Hold Up The Sky

by Liu Cixin

  The Senior Official set the pencil lightly on his desk, waiting in silence for Chen Xufeng to continue, but the latter seemed to have run out of steam. The Senior Official took out a cigarette. Chen Xufeng hurriedly patted at his coat pockets for a lighter, but couldn’t find one.

  One of the two phones on the desk began to ring.

  Chen Xufeng swept his gaze over the caller ID. “It’s them,” he said quietly.

  Unperturbed, the Senior Official motioned at him. Chen pressed the speaker button. A voice immediately sounded, worn and very young. “Your lighter is in the briefcase.”

  Chen Xufeng glanced at the Senior Official, then began to rummage through the briefcase on the desk. He couldn’t find anything at first.

  “It’s wedged in a document, the one on urban household registration reform.”

  Chen Xufeng took out the document. The lighter fell onto the desk with a clatter.

  “That’s one fine lighter there. French-made S. T. Dupont brand, solid palladium-gold alloy, thirty diamonds set in each side, worth … let me look it up … 39,960 yuan.”

  The Senior Official didn’t move, but Chen Xufeng raised his head to study the office. This wasn’t the Senior Official’s personal office; rather, it had been selected at random from the rooms in this office building.

  The target continued the demonstration of their powers. “Senior Official, there are five cigarettes left in your box of Chunghwas. There’s only one Mevacor cholesterol tablet left in your coat pocket—better have your secretary get some more.”

  Chen Xufeng picked up the box of cigarettes on the desk; the Senior Official took out the blister pack of pills from his pocket. The target was correct on both counts.

  “Stop coming after me. I’m in a tricky situation just like you. I’m not sure what to do now,” the target continued.

  “Can we discuss this in person?” asked the Senior Official.

  “Believe me, it would be a disaster for both sides.” With that, the phone went dead.

  Chen Xufeng exhaled. Now he had the proof to back up his story—the thought of disbelief from the Senior Official unsettled him more than his opponent’s antics. “It’s like seeing a ghost,” he said, shaking his head.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do see danger,” said the Senior Official. For the fourth time in his life, Chen Xufeng saw that pair of eyes bore into his.

  THE INMATE AND THE PURSUED

  In the No. 2 Detention Center at the city outskirts, Song Cheng walked under escort into the cell. There were already six other prisoners inside, mostly other inmates serving extended terms.

  Cold looks greeted Song Cheng from all directions. Once the guard left, shutting the door behind him, a small, thin man came up.

  “Hey, you, Pig Grease!” he yelled. Seeing Song Cheng’s confusion, he continued, “The law of the land here ranks us Big Grease, Second Grease, Third Grease … Pig Grease at the bottom, that’s you. Hey, don’t think we’re taking advantage of the latecomer.” He pointed his thumb at a heavily bearded man leaning in the corner. “Brother Bao’s only been here three days, and he’s already Big Grease. Trash like you may have held a pretty government rank before, but here you’re lowest of the low!” He turned toward the other man and asked respectfully, “How will you receive him, Brother Bao?”

  “Stereo sound,” came the careless reply.

  Two other inmates sprang up from the bunks and grabbed Song Cheng by the ankles, dangling him upside down. They held him over the toilet and slowly lowered him until his head was largely inside.

  “Sing a song,” Skinny Guy commanded. “That’s what stereo sound means. Give us a comrade song like ‘Left Hand, Right Hand’!”

  Song Cheng didn’t sing. The inmates let go, and his head pitched all the way into the toilet.

  Struggling, Song Cheng pulled his head out. He immediately began to vomit. Now he realized that the story designed by those who had framed him would make him the target of all his fellow inmates’ contempt.

  The delighted prisoners around him suddenly scattered and dashed back to their bunks. The door opened; the police guard from earlier came in. He looked with disgust at Song Cheng, still crouched in front of the toilet. “Wash off your head at the tap. You have a visitor.”

  *

  Once Song Cheng rinsed off, he followed the guard into a spacious office where his visitor awaited. He was very young, thin-faced with messy hair and thick glasses. He carried an enormous briefcase.

