by Ken Liu
But they’re so faint! I wish they would glow brighter.
The spraying droplets at the top of the fountain dissolved into the chaotic maw at the center of the sky dome. Thousands of new stars were born in that shadow before coalescing into thick fog. Away from that gloomy patch, the silver stars of Delphinus twinkled with an enigmatic light.
Suddenly, the constellation fell into the sea. As the sea roiled with unaccustomed brilliance, a silvery curved blade leapt out of the water. Weaving and dodging, slashing and slicing, the blade cut through moonbeams and swam for the enchanted beanstalk.
Giana!
If … if only we could pierce the crystal sky and go visit the stars….
The mad child was going to climb up the beanstalk to the giant’s castle. But … if the crystal sky was truly an ice cover intended to keep us from the secrets of heaven, how could Giana reach the stars? Striving up the raging torrents rising from the heart of the Thumb Sea, Giana’s nimble figure could be glimpsed from time to time. Would the fountain carry her miles and miles up? Would she see what was above the clouds? Would she break through the crystal sky and find the stars?
I can’t stop thinking about them. A voice is always in my head, telling me, Hey Giana, why not go visit the stars?
Finally, the silvery blade cut through the silky moonlight and, propelled by the surging currents, reached the top of the fountain. Innumerable dolphins—more than I had ever seen in Shallow Bay—poked their heads out of the sea, gazing at the top of the fountain. Their high-pitched chatter was like the drip-drip-drip from stalactites.
Giana! Giana! You’re a credit to all dolphinkind!
The silver figure drifted into the sky like the millions of scattering droplets. It floated above the purple mist. Soon, it disappeared beyond the clouds.
A long moment hung suspended, passing and not passing.
The sky brightened abruptly. A deafening noise crashed from the top of the fountain. Countless cracks zigzagged from the center of the dark blue welkin. Wind and stars tumbled through the opening and fell into the sea. The dome continued to crack open, as if the beanstalk was pushing, growing, forcing its way deeper beyond the barrier. My head rang from the thunderous noise, and my eyes were filled with fantastic visions that eventually melded into a single blinding brightness.
The crystal sky fell.
A moment later, the moon and stars revealed their true nature.
I had never imagined the moon would be full of shadows on its unblemished face. I had never imagined the stars … to be so bright.
And the mystery, the chaotic center, also revealed its truth—
It was a planet.
Our world had always been right next to another: two apples in a cluster. Though it loomed so close to us, we had never been aware of its presence. The shadow it cast hid the heart of the Milky Way, and its own true shape had been obscured by the crystal sky.
It was Giana who revealed the secret. The spot where the gravities of the two planets balanced each other was also the top of the fountain. There, droplets of water, weightless, scattered in every direction. The arrival of Giana gave weight again to this silent terminus of the world—she had been caught by the gravity of the other planet…. And so, the crystal sky cracked as a bug tried to climb out of the apple, broke apart as Giana fell toward a new ocean.
But … Giana … I recalled the graveyard of ships she had once described to me. The whirlpools had torn apart the sails and spars, broken the decks and oars…. Giana’s fall had been powerful enough to shatter the crystal sky. Where was she now?
Under the dim, reddish glow of the moon, all the dolphins gazed up silently.
“There! That’s the constellation Delphinus!” Giana used to tell me all the time.
All the stars were falling toward the sea. They glowed for a while in the water before fading. Far away, new stars were rising … one … another one … so many of them … and soon, every watching dolphin recognized the silvery pattern.
Giana, a credit to all dolphinkind, had smashed the barrier that had blinded us all from the truth and leapt into heaven. Just like Jack climbing up the beanstalk to the giant’s castle; just like a bug climbing up the stem to stare at the noonday sun.
She had become one with the eternal stars.
This was the story of Delphinus.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
There are several Greek myths about Delphinus. The tale about Arion is just one of them.
