To Hold Up the Sky

by Cixin Liu

  “Lie down and play dead!” the lieutenant said. So Kalina lay by the jeep’s wheel and closed her eyes. “It looks more realistic with your eyes open!” the lieutenant added, and smeared a handful of somebody’s blood on her face. He lay down, too, forming a right angle with Kalina, his head pressing against hers. His helmet had rolled to one side, and his coarse hair pricked at Kalina’s temple. She opened her eyes wide, looking at the sky almost swallowed by smoke.

  Two or three minutes later, a half-track Bradley infantry fighting vehicle stopped ten or so meters from them. A few American soldiers in blue-and-white snowy terrain camouflage jumped from the convoy. The bulk of them leveled their guns and advanced in a skirmish line. Only one walked toward the jeep. Kalina saw two snow-speckled paratrooper boots step next to her face; she could clearly make out the insignia of the Eighty-second Airborne Division on the handle of the knife sheathed in his boot. The American crouched down to look at her. Their gazes met, and Kalina tried as hard as she could to make hers blank and lifeless across from that pair of startled blue eyes.

  “Oh, god!” Kalina heard him exclaim. She didn’t know if it was for the beauty of this woman with a major’s star on her shoulder, or for the terrible sight of her bloody, dirty face; maybe it was both. He reached a hand to unfasten her collar. Goose bumps rose all over Kalina, and she nudged her hand a few centimeters closer to the pistol in her belt, but the American only tugged the dog tag from her neck.

  They had to wait longer than expected. Enemy tanks and armored convoys thundered endlessly past them. Kalina could feel her body freezing almost solid on the snowy ground. It made her think of a couplet from an old army song, of all things. She’d read the words in an old book on Matrosov: “A soldier lies on the snowy ground / like they lie on white swan down.” The day she received her Ph.D., she’d written the lines in her diary. That had been a snowy night, too. She’d stood in front of the window on the top floor of Moscow State University’s Main Building; that night, the snow really did look like swan down, and through the haze of snow flickered the lights from the thousands of homes of the capital. She’d joined the army the next day.

  A jeep stopped not far from them, three NATO officers smoking and conversing inside. But the area around Kalina and the lieutenant was clearing. The two finally rose. They jumped in their own jeep, the lieutenant turned the ignition, and they hurtled along the route planned out earlier. Submachine guns sounded behind them; bullets flew overhead, one shattering a rearview mirror. The jeep whipped into a turn, entering a burning residential area. The enemy hadn’t pursued.

  “Major, you have a doctorate, right?” the lieutenant said as he drove.

  “Where do you know me from?”

  “I’ve seen you with Marshal Levchenko’s son.”

  After a silence, the lieutenant said, “Right now, his son is farther from the war than anyone else in the world.”

  “What are you implying? You know that—”

  “Nothing, I was just saying,” the lieutenant said neutrally. Neither of them had their mind on the conversation. They were still lingering on that last thread of hope.

  Of the entire battlefront, this might be the only breach.

  JANUARY 5TH, NEAR-SUN ORBIT, ABOARD THE VECHNYY BURAN

  Misha was experiencing the solitude of a lone inhabitant in an empty city.

  The Vechnyy Buran really was the size of a small city. The modular space station had a volume equivalent to two supercarriers and could sustain five thousand residents in space at a time. When the complex was under centripetal force simulating gravity, it even contained a pool and a small flowing river. Compared to other space work environments of the day, it smacked of unparalleled extravagance. But in reality, the Vechnyy Buran was the product of the thrifty reasoning the Russian space program had demonstrated since Mir. The thinking behind its design went that, although combining all the functionality needed to explore the entire solar system into one structure might require a huge initial investment, it would prove absolutely economical in the long run. Western media jokingly called Vechnyy Buran the Swiss Army knife of space: It could serve as a space station orbiting at any height from Earth; it could relocate easily to moon orbit, or make exploratory flights to the other planets. Vechnyy Buran had already flown to Venus and Mars and probed the asteroid belt. With its huge capacity, it was like shipping an entire research center into space. In the field of space research, it had an advantage over the legion but dainty Western spaceships.

