Year 8, Crisis Era(2)

Standing in the giant shadow cast by the space plane High Frontier and looking up at its massive body, Zhang Beihai was involuntarily reminded of the carrier Tang, now long dismantled, and even wondered if the hull of High Frontier could contain a few steel plates from Tang. Over the course of more than thirty reentries, the burning heat had left scorch marks on the body of the space plane, and it really did look the way Tang had when it was under construction. The body had the same sense of age, but the two cylindrical booster rockets beneath the wings were new, making it resemble repairs to ancient architecture in Europe: The newness of the patches stood in stark contrast to the coloring of the original building, reminding visitors that those parts were modern additions. But if the boosters were removed, High Frontier would look like a big old transport plane.

The space plane was a very new thing, one of the few breakthroughs in aerospace technology over the last five years, and quite possibly the last generation of chemically propelled spacecraft. The concept had been proposed the previous century as a replacement for the space shuttle that could take off from a runway like an ordinary plane and fly conventionally to the top layer of the atmosphere, at which point the rockets would be turned on for spaceflight and it would enter orbit. High Frontier was the fourth such space plane in operation, and many more were under construction. They would, in the near future, take on the task of building the space elevator.

"I once imagined that we would never get the chance to go to space in our lifetime," Zhang Beihai said to Chang Weisi, who had come to see him off. He and twenty other space force officers, all of them members of the three strategic institutes, would take High Frontier to the ISS.

"Are there naval officers who've never been to sea?" Chang Weisi said, smiling.

"Of course there are. Lots of them. Some people in the navy sought exactly that. But I'm not that sort of person."

"Beihai, be aware of one thing: The active-duty astronauts are still air force personnel, so you are the first representatives of the space force to go into space."

"It's a shame there's no specific mission."

"Experience is the mission. A space strategist ought to have a consciousness of space. This wasn't feasible before the space plane, since sending up one person cost tens of millions, but it's much cheaper now. We'll try to put more strategists into space soon, since we're the space force, after all. Right now we're more like a college of bullshit, and that just won't do."

Then the boarding call was issued, and the officers began climbing the airstair to the plane. They wore uniforms but not space suits, and looked no different than if they were taking standard air travel. It was a sign of progress, demonstrating that going to space was a little more normal than it had been. From the uniforms, Zhang Beihai noticed that there were people from other departments boarding the plane as well.

"Ah, Beihai, there's another important thing," Chang Weisi said as Beihai was about to pick up his carry-on. "The CMC has studied the report we submitted on sending political cadres to the future as reinforcements, and the brass feel that conditions are still premature."

Zhang Beihai squinted, as if warding against a glare, though they were still in the space plane's shadow. "Commander, my feeling is that we ought to keep the entire four-century period in mind when making plans, and to be clear about what's urgent and what's important.… But please be assured that I won't say that in any formal setting. I know very well that our superiors are considering the bigger picture."

"The higher-ups have affirmed your long-term thinking and commend you for it. The document stresses one point: The plan to send reinforcements to the future has not been denied. Research and planning will continue, but present conditions are still premature for execution. I feel—and this is of course my personal opinion—that we need additional qualified political cadres in our ranks to lessen the current work pressures before we can consider it."

"Commander, surely you are aware of what 'qualified' means in the context of the Space Force Political Department, and what the basic requirements are. Qualified people are becoming increasingly rare."

"But we've got to look forward. If there are breakthroughs in the two key technologies of phase one, the space elevator and controlled fusion—and there's hope of this in our lifetimes—then things will be better.… Okay then. Off with you."

Zhang Beihai saluted him and then stepped onto the stairs. His first feeling upon entering the cabin was that it wasn't much different than a civilian airliner, except the seats were wider, having been designed to accommodate space suits. During the first flights of the space plane, all passengers had to wear space suits as a precaution, but there was no need for that now.

He had a window seat, and the seat immediately next to his was also occupied. A civilian, judging from his clothing. Zhang Beihai nodded to him in greeting before turning his attention to fastening the seat's complicated safety belt.

There was no countdown. High Frontier started its air engines and began taxiing. Because of its weight, it spent longer on the ground during takeoff than an ordinary plane, but at last it lifted ponderously off the ground and embarked on its voyage into space.

"This is the thirty-eighth flight of the space plane High Frontier. The aviation phase has started and will last approximately thirty minutes. Please do not unfasten your safety belts," said a voice over the intercom.

As he watched the ground recede through the cabin window, Zhang Beihai's thoughts turned to the past. During training to become a carrier captain, he had completed naval aviation pilot training and had passed the level three fighter pilot exam. On his first solo trip he had watched Earth recede like this and suddenly discovered that he loved the sky even more deeply than the ocean. Now, his longing was for the space beyond the sky.

He was a man destined to fly high and fly far.

"Not much different from civil aviation, you think?"

He turned to see the speaker sitting in the next seat, and recognized him at last. "You must be Dr. Ding Yi. I've been wanting to meet you."

"But it's going to get rough in just a little bit," the man said, ignoring Zhang Beihai's salutation. He went on, "The first time, I didn't take off my glasses after the aviation phase, and they crushed my nose with the weight of a brick. The second time I took them off, but then they flew off after gravity went away. It wasn't easy for the guy to find them for me in the air filter in the plane's tail."

"I thought you went up on the space shuttle the first time. On TV, that didn't look like a very nice trip," Zhang Beihai said with a grin.

"Oh, I'm talking about taking the space plane. If we count the shuttle, then this is my fourth time. On the shuttle, they took away my glasses before takeoff."

