Decoded

by Mai Jia

  Over the course of the next couple of years, the pair of them were completely immersed in their work for this research facility – they had very little to do with what was going on in the outside world. They attended the occasional mathematics conference and published a few papers; that was it. From the six papers that they co-authored which appeared in academic journals, it was clear that their work was progressing one step at a time – certainly their research was much further advanced than any other facility in the country, and they were not far behind the international cutting edge. After their first two papers were published in China, they were reprinted in three different international journals – indicating the importance of the results that they had achieved. It was around this time that the chief editor of Time magazine in the US, Roy Alexander, warned the American government: the next computer is going to be built by the Chinese! Jinzhen’s name was now news.

  Of course, this was all media scare-mongering. The fact is that if you read this pair of papers closely, ignoring all the hype, you would immediately notice that they had encountered some very real problems in the course of their research. That was perfectly normal – after all a computer is not like a human brain; with people all you need is to have a man sleep with a woman and lo and behold! You have a new example of human intelligence created. Of course, in some cases once the new intelligence is created things go wrong – the result is someone with a mental handicap. In many ways, in the creation of artificial intelligence, what you were trying to do could be compared to turning a mentally handicapped person into a clever one – a very, very difficult task. Given the difficult nature of the task, frustration and setbacks are only to be expected – there is nothing to be surprised at there. In fact, it would be surprising if these frustrations and setbacks made you give up. Later on, when Young Lillie decided to let Jinzhen go, nobody believed a word of his explanation. He said, ‘We have encountered enormous problems in our research and if we carry on like this, I really cannot see any prospect of success. I don’t want to see such a talented and clever young man follow me down this questionable path, running the risk of ruining his own future. I want to make sure that he gets to do something meaningful.’

  That was in the summer of 1956.

  That same summer, everyone in the university was talking about the man who came to take Jinzhen away. People thought that the whole thing was most mysterious. Why Young Lillie was prepared to let Jinzhen go was much discussed, but without anyone coming up with a good answer – that was part of the mystery.

  The man walked with a limp.

  That was also part of the mystery.

  The First Turn

  1.

  This man’s surname was Zheng, and he walked with a limp. Perhaps because of this striking characteristic, it seemed as though he did not need a personal name – that it was an unnecessary ornament, like wearing a piece of jewellery. He will appear at various crucial junctures in this narrative – some of the time he will be anonymous and some of the time he will be referred to by the name Zheng the Gimp.

  ‘Zheng the Gimp!’

  ‘Zheng the Gimp!’

  The mere fact that people were happy to call him that tells you one important fact about the man – his life was not defined by his physical disability. If you think about it, there are two possible reasons for such a reaction: One, that Zheng the Gimp got that way as the result of an honourable wound – it was the proof that he had once carried a gun and fought side-by-side with his comrades. Two, that Zheng the Gimp’s leg wasn’t that bad – it was just that his left leg was a little bit shorter than his right. When he was younger, such a difference could have been corrected by wearing a shoe with a thicker sole on the relevant foot, but once he got past fifty, he was reduced to walking with a cane. When I met him, he walked with a stick, but he was not the kind of old man that you can possibly overlook. This was in the early 1990s.

  That summer, the summer of 1956, Zheng the Gimp was still in his thirties – a strong and healthy young man. Thanks to the built-up soles of the shoes he wore on his left foot, nobody realized his physical problems – his limp disappeared and to the outside observer, he looked pretty much like anyone else. It was purely by chance that the people at the university discovered what was wrong with him.

  This is how it all came about. The afternoon of the day that Zheng the Gimp came to the university, the entire student body was in the main auditorium, listening to a report about the amazing feats of valour achieved by the heroes of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army. The campus was very quiet and the weather was lovely. It was not roasting hot, that day, and there was a light breeze blowing, fluttering the leaves of the avenue of French plane trees growing on either side of the road. That light susurration made the university seem even quieter than it actually was. He found the peace of the place so striking that he decided to order his jeep to stop – telling the driver to come back three days later to collect him from the university guest house. He got out of the car and started walking through the grounds alone. Some fifteen years earlier, he had spent three years at the attached high school, followed by the freshman year at the university. After such a long absence, he was keenly aware of the changes that had overtaken his alma mater and he was overtaken by a strange sense of nostalgia – many memories from the past seemed to press around him as he walked slowly along, as if called to life by his footsteps. When the presentation for the students finished, he was standing just outside the auditorium. The crowd poured out of the hall, spreading out like a flood. In an instant, he found himself engulfed, surrounded on all sides. He followed the crowd nervously, worried that someone might bump into him; because thanks to his gammy leg, if he fell it would be impossible for him to get up. The students continued coming and he found himself being moved to the back of the crowd, but these stragglers picked him up and marched along, shoulder to shoulder. The young people around him were careful, though; every time it seemed as though someone were just about to knock him down, they moved away just in time to prevent a collision. Nobody looked back, nobody seemed to have so much as noticed him; clearly his special shoe hid his condition from all casual observers. Maybe knowing this gave him confidence; anyway, he started to feel a sudden affection for this band of students, male and female, so bright and lively, chatting with each other; like a bubbling stream carrying him along. He felt himself rejuvenated – time had rolled back fifteen years.

