Vagabonds

by Hao Jingfang

  “He wanted to come back,” said Eko.

  He didn’t say it to offer some comfort to Janet, though he did want to comfort her. He simply told her the truth. Even unto death, Davosky pined to be back on Mars. The less he spoke of it, the deeper his yearning.

  “He was trying to get better. For the last decade of his life, he fought against cancer, but in the end it spread.” Eko didn’t know if these facts would allay her sorrow in some measure. “I think the illness was the reason he returned to Earth. He tried laser and nanosurgery, chemo, everything. Maybe he found out about it on Mars but he didn’t want you to worry. He was trying to get better on Earth before coming back to you, since Terran medicine was more advanced.”

  “I don’t believe that,” said Janet. “His last physical on Mars gave him a clean bill of health.”

  Eko was surprised. “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. He wouldn’t have been able to board Maearth if he had cancer. Cosmic radiation is very dangerous, even for the healthy. Had he been diagnosed with anything, we wouldn’t have allowed him to leave. I know he was healthy.”

  Eko frowned. “Maybe the cancer was the result of the trip, then … I guess we’ll never know.”

  He thought he had found out why Davosky left Mars, but Janet had eliminated that possibility. He still knew nothing. He was hoping to find the answers from Janet, but she needed him to tell her what had happened. He and Janet had each offered reasons for Davosky’s departure that each thought made sense, but they had disproved each other’s theories. The mystery hung in the air, and he didn’t know if there were any more clues to be found.

  The depressive mood silenced him. The sky was like an umbrella that covered him in scattered sunlight. The counter in the middle of the coffee lounge spun, displaying tasty treats. The piano played a melancholy tune, and the keys danced as though caressed by an invisible pianist. Through the swaying leaves of the potted plants, Eko had the illusion of seeing a tuxedoed pianist at the bench.

  Abruptly, he was shaken out of his reverie. He still had not completed the most important task of his trip. “Oh, I almost forgot. My teacher had some things for you.”

  He took out a package: a woman’s comb, a button with Davosky’s portrait and name, the electronic notepad that Davosky had always kept with him. He lined them up in a row on the table.

  “That’s mine,” said Janet, caressing the objects in turn. “This was his Martian transportation pass, which I got for him. And this was his journal, which he had when he arrived from Earth.”

  “I saw a picture of you in it,” said Eko. Then he added, “There was no photograph of his wife in it.”

  Janet continued to run her fingers gently over the objects.

  “One last thing,” said Eko, trying find the right words. “Right before his death, he had his neural patterns digitized onto this chip—that is, he stored his memories on here. He told me to bring it to Mars. I think I should give it to you. He didn’t say so, but I believe this is the way he wanted to be laid to rest.”

  Solemnly, he cradled the chip in his palm and presented it to Janet.

  Lips trembling, Janet held out her hands, trembling as well. Her fingertips brushed against Eko’s hand and pulled back, as though he were holding up a ball of fire. Her swollen eyes could not move away from it.

  “Arthur … he just said to bring it to Mars? No further directions?”

  “No. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Did he suffer?”

  Eko thought about it. “I don’t think he was in a lot of physical pain, but he had been weakening for so long that he couldn’t speak. During his last window of lucidity, he tried to write but only got one letter out: B, the beginning of your name.”

  “B?” Janet’s eyes locked with his, and her lips stopped trembling. “Ah, that’s not me.” She shook her head with conviction.

  There was no disappointment in her voice when she spoke again, only the peace of having figured out a puzzle. “I know now where he wanted you to bring him.”

  Eko listened intently.

  “Let me tell you a secret about Arthur that no one else knows about,” said Janet. “Right before his departure, he went to the First Optical-Electrical Atelier, which was responsible for maintaining the central archive’s hardware. The central archive works on the principle of atomic storage, where each atom’s charged transitions are treated as zeros and ones. The information density is extremely high, allowing unprecedented capacity. Arthur obtained from the atelier the plans for the central archive and brought them to Earth.”

  Eko sat stunned. All of a sudden, everything made sense. He had found the last piece of the puzzle. This was the real reason Davosky had left.

  And even Janet hadn’t understood everything. Davosky hadn’t just gone to the atelier to obtain the secrets of atomic storage as a last-minute impulse. It had been his plan all along. Davosky had stayed on Mars to obtain this technology.

  He had hoped to construct a cave of information, a vast cave capable of holding all the wonderful thoughts of humanity, and to which all were welcome. Earth lacked anything comparable, and so he had begged and pleaded until he got the plans from the Martian researchers. The moment he did, he left. That was the business he needed to take care of on Earth.

  Once back on Earth, Davosky denied all interview requests and lived a life away from the public eye in order to realize his dream without having the technology falling into the wrong hands; perhaps guarding the precious knowledge with care had been a promise extracted by the Martian researchers before giving him the treasure in the first place. He had hoped to return to Mars as soon as the archive was constructed, but he hadn’t planned for cancer.

  The only question left was: What did Davosky do on Earth to build the archive?

