by Cixin Liu
“Do you mean that you plan to hibernate until the Doomsday Battle, and then directly engage the Trisolaran Fleet?”
“Do I have a choice? You know I’ve just been to Japan, China, and Afghanistan and didn’t find what I’m looking for there.”
“And you paid someone a visit,” the US representative said.
“That’s right. I saw him. But…” Tyler gave a long, dejected sigh. “Nothing. I’ll keep trying to establish a force of dedicated space fighters, but if I can’t, then I’ll have to guide them into the final attack myself.”
No one spoke. Where the Doomsday Battle was concerned, people usually chose to be silent.
Tyler continued, “I have another supplement to the mosquito swarm plan. I want to conduct my own studies, of certain bodies in the solar system, in areas of my choosing. These bodies include Europa, Ceres, and several comets.”
“How is this related to the space fighter fleet?” someone asked.
“Do I need to answer that?” Tyler asked, looking at the rotating chair.
No one spoke. Of course he didn’t have to answer.
“Finally, I have a recommendation. The PDC and every nation on Earth should scale back their attacks on the ETO.”
Rey Diaz jumped out of his chair. “Mr. Tyler, even if you claim that this is part of the plan, I strongly oppose this outrageous proposal!”
Tyler shook his head. “This is not part of the plan. It’s totally unconnected to the Wallfacer Project. The reason for my suggestion is obvious: If we persist in our attacks on the ETO, in two or three years we may wipe it out, and we will lose the only direct channel for communication between Earth and Trisolaris. We’ll have lost the most important source of enemy intelligence. I’m sure you understand what the consequences would be.”
Hines said, “I agree. But this proposal shouldn’t be made by a Wallfacer. The three of us are a unit in the minds of the public, so please keep our reputation in mind.”
The hearing ended in unresolved arguments, but an agreement was reached for the PDC to conduct further study of the three revisions to Tyler’s plan and put them to a vote at the next hearing.
Tyler remained seated until he was the last one in the assembly hall. He was exhausted and drowsy after his lengthy travels, and as he looked around the empty room, he suddenly realized a risk he had overlooked: He needed to find a doctor or a psychologist, and a specialist in sleep medicine.
He had to find someone to stop him from talking in his sleep.
* * *
Luo Ji and Zhuang Yan walked toward the main entrance of the Louvre at ten P.M. Kent had advised them to visit at night to facilitate more convenient security.
The first thing they saw was the glass pyramid, shielded from the nighttime din of Paris by the U-shaped palace building, and standing quietly under the watery moonlight as if it were made of silver.
“Mr. Luo, don’t you get the feeling that it flew in from outer space?” Zhuang Yan asked, pointing to the pyramid.
“Everyone has that feeling,” Luo Ji said.
“At first it feels a little out of place, but the more you look at it, the more it seems to be an integral part of the place.”
The meeting of two vastly different worlds, Luo Ji thought, but did not say.
Then the whole pyramid lit up, turning from moonlit silver to a brilliant gold. At the same time the fountains came on in the surrounding pools, sending tall columns of water and light skyward. Zhuang Yan glanced at Luo Ji in alarm, unsettled by the Louvre’s awakening at their arrival. Accompanied by water sounds, they made their way down the pyramid into the Hall Napoléon, and then into the palace.
Their first destination was the largest exhibition hall. It was two hundred meters long and softly lit, and their footsteps echoed down the emptiness. Luo Ji quickly realized that it was only his footsteps echoing, for Zhuang Yan walked lightly on catlike steps, like a child in a fairy tale who enters a magic castle and is afraid of waking what slumbers there. He slowed his pace—not for the artwork, which didn’t interest him at all, but to let the distance between them grow and allow him to appreciate her among this world of art, gazing upon the beauty of this Eastern woman along with the full-figured Greek gods, angels, and the Blessed Virgin in the surrounding classical oil paintings. Like the glass pyramid in the courtyard, she soon blended into the environment and became part of the sacred realm of art. Without her, this place would be missing something. In a reverie or a dream or a vision, he let time pass by quietly.
After a time, Zhuang Yan finally remembered Luo Ji’s presence and flashed a smile back at him. His heart quaked at what felt to him like a bolt of light sent to the mortal realm from a painting of Mount Olympus.
“I’ve heard that with a trained eye, it would take you a whole year to see all of the pieces here,” he said.
“I know,” was her simple reply, but her eyes said, What should I do? Then she turned her attention to the paintings. In all this time she had seen only five of them.
“It doesn’t matter, Yan Yan. I can look at them with you every night for a year.” The words slipped out.
She turned to look at him, visibly excited. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Well … Mr. Luo, have you ever been here before?”
“No. But I went to the Centre Pompidou when I came to Paris three years ago. At first I thought you would be more interested in going there.”
She shook her head. “I don’t like modern art.”
“Then, all this—” He glanced around at the gods, angels, and Blessed Virgin. “You don’t think it’s too old?”
“I don’t like it too old. I just like the paintings of the Renaissance.”
“Those are pretty old, too.”
