Death's End (The Three-Body Problem)

by Cixin Liu

  The phone rang again. It was Sophon. She invited Cheng Xin and Luo Ji to tea again. She was going to tell them good-bye for the last time.

  Slowly, Cheng Xin put the capsule back in the bottle. She would make this appointment. This meant she had enough time to wade across the river of pain.

  The next morning, Cheng Xin and Luo Ji returned to Sophon’s aerial abode. They saw a gigantic crowd gathered a few hundred meters below it. Sophon had announced to the world last night that she was going to leave, and the crowd of worshippers was several times larger than typical. Instead of the usual prayers and pleas, the congregation was silent, as though waiting for something.

  In front of the door to her house, Sophon welcomed them the same way.

  This time, the Way of Tea was conducted in silence. They all knew that everything that needed to be said between the two worlds had already been said.

  Cheng Xin and Luo Ji could both feel the presence of the people below. The expectant crowd was like a giant noise-absorbing carpet that deepened the silence in the parlor. It was almost oppressive, as if the clouds outside the window had grown more solid. But Sophon’s movements remained gentle and graceful, making no noise even when the implements came in contact with porcelain. Sophon seemed to be using her grace and elegance to counteract the heavy air. More than an hour passed, but Cheng Xin and Luo Ji did not feel the flow of time.

  Sophon presented a bowl of tea to Luo Ji with both hands. “I’m leaving. I hope the two of you will take care and be well.” Then she presented Cheng Xin with her bowl. “The universe is grand, but life is grander. Perhaps fate will direct us to meet again.”

  Cheng Xin sipped the tea quietly. She closed her eyes to concentrate on the taste. The clear bitterness seemed to suffuse her body, as though she had drunk cold starlight. She drank slowly, but finally, she was done.

  Cheng Xin and Luo Ji got up to say farewell for the last time. Sophon accompanied them all the way up onto the branch. They saw that the white clouds generated by Sophon’s house had disappeared for the first time in memory. Below them, the sea of expectant people still waited in silence.

  “Before we say good-bye, I’m going to finish my last mission. It’s a message.” Sophon bowed deeply to both of them. Then she straightened up and looked at Cheng Xin.

  “Yun Tianming would like to see you.”

  Excerpt from A Past Outside of Time The Long Staircase

  Near the beginning of the Crisis Era, before the Great Ravine had extinguished humanity’s enthusiasm, the nations of the Earth had banded together and accomplished a series of great deeds for the defense of the Solar System. These gigantic engineering projects had all reached or breached the limits of the most advanced technology of the time. Some of them, such as the space elevator, the test of the stellar-class nuclear bombs on Mercury, the breakthroughs in controlled nuclear fusion, and so on, had been recorded by history. These projects built a solid foundation for the technological leap after the Great Ravine.

  But the Staircase Project wasn’t one of them; it had been forgotten even before the Great Ravine. In the eyes of historians, the Staircase Project was a typical result of the ill-thought-out impulsiveness that marked the beginning of the Crisis Era, a hastily conducted, poorly planned adventure. In addition to the complete failure to accomplish its objectives, it left nothing of technological value. The space technology that eventually developed took a completely different direction.

  No one could have predicted that nearly three centuries later, the Staircase Project would bring a ray of hope to an Earth mired in despair.

  It would probably forever remain a mystery how the Trisolarans managed to intercept and capture the probe carrying Yun Tianming’s brain.

  One of the cables holding the sail to the Staircase probe had broken near the orbit of Jupiter. The craft had deviated from its planned path, and the Earth, deprived of its flight parameters, lost it to the endless depths of space. If the Trisolarans had been able to intercept it later, they must have had its flight parameters after the cable broke; otherwise, even the advanced Trisolaran technology would have been incapable of locating such a small object in the vastness of space outside the Solar System. The most likely explanation was that the sophons had followed the Staircase Project probe, at least through its acceleration leg, to gather its final flight parameters. But it seemed unlikely that the sophons had followed the craft for the remainder of its long journey. The craft had passed through the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud. In these regions, it could have decelerated or been pushed off course by interstellar dust. It appeared that none of these things happened, because Trisolarans wouldn’t have been able to get updated parameters. Thus, the successful interception of the probe required some measure of luck.

