permanent members of the former Security Council held emergency negotiations and conceived the Wallfacer Project.

"The countries took note of the following facts: After the first two sophons appeared, burgeoning evidence demonstrated that additional sophons were constantly reaching the Solar System and coming to Earth, a process that continues even now. Therefore, as far as the enemy is concerned, the Earth is a completely transparent world. To them, everything is an open book, one they can read at any time. Humanity has no secrets at all.

Luo Ji was certain that the secretary general had looked in the direction of his seat.

"The international community has recently launched a mainstream defense program which, in both overall strategic thinking and the tiniest of technological and military details, is completely exposed to the enemy's eyes. Every meeting room, every file cabinet, the hard drives and memory of every computer -- there is nowhere the sophons do not see. Every plan, program, and deployment, no matter the size, will be visible to the enemy command four light-years away the moment they take shape on the Earth. Human communication in any form will result in leaks."

"We should be aware of this one fact: Strategic and tactical tricks do not advance in proportion to technological progress. Precise intelligence has proven that the Trisolarans communicate through direct, open thoughts, making them highly deficient at tricks, camouflage, and deception, and giving human civilization a huge advantage over the enemy. This is one advantage we can't afford to lose. The founders of the Wallfacer Project believe that a number of other strategic plans should proceed in parallel to the mainstream defense program, and that these plans should be secret, not transparent to the enemy. A number of proposals were put forward, but ultimately only the Wallfacer Project is feasible."

"One correction to what I just said: Humanity still has secrets, in the inner world that each of us possesses. The sophons can understand human language, and they can read printed texts and information on every kind of computer storage media at ultrahigh speeds, but they can't read human thoughts. So long as we do not communicate with the outside world, every individual keeps things secret forever from the sophons. This is the basis of the Wallfacer Project."

"At its heart, the project consists of selecting a group of people to formulate and direct strategic plans. They will develop their plans entirely in their own minds, with no communication of any kind with the outside world. The true strategy of these plans, the necessary steps for completion, and the ultimate aims will remain hidden inside the brain. We shall call them the Wallfacers because that ancient Eastern name for meditators mirrors the unique characteristics of their work. As they direct the execution of their strategic plans, the thoughts and behaviors these Wallfacers present to the outside world will be entirely false, a carefully crafted mélange of disguise, misdirection, and deception. The subject of this misdirection and deception will be the entire world, both enemy and ally, until a huge, bewildering maze of illusions is erected to make the enemy lose its judgment, and to delay as long as possible the moment it works out our true strategic intent."

"To guarantee the continuity of the Wallfacer Project, the Wallfacers will take advantage of hibernation technology to bridge the centuries to the Doomsday Battle. When and under what circumstances they will awaken, and for how long, will be decided by the Wallfacers themselves. Over the next four centuries, the UN Wallfacer Act will exist under international law on a level equal to the UN Charter and will act in concert with the national laws to guarantee the execution of the Wallfacers' strategic plans."

"These Wallfacers will be granted extensive powers that will enable them to mobilize and exploit a portion of Earth's existing military resources. As they carry out their strategic plans, the Wallfacers need not make any explanation for their actions and commands, regardless of how incomprehensible their behavior may be. Monitoring and control of the Wallfacer activity will be undertaken by the UN Planetary Defense Council, the sole institution granted the authority to veto Wallfacer commands under the UN Wallfacer Act."

Luo Ji, like the entire assembly, had been listening to the secretary general's speech with rapt attention, and he held his breath for the announcement of the list of names. He wanted to find out what sort of person would be tasked with this unimaginable mission. His own fate was completely forgotten for the time being, because nothing that could happen to him would amount to more than a speck when measured against this historic moment.

"Now, on behalf of the United Nations, I will announce the final four Wallfacer candidates as chosen by the UN Planetary Defense Council."

"The Wallfacers are undertaking the most difficult mission in human history. They will truly be on their own, their souls closed off to the world, to the entire universe. Their only communication partner and sole spiritual support will be themselves. Shouldering this great responsibility, they will pass through the long years alone, so let me speak for all humanity and offer them our deepest respect."

"The First Wallfacer: Frederick Tyler."

When the secretary general uttered his name, Tyler stood up from his seat in the first row and walked with deliberate steps up to the rostrum, where he looked down at the assembly without expression. There was no applause as everyone sat in silence and stared at the First Wallfacer. Tyler's tall, thin body and square-framed glasses were well known across the world. The recently retired US secretary of defense, he had exerted a deep influence on his country's national strategy. His ideological focus was expressed in a book titled The Truth of Technology, in which he argued that small countries are the ultimate beneficiaries of technology, and that the unstinting efforts toward technological development on the part of larger countries was in fact paving the way for world dominance by the smaller ones. This was because technological progress rendered the population and resource advantages of larger countries unimportant, but provided small countries with leverage to move the world. One consequence of nuclear technology was that it allowed a country of just a few million people to pose a substantial threat to one with a hundred million, something that at one time had been practically impossible. One of his key points was that the advantages of a large country were only truly advantageous in low-technology eras and would ultimately be weakened by the swift pace of technological progress, which would meanwhile enhance the strategic weight of small countries. Some might experience a sudden rise, gaining world dominance like Spain and Portugal once did. There was no question that Tyler's thinking provided a theoretic foundation for the United States' global war on terror. But he was not just a strategist. He was also a man of action, and on multiple occasions had won popular acclaim for demonstrating courage and foresight in the face of major threats. Hence, as far as both the depth of his thinking and his leadership were concerned, Tyler made a worthy Wallfacer.

When this brown-skinned, stocky South American with a stubborn look in his eyes ascended the rostrum, Luo Ji was surprised: It was highly unusual for this man to even appear at the UN. But on second thought, it stood to reason. He even wondered why it hadn't already occurred to him. Rey Diaz was the current president of Venezuela, which, under his leadership, had aptly demonstrated Tyler's theory about the rise of small countries. He carried forward the Bolivarian Revolution instigated by Hugo Chavez: In a contemporary world ruled by capitalism and market economics, he promoted in Venezuela what Chavez called Socialism of the Twenty-First Century, founded on lessons drawn from the experience of the international socialist movements of the previous century. Surprisingly, he had achieved considerable success, boosting the country's power across the board and -- for a time -- turning Venezuela into a city on a hill, a symbol of equality, justice, and prosperity for the world. The other countries in South America followed suit, and socialism briefly caught fire on the continent.

"The Second Wallfacer: Manuel Rey Diaz."

Rey Diaz inherited not only Chavez's socialist ideology but his strong anti-Americanism, which reminded the United States that its Latin American backyard could become a second Soviet Union if left unchecked. A rare opportunity presented by an accident and a misunderstanding gave the United States the excuse to launch a full-scale invasion of Venezuela that sought to overthrow the Rey Diaz government along the Iraq model. But with this war, the post-Cold War streak of victories by major western powers over small Third World countries had finally broken. When the US Army entered Venezuela, it discovered that the uniformed military was nowhere to be found. The entire army had been divided by squad into guerilla teams concealed among the people, and their sole combat objective was killing the enemy's vital forces. Rey Diaz's basic approach to warfare was built atop a single, clear idea: Modern high-tech weapons might be useful against point targets, but, for area targets, their performance is no better than conventional weapons and their cost and limited quantity make them essentially nonfactors. He was a genius at low-cost, high-tech exploits. At the turn of the century, an Australian engineer had built a cruise missile for five thousand dollars with the aim of boosting vigilance against terrorists, but Rey Diaz's thousands of guerilla teams were armed with a total of two hundred thousand of them, mass produced for just three thousand dollars apiece. Although the missiles were made out of parts that were cheap and widely available on the market, they were fully equipped with a radar altimeter and GPS and could hit targets within a five-kilometer radius at an accuracy of within five meters. Their hit rate may have been less than 10 percent during the war, but they caused enormous destruction to the enemy. Other mass-produced high-tech gadgets, like proximity-fuse sniper rifle bullets, had a similarly brilliant track record during the war. During its short time in Venezuela, the US Army suffered casualties that approached Vietnam War levels, and it eventually had to withdraw. The defeat of the strong at the hands of the weak made Rey Diaz a hero for the twenty-first century.

"The Third Wallfacer: Bill Hines."

A debonair Englishman ascended the rostrum, a picture of refinement next to Tyler's coldness and Rey Diaz's stubbornness. He gave the assembly a graceful salute. He, too, was well known to the world, although he lacked the aura of the other two men. Hines's life was split into two entirely distinct stages. As a scientist, he was the only person in history to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in two sciences simultaneously for the same discovery. During research conducted with the neuroscientist Keiko Yamasuki, he discovered that brain activity for thoughts and memories operated on the quantum level rather than on the molecular level as previously believed. This discovery pushed brain mechanisms downward to the microstate of matter, rendering all prior research nothing more than superficial attempts that merely skimmed the surface of neuroscience. This discovery also demonstrated that the animal brain's capacity to process information was several orders of magnitude higher than previously imagined, which lent credence to long-held speculation that the brain had a holographic structure. Hines was nominated for Nobel Prizes in both Physics and Physiology or Medicine for the discovery. Although his work was too radical for him to win either award, Keiko Yamasuki -- who by this time was his wife -- won the prize in Physiology or Medicine that year for her application of the theory to the treatment of amnesia and mental illness.

Seated in the very last row of the hall, Keiko Yamasuki, the world authority in neuroscience, gazed lovingly down at her husband on the rostrum.

The assembly remained silent as all waited for the announcement of the final Wallfacer. The first three, Tyler, Rey Diaz, and Hines, represented balance and compromise among the political powers of the United States, Europe, and the Third World, so there was considerable interest in the final selection. As he watched Say turn back to the paper in the folder, world-famous names flashed through Luo Ji's mind. The final Wallfacer would be one of them. He looked ahead four rows and surveyed the backs of the first-row occupants. That's where the first three Wallfacers had been before they ascended the rostrum, but from behind he couldn't make out whether any of the people he had in mind were seated there. Still, the Fourth Wallfacer would definitely be there.

In the second stage of his life, he was a politician and served as president of the EU for two years. Hines was recognized as a prudent and experienced politician, but his term in office was not marked by many challenges that tested his political skills. The nature of the EU's work at the time, which was largely transactional coordination, meant that his qualifications to face a major crisis stacked up rather poorly compared to the other two men. Still, the choice of Hines evidently took into account both his scientific and political credentials, a perfect combination that was quite rare indeed.

Say slowly raised her right hand, and he watched as it pointed to a spot not in the first row.

"It's my Hubble!" shouted Albert Ringier, clapping his palms together. The tears brimming in his eyes reflected the distant blazing ball of fire that rumbled for a few seconds before passing on. He and the cheering crowd of astronomers and physicists behind him ought to have been watching the launch from a VIP platform closer in, but a damn NASA official said they lacked proper qualifications for access, because the object being sent heavenward did not belong to them. Then the official had turned back to the group of uniformed, ramrod-straight generals and, groveling like a dog, had led them past the sentry post to the viewing platform. Ringier and his colleagues were forced to remain at this far-off spot where, in the previous century, a countdown clock had been built across a lake from the launch site. It was open to the public, but on this late night, there were no other observers apart from scientists.

She was pointing at him.

"The Fourth Wallfacer: Luo Ji."

Viewed from this distance, the blastoff looked like a sped-up sunrise. The floodlights did not follow the rocket as it lifted off, leaving its massive body indistinct except for the spurting flames. From its hiding place in the dark of night, the world burst forth into a magnificent light show, and golden waves whipped up on the inky black surface of the lake as if the flames had ignited the water itself. They watched the rocket ascend. When it passed through the clouds, it turned half the sky the kind of red only found in dreams before it disappeared into the Florida sky, the brief dawn once again swallowed up by the night.

The Hubble II Space Telescope was a second-generation model, its diameter enlarged to 21 meters from its predecessor's 4.27 meters, which enhanced its observational capability by a factor of fifty. It used a compound lens technology consisting of lens components manufactured on the ground and assembled in orbit. To put the whole lens into space required eleven launches, and this was the final one. The assembly of Hubble II in the vicinity of the International Space Station was nearing completion.

"You pack of thieves! You've stolen another thing of beauty," Ringier said to the tall man beside him, the only one in the group unaffected by the sight before them. George Fitzroy had seen too many of the launches, and spent the entire process leaning against the countdown clock smoking a cigarette. He had become the military's representative after Hubble II's requisition, but since he wore civilian clothes most of the time, Ringier didn't know his rank and never called him sir. Calling a thief by his name worked just fine.

In two months, it would be able to turn its gaze to the depths of the universe.

"Doctor, in wartime the military has the right to requisition all civilian equipment. Besides, you people didn't grind a single lens component or design a single screw of the Hubble II. You're just there to enjoy its success, so it's not your place to complain." Fitzroy yawned, as if it was tiring work dealing with this pack of nerds.

"But without us, it wouldn't have any reason to exist! Civilian equipment? It can see the edge of the universe, but you shortsighted types only want to use it to look at the nearest star!"

"Great," Ringier said. Though his face was indistinct in the darkness, Fitzroy could sense the schadenfreude in Ringier's expression, which made Fitzroy as uncomfortable as the acrid odor that now wafted over from the launch platform and filled the air.

Fitzroy said with a sigh, "It's worse than that. The public thinks that it will be able to see the Trisolaran Fleet."

Ringier groaned and nodded, then shook his head with a sigh. "But what do you want Hubble II to see? You've got to be aware that it won't be able to see the Trisolaran planet."

"Like I've said before, this is wartime. A war to defend all humanity. Even if you've forgotten that you're an American, you at least remember you're human, right?"

"Doctor, you ought to know the consequences."

"And you find this acceptable?"

"If the public has placed its hope in Hubble II, then they probably won't believe the enemy really exists until they have seen the Trisolaran Fleet with their own eyes."

"You've explained it to the public, right?"

"Of course we've explained it! We've held four press conferences, and I've repeatedly explained that although Hubble II is orders of magnitude more powerful than the largest telescopes currently available, there's no way it can detect the Trisolaran Fleet. It's too small! Detecting a planet in another star system from our Solar System is like detecting a mosquito on a lamp on the East Coast from the West Coast, but the Trisolaran Fleet is only as big as the bacteria on one of that mosquito's legs. How much clearer can I be?"

"But what else can we do? The public will believe whatever it wants. I've been in this job for a while now, and I haven't seen any major space project that they haven't misinterpreted."

"That's pretty clear."

"Is this a private negotiation of terms?"

"I said long ago that the military has lost all credibility as far as space projects are concerned."

"But they're willing to believe you. Don't they call you a second Carl Sagan? You've made a mint off those popular cosmology books of yours. Give us a hand. That's what the military wants, and now I'm formally passing on their request."

"There aren't any terms! It's your duty as an American. As a citizen of Earth."

"You're doing quite well at twelve point five percent right now, and no one can say if those allotments can be guaranteed in the future."

"Assign me a bit more observational time. I don't need much. Bump me up to twenty percent, okay?"

Fitzroy waved a hand in the direction of the launch pad, where the dissipating smoke left by the rocket smeared a dirty patch across the night sky. Illuminated by the launch pad lights, it looked like a milk stain on a pair of jeans. The odor had grown more unpleasant. The rocket's first stage was fueled by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen and shouldn't have had that odor, so something nearby had probably been burnt by the stream of flames diverted by the launch pad. Fitzroy said, "I'm telling you, all of this is definitely going to get worse."

As for what went on during the rest of the session, Luo Ji had absolutely no idea. All he knew was that after standing there for a while, he was led off to a seat in the middle of the first row alongside the other three Wallfacers. In a haze, he had missed the historic moment of the announcement of the launch of the Wallfacer Project.

Luo Ji felt the weight of the slanted cliff face pressing down on him, and for a moment he was paralyzed. The hall was totally silent, until a voice behind him said softly, "Dr. Luo, if you please." He stood up stiffly and walked with mechanical steps to the rostrum. On the short journey, it was like he had returned to a child's sense of helplessness and wanted someone to hold his hand and guide him forward. But no one extended a hand. He ascended the platform and stood next to Hines, then turned to face the assembly and the hundreds of pairs of eyes focused on him, eyes that represented six billion people from more than two hundred countries on Earth.

Some time later, when the session seemed to have ended and people, including the three Wallfacers sitting to Luo Ji's left, had begun to disperse, a man, perhaps Kent, whispered something into his ear before leaving. Then the hall was empty except for the secretary general, still standing on the rostrum, her petite figure in far-off opposition to his against the sloping cliff.

"Why me?" he asked.

"I'm just an ordinary man."

"No one solicited my opinion in advance. I was totally in the dark about this."

"You may."

"In the face of this crisis, we are all ordinary people. But we all have our own responsibilities."

"That's right."

"You need to find your own answer to that," she said.

Say laughed again. "Doesn't your name mean 'logic' in Chinese?"

"Dr. Luo, I imagine you have some questions." Say's gentle feminine voice echoed in the empty hall like a spirit descending from the heavens.

"Has there been some mistake?" Luo Ji said. His voice, sounding similarly ethereal, didn't feel like his own.

From the rostrum, Say gave a laugh that clearly meant, Do you really think that's possible?

"I refuse," he said firmly, without even thinking over what Say had just said.

"Then you should be able to work out that it would have been impossible to solicit the opinions of the people undertaking this mission before it was handed to them."

The swiftness of this reply, right on the heels of his refusal, left him at a loss for a moment. After a few seconds of silence, he said, "I reject the position of Wallfacer, I reject all the powers granted it, and I will not undertake any responsibility you force upon me."

The simple, immediate reply to his statement, light as a dragonfly touching on the water, shut down his brain's ability to think and made his mind a total blank.

He continued onward, past the Foucault Pendulum at the entrance that showed the rotation of the Earth, and ran into Shi Qiang, Kent, and a group of black-suited security personnel who looked inquiringly at him. In their eyes he saw a new respect and awe. Even Shi Qiang and Kent, who had always behaved naturally toward him, made no attempt to mask their expressions. Luo Ji passed through their midst, saying nothing. He walked through the bare lobby, occupied as on his arrival only by black-clothed guards. As before, whenever he passed one, they spoke softly into a radio. When he came to the exit, Shi Qiang and Kent stopped him.

