Hold Up The Sky

by Liu Cixin

  The planes were flying over a long, narrow basin, the empty space in the ocean that was left once the giant block of ice was removed. On each side was a mountain of seawater five kilometers high. Hundred-meter-high waves surged at the bottom of these liquid cliffs. At the top, the cliffs were collapsing, advancing as they did. Their surface rippled, but they remained perpendicular to the seafloor. As the seawater cliffs advanced, the basin shrank.

  This was the reverse of Moses parting the Red Sea.

  What startled Yan Dong the most was how slow the entire process seemed. This was, she assumed, due to the scale. She’d seen the Huangguoshu waterfalls. The water had seemed to fall slowly there, too. And these cliffs of seawater before her were magnitudes larger than those waterfalls. Watching them felt like an endless moment of unparalleled wonder.

  The shadow cast by the block of ice had completely disappeared. Yan Dong looked up. The block of ice was now just the size of two full moons.

  As the two seawater cliffs advanced, the basin shrank into a canyon. Then the two seawater cliffs, tens of kilometers long, five thousand meters high, crashed into each other. An incredible roar echoed between the sea and sky. The space in the ocean the ice block left was gone.

  “We aren’t dreaming, are we?” Yan Dong said to herself.

  “If this were a dream, everything would be fine. Look!”

  The pilot pointed below. Where the two cliffs had crashed into each other, the sea hadn’t yet settled. Two waves as long as those cliffs rose, as if they were the reincarnation of those two seawater cliffs on the sea’s surface. They parted, heading in opposite directions. From high above, the waves weren’t that impressive, but careful measurements showed they were over two hundred meters tall. Viewed from up close, they’d seem like two moving mountain ranges.

  “Tidal waves?” Yan Dong asked.

  “Yes. Could be the largest ever. The coast is in for a disaster.”

  Yan Dong looked up. She could no longer see the frozen block in the blue sky. According to radar, it had become an ice satellite of Earth.

  *

  For the rest of the day, the low-temperature artist removed, in the same way, hundreds of blocks of ice of the same size from the Pacific Ocean. It sent them into orbit around the Earth.

  By nightfall, a cluster of twinkling points could be seen flying across the sky every couple of hours. You could distinguish them from the usual stars because, on careful inspection, someone could make out the shape of each point. They were each a small cuboid. They all, in their own orientations, spun on their own axes. As a result, they reflected the sunlight and twinkled at different rates.

  People thought for a long time, but were never quite able to adequately describe these small objects in space. Finally, a reporter came up with an analogy that got some traction.

  “They’re like a handful of crystalline dominoes scattered by a space giant.”

  A Dialogue Between Two Artists

  “We ought to have a chat,” Yan Dong said.

  “I asked you to come just to do that, but only about art,” the low-temperature artist said.

  Yan Dong stood on a giant block of ice suspended five thousand meters in the air. The low-temperature artist had invited her here. The helicopter that had brought her had landed and now waited to the side. Its rotors were still spinning, ready to take off at any moment.

  Ice fields stretched to the horizon on all sides. The ice surface reflected the dazzling sunlight. The layer of blue ice below her seemed bottomless. At this altitude, the sky was clear and boundless. The wind blew stiffly.

  This was one of the five thousand giant blocks of ice the low-temperature artist had taken from the oceans. Over the past five days, it had taken, on average, one thousand blocks a day from the oceans and sent them into orbit. All across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, giant blocks of ice were being frozen and then carried into the air to become one of an increasing number of glittering “space dominoes.” Tidal waves assaulted every major city along the world’s coasts. Over time, though, these disasters became less frequent. The reason was simple: The sea level had dropped.

  Earth’s oceans had become blocks of ice revolving around it.

  Yan Dong stamped her feet on the hard ice surface. “Such a large block of ice, how did you freeze it in an instant? How did you do it in one piece without it cracking? What force are you using to send it into orbit? All of this is beyond our understanding and imagination.”

