by Liu Cixin
“Listen to this: I can achieve subterranean gasification of coal without using a catalyst!”
“And how would you do that?” the director said, pushing aside his blueprint and giving Liu Xin his full attention. An encouraging sign, Liu Xin thought, and revealed his plan:
“Ignite the coal.”
The director was silent for a moment, then lit a cigarette and motioned for Liu Xin to continue. But Liu Xin felt his enthusiasm drain as he realized the nature of the director’s excitement: Here, after days of constant drudgery, he had at last found a brief opportunity to relax. A free performance by an idiot. But Liu Xin pressed stubbornly onward.
“Extraction is accomplished through a series of holes drilled from the surface to the seam, using existing oil drills. These holes have the following effects: First, they distribute a large number of sensors into the seam. Second, they ignite the subterranean coal. Third, they inject water or steam into the seam. Fourth, they introduce combustion air into the seam. Fifth, they remove the gasified coal.
“Once the coal is ignited and comes into contact with the steam, the following reactions occur: Carbon reacts with water to produce carbon monoxide and gaseous hydrogen, and carbon dioxide and hydrogen; then carbon and carbon dioxide react to form carbon monoxide; and carbon monoxide and water react to form more carbon dioxide and hydrogen. The ultimate result is a combustible gas akin to water gas, with a combustible portion consisting of fifty percent hydrogen and thirty percent carbon monoxide. This is the coal gas we will obtain.
“Sensors transmit burn and production conditions of all combustible gases at every point in the seam to the surface by ultrasound. These signals are aggregated by a computer to build a model of the coal-seam furnace, enabling us to control, through the holes, the scale and depth of the subterranean fire as well as the burn rate. Specifically, we can inject water into the holes to arrest the burn, or pressurized air or steam to intensify it. All of this proceeds automatically in response to changes in the computer’s burn model so that the fire is kept at an optimum state of incompletely combusted water and coal, to ensure maximum production. You’d be most concerned, of course, with controlling the fire’s range. We can drill a series of holes ahead of its advance and inject pressurized water to form a fire barrier. Where the burning is fierce, we can also employ a pressurized cement curtain, the kind used in dam building, to block the fire.” He trailed off. “Are you listening to me?”
A noise outside had attracted the director’s attention. Liu Xin knew that the image his plan evoked in the director’s mind was different from his own vision. The director surely knew what igniting subterranean coal meant: right now, coal mines were burning all over the world, including several in China.
The previous year, Liu Xin had seen ground fire for the first time in Xinjiang. Not a stitch of grass on the ground or hillsides as far as the eye could see, and the air churned in hot waves of sulfur, shimmering his vision as if he were underwater or as if the entire world were roasting on a spit. At night, Liu Xin saw ribbons of ghostly red where light seeped through countless cracks in the earth. He had approached one to peer inside, and immediately gulped a nervous breath. It was like the entrance to hell. The light shone dimly from deep within, but he could still sense its ferocious heat. Looking out at the glowing lines beneath the night sky, he’d felt as if the Earth were a burning ember wrapped in a thin layer of crust. Aygul, the brawny Uighur man who had accompanied him, was the leader of China’s sole coal-seam fire brigade, and Liu Xin’s aim in making the trip there had been to recruit him for his lab.
“It’ll be hard to pull myself away,” Aygul had said in accented Chinese. “I grew up watching these ground fires, so to me they’re an integral part of the world, like the sun or the stars.”
“You mean the fire started burning when you were born?”
“No, Dr. Liu. This fire has been burning since the Qing Dynasty.”
Liu Xin stood rooted in place and shivered as the heat waves rolled over him in the night.
Aygul had continued, “I’d do better to stand in your way than agree to help you. Listen to me, Dr. Liu. This isn’t a game. You’re working with devilry!”
Now, in the director’s office, the noise outside the window had grown louder. As the director stood up and went over to it, he said to Liu Xin, “Young man, I really hope that the sixty million the bureau is investing in this project could be put to better use. You can see there’s much that needs to be done. Until next time.”