"You may."

"You may, Dr. Luo. You are free to do anything."

"So am I free to leave?" was all he could ask.

Luo Ji turned and walked out past the rows of empty seats. The ease with which he was able to discard the Wallfacer identity and its responsibilities did not give him the slightest shred of comfort or release. Filling his mind now was an absurd sense of unreality, as if all of this was part of some postmodern play devoid of all logic.

He looked back at the exit and saw Say watching him from the rostrum. She seemed small and helpless against the cliff, but when she saw him looking back, she nodded and smiled at him.

"No, I don't. Get out of my way," Luo Ji said, keeping his eyes straight ahead.

"It may be dangerous outside. Do you need security?" Shi Qiang asked.

"Very well. We can only do as you tell us," Shi Qiang said as he moved aside. Kent did the same. Luo Ji went out the door.

And so Luo Ji the Wallfacer walked as if sleepwalking through absurd fantastic reality. In his trance, he had lost the capacity for rational thought and was unaware of where he came from, much less where he was going. Unwittingly, he walked onto the lawn and came to a statue. When his gaze passed over it, he noticed that it was of a man hammering a sword: Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares. It had been a gift to the UN from the former Soviet Union, but to his mind the powerful composition formed by the hammer, the bulky man, and the sword being bent beneath him imbued the work with hints of violence.

The cool air hit him in the face. It was still nighttime, but the outside was clearly lit by the bright lamps. The delegates to the special session had driven off, and the few people left in the plaza were tourists or locals. The historic meeting had not yet made the news, so no one recognized him, and his presence did not attract any attention.

And then the man with the hammer was smacking Luo Ji savagely in the chest with a fierce blow that sent him tumbling to the ground and knocked him out before he even hit the grass. But the shock passed quickly, and soon partial consciousness returned amid pain and dizziness. He had to shut his eyes against the blinding flashlights that were all around him. Then the rings of light receded and he could make out a circle of faces over him. In the black cloud of haze and agony he recognized Shi Qiang the moment he heard his voice:

"Do you need security protection? We can only do as you tell us!"

Luo Ji nodded weakly. Then everything happened in a flash. He felt himself lifted onto what seemed like a stretcher, and then the stretcher was hoisted up. He was surrounded by a tight clutch of people, as if he was in a narrow pit with walls formed by human bodies. The only thing visible out of the mouth of the pit was the black night sky, and it was only from the motion of the legs of the people surrounding him that he could tell he was being carried. Soon the pit vanished, as did the sky above him, replaced by the lit ceiling panels of an ambulance. He tasted blood in his mouth and then emptied his stomach in a bout of nausea. Someone beside him caught his vomit -- blood and what he had eaten on the plane -- in a plastic bag with a practiced hand. After he vomited, someone strapped an oxygen mask to his face. When he could breathe easier he felt a little better, although his chest still hurt. He felt his clothes getting cut off at the chest, and imagined in a panic that fresh blood was spurting from a wound, but that didn't seem to be right, since no bandaging seemed to be taking place. He was covered in a blanket. Not long after that, the vehicle stopped. He was carried out, and the night sky and the lit ceilings of hospital corridors passed over him, then the ceiling of an emergency room, and then, moving slowly overhead, the glowing red slit of the CT scanner. Faces of doctors and nurses occasionally popped into view and caused him pain with their inspections and manipulation of his chest. Finally, when he could see the ceiling of the ward overhead, everything settled down.

"One broken rib and minor internal bleeding. It's not serious. You're not badly injured, but you need rest due to the bleeding," the bespectacled doctor looking down at him said.

This time Luo Ji didn't refuse sleeping pills, but took them with a nurse's help and quickly fell asleep. Two scenes alternated in his dreams: the rostrum of the UN assembly hall looming above him, and the man from Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares swinging a hammer into him over and over. Later, he came to the quiet patch of snow deep in his heart and entered the simple, exquisite cabin. The Eve of his own creation stood up from the fireplace, her beautiful eyes brimming with tears… Then he woke up and felt tears in his own eyes and a spot of wetness on the pillow. They had dimmed the lights for him, and since she didn't appear while he was awake, he fell back to sleep in the hope of returning to the cabin. But this time he slept without dreaming.

When he woke next, he knew that he had been asleep for a long time. He felt refreshed, and although there was still intermittent pain in his chest, he could believe now that his injuries weren't serious. When he tried to sit up, the blond nurse didn't stop him, but simply adjusted his pillow for him to lean on.

"I'd like to see him."

"Does the ETO want to kill us?"

"And the other three?"

"Probably. The assailant has been detained. It's a good thing we set up a snake-eye behind you."

Shi Qiang knew immediately who he was referring to. "They're fine. They weren't as careless as you, walking out alone."

Shi Qiang waved a hand. "This happened because we fell down on the job. We didn't take timely and effective protection measures. We have to do what you say. It's over now, though."

"How are you feeling? I've been shot three times while wearing a bulletproof vest. This shouldn't be anything serious," he said.

"Da Shi, you saved my life," Luo Ji said weakly.

"A what?"

After a while, Shi Qiang came in and sat down by his bed.

"A precise radar system that can quickly determine the shooter's position from the path of the bullet. The assailant's identity has been confirmed. He's a professional guerilla in the ETO militia. We never imagined he would dare to attack in a downtown area like this. His actions were practically suicidal."

"Who? The assailant?"

"Sure. But that's not within the scope of my authority. I'm only in charge of security protection. I'll put in a request." Having said this, Shi Qiang turned and left. He seemed more careful and cautious now, different from the lackadaisical image he used to project. Luo wasn't used to it.

"They're on their way over, so you'll have to wait for a while. Why don't you have something to eat? It's been a day since you ate on the plane. I'll set it up." Then he went out again.

Luo Ji nodded.

Luo Ji wanted to tell him that he'd like to change venues. He even started to get up, but then the thought struck him that a sickly appearance better suited his purpose, so he lay back down again. "I'll see him here."

The assailant was brought in right after Luo Ji had finished eating. He had a handsome European face, but his most prominent feature was his slight smile, a smile that seemed so plastered on it never went away. He was not in cuffs, but when he entered, two people who looked like professional escorts sat down on chairs, and two others stood at the doorway. They were wearing badges that identified them as PDC officers.

Shi Qiang quickly returned and said, "You may, either here or somewhere else. The doctor says walking isn't an issue."

"I'm already free of it. I submitted my refusal to the secretary general, rejecting the Wallfacer position and all of its rights and responsibilities, and she agreed on behalf of the UN. Of course, you didn't know this when you were trying to kill me. The ETO wasted an assassin."

"Sorry I didn't kill you, sir. I thought you wouldn't be wearing a vest to a meeting like this. Never imagined you would be so scrupulous with protecting your life. Otherwise I'd have used armor-piercing bullets, or simply aimed for your head. Then I would have completed my mission, and you would be freed from yours, this unnatural mission no normal person can shoulder."

"You're sorry for trying to kill me?" Luo Ji raised his head off the pillow to look at his attacker.

He tried to look as close to death's door as possible, but the assailant saw through him. "Doctor, surely it's not as serious as all that?" He smiled as he said this, a different smile appearing over his permanent one like an ephemeral oil slick floating on water. "I'm very sorry."

The smile on the assailant's face grew brighter, like a monitor whose brightness had been turned up. "You're a funny man."

"What do you mean? I'm telling you the honest truth. If you don't believe me --"

"I believe you, but you're still a funny man," the assailant said, the bright smile still on his face. It was a smile that Luo Ji noted in passing but that would soon be imprinted on his consciousness as if by liquid metal, marking him for life.

He shook his head and, with a sigh, lay back down on the bed. He did not speak.

The assailant said, "Doctor, I don't think we have much time. I presume you did not call me here purely to tell this infantile joke."

"I still don't understand what you mean."

The two cast an inquiring glance at Luo Ji, who waved a hand at them, and then the assailant was led out.

"If that's the case, then your intelligence does not qualify you to be a Wallfacer, Dr. Luo Ji. You're not as logical as your name suggests. My life really has been wasted, it appears." The assailant looked at the two people standing on alert behind him and said, "Gentlemen, I think we can leave."

Luo Ji sat up in bed and thought over the assailant's words. He had the odd feeling that something wasn't right, but he didn't know what it was. He got out of bed and took a couple of steps: no impediments apart from the dull pain in his chest. When he went to the door and looked out, the guards armed with rifles sitting beside it stood up immediately, and one of them spoke into the radio on his shoulder.

Luo Ji saw a bright and clean hallway that was completely empty except for two more armed guards at the very end. He shut the door, went over to the window, and drew back the curtain. Looking down from this height he saw that guards armed to the teeth were posted all over the hospital entrance, and two green military vehicles were parked out front. Apart from the occasional white-clothed hospital staffer hurrying in or out, he saw no one else. Looking more carefully, he noticed that on the roof of the building opposite were two people surveying the surroundings through binoculars next to a sniper rifle, and he was instinctively certain that similar snipers were on the roof of his own building.

"And if I asked you to dismiss all of the security, what would happen?"

"Call him in!"

"We would do as you asked. But I advise you not to do so. It's dangerous at the moment."

Kent came in shortly after Shi Qiang left. His manner had returned to the gracious demeanor of a UN official.

The guards weren't police. They looked like military. He called for Shi Qiang.

"Then… where's Kent?"

"What department are you with? What are you in charge of?"

"The hospital is still under heavy security, correct?" he asked.

Shi Qiang's face remained expressionless, like a rubber mask. "These are the orders we were given."

"Outside."

"Yes."

"But I'm no longer a Wallfacer. I'm just an ordinary citizen, so even if my life is in danger, the duty ought to fall to the ordinary police. Why should I still enjoy this degree of protection from planetary defense security? And to have them dismissed or recalled if I so desire? Who gave me that power?"

"I belong to the Planetary Defense Security Department, and I'm in charge of your safety."

"To the entire world."

"If there's nothing else, then I'll be going. Rest well. Call for me at any time," Kent said, and then started to leave. Just as he stepped through the door, Luo Ji called for him to stop.

"And my refusing to be a Wallfacer?"

"The Planetary Defense Council is the specific agency in charge of the direction and execution of the Wallfacer Project. The supreme leader is the PDC's rotating chair. The UN secretary general exercises no direct leadership over the PDC."

"I'm in charge of your day-to-day liaisons."

"It's in there too, of course."

"I want to see the secretary general."

"Then what are you still doing here?"

"What are you doing now?"

"Dr. Luo, I wanted to wait to see you until you had recovered."

Luo Ji looked at him blankly. Kent seemed to be wearing the same rubber mask as Shi. He was unreadable.

"It was quite simple. 'After the conclusion of the UN special session, Luo Ji declared his refusal of the Wallfacer position and mission.'"

"But I'm not a Wallfacer anymore!" Luo Ji shouted. Then he asked, "Has the media announced the Wallfacer Project?"

"I'm your day-to-day liaison with the Planetary Defense Council."

"What did it say?"

"Dr. Luo, I'd wanted to visit you in the hospital yesterday, but you see…" She gestured to the pile of papers on the desk, whose only personal touch was a finely crafted bamboo pencil holder.

All along the way to the secretary general's office on the thirty-fourth floor of the Secretariat Building, Luo Ji remained under security so tight he was practically shut up in a movable safe. The office was smaller than he had imagined, and simply furnished, with a fair bit of space taken up by a UN flag standing behind the desk. Say came around the desk to welcome him.

Luo Ji thought this over. "I'd still like to see the secretary general. I ought to have that power."

"Very well. Wait one moment." Kent left the room, but soon returned and said, "The secretary general is waiting for you in her office. Shall we be off, then?"

Say nodded but said nothing.

"Ms. Say, I have come to reiterate the statement I made to you at the close of the meeting," he said.

"I want to go home. If I am in danger, please notify the New York Police Department and have them be responsible for my safety. I am just an ordinary citizen. I don't need PDC protection."

It took just an instant for Luo Ji to comprehend the true nature of his status as Wallfacer. Like Say had said, before the mission was handed down, the ones who would undertake it could not have been consulted. And once the Wallfacer mission and identity were granted, they could not be refused or abandoned. This impossibility was not due to any individual's coercion, but because cold logic, as determined by the project's very nature, meant that once someone became a Wallfacer, an invisible and impenetrable screen was immediately thrown up between them and ordinary people that made their every action significant. And that was what the smiles directed at Wallfacers meant:

Say nodded again. "That certainly can be done, but I advise you to accept your current protection, because it is more specialized and reliable than the NYPD."

"Please answer me honestly. Am I still a Wallfacer?"

Say returned to her desk. Standing beside the UN flag, she smiled slightly at Luo Ji. "What do you think?" Then she motioned for him to take a seat on the sofa.

My god!

The slight smile on Say's face was familiar. He had seen the same smile on the face of the young assailant, and in the future he would see it in the eyes and on the face of everyone he met. The smile would come to be called "the Wallfacer smile," and it would be as famous as the smile of the Mona Lisa or the grin of the Cheshire cat. Say's smile calmed him down at last, the first time he had been truly calm since before she had stood on the rostrum and announced to the world that he was a Wallfacer. He sat slowly down on the sofa, and by the time he got situated, he understood everything.

His heart surged with a towering fury such as he had never before experienced. He wanted to shout hysterically, to inquire after Say's mother and the UN's mother, to inquire after the mothers of all of the delegates at the special session and on the PDC, to inquire after the mothers of the entire human race, and finally to inquire after the nonexistent mothers of the Trisolarans. He wanted to jump up and down and smash things, to sweep aside the documents, globe, and bamboo pencil holder on Say's desk, and then tear the blue flag to shreds… But in the end he understood where he was and who he was facing, controlled himself, and stood up, only to fall heavily back upon the sofa again.

How are we supposed to know whether or not you have already started work?

He now understood that the Wallfacers had a mission far weirder than any in history, its logic cold and twisted, yet unyielding as the chains that bound Prometheus. It was an unliftable curse impossible for the Wallfacers to break under their own strength. No matter how he struggled, the totality of everything would be greeted with the Wallfacer smile and imbued with the significance of the Wallfacer Project:

How are we supposed to know whether or not you are working?

"But there's got to be a reason why I was chosen!"

"Why was I chosen?" Luo Ji began, hands covering his face. "Next to the three of them, I have no qualifications. I have no talent and no experience. I've never seen war, much less led a country. I'm not a successful scientist. I'm just a university professor who muddles through by throwing together crappy papers. I'm someone who lives for today. I don't want kids of my own, and I could care less about the continuation of human civilization… Why was I picked?" By the end of this speech, he had jumped up from the sofa.

Say's smile vanished. "To tell you the truth, Dr. Luo, we're baffled by this too. And that's the reason you have access to the fewest resources out of all of the Wallfacers. Choosing you is the greatest gamble in history."

"Yes, but only indirectly. No one knows the real reason. Like I said, you have to find your own answer."

"Then what about the indirect reason?"

"I'm sorry. I'm not authorized to tell you. But I do believe that you'll know when the time is right."

Luo Ji sensed that they had reached the end of their conversation, so he turned to leave, only realizing when he reached the door that he hadn't said good-bye. He turned around. Like in the assembly hall, Say nodded at him with a smile. Only this time, he knew the meaning behind that smile.

She said, "It's a pleasure to meet you again. But in the future, your work will be conducted within the framework of the PDC, so you will report directly to the PDC rotating chair."

"You don't have any confidence in me, do you?" Luo Ji asked.

"Then you're right."

Again with no good-bye, he walked straight out of the office. Relapsing to the state he had been in just after being declared a Wallfacer, he walked aimlessly. At the end of the hallway, he entered an elevator and rode it down to the hall on the ground floor, then exited the Secretariat Building and came once more to the United Nations Plaza. He was surrounded by security guards the entire way, and though he pushed them impatiently a few times, they stuck to him like magnets and followed him wherever he went. It was daytime now, and Shi Qiang and Kent walked up to him in the sunny square and asked him to either go back inside or enter a vehicle as quickly as possible.

"I said that choosing you was a huge gamble."

"No. Right to have no confidence in me."

"Right to have gambled?"

"It's not that. They've cleared the vicinity, so it's relatively safe here. But there are lots of visitors who all recognize you. Crowds are hard to handle, and you probably don't want that either."

"I'm never going to see the sun again my entire life, am I?" he asked Shi Qiang.

Luo Ji looked around him. At least for now, no one paid any attention to their small group. He headed toward the General Assembly Building and entered quickly for a second time. His goal was clear and he knew where he had to go. Past the empty balcony, he saw the colorful stained-glass panel. Turning right, he entered the Meditation Room, closing the door to keep Shi Qiang, Kent, and the guards outside.

When he saw the oblong slab of iron ore for a second time, his first instinct was to dash himself into it headfirst and put an end to everything. Instead he lay down on the stone's smooth surface, whose coolness drained off some of the irritation from his mind. With his body, he felt the hardness of the ore and, weirdly, thought of a problem put forth by his high school physics teacher: How can you make a marble bed as soft as a Simmons mattress? The answer: Dig out a depression in that marble the exact size and shape of a human body. Then when you lie in that depression, the pressure will be evenly distributed and it would feel incredibly soft. He closed his eyes and imagined that the warmth of his body was melting the iron ore beneath him and forming that kind of depression… Gradually, this calmed him. After a time, he opened his eyes and looked up at the bare ceiling.

Luo Ji felt himself getting snared once again in a logical trap, and once again was convinced that he could not extricate himself.

So he turned his attention to the power in his hands. The least of all the Wallfacers, Say had said, but he would certainly be able to make use of a terrifying amount of resources. Most importantly, he didn't have to justify his use of them to anyone. In fact, an important part of his mandate was to act in such a way as to keep others guessing, and furthermore, to do as much as possible to engender misunderstandings. Never in human history had there been such a thing! Maybe the absolute monarchs of old had been able to do whatever they wished, but even they ultimately had to account for their actions.