“But they don’t feel old to me. Those painters were the first to discover human beauty, and they painted God as a pleasing person. Looking at these works, you can sense their joy in painting, the same joy I felt when I first saw the lake and the snow peak.”
“That’s good, but the humanistic spirit pioneered by the Renaissance masters has become a stumbling block.”
“You mean, in the Trisolar Crisis?”
“Yes. You must have seen what’s been happening lately. Four centuries from now, the post-disaster world might return to the Middle Ages, with humanity once again subjected to extreme repression.”
“And art will enter a long winter’s night, right?”
Looking at her innocent eyes, he smiled wryly to himself. Silly kid, you talk about art, but if humanity does manage to survive, regressing to a primitive society would be a small price to pay. But he said, “When that time comes, there may be a second Renaissance, and you could rediscover forgotten beauty and paint it.”
She smiled a smile tinged with sadness, clearly understanding the meaning behind Luo Ji’s consoling words. “I’m just thinking: After doomsday, what will happen to these paintings and artworks?”
“You’re worried about that?” he asked. When she mentioned doomsday, his heart ached, but if his last attempt at comfort had failed, he was confident that he would succeed this time. So he took her hand and said, “Come on, let’s go to the Asian Art exhibit.”
Before the pyramid lobby was built, the Louvre was a giant maze. Getting to any particular gallery meant a long and winding detour. But now you could go directly from the Hall Napoléon beneath the pyramid to any point in the museum. Luo Ji and Zhuang Yan returned to the entrance hall, followed the signs leading to the Arts of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas, and wound up in an entirely different world from the galleries of classical European paintings.
Luo Ji pointed out the sculptures, paintings, and old documents from Asia and Africa, and said, “These were taken by an advanced civilization from a backward one. Some were looted, others were stolen or defrauded, but look at them now: They’re all well preserved. Even during the Second World War, these objects were transferred to a safe place.” They stood before a Dunhuang mural sealed in a
glass case. “Think about how much turmoil and war that land of ours has seen since the time Abbot Wang gave these to the Frenchman.15 If the murals were left there, can you be certain they would have been this well preserved?”
“But will the Trisolarans preserve humanity’s cultural heritage? They have no regard for us at all.”
“Because they said we’re bugs? But that’s not what that means. Yan Yan, do you know what the greatest expression of regard for a race or civilization is?”
“No, what?”
“Annihilation. That’s the highest respect a civilization can receive. They would only feel threatened by a civilization they truly respect.”
They passed silently through the twenty-four galleries housing Asian art, walking through the distant past while imagining a gloomy future. Without realizing it, they reached the Egyptian Antiquities gallery.
“Do you know who I’m thinking of here?” Luo Ji stood beside a glass case containing the golden mask of a mummified pharaoh and tried out a lighter topic of conversation. “Sophie Marceau.”
“Because of Belphegor, Phantom of the Louvre, right? Sophie Marceau is gorgeous. She’s got Eastern looks, too.”
For some reason, right or wrong, Luo Ji sensed traces of jealousy and offense in her voice.
“Yan Yan, she’s not as beautiful as you. That’s the truth.” He also wanted to say, One might be able to find her beauty among these works of art, but yours eclipses them, but he didn’t want to come off as sarcastic. The hint of a shy smile flitted across her face like a cloud, the first time he had seen this smile he remembered from his dreams.
“Let’s go back to the oil paintings,” she said softly.
They returned to the Hall Napoléon, but forgot which entrance to use. The most visible signs pointed to the three jewels of the palace: the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Winged Victory.
“Let’s see the Mona Lisa,” he suggested.
As they headed in that direction, she said, “Our teacher said that after he visited the Louvre, he was a little disgusted with the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo.”
“Why was that?”
“Because tourists come for those two objects but have no interest in less famous but equally great works of art.”
“I’m one of the great uncultured.”
They arrived at the mysterious smile, which was behind a thick wall of protective glass and much smaller than Luo Ji had imagined. Even Zhuang Yan didn’t seem particularly excited.
“Seeing her reminds me of all of you,” she said, pointing at the figure in the painting.
“All of us?”
“The Wallfacers, of course.”
“What’s she got to do with the Wallfacers?”
“Well, I wonder—and this is just speculation, so don’t laugh—I wonder whether we could find a form of communication that only humans can comprehend, but which the sophons never will. That way, humanity can be free of sophon monitoring.”
Luo Ji looked at her for several seconds, and then stared at the Mona Lisa. “I get what you mean. Her smile is something that the sophons and the Trisolarans will never understand.”
“That’s right. Human expressions, and people’s eyes in particular, are subtle and complex. A gaze or a smile can transmit so much information! And only humans can understand that information. Only humans have that sensitivity.”
“True. One of the biggest problems in artificial intelligence is identifying facial and eye expressions. Some experts even say that computers may never be able to read the eyes.”
“So is it possible to create a language of expressions and then speak with the face and the eyes?”
Luo Ji thought this over seriously, then shook his head with a smile. He pointed at the Mona Lisa. “We can’t even read her expression. When I stare at her, the meaning of her smile changes every second and never repeats itself.”
Zhuang Yan jumped up and down excitedly, like a child. “But that means that facial expressions really can convey complex information!”