"Why are you going to the station this time? You've just been put in charge of a controlled fusion project. The third branch, isn't it?"

Four branches had been set up for the controlled fusion project, each pursuing a different direction of research.

Restrained by the safety belt, Ding Yi lifted a hand to point at Zhang Beihai. "You study controlled fusion and you can't go to space? You sound the same as those guys. The ultimate goal of our research is spaceship engines, and the real power held by the aerospace industry today remains to a large degree in the hands of the people who used to make chemical rocket engines. They're saying now that we're just supposed to devote ourselves to controlled fusion on the ground, and that we basically have no say in the general plan of the space fleet."

"Dr. Ding, your views are identical to mine." Zhang Beihai loosened his safety belt and leaned over. "For a space fleet, space travel is an entirely different concept from chemical rocketry. Even the space elevator is different from today's aerospace techniques. But right now the aerospace industry of the past still holds too much power. Its people are ideologically ossified and legalistic, and if things continue, there will be all kinds of trouble."

"There's nothing to be done. At least they've managed to come up with this in the course of five years." He pointed around him. "And this gives them the capital to squeeze out outsiders."

The cabin intercom started up. "Please take care: We are approaching an altitude of twenty thousand meters. Due to the thin atmosphere we will now be flying through, there may be sharp drops in altitude that will produce momentary weightlessness. Please do not panic. Again, please keep your safety belts fastened."

Ding Yi said, "But our trip to the station this time is unrelated to the controlled fusion project. It's to recover those cosmic ray catchers. That's some expensive stuff."

"The space-based high-energy physics research project has been stopped?" asked Zhang Beihai, retightening his safety belt.

"It's stopped. Knowing that there's no need to waste effort in the future counts as a kind of success."

"The sophons won."

"That's right. So humanity only has a few reserves of theory remaining: classical physics, quantum mechanics, and a still-embryonic string theory. How far their applications can be pushed is up to fate."

High Frontier continued to climb, its aviation engines rumbling under the strain as if it were struggling up a tall mountain, but there were no sudden drops. The space plane was now approaching thirty thousand meters, the limit of aviation. Looking out, Zhang Beihai saw that the blue of the sky was fading as it got dark, even though the sun became even more dazzling.

"Our current flight altitude is thirty-one thousand meters. The aviation phase is complete and the spaceflight phase is about to begin. Please adjust your seats according to the illustration onscreen to minimize the discomfort of hypergravitation."

Then Zhang Beihai felt the plane rise gently, as if it had discarded a burden.

"Aircraft engine assembly separated. Aerospace engine ignition countdown: ten, nine, eight…"

"For them, this is the real launch. Enjoy," Ding Yi said, and closed his eyes.

When the countdown reached zero, there was a huge roar, as if the entire sky outside was shouting, and then hypergravity came like a giant, slowly tightening fist. With effort, Zhang Beihai twisted his head to look out the window. He was unable to see the flames spurting from the engine, but a wide swath of the rarified air of the sky outside was painted red, as if High Frontier was floating through a sunset.

Five minutes later, the boosters detached, and after another five minutes of acceleration, the main engine cut off. High Frontier had entered orbit.

The giant hand of hypergravity suddenly let go and Zhang Beihai's body bounced back from the depths of his seat. Although the restraint of his safety belt kept him from floating away, to his senses he and the High Frontier were no longer parts of the same whole. The gravity that had once bonded them together was gone, and he and the plane were now flying in parallel paths through space. Out the window were the brightest stars he had ever seen in his life. Later, when the space plane adjusted its attitude, the sun streamed in through the windows and myriad points of light danced in its beams: dust particles that had weightlessly taken to the air. As the plane gradually rotated, he saw the Earth. From this low orbital position he couldn't see the entire sphere, only the arc of the horizon, but he could clearly make out the shapes of the continents.

Then the starfield, that long-awaited sight, finally came into view, and he said in his heart, Dad, I've taken the first step.

* * *

For five years, General Fitzroy had felt like a Wallfacer in the actual sense of the word, in that the wall he faced was the big screen with the image of the stars between Earth and Trisolaris. At first glance it was entirely black, but closer inspection of the screen revealed points of starlight. He had grown so well acquainted with those stars that when he had attempted to sketch their position on a piece of paper at a dull meeting the previous day and compared it to the actual photo afterward, he was basically correct. The three stars of Trisolaris lying inconspicuously at the center looked like a single star in the standard view, but every time he magnified them he found that their positions had changed. This chaotic cosmic dance so fascinated him that he forgot what he was looking for in the first place. The brush that had been observed five years ago had gradually faded away, and no second brush had appeared. The Trisolaran Fleet left a visible wake only when it passed through interstellar dust clouds. Earth's astronomers had verified through observations of the absorption of background starlight that during the fleet's four-century-long voyage through space, it would pass through five of them. People dubbed these "snow patches" after the way that passersby left tracks on snowy ground.

If the Trisolaran Fleet had maintained a constant acceleration over the past five years, it would pass the second snow patch today.

Fitzroy arrived at the Hubble II Space Telescope Control Center early. Ringier laughed when he saw him. "General, why do you remind me of a child who wants another present so soon after Christmas?"

"Didn't you say that they would cross the snow patch today?"

"That's right, but the Trisolaran Fleet has only traveled 0.22 light-years, so it's still four light-years away. Light reflected from its passage through the snow won't reach Earth for another four years."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot about that," Fitzroy said with an embarrassed shake of his head. "I really wanted to see them again. This time, we'll be able to measure their speed and acceleration at the time of passage, and that's very important."

