The Three-Body Problem (34 page)

“Because it can allow humans to escape gravity and engage in space construction at a much larger scale.”

“The space elevator?” Wang suddenly understood.

“Yes. If ultrastrong nanomaterials could be mass produced, then that would lay the technical foundation for building a space elevator from the ground up to a geostationary point in space. For our Lord, this is but a tiny invention; but for humans on Earth, its meaning would be significant. With this technology, humans could easily enter near-Earth space and build up large-scale defensive structures. Thus, this technology must be extinguished.”

“What is at the end of the countdown?” Wang asked the question that frightened him the most.

Ye smiled. “I don’t know.”

“But trying to stop me is useless! This is not basic research. Based on what we’ve already found out, someone else can figure out the rest.” Wang’s voice was loud but anxious.

“Yes, it is rather useless. It’s far more effective to confuse the researchers’ minds. But, like you point out, we didn’t stop the progress in time. After all, what you do is applied research. Our technique is far more effective against basic research.…”

“Speaking of basic research, how did your daughter die?”

The question silenced Ye for a few seconds. Wang noticed that her eyes dimmed almost imperceptibly. But she then resumed the conversation. “Indeed, compared to our Lord, who possesses peerless strength, everything we do is meaningless. We’re just doing whatever we can.”

Just as she finished speaking, several loud booms rang out and the doors to the cafeteria broke open. A team of soldiers holding submachine guns rushed in. Wang realized that they were not armed police, but the real army. Noiselessly they proceeded along the walls and soon surrounded the rebels of the ETO. Shi Qiang was the last to enter. His jacket was open, and he held the barrel of a pistol so that the grip was like the head of a hammer.

Da Shi looked around arrogantly, then suddenly dashed forward. His hand flashed and there was the dull thud of metal striking against a skull. An ETO rebel fell to the ground, and the gun that he was trying to draw tumbled to fall some distance away. Several soldiers began to shoot at the ceiling, and dust and debris fell. Someone grabbed Wang Miao and pulled him away from the ETO ranks until he was safe behind a row of soldiers.

“Drop all your weapons onto the table! I swear I’m going to kill the next son of a bitch who tries anything.” Da Shi pointed at the submachine guns arrayed behind him. “I know that none of you is afraid to die, but we’re not afraid either. I’m going to say this up front: Normal police procedures and laws don’t apply to you. Even the human laws of warfare no longer apply to you. Since you’ve decided to treat the entire human race as your enemy, there’s no longer anything we wouldn’t do to you.”

There was some commotion among the ETO members, but no one panicked. Ye’s face remained impassive. Three people suddenly rushed out of the crowd, including the young woman who had twisted Pan Han’s neck. They ran toward the three-body sculpture, and each grabbed one of the spheres and held it in front of his or her chest.

The young woman raised the bright metal sphere before her with both hands, as though she were getting ready to start a gymnastics routine. Smiling, she said, “Officers, we hold in our hands three nuclear bombs, each with a yield of about one point five kilotons. Not too big, since we like small toys. This is the detonator.”

Everyone in the cafeteria froze. The only one who moved was Shi Qiang. He put his gun back into the holster under his left arm and placed his hands together calmly.

“Our demand is simple: Let the commander go,” the young woman said. “Then we can play whatever game you want.” Her tone suggested that she wasn’t afraid of Shi Qiang and the soldiers at all.

“I stay with my comrades,” Ye said, calmly.

“Can you confirm her claim?” Da Shi asked an officer next to him, an explosives expert.

The officer threw a bag in front of the three ETO members holding the spheres. One of the ETO fighters picked up the bag and took out a spring scale, a bigger version of the ones some customers brought to street markets to verify the portions measured by vendors. He placed his metal sphere into the bag, attached it to the spring scale, and held it aloft. The gauge extended about halfway and stopped.

The young woman chuckled. The explosives expert also laughed, contemptuously.

The ETO member took out the sphere and tossed it on the ground. Another ETO fighter picked up the scale and the bag and repeated the procedure with his sphere, and ended up also tossing the sphere to the ground.

