Supernova Era

by Cixin Liu

* * *

  As the leadership team was holding its nighttime meeting in the NIT hall to explore the design of the huge national park, the course of history was mercilessly interrupted by the receipt of an email from the other side of the globe. The contents read as follows:

  Children of China, your national leaders are requested to come to a meeting at the UN as soon as possible. This will be the first session of the UN General Assembly in the Supernova Era, and the leaders of all children’s countries in the world will attend. The children’s world has important things to discuss. Hurry! We’re all waiting for you.

  Will Yagüe

  Secretary General of the UN

  8

  CANDYTOWN IN AMERICA

  THE ICE CREAM BANQUET

  The Rose Nebula had not yet risen, and the streets of Washington, D.C., were shrouded in twilight. Not a single person could be seen on the Mall, and the last rays of daylight reflected off the high dome of the Capitol on Jenkins Hill over the chilly scene. The spire of the Washington Monument to the west stood eerie and alone, pointing straight up at two stars that had just come out. Few lights shone on the white buildings beside the Mall, the rotund Jefferson Memorial, the colossal Lincoln Memorial, the National Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian museums, and the fountains in the reflecting pool were off, letting the untroubled water reflect the darkening sky. The city of European neoclassical buildings seemed like a desolate Greek ruin.

  As if to shake off the city’s veil of night and silence, in the White House lights blazed and music blared. Parked outside the east and north gates were cars bearing flags of a host of countries. The president was hosting a banquet for the heads of state who had come to the United States to attend the first UN General Assembly of the Supernova Era. The banquet was meant to be held in the State Dining Room on the western side, but it could only hold around a hundred people, not the roughly 230 that were expected, so they had to hold it in the East Room, the largest in the building. Three large Bohemian-style crystal chandeliers installed in 1902 hung from the gilded plaster ceiling, lighting up the room where Abraham Lincoln had once lain in repose. Children in formal evening wear crowded together in the white-and-gold-decorated hall, some joking in small groups, some wandering around the hall with great curiosity.

  The rest of the children crowded around the Steinway grand piano in front of a long window (the piano’s most notable features were its three American eagle supports) listening to the White House chief of staff, a pretty blond-haired girl named Frances Benes, play the “Beer Barrel Polka.” All of the children were pretending not to notice the long banquet table in the center of the room, piled high with mouthwatering delicacies: French classics like strip steaks in ginger sauce and escargot in wine, as well as typical Western fare like baked beans, pork chops, and walnut pie.

  The army band struck up “America the Beautiful,” and all of the guests stopped their chattering and turned toward the door.

  Entering the room was the first American president of the Supernova Era, Herman Davey, accompanied by the secretary of state, Chester Vaughn, and other senior government officials.

  All eyes were on the young president. Every child has a physical trait that is striking, to some degree—be it eyes, forehead, or mouth—and if the most appealing traits of ten thousand children were extracted and combined into one, the result would be Herman Davey. The boy’s outward appearance was indeed a picture of perfection, so much so that the other children wondered about his origins, and even speculated that he had arrived on a gleaming alien spaceship as a little Superman.

  In actual fact, Davey was not only born from his mother’s womb but was the product of no particular storied or noble lineage. His father was of Scottish extraction, but his family tree grew murky by the time of the Revolutionary War, nothing like FDR being able to trace his heritage back to William the Conqueror. His mother had been an undocumented immigrant from Poland after the Second World War.

  Most disappointing to the other children was that Davey’s life before the age of nine was entirely unremarkable. His family was ordinary, his father a cleaning-products salesman who had none of the aspirations for his son that JFK’s father had shown; his mother was a graphic designer in advertising who had never given her child the education that Lincoln received from his mother. His family was politically unengaged; his father reportedly only voted in a single presidential election, and made the choice between Republican and Democrat by the flip of a coin. Nothing of note could be found in his childhood. He made Bs in most subjects at school and enjoyed football and baseball, but was never good enough to be even a benchwarmer. It was only with enormous effort that young reporters were able to dig up the fact that he had been a mentor for younger students for one semester in the third grade, but the school had made no comment as to his performance.