  The low-temperature artist said, “This is nothing. In the course of creation, we’ve often destroyed stars! Didn’t we agree to discuss only art? I, creating art in this way, you, using small knives and shovels to carve ice sculptures, from the view from the perspective of art, aren’t all that different.”

  “When those ice blocks orbiting in space are exposed to intense sunlight, why don’t they melt?”

  “I covered every ice block with a layer of extremely thin, transparent, light-filtering membrane. It only allows cold light, whose frequencies don’t generate heat, to get into the block of ice. The frequencies that do generate heat are all reflected. As a result, the block of ice doesn’t melt. This is the last time I’ll answer this sort of question. I didn’t stop work to discuss these trivial things. From now on, we’ll discuss only art, or else you might as well leave. We’ll no longer be colleagues and friends.”

  “In that case, how much ice do you ultimately plan to take from the oceans? This is surely relevant to the creation of art!”

  “Of course, I’ll only take as much as there is. I’ve talked to you before about my design. I’d like to realize it perfectly. Initially, I planned to take ice from Jupiter’s satellites if it had turned out that Earth’s oceans aren’t enough, but it seems there’s enough to make do.”

  The wind mussed Yan Dong’s hair. She smoothed it back into place. The cold at this altitude made her shiver. “Is art important to you?”

  “It’s everything.”

  “But … there are other things in life. For example, we still need to work to survive. I’m an engineer at the Changchun Institute of Optics. I can only make art in my spare time.”

  The low-temperature artist’s voice rumbled from the depths of the ice. The vibrating ice surface tickled Yan Dong’s feet. “Survival. Ha! It’s just the diaper of a civilization’s infancy that needs to be changed. Later, that’s as easy as breathing. You’ll forget there ever was a time when it took effort to survive.”

  “What about societal and political matters?”

  “The existence of individuals is also a troublesome part of infant civilizations. Later, individuals melt into the whole. There’s no society or politics as such.”

  “What about science? There must be science, right? Doesn’t a civilization need to understand the universe?”

  “That is also a course of study infant civilizations take. Once exploration has carried out to the proper extent, everything down to the slightest will be revealed. You will discover that the universe is so simple, even science is unnecessary.”

  “So that just leaves art?”

  “Yes. Art is the only reason for a civilization to exist.”

  “But we have other reasons. We want to survive. The several billion people on this planet below us and even more of other species want to survive. You want to dry our oceans, to make this living planet a doomed desert, to make us all die of thirst.”

  A wave of laughter propagated from the depths of the ice. Again, it tickled Yan Dong’s feet.

  “Colleague, look, once the violent surge of creative inspiration had passed, I talked to you about art. But, every time, you gossip with me about trivialities. It disappoints me greatly. You ought to be ashamed. Go. I’m going to work.”

  Yan Dong finally lost her patience. “Fuck your ancestors!” she shouted, then continued to swear in a Northeastern dialect of Chinese.

  “Are those obscenities?” the low-temperature artist asked placidly. “Our species is one where the same body matures as it evolv
es. No ancestors. As for treating your colleague like this …” It laughed. “I understand. You’re jealous of me. You don’t have my ability. You can only make art at the level of bacteria.”

  “But, you just said that our art requires different tools but there’s no essential difference.”

  “I’ve just now changed my perspective. At first, I thought I’d run into a real artist, but, as it turns out, you’re a mediocre, pitiful creature who chatters on about the oceans drying, ecological collapse, and other inconsequential things that have nothing to do with art. Too trivial, too trivial, I tell you. Artists cannot be like this.”

  “Fuck your ancestors anyway.”

  “Yes, well. I’m working. Go.”

  For a moment, Yan Dong felt heavy. She fell ass-first onto the slick ice as a gust of wind swept down from above. The ice block was rising again. She scrambled into the helicopter, which, with difficulty, took off from the nearest edge of the block of ice, nearly crashing in the tornado produced as the block of ice rose.

  Communication between humanity and the low-temperature artist had failed.