Here, I tell a story about Delphinus using the language of science fiction. It was published in Science Fiction World magazine in a section known as the “gray area.” It’s hard to say if stories published there meet the definition of science fiction.
Thanks to David Brin for inspiring me with his story “The Crystal Spheres.”
BAOSHU
After graduating from Peking University, Baoshu (a pen name that should be treated as an indivisible unit) obtained a master’s degree in philosophy from KU Leuven, Belgium. He has lived in the US and Europe. Working as a freelance writer in China, he has published four novels and over thirty novellas, novelettes, and short stories since 2010.
His best-known works include The Redemption of Time (a sequel of sorts to Liu Cixin’s “Three-Body” books) and Ruins of Time (winner of the 2014 Xingyun Award for Best Novel). Perhaps as a result of his background in philosophy, many of his stories play with time in various ways: compressing it, stretching it, slicing it into thin slices and piecing them back together in a different order, questioning its nature, altering its essence, transforming it into something alien but still recognizable.
In translation, his fiction may be found in F&SF and Clarkesworld, among other places.
“What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear” is also a story about time. Although its first formal publication was through an English translation, it is, in some ways, the most Chinese story in this entire volume: the more one knows about the history of the People’s Republic, the more the story’s meaning comes into focus.
A special note of thanks goes to my friend Anatoly Belilovsky, who provided the translation of Pushkin’s poem quoted in this story.
WHAT HAS PASSED
SHALL IN KINDER
LIGHT APPEAR
1.
My parents named me Xie Baosheng, hoping I would live a life full of precious memories. I was born on the day the world was supposed to end.
Mom and Dad told me how strange flashing lights appeared in the sky all over the globe, accompanied by thunder and lightning, as though the heavens had turned into a terrifying battlefield. Scientists could not agree on an explanation: some said extraterrestrials had arrived; some suggested the Earth was passing through the galactic plane; still others claimed that the universe was starting to collapse. The apocalyptic atmosphere drove many into church pews while the rest shivered in their beds.
In the end, nothing happened. As soon as the clock struck midnight, the world returned to normality. The crowds, teary-eyed, embraced each other and kissed, thankful for God’s gift. Many petitioned for that day to be declared the world’s new birthday as a reminder for humanity to live more honestly and purely, and to treasure our existence.
The grateful mood didn’t last long, and people pretty much went on living as before. The Arab Spring happened, followed by the global financial crisis. Life had to go on, and we needed to resolve troubles both big and small. Everyone was so busy that the awkward joke about the end of the world never came up again. Of course, I had no memory of any of this: I was born on that day. I had no impressions of the next few years, either.
My earliest memory was of the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics. I was only four then, but nonetheless caught up in the excitement all around me.
Mom and Dad told me, China is going to host the Olympics!
I had no idea what the “Olympics” were, just that it was an occasion worth celebrating. That night, Mom took me out. The streets were packed, and she held me up so that I could see, overhead, i
mmense footprints formed by fireworks. One after another, they appeared in the night sky, as if some giant were walking above us. I was amazed.
The neighborhood park had a large projection screen, and Mom brought me there to see the live broadcast. I remembered there were many, many people and it was like a big party. I looked around and saw Qiqi. She was wearing a pink skirt and a pair of shoes that lit up; two braids stuck out from the top of her head like the horns of a goat. Smiling sweetly, she called out, “Bao gege!”
Qiqi’s mother and Mom were good friends from way back, before they both got married. I was only a month older than Qiqi and had almost certainly seen her lots of times before that night, but I couldn’t remember any of those occasions. The Opening Ceremony of the Olympics was the first memory I could really recall with Qiqi in it—it was the first time I understood what pretty meant. After we ran into Qiqi and her parents, our two families watched the live broadcast together. While the adults conversed, Qiqi and I sat next to a bed of flowers and had our own chat. Later, an oval-shaped, shiny gigantic basket appeared on the screen.