  Like all American children, he whiled away the endless freedom of his younger days but always kept a third eye open for some opportunity, rare but possible nevertheless, that he could seize hold of and never let go. At the time of the supernova, Davey was twelve years old, and his chance had arrived.

  When he heard the president’s announcement about the disaster, he understood immediately that history was reaching out to him. Competition was brutal in the country simulation, and he nearly forfeited his life, but eventually he defeated all of his adversaries by dint of a sudden burst of superlative leadership and charisma.

  But it did not proceed without fault. Even as he was reaching the apex of power, a specter loomed in his mind, the specter of Chester Vaughn.

  Anyone seeing Vaughn for the first time, be they adult or child, would suck in a chilly breath and then avert their eyes. Vaughn’s appearance was the inverse of Davey’s. He was shockingly skinny, with a neck so thin it made one wonder how it could support his disproportionately large head; his hands were little more than skin over bones. The only thing that differentiated him from a starving child from a drought-ridden region of Africa was the whiteness of his skin, so frighteningly white that the other children called him “Little Vampire.” His skin seemed almost transparent, revealing the fine reticular blood vessels beneath the epidermis. It was most conspicuous on his immense forehead, giving him the look of a mutant.

  Vaughn’s other notable characteristic was his aged features, which were wrinkled enough that in the adults’ era it would have been impossible to guess his age; most people would have taken him for an elderly dwarf. Davey’s first encounter with Vaughn came when he stepped into the Oval Office to stand before the dying president and the chief justice of the Supreme Court, place a hand on the Bible lying on the desk, and recite the oath of office. Vaughn had been standing at a distance beneath the national flag, silent with his back turned, entirely unconcerned with this historic event. After the oath, the former president made the introductions.

  “Mr. President, this is Chester Vaughn, secretary of state. Mr. Secretary, this is Herman Davey, president of the United States.”

  Davey extended a hand, but then lowered it again in confusion when there was no move from Vaughn, who remained with his back turned. What further puzzled him was that when he was about to speak a greeting, the former president stopped him with a slight wave, like a servant stopping a presumptuous visitor from disturbing his master’s deep contemplation. After a long pause, Vaughn slowly turned around.

  “This is Herman Davey,” the president repeated. “You’re familiar with him, I presume.” The tone of his voice suggested he almost wished that it were the weird kid who had the fatal illness instead of himself.

  When Vaughn turned around, his eyes were still directed elsewhere, and it was only after the president had finished speaking that he looked at Davey for the first time. Then, without a word or even the slightest nod of his head, he turned back around again. That glance was the first time Davey saw Chester Vaughn’s eyes. Sunk into deep sockets under heavy eyebrows, his eyes were swallowed up in darkness, like two frosty pools deep in the mountains, concealing who kno
ws what sort of fearsome creature. Even so, Davey could still sense his expression, a pair of monster’s hands, damp and freezing, extending out of those pools to seize him by the neck and strangle him. As Vaughn turned back round, the fluorescent lights glinted off his eyes, and in that instant Davey glimpsed two frosty explosions.

  Davey had a sixth sense about power. That he, as the new president, had arrived in the Oval Office after Vaughn, the secretary of state, had not escaped his notice, nor had any detail of either the office or the encounter, and it made him uneasy. Weighing most heavily on his mind was the fact that Vaughn held the power to constitute the cabinet. While this power had been granted to the secretary of state in a constitutional amendment ratified after the supernova, the sitting president, and not his predecessor, customarily had the right to appoint the secretary of state. Moreover, the previous president had emphasized this particular power, which Davey felt was somewhat unusual.