  Song Cheng sat down coldly without looking at the visitor. He had been permitted a visit at this time, and here, not in a visitation room with a glass partition; from that, Song Cheng had a good guess as to who sent him. But the first words out of his visitor’s mouth made Song lift his head in surprise.

  “My name’s Bai Bing. I’m an engineer at the Center for Meteorological Modeling. They’re coming after me for the same reason they came after you.”

  Song Cheng looked at the visitor. His tone of voice seemed odd: this was a subject that should have been discussed in whispers, but Bai Bing spoke at a normal volume, as if he wasn’t talking about anything that needed hiding.

  Bai Bing seemed to have noticed his confusion. “I called the Senior Official two hours ago. He wanted to talk face-to-face with me, but I turned him down. After that, they got on my trail, followed me all the way to the detention center doors. They haven’t seized me because they’re curious about our meeting. They want to know what I’ll tell you. They’re listening in to our conversation right now.”

  Song Cheng shifted his gaze from Bai Bing to the ceiling. He found it hard to trust this person, and regardless, he wasn’t interested in the matter. The law might have spared him the death penalty, but it had sentenced and executed his spirit all the same. His heart was dead. He could no longer muster interest in anything.

  “I know the truth, all of it,” Bai Bing said.

  A smirk flickered at the corner of Song Cheng’s mouth. No one knows the truth but them, but he didn’t bother to say that out loud.

  “You began working for the provincial-level Commission for Discipline Inspection seven years ago. You were promoted to this rank just last year.”

  Song Cheng remained silent. He was angry now. Bai Bing’s words had dragged him back into the memories he’d worked so hard to escape.

  THE BIG CASE

  At the beginning of the century, the Zhengzhou Municipal Government began a policy of setting aside a number of deputy-level positions for holders of Ph.D.s. Many other cities followed its example, and later, provincial governments began to adopt the same practice, even removing graduation-year requirements and offering higher starting positions. It was an excellent way to demonstrate the recruiters’ magnanimity and vision to the world, but in reality, the attractive concept amounted to little more than political record engineering. The recruiters were farsighted indeed—they knew perfectly well that these book-smart, well-educated young people lacked any sort of political experience. When they entered the unfamiliar and vicious political sphere, they found themselves swallowed whole in labyrinthine bureaucracy, unable to gain any foothold. The whole business was no big loss in job vacancies, while substantially padding the recruiters’ political résumés.

  An opportunity like this led Song Cheng, already a law professor at the time, to leave his peaceful campus study for the world of politics. His peers who chose the same road didn’t last a year before they left in utter despair, beaten men and women, their only achievement being the destruction of their dreams. But Song Cheng was an exception. He not only stayed in politics, but did exceptionally well.

  The credit belonged to two people. One was his college classmate Lu Wenming. In their last year as undergraduates, he’d placed in the civil service even as Song Cheng tested into grad school. With his advantageous family background and his own dedicated effort, ten years later he’d become the youngest provincial secretary of discipline inspection in the nation, head of the organization in charge of maintaining
discipline within the provincial-level Party. He was the one who’d advised Song Cheng to give up his books for governance.

  When the simple scholar first began, Lu didn’t lead him by the hand so much as he toddled him along by the feet, hand-placing Song’s every step as he taught him how to walk. He’d steered Song Cheng around traps and treachery that the latter could never have spotted himself, allowing him to progress up the road that had led to today. The other person he should thank was the Senior Official … on that thought, Song Cheng’s heart gave a spasm.

  “You have to admit, you chose this for yourself. You can’t say they didn’t give you a way out.”

  Song Cheng nodded. Yes, they’d given him a way out, a boulevard with his name in lights at that.

  Bai Bing continued, “The Senior Official met with you a few months ago. I’m sure you remember it well. It was in a villa out in the exurbs, by the Yang River. The Senior Official doesn’t normally see outsiders there.

  “Once you were out of the car, you found him waiting for you at the gate, a very high honor. He clasped your hand warmly and led you into the drawing room.