The young woman laughed once more and picked up the bag herself. She loaded her sphere into the bag, hung it on the hook of the scale, and the gauge immediately dropped to its bottom, the spring in the scale having been fully extended.

The smile on the explosives expert’s face froze. He whispered to Da Shi, “Damn! They really do have one.”

Da Shi remained impassive.

The explosives expert said, “We can at least confirm that there are heavy elements—fissile material—inside. We don’t know if the detonation mechanism works.”

The flashlights attached to the soldiers’ guns focused on the young woman holding the nuclear bomb. While she held the destructive power of 1.5 kilotons of TNT in her hands, she smiled brightly, as though enjoying applause and praise on a spotlit stage.

“I have an idea: Shoot the sphere,” the explosives expert whispered to Da Shi.

“Won’t that set off the bomb?”

“The conventional explosives around the outside will go off, but the explosion will be scattered. It won’t lead to the kind of precise compression of the fissile material in the center necessary for a nuclear explosion.”

Da Shi stared at the nuclear woman, saying nothing.

“How about snipers?”

Almost imperceptibly, Da Shi shook his head. “There’s no good position. She’s sharp as a tack. As soon as she’s targeted by a sniper scope, she’ll know.”

Da Shi strode forward. He pushed the crowd apart and stood in the middle of the empty space.

“Stop,” the young woman warned Da Shi, staring at him intently. Her right thumb was poised over the detonator. Her face was no longer smiling in the flashlight beams.

“Calm down,” Da Shi said, standing about seven or eight meters from her. He took an envelope from his pocket. “I have some information you’ll definitely want to know. Your mother has been found.”

The young woman’s feverish eyes dimmed. At that moment her eyes were truly windows to her soul.

Da Shi took two steps forward. He was now no more than five meters from her. She raised the bomb and warned him with her eyes, but she was already distracted. One of the two ETO members who had tossed away fake bombs strode toward Da Shi to take the envelope from him. As the man blocked the woman’s view of Da Shi, he drew his gun with a lightning-fast motion. The woman only saw a flash by the ear of the man trying to take the letter from Da Shi before the bomb in her hands exploded.

After hearing the muffled explosion, Wang saw nothing before his eyes but darkness. Someone dragged him out of the cafeteria. Thick, yellow smoke poured out of the door, and a cacophony of shouting and gunshots came from inside. From time to time, people rushed through the smoke and out of the cafeteria.

Wang got up and tried to go back into the cafeteria, but the explosives expert grabbed him around the waist and stopped him.

“Careful. Radiation!”

The chaos eventually subsided. More than a dozen ETO fighters were killed in the gunfight. The rest—more than two hundred, including Ye Wenjie—were arrested. The explosion had turned the nuclear woman into a bloody mess, but she was the only casualty of the aborted bomb. The man who had tried to take the letter from Da Shi was severely injured, but since his body had shielded Da Shi, his wounds were light. However, like everyone else who remained in the cafeteria after the explosion, Shi suffered severe radiation contamination.

Through the small window of an ambulance, Wang stared at Da Shi, who was lying inside. A wound on Da Shi’s head continued to ooze blood. The nurse who was dressing the wound wore transparent protective gear. Da Shi and Wang could only talk through their mobile phones.

“Who was that young woman’s mother?” Wang asked.

Da Shi grinned. “Fucked if I know. Just a guess. A girl like that most likely has mother issues. After doing this for more than twenty years, I’m pretty good at reading people.”

“I bet you’re happy to be proven right. There really was someone behind all this.” Wang forced himself to smile, hoping Da Shi could see it.

“Buddy, you’re the one who was right!” Da Shi laughed, shaking his head. “I would never have thought that actual fucking aliens would be involved!”

25

The Deaths of Lei Zhicheng and Yang Weining

INTERROGATOR:
Name?

YE WENJIE:
Ye Wenjie.

INTERROGATOR:
Birth date?

YE:
June 1943.

INTERROGATOR:
Employment?