Liu Xin followed the director out of the building, where the workers’ sit-in protest had grown larger, and a leader was shouting something he couldn’t make out to the crowd. His attention was drawn to a corner of the crowd, where he saw a group of people in wheelchairs. More were filing in, each one a miner who had lost a limb in a work accident.
Liu Xin felt like he couldn’t breathe. He loosened his tie, lowered his head, and passed quickly through the crowd before ducking into his car. He drove aimlessly, his mind blank, and after a while slammed on the brakes at the top of a hill. He used to come here as a kid. From here, there was a bird’s-eye view of the whole mine. He got out and stood motionless for a long time.
“What are you looking at?” a voice said. Liu Xin looked back and saw Li Minsheng, who had come up at some point to stand behind him.
“That’s our school,” Liu Xin said, pointing off at a large mining school that housed both primary and secondary classes. The athletic field on the campus was conspicuously large. It was there they had lain to rest their childhood and youth.
“Do you think you remember everything?” Li Minsheng said tiredly as he sat down on a nearby rock.
“I do.”
“That afternoon in late autumn, when the sun was hazy. We were playing football on the field, when the building’s loudspeaker came on … do you remember?”
“It was playing a dirge, and then Zhang Jianjun came running over barefoot to say that Chairman Mao had died …”
“We called him a counterrevolutionary, and walloped him, even as he was crying out that it was true, honest to Chairman Mao it was true. We didn’t believe him, though, and dragged him off to the police …”
“But we slowed down at the school gate, since the dirge was playing outside too, as if that dark music was filling the whole world …”
“That dirge has been playing in my mind for more than two decades. These days, when the music plays it’s Nietzsche who runs over barefoot and says, ‘God is dead.’” Li Minsheng barked out a laugh. “I believe it.”
Liu Xin stared at his childhood friend. “When did you turn into this? I hardly even recognize you.”
Li Minsheng jumped up and glared back at him, jabbing a finger at the gray world at the foot of the hill. “When did the mine turn into that? Do you still recognize it?” Then he sat down heavily again. “Our fathers were such a proud group. Such a proud, grand group of miners. Take my dad. He was a level-eight worker2 and earned a hundred and twenty yuan a month. A hundred and twenty yuan in the Chairman Mao era, no less.”
Liu Xin was silent for a moment, then tried to change the subject. “How’s your family? Your wife … uh, something Shan, is it?”
Li Minsheng smiled thinly. “Last year she told me she was taking a work trip, told her work unit she was taking annual leave, and took our daughter and left me and vanished. Two months later she sent a letter, posted from Canada, in which she said she had no wish to waste her life with a dirty coalman.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. You’re a senior engineer!”
“Same difference.” Li Minsheng swept his hand about them. “To those who’ve never been below, it’s all the same. We’re all dirty coalmen. Do you remember how badly we wanted to become engineers?”
“Those were the days of record-chasing production,” Liu Xin said. “We brought our fathers lunch. It was the first time we’d been down the shaft, and it was so dark down there. I asked my father and those standing near him, ‘How do you know
where the coal seam is? How do you know where to dig the tunnels? And how are you able to get two tunnels dug from different directions to meet so precisely so far down?’ And your father answered, ‘Child, no one knows except for the engineers.’ And when we got to the surface, he pointed out a few men carrying hard hats and clipboards, and said, ‘Look, those are engineers.’ Do you remember that, Minsheng? Even we could see that they were different. The towels around their necks, at least, were a bit whiter. We’ve achieved that childhood dream now. Of course, it’s not all that glorious, but we have to at least fulfill our duty and accomplish something. Otherwise, won’t we be betraying ourselves?”
“That’s enough,” Li Minsheng said, standing up with a sudden anger. “I’ve been doing my duty this whole time. I’ve been accomplishing things. But you? You’re living in a dream! Do you really believe you can bring miners up from the mines? Turn this mine into a gas field? Say all that theory is correct and your test succeeds. So what? Have you calculated the cost of the thing? Also, how are you going to lay tens of thousands of kilometers of pipe? You realize that we can’t even pay rail shipping fees these days?”