  “The décor would’ve given off a first impression of unassuming simplicity, but you’d be wrong there. That aged-looking mahogany furniture is worth millions. The one plain scroll painting hanging on the wall looks even older, and there’s insect damage if you look closely, but that’s Dangheqizi by the Ming Dynasty painter Wu Bin, bought at a Christie’s auction in Hong Kong for eight million HKD. And the cup of tea the Senior Official personally steeped for you? The leaves were ranked five stars at the International Tea Competition. It goes for nine hundred thousand yuan per half kilo.”

  Song Cheng really could recall the tea Bai Bing spoke of. The liquid had sparkled the green of a jewel, a few delicate leaves drifting in its clarity like the languid notes from a mountain saint’s zither…. He even recalled how he’d felt: If only the outside world could be this lovely and pure. The tarp of apathy was torn from Song Cheng’s stifled thoughts, his blurred mind snapping back into focus. He stared at Bai Bing, eyes wide with shock.

  How could he know all this? The whole affair had been dispatched to the deepest oubliettes, a secret among secrets. No more than four people in all the world knew, and that was counting himself.

  “Who are you?!” He opened his mouth for the first time.

  Bai Bing smiled. “I introduced myself earlier. I’m an ordinary person. But I’ll tell you straight off, not only do I know a lot, I know everything, or at least have the means to know everything. That’s why they want to get rid of me like they got rid of you.”

  Bai Bing continued his account. “The Senior Official sat close, one hand on your shoulder. That benevolent gaze he turned on you would have moved anyone from the junior ranks. From what I know (and remember, I know everything), he’d never shown anyone else the same intimacy. He told you, Don’t worry, young man, we’re all comrades here. Whatever the matter, just speak honestly and trust that you’ll get honesty in return. We can always come to a solution … you have ideas, you’re capable, you have a sense of duty and a sense of mission. Those last two in particular are as precious as an oasis in a desert among young cadres nowadays. This is why I think so highly of you. In you, I see the reflection of what I was once like.

  “I should mention that the Senior Official may have been telling the truth. Your official work didn’t give you many chances to interact with him, but quite a few times, you’d run into him in the hallways of the government building or coming out of a meeting, and he’d always be the one to come up to you to chat. He very rarely did that with lower-ranking officials, especially the younger ones. People took notice. He might not have said anything to help you at organizational meetings, but those gestures did a lot for your career.”

  Song Cheng nodded again. He’d known all this, and had been immensely grateful. All that time, Song had wanted the opportunity to repay him.

  “Then the Senior Official raised his hand and gestured behind him. Immediately, someone entered and quietly set a big stack of documents and materials on the table. You must have noticed that he wasn’t the Senior Official’s normal secretary.

  “The Senior Official passed a hand over the documents and said, The project you just completed fully demonstrates those priceless assets of yours. It required such an immense and difficult investigation to collect evidence, but these documents are ample, detailed, and reliable, the conclusions drawn profound. It’s hard to believe you did it all in half a year. It would be the Party’s great fortune to have more outstanding Discipline Inspection officials like you…. I don’t need to tell you how you felt at that moment, I think.”

  Of course he didn’t. Song Cheng had never been so horrified in his life. That stack of documents first sent him shaking as if electrocuted, then froze him into stone.

  Bai Bing continued: “It all started with the investigation into the illegal apportionment of state-owned land you undertook on behalf of the Central Commission, yes….

  “I recall that when you were a child, you and two of your friends went exploring in a cave, called Old Man Cavern by the locals. The entrance was only half a meter high, and you had to crouch down to enter. But inside was an enormous, dark vault, its ceiling too high for your flashlights to reach. All you could see were endless bats swishing past the beams of light. Every little sound provoked a rumbling echo from the distance. The dank cold seeped into your bones…. It’s a lively metaphor for the investigation: walking along, following that seemingly run-of-the-mill trail of clues, only to find yourself led toward places that made you afraid to believe your own eyes. As you deepened your investigation, a grand network of corruption spanning the entire province unfolded before you, and every strand of the web led in one direction, to one person. And now, the top-secret Discipline Inspection report you’d prepared for the Central Commission was in his hands! In this investigation, you’d considered all sorts of worst-case scenarios, but you never dreamed of the one that you faced now. You were thrown into total panic. You stammered, H-how did this end up in your hands, sir? The Senior Official smiled indulgently and lifted his hand to gesture lightly again. You immediately got your answer: The secretary of discipline inspection, Lu Wenming, walked into the room.