  It was virtually certain that a ship from the First Trisolaran Fleet was responsible for capturing the probe—most likely the one ship that had never decelerated. At the time, it had been sent way ahead of the rest of the fleet so that it could arrive in the Solar System a century and a half before the other ships—but, due to its extremely high velocity, it couldn’t have decelerated in time, and would have had to pass straight through the Solar System. The goal of this ship was still a mystery. After the creation of dark forest deterrence, this ship, along with the rest of the First Trisolaran Fleet, had turned away from the Solar System. The Earth had never ascertained its precise flight parameters, but if it had turned in the same general direction as the rest of the First Fleet, then it was possible that it encountered the Staircase probe. Of course, even so, the two crafts were still at great distances from each other; without precise parameters for the probe’s trajectory, the Trisolaran ship couldn’t have located it.

  A rough estimate—the only estimate possible given the lack of more information—would place the moment of interception between thirty and fifty years ago, but not before the Deterrence Era.

  It was understandable that the Trisolaran Fleet would attempt to capture the Staircase probe. Until the very end, direct contact between the Trisolarans and humans was limited to the droplets. They would have been interested in a live human specimen.

  Yun Tianming was now aboard the First Trisolaran Fleet. Most of the ships in the fleet were headed in the direction of Sirius. His exact condition was unknown: Perhaps his brain was kept alive by itself; or perhaps it had been implanted in a cloned body. But people were far more interested in a different question:

  Was Yun Tianming still working for the interests of humanity?

  This was a reasonable worry. The fact that Yun Tianming’s request to see Cheng Xin had been approved showed that he had already integrated into Trisolaran society, and perhaps even possessed some social status there.

  The next question was even more troubling: Had he participated in recent history? Did the events of the past century between the two worlds have anything to do with him?

  Still, Yun Tianming had appeared at the exact moment when Earth civilization seemed to be bereft of hope. When the news became public, people’s first reaction was that their prayers had been answered: The angel of salvation had finally arrived.

  Broadcast Era, Year 7 Yun Tianming

  Viewed through the portholes in the elevator, Cheng Xin’s entire world consisted of an eighty-centimeter-thick guide rail. The guide rail extended endlessly both above and below her, shrinking into invisibility in each direction. She had been riding for an hour already and was more than a thousand kilometers above sea level, outside the atmosphere. The Earth below her was in the shadow of night, and the continents were mere hazy outlines with no substance. The space above her was inky blackness, and the terminal station, thirty thousand kilometers away, was invisible. One felt as though the guide rail pointed to a road from which there was no return.

  Although she was an aerospace engineer from the Common Era, Cheng Xin had never been in space until this day, three centuries later. It no longer required special training to ride any space vehicles, but in consideration for her lack of experie
nce, the technical support staff suggested that she ascend in the space elevator. Since the entirety of the ride was conducted at the same speed, there would be no hypergravity. And the gravity inside the elevator car now wasn’t noticeably lower—gravity would diminish gradually, until she achieved complete weightlessness at the terminal station in geosynchronous orbit. At this altitude, one would experience weightlessness only when orbiting the Earth, not when going up in a space elevator. Occasionally, Cheng Xin saw tiny dots sweep past in the distance—probably from satellites coasting at first cosmic velocity.