  When they arrived at the playing field, the crowd broke up the way a wave does when it hits the sand. He was now in no danger of being knocked off his feet. It was just at that moment that he suddenly felt something fall against the back of his neck. Before he had time to react, the crowd were already beginning to shout: ‘Rain!’ ‘It’s raining!’ When this cry first went up, people didn’t move, they just looked up at the sky. A moment later, the first drops were followed by a huge bolt of lightning, and then the rain really did begin to hammer down, as if someone had turned on a high-pressure hose. Immediately the crowd began to scatter like a flock of frightened hens – some were running forward, others had turned back towards the auditorium, some were rushing towards nearby buildings, some were heading for the bike sheds. As people ran around shouting at each other, the playing field was reduced to chaos. He was now in a real fix – he couldn’t run and he couldn’t not run: if he ran people would realize that he had a gammy leg; if he didn’t run he was going to get soaked. Maybe he didn’t even particularly want to run – he had faced the full force of enemy fire so why should he be scared of rain? Of course he wasn’t bothered by the prospect of getting wet. But his feet were obeying commands from some other part of his brain – he was starting to hop forward, one foot striking out, the other dragging behind. That was the way he had to run, the way a lame man runs, one leap at a time, as if there was a shard of glass stuck in the bottom of his shoe.

  When he first started, everyone else was too busy running themselves to pay any attention to him. Later on, when they had found sanctuary in n
earby buildings, he was still in the middle of the playing field. He hadn’t wanted to run in the first place, he was hampered by his gammy leg, he was still carrying his suitcase – no wonder he was so slow! No wonder everyone else had vanished! Now, in the whole of that massive playing field, he was the only person to be seen – he stuck out like a sore thumb. Once he realized that, he decided to get away from the playing field as quickly as possible, but that meant having to hop even faster. It was valiant, it was comical; to the people watching, it seemed like this was all part of the spectacle. Some people even started to shout encouragement at him.

  ‘Faster!’

  ‘Faster!’

  Once the cry of ‘Faster!’ went up, it attracted the attention of even more people. It seemed as if all eyes were fixed on him – he felt almost nailed in place by their stares. He immediately decided to stop, cheerfully waving his hands in the air: a gesture of appreciation for the people who had shouted encouragement to him. Afterwards he began to walk forward, a smile on his face, like an actor leaving the stage. At that moment, seeing him walk normally, it looked as if his hopping run had been put on: a performance. In reality, something that he tried to cover up had been glaringly revealed to everyone. You could say that this sudden rainstorm forced him to play a role which disclosed the secret of his gammy leg – on the one hand this embarrassed him, and on the other, it made sure that everyone recognized him as . . . a gimp! An amusing and friendly gimp. The fact is that when he left this place fifteen years earlier, having spent four years there, nobody noticed that he had gone. However, this time, in the space of just a couple of minutes, he had become famous throughout the university. A couple of days later, when he took Jinzhen away on his mysterious mission, everyone said, ‘It was the cripple who danced in the rain that took him away.’

  2.

  He had come to take someone away.

  Someone like him came to N University every year in the summer, wanting to take people away. Whoever came in any particular year had certain distinguishing features, no matter what they looked like. They seemed to be able to call on considerable resources; they were very mysterious; and the minute they arrived, they would go straight to the office of the chancellor of the university. On this occasion the chancellor’s office was empty, so he left and went to the office next door, which belonged to the registrar. As it happened, that was where the chancellor was, discussing something with the registrar. The moment he entered, he announced that he was looking for the chancellor. The registrar asked who he was. He said with a laugh, ‘I am a coper, looking for horses.’

  The registrar said, ‘Then you ought to go to the Student Centre: it’s on the first floor.’

  ‘I need to talk to the chancellor first,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ asked the registrar.

  ‘I have something here that the chancellor needs to see.’

  ‘What is it? Give it to me.’

  ‘Are you the chancellor? It is for his eyes only,’ he said aggressively.

  The registrar looked at the chancellor. The chancellor said, ‘Let me have a look at whatever it is.’

  Once he was sure that the person he was speaking to was indeed the chancellor of the university, he opened his briefcase and took out a file. The file was perfectly ordinary, the kind made out of card – somewhat like the kind of things that schoolteachers use. He took a single-page document out of the file and handed it to the chancellor, asking him to read it.