The Meditation Room had been designed by Dag Hammarskjöld, second secretary general of the UN, who believed that the UN ought to have a place for meditation removed from the history-making decisions of the General Assembly Hall. Luo Ji didn't know whether any head of state or ambassador to the UN had actually meditated here, but surely when Hammarskjöld died in 1961 he never imagined that a Wallfacer like himself would be daydreaming here.

"Oh, Dr. Luo. I heard you had some minor problems, so I wasn't in a hurry to get in touch with you."

If all I'm left with is this peculiar power, why not make use of it?

He got off the hard bed of stone, opened the door, and asked to see the chair of the PDC.

"Of course."

The incumbent chair, a Russian named Garanin, was a burly, white-bearded old man. The chair's office was one floor below the secretary general's. He was sending off a few visitors, half of them in uniform, when Luo Ji entered.

Luo Ji thought to himself, and sat up. After a short time thinking it over, he decided what his next step would be.

Looking at the paper, Luo Ji asked, "Mr. Chair, have you ever had a dream?"

"I don't need a general staff department."

"What are the other three Wallfacers doing?"

"May I have a pen and paper?"

"They're busy setting up general staff departments, a task I'd advise you to get on with immediately. I'll send some advisors to assist you in the initial stages."

"Oh? If you think it would be better that way… If you do have the need, one can be set up at any time."

"Wrong! The land beneath the snowcaps must not be cold. It's a subtropical climate. This is important! In front of the mountains there's a broad lake, and the water is even bluer than the sky, as blue as your wife's eyes…"

Garanin shook his head with a wry smile. "I just flew in from London yesterday. I worked the entire trip, and when I arrived I slept less than two hours before I had to rush to work. When today's regular PDC meeting finishes, I'll have to fly overnight to Tokyo… My whole life is rushing around, and I'm at home no more than three months out of the year. What's the point of that kind of dream for me?"

"For instance, have you ever dreamt of living in some perfect place?"

"What sort?"

"In my dreams, I've got lots of those places. I've chosen the most beautiful." Luo Ji picked up the pencil and began sketching on the paper. "This isn't colored, so you've got to imagine it. See these snowcapped mountains here? They're steep like the swords of the gods or the tusks of the earth, and they shine a satiny silver against the blue sky. Utterly dazzling…"

"Ah," Garanin said, watching with careful attention. "That's a very cold place."

"And who will its master be?"

"My wife's eyes are black."

"Live out my days in peace."

Luo Ji waited for Garanin to say something rude, but the chair simply nodded gravely, and said, "After an audit by the commission, we will carry this out at once."

"What are you going to do there?"

"Myself."

"Well, the lake water is a blue so deep it looks black. That's even better. Surrounding the lake are swaths of forest and grasslands, but remember that there have to be both, not just one of the two. This is the place: snow peaks, a lake, forests, and grasslands. And everything is in its untouched, primeval state. When you see the place, you would imagine that man had never set foot on the Earth. Here, on the grass beside the lake, build a house. It doesn't need to be large, but it should be fully equipped for modern living. The style can be either classical or modern, but it should complement its natural surroundings. And the necessary facilities -- fountains, a swimming pool -- should be provided so that its master can live the comfortable life of the aristocracy."

Garanin smiled, winked, and made an "okay" sign. "The world is big enough to have a place like that. Besides, to tell you the truth, I've seen it before."

"You and your commission won't raise any questions about my motivation?"

"Do you really believe the place I described exists?"

"That's wonderful, truly. And make sure that I can live a comfortable aristocrat's life. This is part of the Wallfacer Project."

Garanin shrugged. "The commission can question the Wallfacers in two areas: use of resources exceeding the set scope, and harm caused to human lives. Apart from these, all questions are in violation of the spirit of the Wallfacer Project. And truth be told, Tyler, Rey Diaz, and Hines have left me disappointed. Looking at their strategizing over the past two days, you can tell immediately what they are up to with their grand strategic plans. You're different from them. Your behavior is baffling. That's what a Wallfacer should be like."

Garanin nodded gravely.

"Oh, and one other thing. When you find a suitable place, never tell me where it is."

Garanin nodded again, seemingly pleased this time. "Dr. Luo, you've got another trait that satisfies my notion of being a Wallfacer: Your project requires the smallest investment of the four, at least for the time being."

No, you can't say where it is! Once I know where I am, then the world becomes as narrow as a map. When I don't know, the world feels unlimited.

"Go on."

"Then you'll be a blessing to all my successors. Money is a real headache… The specific departments in charge of executing this may consult with you on some details. The house, in particular, I think."

"If that's the case, then mine will never have the largest investment."

"Oh, the house," Luo Ji said. "I forgot one very important detail."

Luo Ji imitated Garanin's wink and smile. "It needs a fireplace."

After his father's funeral, Zhang Beihai went with Wu Yue one more time to the carrier dry dock, where construction on Tang had been suspended entirely. The welding sparks had vanished from the hull, and there were no signs of life anywhere on the giant ship lying in the noonday sun. The overarching impression it gave was one of the passage of time.

"Your father was one of the wisest generals among the navy's top brass. If he were still with us, I might not have gotten so thoroughly stuck," Wu Yue said.

Zhang Beihai said, "Your defeatism is built on a rational basis, or at least it's your own reasoning, so I don't believe there's anyone who can truly cheer you up. I'm not here to apologize, Wu Yue. I know you don't hate me over this."

"It's dead," Zhang Beihai said.

"I'd like to thank you, Beihai. You got me out."

"Victory or defeat is not for us to see."

"You can return to the navy. Working there should suit you quite well."

Wu Yue shook his head slowly. "I've submitted my discharge application. What would I do if I went back? Construction on new destroyers and frigates has stopped, and I no longer have any place in the fleet. Sit in an office in Fleet Command? Forget it. Besides, I'm not a good soldier at all. A soldier who's only willing to engage in a winnable war is unqualified to be one."

"But you have faith in victory, Beihai. I envy you, really, to the point of jealousy. Faith like yours is the height of happiness for a military man these days. You truly are your father's son."

"Administrator, start up a Stable Era. Can't you see we're holding a meeting?" shouted a voice.

A low rumble came from the direction of the shipyard, and Tang slowly started to move. To vacate the dock, it had to take to the water ahead of schedule and be towed to another dock for demolition. When Tang's sharp prow split the seawater, Zhang Beihai and Wu Yue sensed a trace of anger in the massive hull. Quickly, it entered the sea, tossing up huge waves that caused the other boats in the port to rock, as if paying tribute. Tang crept slowly forward in the water, quietly enjoying the sea's embrace. In its brief and aborted career, this giant ship had at least met the ocean once.

"So do you have any plans?"

"No. I feel like my life is over." Wu Yue pointed at Tang in the distance. "Just like that, over before it even launched."

In the virtual Three Body world, it was the dead of night. Apart from scraps of starlight, all was immersed in an inky blackness, so that even the horizon was invisible, and the empty land and sky blended together in the dark.

"I am not alone," he said. "This is the core leadership of seven speaking."

The world flashed. Suns flew across the sky, and soon time returned to normal. One stable sun illuminated the world.

Another voice in the darkness said, "Then increase the speed and find some stable daylight. It won't take too long."

The administrator's voice seemed to come from the sky itself. "I can't do that. The era is run randomly along the core model and can't be set externally."

The sun shone in the wilderness on a group of people, some familiar faces among them: King Wen of Zhou, Newton, Von Neumann, Aristotle, Mozi, Confucius, and Einstein. Sparsely distributed, they faced Qin Shi Huang, who stood on a rock with a sword across his shoulders.

"You shouldn't be talking about a new leadership before it's been finalized," someone said, and a clamor rose among the rest.

"Enough," Qin Shi Huang said, struggling to raise the sword. "Setting aside the leadership controversy for the moment, we shall turn to more pressing matters. We all know of the launch of the Wallfacer Project, humanity's attempt to use closed-off, private strategic thinking to resist sophon surveillance. Since the Lord's transparent mind cannot possibly thread that labyrinth, humanity has regained its edge through this plan, and the four Wallfacers pose a threat to the Lord. In accordance with the resolution of the previous offline meeting, we must launch the Wallbreaker Project immediately."

"Okay. I don't know how long this will last," the administrator said.

Qin Shi Huang extended the sword and, as if conferring knighthood, touched it to Von Neumann's shoulder. "You are the First Wallbreaker," he said. "You are Frederick Tyler's Wallbreaker."

Von Neumann knelt down and placed his left hand to his right shoulder in a salute. "I accept the mission."

At those last words, silence reigned, and no one voiced any objections.

Qin Shi Huang touched the sword to Mozi's shoulder. "You are the Second Wallbreaker. You are Manuel Rey Diaz's Wallbreaker."

Then Qin Shi Huang said, "We will appoint a Wallbreaker for each Wallfacer. Like the Wallfacers, the Wallbreakers will be authorized to tap all of the organization's resources, but their greatest resource will be the sophons, which will render the Wallfacers' every action utterly exposed. The only secret will be their thoughts. The Wallbreakers' mission, then, is to analyze the Wallfacers' open and clandestine actions, with the help of the sophons, and decipher the true nature of their strategic aims as early as possible. The leadership will now appoint the Wallbreakers."

The sword touched Aristotle's shoulder. "You are the Third Wallbreaker. You are Bill Hines's Wallbreaker."

Aristotle did not kneel either, but shook his robe and said thoughtfully, "Yes, I'm the only one who can break his wall."

Mozi did not kneel, but stood straight and nodded haughtily. "I will be the first to break a wall."

"I don't think hibernation is necessary," Aristotle said. "I can complete the Wallbreaker mission before we finish our normal lifespan."

Qin Shi Huang returned the sword to his own shoulder and swept his gaze across the crowd. "Good. We now have Wallbreakers. You, like the Wallfacers, are the elite of the elite. The Lord be with you! Assisted by hibernation, you will start the long journey to the end of days together with the Wallfacers."

Mozi nodded in agreement. "When I break the wall, I will face my Wallfacer in person, and I will savor how his spirit collapses in anguish and despair. Devoting the rest of my life to this is well worth it."

The final Wallbreaker likewise stated his intent to break their Wallfacers in person. Von Neumann said, "We will unmask the last traces of every secret that humanity harbors from the sophons. This is the final thing we can do for the Lord, for afterward there will be no reason for us to exist."

"What about Luo Ji's Wallbreaker?" someone asked.

"Luo Ji is his own Wallbreaker. He needs to find out what threat he poses to the Lord," Qin Shi Huang said.

"Do we know whether or not he is a threat?" someone asked.

The question seemed to touch something in Qin Shi Huang's mind. He planted the sword into the ground and fell deep in thought. The sun suddenly sped up its descent to the Earth, lengthening the shadows until they extended to the horizon. When it had set halfway, it abruptly changed direction and rose and fell a few times along the horizon, like the gleaming back of a whale cresting out of the black ocean, pulling the vast wilderness and the small group of people that made up this stark world back and forth between light and darkness.

"I don't know, but the Lord knows, and Evans knew. Evans taught the Lord how to keep this secret, and he's dead. We can't know."

"We don't know that either. Only one thing is clear," Qin Shi Huang said, looking up at the canopy of the sky as it changed from blue to black. "Out of the four Wallfacers, he is the only one in direct contest with the Lord."

"So of all the Wallfacers, is Luo Ji the greatest threat?" someone hesitantly asked.

Work meeting, Space Force Political Department

"Comrades, by an order announced yesterday by the Central Military Commission, I am now serving as commander of the Political Department of the Armed Forces. I accepted the appointment one week ago, but only now that we are seated together do I feel conflicted. I have suddenly realized that in front of me is the most beleaguered group of people in the space force, and now I am one of your number. I didn't realize this before, and for this I apologize to you." He opened the document in front of him. "This portion of the meeting will be off the record. Comrades, let us have a candid exchange of views. Let us be Trisolarans for once and open our thoughts to each other. This is crucial for our future work."

Chang Weisi stayed silent for a long while after opening the meeting, something he had never done before. He swept his eyes across the two rows of political officers at the conference table, then looked into the infinite distance while gently tapping his pencil on the tabletop, a light tapping that seemed to mark time for his thoughts. At last, he pulled himself out of his reverie.

"Our duty is to build in our forces the faith that we will be victorious in the future war. So, do we have that faith ourselves? Please raise your hands if you do. Remember, we are speaking our minds."

Chang Weisi's gaze lingered on the face of each officer for a second or two, but they remained silent. Then he stood up and paced along the table behind the row of seated officers.

No one raised a hand. Nearly everyone was staring at the table. But Chang Weisi noticed one man's gaze was fixed straight ahead: Zhang Beihai.

He went on, "Do you believe that victory is possible? By possible, I mean not an accidental few tenths of a percent, but an actual, meaningful possibility."

Zhang Beihai stood up, but Chang Weisi motioned for him to sit down. "This is not a formal meeting," he said. "It's just a heart-to-heart chat."

Zhang Beihai raised a hand. His was the only hand raised.

"First let me thank all of you for your honesty," Chang Weisi said, and then turned to Zhang Beihai. "Excellent, Comrade Zhang. Tell us, on what do you base your confidence?"

Still standing at attention, Zhang Beihai said, "Commander, I can't answer your question sufficiently in just a few words, because building faith is a long and complicated process. First of all, I'd like to make note of the mistaken thinking among the troops at the present time. We all know that prior to the Trisolar Crisis, we had been advocating for the examination of the future of war from scientific and rational perspectives, and a powerful inertia has sustained this mentality to the present day. This is particularly the case in the present space force, where it has been exacerbated by the influx of a large number of academics and scientists. If we use this mentality to contemplate an interstellar war four centuries in the future, we'll never be able to establish faith in a victory."

"What Comrade Zhang Beihai says is peculiar," a colonel said. "Is steadfast faith not built upon science and reason? No faith is solid that is not founded on objective fact."

"Then let's take another look at science and reason. Our own science and reason, remember. The Trisolarans' advanced development tells us that our science is no more than a child collecting shells on the beach who hasn't even seen the ocean of truth. The facts we see under the guidance of our science and reason may not be the true, objective facts. And since that's the case, we need to learn how to selectively ignore them. We should see how things change as they develop, and we shouldn't write off the future through technological determinism and mechanical materialism."

"Excellent," Chang Weisi said, and nodded at him to continue.

"We must establish faith in victory, a faith that is the foundation of military duty and dignity! When the Chinese military once faced a powerful enemy under extremely poor conditions, it established a firm faith in victory through a sense of responsibility to the people and the motherland. I believe that today, a sense of responsibility to the human race and to Earth civilization can encourage the same faith."

"But how are we supposed to go about specific ideological work?" asked an officer. "The space force is made up of complicated parts, which means that its ideology is complex. We've got our work cut out for us."

"I think that for the time being, at least, we should start with the mental condition of the troops," Zhang Beihai said. "Big picture: Last week I visited troops from the air force and naval air force that have just been brought under our branch, and I discovered that day-to-day training for these forces is incredibly slack. Small picture: Problems with military discipline are cropping up with increasing frequency. There was supposed to be a total switch to summer uniforms, but lots of people in headquarters are still wearing their winter uniforms. This state of mind must be changed as quickly as possible. Look, the space force is turning into an academy of sciences. Of course, we can't deny that its present mission is that of an academy of military sciences, but we ought to be conscious that we are an army, and we're an army in a state of war!"

Zhang Beihai, I know you have faith. With a father like that, it would be impossible for you not to. But things are definitely not as simple as you say. I don't know what you base your faith on, and I don't even know what else your faith encompasses. Just like your father. I admired him, but I have to admit that in the end I couldn't figure him out.

Chang Weisi flipped open the document in front of him. "Research on space warfare theory is in full swing at present, but one problem has already cropped up: The study of interplanetary warfare needs to be founded on a certain level of technological development, no doubt about it. But right now, basic research has only just begun, and technological breakthroughs will occur far in the future. This means our research has no support. Headquarters has revised the research plan in light of the circumstances, and has divided unified research on the theory of space warfare into three parts, to cater to the possible technological levels that the human world may reach in the future. Namely: a low-tech strategy, a mid-tech strategy, and a high-tech strategy.

The conversation went on for a while longer, and then Chang Weisi returned to his seat. "Thank you. I hope that we will be able to continue having frank conversations. Now, let's move on to the contents of the formal meeting." As he spoke, he looked up and once again saw Zhang Beihai's steady gaze, which revealed a determination that warmed his heart a little.

"Work is currently in progress to define these three levels of technology, as well as to define a large number of index parameters in every major scientific discipline, but the core parameter will be the speed and range of a ten-kiloton-class spaceship."

"The Low-Tech Level: Spacecraft speed achieves fifty times the third cosmic velocity, or roughly eight hundred kilometers per second. Spacecraft are not equipped with life support. Under these conditions, the craft has a combat radius limited to the inner Solar System. That is, within Neptune's orbit, or thirty AU from the sun."

"The Mid-Tech Level: Spacecraft speed achieves three hundred times the third cosmic velocity, or forty-eight hundred kilometers per second. Spacecraft are equipped with partial life support. Under these conditions, the combat radius of the craft extends beyond the Kuiper Belt, and includes all space within one thousand AU of the sun."

"The High-Tech Level: Spacecraft speed achieves one thousand times the third cosmic velocity, or sixteen thousand kilometers per second, which is five percent of the speed of light. Spacecraft are fully equipped with life support. Under these conditions, the combat radius extends to the Oort Cloud, with preliminary interstellar navigation capabilities."

"Defeatism is the greatest threat to the armed forces in space, so political and ideological workers will shoulder an extremely important responsibility in the space force. Political departments in the military will participate fully in the study of space warfare theory to eradicate the stain of defeatism and guarantee the correct direction of research."

"Those of you present today will become members of a space warfare theory task force. Although there will be some overlap among members of the three branches, the research institutions are independent, and will tentatively be known as the Institute for Low-Tech Strategy, the Institute for Mid-Tech Strategy, and the Institute for High-Tech Strategy. At today's meeting, I'd like to hear from each of you which one you would choose, as a reference for the Political Department's next round of work appointments. Let's share our selections."