"I'm sorry. We're outside the light cone."

"What's that?"

"It's what physicists call the cone shape that light describes as it emanates along the time axis. It's impossible for people outside the cone to comprehend events taking place inside the cone. Think about it: Information about who-knows-how-many major events in the universe is flying toward us right now at the speed of light. Some of it has been traveling for hundreds of millions of years, but we're still outside the light cones of those events."

"Fate lies within the light cone."

Ringier considered this, then gave him an appreciative nod. "General, that's an excellent analogy! But sophons outside the light cone can see events on the inside."

"So the sophons have changed fate," Fitzroy said with feeling, and turned back to an image-processing terminal. Five years before, the young engineer Harris had started to cry at the sight of the brush, and afterward had suffered from depression so severe that he became practically useless at his job and was let go. No one knew where he had ended up.

Fortunately, there weren't many people like him.

* * *

Temperatures were cooling rapidly these days, and it had started to snow, causing the green to gradually disappear from the surrounding area and a thin layer of ice to freeze on the surface of the lake. Nature lost its bright coloring, like a color photograph turned black-and-white. Warm weather here had always been short-lived, but to Luo Ji, the Garden of Eden felt like it had lost its aura since the departure of his wife and child.

Winter was a season for thinking.

When Luo Ji began to think, he was surprised to find that his thoughts were already in progress. He remembered back to middle school and a lesson a teacher had taught him for language arts exams: First, take a look at the final essay question, then start the exam from the top, so that as you work on the exam, your subconscious will be thinking over the essay question, like a background process in a computer. Now he knew that from the moment he became a Wallfacer, his thinking had started up and had never stopped. The entire process was subconscious and he had never been aware of it.

He quickly retraced the steps his thoughts had already completed.

He was now certain that everything about his current situation stemmed from his chance encounter with Ye Wenjie nine years ago. Afterward, he had never spoken of the meeting with anyone for fear of causing unnecessary trouble for himself, but with Ye Wenjie gone, the meeting was a secret known only to him and Trisolaris. In those days, only two sophons had reached Earth, but he could be certain that on that evening, they had been there by Yang Dong's grave, listening to their every word. And the fluctuation in their quantum formation that instantly crossed the space of four light-years meant that Trisolaris had also been listening.

But what had Ye Wenjie said?

Secretary General Say had been wrong about one thing. Luo Ji's never-begun research into cosmic sociology was quite likely the immediate reason why Trisolaris wanted to kill him. Of course, Say didn't know that the project had been Ye Wenjie's suggestion, and although it had just seemed to Luo Ji like an excellent opportunity to make scholarship entertaining, he had been looking for just such an opportunity. Prior to the Trisolar Crisis, the study of alien civilization was indeed a sensational project that would have garnered easy media attention.

The aborted research project wasn't important in and of itself. What mattered was the instruction that Ye Wenjie had given him, so that's where Luo Ji's mind was stuck.

Over and over again he recalled her words: Suppose a vast number of civilizations are distributed throughout the universe, on the order of the number of detectable stars. Lots and lots of them. The mathematical structure of cosmic sociology is far clearer than that of human sociology.

The factors of chaos and randomness in the complex makeups of every civilized society in the universe get filtered out by the immense distance, so those civilizations can act as reference points that are relatively easy to manipulate mathematically.

First: Survival is the primary need of civilization. Second: Civilization continuously grows and expands, but the total matter in the universe remains constant.

One more thing: To derive a basic picture of cosmic sociology from these two axioms, you need two other important concepts: chains of suspicion and the technological explosion. I'm afraid there won't be that opportunity.… Well, you might as well just forget I said anything. Either way, I've fulfilled my duty.

He had returned countless times to these words, analyzing each sentence from every angle and chewing over every word. The component words had been strung into a set of prayer beads, and like a pious monk he stroked them time and again; and unstrung them, scattered them, and restrung them in different orders until a layer of each had been worn away.

Try as he might, he couldn't extract the clue from those words, the clue that made him the only person that Trisolaris wanted to destroy.

During his lengthy contemplation he strolled aimlessly. He walked along the desolate lakeside, walked through the wind as it grew ever colder, oftentimes completing a circuit of the lake unawares. Twice he even walked to the foot of the snow peak, where the patch of exposed rock that looked like a moonscape was blanketed with snow, becoming one with the snowcap ahead of him. Only then did his mood leave the track of his thoughts, Zhang Yan's eyes appearing before his own in the boundless blank white of the natural painting. But he was now able to keep his mood in check and continue turning himself into a thinking machine.

A month went by without him knowing it, and then winter came in full force. But he still conducted his lengthy thought process outside, sharpening his mind on the cold.

By this time, most of the prayer beads had been worn faint, except for twenty-one of them. These ones seemed only to get newer the more he polished them, and now emitted a faint light:

Survival is the primary need of civilization.

Civilization continuously grows and expands, but the total matter in the universe remains constant.

He fixated on these two sentences, the axioms Ye Wenjie had proposed for cosmic civilization. Although he did not know their ultimate secret, his long meditation told him that the answer lay within them.

But it was too simple a clue. What could he and the human race gain from two self-evident rules?

Don't dismiss simplicity. Simple means solid. The entire mansion of mathematics was erected on a foundation of this kind of irreducibly simple, yet logically rock-solid, axiom.