  Having taken the document, the chancellor stepped back a pace or two and read it. The registrar could only see the back. As far as he could see the paper was not particularly large, nor was it particularly thick, nor were there any special seals or stamps attached to it. It seemed like a perfectly ordinary letter of introduction. However, judging by the chancellor’s reaction, there was clearly more to it. He noticed particularly that the chancellor seemed to just run his eye over the paper – maybe he only looked at the letterhead at the top – before immediately becoming much more serious and concerned.

  ‘Are you Section Chief Zheng?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I do apologize for your reception, sir.’ The chancellor was all smiles as he invited the man into his own office.

  Nobody had the first idea as to what kind of organization could produce a letter that would have quite that kind of result, making the chancellor so very obsequious. The registrar thought that he would be able to find out: according to the rules of the university, all letters of introduction from external work-units had to be filed with his office. Later on, when he realized that the chancellor had not handed over the document as he should have done, he went to the trouble of putting in a request for it. He was not expecting the chancellor to say that he had burned it. The chancellor went on to explain that the very first sentence in the letter was that it should be destroyed immediately after it was read. The registrar was startled into an exclamation: ‘Top secret!’ The chancellor told him sternly that he was to forget all that had happened and not to mention it to anyone.

  In actual fact, when the chancellor was showing the man into his office, he already had a box of matches ready in his hand. When the chancellor had finished reading the letter, he struck a match and said, ‘Shall I burn it?’

  ‘Why not?’

  So the letter was burnt.

  The two men stood there in silence, neither saying a word, as the paper went up in flames.

  Afterwards, the chancellor asked, ‘How many people do you want?’

  He held up a finger: ‘One.’

  Then the chancellor asked, ‘What field?’

  He opened up the file again and took out another piece of paper. He said: ‘This is my list of the requirements that whoever it is must fulfil – it is probably not complete but there is enough to give you an idea.’

  The paper that he held out was exactly the same size as the previous letter, sextodecimo. There was no letterhead printed on this sheet though, and the words on it were written by hand, rather than being typed. The chancellor ran his eye down the list and then asked,‘Is this another one where it has to be burnt as soon as I have read it?’

  ‘No,’ he laughed. ‘You think this is also top secret?’

  ‘I haven’t read it properly yet,’ the chancellor said, ‘so I don’t know whether it is top secret or not.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ he said. ‘You can show it to anyone you like, even to students. Anyone who thinks that they fit this set of requirements can come and find me. I will be staying in Room 302 in the guest house attached to your university – you are welcome to turn up whenever you like.’

  That evening, the chancellor of the university took two final-year students with particularly high grades to Room 302. Afterwards a constant stream of visitors arrived. By the afternoon of the third day twenty-two students had gone to Room 302 to meet the mysterious man with a limp: some were brought by their professors; some came under their own steam. The vast majority were students in the mathematics department. There were nine undergraduates and seven graduate students from that one department; the people who came from other departments were all taking specials in mathematics. Mathematical ability was the first requirement that Zheng the Gimp had set down for the person that he wanted – in fact, it was virtually the only condition. The thing is that the people who had gone in to see him had a very different story to tell once they came out again – they said it was a totally bizarre experience. They were inclined to think that it was all a joke of some kind, or at the very least not as serious as they had been led to believe. As for Zheng the Gimp – if you had listened to them you would have thought he was a lunatic, a psycho with a gammy leg! Some of them said that when they went into the room, he paid no attention to them at all. They stood there or sat there for a bit, feeling like complete fools, and then Zheng the Gimp waved them away, telling them to leave. Some of the professors in the mathematics department were so upset at what their students were telling them that they rushed round to the university guest house to
complain to the lame man in person, asking him what on earth he thought he was doing? Why was he sending people away without asking them any questions? The only answer that they got was that it was his way of doing things.

  What Zheng the Gimp said was, ‘Every discipline has its own requirements, right? In physical education they pick athletes by feeling their bones. The person I am looking for has to have an independent mind-set. Some people were really uncomfortable about the fact that I didn’t pay any attention to them – they couldn’t even sit still, nor could they stand up straight and not fidget. They found the whole experience extremely unsettling. That is not the kind of personality I am looking for.’

  That sounds very fine, but only Zheng the Gimp knew whether he was telling the truth or not.

  On the afternoon of the third day of his stay, Zheng the Gimp invited the chancellor of the university to visit him at the guest house, to discuss his search. He wasn’t very happy, but he had got something out of it. He gave the chancellor five names from the list of the twenty-two people he had interviewed and requested permission to see their personal dossiers – he thought that the person he was looking for would most likely be one of these five. When the chancellor realized that the whole thing was in its final phase and that Zheng the Gimp was proposing to leave the following day, he stayed behind at the guest house to eat a simple dinner with him. While they were still at table Zheng the Gimp seemed to suddenly remember something. He asked the chancellor about what had happened to Young Lillie, and the chancellor explained. He said, ‘If you would like to see the retired chancellor, I will tell him to come.’