Of the thirty-two political officers at the meeting, twenty-four selected low-tech and seven selected mid-tech. Just one officer chose high-tech: Zhang Beihai.

"We haven't even mastered controlled nuclear fusion. Sending a ten-thousand-ton warship to five percent of the speed of light? Ten thousand times faster than the truck-sized spacecraft humanity has today? It's not even science fiction. It's fantasy!"

"My choice is the only hope for victory. That's the only level of technology that gives humanity any chance of building an effective defensive system for the Earth and Solar System," Zhang Beihai said.

"Looks like Comrade Beihai wants to get into science fiction," someone said, to scattered laughter.

"But don't we have four more centuries? We've got to keep potential progress in mind."

"But progress in fundamental physics is impossible."

"We haven't even tapped one percent of the potential applications of existing theories," Zhang Beihai said. "My feeling is that the biggest problem right now is the technology sector's approach to research. They're wasting too much time and money on low-end technology. In propulsion, for example, there's no reason at all to work on the fission drive, but right now they're not only throwing huge amounts of R&D at it, they're even putting the same amount of effort into studying next-gen chemical propulsion! We should focus our resources on studying fusion engines, and move directly to the development of media-free fusion engines, leapfrogging media-based fusion. The same problem exists in other areas of research. Sealed ecosystems, for instance, are a necessary technology for interstellar spacecraft, one that is not particularly dependent on fundamental theory, but research in this area is very limited."

"The Wallfacers?" someone asked in wonder. "Are they going to interfere in space force work?"

Chang Weisi said, "Comrade Zhang Beihai has posed at least one question worthy of attention: The military and scientific communities are all busy starting their own work, but there is insufficient communication among them. Fortunately, both sides are aware of the situation and are organizing a joint conference, and the military and the scientific communities have each established special agencies to strengthen communication between the two sides and establish a fully interactive relationship between space strategy and scientific research. The next step is to dispatch military representatives to the various research areas and to involve a large group of scientists in studying the theory of space warfare. Again, we can't sit and wait for technological breakthroughs. We ought to form our own ideological strategy as soon as possible and then promote it in every field. "Next, I'd like to talk about another layer of relationships: that between the space force and the Wallfacers."

"There's no sign of that at the moment, although Tyler has proposed paying an inspection visit to the military. But we ought to realize that they do have that power, and any interference that does take place may have unanticipated effects. We need to be mentally prepared for it. When such a situation does occur, we should maintain a balance between the Wallfacer Project and mainstream defense."

After the meeting, Chang Weisi sat alone in the empty conference room smoking a cigarette. The smoke wafted into a beam of sunlight shining through the window and seemed to catch fire.

Whatever happens, at least it's begun, he thought to himself.

For the first time, Luo Ji felt that a dream had come true. He had imagined that Garanin was only boasting -- of course he could find a stunning, untouched place, but it was certain to be quite different from the place in his imagination. But when he got off the helicopter, it was like he had stepped into a dream world: the distant snow peaks, the lake in front of him, the grassy plain and forest beside the lake, all of it laid out exactly as he had sketched it for Garanin. And he hadn't dared permit himself to imagine such an immaculate environment. Everything seemed to have sprung out of a fairy tale. There was a slight sweetness to the fresh air, and even the sun seemed to be cautious, sending the softest and most exquisite part of its glow into this place. The most incredible thing was the small estate beside the lake and the villa at its heart. Kent, who was traveling with him, said the house was built in the mid-nineteenth century, but it looked older, and the passage of time had made it blend in with its environment.

"Don't be surprised. Sometimes people dream of places that really exist," Kent said.

"Does anyone live here?" Luo Ji asked.

"The former master of the house bids you welcome. He is proud to have a Wallfacer living here." Kent went on to tell him that the estate contained more than just the facilities he had requested: stables with ten horses, because the best way to get to the mountains was by walking and riding; a tennis court and a golf course; a wine cellar; and, on the lake, a motorboat and a few sailboats. Beneath its old exterior, the house had been fully modernized. Every room was equipped with a computer, broadband, and satellite television, and there was a digital projection room as well. In addition to all of this, Luo Ji had noticed a helipad when he arrived. It was clearly not built at the last minute.

Kent led him into the house. With his first glance at the spacious European-style living room, Luo Ji saw a fireplace, with fruitwood stacked neatly next to it that gave off a fresh fragrance.

"No one in a five-kilometer radius. Beyond that there are a few small villages."

Luo Ji guessed that the place might be in northern Europe, but he didn't ask.

"The man's got money."

Kent took Luo Ji on a tour of every room in the house. He noticed that the original owner had good taste and had furnished every room with a sense of elegant tranquility. A considerable portion of the books in the library were old Latin editions. The paintings were mostly in the modernist style, but they did not seem out of place in rooms with a rich classical atmosphere. One thing in particular that struck him was the total absence of landscapes, the mark of a mature aesthetic sensibility: hanging landscape paintings in a house situated in the Garden of Eden would be as pointless as pouring a bucket of water into the ocean.

"Not just money. He doesn't want to disclose his identity, but you would probably recognize his name if I told you. He donated the land to the UN, a far larger gift than Rockefeller's. Just so you're clear, the land and all of the real estate on it belong to the UN. You only have right of residence. But you're not getting nothing. When the owner left, he said that he had taken away all of his personal belongings and that whatever is left is yours. These paintings alone must be worth quite a bit."

Then Kent came in and introduced a few people: the housekeeper, cook, driver, groom, and boat master, all of whom had been in the previous owner's service. When they had gone, Kent introduced him to a lieutenant colonel in civvies, who was responsible for security. After he left, Luo Ji asked Kent where Shi Qiang was.

Returning to the living room, Luo Ji sat down on the deliciously comfortable chair in front of the fireplace. He stretched out his hand and brushed against an object, which he then picked up and inspected. A churchwarden pipe, the kind with a long, thin stem, used indoors by the leisure class. He looked toward the wall and its empty shelves and imagined what had been taken down.

"He's handed over your security detail and has probably returned home."

"Let him take the place of that guy just now. I think he'll do a better job."

Kent agreed and left to make the call.

"Then bring in Chinese guards to replace the ones here."

"I feel the same way, but he doesn't speak English. It would be hard for him to do his job."

Screw the Wallfacer Project.

Luo Ji also left the room and walked across the manicured lawn onto a pier leading out into the middle of the lake. He held the railing at the end and gazed at the reflection of the snowcaps in the lake's mirror surface. Surrounded by sweet air and sunshine, he said to himself, "Compared to life today, what does the world four centuries from now matter?"

"How did that bastard get in?" the researcher at the terminal said softly.

"It's pretty dull, isn't it? I expect you're disappointed, Mr. President," Dr. Allen, director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said to Rey Diaz as he led him past the rows of computer terminals.

"Wallfacers are naturally free to enter," his neighbor answered quietly.

Two objects caught Rey Diaz's eye as being not entirely dull. They looked new, with large displays and consoles with lots of fine knobs. He headed over to take a closer look, but Allen pulled him back. "That's a game machine. The terminals here aren't for gaming, so we brought in two machines for relaxation."

"I'm no longer president," Rey Diaz said severely, as he surveyed his surroundings.

"This is our nuclear weapons simulation center. Los Alamos has four of these centers, and Lawrence Livermore has three."

Rey Diaz noticed another two not-entirely-dull objects. Transparent and structurally complicated, they contained a bubbling liquid. Again, he started over to take a look, and this time Allen shook his head with a smile and did not stop him. "That one's a humidifier. The climate is dry in New Mexico. The other one's just a coffee machine. Mike, pour Mr. Rey Diaz a cup of coffee… No, wait, not from that. I'll brew you a cup of top-shelf roast in my office."

The only thing left for Rey Diaz to do was to examine the blown-up black-and-white photographs hanging on the wall. He recognized the skinny man wearing a hat and smoking a pipe as Oppenheimer, then Allen directed his attention back to the bland terminals.

"These displays are obsolete," Rey Diaz said.

"But behind them is the most powerful computer in the world, operating at thirty petaFLOPS."

"Excellent."

The engineer lowered his voice. "We've suspended the output module," he said, and glanced at Rey Diaz.

An engineer came up to Allen. "Doctor, the AD4453OG is operational."

Rey Diaz brushed the paper from his head and shoulders, and said, "You run nuclear tests every day, but to you it's as easy as playing a video game. It's not like that for us. We don't have supercomputers. We've got to do real tests… We do the same things, but the poor always end up being the nuisance."

"This is a simulation center tradition. When the first atom bomb was exploded, Dr. Fermi tossed torn paper into the air, and according to the distance the pieces drifted in the shock wave, he was able to accurately compute the yield of the bomb. Now we do the same thing for every simulation we run."

Then Rey Diaz heard tearing sounds and saw the people at the terminals ripping paper apart. Assuming that they were destroying documents, he muttered, "Don't you even have a shredder?" But then he noticed that they were tearing up blank copy paper. Then someone shouted, "Over!" and everyone cheered and tossed the shredded paper into the air, making the cluttered floor even more like a garbage dump.

"Run it," Allen said, then turned to Rey Diaz: "See, we've got nothing to hide from the Wallfacers."

Rey Diaz leaned in to take a closer look at the terminals, but saw only scrolling data and shifting curves. When he finally did locate some graphics, they were so abstract he couldn't make anything out. When he leaned toward another terminal, the physicist seated in front of it looked up and said, "Mr. President, if you're looking for a mushroom cloud, it's not there."

"I'm not the president," Rey Diaz repeated, as he accepted the coffee Allen handed him.

"Mr. Rey Diaz, no one here is interested in politics."

Allen said, "Then we ought to talk about what we can do for you."

Allen stared at him for a moment, and then bent his head in thought. "That will require some time."

"Design a nuclear bomb."

"The PDC will send you the completed technical requirements before long, so I'll just brief you on the key points. Large yield, the largest possible. As large as you can make it. Two hundred megatons at an absolute minimum."

"Of course. Los Alamos may be a multidisciplinary institution, but I suspected you wouldn't be here for any other reason. Can you give me any specifics? What type? What yield?"

"Of course we do. We have models for everything from five-hundred-ton shells to large twenty-megaton bombs, from neutron bombs to EMP bombs, but the explosive yield you're asking for is far too large. It's more than ten times the world's largest thermonuclear device. It would have to have a totally different trigger and staging from a conventional nuclear weapon, and it might even require an entirely new structure. We don't have a model that fits."

"Don't you have mathematical models?"

They spoke some more about the general planning of various research projects, and when it came time to leave, Allen said, "Mr. Rey Diaz, I know you have the best physicists on your staff at the PDC. I assume they've told you about the applications of nuclear weapons to space warfare?"

"Very well. In space warfare, nuclear bombs may be low-efficiency weapons, since nuclear explosions produce no shock wave in the vacuum of space and only negligible pressure from the light they generate, so they don't produce the mechanical impact found in explosions in the atmosphere. All their energy is released in the form of radiation and electromagnetic pulses, and, at least for humans, radiation and EM shielding on spacecraft is a fairly mature technology."

"You're permitted to be redundant."

"And if the target is directly hit?"

"My studies were in nuclear energy, which is why I like nuclear bombs. I've got a good feeling about them."

"But those weapons aren't combat ready. Nuclear bombs are humanity's most powerful mature weapons. And as for the performance issues you mention in space combat, ways can be found to improve them. Adding a medium to create a shock wave, for example, like putting ball bearings in a grenade."

"That's a different thing altogether. In that case, heat will be a decisive factor, and the target may be melted or even vaporized. But one bomb of a few hundred million tons will probably be as big as a building, so I'm afraid it won't be easy to score a direct hit… In fact, the mechanical impact of nuclear weapons doesn't measure up to kinetic weapons, their radiation is less intense than particle beam weapons, and their thermal destruction can't compare to gamma-ray lasers."

"That's an intriguing idea. Your STEM background shows through."

Allen laughed. "I almost forgot: It's ridiculous to discuss issues like this with a Wallfacer."

The two men stopped on the quiet path through the woods they had been walking along. Allen said, "Fermi and Oppenheimer walked down this road countless times. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, most of the architects of the first generation of nuclear weapons spent the rest of their lives mired in depression. They would be gratified if they knew the mission that humanity's nuclear weapons are now facing."

The two men laughed, but Rey Diaz quickly grew serious and said, "Dr. Allen, like everyone else, you're treating the Wallfacer strategy as something mysterious. The most powerful combat-ready weapon available to mankind right now is the hydrogen bomb. Focusing on that is only natural, isn't it? I believe my approach is the correct one."

Keiko Yamasuki woke up in the middle of the night to find herself alone, the sheets beside her cool. She got up, dressed, and went out the door. At first glance she saw her husband's shadow in the bamboo grove in the yard, as usual. They had homes in England and in Japan, but Hines preferred his Japanese home. He said that the moonlight of the East calmed his heart. There was no moon tonight. The bamboo and his kimono-clad figure lost their dimensionality and looked like paper cuttings hung beneath the stars.

"No matter how frightening they might be, weapons are a good thing… Just to let you know, the next time I come, I hope I won't see you throwing scrap paper around. We should make a tidy impression on the sophons."

"No one can. I say an ultimate victory plan doesn't exist." She took two steps forward but was still separated from Hines by a few stalks of bamboo. The grove was their place for contemplation, and the inspiration for most of their previous research had its source here. They rarely brought intimacy to this sacred place, but always addressed each other courteously, as befitted an atmosphere seemingly imbued with Eastern philosophy. "Bill, you should relax. Doing the best you can is enough."

Hines heard Keiko Yamasuki's footsteps but did not look back. Strangely, Keiko wore the same shoes in England as in Japan. Even in her hometown she never wore geta. But it was only here, never in England, that he could hear her footsteps.

"My love, you haven't slept properly for days," she said. Her voice was soft, but the summer insects stopped chirping and peace flooded like water over everything.

She heard her husband sigh. "Keiko, I can't do it. I can't think of anything. Really, I can't come up with anything at all."

"Keiko, that's exactly what I've been thinking about. Here's what I've decided to do: Even if I can't come up with a plan, I can help other people think of one."

He turned around, but in the darkness of the grove his face was indistinct. "How is that possible? Every step I take consumes a massive amount of resources."

"What other people? The other Wallfacers?"

"No, they're not much better off than I am. I mean our descendants. Keiko, have you ever considered this fact? The outcome of natural biological evolution requires at least twenty thousand years to manifest itself, but human civilization has just five thousand years of history, and modern technological civilization just two hundred. That means that the study of modern science today is being done by the brain of primitive man."

"Then why not adopt this approach?" Keiko's answer came swiftly. She had obviously been thinking about the question. "Choose a direction that, even if you're unsuccessful, will do something beneficial while it is being carried out."

"We've been doing brain research, and we ought to put more effort into expanding it to a scale that can tackle a planetary defense system. If we work hard for a century or two, we might be able to increase human intelligence and allow the science of the future to break out of the sophons' prison."

"What will it take? Do you have even a rough idea?"

"I mean intelligence in the broadest sense of the word. Not just the traditional meaning of logical reasoning, but learning ability, imagination, and innovation as well. And also the ability to accumulate common sense and experience while preserving intellectual vigor. And enhancing mental endurance, so that a brain can think continuously without fatigue. And we can even consider the possibility of eliminating sleep. And so forth."

"You want to use technology to accelerate the brain's evolution?"

"Intelligence is a vague term in our field. What in particular --"

"No. Not yet. Perhaps the brain can be connected directly to a computer, which can use its computing power to amplify human intelligence. Or maybe we can achieve a direct interface between human brains and blend different people's thoughts. Or inherit memories. But whatever avenue we ultimately take to increase human intelligence, we must first begin from a fundamental understanding of the mechanisms of the human brain."

"And that's precisely our area of interest."

"Bill, you're wonderful!"

"Love, I'm truly happy. I'm ecstatic! There's just one thing. As a Wallfacer, don't you think this plan is a little…"

"We can continue in the same career as before. The difference will be that we can tap huge resources to do it!"

"So think about this for a moment: If we turn neuroscience and thought research into a world engineering project, and can invest an inconceivably enormous amount of money in it, how long will we have to wait for success?"

"A little indirect? Maybe. But think about it, Keiko. Human civilization ultimately comes down to humans themselves. If we start by elevating humans, doesn't that make this a far-reaching plan? Besides, what else can I do?"

"About a century, more or less."

"Let's be a little more pessimistic and say two centuries. Then the highly intelligent humans will still have two centuries left, and if they use one century to develop fundamental science and another to turn those theories into technology…"

"Even if it fails, we'll have done what we wanted to do."

It was day three of the PDC's first Wallfacer Project Hearing. Rey Diaz and Hines had spoken about the first phase of their respective projects, which were put to preliminary discussion by representatives of the PDC permanent members.

"Keiko, come with me to the end of days," Hines murmured.

Rey Diaz and Hines had both submitted their plans at the previous hearing, but Tyler had delayed his first disclosure until this session, leaving representatives particularly eager for details.

"Yes, Bill. We certainly have the time."

"Luo Ji still hasn't arrived?" asked the annoyed US representative.

The insects in the grove seemed to have grown accustomed to their presence and resumed their musical chirping. When a soft wind blew through the bamboo and the stars in the night sky flashed through the gaps between the leaves, it was as if the insect chorus was issuing from those stars.

"He won't be coming," said Garanin. "He declared that his seclusion and nonparticipation in the PDC hearing is part of his plan."

"He's a deadbeat, a waste!" Rey Diaz said.

At this, the attendees whispered among themselves. Some of them seemed annoyed, while others flashed cryptic smiles.

Hines said, "I'd rather express my regard for Dr. Luo. He knows himself and knows his own abilities, so he doesn't want a pointless waste of resources." He turned graciously to Rey Diaz. "I think Mr. Rey Diaz should learn something from him."

"Then what are you?" Tyler asked rudely, even though his mosquito swarm plan relied on Rey Diaz's super hydrogen bomb technology.

Everyone could see that Tyler and Hines were not defending Luo Ji, but that their enmity toward Rey Diaz was far deeper by comparison.