With this in mind, he looked around him. All that surrounded him was huddled up against the icy cold of winter, but most of the world still teemed with life. It was a living world brimming with a complex profusion of oceans, land, and sky as vast as the foggy sea, but all of it ran according to a rule even simpler than the axioms of cosmic civilization: survival of the fittest.

Luo Ji now saw his problem: Where Darwin had taken the boundless living world and made a rule to sum it up, Luo Ji had to use the rules he knew to uncover a picture of cosmic civilization. It was the opposite road to Darwin's, but a more difficult one.

So he began sleeping in the daytime and thinking at night. Whenever the perils of his mental roadway terrified him, he found comfort in the stars overhead. Like Ye Wenjie had said, the distance hid the complex structure of each star, making them just a collection of points in space with a clear mathematical configuration. It was a thinker's paradise, his paradise. To Luo Ji, at least, it felt like the world in front of him was far clearer and more concise than Darwin's.

But this simple world held a perplexing riddle: The entire galaxy was a vast empty desert, but a highly intelligent civilization had appeared on the star nearest to us. In this mystery, his thoughts found an entry point.

Gradually, the two concepts Ye Wenjie had left unexplained came into focus: chains of suspicion and the technology explosion.

The weather that day was colder than usual, and from Luo Ji's vantage point on the lakeshore, the cold seemed to make the stars into an even purer silver lattice against the black sky, solemnly displaying for him their clear mathematical configuration. All of a sudden, he found himself in a state that was entirely new. In his perception, the entire universe froze, all motion stopped, and everything from stars down to atoms entered a state of rest, with the stars just countless cold, dimensionless points reflecting the cold light of an outside world.… Everything was at rest, waiting for his final awakening.

The distant bark of a dog brought him back to reality. Probably a service canine belonging to the security forces.

Luo Ji was beside himself with excitement. Although he hadn't actually glimpsed that final mystery, he had clearly felt its presence just now.

He collected his thoughts and tried to reenter that state, but was unsuccessful. Though the stars remained the same, the world around him interfered with his thinking. All was shrouded in darkness, but he could make out the distant snowcap, the lakeside forest and grassland, and the house behind him, and through the house's half-open door he could see the dark glow of the fire.… Next to the simple clarity of the stars, everything in the vicinity represented a complexity and chaos that mathematics would be forever unable to grasp, so he attempted to remove them from his perception.

He walked out onto the frozen lake—cautiously, at first, but when he found that the icy surface seemed solid, he walked and slid ahead more quickly, until he reached a point where he could no longer make out the lakeshore through the night around him. Now he was surrounded on all sides by smooth ice. This distanced him somewhat from earthly complexity and chaos, and by imagining that the icy plane extended infinitely in every direction, he obtained a simple, flat world; a cold, planar mental platform. Cares vanished, and soon his perception reentered that state of rest, where the stars were waiting for him.…

Then, with a crunch, the ice beneath Luo Ji's feet broke and his body plunged straight into the water.

At the precise instant the icy water covered Luo Ji's head, he saw the stillness of the stars shatter. The starfield curled up into a vortex and scattered into turbulent, chaotic waves of silver. The biting cold, like crystal lightning, shot into the fog of his consciousness, illuminating everything. He continued to sink. The turbulent stars overhead shrank into a fuzzy halo at the break in the ice above his head, leaving nothing but cold and inky blackness surrounding him, as if he wasn't sinking into ice water, but had jumped into the blackness of space.

In the dead, lonely, cold blackness, he saw the truth of the universe.

He surfaced quickly. His head surged out of the water and he spat out a mouthful. He tried crawling onto the ice at the edge of the hole but could only bring his body up halfway before the ice collapsed again. He crawled and collapsed, forging a path through the ice, but progress was slow and his stamina began to give out from the cold. He didn't know whether the security team would notice anything unusual on the lake before he drowned or froze to death. Stripping off his soaked down jacket to lessen the burden on his movement, he had the idea that if he spread out the jacket on the ice, it might distribute the pressure and allow him to crawl onto it. He did so, and then, with just enough energy left for one last attempt, he used every last ounce of strength to crawl onto the down jacket at the edge of the ice. This time the ice didn't collapse, and at last his entire body was lying on top of it. He crept carefully ahead, daring to stand up only after putting a fair distance between him and the hole. Then he saw flashlights waving on the shore and heard shouts.

He stood on the ice, his teeth chattering in the cold, a cold that seemed to come not from the lake water or icy wind, but from a direct transmission from outer space. He kept his head down, knowing that from this moment on, the stars were not like they once were. He didn't dare look up. As Rey Diaz feared the sun, Luo Ji had acquired a severe phobia of the stars. He bowed his head, and through chattering teeth, said to himself:

"Wallfacer Luo Ji, I am your Wallbreaker."

* * *

"Your hair's turned white over the years," Luo Ji said to Kent.

"For many years to come, at least, it's not going to get any whiter," Kent said, laughing. In Luo Ji's presence, he had always worn a courteous, studied face. This was the first time Luo Ji had seen him with such a sincere smile. In his eyes, he saw the words that remained unspoken: You've finally begun to work.

"I need someplace safer," he said.

"Not a problem, Dr. Luo. Any particular requests?"

"Nothing apart from safety. It must be absolutely secure."

"Doctor, an absolutely safe place does not exist, but we can come very close. I'll have to warn you, though, these places are always underground. And as for comfort…"

"Disregard comfort. However, it'd be best if it's in China."

"Not a problem. I'll take care of it immediately."

When Kent was about to leave, Luo Ji stopped him. Pointing out the window at the Garden of Eden, which was now completely blanketed in snow, he said, "Can you tell me the name of this place? I'm going to miss it."