  The guide rail’s surface was very smooth, and it was almost impossible to see motion. The elevator car seemed to be sitting still on the rail. In reality, her velocity was fifteen hundred kilometers per hour, equivalent to a supersonic jet. Reaching geosynchronous orbit would take about twenty hours, which made this a very slow journey in the context of space. Cheng Xin recalled a conversation during college where Tianming had pointed out that in principle, it was perfectly possible to achieve spaceflight at low speeds. As long as one maintained an ever-upward speed, one could go into space going as slow as a car or even walking. One could even walk up to the orbit of the moon in this manner, though it would be impossible to step onto the moon—by then, the relative velocity of the moon with respect to the climber would be more than three thousand kilometers per hour, and if one were to attempt to remain at rest with respect to the moon, the result would once again be high-speed astronautics. Cheng Xin clearly recalled that he had said at the end that it would be an amazing sight to be in the vicinity of the moon’s orbit and watch the gigantic satellite sweep overhead. She was now experiencing the low-speed spaceflight he had imagined.

  The elevator car was shaped like a capsule, but divided into four decks. She was in the top deck, and those who accompanied her were in the lower three decks. No one came up to bother her. She was in the luxurious business-class cabin, like a room in a five-star hotel. There was a comfortable bed and a shower, but the suite was small, about the size of a college dorm room.

  She was always thinking about her time in college these days, thinking about Tianming.

  At this altitude, the Earth’s umbral cone was narrower, and the Sun thus became visible. Everything outside was submerged in the powerful, bright light, and the portholes automatically adjusted to decrease their transparency. Cheng Xin lay on the sofa and watched the guide rail above her through the porthole overhead. The endless straight line seemed to descend directly from the Milky Way. She wanted to see signs of motion against the guide rail, or at least to imagine it. The sight was hypnotic, and eventually she fell asleep.

  She heard someone call her name softly, a man’s voice. She saw that she was in a college dorm sleeping in the bottom bunk of a bunk bed. But the room was otherwise empty. A streak of light moved across the wall, like streetlights inside a moving car. She looked outside the window and saw that, behind the familiar Chinese parasol tree, the Sun swept across the sky rapidly, rising and setting every few seconds. Even when the Sun was up, however, the sky behind it remained inky black, and the stars shone along with the Sun. The voice continued to call her name. She wanted to get up to look around, but found her body floating up from the bed. Books, cups, her notebook computer, and other objects floated around her....

  Cheng Xin woke up with a start, and found herself truly floating in air, hovering a small distance above the sofa. She reached out to pull herself back onto the sofa, but inadvertently pushed herself away. She rose until she was next to the porthole in the ceiling, where she turned around weightlessly and pushed against the glass, successfully sending herself back to the sofa. Everything looked the same in the cabin, except that the weightlessness released some of the settled dust motes, and they sparkled in the sunlight.

  She saw that an official from the PDC had come up from the cabin below. It was probably he who had been calling her name earlier. He stared at her, astonished. “Dr. Cheng, I understand this is the first time you’ve been in space?” he asked. After Cheng Xin nodded, he smiled and shook his head. “But you look like an old spacer.”

  Cheng Xin herself felt surprised as well. This first experience of weightlessness did not cause her discomfort or anxiety. She felt relaxed, and there was no dizziness or nausea. It was as if she naturally belonged here, belonged to space.

  “We’re almost there,” the official said, pointing up.

  Cheng Xin looked up. She saw the guide rail again, but now she could tell they were moving by its surface—a sign that they were slowing down. At the end of the rail, the geosynchronous terminal station was coming into view. It was formed of multiple concentric rings connected together by five radial spokes. The original terminal station was just a small part in the center. The concentric rings were later additions, with the outer rings being newer. The entire structure slowly rotated in place.

  Cheng Xin also saw other space buildings appear around her. The dense cluster of buildings in this region was the result of engineers taking advantage of proximity to the space elevator terminal station for transportation of construction materials. The buildings were of different shapes and appeared from the distance as a bunch of intricate toys—only when one swept past at close range could their immensity be felt. Cheng Xin knew that one of these housed the headquarters of the Halo Group, her space construction company. AA was working in it right now, but she couldn’t tell which building it was.