“And if the information is: ‘The spacecraft have left Earth, destination Jupiter’? How would you convey that using facial expressions?”
“When primitive man began to speak, surely it was only to convey simple meanings. It may even have been less complex than birdcalls. Language gradually grew in complexity after that.”
“Well, let’s try to convey a simple meaning through facial expressions.”
“Okay!” She nodded her head excitedly. “Here, let’s each think of a message, and then exchange them.”
Luo Ji paused for a moment. “I’ve thought of mine.”
Zhuang Yan thought for a much longer time, and then nodded. “Then let’s begin.”
They stared at each other, but held that pose for less than half a minute before they burst out laughing at practically the same instant.
“My message was, ‘Tonight I’d like to invite you to have supper on the Champs-Élysées,’” he said.
She doubled over with laughter. “Mine was, ‘You … need to shave!’”
“These are grave matters concerning the fate of humanity, so we ought to remain serious,” Luo Ji said, holding in his laughter.
“This time, no laughing allowed!” she said, as serious as a child redefining the rules of a game.
They stood back to back, each thinking of a message, and then turned around and locked eyes once again. Luo Ji felt the urge to laugh and strove to suppress it, but the task soon became much easier, for Zhuang Yan’s clear eyes had begun to pluck at his heartstrings again.
And so it was that the Wallfacer and the young woman stood, gazes locked, in front of the smile of Mona Lisa in the Louvre in the dead of night.
The dam in Luo Ji’s soul had sprung a tiny leak, and this trickle eroded it, expanding the tiny fissure into a turbulent stream. He grew afraid and strove to patch the crack in the dam, but was unable to. A collapse was inevitable.
Then he felt like he was standing on a towering cliff top, and the girl’s eyes were the vast abyss beneath, covered in a pure white sea of clouds. But the sun shone down from all directions and turned the clouds into a brilliance of color that surged endlessly. He felt himself sliding downward, a very slow slide, but one he could not arrest under his own power. In a panic, he shook his limbs to try to find a place to hold on. But beneath his body was nothing but slick ice. His slide accelerated, until, finally, with a burst of vertigo, he began to fall into the abyss. In an instant, the joy of falling reached the upper limit of pain.
The Mona Lisa was deforming. The walls were deforming, melting like ice as the Louvre collapsed, its stones turning to red-hot magma as they fell. When the magma passed over their bodies, it felt cool as a clear spring. They fell with the Louvre, passing through a melted Europe toward the center of the Earth, and when they reached it, the world around them exploded in a shower of gorgeous cosmic fireworks. Then the sparks extinguished, and in the twinkling of an eye, space became crystal clear. The stars wove crystal beams into a giant silver blanket, and the planets vibrated, emitting beautiful music. The starfield grew dense like a surging tide. The universe contracted and collapsed, until at last everything was annihilated in the creative light of love.
* * *
“We need to observe Trisolaris right now!” General Fitzroy said to Dr. Ringier. They were in the control room of the Hubble II Space Telescope, a week after its assembly was completed.
“General, I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“I have the feeling that the observations in progress right now are actually private work that you astronomers are doing on the side.”
“I’d have done my own work if it were possible, but Hubble II is still in the testing phase.”
“You’re working for the military. Carrying out orders is all you need to do.”
“No one here is military apart from you. We’re following NASA’s testing plan.”
The general’s tone softened. “Doctor, can’t you just use Trisolaris as a tes
t target?”
“Test targets have been carefully selected according to distance and brightness classes, and the test plan has been formulated to be maximally economical, so that the telescope completes all tests after just one rotation. In order to observe Trisolaris now, we would need to rotate through an angle of nearly thirty degrees and back, and spinning this bad boy uses up propellant. We’re saving the military money, General.”
“Let’s have a look at how you’re saving it, then. I just found this on your computer,” Fitzroy said as he brought a hand out from behind his back. He held a printout of a photograph, an overhead shot of a group of people looking upward excitedly. They were recognizably the crew from this very control room, Ringier in their midst, along with three women in sexy poses who might have been the girlfriends of some in the group. The location of the photo was evidently the roof of the control room building, and the photo was very clear, as if it had been shot from ten or twenty meters above. Where it differed from an ordinary photograph was in the complicated numbers overlaid atop it. “Doctor, you’re standing on the highest point of the building. It doesn’t have a rocker arm like a movie set, does it? You’re telling me that rotating Hubble II thirty degrees costs money. Well, how much does it cost to rotate it three hundred sixty degrees? Besides, that ten-million-dollar investment wasn’t made so you could snap photos of you and your girlfriends from space. Should I add that sum to your bill?”
“General, your order must of course be carried out,” Ringier said hastily, and the engineers immediately went to work.
Coordinate data was quickly called up from the target database. In space, the enormous cylinder, over twenty meters in diameter and more than a hundred meters long, slowly started to turn, panning across the starfield displayed on the screen in the control room.
“This is what the telescope sees?” asked the general.
“No, this is just the image returned by the positioning system. The telescope returns still photos that need to be processed before they’re viewable.”