* * *

Luo Ji traveled more than ten hours under tight security before reaching his destination. When he exited the car, he knew immediately where he was: It was here, in the broad, squat hall that looked like an underground parking garage, that he had embarked on his fantastic new life five years before. Now, after five years of dreams alternating with nightmares, he had returned to the starting point.

Greeting him was a man named Zhang Xiang, the same young man who—along with Shi Qiang—had sent him off five years ago, and who now was in charge of security. He had aged considerably in five years and now looked like a middle-aged man.

The elevator was still operated by an armed soldier—not the one from back then, of course, but Luo Ji still felt a certain warmth in his heart. The old-style elevator had been swapped for one that was completely automated and did not require an operator, so the soldier merely pressed the "-10" button and the elevator started its descent.

The underground structure had clearly undergone a recent renovation: The ventilation ducts in the hallways had been hidden, the walls coated with moisture-proof tile, and all traces of the civil air defense slogans had disappeared.

Luo Ji's living quarters took up the whole of the tenth basement floor. While it was no match in comfort for the house he had just left, it was equipped with comprehensive communications and computer equipment, along with a conference room set up with a remote video conferencing system, giving the place the feel of a command center.

The administrator made a particular point of showing Luo Ji a set of light switches in the room, each of which bore a small picture of the sun. The administrator called them "sun lamps" and said they needed to be turned on for no fewer than five hours a day. Originally intended as labor-safety products for mine workers, they could simulate sunlight, including UV rays, as supplementary daylight for people spending long periods underground.

The next day, as Luo Ji had requested, the astronomer Albert Ringier visited the tenth basement.

When he saw him, Luo Ji said, "You were the first to observe the flight path of the Trisolaran Fleet?"

Ringier looked a little unhappy to hear this. "I've repeatedly issued statements to reporters, but they insist on forcing this honor on my head. It should be credited to General Fitzroy. He was the one who demanded that Hubble II observe Trisolaris during testing. Otherwise we might have missed the chance, since the wake in the interstellar dust would have faded."

"What I'd like to talk to you about isn't connected to that. I did a bit of astronomy once, but not in much depth, and I'm no longer familiar with the subject. My first question is this: If, in the universe, there exists another observer apart from Trisolaris, has Earth's position been revealed to them?"

"No."

"You're sure of that?"

"Yes."

"But Earth has exchanged communication with Trisolaris."

"That low-frequency communication would reveal only the general direction of Earth and Trisolaris in the Milky Way Galaxy, and the distance between the two worlds. That is, if there's a third-party recipient, the communication would make it possible for them to know of the existence of two civilized worlds 4.22 light-years apart in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way, but they would still be ignorant of the precise position of those two worlds. In fact, determining each other's position through this kind of exchange is only feasible for stars in close proximity, like the sun and the stars of Trisolaris. For a slightly more distant third-party observer, however, even if we communicate directly with them, we wouldn't be able to determine each other's position."

"Why is that?"

"Marking the position of a star for another observer in the universe is hardly as easy as people imagine. Here's an analogy: You're taking a plane through the Sahara Desert and a grain of sand below you shouts 'Here I am!' You hear the shout, but can you fix a location for that grain of sand from the plane? There are nearly two hundred billion stars in the Milky Way. It's practically a desert of stars."

Luo Ji nodded in apparent relief. "I understand. So that's it, then."

"What is?" Ringier asked in confusion.

Luo Ji didn't answer, but asked instead, "Using our present level of technology, is there a way to indicate the position of a star in the universe?"

"Yes, by using directed very high frequency electromagnetic waves, equal to or higher in frequency than visible light, and then harnessing stellar power to transmit information. In simple terms, you'd make the star flash, like a cosmic lighthouse."

"This far exceeds our present technical capabilities."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I overlooked your precondition. At our present technical capabilities, it would be fairly difficult to show a star's position to the far reaches of the universe. There's still a way, but interpreting the positional information requires a level of technology far beyond that of humanity, and even, I believe, beyond that of Trisolaris."

"Tell me about that approach."

"The key information is the relative position of stars. If you specify a region of space in the Milky Way that contains a sufficient number of stars—perhaps a few dozen would be sufficient—their relative arrangement in three-dimensional space would be totally unique, like a fingerprint."

"I'm starting to understand. We send out a message containing the position of the star we wish to point out, relative to the surrounding stars, and the recipient compares the data to its star map to determine the star's location."

"Right. But things aren't that simple. The recipient must possess a three-dimensional model of the entire galaxy that precisely indicates the relative position of every one of a hundred billion stars. Then, after receiving our message, they would have to search through that enormous database to find an area of space that matches the pattern of positions we sent out."

"No, it's not simple at all. It's like recording the relative position of every grain of sand in the desert."

"Even harder than that. The Milky Way, unlike the desert, is in motion, and the relative positions of its stars are constantly changing. The later the position information is received, the greater the error caused by these changes. This means the database has to be able to predict the changes in position of each of those hundred billion stars. In theory, it's not a problem, but to actually do it … God…"

"Would it be hard for us to send that positional information?"

"No, because we would only need to have a position pattern for a limited number of stars. And now that I've had time to think about it, given the average stellar density of the outer arm of the galaxy, a position pattern with no more than thirty stars should be sufficient. That's a small amount of information."

"Good. Now I'll ask a third question: Outside the Solar System, there are other stars with planets. You've discovered several hundred, right?"

"More than a thousand to date."