  The war had broken out just as Vechnyy Buran was preparing for the three-year expedition to Jupiter. At that time, its over one hundred crew members, most of them air force officers, had left for Earth, leaving only Misha. The Vechnyy Buran had revealed a flaw: Militarily, it presented too big a target while possessing no defensive abilities. Failing to foresee the progressive militarization of space had been a mistake on the part of the designer.

  Vechnyy Buran could only take avoidance measures. It couldn’t depart for farther space, with numerous unmanned NATO satellites patrolling Jupiter’s orbital path. They were small, but whether armed or unarmed, any one could pose a deadly threat to the Vechnyy Buran.

  The only option was to draw near the sun. The automatic active-cooling heat-shielding system that was the pride of the Vechnyy Buran allowed it to go closer to the sun than any other man-made object yet. Now the Vechnyy Buran had reached Mercury’s orbital path, five million kilometers from the sun and one hundred million kilometers from Earth.

  Most of the Vechnyy Buran’s hold had been closed off, but the area left to Misha was still astonishingly enormous. Through the broad, clear dome ceiling, the sun looked three times larger than it looked on Earth. He could clearly see the sunspots and the singularly beautiful solar prominences emerging from the purple corona; sometimes, he could even see the granules formed by convection in the surface. The serenity here was an illusion. Outside, the sun pitched a raging storm of particles and electromagnetic radiation, and the Vechnyy Buran was just a tiny seed in a turbulent ocean.

  A gossamer-thin thread of EM waves connected Misha to the Earth, and brought the troubles of that distant world to him as well. He had just been informed that the command center near Moscow had been destroyed by a cruise missile, and that the Vechnyy Buran’s control had passed to the secondary command center at Samara. He received the latest news of the war from Earth at five-hour intervals; at those times, each time, he would think of his father.

  JANUARY 5TH, RUSSIAN ARMY GENERAL STAFF HEADQUARTERS

  Marshal Mikhail Semyonovich Levchenko felt as if he were face-to-face with a wall, though in reality, a holographic map of the Moscow theater of war lay in front of him. Conversely, when he turned toward the big paper map hanging on the wall, he could see breadth and depth, a sense of space.

  No matter what, he preferred traditional maps. He didn’t know how many times he’d sought a location on the very bottom of the map, forcing him and his strategists to get on hands and knees; the thought now made him smile a little. He also remembered spending the eve of military exercises in his battlefield tent, piecing together the newly received battle maps with clear tape. He always made a mess of it, but his son had done the taping neater than he ever did, that first time he came along to watch the exercises.…

  Finding that his musings had returned to the subject of his son, the marshal vigilantly cut off his train of thought.

  He and the commander of the Western Military District were the only people in the war room, the latter chain-smoking cigarettes as they watched the shifting clouds of smoke above the holographic map, their gaze as intent as if it were the grim battlefield itself.

  The district commander said: “NATO has seventy-five divisions along the Smolensk front now. The battlefront is a hundred kilometers long. They’ve breached the line at multiple points.”

  “And the eastern front?” Marshal Levchenko asked.

  “Most of our Eleventh Army defected to the Rightists too, as you know. The Rightist army i
s now twenty-four divisions strong, but their assaults on Yaroslavl remain exploratory in nature.”

  The earth shook with the faint vibrations of some ground explosion. The lights hanging from the ceiling cast swaying shadows around the war room.

  “There’s talk now of retreating to Moscow and using the barricades and fortifications for a street-to-street battle, like seventy-odd years ago.”

  “That’s absurd! If we withdraw from the western front, NATO can swing north around us to join forces with the Rightists at Tver. Moscow would fall into panic without them lifting a finger. We have three options in our playbook right now: counterattack, counterattack, and counterattack.”

  The district commander sighed, looking wordlessly at the map.

  Marshal Levchenko continued, “I know the western front isn’t strong enough. I plan to relocate an army from the eastern front to strengthen it.”

  “What? But it’s already going to be a challenge to defend Yaroslavl.”