“Can’t you take the long view? In a few years, or a few decades …”
“The hell with the long view! The people here aren’t certain about the next few days, much less the next few decades. I’ve said before that you live on dreams. You’ve always been that way. Sure, back in your quiet old institute headquarters in Beijing you can have that dream, but I can’t. I live in the real world.”
Li Minsheng turned to leave, then added, “Oh, I came to tell you that the director has arranged for us to cooperate with your experiment. Work is work, and I’ll do it.” Then he set off down the hill without looking back.
Liu Xin silently surveyed the mine where he had been born and spent his childhood. Its towering headframes and their enormous top wheels spinning, lowering large cages down the shaft out of sight; rows of electric trams going in and out of the entrance to the shaft where his father had worked; a train outside the coal-separator building easing past more piles of coal than he could count; the cinema and soccer field where he had spent the best moments of his youth; the huge bathhouse—only miners had ones so large—where he had learned how to swim in water stained black from coal dust. Yes, he had learned to swim in a place so far from rivers and oceans.
Turning his gaze toward the distance, he saw the spoil tip, the accumulation of more than a century’s worth of shale dug out of the mine. It seemed taller than the surrounding hills, with smoke rising where the sulfur heated the rain…. All of it black, blanketed over time in a layer of coal dust. It was the color of Liu Xin’s childhood, the color of his life. He closed his eyes, and as he listened to the sounds of the mine below, time seemed to stop.
Dad’s mine. My mine …
*
The valley was not far from the mine, whose smoke and steam were visible beyond the ridge during the day, whose glow projected into the sky at night, and whose steam whistles were always audible. Liu Xin, Li Minsheng, and Aygul stood in the center of the desolate valley. In the distance, a herder was driving a flock of scrawny goats slowly along the foot of the mountain. Beneath the valley lay the small isolated coal seam that Liu Xin wanted to use for his subterranean gasified coal extraction experiment, found by Li Minsheng and the engineers in the geology department after a month of combing through mountains of materials in the archives.
“We’re pretty far from the main mining area, so we’ve got fewer geological details on it,” Li Minsheng said.
“I’ve read the materials, and from what we have now, the experimental seam is at least two hundred meters from the main seam. That’s acceptable. We should get to work,” Liu Xin said excitedly.
“You’re not an expert in mining geology, and you’re even less familiar with the actual conditions here. I advise you to be more cautious. Think about it some more.”
“There’s nothing to think about. The experiment can’t proceed,” Aygul said. “I’ve read the materials too. They’re too sketchy. The separation between exploratory boreholes is too large, and they were made in the sixties. They need to be redone, to prove conclusively that the seam is independent, before the experiment can begin. Li and I have drawn up an exploratory plan.”
“How long until exploration is complete, according to your plan? And how much more investment is needed?”
Li Minsheng said, “At the geology department’s current capacity, at least a month. We didn’t run the investment numbers. To estimate … at least two million or so.”
“We have neither the time nor the money for that!”
“Then put in a request to the ministry.”
“The ministry? A bunch of bastards in the ministry want to kill this project! The higher-ups are anxious for results, so I’m dooming the entire project if I go back and ask for more time and a bigger budget. Instinct tells me there won’t be major problems, so why not take a little risk?”
“Instinct? Risk? Not on a project like this! Dr. Liu, do you realize where we’re starting this fire? You call that a small risk?”
“I’ve made my decision!” Liu Xin cut him off with a wave of his hand and walked off alone.
“Engineer Li, why aren’t you stopping that madman? The two of us are on the same side,” Aygul said.
“I’m going to do what I’m required to,” Li Minsheng said.
*
Three hundred men were at work in the valley. Besides physicists, chemists, geologists, and mining engineers, there were a few unexpected experts. Aygul led a coal-seam fire brigade of more than ten members, and there were two entire drilling squads from Renqiu Oil Field in Hebei Province, as well as a number of hydraulic-construction engineers and workers who would erect subterranean firebreaks. On the work site, in addition to tall rigs and piles of drilling poles, there were piles of cement bags and a mixer, a high-pressure slurry pump whining as it injected liquid cement into the ground, rows of high-pressure water and air pumps, and a spiderweb of crisscrossing multicolored pipes.