  Sea of Dreams

  Yan Dong stood in a white world. The ground below her feet and the surrounding mountains were covered in a silvery white cloak. The mountains were steep and treacherous. She felt as though she were in the snow-covered Himalayas. But in fact, it was the opposite; she was at the lowest place on Earth. The Marianas Trench. Once the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean. The white material that covered everything was not snow but the minerals that had once made the water salty. After the seawater froze, these minerals separated out and were deposited on the seafloor. At the thickest, these deposits were as much as one hundred meters deep.

  In the past two hundred days, the oceans of the Earth were exhausted by the low-temperature artist. Even the glaciers of Greenland and Antarctica were completely pillaged.

  Now, the low-temperature artist invited Yan Dong to participate in its work’s final rite of completion.

  *

  In the ravine ahead lay a surface of blue water. The blue was pure and deep. It seemed all the more touching among so many snow-white mountain peaks. This was the last ocean on Earth. It was about the area of Dianchi Lake in Yunnan. Its great waves had long ceased. Only gentle ripples swayed on the water, as though it were a secluded lake deep in the mountains. Three rivers converged into this final ocean. These were great rivers that had survived by luck, trudging through the vast, dehydrated seafloor. They were the longest rivers on Earth. By the time they’d arrived here, they’d become slender rivulets.

  Yan Dong walked to the oceanfront. Standing on the white beach, she dipped her hand into the lightly rippling sea. Because the water was so saturated with salt, its waves seemed sluggish. A gentle breeze blew Yan Dong’s hand dry, leaving a layer of white salt.

  The sharp sound that Yan Dong knew so well pierced the air. It tore through the air whenever the low-temperature artist slid toward the ground. Yan Dong spotted it in the sky as it approached.

  The low-temperature artist didn’t greet Yan Dong. The ball of ice fell into the middle of this last ocean, causing a tall column of water to spout. Afterward, once again, a familiar scene emerged: A disk of white fog oozed out from the point where the low-temperature artist hit the water. Rapidly, the white fog covered the entire ocean. The water quickly froze with a loud cracking sound. Once again, the fog dissipating revealed a frozen ocean surface. Unlike before, this time, the entire body of water was frozen. There wasn’t a drop of liquid water left. The ocean surface also didn’t have frozen waves. It was as smooth as a mirror. Throughout the freezing process, Yan Dong felt a cold draft on her face.

  The now-frozen final ocean was lifted off the ground. At first, it was lifted only several careful centimeters off the ground. A long black fissure emerged from the edge of the ice field between the ice and white salt beach. Air, forming a strong wind low to the ground, rushed into the long fissure, filling the newly created space. It blew the salt around, so that it now buried Yan Dong’s feet. The rate the lake was rising at increased. In the blink of an eye, the final ocean was in midair. So much volume rising so quickly produced violent, chaotic winds. A gust swirled up the salt into a white column in the ravine. Yan Dong spit out the salt that flew into her mouth. It wasn’t salty like she’d imagined. It tasted bitter in a way that was hard to express, like the reality that humanity was up against.

  The final ocean wasn’t a cuboid. Its bottom was an exact impression of the contours of the seafloor. Yan Dong watched it rise until it became a small point of light that dissolved into the mighty ring of ice.

  The ring of ice was about as wide as the Milky Way in the sky. Unlike the rings of Uranus and Neptune, the surface of the ring of ice was neither perpendicular nor parallel to the surface of the Earth. It was like a broad belt of light in space. A broad belt composed of two hundred thousand blocks of ice completely surrounding the Earth. From the ground, one could clearly make out every block of ice. Some of them rotated while others seemed static. Throughout the day, the ring of ice varied with dramatic changes in brightness and color. The two hundred thousand points of light, some twinkling, some not, formed a majestic, heavenly river that flowed solemnly across the Earth’s sky.

  Its colors were the most dramatic at dawn and dusk. The ring of ice changed gradually from the orange-red of the horizon to a dark red and then to dark green and dark blue, like a rainbow in space.

  During the daytime, the ring of ice assumed a dazzling silver color against the blue sky, like a great river of diamonds flowing across a blue plain. The daytime ring of ice looked most spectacular during an eclipse, when it blocked the sun. Massive blocks of ice refracted the sunlight. Like a strange and magnificent fireworks show in the sky.