What’s that? I asked.
It’s called the Bird’s Nest, Qiqi said.
There were no birds inside the Nest, but there was an enormous scroll with flickering animated images that were very pretty. Qiqi and I were entranced.
How do they make those pictures? Qiqi asked.
It’s all done with computers, I said. My dad knows how to do it. Someday, I’ll make a big picture, too, just for you.
Qiqi looked at me, her eyes full of admiration. Later, a little girl about our age sang on the screen, and I thought Qiqi was prettier than her.
That was one of the loveliest, most magical nights of my life. Later, I kept on hoping China would host the Olympics again, but it never happened. After I became a father, I told my son about that night, and he refused to believe China had once been so prosperous.
I had no clear memories of kindergarten, either. Qiqi and I went to the same English-immersion kindergarten, in which half the classes were conducted in English, but I couldn’t recall any of it—I certainly didn’t learn any English.
I did remember watching Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf with Qiqi. I told her that I thought she was like Beauty, the cute lamb in the cartoon. She said I was like Grey Wolf.
If I’m Grey Wolf, I said, you must be Red Wolf. Red Wolf was Grey Wolf’s wife.
She pinched me, and we fought. Qiqi was always ready to hit me to get her way, but she also cried easily. I only pushed back a little bit and she started sobbing. I was terrified she might tattle on me and rushed to the fridge to get some red-bean-flavored shaved ice for her, and she broke into a smile. We went on watching Chibi Maruko Chan and The Adventures of Red Cat and Blue Rabbit while sharing a bowl of shaved ice.
We played and fought, fought and played, and before we knew it, our childhood had escaped us.
Back then, I thought Qiqi and I were so close that we’d never be apart. However, before we started elementary school, Qiqi’s father got a promotion at work and the whole family had to move to Shanghai. Mom took me to say goodbye. While the adults became all misty-eyed, Qiqi and I ran around, laughing like it was just some regular playdate. Then Qiqi got on the train and waved at me through the window like her parents were doing, and I waved back. The train left and took Qiqi away.
The next day, I asked Mom, “When’s Qiqi coming back? How about we all go to Tiananmen Square next Sunday?”
But Qiqi wasn’t back the next Sunday, or the one after that. She disappeared from my life. I didn’t get to see her again for many years, until my memories of her had blurred and sunk into the depths of my heart.
In elementary school, I made a good friend—everyone called him “Heizi” because he was dark and skinny. Heizi and I lived in the same neighborhood, and his family was in business—supposedly his dad had made his fortune by flipping real estate. Heizi wasn’t a good student and often asked to copy my homework; to show his gratitude, he invited me over to his house to play. His family owned a very cool computer hooked up to an ultra-high-def LCD screen that took up half a wall—fantastic for racing or fighting games, though the adults didn’t let us play for long. But when we were in the third grade, SARS was going around and some kid in the neighborhood got sick, so we all had to be taken out of school and quarantined at home. We ended up playing games the whole day, every day. Good times.
During those months in the shadow of SARS, the adults had gloomy expressions and sighed all the time. Everyone hoarded food and other consumables at home and seldom went out—when they did, they wore face masks. They also forced me to drink some kind of bitter Chinese medicine soup that supposedly provided immunity against SARS. I was old enough to understand that something terrible was going on in China and the rest of the world, and felt scared. That was my first experience of the dread and panic of a world nearing doom. One time, I overheard Mom and Dad discussing some rumor that tens of thousands of people had died from SARS, and I ended up suffering a nightmare. I dreamed that everyone around me had died so that I was the only one left, and the United States was taking advantage of the SARS crisis to attack China, dropping bombs everywhere…. I woke up in a cold sweat.
Of course, nothing bad really happened. The SARS crisis ended up not being a big deal at all.
But it was a start. In the days still to come, my generation would experience events far more terrifying than SARS. We knew nothing of the future that awaited us.
2.