Garanin rapped the gavel on the table. "First of all, Wallfacer Rey Diaz has spoken out of order. I remind you to show respect to the other Wallfacers. Similarly, I remind Wallfacers Hines and Tyler that your words are also inappropriate for this meeting."

Hines said, "Mr. Chair, what Wallfacer Rey Diaz has demonstrated in his plan is nothing but the crudeness of a soldier. Following in the footsteps of Iran and North Korea, his country fell under UN sanctions because of its nuclear weapons program, and this has given him a twisted complex for the bomb. There is essentially no difference between Mr. Tyler's mosquito swarm program and Rey Diaz's giant hydrogen bomb plan. Both are disappointments. The two straightforward plans will have their strategic intent exposed right from the start. Neither exhibits the canniness that's the strategic advantage of the Wallfacer Project."

When the hearing ended, the Wallfacers went to the Meditation Room, their favorite place in UN Headquarters. It now seemed to them that this room designed for silence was built especially for Wallfacers. Gathered there, they waited in silence, each of them feeling that they would never be able to exchange thoughts until the final war came. The slab of iron ore lay silently in their midst, as if absorbing and collecting their thoughts and silently bearing witness.

Tyler shot back, "Mr. Hines, your plan is like some sort of naïve daydream."

Hines said softly, "Have you heard about the Wallbreakers?"

Tyler nodded. "The ETO just announced it on their public Web site, and it's been verified by the CIA."

The Wallfacers lapsed into silence again, each one conjuring in his mind an image of his own Wallbreaker. It was an image that would appear countless times in their nightmares, for the day a Wallbreaker actually appeared would likely spell the end of that Wallfacer.

When Shi Xiaoming saw his father enter, he edged toward the corner, but Shi Qiang simply sat down quietly next to him.

"Let's talk about you first."

"Don't be afraid. I won't hit you or curse at you this time. I don't have the energy." He brought out a pack of cigarettes, took out two, and offered one to his son. Shi Xiaoming hesitated before accepting it. They lit up and smoked for a while in silence. Then Shi Qiang said, "I've got a mission. I'll be leaving the country soon."

"What about your illness?" Shi Xiaoming looked up through the smoke and gave his father a worried look.

Shi Xiaoming's expression turned pleading. "Dad, there's going to be a heavy sentence for this --"

"Any other crime, and I'd be able to work it out for you, but that's not how this is going to work. Ming, we're both adults. We need to be responsible for our actions."

Shi Qiang said, "I'm half to blame. I never had any concern for you when you were growing up. I came home late every night, so tired I'd just have a drink and then go to bed. I never went to a parents' meeting at school, and I never had a good talk with you about anything… It's the same thing again: We have to be responsible for our own actions."

Shi Xiaoming bowed his head in despair and took a silent draw on his cigarette.

Tears in his eyes, Shi Xiaoming ground the cigarette back and forth repeatedly on the edge of the bed, like he was extinguishing the latter half of his life.

"Prison is like a criminal training course. Forget about reform when you go in, just don't get mixed up with the other prisoners. And learn how to protect yourself a little. Take these --" Shi Qiang placed a plastic bag on the bed. Inside were two cartons of ordinary Yun Yan cigarettes. "And if you need anything else, your mother will send it to you."

Shi Qiang went to the door, then turned and said to his son, "Ming, you may still meet your dad again. You'll probably be older than me at that point, and then you'll understand what's in my heart right now."

In an era where anxiety had taken hold of everything, Luo Ji was now the world's most laid-back man. He strolled beside the lake, took a boat out into the water, had the chef turn the mushrooms he picked and the fish he caught into tasty delicacies, browsed through the library's rich collection, and when he tired of that, went outside and golfed with the guards. He rode on horseback through the grassland and on the forest path in the direction of the snow peak, but he never reached the foot of the mountain. Oftentimes, he would sit on a bench on the lakeside and look at the mountain's reflection in the water, doing and thinking nothing as an entire day passed unknowingly.

Through the small window in the door, Shi Xiaoming watched his father exit the detention center. From the back, he looked quite old.

He felt like the boat in the water, floating quietly with its sail furled, ignorant of where it was moored and not caring where it floated. Now and then when he thought about his former life, he was surprised to discover that in the short space of a few days, he could no longer recognize it. This state satisfied him.

He was particularly interested in the wine cellar. He knew that the dust-covered bottles lying horizontally on the racks held nothing but the best. He drank in the living room, he drank in the library, and sometimes he drank on the boat; but never too much, just enough to keep him in that perfect, half-drunk, half-sober state, and then he would take out that long-stemmed pipe left by the previous owner and puff away.

He was alone during this time, with no connection to the outside world. Kent was in the manor, too, but he had his own small office and rarely bothered him. Luo Ji had only spoken once to the officer in charge of security, to ask that the security detail not trail along behind him, and if they absolutely had to, to make sure that he could not see them.

He never went online here, but he sometimes watched television, skipping over the news and watching programs that had nothing to do with current events or even the present day. This sort of content was still possible to find, although it was growing increasingly rare in the last ebbs of the Golden Age.

Even when it rained and the living room grew chilly, Luo Ji never had the fireplace lit. He knew it wasn't yet time.

Late one night, he got carried away by a bottle of cognac that, from the label, was thirty-five years old. Wielding the remote, he skipped past the several news stations on the high-definition television, but one English-language news item caught his eye. It concerned the salvage of a mid-seventeenth-century wreck, a clipper that had sailed from Rotterdam to Faridabad and had sunk off Cape Horn. Among the objects that divers had retrieved from the wreck was a small, sealed cask of fine wine that experts speculated was still drinkable. Not only that, but after three centuries in storage at the bottom of the ocean, its taste would be unparalleled. Luo Ji recorded most of the program, and then called for Kent.

"That amount is nothing to the Wallfacer Project. Buy it. It's part of the plan."

Kent went to make a call. Two hours later he told Luo Ji that the price of the cask was astonishingly high: Bidding would start at three hundred thousand euros.

"I want that cask. Buy it for me," he said.

Two days later, the cask, its aged surface covered in shells, was placed in the villa's living room. Luo Ji took out a tap with a twist drill specially made for wooden casks, which he found in the cellar, and carefully drilled it into the side to pour out the first glass. The liquid was a tempting emerald green. He sniffed it, and then put the glass to his lips.

And thus, the Wallfacer Project produced a second idiom after the "Wallfacer smile." Anything that was clearly absurd but which had to be done anyway was called "part of the Wallfacer plan," or simply, "part of the plan."

"Doctor, is this part of the plan too?" Kent asked softly.

"That's right. It's part of the plan." Luo Ji was about to drink, but seeing the people present in the room, he said, "All of you, out."

"Sending you out is part of the plan too. Out!" He glared at them. Kent gently shook his head and led the others out.

Kent and the rest of them did not move.

Deeply exhausted, he lay in bed watching his IV drip, and an intense loneliness seized him. He knew that his recent leisure was merely the weightlessness of tumbling into the abyss of loneliness, and now he had reached the bottom.

Luo Ji took a sip. Although he did his utmost to convince himself that the flavor was heavenly, in the end he did not have the guts to take a second sip.

But that one sip didn't let him go unscathed. That night he was sick out both ends until he spat up bile the color of the wine and his body was so weak he couldn't get out of bed. Later, after doctors and experts opened the cask lid, they found that it had a rather large brass label on the inside wall, as was the custom in those days. Over time there had been some sort of reaction between the normally peacefully coexisting copper and the wine, and some sort of substance had dissolved into the wine… When the cask was carried off, Luo Ji could see the schadenfreude on Kent's face.

But he had anticipated this moment, and he had been prepared. He was waiting for someone, and then the next step of the plan would begin. He was waiting for Da Shi.

Tyler stood holding an umbrella against the Kagoshima drizzle. Behind him, two meters away, stood defense chief Koichi Inoue, whose umbrella remained unopened. The past two days he had maintained the same separation from Tyler, both physically and mentally. They were at the Chiran Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots, and in front of them was a statue of a special attack unit next to a white plane, call sign 502. A light layer of rain painted the surface of the statue and the aircraft and made them deceptively lifelike.

"I strongly advise you not to speak of this to the media. It will cause trouble." Koichi Inoue's words were as icy as the rain.

"Is it still that sensitive, even today?"

"Isn't there any room for discussion of my proposal?" Tyler asked.

"What's sensitive isn't the history, but your proposal to restore the kamikaze special attack units. Why don't you do it in the US or some other place? Are the Japanese people the only ones in the world who can die out of duty?"

"In interplanetary war, does this mode of attack really have any significance? You should realize that victories for those special attack units were limited, and they didn't turn the tide of battle."

"Commander, sir, the space force I have established is a fleet of fighters equipped with super hydrogen bombs."

Tyler closed up his umbrella and drew closer to Koichi Inoue, who -- although he didn't recoil -- seemed to have a force field surrounding him that prevented Tyler from getting close. "I've never said that the future kamikaze forces would be made up only of Japanese members. It's an international force, but since it originated in your great country, isn't it only natural to revive it here?"

"Why do you need humans? Can't computer-controlled fighters get close enough to attack?"

This question seemed to give Tyler the opportunity he was waiting for, and he grew exited. "That's exactly the problem! Today's computers are unable to replace human brains, and advancements in fundamental theory would be necessary for quantum and other next-gen computers. But that's been locked up by the sophons. So four centuries from now, computing intelligence will still be limited, and human-controlled weapons will be indispensable… To tell you the truth, reviving the kamikaze squads only has moral significance now, because it will be ten generations before any of them go to their death. But establishing that spirit and faith means starting now!"

As Tyler walked in the sea breeze, his mind returned to a sentence from a suicide note from a kamikaze pilot to his mother that he had seen in the exhibit:

Koichi Inoue turned around to face Tyler for the first time. His wet hair was plastered against his forehead and the raindrops on his face looked like tears. "That approach violates the basic moral principles of modern society: Human lives come first, and the state and the government can't require any individual to take up a death mission. I seem to remember a line Yang Wen-li said in Legend of the Galactic Heroes: 'In this war lies the fate of the country, but what does it matter next to individual rights and freedoms? All of you just do your best.'"

Mom, I'm going to be a firefly.

Tyler sighed. "You know what? You have thrown away your most precious resource." Then he snapped open his umbrella and turned and walked angrily away. When he reached the gate of the memorial, he looked back and saw Koichi Inoue still standing in the rain before the statue.

"Totally different from today's nuclear bombs. Constructing its mathematical model might be more than a hundred times more complicated than today's bombs. This is an enormous undertaking."

"William Cosmo?"

"What do I need to do?"

"What's he going to do?"

"But he's… he's…"

"An astrophysicist. An authority on stars."

"That's what I'm gonna tell you. To your mind, a nuclear bomb is detonated and then explodes, but the actual process is more like burning. The greater the yield, the longer the combustion. A twenty-megaton nuclear explosion, for example, has a fireball that can last for over twenty seconds. The superbomb we're designing is two hundred megatons, and its fireball will burn for several minutes. Think about that. What will it look like?"

"Yes."

"It's worse than I imagined," Allen said to Rey Diaz. They were standing next to a black obelisk made of lava rock, the monument marking ground zero of humankind's first atom bomb.

"Is its structure really that different?" Rey Diaz asked.

"Cosmo's on your staff, right? Get him to come to my lab."

"A small sun."

"Don't be limited by planetary defense. Me and my colleagues in the lab are scientists, after all. Besides, this thing is not without practical significance. So long as you input the appropriate parameters, the star could be a model for our sun. Think about it. It's always useful to have the sun in your computer memory. It's the biggest presence that's close to us in the cosmos, but we could take more advantage of it. The model may have many more discoveries lying in wait."

"Correct! Its fusion structure is very like that of a star, and it reproduces stellar evolution over a very abbreviated period. So the mathematical model we need to construct is essentially the model of a star."

White sands stretched out in front of them. In the moments just before dawn, the details of the dark desert couldn't be made out. As they gazed at the scenery, they were involuntarily reminded of the basic setting of Three Body.

"I'm very excited, Mr. Rey Diaz. Please forgive me for our lack of enthusiasm at the start. Looking at the project now, the significance far exceeds the construction of a superbomb itself. Do you know what we're doing? We're creating a virtual star!"

Rey Diaz shook his head in disapproval. "What does that have to do with the defense of Earth?"

The rising sun was now just peeking its head over the horizon. The desert in front of them came into focus like a developing photograph, and Rey Diaz could see that this place, once blasted by the fires of hell, was now covered in sparse undergrowth.

Rey Diaz said, "One previous use of the sun is what brought humanity to the brink, and brought you and me to this place."

"But new discoveries might bring humanity back. So today, I've invited you here to watch the sunrise."

"Oppenheimer said that when he watched the first nuclear explosion. I think it's a quote from the Bhagavad Gita."

"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds," Allen exclaimed.

"What?" Rey Diaz whipped his head around, as if someone had shot him from behind.

The wheel in the east expanded rapidly, casting light across the Earth like a golden web. The same sun was there on that morning when Ye Wenjie had tuned the Red Shore antenna, and even before that, the same sun had shone upon the dust settling after the first bomb blast. Australopithecus a million years ago and the dinosaurs a hundred million years ago had turned their dull eyes upon this very sun, and even earlier than that, the hazy light that penetrated the surface of the primeval ocean and was felt by the first living cell was emitted by this same sun.

In the east, the sun rose in overarching solemnity, as if declaring to the world, "Everything is as fleeting as a shadow before me."

"What are you talking about?" Rey Diaz said. Watching the rising sun, his breathing became ragged.

"I'm thanking you, Mr. Rey Diaz, because from now on we're not sons of bitches."

Allen went on, "And then a man called Bainbridge followed up Oppenheimer's statement with something completely nonpoetic: 'Now we are all sons of bitches.'"

"Go, go to the car," he said weakly. He turned his head in the direction opposite the sun, and he raised his other hand to block the sunlight. He was unable to get up. Allen tried to assist but couldn't budge his stocky body. "Drive the car over…" Rey Diaz wheezed out, while pulling his hand back to cover his eyes. When Allen drove over to him, he had fallen to the ground. With difficulty, Allen helped him into the backseat. "Sunglasses. I need sunglasses…" He half-reclined into the backseat, his hands clawing at the air. Allen handed Rey Diaz a pair of sunglasses he found on the dashboard. After he put them on his breathing grew smoother. "I'm all right. Let's get out of here. Quickly," he said feebly.

"What's the matter, Mr. Rey Diaz?" Allen saw that Rey Diaz had fallen into a crouch, one hand on the ground, and was convulsing in dry heaves. His face had turned pale and was covered in a cold sweat, and he had no strength to move his hand from the clump of thorns it was pressing on.

"Uh… when did you start having this sort of reaction?"

"Just now."

"Yeah. You'll never find a plane as comfortable as that one we were on," Shi Qiang said as he appraised his surroundings.

"Can't you be any more romantic?"

"It's awful," Shi Qiang said, shaking his head. "Woods on three sides, so it's easy to hide close to the house. And there's a lake. With the shore this close to the house, it would be difficult to defend against divers coming from the woods on the other side. But the surrounding grassland is pretty good, and provides some open space."

"Not bad, eh?"

"What on earth happened? What's wrong?"

"I'm here to work, my boy."

"It's romantic work I'm thinking of." Luo Ji led Shi Qiang into the living room. He surveyed it, but did not seem much impressed by the luxury and elegance. Luo Ji poured him a drink in a crystal goblet, but Shi Qiang turned it down with a wave of his hand.

The peculiar phobia for the sun that afflicted Rey Diaz pushed him to the edge of mental and physical breakdown whenever he saw it and kept him confined indoors from then on.

"It might be the sun."

"Was the flight very long? You look like you don't have any energy," was the first thing Luo Ji said after Shi Qiang arrived.

"She's, well, she's Asian, so let's say Chinese." As Luo Ji spoke, he took out a paper and pencil. "Her face is like this. Her nose, like this. And her mouth… geez, I can't draw. And her eyes… damn it, how can I draw her eyes? Do you have one of those things, a piece of software that will let you pull up a face and then adjust the eyes and nose and so on according to the eyewitnesses description to come up with an accurate depiction of the person the witness saw?"

Luo Ji sipped his brandy and sat down next to him. "Da Shi, I'm asking you to do me a favor. In your old job, did you ever have to look across the entire country for a particular person, or even around the world?"

"Okay, so long as you know what she looks like."

"At finding people? Of course."

"Great. Help me find a person. A woman in her early twenties. This is part of the plan."

"Were you good at it?"

"What?"

"Nationality? Name? Address?"

Luo Ji nodded. "Daydreams, too."

"None. The possibility that she even exists in the world is low."

Shi Qiang looked at him, and after a few seconds said, "You dreamed her?"

"I can't drink right now… Tell me of this romantic work of yours."

"Yes."

Shi Qiang nodded, too, then said something Luo Ji had not expected him to say. "Okay."

"It's thirty-year-old aged brandy."

"Then get it out and let's draw!"

"Sure. I've got one right here on my laptop."

Something in Luo Ji's mind caught fire, and he stood up and began to pace restlessly in front of the fireplace. "She… how should I put it? She came into this world like a lily growing out of a rubbish heap, so… so pure and delicate, and nothing around her can contaminate her. But it can all harm her. Yes, everything around her can hurt her! Your first reaction when you see her is to protect her. No, to care for her, to let her know that you are willing to pay any price to shield her from the harm of a crude and savage reality. She… she's so… ah, I've got a clumsy tongue. I can't say anything clearly."

"It's always like that," Shi Qiang said with a laugh. His laugh, which had seemed crude and silly the first time Luo Ji heard it, felt full of wisdom now, and it soothed him. "But you've been clear enough."

Shi Qiang stretched out on the sofa and situated himself comfortably. "Not necessary. You don't need to draw her. Just keep talking. Put aside her appearance, and first talk about what sort of person she is."

Shi Qiang calmed him with a wave. "Forget it. Just talk about what happens when the two of you are together. The more detailed the better."

Luo Ji's eyes widened in amazement. "How did you know about the two of us?"