  How long the sun was blocked by the ice ring depended on whether it was an intersecting eclipse or a parallel eclipse. What was known as a parallel eclipse was when the sun followed the ring of ice for some distance. Every year, there was one total parallel eclipse. For a day, the sun, from sunrise to sunset, followed the path of the ice ring for its entire journey. On this day, the ring of ice seemed like a belt of silver gunpowder set loose on the sky. Ignited at sunrise, the dazzling fireball burned wildly across the sky. When it set in the west, the sight was magnificent, too difficult to put into words. Some people proclaimed, “Today, God strolled across the sky.”

  Even so, the ring of ice’s most enchanting moment was at night. It was twice as bright as a full moon. Its silver light filled the Earth. It was as though every star in the universe had lined up to march solemnly across the night sky. Unlike the Milky Way, in this mighty river of stars, one could clearly make out every cuboid star. Of these thickly clustered stars, half of them glittered. Those hundred thousand twinkling stars formed a ripple that surged, as though driven by a gale. It transformed the river of stars into an intelligent whole….

  With a sharp squeal, the low-temperature artist returned from space for the last time. The ball of ice was suspended over Yan Dong. A ring of snowflakes appeared and wrapped itself tightly around it.

  “I’ve completed it. What you do think?” it asked.

  Yan Dong stayed silent for a long time, then said only one short phrase: “I give up.”

  She had truly given up. Once, she’d stared up at the ring of ice for three consecutive days and three nights, without food or drink, until she collapsed. Once she could get out of bed again, she went back outside to stare at the ice ring again. She felt she as if she could gaze at it forever and it wouldn’t be enough. Beneath the ring of ice, she was sometimes dazed, sometimes steeped in an indescribable happiness. This was the happiness of when an artist found ultimate beauty. She was completely conquered by this immense beauty. Her entire soul was dissolved in it.

  “As an artist, now that you’re able to see such work, are you still striving for it?” the low-temperature artist asked.

  “Truly, I’m not,” Yan Dong answered sincerely.

 
“However, you’re merely looking. Certainly, you can’t create such beauty. You’re too trivial.”

  “Yes. I’m too trivial. We’re too trivial. How can we? We have to support ourselves and our children.”

  Yan Dong sat on the saline soil. Steeped in sorrow, she buried her head in her hands. This was the deep sorrow that arose when an artist saw beauty she could never produce, when she realized she would never be able to transcend her limitations.

  “So, how about we name this work together? Call it—Ring of Dreams, perhaps?”

  Yan Dong considered this. Slowly, she shook her head. “No, it came from the sea or, rather, was sublimated from the sea. Not even in our dreams could we conceive that the sea possessed this form of beauty. It should be called—Sea of Dreams.”

  “Sea of Dreams … very good, very good. We’ll call it that, Sea of Dreams.”

  Then, Yan Dong remembered her mission. “I’d like to ask, before you leave, can you return Sea of Dreams to become our actual seas?”

  “Have me personally destroy my own work? Ridiculous!”

  “Then, after you leave, can we restore the seas ourselves?”

  “Of course you can. Just return these blocks of ice and everything should be fine, right?”

  “How do we do that?” Yan Dong asked, her head raised. All of humanity strained to hear the answer.

  “How should I know?” the low-temperature artist said indifferently.

  “One final question: As colleagues, we all know that works of art made from ice and snow are short-lived. So Sea of Dreams …”

  “Sea of Dreams is also short-lived. A block of ice’s light-filtering membrane will age. It’ll no longer be able to block heat. But they will dissolve differently than your ice sculptures. The process will be more violent and magnificent. Blocks of ice will vaporize. The pressure will cause the membrane to burst. Every block of ice will turn into a small comet. The entire ring of ice will blur into a silver fog. Then Sea of Dreams will disappear into that silver fog. Then the silver fog will scatter and disappear into space. The universe can only look forward to my next work on some other distant world.”