During the SARS crisis, I dreamed of an American attack on China because the US had just conquered Iraq and Afghanistan, and managed to catch Saddam. They were also looking for a man named bin Laden, and it was all over the news. I watched the news during dinnertime, and I remember being annoyed at America: Why are the Americans always invading other countries? I felt especially bad for Saddam: a pitiable old man captured by the Americans and put on trial. And they said he was going to be executed. How terrible! I kept hoping the Americans would lose.
Amazingly, my wish came true. Not long after SARS, the news reports said that something called the Iraqi Republican Guard had mobilized and rescued Saddam. Saddam led the resistance against the American invasion and somehow managed to chase the US out of Iraq. In Afghanistan, a group called Tali-something also started an uprising and waged guerrilla war against the American troops in the mountains. Bin Laden even succeeded in planning a shocking attack that brought down two American skyscrapers using airliners. The Americans got scared and retreated in defeat.
Two years later, I started middle school. Heizi and I were in the same school but different classes.
My first year coincided with another apocalypse predicted by an ancient calendar—I had no idea back then why there were so many apocalyptic legends; maybe everyone felt living in this world wasn’t safe. Those were also the years when the world economy was in a depression and lots of places had difficulties: Russia, a new country called Yugoslavia, Somalia … The desperate Americans even decided to bomb our embassy in Belgrade. People were so angry that college students marched to the American embassy and threw rocks at the windows.
However, the life of middle school students was very different. The costume drama Princess Pearl was really popular, and they showed it all the time on TV. Everyone in my class became addicted, and all we could talk about was the fate of Princess Xiaoyanzi. We didn’t understand politics and paid very little attention to those world events.
Gradually, though, the effects of the worldwide depression became apparent in daily life. Real estate prices kept crashing; Heizi’s father lost money in his property deals and turned to day-trading stocks, but he was still losing money. Although prices for everything were falling, wages dropped even faster. Since no one was buying the high-tech gadgets, they stopped making them. The huge LCD screen in Heizi’s home broke, but they couldn’t find anything similar in the market and had to make do with a clumsy CRT monitor: the screen was tiny and convex, which just looked weird. My
father’s notebook computer was gone, replaced by a big tower that had much worse specs—supposedly this was all due to the depressed American economy. Over time, websites failed one after another, and the new computer games were so bad that it was no longer fun to mess around on the computer. Street arcades became popular, and kids our age went to hang out at those places while the adults began to practice traditional Chinese meditation.
There was one benefit to all this “progress”: the sky over Beijing became clear and blue. I remembered that, when I was little, every day was filled with smog and it was difficult to breathe. Now, however, other than during sandstorm season, you could see blue sky and white clouds all the time.
In the summer of my second year in middle school, Qiqi returned to Beijing for a visit and stayed with my family. She was tall and slender, almost 5′3″, and wore a pair of glasses. With her graceful manners and big eyes, she was closer to a young woman than a girl, and I still thought she was pretty. When she saw me, she smiled shyly, and instead of calling me “Bao gege” like a kid, she addressed me by my given name: “Baosheng.” She had lost all traces of her Beijing accent and spoke in the gentle tones of southern China, which I found pleasing. I tried to reminisce with her about the Olympics and watching Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf. Disappointingly, she told me she couldn’t remember much.
I overheard Mom and Dad saying that Qiqi’s parents were in the middle of a bitter divorce and were fighting over every bit of property and Qiqi’s custody. They had sent Qiqi away to Beijing to avoid hurting her while they tore into each other. I could tell that Qiqi was unhappy, because I heard her cry in her room the night she arrived. I didn’t know how to help her except to take her around to eat good food and see interesting sights, and to distract her with silly stories. Although Qiqi had been born in Beijing, she was so young when she left that she might as well have been a first-time visitor. That whole summer, she rode behind me on my bicycle, and we toured every major avenue and narrow hutong in the city.