"And the closest to the sun?"

"244J2E1, sixteen light-years from the sun."

"As I remember it, the serial numbers are set like this: the prefix digits represent the order of discovery; the letters J, E, and X stand for Jupiter-type planets, Earth-type planets, and other planets, respectively; and the digits following the letter indicate the number of that type of planet in the system."

"That's right. 244J2E1 is a star with three planets, two of them Jupiter-type and one Earth-type."

Luo Ji thought for a moment, then shook his head. "That's too close. How about a little farther, like … around fifty light-years?"

"187J3X1, 49.5 light-years from the sun."

"That one's fine. Can you draw up a position pattern for that star?"

"Of course I can."

"How long would it take? Would you need help?"

"I can do it here if there's a computer with Internet. For a pattern of, say, thirty stars, I can give it to you tonight."

"What time is it now? It's not nighttime already?"

"I'd say it's probably morning, Dr. Luo."

Ringier went to the computer room next door, and Luo Ji called in Kent and Zhang Xiang. He first explained to Kent that he wanted the PDC to hold the next Wallfacer hearing as soon as possible.

Kent said, "There are lots of PDC meetings these days. Once you've submitted the application, you'll probably only have to wait a few days."

"Then I'll have to wait. But I'd really like it as soon as possible. Also, I have a request: to attend the hearing here via video rather than go to the UN."

Kent looked reluctant. "Dr. Luo, don't you think that's a little inappropriate? For such a high-level international meeting … It's a question of respect for the participants."

"It's part of the plan. All those bizarre requests I made in the past were fulfilled, but this one's over the line?"

"You know…" Kent faltered.

"I know that a Wallfacer's status isn't like it once was, but I insist on this." When he continued, it was in a softer voice, even though he knew that the sophons hanging in the vicinity could still hear. "There are two possibilities now: One, if everything is like it used to be, I wouldn't mind going to the UN. But there's another possibility: I may be in a very dangerous situation, and I can't take that risk."

Then he said to Zhang Xiang, "That's why I've brought you here. We may become a target for a concentrated enemy attack, so security must be strengthened."

"Don't worry, Dr. Luo. We're located two hundred meters below ground. The area above us is under lockdown, an antimissile system has been deployed, and a state-of-the-art subterranean warning system has been installed to detect the digging of a tunnel from any direction. I guarantee to you that our security is foolproof."

When the two men left, Luo Ji took a walk down the hallway, his thoughts turning involuntarily to the Garden of Eden (he knew its name now, but still called it that in his heart) and its lake and snow peak. He knew that it was quite likely he would spend the rest of his life underground.

He looked around at the sunlamps in the hallway ceiling. The light they emitted was nothing like the sun.

* * *

Two meteors moved slowly across the starfield. All was dark on the ground, and the distant horizon blended into one with the night sky. A burst of whispers sounded through the dark, although the speakers remained unseen, as if the voices themselves were invisible creatures floating in the darkness.

With a clink, a small flame appeared in the darkness, its dim light revealing three faces: Qin Shi Huang, Aristotle, and Von Neumann. The flame came from a lighter in Aristotle's hand. When a few torches were extended, he lit one, which then passed fire among the others to form a shaky light in the wilderness and illuminate a group of people drawn from every era. Their whispers continued.

Qin Shi Huang leapt up on a stone and brandished his sword, and the crowd fell silent.

"The Lord has issued a new command: Destroy Wallfacer Luo Ji," he said.

"We too have received this command. This is the second assassination order that the Lord has issued for Luo Ji," Mozi said.

"But it will be difficult to kill him now," someone said.

"Difficult? It's impossible!"

"If Evans hadn't added that condition to the first assassination order, he would have been dead five years ago."

"Perhaps Evans was right to do so. After all, we don't know his reasons. Luo Ji was lucky to escape a second time in the UN Plaza."

Qin Shi Huang stopped the debate with a wave of his sword. "Shall we talk instead about what to do?"

"There's nothing we can do. Who can even get anywhere near a bunker two hundred meters deep, much less get inside? It's guarded too tightly."

"Shall we consider nuclear weapons?"

"The place is an antinuke bunker from the Cold War, damn it."

"The only viable option is sending someone to infiltrate security."

"Can that be done? We've had years. Has there ever been a successful infiltration?"

"Infiltrate his kitchen!" This prompted some laughter.

"Cut the crap. The Lord ought to tell us the truth, and maybe we can come up with a better option."

Qin Shi Huang answered the last speaker: "I also made that request, but the Lord said the truth was the most important secret in the universe and could not be revealed. The Lord spoke of it with Evans under the impression that humanity already knew but later learned otherwise."

"Then ask the Lord to transfer technology!"

Many other voices echoed this. Qin Shi Huang said, "This was another request I made. To my surprise, the Lord uncharacteristically did not reject it entirely."

A commotion took hold of the crowd, but Qin Shi Huang's next words quieted the excitement: "But once the Lord learned the location of the target, the request was swiftly rejected. It said that as far as the target's location was concerned, any technology It could transfer to us would be ineffective."

"Is he really that important?" Von Neumann asked, unable to conceal a note of jealousy in his voice. As the first successful Wallbreaker, he had risen rapidly in the organization.

"The Lord is afraid of him."

Einstein said, "I have thought this over for a long time, and I believe that the Lord's fear of Luo Ji has only one possible reason: He is the mouthpiece of certain power."

Qin Shi Huang shut down further discussion of the subject: "Don't get into that. Instead, let's think of how to fulfill the Lord's command."