  The image of Theon came to Eko instantly. He was certain that Davosky had gotten in touch with the man. Theon and his teacher were old friends, and Davosky had collaborated with the Thales Group many times. Davosky likely thought of the Thales Group as the most appropriate executor of his plan, since there was no other institution on Earth with such coverage and influence or with so many resources at its disposal. In the second half of the twenty-second century, when the market of the web was vastly larger than the market of physical goods, the Thales Group was the biggest company in the world.

  If Arthur wanted to realize his vision, he had no choice but to approach Theon.

  THE GRAND THEATER

  With a tumultuous heart, Luoying waited for Rudy. No matter what, she had to make her brother talk to her about their parents.

  Rudy got up before she did and returned home after she was already asleep. She pretty much never saw him at home. She went to his atelier to look for him, but he wasn’t in the office either. His colleagues told her that he was at the machining workshop, and so she went there and waited for him in the break room.

  She didn’t have the authorization to enter the workshop floor. A tempered-glass partition separated it from the break room, through which she could see the vast, uncluttered workshop floor, with walls filled with dense circuitry. The thick door of the break room was locked, and the tempered-glass partition itself was gridded with green reinforcement bars. She saw her brother, safety goggles and hard hat in place, supervising the operation of the assembly line. Next to him stood two assistants, both of them older than he was but listening intently to his directions.

  Luoying watched Rudy gesture as he issued commands with confidence. Standing before the row of gigantic machines, he was like a trainer skillfully directing a dragon to use its massive limbs to carry out his will and to fulfill the plan in his head. The dragon was blue and white, with each segment dedicated to a single task: cutting metal, weaving fiber, welding, drilling, punching, hammering. At one end stood three giant tanks for raw materials, and at the other end emerged one golden bench after another, like soap bubbles being blown.

  Luoying recognized the benches. One just like these had welcomed her home on the
day she landed on Mars.

  Though she’d been home for a few days, she still didn’t know much about her brother’s life, but she did know his ideal career path: technology researcher, industrial group leader, legislator, system director. This was the smoothest path to prominence on Mars, and Rudy was already a few rungs up the long ladder. He had always been an excellent student, with a bit of an arrogant swagger. So far he had been carrying out his plan with great success, though it was still early in the journey.

  The Fifth Electro-Mag Atelier was part of the Sunlight System. Most of Mars’s power needs came from the sun, and electromagnetic research was typically administratively treated as part of the Sunlight System. Sunlight System researchers were responsible for such inventions as rooftop electric panels, the power cables surrounding the city, and the magnetic particle shielding circuits installed in every house. On Mars, roofs and walls were filled with circuits of all kinds, some visible, some not. By manipulating these circuits, it was possible to generate powerful localized magnetic fields. Rudy’s research focused on such effects.

  While waiting, Luoying drank two glasses of juice and thought about their childhood. Back then, she and Rudy had spoken of their dreams to each other. She wanted to read next to a brightly lit window with someone she loved, while he wanted to go explore the galaxy with a girl he liked. She wanted to stay while her brother wanted to leave. But in the end it was she who had wandered afar, while he had put down roots here. They hadn’t spoken to each other of their dreams in a long time.

  She drained another glass, and Rudy came into the break room.

  Surprised to see her, he took off the hard hat and combed his messy blond hair with his fingers. He looked to be in a bad mood, with an exhausted face and red eyes. He went to the wall and got himself a coffee and two cookies before coming to sit next to her. He drank the coffee so fast that he fell into a fit of coughing. Luoying waited until he had recovered.

  “You look a bit tired,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I’m all right. How’s your practice going?”

  “All right, I guess.”

  Rudy waited for Luoying to explain why she had come. But she couldn’t get to the point right away. Instead, she got up, glanced at the busy workshop floor, and took Rudy’s mug to the wall and refilled it. She added sugar and stirred it and put the mug back in front of Rudy.

  “I went to see Uncle Laak.”

  “What for?”

  “He confirmed my suspicion.”

  He understood. He buried his nose in the mug as he drank. “Okay.”

  “But you already knew I was right, didn’t you?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “And you also know why Mom and Dad died.”

  Still nothing.

  “Tell me!”

  “It was an accident.” Rudy sat, stone-faced. “Those responsible for the technical malfunction were punished afterward.”

  His distant demeanor wounded her. She tried another tack. “Rudy, do you think Grandfather is a dictator?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “Because that’s what others say.”

  “Who says that?”

  “Many people.”

  “Terrans?”

  “Sure.”

  “You can’t believe anything Terrans say. They are prejudiced.”

  “Not all of them.”

  “Then they’re ignorant. You should know that.”

  “I don’t know that.”

  “You should.”

  Rudy was frowning at Luoying, looking very serious.

  “I thought they were ignorant,” she said softly. “But Grandfather … he ordered the suppression of the protest movement. Isn’t that true?”

  She had learned of this when she protested with her Reversionist friends on Earth. How the Terrans had known this was unclear to her. It seemed as if Terrans knew many things about Mars that she had never heard about, just as Martians knew many things about Earth that many Terrans did not. They had sat around a bonfire in the protest camp and shared stories they each knew about the other world. In the end, rumors and truths were mixed together so completely that it was impossible to tell which was which.