YE:
Professor of Astrophysics at Tsinghua University. Retired in 2004.

INTERROGATOR:
In consideration of your health, you may stop the interrogation temporarily at any time.

YE:
Thank you. I’m fine.

INTERROGATOR:
We’re only conducting a regular criminal investigation now and won’t get into more sensitive matters. We would like to finish quickly. We hope you’ll cooperate.

YE:
I know what you’re referring to. Yes, I’ll cooperate.

INTERROGATOR:
Our investigation revealed that while you were working at Red Coast Base, you were suspected of murder.

YE:
I did kill two people.

INTERROGATOR:
When?

YE:
The afternoon of October 21, 1979.

INTERROGATOR:
Names of the victims?

YE:
Base Commissar Lei Zhicheng, and my husband, Base Engineer Yang Weining.

INTERROGATOR:
Explain your motive for murder.

YE:
Can I … assume that you understand the relevant background?

INTERROGATOR:
I know the basics. If something is unclear I’ll ask you.

YE:
Good. On the day when I received the extraterrestrial communication and replied, I learned that I wasn’t the only one to get the message. Lei did as well.

*   *   *

Lei was a typical political cadre of the time, so he possessed an extremely keen sense for politics and saw everything through an ideological lens. Unbeknownst to most of the technical staff at Red Coast Base, he ran a small program in the background on the main computer. This program constantly read from the transmission and reception buffers and stored the results in a hidden encrypted file. This way, there would be a copy of everything Red Coast sent and received that only he could read. It was from this copy that he discovered the extraterrestrial message.

On the afternoon after I sent my message toward the rising sun, and shortly after I learned that I was pregnant at the base clinic, Lei called me to his office, and I saw that his terminal displayed the message from Trisolaris that I had received the night before.…

*   *   *

“Eight hours have passed since you received the first message. Instead of making a report, you deleted the original message and maybe hid a copy. Isn’t that right?”

I kept my head down and did not reply.

“I know your next move. You plan to reply. If I hadn’t discovered this in time, you could have ruined all human civilization! Of course I’m not saying that we’re afraid of an interstellar invasion. Even if we assumed the worst and that really did happen, the outer space invaders would surely drown in the ocean of the people’s righteous war!”

I realized then that he didn’t know that I’d already replied. When I placed the answer into the transmission buffer, I didn’t use the regular file interface. Luckily, this got around his monitoring program.

“Ye Wenjie, I knew you were capable of something like this. You’ve always held a deep hatred toward the Party and the people. You would seize any opportunity for revenge. Do you know the consequences of your actions?”

Of course I knew, so I nodded. Lei was silent for a moment. But what he said next was unexpected. “Ye Wenjie, I have no pity for you at all. You’ve always been a class enemy who views the people as your adversaries. But I’ve served many years with Yang. I cannot bear to see him ruined along with you, and I certainly cannot allow his child to be ruined as well. You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”

What he said wasn’t idle speculation. During that era, my deeds would certainly have implicated my husband if revealed, regardless of whether he had anything to do with them.

Lei kept his voice very low. “Right now, only you and I know what happened. What we must do is to minimize the impact of your actions. Pretend that it never happened and never mention it to anyone, including Yang. I’ll take care of the rest. As long as you cooperate, you can avoid the disastrous consequences.”

I immediately knew what Lei was after. He wanted to become the first man to discover extraterrestrial intelligence. It really was a great opportunity to get his name into the history textbooks.

I assented. Then I left his office. I’d already decided everything.

I took a small wrench and went to the equipment closet for the processing module of the receiver. Because I often needed to inspect the equipment, no one paid attention. I opened the main cabinet and carefully loosened the bolt that secured the ground wire to the bottom. The interference on the receiver suddenly increased and the ground resistance went up from 0.6 ohms to 5 ohms. The technician on duty thought it was a problem with the ground wire, because that kind of malfunction happened a lot. It was an easy diagnosis. He would never have guessed that the problem was at this end, at the top of the ground wire, because this end was securely fastened, out of the way, and I told him that I had just inspected it.