Shi Qiang laughed again. Then he looked around. "There wouldn't happen to be any cigars in this place, would there?"

"Yes, there are!" Luo Ji grabbed an elegant wooden box from the mantel, took out a thick Davidoff, and used an even more elegant guillotine-style cigar cutter to slice off the end. Then he passed it to Shi Qiang, and lit it for him with a cedar strip specially designed for cigars.

"Okay. Well, I'll go on, then. She… but what am I saying? No matter what I say, I can't express what she's like in my heart." He grew irritated, and seemed to want to tear out his heart to show to Shi Qiang.

Shi Qiang took a puff and nodded his head, pleased. "Go on."

Luo Ji overcame his earlier language barrier and grew garrulous. He described how she had come alive for the first time in the library, how she appeared in his classroom during lecture, how the two of them had met in front of the imaginary fireplace in his dormitory, the beauty of the firelight shining onto her face through the bottle of wine like the eyes of twilight. He recalled with pleasure their road trip, describing every last detail: the fields after the snow, the town and village under the blue sky, the mountains like old villagers basking in the sun, and the evening and bonfire at the foot of the mountain…

After he finished, Shi Qiang stubbed out his cigar. "Well, that's about enough. I'll guess a few things about the girl, and you see if I'm right."

Luo Ji nodded. "Yes, yes. She's knowledgeable, but not to the point where it calcifies her. It only makes her more sensitive to life and to the world."

"She was probably born into a highly educated family and lived a life that wasn't too rich but more affluent than most families. Growing up she enjoyed her parents' love, but she had little contact with the community, particularly the lower rungs of society."

"Now, if any of the following speculations are wrong, let me know. She likes to wear -- how would you put it -- simple, elegant clothing, a little plainer than other women her age." Luo Ji nodded dumbly, over and over. "But there's always something white, like a shirt or a collar, that contrasts sharply with the dark colors of the rest of the outfit."

"Great!"

"Education: She's got at least a bachelor's, but less than a doctorate."

"Right, absolutely right! She never told me about her family circumstances, or actually anything about herself, but I think that ought to be the case."

"Da Shi, you're…" Luo Ji said, admiration in his eyes, as he watched Shi Qiang speak.

Luo Ji was ready to fall on his knees before Shi Qiang. "Da Shi, I throw myself on the ground before you. You're the reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes!"

Brushing him aside, Shi Qiang went on, "Finally, she's not tall, one hundred and sixty centimeters or so, and her body is… well, I guess you could say slender, as if a gust of wind could blow her away, so she doesn't seem so short… I can come up with more, of course. Not far off, is it?"

That night, he brought the computer to Luo Ji. When the woman's portrait appeared onscreen, Luo Ji stared, not moving a muscle, like he had been struck by a curse. Shi Qiang had evidently expected this, and retrieved another cigar from the mantel, clipped it with the guillotine, lit it, and began to smoke. When he had taken a few puffs, he came back to find Luo Ji still staring at the screen.

Shi Qiang stood up. "Now I'll sketch her on the computer."

"Tell me what's off and I'll adjust it for you."

"Dream lovers are basically the same for men of a certain type."

"I thought so," Shi Qiang said, and closed the computer.

With difficulty, Luo Ji tore his gaze from the screen, stood up, and walked to the window, where he watched the moonlight shining on the distant snow peak. He murmured, dreamlike, "Nothing."

Shi Qiang sat down on the sofa, exhausted. "There's nothing supernatural about it. We're both men."

"Remember, you told me a lot of stuff."

Luo Ji turned to him. "But every man's dream lover is quite different!"

"Still, getting it so close should be impossible!"

Still gazing into the distance, Luo Ji uttered a phrase that others had used to evaluate Shi Qiang: "Da Shi, you're a devil."

Luo Ji walked over to the computer and opened it up again. "Send me a copy." Then, as Shi Qiang worked on copying the image, he asked, "Can you find her?"

"All I can say now is that it's quite likely. But I can't rule out not finding her."

"What?" Luo Ji's hands stopped their movements and he turned to look at Shi Qiang in astonishment.

"With this sort of thing, how can you guarantee one hundred percent success?"

"No, that's not what I mean. The total opposite, in fact. I thought you would say that it's practically impossible, but you wouldn't rule out a random, one-ten-thousandth of a percent chance of finding her. And if you had said that, I'd have been satisfied." He turned back to the picture on the screen, and murmured again, "Can such a person really exist in the world?"

Shi Qiang smiled scornfully. "Dr. Luo, how many people have you seen?"

"Not as many as you, of course, but I know that there's no perfect person in the world, much less a perfect woman."

"Like you said earlier, I'm often able to find a particular individual out of tens of thousands, and I can tell you from the experience of most of my life that there are all kinds of people out there. All kinds, my boy. Perfect people, perfect women. You just haven't met them."

"That's the first time I've heard anyone say that."

"It's because someone who's perfect in your mind isn't necessarily perfect in the minds of others. This girl of your dreams -- to me, she's got obvious, well, imperfections. So there's a good chance of finding her."

"Tell them that it's an important part of the Wallfacer Project and must be taken seriously."

"What? The PDC needs to find him…?" Kent groped for the Chinese term. "A dream lover? The guy's been indulged too much. I'm sorry. I can't pass along your request."

"But directors can search for an ideal actor out of tens of thousands of people and not find them in the end."

"Those directors can't match our professional search capabilities. We're not just looking at tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands or millions of people. The tools and techniques we use are more sophisticated than any director's. The computers at the police analysis center, say, can find a match out of upwards of a hundred million faces in just half a day… The only catch is that this is beyond the scope of my duties, so I'll need to report to the higher authorities first. If they approve and assign the task to me, then of course I'll do my best."

"Then you are in violation of the Wallfacer Project principle: No matter how incomprehensible a Wallfacer's order is, it must be reported and executed. Any veto belongs to the PDC."

Shi Qiang chuckled opaquely and then took his leave.

Shi Qiang shook his head. "I don't know." He raised a hand to stop Kent from arguing. "However, sir, that's just my ignorance, not the opinion of our superiors. This is the biggest difference between you and me: I'm just someone who faithfully carries out orders. You, you're someone who always has to ask why."

"It's not about right or wrong. If everyone had to be clear about why before they executed an order, then the world would have plunged into chaos long ago. Mr. Kent, you do outrank me, but when you get down to it, we're both people who carry out orders. We ought to understand that some things aren't for people like us to think over. It's enough to do our duty. If you can't do that, then I'm afraid you'll have a rough time."

"But we can't use society's resources to allow a person like him to live the life of an emperor! Mr. Shi, we haven't been working together long, but I really respect you. You're an experienced and insightful man, so tell me the truth. Do you really think Luo Ji is carrying out the Wallfacer Project?"

"Is that wrong?"

"Even if there were a template for a Wallfacer, Luo Ji is not entirely inconsistent with it."

"What should a Wallfacer look like?"

"But he's so… I mean… if he's just carefree like that, how does it relate to the Wallfacer Project?"

"That I am."

"What?" asked Kent, a little taken aback. "You're not saying that you see a certain amount of quality in him?"

"Well, damn it, what do you see?"

Kent was speechless for a moment.

"That's right. But Luo Ji's carefree. Nothing bothers him. Kent, old fellow, do you think what he's doing is easy? Open-mindedness, is what this is, and anyone who wants to do great things needs to be open-minded. Someone like you won't accomplish great things."

Shi Qiang clapped a hand to Kent's shoulder. "You, for example. If the Wallfacer mantle descended upon you, you would be an opportunistic hedonist just like him."

"I'd have broken down long before now."

"I'm already having a rough time! We just wasted gobs of money buying that sunken wine. I just think… look, does he look like a Wallfacer at all?"

Kent stared at Shi Qiang for a long moment, and at last shook his head, unsure whether or not he understood that last sentence. "Fine. I'll make the report. But can you let me see that dream lover of his first?"

"I've been explaining it all this time and you still don't get it? I said that I don't know. How do you know that what the guy's doing right now isn't part of the plan? Once again, this isn't something for you or I to judge. Taking a step back, even if we're correct in what we think,"-- Shi Qiang drew close to Kent and lowered his voice --"some things require time."

When he saw the woman on the screen, Kent's old face grew gentle for an instant. He rubbed his jaw and said, "Oh… my god. I don't believe for a moment that anyone like that exists, but I hope you find her soon."

"Colonel, do you find it a little abrupt for me to inspect the political and ideological work of your military in my capacity?" Tyler said when he met Zhang Beihai.

"No, Mr. Tyler. There's precedent for it. Rumsfeld once visited the Central Military Commission's Party School when I was studying there." Zhang Beihai lacked the curiosity, caution, and distance that Tyler had observed in the other officers. He appeared sincere, and that made the conversation easier.

"That's right. The US Space Force drew an even larger proportion from the navy than we did."

"You've got good English. You must be from the navy."

"I'm quite interested in your political and ideological work. I was hoping I could do some in-depth investigation."

Zhang Beihai clearly did not agree, but he laughed graciously. "The same soul is found throughout the different branches of the military. In every country's nascent space force, the military culture bears the imprint of its various branches."

"That venerable old branch of the services would never have imagined that its warships would be sailing into space… I'll be frank. When General Chang Weisi introduced you as the finest political cadre in the space force, I thought you would be army, because the army is the soul of your military."

"Not a problem at all. My superiors have instructed me to hold nothing back, within the scope of my work."

"Thank you!" Tyler hesitated before going on. "My purpose in this trip is to obtain an answer. I'd like to ask you first."

"A wide range of time, from perhaps ancient Greece through the Second World War. What's key is the spiritual commonalities I mentioned: duty and honor above all, and, in time of need, to unhesitatingly lay down one's life. You may have noticed that after the Second World War, this spirit vanished from the military in democratic and authoritarian countries alike."

"Of course. Go ahead."

"What do you mean by 'past'?"

"Colonel, do you believe that we can restore the spirit of armies of the past?"

"The army is drawn from society, so it would mean that the past spirit you speak of would need to be restored throughout society."

Zhang Beihai considered this for a moment, then said, "This is a profound question, but I think that society has grown up and can never return to its childhood. In the four hundred years that led to the formation of modern society, we see no cultural or mental preparation for this sort of crisis."

"Our views agree on this point."

"But, Mr. Tyler, that is impossible."

"Why? We have four hundred years. In the past, human society used exactly that amount of time to evolve from the era of collective heroism to one of individualism, so why can't we use the same amount of time to evolve back?"

"Didn't you just say we have four hundred years? If we can't go backward, then we must move resolutely forward."

Tyler passed a sentry as he left the space force headquarters. When their eyes met, the sentry greeted him with a shy smile. It was something he hadn't seen in other countries' militaries, whose sentries stared intently straight ahead. Looking at the young man's face, Tyler once again repeated that line to himself:

Zhang Beihai's answer was opaque. Tyler obtained nothing else from the ensuing conversation but a feeling that the man's thoughts went deeper than a brief visit could reveal.

"Then from what do you draw your confidence? As far as I'm aware, you are a committed triumphalist. How will a space fleet brimming with defeatism face a powerful enemy?"

It began to rain that evening for the first time since Luo Ji had arrived at the estate, and the living room was quite cold. He sat beside the unlit fireplace and listened to the rain outside, feeling that the house was located on a lonely island in the middle of a dark ocean. He wrapped himself in the boundless solitude. With Shi Qiang gone, he had been restlessly waiting, and this lonely wait was itself a kind of happiness. Then he heard a car pull up to the porch and caught snatches of conversation. The soft, gentle voice of a woman saying "Thank you" and "Good-bye" jolted him like an electric shock.

Mom, I'm going to be a firefly.

Two years ago, he had heard the same sound day and night in his dreams. The ethereal sound, a wisp of gossamer floating through the blue sky, brought a fleeting sunshine to the gloomy evening.

Then there was a light knock at the door. He sat stiffly in place and only after a long while did he finally open his mouth and say, "Come in." The door opened. A slender figure floated in on a breath of rain. The sole light in the living room was a floor lamp with an old-fashioned lampshade that cast a circle of illumination beside the fireplace but lit the rest of the room only dimly. Luo Ji couldn't make out her face, but noticed that she wore white trousers and a dark jacket that stood in stark contrast to her white collar and made him think of lilies.

"Hello, Mr. Luo," she said.

"Hello," he said, standing up. "Is it cold outside?"

"Not in the car." Although he couldn't see her clearly, he knew she was smiling. "But here"-- she looked around her --"here it's a little cold… Er, I'm Zhuang Yan, Mr. Luo."

"Hello, Zhuang Yan. Let's light the fireplace."

And so Luo Ji knelt down and put some of the neatly stacked fruitwood into the fireplace. He said, "Have you ever seen one before? Here, come have a seat."

She came over and sat on the sofa, still in the shadows. "Oh… only in the movies."

Luo Ji struck a match and lit the fire-starter under the wood pile. The flame stretched like it was alive, and the woman gradually took shape in its soft golden glow. Luo Ji gripped tightly to the match with two fingers as it burnt down. He needed the pain to tell him this wasn't a dream. It was like he had ignited the sun, which now shone on a dreamworld-turned-reality. Outside, the sun could remain forever hidden by clouds and night, so long as his world had her and the firelight in it.

Da Shi, you really are a devil. Where did you find her? How the hell were you able to find her?

Luo Ji looked away, back into the fire, and tears came unbidden to his eyes. This made him a little scared to look at her, until he realized there was no reason to hide -- she would probably think it was the smoke that made him cry. He rubbed his tears away with a hand.

She smiled at him. "My name is the 'yan' that means color, not dignity."

Looking at her innocently holding the wineglass stirred the most delicate parts of his mind. She drank when invited. She trusted the world and had no wariness about it at all. Yes, everything in the world was lying in wait to hurt her, except here. She needed to be cared for here. This was her castle.

"It's not…" He thought about her name. "It's not 'dignified' enough for you?"

"It's not the same."

"It's not the same as you imagined?"

"Why is it like this?" She looked up and glanced around the dim living room a second time.

"Oh, I see. Perhaps you think there ought to be lots of maps, and a large screen, and clusters of uniformed generals, and I'd be here pointing at things with a stick?"

Her words and her smile made Luo Ji's heart tremble.

She nodded. "Okay." She accepted the goblet with a quiet "Thank you," and took a small sip.

"That's it exactly, Mr. Luo." Delighted, her smile blossomed like a rose in bloom.

Luo Ji stood up. "You must be tired from the journey. Have some tea." He hesitated. "Or would you care for some wine? It'll ward off the cold."

"It's really warm, and nice…" she said with a smile as she watched the flames.

"I really don't know where we are. The land looks like Scandinavia. I could call and ask right now." He reached for the phone next to the sofa.

"What did you study?"

He sat down and looked at her, and then said, as calmly as he could, "What did they tell you before you came?"

"Traditional painting, at the Central Academy of Fine Arts."

"Ah. Have you graduated?"

"That I'd be coming to work, of course." She flashed him that innocent smile that dashed his heart to pieces. "Mr. Luo, what will I be working on?"

"Yes. I just graduated, and have been looking for work while I prepare for grad school."

She nodded and chuckled to herself, clearly not believing him.

"I don't know. There was a lot of fog when I came from the airport, and then it got dark, so I couldn't see anything… Mr. Luo, where is this?"

"I don't know either."

Luo Ji considered this for a while, but he couldn't come up with anything for her to do. "Well, as for work, we'll talk about that tomorrow. You must be tired. First you must sleep well… Do you like it here?"

"The eyes of twilight, no?"

The next morning, after the rain had cleared, Luo Ji felt as if God had washed out this Garden of Eden to prepare for Zhuang Yan's arrival. When she saw its true appearance for the first time, what Luo Ji heard was not the squeals and fussing and exclamations that young women like her usually made. No, in the face of such a magnificent vista, she fell into an awed and breathless state and was unable to speak even one word of praise. He could tell that she was far more sensitive to natural beauty than other women.

My god, he exclaimed to himself.

All of a sudden, she exclaimed, "Mr. Luo, look at how lovely the wine is in the firelight."

"Why?"

"Well, I think it looks like eyes."

"What do you think it looks like?" he asked nervously.

The wine, soaked in the light of the fire, shone with a glistening crimson found only in dreams.

"Once you know, the world turns narrow."

"Dawn or twilight? You prefer twilight, do you?"

"The eyes of twilight? That's a marvelous way to put it, Mr. Luo."

"That's right. How did you know? I love painting the twilight." Her eyes shone crystalline in the firelight, as if asking, What's wrong with that?

"No, don't, Mr. Luo. It's nice not knowing."

"Why's that?"

She stared speechless at the distant snow peak, and it was some time before she recovered her senses. "Oh, yes. But if I'd grown up here, I probably wouldn't."

"So you really like to paint?" he asked.

"That's true. When the beauty in your imagination becomes reality, it's really…" He trailed off, and glanced at Zhuang Yan against the sunrise, the angel who had stepped out of his dream. The happiness in his heart rippled like the waves on the lake sparkling in the light. The UN and the PDC never imagined that this would be a consequence of the Wallfacer Project. If he died now, he wouldn't care.

"I've imagined lots of wonderful places, and when I paint them it's like I've been there. But this place has everything from my dreams and imagination, so what would a painting do?"

"Mr. Luo, if it rained so much yesterday, why hasn't the snow on that mountain been washed away?" she asked.

"The rain fell below the snowline. That mountain has snow year-round. The climate here is very different from back in China."

"What about work?" Zhuang Yan tore her eyes from the mountain and looked at Luo Ji.

"Then let's go."

"Well…" She tilted her head, giving his heart a jolt. The naïve expression was one he had seen on her countless times before. "Mr. Luo, I've got to know what it is I'm doing."

"Great! Then we should be off, shouldn't we?"

"Really? When?" she exclaimed in excitement.

He looked into the distance and thought for a few seconds, then said with finality, "I'll tell you when we've reached the mountain."

They walked to the end of the pier. Luo Ji noted that the wind was favorable, so they could take the sailboat. The direction would change at night so they would be able to catch it again coming back. He took her by the hand to help her into the boat. It was the first time he had touched her, and her hands were exactly like the ones he had first clasped on that winter night in his imagination, so soft and cool. She was pleasantly surprised when he raised the white spinnaker. When the boat left the pier, she plunged a hand into the water.