"It can't be done."

"It really can't be done. It's a mission that can't be completed."

Qin Shi Huang clanged his sword on the rock beneath his feet. "This mission is crucial. The Lord may really be under threat. Besides, if we complete it, the organization will be greatly elevated in the Lord's eyes! Gathered here are the elite of every sphere throughout the world, so how can we fail to think of something? Go back and think it over, and send your plans here to me through other channels. We've got to get on this!"

The torches burned out in succession and darkness swallowed everything. But the whispering went on.

* * *

The PDC Wallfacer Project Hearing did not convene for two weeks. After Tyler's failure and the hibernation of the other two Wallfacers, the PDC's main priority and attention had turned to mainstream defense.

Luo Ji and Kent awaited the start of the meeting in the videoconference room. The conference video connection had been made, and the big screen displayed the PDC auditorium, where the circular table familiar from the Security Council days was still completely empty. Luo Ji had arrived early as something of an apology for not attending in person.

While they waited, he chatted with Kent and asked him how he was managing. Kent said that he had lived in China for three years when he was younger, so he was quite accustomed to it and was doing well. At any rate, he didn't have to spend all day underground like Luo Ji, and his rusty Chinese had recently regained its fluency.

"You sound like you have a cold," Luo Ji said.

"I've just caught the bed flu," he replied.

"Bird flu?" Luo Ji said in alarm.

"No. Bed flu. That's what the media's calling it. It started going around in a nearby city a week ago. It's infectious, but symptoms are light. There's no fever, just a runny nose, and some patients get a sore throat. There's no need for medication, and it goes away on its own in three days or so after a little bed rest."

"The flu is usually more serious than that."

"Not this time. A lot of soldiers and staff here have already been infected. Haven't you noticed that they replaced the caretaker? She caught the bed flu too, but was afraid of giving it to you. But as your liaison, I can't be replaced for the time being."

Onscreen the national delegates had begun to enter the auditorium. They sat down and started talking in low voices, as if they hadn't noticed Luo Ji's presence. The incumbent rotating chair of the PDC opened the meeting, saying, "Wallfacer Luo Ji, the Wallfacer Act was amended at the special session of the UN General Assembly that just adjourned. You've seen it?"

"Yes," he answered.

"Then you must have noticed that the Act strengthens the examinations and restrictions on Wallfacer resource allocation. I hope that the plan you will submit to the hearing today will comply with the Act's requirements."

"Mr. Chair," Luo Ji said, "the other three Wallfacers have allocated an enormous amount of resources to the execution of their own strategic plans. To limit my plan's resources in this way is unfair."

"Resource allocation privileges depend on the plan itself, and you must be aware that the other three Wallfacer plans are not in conflict with mainstream defense. In other words, the research and engineering they are conducting would have been carried out even without the Wallfacer Project. I hope that your strategic plan is also of this nature."

"I'm sorry to say that my plan is not of this nature. It has absolutely nothing to do with mainstream defense."

"Then I'm sorry, too. Under the new Act, the resources you can allocate to this plan are very limited."

"Even under the old plan, I couldn't allocate all that much. However, this isn't a problem, Mr. Chair. My strategic plan consumes practically no resources at all."

"Just like your previous plans?"

The chair's remark prompted snickers from several participants.

"Even less than in the past. Like I said, it consumes practically no resources at all," he said simply.

"Then let's have a look," the chair said, nodding.

"The specifics of the plan will be introduced by Dr. Albert Ringier, although I presume you all received the corresponding file. To sum up, using the radio wave magnification capabilities of the sun, a message will be sent into the cosmos containing three simple images, along with additional information to demonstrate that these images have been sent by an intelligence as opposed to occurring naturally. The images are included in the file."

The sound of rustling paper filled the auditorium as the attendees located the three sheets. The images were also displayed on the screen. They were quite simple. Each consisted of black dots, seemingly scattered at random, but they all noticed that each image contained one conspicuously larger dot that was marked with an arrow.

"What is it?" asked the US representative, who, like the rest of the attendees, was inspecting the images carefully.

"Wallfacer Luo Ji, according to the basic principles of the Wallfacer Project, you do not need to answer that question," the chair said.

"It's a spell," he said.

The rustling and murmuring in the auditorium stopped abruptly. Everyone looked up in the same direction, so that Luo Ji now knew the location of the screen displaying his feed.

"What?" asked the chair, with narrowed eyes.

"He said it's a spell," someone seated at the circular table said loudly.

"A spell against whom?"

Luo Ji answered, "Against the planets of star 187J3X1. Of course, it could also work directly against the star itself."

"What effect will it have?"

"That's unknown right now. But one thing is certain: The effect of the spell will be catastrophic."

"Er, is there a chance these planets have life?"

"I consulted repeatedly with the astronomical community on that point. From present observational data, the answer is no," Luo Ji said, narrowing his eyes like the chair had. He prayed silently, May they be right.

"After the spell is sent out, how long will it take to work?"

"The star is around fifty light-years from the sun, so the spell will be complete in fifty years at the earliest. But we won't be able to observe its effects for one hundred years. This is just the earliest estimate, however. The actual time it takes might stretch out much farther."

After a moment of silence in the auditorium, the US representative was the first to move, tossing the three sheets and their printed black dots onto the table. "Excellent. We finally have a god."

"A god hiding in a cellar," added the UK representative, to peals of laughter.

"More like a sorcerer," sniffed the representative of Japan, which had never been admitted to the Security Council, but had been accepted immediately once the PDC was established.