  “The protests had to be suppressed.” Rudy spoke slowly but determinedly. “Mars isn’t like Earth. It was too dangerous.”

  “Too dangerous,” Luoying repeated, also very slowly. “But Mom and Dad died for that cause.”

  “Don’t speak about things you don’t understand.”

  “But what other reasons could possibly explain their deaths? To refuse to register is not, by itself, a crime. But to instigate an ideological revolution, to lead a massive protest movement against the atelier system—that had to be punished.”

  “Who told you such stories?”

  Luoying ignored him. “Their ideas about freedom challenged the whole system around us, and they had to be punished. Grandfather gave the order himself, didn’t he? The system cannot tolerate revolutions.”

  Rudy’s tone was cold. “You are a romantic, but that’s not how the world works.”

  Luoying held her tongue. The Rudy before her was nothing like the Rudy she knew as a little girl. In those days, her big brother had loved to read soul-stirring tales of idealistic revolutionaries. He told her stories about the Renaissance, the French Revolution, the anarchist movements of the twenty-first century. When he told her about these heroes, his face lit up, his words poured out like a torrent, and he waved the pen in his hand about wildly like a sword. Those young predecessors who had led young revolutions in the young history of the human race made him gaze far into the future and elevated his soul. He once told her that all systems of rules, all order, existed to be broken by the brave. The young Rudy had only two dreams: to explore afar and to join a revolution.

  “Then why don’t you tell me the truth as you see it?” she asked, her voice now also cold. “You should have told me everything from the start. Why are you and Grandfather so determined to keep the truth from me? Why do you think I won’t understand?”

  “Some things you just can’t understand.”

  “I can!”

  Rudy had no interest in arguing with her. It was clear that he simply wanted to end the discussion as soon as possible. In a tired voice he said, “If you really think you can understand, then stop asking these questions. I’ve got much bigger problems to deal with right now. You can wait until later.”

  “What problems?”

  “The negotiations with Earth.”

  Luoying remembered the looming crisis. “So there’s been no progress?”

  “No.”

  “They’ve made fusion technology a requirement?”

  “They haven’t said so. But it’s clear they are not going to give up on it easily.”

  “What’s our response?”

  “We also haven’t said anything definite.” Rudy paused, but there was a strange expression on his face: the look a hunter got when he had sighted his prey. “If I were in charge … I would go with Uncle Juan’s plan and strike first. It’s the cleanest solution.”

  “Uncle Juan wants to go to war?”

  “Of course.”

  “But his grandmother died in the war.”

  “That’s totally different. Uncle Juan isn’t suggesting we behave like the despicable Terrans, all butchers. He thinks we should capture the Moon bases with a surprise attack, quick and bloodless. Then we’ll destroy or take over all Terran satellites in orbit. Earth would then be at our mercy. He has no interest in a massacre. We’re not like them.”

  “How can taking over the Moon bases be bloodless?”

  “We can do it.” Rudy spoke with conviction. “Do you think we’ve been wasting our time all these years? You have no idea how much we’ve invested in spaceflight and weapons research. Both Sanlias and Loqia research centers have been working nonstop, and there’s no way Terran research, driven by commercial interests, can compete. Our fighters, even without fusion engines, are far
more powerful than theirs. I’m not exaggerating: given our guidance systems and improved lasers, I think we’ll take over the Moon bases within two weeks without meeting meaningful resistance.”

  Luoying’s heart sank. Two weeks. What kind of war can be over in two weeks?

  She remembered that old house on Earth. She and her friends had also said something about two weeks. Give us two weeks, and we’ll take everything back! That was Lily-Ruta, the older girl who Luoying found so fascinating. In two weeks we’ll take over this place and return it to God, to the unfallen world. She was lying on a rotting sofa, her feet on the back, her blond tresses matted as she closed her eyes and took another hit from the marijuana-packed hookah. Trust me. Two weeks is more than enough.

  They were faithful heretics, worshippers of a god named Nature. They viewed the claims of the rich over pieces of land as illegitimate, as the desecration of Earth itself. Luoying joined them in their effort to take over a ranch, and they achieved a quick initial victory. But two weeks later, Lily-Ruta and her friends were trapped in the old house, running out of food and water, while outside, armored police vehicles surrounded the property and loudspeakers demanded their surrender every minute. They waited for their friends in Berlin to come rescue them by air, but they didn’t know that their friends were also surrounded and trapped, just like them.

  In the end, everyone was arrested. The movement ended with a whimper, without even meaningful sacrifices. The three weeks they spent in jail seemed both chaotic and silly. This was, in fact, the best conclusion: it was better to be laughed at then to have anyone die. Luoying had never really believed promises involving “two weeks,” and certainly not after that. She could see that a planned surprise attack could succeed, but she no longer believed that there would be no counterattack or escalation.

  “Once war starts, it won’t end just because we want it to,” she said.