  “You stood and glared at Lu Wenming. How—how could you do this? How could you go against our organization’s rules and principles like this? Lu Wenming cut you off with a wave of his hand and asked in the same furious tone of voice as you, How could you go ahead with something like this without telling me?

  “I’ve taken over your duties as secretary for the year you’re undergoing training at the Central Party School, you shot back. Of course I couldn’t tell you, it was against the rules of the organization!

  “Lu Wenming shook his head sorrowfully, looking as if he wanted to weep in despair. If I hadn’t caught this report in time … can you even imagine the consequences? Song Cheng, your fatal flaw is that insistence on dividing the world into black and white, when reality is nothing more than gray!”

  Song Cheng exhaled long and slow. He remembered how he’d stared dumbly at his classmate, unable to believe that he could say something like that. He’d never revealed thoughts in that vein before. Was the hatred of internal corruption he’d shown in their many late-night conversations, the steadfast courage he displayed as they tackled sensitive cases that drew pressure from all directions, the deeply personal concern for the Party and the nation he’d expressed at so many dawns, after grueling all-nighters at work—was all that nothing but pretense?

  “It’s not that Lu Wenming was lying before. It’s more that he never delved that deeply into his soul in front of you. He’s like that famous dessert, Baked Alaska, flash-cooked ice cream. The hot parts and the cold parts are both real. But the Senior Official didn’t look at Lu Wenming. Instead, he slammed a hand onto the table. What gray? Wenming, I really can’t stand this side of you! What Song Cheng did was outstanding, faultless. In that respect he�
�s better than you! He turned to you and said, Young man, you did exactly as you should have done. A person, especially a young person, is gone forever if they lose that faith and sense of mission. I look down on people like that.”

  The part that had struck Song Cheng the deepest was that, although he and Lu Wenming were the same age, the Senior Official only called him “young,” and emphasized it repeatedly at that. The unspoken implication was clear: With me as an opponent, you’re still nothing but a child. In the present, Song Cheng could only concede that he was right.

  “The Senior Official continued on. Nonetheless, young man, we still need to mature a little. Let’s take an example from your report. There really are problems with the Hengyu Aluminum Electrolysis Base, and they’re even worse than you discovered in your investigations. Not only are domestic officials implicated, foreign investors have collaborated with them in serious legal trespasses. Once the matter is dealt with, the foreigners will withdraw their investments. The largest aluminum-electrolysis enterprise in the country will be put out of business. Tongshan Bauxite Mines, which provides the aluminum ore for Hengyu, will be in deep trouble too. Next comes the Chenglin nuclear power plant. It was built too big due to the energy crisis the last few years, and with the severe domestic overproduction of electricity now, most of this brand-new power plant’s output goes to the aluminum-electrolysis base. Once Hengyu collapses, Chenglin Nuclear Facility will face bankruptcy as well. And then Zhaoxikou Chemical Plant, which provides the enriched uranium for Chenglin, will be in trouble…. With that, nearly seventy billion yuan in government investment will be gone without a trace, and thirty to forty thousand people will lose their jobs. These corporations are all located within the provincial capital’s outskirts—this vital city will be instantly thrown into turmoil…. And the Hengyu issue I went into is only a small part of this investigation. The case implicates one provincial-level official, three sub-provincial-level officials, two hundred and fifteen prefectural-level officials, six hundred and fourteen county-level officials, and countless more in lower ranks. Nearly half of the most successful large-scale enterprises and the most promising investment projects in the province will be impacted in some way. Once the secrets are out, the province’s entire economy and political structure will be dead in the water! And we don’t know, and have no way of predicting, what even worse consequences might arise from so large-scale and severe a disturbance. The political stability and economic growth our province has worked so hard to attain will be gone without a trace. Is that really to the benefit of the Party and the country? Young man, you can’t think like a legal scholar anymore, demanding justice by the law come hell or high water. It’s irresponsible. We’ve progressed along the road of history to today because of balance, arising from the happy medium between various elements. To abandon balance and seek an extreme is a sign of immaturity in politics.