  The elevator car passed through a massive frame. The dense struts in the frame made the sunlight flicker. By the time the car emerged from the other end of the frame, the terminal station took up most of the view, and the Milky Way twinkled only from the space between the concentric rings. The immense structure pressed down, and as the car entered the station, everything dimmed as though the car was entering a tunnel. A few minutes later, bright lights illuminated the outside: The car was in the terminal hall. The hall spun around the car, and for the first time Cheng Xin felt dizzy. But as the car detached from the guide rail, it was clamped by the platform. After a slight jolt, the car began to spin along with the station, and everything around her seemed to be still again.

  Cheng Xin, accompanied by four others, emerged into the circular hall from the car. As their car was the only one at the platform, the hall seemed very empty. Cheng Xin felt a sense of familiarity right away: Although information windows floated everywhere, the main structure of the hall was built from metallic materials that were rare in this age, mainly stainless steel and lead alloys. She could see the marks left by the passage of years everywhere, and she felt herself situated in an old train station instead of in space. The elevator she had ridden was the first space elevator ever built, and this terminal station, completed in Year 15 of the Crisis Era, had been in continuous operation for more than two centuries, even through the Great Ravine. Cheng Xin noticed the guardrails crisscrossing the hall, installed to help people move around in weightlessness. The guardrails were mainly made of stainless steel, though some were made from copper. Observing their surfaces, bearing the marks of countless hands through more than two centuries of service, Cheng Xin was reminded of the deep ruts left in front of ancient city doors.

  The rails were leftovers from an earlier age, since everyone now relied on individual tiny thrusters which could be worn on the belt or over the shoulders. They generated enough thrust to propel people around in weightlessness, controlled by a handheld remote. Cheng Xin’s companions tried to give her a first lesson in space—how to use the weightless thrusters. But Cheng Xin preferred to navigate around by grabbing on to the guardrails. As they arrived at the exit to the main hall, Cheng Xin paused to admire a few propaganda posters on the wall. These were ancient, and most of them dealt with the construction of the Solar System defense system. In one of the posters, a soldier’s figure filled most of the image. He was dressed in a uniform unfamiliar to Cheng Xin, and his fiery eyes stared at the viewer. Below him was a line of large text: The Earth needs you! Next to it was an even larger poster
in which people of all races and nationalities stood, arms linked, to form a dense wall. Behind them, the blue flag of the UN took up most of the picture. The text on the poster read: Let us build a new Great Wall for the Solar System with our flesh! Although Cheng Xin was interested in the posters, they didn’t feel familiar. They seemed to harken back to an older style, reminding people of an age before she had even been born.

  “These were from the beginning of the Great Ravine,” one of the PDC officials traveling with her said.

  That had been a brief, despotic age, when the whole world had been militarized before everything, from faith to life, collapsed.... But why had these posters been kept until now? To remember, or to forget?

  Cheng Xin and the others exited the main hall into a long corridor, whose cross section was also circular. The corridor extended ahead of her for some distance, and she couldn’t see to the end. She knew that this was one of the five radial spokes of the station. At first, they moved in total weightlessness, but soon, “gravity” appeared, in the form of centrifugal force. At first, the force was very weak, but it was enough to induce a sense of up and down: the corridor suddenly turned into a deep well, and instead of floating, they were falling. Cheng Xin felt dizzy, but many guardrails protruded from the wall of the “well.” If she felt she was falling too fast, she could decelerate by grabbing on to one of the rails.

  They passed the intersection between the spoke and the first ring. Cheng Xin looked to the right and left, and saw that the ground rose up on both sides, as though she were at the bottom of a valley. Over the entrances to the ring on both sides were red-glowing signs: First Ring, Gravity 0.15G. The wall of the curved corridor of the ring was punctuated by multiple doors, which opened and closed from time to time. Cheng Xin saw many pedestrians. They stood on the floor of the ring due to the microgravity, but they still moved by leaping ahead with the aid of the weightless thrusters.