She nodded.

"We can set off now. There's a simple roadway that runs to the foot of the mountain, and if we go now, we can be back by evening."

"Right. It's easier if we take the boat to the other side of the lake and then drive from there."

"No. I haven't been here very long." He noticed that the girl's eyes never left the mountain. "Do you like snowcaps?"

"Have you been to the mountain?"

"Work can be set aside for now. You just arrived," he said perfunctorily.

"The lake water is very cold," he said.

"Mr. Luo, are you aware of the difference between traditional painting and oil painting? Oil paintings are brimming with rich colors. A master once said that in oil painting, white is as precious as gold. But it's different with traditional painting. There's lots and lots of blank space, and blank space forms the painting's eyes. The scenery is just the border for that blank space. Look at that snowy peak. Doesn't it look like the blank space in a traditional painting?" This was the most she had ever said to him. She lectured the Wallfacer, pouring out words and turning him into an ignorant schoolboy, without any sense of being out of line.

"I like traditional painting."

"What's that got to do with snowcaps?"

Like your eyes, he said to himself. "Why do you like snowcaps?"

You're like the blank space in a traditional painting: pure, but to a mature appreciation, infinitely appealing, he thought as he looked at her.

"But it's so clean and clear!"

The boat docked at a pier on the opposite shore, where an open-top Jeep was parked next to the trees. The driver who had parked it there was gone.

"Is this a military car? I saw troops around when I arrived, and had to go past three sentry points," she said as they got into the car.

Everything about their surroundings was completely remote from Mount Taihang and the snowy northern China plains, but his dreams from that trip were so seamlessly connected to today's reality that he found it hard to believe that it was actually happening to him.

"That doesn't matter. They won't bother us," he said, starting the engine.

He turned to look at Zhuang Yan and found her looking back at him. She had been for a long time, it seemed. The look in her eyes was one of slight curiosity mixed with goodwill and innocence. Sunbeams flickered over her face and body. When she saw Luo Ji looking at her, she did not turn away.

The road passing through the forest was narrow and rough, but the car drove smoothly on it. In the forest, where the morning mist had not yet lifted, the sun penetrated the tall pines with shafts of light, and even through the engine sound they could hear the calls of birds in the trees. A sweet breeze whipped up Zhuang Yan's hair and tossed it about on Luo Ji's face, and the itching made him think of the winter road trip two years ago.

"Mr. Luo, do you really have the ability to defeat the aliens?" she asked.

"But why were you chosen?"

He was completely overcome by her childlike nature. The question was one that no one but her would ever ask a Wallfacer, and they had known each other so briefly.

That question was even more abrupt and outrageous than the previous one, but it sounded natural coming from Zhuang Yan's lips, because in her transparent heart, every sunbeam was transmitted and refracted with crystalline clarity.

"That's your duty."

"Zhuang Yan, the core meaning of the Wallfacer Project is to encapsulate humanity's real strategy in the mind of one person, the only place in the world that's safe from sophon spying. They had to choose a few people, but that doesn't mean those people are supermen. Superman doesn't exist."

Luo Ji slowed the car to a stop. She looked at him in surprise as he stared straight ahead at the patches of sun on the roadway.

"Wallfacers are the most untrustworthy people in history. The world's greatest liars."

She nodded. "Mr. Luo, please continue. I believe you."

He nodded. "But, Zhuang Yan, I'm going to tell you the truth. Please believe me."

He was silent for a long while, increasing the weight of the words he then uttered. "I don't know why I was chosen." He turned to her. "I'm just an ordinary man."

She nodded again. "It must be very hard."

They drove on in silence, until the trees grew sparse and the deep blue sky emerged overhead.

Those words and Zhuang Yan's look of innocence again brought tears to his eyes. It was the first time he had received such an acknowledgement since becoming a Wallfacer. The girl's eyes were his paradise, and in that clear gaze he saw no trace of the expression that everyone else directed at the Wallfacers. Her smile was paradise for him, too. It wasn't the Wallfacer smile, but a pure, innocent smile, like a sun-drenched dewdrop falling softly into the driest part of his soul.

"It'll be hard, but I'd like to make it easier… That's all. Here endeth the truth. We now return to the Wallfacer state," he said, as he restarted the engine.

"I got irradiated on a previous mission and then got ill last year."

"Fine. Excellent. Wonderful. Thank you!"

"And that over there looks like deer!" He pointed, fast enough to distract her attention, because he knew that the object in the sky wasn't an eagle but a circling sentry drone. This reminded him of Shi Qiang. He took out his phone and dialed.

"Final mission? Where are you?"

"That's good. So it turns out I've completed my final mission."

"With this sort of thing, delay isn't relevant. Who knows what medicine will be like in the future?"

"Back home. I'm getting ready for hibernation."

"Er… when did this happen?"

Luo Ji slammed his foot down on the brakes and stopped short. Zhuang Yan yelped. He looked at her in concern, but, seeing that nothing was wrong, he resumed talking to Shi Qiang.

"Mr. Luo, look at that eagle!" Zhuang Yan shouted.

"My god! I didn't delay you, did I?"

Shi Qiang answered. "Hey, brother Luo. So now you remember me, eh? First, tell me: How's Yan Yan doing?"

"What?"

"I've got leukemia. I'm going to the future to cure it."

After a lengthy silence, Shi Qiang said, "'Three things are unfilial, and having no issue is the greatest.' Brother Luo, the lineage of the Shi family four hundred years from now is in your hands."

"He said you were doing the most important thing in the world, and he asked me to help you."

"Please."

"You were talking to Uncle Shi?" Zhuang Yan asked.

"Oh… Did he say anything to you?"

"I'm truly sorry, Da Shi."

Now the forest had entirely disappeared, leaving only grassland between them and the mountain. In silver and green, the composition of the world had turned simple and pure, and, to Luo Ji's mind, more and more like the girl sitting beside him. He noticed a hint of melancholy in her eyes, and he became aware that she was sighing softly.

"Oh, it doesn't matter. It's all part of the job. I didn't bother you about it because I figured we would be able to meet again sometime. But I'd like to tell you something in case we can't."

"Yes. Did you meet him?"

The call disconnected. Luo Ji looked up at the sky, where the drone had disappeared. The empty blue wash of the sky was his heart.

"I met him. He's a nice man. The day I left he accidentally broke the skin on his hand and it wouldn't stop bleeding. It was pretty scary."

"I don't think they appreciate beauty."

"My dad said that people who are sensitive to beauty are good by nature, and if they're not good, then they can't appreciate beauty."

He was about to say that the possibility of that was practically nil, but he controlled himself, and said, "Could I what?"

"Perhaps."

"Yan Yan, their approach to humans is a rational choice. It's the responsible thing to do for the survival of their species, and has nothing to do with good or evil."

"It's such a beautiful world, but when you think about how someday there may be no one here to see it, it's quite sad."

"That's the first I've heard of it. Mr. Luo, you're going to see them, aren't you?"

"Why do you have to drive them out into space to die? Give them a plot of land, and let them coexist with us? Wouldn't that be wonderful?"

"Won't the aliens be here?"

"Why?"

"If they're really like you say, and you defeat them in the Doomsday Battle, then, well, could you…" She tilted her head to look at him, and hesitated.

"Yan Yan, what's wrong?" he asked. It was the first time he had called her that, but he thought, If Da Shi can call her that, why can't I?

Zhuang Yan looked up nervously. "Oh, right. There must be tons of sophons around us."

"It might have been the Trisolar High Consul himself who heard you."

"You, except that you're not enough. Or, rather, there aren't enough people like you. If a third of humanity was like you, then Trisolaris might negotiate with us about the possibility of coexisting on the world. But now…" He let out a long sigh.

Luo Ji dealt silently with his emotions for a moment, then pointed up to the sky and said, "Yan Yan, I'm not the only one who heard what you just said."

"Me?" She burst out laughing.

"And you're all laughing at me, aren't you?"

"No. Yan Yan, do you know what I'm thinking right now?" He had a strong impulse to take hold of her slender left hand, which was lying next to the steering wheel, but he controlled himself. "I'm thinking that the person who might actually have a chance of saving the world is you."

Zhuang Yan flashed a helpless smile. "Mr. Luo, it hasn't been easy for me. Going out into the world after graduation, I was like a fish swimming into the sea, where the water was muddy and I couldn't see anything at all. I wanted to swim to clearer waters, but all that swimming got tiring…"

The road began to climb the mountain, and as the altitude increased, the vegetation grew sparse, exposing the naked black rock. For one stretch of road, they seemed to be driving on the surface of the moon. But soon they crossed the snowline and were surrounded by white, and a crisp chill filled the air. He grabbed down jackets from the travel bag in the backseat, and they put them on and continued ahead.

The sun had started its descent, casting shadows around them on the snowy slope. The pure snow was pale blue in color, almost weakly fluorescent. The jagged peaks in the distance were still lit and shone silver in all directions, a light that seemed to issue from the snow itself, as if it was this mountain and not the sun that had been illuminating the world all along.

Before long they reached a roadblock, a conspicuous sign in the middle of the road that warned, DANGER: AVALANCHE SEASON. ROAD AHEAD CLOSED. So they got out of the car and walked to the snow at the roadside.

I wish I could help you swim to those waters, he said to himself.

Zhang Yan drank in the white world around her. "Mr. Luo, I actually did do a painting like this once. From a distance, it was a white sheet of paper, almost entirely blank, but closer in you would see fine reeds in the lower left corner, and in the upper right the traces of a disappearing bird. In the blank center, two infinitesimally tiny people… It's the painting I'm proudest of."

"Okay, now the painting's entirely blank," he said, sweeping his hands about him.

She nodded, but looked anxious.

She nodded nervously. "Yes, I understand." Then she laughed and shook her head. "I mean, I get it."

"You know about the Wallfacer Project, and you know that its success relies on its incomprehensibility. At its highest level, no one on Earth or Trisolaris, apart from the Wallfacer himself, understands it. So, Zhuang Yan, no matter how inexplicable you find your work, it definitely has meaning. Don't try to understand it. Just do it as best you can."

"I can imagine it. It must be magnificent… So, Zhuang Yan, now that we're in this blank world, are you interested in learning about your job?"

Looking at her amid the snow, the whiteness lost all dimension, and the world faded around her, leaving her its only presence. Two years before, when the literary image he had created had come to life in his imagination, he had tasted love. Now, in the blank space of this grand natural painting, he understood love's ultimate mystery.

"Zhuang Yan, your work is to make yourself happy."

Her eyes widened.

Luo Ji grew animated. "Whatever you want to! Tomorrow, or when we go back tonight, you can go wherever you want and do whatever you wish, and live life as you please. As a Wallfacer, I can help you realize all of it."

"You must become the happiest woman on Earth. This is part of the Wallfacer plan."

The light of the peak that illuminated their world was reflected in her eyes, and complex feelings drifted across the purity of her gaze. The snowy peak absorbed all sound from the outside world, and he waited patiently in the silence, until finally she said, in a voice that seemed to come from a great distance, "Then… what should I do?"

"That's not possible. Everyone needs something! Aren't young people always chasing after something?"

"But I…" She looked at him helplessly. "Mr. Luo, I… I don't need anything."

She laughed, as if Luo Ji had turned into a foolish child. "Mr. Luo, I paint for myself. I've never thought about that stuff."

"Ah, yes. A carefree young woman like you might not need to. But you've got to have a dream, at least. You like painting, so have you ever thought of having an individual exhibition at the world's largest gallery or art museum?"

"Have I ever chased after anything?" She slowly shook her head. "No, I don't think so."

"Well then. You must have dreamed of love," he said without hesitation. "You've got the means now, so why not go find it?"

"True." He calmed himself down and nodded. "Then, how about this: Don't think long term, just think about tomorrow. Tomorrow, you know? Where do you want to go tomorrow? What do you want to do? What will make you happy tomorrow? You're able to come up with something, surely."

The sunset was draining its light from the snowy peak. Zhuang Yan's eyes darkened, and her expression softened. She said gently, "Mr. Luo, that's not something you can go in search of."

"Of course. Tell me."

She thought earnestly for a while, and finally said, hesitantly, "If I tell you, can you really make it happen?"

"Then, Mr. Luo, can you take me to the Louvre?"

When Tyler removed the blindfold, his eyes weren't adjusted to the light and he had to squint. Despite the bright lights affixed to the rock walls of this mountain cave, it was dark here -- quite dark, in fact -- because the light was absorbed by the walls. He smelled antiseptic, and noticed the cave was set up like a field hospital, with lots of open aluminum cases containing neatly packed drugs, as well as oxygen tanks, small UV disinfectant cabinets, mobile shadowless operating lamps, and several portable medical devices that looked like X-ray machines and defibrillators. It looked like it had just been unpacked and could be re-boxed at any time. Tyler saw two assault rifles hanging on a rock wall, but their similarity in color to the rock behind made them easy to miss. A stony-faced man and woman walked past him. They weren't in white lab coats, but they were definitely a doctor and a nurse.

Tyler spat inwardly. "Damn it to hell. How did it come to this?"

Man truly was a peculiar animal.

The bed, near the cave entrance, was a sea of white: the curtains behind it, the old man under the bedsheets, the old man's long beard, the scarf around his head, and even his face -- all white. The light in that area was more like candlelight, obscuring some of the whiteness and casting a weak golden sheen across the remainder, turning the place into a classical oil painting of a saint.

As he walked over to the bed, he tried to overcome the pain in his hip and inner thigh by adopting a stately, steady pace. He stopped at the bedside, before the man that he and his government had dreamed of finding for so many years. He could hardly believe he was real. He looked at the old man's pale face, and it was like the media always said: This was the kindliest face in the world.

"I'm honored to meet you," Tyler said with a slight bow.

"As am I," the old man said politely. He didn't move, but while his voice was reed-thin, it could render power inert but never snap, like spider silk. The old man gestured to the end of the bed, and Tyler sat down gingerly, not knowing whether or not it was intended as kindness. There was no chair, after all. The old man said, "You must be tired. Was it your first time on a mule?"

The old man slowly shook his head. "Surely you can see that I don't have long to live." A playful light suddenly entered his deep eyes. "You're about the least likely person to want me to die of illness. I am truly sorry."

"Ah, no. I rode one when I visited the Grand Canyon." Although his legs hadn't hurt so much back then. "Are you doing well?"

The irony in this last sentence pricked Tyler, but it was the truth. One of his greatest fears had once been that the man would die of illness or old age. The secretary of defense had prayed on many an occasion that an American cruise missile or Special Forces bullet would drop on the man's head before he died of natural causes, even if it happened just a minute before death. Natural death would be the man's greatest triumph, and mark the failure of the war on terror. Even now, the man was edging close to glory. There had been opportunities, of course: Once a Predator drone had snapped his picture in the courtyard of a mosque in the mountains of northern Afghanistan. Simply crashing the drone into him would have made history, not to mention the fact that it had been carrying Hellfire missiles that day. But the young officer on duty lacked the courage to make a unilateral decision once he made the positive ID. Instead, he had reported it up the command chain, and when they checked again the target was gone. Tyler, roused from his bed, had erupted in anger and shattered a precious piece of Chinese porcelain he had at home.

With effort, the old man reached out a hand as thin as kindling and plucked out the bottommost volume. "Ah, I've only read the first trilogy. I had someone buy the others, but I never had the time to read them, and then I lost them… Excellent, thank you. I like them very much."

The same playful light returned to the old man's eyes. "Oh? What do I need to do?"

Tyler wanted to avoid the awkward subject, so he brought out his briefcase and set it on the bed. "I have a small gift for you," he said, opening the case. He took out a set of hardcover books. "This is the latest Arabic version."

The old man set the book gently to one side and smiled. "Let it stay a legend. You have your wealth and technology. Legends are all we have."

"Let your organization be preserved."

"There's a legend that says you named your organization after these novels."

"Preserved until when?"

Tyler picked up the book the old man had set down, and faced him like a pastor holding a Bible. "I've come to make you into Seldon."

"Until four centuries from now. Until the Doomsday Battle."

Tyler stood up excitedly from the bed. "That depends on what you need. So long as you can ensure the preservation of your organization, I can give you anything."

"Yes, if it continues to develop. Let its soul and spirit permeate the space force so that your organization will be part of it forever."

"And you think that's possible?"

"And you value that so highly because?" The sarcasm in the old man's voice grew stronger.

"Because it's one of the few armed forces available to humanity that uses lives as a weapon. You know, fundamental science has been frozen by the sophons, and this imposes corresponding limitations on advances in computer science and artificial intelligence. In the Doomsday Battle, space fighters will still be piloted by humans, and that requires an army who possesses that spirit. Ball lightning requires a close-range attack."

"What else have you brought with you besides those books?"

The old man motioned for Tyler to sit down. "I sympathize with you. After so many years, you still don't know what our needs truly are."

"You can tell me."

"Weapons? Money? No, no. What we need is far more precious. The organization doesn't exist because of Seldon's ambitious goals. You can't get a sane, rational person to believe in and die for that. It exists because it possesses something, something that's its air and blood, and without which the organization would wither away immediately."

"As for Seldon, I'd say his plan is an impossible one."

Tyler was silent.

"What's that?"

"Hatred."

Tyler remained silent.

"On the one hand, thanks to our common enemy, our hatred of the West has faded. On the other, the human race that the Trisolarans want to wipe out includes the hated West, so to us, perishing together would be a joy. So we don't hate the Trisolarans." The old man spread his hands. "You see, hatred is a treasure more precious than gold or diamonds, and a weapon keener than any in the world, but now it's gone. It's not yours to give back. So the organization, like me, does not have long to live."

Tyler let out a sigh and sat back down on the bed. "You mean you've read the ending?"

"Ah, the wise always die young. May he find heaven, whichever one it is…"

The old man raised an eyebrow in surprise. "No, I haven't read it. That's just what I think. What? Does the Seldon Plan fail in the book? The author is an exceptional man, if that's the case. I'd imagined he wrote a happy ending, may Allah protect him."