  Marshal Levchenko chuckled. “Nowadays, the problem with many commanders is their tendency to only consider a problem from the military angle. They can’t see beyond the grim tactical situation. Looking at the current situation, do you think the Rightists lack the strength to take Yaroslavl?”

  “I don’t think so. The Fourteenth Army is an elite force with a high concentration of armored vehicles and low-altitude attack power. For them to advance less than fifteen kilometers a day while not having suffered serious setbacks seems like taking things slow on purpose.”

  “That’s right, they’re watching and waiting. They’re watching the western front! And if we can take back the initiative in the western front, they’ll keep on watching and waiting. They might even independently negotiate a cease-fire.”

  The district commander held his newest cigarette in his hand, but had forgotten all thoughts of lighting it.

  “The defection of the armies on the eastern front really was a knife in our back, but some commanders have turned this into an excuse in their minds to steer us toward passive operational policies. That has to change! Of course, it must be said that our current strength in the Moscow region isn’t enough for a total turnaround. Our hope lies in the relief forces from the Caucasus and Ural districts.”

  “The closer Caucasus forces will need at least a week to assemble and advance into place. If we account for possession of the airspace, it might take even longer.”

  JANUARY 5TH, MOSCOW

  It was past three in the afternoon when Kalina and the first lieutenant entered the city in their jeep. The air raid alarm had just sounded, and the streets were empty.

  “I miss my T-90 already, Major,” sighed the lieutenant. “I finished armored-vehicle training right around the time I broke up with my girlfriend, but the moment I arrived at my unit and saw that tank, my heart soared right back up again. I put my hand on its armor, and it was smooth and warm, like touching a lover’s hand. Ha, what was that relationship worth! Now I’d found a real love! But it took a Mistral missile this morning.” He sighed again. “It might still be burning.”

  At that time they heard dense explosions from the northwest, a savage area bombing rare in modern aerial warfare.

  The lieutenant was still wallowing in the morning’s engagement. “Less than thirty seconds, and the whole tank company was gone.”

  “The enemy losses were heavy, too,” Kalina said. “I observed the aftermath. There were about the same number of destroyed vehicles on each side.”

  “The ratio of destroyed tanks was about 1 to 1.2, I think. The helicopters were worse off, but it wouldn’t have gone over 1 to 1.4.”

  “In that case, the battlefield initiative should have stayed on our side. We have a sizable advantage in numbers. How did the battle end up like this?”

  The lieutenant turned to eye Kalina. “You’re one of the electronic-warfare people. Don’t you get it? All your toys—the fifth-generation C3I, the 3-D battle displays, the dynamic situation simulators, the attack-plan optimizer, whatever—looked great in the mock battles. But on the real battlefield, all the screen in front of me ever showed was ‘COMMUNICATION ERROR’ and ‘COULD NOT LOG IN.’ Take this morning, for example. I didn’t have a clue what was happening in the front and flanks. I only got one order: ‘Engage the enemy.’ Ah, if we’d only had half our force again in reinforcements, the enemy wouldn’t have broken through our position. It was probably the same way all down the line.”

  Kalina knew that in the battle that had just ended, the two sides had sent perhaps over ten thousand tanks into battle along the front, and half as many armed helicopters.

  At that point they arrived at Arbat Street. The popular pedestrian boulevard of yesteryear was empty now, sandbags walling off the entrances to the antiques shops and artisans’ places.

  “My steel darling gave as good as she got.” The lieutenant was still stuck on the morning’s battle. “I’m sure I hit a Challenger tank. But most of all, I’d wanted to take down an Abrams, you know? An Abrams…”

  Kalina pointed to the entrance of the antiques store they had just passed. “There. My grandfather died there.”

  “But I don’t remember any bombs getting dropped here.”

  “I’m talking about twenty years ago—I was only four then. The winter that year was bitterly cold. The heating was cut off, and ice formed in the rooms. I wrapped myself around the TV for warmth, listening to the president promise the Russian people a gentle winter. I screamed and cried that I was cold, hungry.