"Dr. Luo, you have succeeded in making your plan weird and baffling, at least," said Garanin, the Russian representative who had held the rotating chair on several occasions during Luo Ji's five years as a Wallfacer.

The chair banged the gavel, silencing the commotion in the auditorium. "Wallfacer Luo Ji, I have a question for you. Given that this is a spell, why don't you direct it at the enemy's world?"

Luo Ji said, "This is a proof of concept. Its actual implementation will wait for the Doomsday Battle."

"Can't Trisolaris be used as the test target?"

Luo Ji shook his head with finality. "Absolutely not. It's too close. It's close enough that the effects of the spell might reach us. That's why I rejected any planetary star system within fifty light-years."

"One final question: Over the next hundred or more years, what do you plan on doing?"

"You'll be free of me. Hibernation. Wake me when the effects of the spell on 187J3X1 are detected."

* * *

As he was preparing for hibernation, Luo Ji came down with the bed flu. His initial symptoms were no different from everyone else, just a runny nose and a slight throat inflammation, and neither he nor anyone else paid it any attention. But two days later his condition worsened and he began to run a fever. The doctor found this abnormal and took a blood sample back to the city for analysis.

Luo Ji spent the night in a fevered torpor, haunted endlessly by restless dreams in which the stars in the night sky swirled and danced like grains of sand on the skin of a drum. He was even aware of the gravitational interaction between these stars: It wasn't three-body motion, but the 200-billion-body motion of all of the stars in the galaxy! Then the swirling stars clustered into an enormous vortex, and in that mad spiral the vortex transformed again into a giant serpent formed from the congealed silver of every star, which drilled into his brain with a roar.…

At around four in the morning, Zhang Xiang was awakened by his phone. It was a call from the Planetary Defense Council Security Department leadership who, in severe tones, demanded that he report immediately on Luo Ji's condition, and ordered the base to be put under a state of emergency. A team of experts was on its way over.

As soon as he hung up the phone, it rang again, this time with a call from the doctor in the tenth basement, who reported that the patient's condition had sharply deteriorated and he was now in a state of shock. Zhang Xiang descended the elevator at once, and the panicked doctor and nurse informed him that Luo Ji had begun spitting up blood in the middle of the night and then had gone unconscious. Zhang Xiang saw Luo Ji lying on the bed with a pale face, purple lips, and practically no signs of life in his body.

The team, consisting of experts from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, doctors from the general hospital of the PLA, and an entire research team from the Academy of Military Medical Sciences soon arrived.

As they observed Luo Ji's condition, one expert from the AMMS took Zhang Xiang and Kent outside and described the situation to them. "This flu came to our attention a while ago. We felt that its origin and characteristics were highly abnormal, and it's clear now that it's a genetic weapon, a genetic guided missile."

"A guided missile?"

"It's a genetically altered virus that is highly infectious, but only causes mild flu symptoms in most people. However, the virus has a recognition ability which allows it to identify the genetic characteristics of a particular individual. Once the target has been infected, it creates deadly toxins in his blood. We now know who the target is."

Zhang Xiang and Kent glanced at each other, first in incredulity and then in despair. Zhang Xiang blanched and bowed his head. "I accept full responsibility."

The researcher, a senior colonel, said, "Director Zhang, you can't say that. There's no defense against this. Although we had begun to suspect something odd about the virus, we never even considered this possibility. The concept of genetic weapons first appeared in the last century, but no one believed that anyone would actually produce one. And although this one's imperfect, it truly is a frightening tool for assassination. All you need to do is spread the virus in the target's general vicinity. Or, rather, you don't even need to know where the target is: You could just spread it across the globe, and because the virus causes little to no illness in ordinary people, it will spread quickly and would probably strike its target in the end."

"No, I accept full responsibility," Zhang said, covering his eyes. "If Captain Shi was here, this wouldn't have happened." He dropped his hand and his eyes shone with tears. "The last thing he said to me before hibernation was to warn me of what you said about no defense. He said, 'Xiao Zhang, in this job of ours we need to sleep with one eye open. There's no certainty of success, and some things we can't defend against.'"

"So what do we do next?" Kent asked.

"The virus has penetrated deep. The patient's liver and cardiopulmonary functions have failed, and modern medicine is helpless. Hibernate him as soon as possible."

After a long while, when Luo Ji recovered a little of the consciousness that had totally disappeared, he had sensations of cold, a cold that seemed to emanate from within his body and diffuse outward like light to freeze the entire world. He saw a snow-white patch in which there first was nothing but infinite white. Then a small black dot appeared its very center, and he could gradually make out a familiar figure, Zhuang Yan, holding their child. He walked with difficulty through a snowy wilderness so empty that it lost all dimension. She was wrapped in a red scarf, the same one she had worn seven years ago on the snowy night he first saw her. The child, red-faced from the cold, waved two small hands at him from her mother's embrace, and shouted something that he couldn't hear. He wanted to chase them through the snow, but the young mother and child vanished, as if dissolved into snow. Then he himself vanished, and the snowy white world shrank into a thin silver thread, which in the unbounded darkness was all that remained of his consciousness. It was the thread of time, a thin, motionless strand that extended infinitely in both directions. His soul, strung on this thread, was gently sliding off at a constant speed into the unknowable future.

Two days later, a stream of high-power radio waves was sent off from Earth toward the sun, penetrating the convection zone and reaching the energy mirror in the radiation zone, where its reflection, magnified hundreds of millions of times, carried Wallfacer Luo Ji's spell into the cosmos at the speed of light.