For most of the way back, Tyler was not blindfolded, giving him the opportunity to see the steep, barren mountains of Afghanistan. The young man who led his mule even trusted him enough to leave his assault rifle hanging from the saddle, right next to Tyler's hand.

"Have you killed anyone with that gun?" he asked.

"Asimov's been dead for many years."

Luo Ji and Zhuang Yan walked toward the main entrance of the Louvre at ten P. M. Kent had advised them to visit at night to facilitate more convenient security.

The young man looked up questioningly at Tyler. He had no beard on his childlike face, and his eyes were as clear as the blue sky of western Asia.

The young man didn't understand, but an older, unarmed man riding next to them answered for him. "No. There hasn't been any fighting for a long time."

The first thing they saw was the glass pyramid, shielded from the nighttime din of Paris by the U-shaped palace building, and standing quietly under the watery moonlight as if it were made of silver.

"Mr. Luo, don't you get the feeling that it flew in from outer space?" Zhuang Yan asked, pointing to the pyramid.

"At first it feels a little out of place, but the more you look at it, the more it seems to be an integral part of the place."

"Everyone has that feeling," Luo Ji said.

Their first destination was the largest exhibition hall. It was two hundred meters long and softly lit, and their footsteps echoed down the emptiness. Luo Ji quickly realized that it was only his footsteps echoing, for Zhuang Yan walked lightly on catlike steps, like a child in a fairy tale who enters a magic castle and is afraid of waking what slumbers there. He slowed his pace -- not for the artwork, which didn't interest him at all, but to let the distance between them grow and allow him to appreciate her among this world of art, gazing upon the beauty of this Eastern woman along with the full-figured Greek gods, angels, and the Blessed Virgin in the surrounding classical oil paintings. Like the glass pyramid in the courtyard, she soon blended into the environment and became part of the sacred realm of art. Without her, this place would be missing something. In a reverie or a dream or a vision, he let time pass by quietly.

The meeting of two vastly different worlds, Luo Ji thought, but did not say.

Then the whole pyramid lit up, turning from moonlit silver to a brilliant gold. At the same time the fountains came on in the surrounding pools, sending tall columns of water and light skyward. Zhuang Yan glanced at Luo Ji in alarm, unsettled by the Louvre's awakening at their arrival. Accompanied by water sounds, they made their way down the pyramid into the Hall Napoléon, and then into the palace.

"Really."

"I know," was her simple reply, but her eyes said, What should I do? Then she turned her attention to the paintings. In all this time she had seen only five of them.

"No. But I went to the Centre Pompidou when I came to Paris three years ago. At first I thought you would be more interested in going there."

"I don't like it too old. I just like the paintings of the Renaissance."

"It doesn't matter, Yan Yan. I can look at them with you every night for a year." The words slipped out.

"I've heard that with a trained eye, it would take you a whole year to see all of the pieces here," he said.

She turned to look at him, visibly excited. "Really?"

"Well… Mr. Luo, have you ever been here before?"

She shook her head. "I don't like modern art."

"Then, all this --" He glanced around at the gods, angels, and Blessed Virgin. "You don't think it's too old?"

After a time, Zhuang Yan finally remembered Luo Ji's presence and flashed a smile back at him. His heart quaked at what felt to him like a bolt of light sent to the mortal realm from a painting of Mount Olympus.

"You mean, in the Trisolar Crisis?"

"But they don't feel old to me. Those painters were the first to discover human beauty, and they painted God as a pleasing person. Looking at these works, you can sense their joy in painting, the same joy I felt when I first saw the lake and the snow peak."

She smiled a smile tinged with sadness, clearly understanding the meaning behind Luo Ji's consoling words. "I'm just thinking: After doomsday, what will happen to these paintings and artworks?"

Looking at her innocent eyes, he smiled wryly to himself. Silly kid, you talk about art, but if humanity does manage to survive, regressing to a primitive society would be a small price to pay. But he said, "When that time comes, there may be a second Renaissance, and you could rediscover forgotten beauty and paint it."

"Those are pretty old, too."

"That's good, but the humanistic spirit pioneered by the Renaissance masters has become a stumbling block."

"And art will enter a long winter's night, right?"

"Yes. You must have seen what's been happening lately. Four centuries from now, the post-disaster world might return to the Middle Ages, with humanity once again subjected to extreme repression."

"You're worried about that?" he asked. When she mentioned doomsday, his heart ached, but if his last attempt at comfort had failed, he was confident that he would succeed this time. So he took her hand and said, "Come on, let's go to the Asian Art exhibit."

Before the pyramid lobby was built, the Louvre was a giant maze. Getting to any particular gallery meant a long and winding detour. But now you could go directly from the Hall Napoléon beneath the pyramid to any point in the museum. Luo Ji and Zhuang Yan returned to the entrance hall, followed the signs leading to the Arts of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas, and wound up in an entirely different world from the galleries of classical European paintings.

Luo Ji pointed out the sculptures, paintings, and old documents from Asia and Africa, and said, "These were taken by an advanced civilization from a backward one. Some were looted, others were stolen or defrauded, but look at them now: They're all well preserved. Even during the Second World War, these objects were transferred to a safe place." They stood before a Dunhuang mural sealed in a glass case. "Think about how much turmoil and war that land of ours has seen since the time Abbot Wang gave these to the Frenchman. If the murals were left there, can you be certain they would have been this well preserved?"

"No, what?"

"Because they said we're bugs? But that's not what that means. Yan Yan, do you know what the greatest expression of regard for a race or civilization is?"

"Do you know who I'm thinking of here?" Luo Ji stood beside a glass case containing the golden mask of a mummified pharaoh and tried out a lighter topic of conversation. "Sophie Marceau."

They passed silently through the twenty-four galleries housing Asian art, walking through the distant past while imagining a gloomy future. Without realizing it, they reached the Egyptian Antiquities gallery.

"Annihilation. That's the highest respect a civilization can receive. They would only feel threatened by a civilization they truly respect."

For some reason, right or wrong, Luo Ji sensed traces of jealousy and offense in her voice.

"Because of Belphegor, Phantom of the Louvre, right? Sophie Marceau is gorgeous. She's got Eastern looks, too."

"Yan Yan, she's not as beautiful as you. That's the truth." He also wanted to say, One might be able to find her beauty among these works of art, but yours eclipses them, but he didn't want to come off as sarcastic. The hint of a shy smile flitted across her face like a cloud, the first time he had seen this smile he remembered from his dreams.

"But will the Trisolarans preserve humanity's cultural heritage? They have no regard for us at all."

"I'm one of the great uncultured."

"All of us?"

They arrived at the mysterious smile, which was behind a thick wall of protective glass and much smaller than Luo Ji had imagined. Even Zhuang Yan didn't seem particularly excited.

"Let's go back to the oil paintings," she said softly.

"Because tourists come for those two objects but have no interest in less famous but equally great works of art."

They returned to the Hall Napoléon, but forgot which entrance to use. The most visible signs pointed to the three jewels of the palace: the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Winged Victory.

"Why was that?"

As they headed in that direction, she said, "Our teacher said that after he visited the Louvre, he was a little disgusted with the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo."

"Seeing her reminds me of all of you," she said, pointing at the figure in the painting.

"Let's see the Mona Lisa," he suggested.

"What's she got to do with the Wallfacers?"

"The Wallfacers, of course."

"Well, I wonder -- and this is just speculation, so don't laugh -- I wonder whether we could find a form of communication that only humans can comprehend, but which the sophons never will. That way, humanity can be free of sophon monitoring."

"So is it possible to create a language of expressions and then speak with the face and the eyes?"

Luo Ji looked at her for several seconds, and then stared at the Mona Lisa. "I get what you mean. Her smile is something that the sophons and the Trisolarans will never understand."

"That's right. Human expressions, and people's eyes in particular, are subtle and complex. A gaze or a smile can transmit so much information! And only humans can understand that information. Only humans have that sensitivity."

Luo Ji thought this over seriously, then shook his head with a smile. He pointed at the Mona Lisa. "We can't even read her expression. When I stare at her, the meaning of her smile changes every second and never repeats itself."

"True. One of the biggest problems in artificial intelligence is identifying facial and eye expressions. Some experts even say that computers may never be able to read the eyes."

Zhuang Yan jumped up and down excitedly, like a child. "But that means that facial expressions really can convey complex information!"

"And if the information is: 'The spacecraft have left Earth, destination Jupiter'? How would you convey that using facial expressions?"

"Well, let's try to convey a simple meaning through facial expressions."

"Okay!" She nodded her head excitedly. "Here, let's each think of a message, and then exchange them."

Zhuang Yan thought for a much longer time, and then nodded. "Then let's begin."

"When primitive man began to speak, surely it was only to convey simple meanings. It may even have been less complex than birdcalls. Language gradually grew in complexity after that."

Luo Ji paused for a moment. "I've thought of mine."

"My message was, 'Tonight I'd like to invite you to have supper on the Champs-Élysées,'" he said.

They stared at each other, but held that pose for less than half a minute before they burst out laughing at practically the same instant.

"These are grave matters concerning the fate of humanity, so we ought to remain serious," Luo Ji said, holding in his laughter.

She doubled over with laughter. "Mine was, 'You… need to shave!'"

The dam in Luo Ji's soul had sprung a tiny leak, and this trickle eroded it, expanding the tiny fissure into a turbulent stream. He grew afraid and strove to patch the crack in the dam, but was unable to. A collapse was inevitable.

And so it was that the Wallfacer and the young woman stood, gazes locked, in front of the smile of Mona Lisa in the Louvre in the dead of night.

"This time, no laughing allowed!" she said, as serious as a child redefining the rules of a game.

They stood back to back, each thinking of a message, and then turned around and locked eyes once again. Luo Ji felt the urge to laugh and strove to suppress it, but the task soon became much easier, for Zhuang Yan's clear eyes had begun to pluck at his heartstrings again.

Then he felt like he was standing on a towering cliff top, and the girl's eyes were the vast abyss beneath, covered in a pure white sea of clouds. But the sun shone down from all directions and turned the clouds into a brilliance of color that surged endlessly. He felt himself sliding downward, a very slow slide, but one he could not arrest under his own power. In a panic, he shook his limbs to try to find a place to hold on. But beneath his body was nothing but slick ice. His slide accelerated, until, finally, with a burst of vertigo, he began to fall into the abyss. In an instant, the joy of falling reached the upper limit of pain.

The Mona Lisa was deforming. The walls were deforming, melting like ice as the Louvre collapsed, its stones turning to red-hot magma as they fell. When the magma passed over their bodies, it felt cool as a clear spring. They fell with the Louvre, passing through a melted Europe toward the center of the Earth, and when they reached it, the world around them exploded in a shower of gorgeous cosmic fireworks. Then the sparks extinguished, and in the twinkling of an eye, space became crystal clear. The stars wove crystal beams into a giant silver blanket, and the planets vibrated, emitting beautiful music. The starfield grew dense like a surging tide. The universe contracted and collapsed, until at last everything was annihilated in the creative light of love.

"I have the feeling that the observations in progress right now are actually private work that you astronomers are doing on the side."

"We need to observe Trisolaris right now!" General Fitzroy said to Dr. Ringier. They were in the control room of the Hubble II Space Telescope, a week after its assembly was completed.

"General, I'm afraid that's not possible."

"You're working for the military. Carrying out orders is all you need to do."

"I'd have done my own work if it were possible, but Hubble II is still in the testing phase."

"Let's have a look at how you're saving it, then. I just found this on your computer," Fitzroy said as he brought a hand out from behind his back. He held a printout of a photograph, an overhead shot of a group of people looking upward excitedly. They were recognizably the crew from this very control room, Ringier in their midst, along with three women in sexy poses who might have been the girlfriends of some in the group. The location of the photo was evidently the roof of the control room building, and the photo was very clear, as if it had been shot from ten or twenty meters above. Where it differed from an ordinary photograph was in the complicated numbers overlaid atop it. "Doctor, you're standing on the highest point of the building. It doesn't have a rocker arm like a movie set, does it? You're telling me that rotating Hubble II thirty degrees costs money. Well, how much does it cost to rotate it three hundred sixty degrees? Besides, that ten-million-dollar investment wasn't made so you could snap photos of you and your girlfriends from space. Should I add that sum to your bill?"

"No one here is military apart from you. We're following NASA's testing plan."

The general's tone softened. "Doctor, can't you just use Trisolaris as a test target?"

"Test targets have been carefully selected according to distance and brightness classes, and the test plan has been formulated to be maximally economical, so that the telescope completes all tests after just one rotation. In order to observe Trisolaris now, we would need to rotate through an angle of nearly thirty degrees and back, and spinning this bad boy uses up propellant. We're saving the military money, General."

"This is what the telescope sees?" asked the general.

Coordinate data was quickly called up from the target database. In space, the enormous cylinder, over twenty meters in diameter and more than a hundred meters long, slowly started to turn, panning across the starfield displayed on the screen in the control room.

"Yes. Now the images are being processed."

"General, your order must of course be carried out," Ringier said hastily, and the engineers immediately went to work.

"No, this is just the image returned by the positioning system. The telescope returns still photos that need to be processed before they're viewable."

In surprise, Fitzroy asked, "What? Is it done?"

Five minutes later, the panning stopped. The control system reported that positioning had been achieved, and after another five minutes, Ringier said, "Good. Now return to the test position."

"Can't you take a few more?"

"General, we've captured two hundred ten images at multiple focal lengths." At that moment the first observation image finished processing, and Ringier pointed to the screen. "Look, General. There's the enemy world you want to see so badly."

"Of course we can't. Even when the hundred-meter Hubble III is finished, we'll only be able to observe Trisolaris at a very few set positions, and we'll only be able to make it out as a dot, with no detail at all."

"So we really can't see the planet." Fitzroy couldn't hide his disappointment.

Fitzroy saw nothing but a group of three halos against a dark background. They were diffuse, like streetlights through fog. These were the three stars that would decide the fate of two civilizations.

"But there's something else here, Doctor. What do you think this is?" asked one of the engineers, pointing to a spot close to the three halos.

Fitzroy leaned in but saw nothing. It was so faint that only an expert could catch it.

"It's got a diameter larger than a star," an engineer said.

After enlarging the area several times, the thing covered the entire screen.

"It's a brush!" shouted the general in alarm.

The layman always comes up with better names than the expert, which is why when experts name things they, too, work from an outsider's perspective. And thus "brush" became the figure's name, because the general's description was accurate: It was a cosmic brush. Or, to be more precise, a set of cosmic bristles without a handle. Of course, you could also see it as hair standing on end.

"It must be a scratch in the coating! I mentioned in the feasibility study that a paste-up lens would cause problems," Ringier said, shaking his head.

The frozen formation abruptly turned into excited activity. The snatches of dialogue Fitzroy picked up were a bit too technical for him.

"All the coatings have been through stringent testing. A scratch of this sort wouldn't happen. And it's not generated by any other lens flaw, either. We've already returned tens of thousands of test images, and it's never come up before," said an expert from Zeiss, the lens's manufacturer.

A hush fell over the control room. They all gathered to stare up at the image on the screen until it got so crowded that some of them called up the image on other terminals. Fitzroy sensed the change in the room's atmosphere: People who had grown lazy from the fatigue of lengthy tests were anxious now, like they had been hit by a curse that rooted everything in place but their eyes, which grew ever brighter.

"God!" exclaimed several people at the same time.

"Any opinions on the effect of high-speed impact?"

The computer needed four or five minutes to complete every calculation, but there were a number of errors, so it was half an hour before the results were ready.

"The wake diffuses the dust to a maximum diameter of two hundred forty thousand kilometers, or twice the size of Jupiter," the astronomer running the mathematical model said.

The general nodded, and then bent over a terminal and began counting.

With the experts busy, Ringier stood next to Fitzroy. "General, can you try your best to count the bristles in the brush?"

"No need. I completed that item. Observing the absorption of the background stellar radial movement, there's an absorption peak at two hundred millimeters. It may be a carbon microparticle, F-class density."

"That's a conservative figure… For the impact cross section, use… Right, that's right. That's just about it. Just a rough estimate."

"Any dust around the target's position? Check it --"

"Yes. One moment… Here it is. Impact speed?"

"A hundred times third cosmic velocity."

"The wake diffuses along the impact axis, but the diffusion scope… Do we have a model of that?"

"Is it already that high?"

"Knock it off, Harris. You're not the only skeptic here. It's hard for everyone," someone said.

"That makes sense," Ringier said. He raised his arms and looked up at the ceiling, as if looking through it to the heavens. "And that confirms it." There was a tremble to his voice, and then, as if to himself, he said, "So it's been confirmed. Nothing wrong with that."

The young man, Harris, lifted his teary eyes and said, "I know skepticism is just a way to comfort myself, but I wanted to live out my life in comfort. God, now I'm not even lucky enough for that."

Silence returned.

Silence fell over the control room again, heavy and oppressive this time. Fitzroy wanted to ask a question, but at the sight of the solemn, bowed heads, he couldn't open his mouth. After a while, he heard gentle sobs and saw a young man trying to hide his tears.

At last Ringier remembered Fitzroy. "General, let me explain. The three stars are surrounded by interstellar dust. Previously, a number of bodies moving at high speed crossed that dust, and their high-speed impact with the dust left behind a wake. The wake continued to expand and has now reached a diameter twice that of the planet Jupiter. There are only subtle differences between the wake and the surrounding dust, so they are undetectable at close range. Only here, four light-years away, are they observable."

Hubble II's discovery, the final confirmation of the reality of the Trisolaran invasion, extinguished the last of humanity's fantasies. The descent of a new round of despair, panic, and confusion ushered the human race into life under the Trisolar Crisis. Then the hard times began. With a rocky change of direction, the vehicle of time veered off along a new track.

"Of course. That number confirms our intelligence reports. General, we're looking at the Trisolaran Fleet."

"I've counted the bristles. There are about a thousand," General Fitzroy said.

The only constant in a world of tremendous change is the swift passage of time. Five years passed like a blur.