  “My grandfather looked at me silently, and finally he made up his mind. He took out his treasured military medal and took me here. This was a free market, where you could sell anything, from vodka to political views. An American wanted my grandfather’s medal, but he was only willing to pay forty dollars. He said Order of the Red Star and Order of the Red Banner medals weren’t worth anything, but he’d pay a hundred dollars for an Order of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, a hundred fifty for an Order of Glory, two hundred for an Order of Nakhimov, two hundred fifty for an Order of Ushakov. Order of Victories are worth the most, but of course you wouldn’t have one, those were only given to generals. But Order of Suvorovs were worth a lot too, he’d pay four hundred fifty dollars for one.… My grandfather walked away then. We walked and walked along Arbat Street in the freezing cold. Then my grandfather couldn’t walk anymore. The sky was almost dark. He sat heavily on the steps of that antiques store and told me to go home without him. The next day, they found him frozen to death there, his hand reaching into his jacket to clench the medal he’d earned with his own blood. His eyes were wide open, looking at the city he’d saved from Guderian’s tanks fifty years ago.…”

  JANUARY 5TH, RUSSIAN ARMY GENERAL STAFF HEADQUARTERS

  Marshal Levchenko left the underground war room for the first time in a week. He walked in the thick snowfall, searching for the sun, half set behind the snow-draped pinewoods. In his mind’s eye, he saw a small black dot slowly moving against the orange setting sun: the Vechnyy Buran, with his son inside, farther than any other son from a father.

  It had led to many ugly rumors within his homeland, and the enemy utilized it even more fully abroad. The New York Times had printed its headline in black type sized for shock: NO DESERTER HAS RUN FARTHER. Below was a photo of Misha, captioned “At a time when the communist regime is agitating three hundred million Russians for a bloodbath defense against the ‘invaders,’ the son of their marshal has fled the war aboard the nation’s only massive-scale spacecraft. Sixty million miles from the battlefield, he is safer than any other of his fellow citizens.”

  But Marshal Levchenko didn’t take it to heart. From secondary school to postgraduate studies, almost none of Misha’s associates had known who his father was. The space program command center made its decision solely because Misha’s field of study happened to be the mathematical modeling of stars. The Vechnyy Buran approaching the sun was a rare opportunity for his research, and the space complex couldn’t be entirely piloted by remote
control, requiring at least one person aboard. The general learned of Misha’s background only later, from the Western news media.

  On the other hand, whether Marshal Levchenko admitted it or not, deep down inside, he really did hope his son could stay away from the war. It wasn’t solely a matter of blood ties; Marshal Levchenko had always felt that his son wasn’t meant for war—perhaps he was the least meant for war of all the world’s people. But he knew his notion was faulty: was anyone truly meant for war?

  Besides, was Misha truly suited for the stars either? He liked stars, had devoted his life to their research, but he himself was the opposite of a star. He was more like Pluto, the silent and cold dwarf planet orbiting in its distant void, out of sight of the mortal realm. Misha was quiet and graceful. Solitude was his nourishment and air.

  Misha was born in East Germany, and the day he was born was the darkest day in the marshal’s life. He was only a major that evening in West Berlin, standing guard with his soldiers in front of the Soviet War Memorial in the Tiergarten, keeping vigil for the fallen for the last time in forty years. In front of them were a gaggle of grinning Western officers; and a few slovenly, shiftless German police officers trailing wolfhounds on leashes to replace them; and the skinhead neo-Nazis hollering “Red Army Go Home.” Behind him were the tear-filled eyes of the senior company commander and soldiers. He couldn’t help himself; he, too, let tears blur all this away.

  He returned to the emptied barracks after dark. On this last night before he left for home, he was notified that Misha had been born, but that his wife had died of complications from childbirth.

  His life after he returned was difficult, too. Like the 400,000 army men and 120,000 administrators withdrawn from Europe, he had no home to go to, and lived with Misha in a temporary shack of metal sheets, freezing in winter and broiling in summer. His old colleagues would do any work for a living, some becoming gun runners for the gangs, some reduced to strip dances at nightclubs. But he stuck to his honest soldier’s life, and Misha quietly grew up amid the hardship. He wasn’t like the other children; he seemed to have been born with an innate ability to endure, because he had a world of his own.