Work had been progressing for two months, and an underground cement curtain more than two thousand meters long had been constructed surrounding the seam. Liu Xin had thought of adapting hydraulic engineering technology used in waterproofing the foundation of dams to the subterranean firewall: high-pressure cement was injected underground, where it hardened into a tight fireproof barrier. Within the curtain, the drills had sunk nearly a hundred boreholes, each directly into the seam. The holes were connected by pipes that split into three prongs attached to different high-pressure pumps that could inject water, steam, or compressed air.
The final bit of work was the release of the “ground rats,” as they called the fire sensors. The curious gizmos, Liu Xin’s own design, resembled not rats but bombs. Each was twenty centimeters long with a bit at one end and a drive wheel at the other, and once released into the borehole, it could drill nearly a hundred meters farther into the seam and reach its designated location autonomously. Operable even under high temperatures and pressures, it would transmit the parameters at its location back to the master computer once the seam was ignited via seam-penetrating infrasound. More than a thousand of these ground rats had been released into the seam, half of which were positioned outside of the fire curtain to detect potential breaches.
Liu Xin stood in a large tent in front of a projection screen showing the fire curtain, with flashing lights that indicated the position of each ground rat according to the signals. They were densely distributed, giving the screen the look of an astronomical chart.
Everything was ready. Two bulky ignition electrodes had been lowered down a borehole at the center of the enclosure and were directly wired to a red button switch in the tent where Liu Xin was standing. All of the workers were in place and waiting.
“There’s still time to change your mind, Dr. Liu,” Aygul said quietly. “Or to take more time to think on it.”
“Aygul, that’s enough. You’ve bee
n spreading fear and uncertainty from day one, and you’ve complained about me all the way to the ministry. To be fair, you’ve contributed immensely to this project, and without your work this past year, I wouldn’t be so quick to conduct the experiment.”
“Dr. Liu …” Aygul was pleading now. Liu Xin had never seen him like this. “We don’t have to do this. Don’t release the demon from the depths!”
“You think we can quit now?” Liu Xin smiled and shook his head, then turned toward Li Minsheng.
Li Minsheng said, “As you instructed, we reviewed all of the geological materials a sixth time. We found no problems. Last night we added an additional curtain layer to a few sensitive spots.” He pointed out several short lines on the screen, outside the enclosure.
Liu Xin went up to the ignition switch, and when his hand made contact with the red button he paused and closed his eyes as if in prayer. His lips moved, but only Li Minsheng, standing closest to him, heard the word he said—
“Dad …”
The button made no sound or flash. The valley remained the same as ever. But somewhere deep underground, a glittering high-temperature electric arc was created by more than ten thousand volts of electricity in the seam. On the screen, at the location of the electrodes, a small red dot appeared and quickly expanded like a blot of red ink on rice paper. Liu Xin moved the mouse, and the screen switched to a burn model produced from the data returned by the ground rats, a continuously growing, onion-like sphere, where each layer was an isotherm. High-pressure pumps roared, pouring combustion air into the seam through the boreholes, and the fire expanded like a blown-up balloon…. An hour later, when the control computer switched on the high-pressure water pumps, the fire onscreen twisted and distorted like a punctured balloon, although its volume remained the same.
Liu Xin exited the tent. The sun had set behind the hill, and the thunder of machines echoed in the darkening valley. More than three hundred people were assembled outside, surrounding a vertical jet the diameter of an oil barrel. They made way for him, and he approached the small platform at the foot of the jet. Two people were standing on the platform, one of whom twisted the knob when he saw Liu Xin coming; the other struck a lighter to light a torch, which he passed to Liu Xin. The turning of the knob produced a hiss of gas from the jet that rose dramatically in volume until it roared throughout the valley like a hoarse giant. On all sides, three hundred nervous faces watched in the faint torchlight. Liu Xin closed his eyes and spoke silently to himself again. Then he brought the torch to the mouth of the jet and ignited the world’s first gasified coal well.