  After moving into the White House, Davey did his best to avoid direct contact with Vaughn, who spent most of his time in the Capitol; mostly they communicated by phone. Abraham Lincoln had once said, of a man he refused to appoint to a position, “I don’t like his face,” and when someone argued that a man isn’t responsible for his face, shot back, “Every man over forty is responsible for his face.” Vaughn may have been only thirteen, but Davey still felt he ought to be responsible for his face. He knew little about Vaughn’s background. No one did, in fact, something rather unusual in the United States.

  In the adults’ era, the background of every high-level leader was an open book to the electorate. Few children in the White House and Capitol had previously known Vaughn. The chair of the Federal Reserve did mention to Davey that her father had once brought a weird kid over to their house. Her father, a Harvard professor, had told her that Vaughn was extremely talented in sociology and history. The news was hard for Davey to wrap his mind around, since although he had heard of, if not actually met, lots of prodigies, they were all in the sciences or the fine arts. He had never heard of a sociology or history prodigy. Achievement in sociology, unlike in the natural sciences, can’t be made on the basis of intelligence alone, but requires its student to obtain a wealth of experience of society and keen observations of the world from every angle. Likewise with history; a child without real-world life experience would find it hard to gain a real sense of history, a sense that no true historian could be without. But where would Vaughn have found that kind of time?

  Still, Davey was a pragmatic child, and he knew that his relationship with the secretary could not continue in this manner. Shortly after taking office, he decided to conquer his disgust and fear (even if he was unwilling to acknowledge the latter) and visit Vaughn at home. He knew that Vaughn spent the entire day buried in documents and books, speaking only if absolutely necessary, and had no friends. He stayed in his office reading until very late at night, so it was after ten when Davey paid him a call at home.

  Vaughn’s residence was in Shepherd Park on Sixteenth Street NW, in an area in the northernmost part of the city known as the “Gold Coast.” It had once been a Jewish neighborhood, and later a home for predominantly black middle-class government and legal professionals. On the side closer to downtown was a large stretch of unrestored apartment buildings, one of the District’s neglected corners which, while not as crumbling as Anacostia in the southeast, was an area with a fairly high crime rate and drug trade during the adults’ time. Vaughn lived in one of those buildings.

  Davey’s knock at the door drew a chilly “It’s unlocked.” He carefully opened the door to reveal a book storeroom. Books were everywhere beneath the light of a dim incandescent lamp, but there were no shelves, or anything else for that matter—not even a desk or chair. Books were stacked in piles, covering the floor. There wasn’t even a bed, just a blanket spread over some of the more evenly stacked piles, and there was no space for Davey to find a foothold.

  Since he couldn’t enter, he just looked at the books from a distance. Apart from the English-language books, he could make out books in French and German, and even a few tattered Latin works. He was standing on a copy of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; just ahead was The Prince, whose author was obscured by another volume, William Manchester’s The Glory and the Dream. There was also Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber’s Le Défi mondial, Trevor N. Dupuy’s The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,’s History of U.S. Political Parties, Immanuel Kant’s A Critique of Pure Reason, K. Spidchenko’s Economic Geography of the World, Henry A. Kissinger’s The Necessity for Choice …

  Vaughn, who had been sitting on a pile of books, stood up when Davey opened the door and came over, and Davey saw him withdraw a clear object from his left arm, a small syringe. Vaughn stood in front of him holding the syringe in his right hand, and didn’t appear to mind that the president had seen him.

  “You do drugs?” Davey asked.

  Vaughn didn’t answer, but just looked at him, and again those incorporeal claws reached out toward him. He was a little scared, and looked around him in the hope that someone else was there, but the building was empty. Once the adults left, there were lots of empty buildings like this one.

  “I know you don’t like me, but you’ve got to tolerate me,” Vaughn said.

  “Tolerate a druggie secretary of state?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why?”

  “For America.”

  Davey was forced to submit under Vaughn’s intense, Darth Vader–like stare. He sighed and broke his gaze away from Vaughn’s.

  “I’m inviting you to dinner.”

  “At the White House?”

  “Yes.”

  Vaughn nodded, and motioned out the door, and then the two of them went out toward the stairs. As Vaughn was closing the apartment door, Davey took one last look and noticed that in addition to the books and blanket, the room also held an unusually large globe. It stood in one corner, which was why he hadn’t seen it at first, and it was taller than Vaughn himself. It was on a stand formed from two intricately carved Greek figures—Athena, the goddess of war and wisdom, and Cassandra, empowered with the gift of prophecy. Together they supported the enormous globe.

  * * *

  The president and secretary of state dined in the Red Room, one of the four state reception rooms in the White House, and formerly the drawing room where the First Lady held receptions. The muted light illuminating the garnet-red twill satin fabric edged in gold scroll designs on the walls, the two eighteenth-century candelabras on the mantel, and the French Empire mahogany cabinets gave the room an ancient, mysterious aura.

  The two children ate opposite the fireplace at the small round marble table, one of the finest pieces of furniture in the White House collection. It was made of mahogany and other hard woods, and on the inlaid marble surface supported by gilded bronze busts of women sat a bottle of Scotch. Vaughn ate little, but he was a drinker and quickly polished off a number of glasses in succession. Within the space of ten minutes the bottle was practically empty, and Davey had to get two more. Vaughn continued to drink, but the alcohol seemed to have no effect on him.

  “Can you tell me about your mom and dad?” Davey ventured.

  “I never met them,” Vaughn said coldly.

  “So … where are you from?”

  “Hart Island.”

  They said no more, but ate in silence. Then the implication of what Vaughn had said hit Davey, and he shuddered. Hart Island was a small island outside Manhattan, the site of a baby cemetery where the unwanted children of drug addicts were buried in mass graves.

  “Does that mean you’re…”

  “That’s right.”

  “You mean, you were put in a fruit basket and left there?”

  “I wasn’t big enough for that. I was left in a shoebox. They said that eight were left that day, and I was the only one who survived.” Vaughn’s voice was as calm as could be.

  �
�Who picked you up?”

  “I know him by a dozen names, but none of them are his real one. He trafficked in heroin using a variety of his own unique methods.”

  “I … I imagined you grew up in a library.”

  “That’s true, too, only it was a big library and the pages were made of money and blood.”

  “Benes!” Davey shouted.

  The White House chief of staff, the blond-haired girl with doll-like features, entered the room.

  “Turn on some lights.”

  “But … the First Lady used to keep it this dark when receiving guests. For the nobles, she’d have to light candles,” she protested.

  “I’m the president, not the First Lady, and neither are you. I hate these dim lights!” Davey said angrily.

  In a fit of pique Benes turned on all the lights in the room, including the floodlights only used during photographs, and the walls and carpets of the Red Room glared blinding red. Davey felt much better, but he still couldn’t bring himself to look at Vaughn. Now all he wanted was for the dinner to be over.

  The gilded bronze clock on the mantel, a gift from French president Vincent Auriol in 1952, played a pleasing pastoral melody, informing the two children it was getting late. Vaughn got up and made a farewell, and Davey offered him a ride home, since he didn’t want the little freak spending the night.

  * * *

  The presidential Lincoln limousine drove along a quiet avenue. Davey was in the driver’s seat; he had stopped the boy who served as driver and Secret Service special agent from coming along with him. He and Vaughn remained silent on the road, but when they reached the Lincoln Memorial, Vaughn gestured and Davey brought the car to a stop. Immediately he regretted doing so: I’m the president, he thought. Why should I follow his signals? But he had to admit that the boy possessed a power beyond him.

  Lincoln’s pale seated form loomed indistinctly above them in the night, and the young president looked up at the sculpture’s head, wishing that Lincoln could see him, too, but the great man did not move his gaze from the low horizon, where the Washington Monument pierced the night sky in the Reflecting Pool, and beyond it the Capitol at the end of the Mall.