On the subway I glanced at the newspaper held up by the man sitting next to us. “USA Strikes Back!” was the headline. The big photograph showed the American president smiling triumphantly. Below that was a series of other pictures, some I had seen before: the first experimental American evacuation ship from years ago exploding on its test flight; the leader of some rogue nation claiming responsibility on TV; American soldiers marching into a foreign capital.
Below the fold was a smaller article: “American Scientists Skeptical of Doomsday Scenario.” Dad had said that some people preferred to believe that a disaster was unreal rather than accept that nothing could be done.
I looked forward to picking out a present for Dad. But instead of going to the electronics district, where I had expected Mom to take me to buy him a gift, we went to a section of the city I had never been to before. Mom took out her phone and made a brief call, speaking in English. I looked up at her, surprised.
Then we were standing in front of a building with a great American flag flying over it. We went inside and sat down in an office. An American man came in. His face was sad, but he was working hard not to look sad.
“Rin.” The man called my mother’s name and stopped. In that one syllable I heard regret and longing and a complicated story.
“This is Dr. Hamilton,” Mom said to me. I nodded and offered to shake his hand, as I had seen Americans do on TV.
Dr. Hamilton and Mom spoke for a while. She began to cry, and Dr. Hamilton stood awkwardly, as though he wanted to hug her but dared not.
“You’ll be staying with Dr. Hamilton,” Mom said to me.
“What?”
She held my shoulders, bent down, and looked into my eyes. “The Americans have a secret ship in orbit. It is the only ship they managed to launch into space before they got into this war. Dr. Hamilton designed the ship. He’s my . . . old friend, and he can bring one person aboard with him. It’s your only chance.”
“No, I’m not leaving.”
Eventually, Mom opened the door to leave. Dr. Hamilton held me tightly as I kicked and screamed.
We were all surprised to see Dad standing there.
Mom burst into tears.
Dad hugged her, which I’d never seen him do. It seemed a very American gesture.
“I’m sorry,” Mom said. She kept saying “I’m sorry” as she cried.
“It’s okay,” Dad said. “I understand.”
Dr. Hamilton let me go, and I ran up to my parents, holding on to both of them tightly.
Mom looked at Dad, and in that look she said nothing and everything.
Dad’s face softened like a wax figure coming to life. He sighed and looked at me.
“You’re not afraid, are you?” Dad asked.
I shook my head.
“Then it is okay for you to go,” he said. He looked into Dr. Hamilton’s eyes. “Thank you for taking care of my son.”
Mom and I both looked at him, surprised.
“A dandelion
In late autumn’s cooling breeze
Spreads seeds far and wide.”
I nodded, pretending to understand.
Dad hugged me, fiercely, quickly.
“Remember that you’re Japanese.”
And they were gone.
***
“Something has punctured the sail,” Dr. Hamilton says.
The tiny room holds only the most senior command staff—plus Mindy and me because we already know. There is no reason to cause a panic among the people.
“The hole is causing the ship to list to the side, veering off course. If the hole is not patched, the tear will grow bigger, the sail will soon collapse, and the Hopeful will be adrift in space.”
“Is there any way to fix it?” the Captain asks.
Dr. Hamilton, who has been like a father to me, shakes his headful of white hair. I have never seen him so despondent.
“The tear is several hundred kilometers from the hub of the sail. It will take many days to get someone out there because you can’t move too fast along the surface of the sail—the risk of another tear is too great. And by the time we do get anyone out there, the tear will have grown too large to patch.”
And so it goes. Everything passes.
I close my eyes and picture the sail. The film is so thin that if it is touched carelessly it will be punctured. But the membrane is supported by a complex system of folds and struts that give the sail rigidity and tension. As a child, I had watched them unfold in space like one of my mother’s origami creations.
I imagine hooking and unhooking a tether cable to the scaffolding of struts as I skim along the surface of the sail, like a dragonfly dipping across the surface of a pond.
“I can make it out there in seventy-two hours,” I say. Everyone turns to look at me. I explain my idea. “I know the patterns of the struts well because I have monitored them from afar for most of my life. I can find the quickest path.”
Dr. Hamilton is dubious. “Those struts were never designed for a maneuver like that. I never planned for this scenario.”
“Then we’ll improvise,” Mindy says. “We’re Americans, damn it. We never just give up.”
Dr. Hamilton looks up. “Thank you, Mindy.”
We plan, we debate, we shout at each other, we work throughout the night.
***
The climb up the cable from the habitat module to the solar sail is long and arduous. It takes me almost twelve hours.
Let me illustrate for you what I look like with the second character in my name:
It means “to soar.” See that radical on the left? That’s me, tethered to the cable with a pair of antennae coming out of my helmet. On my back are the wings—or, in this case, booster rockets and extra fuel tanks that push me up and up toward the great reflective dome that blocks out the whole sky, the gossamer mirror of the solar sail.
Mindy chats with me on the radio link. We tell each other jokes, share secrets, speak of things we want to do in the future. When we run out of things to say, she sings to me. The goal is to keep me awake.
“Wareware ha, hoshi no aida ni kyaku ni kite.”
***
But the climb up is really the easy part. The journey across the sail along the network of struts to the point of puncture is far more difficult.
It has been thirty-six hours since I left the ship. Mindy’s voice is now tired, flagging. She yawns.
“Sleep, baby,” I whisper into the microphone. I’m so tired that I want to close my eyes just for a moment.
I’m walking along the road on a summer evening, my father next to me.
“We live in a land of volcanoes and earthquakes, typhoons and tsunamis, Hiroto. We have always faced a precarious existence, suspended in a thin strip on the surface of this planet between the fire underneath and the icy vacuum above.”
And I’m back in my suit again, alone. My momentary loss of concentration causes me to bang my backpack against one of the beams of the sail, almost knocking one of the fuel tanks loose. I grab it just in time. The mass of my equipment has been lightened down to the last gram so that I can move fast, and there is no margin for error. I can’t afford to lose anything.
I try to shake the dream and keep on moving.
“Yet it is this awareness of the closeness of death, of the beauty inherent in each moment, that allows us to endure. Mono no aware, my son, is an empathy with the universe. It is the soul of our nation. It has allowed us to endure Hiroshima, to endure the occupation, to endure deprivation and the prospect of annihilation without despair.”
“Hiroto, wake up!” Mindy’s voice is desperate, pleading. I jerk awake. I have not been able to sleep for how long now? Two days, three, four?
For the final fifty or so kilometers of the journey, I must let go of the sail struts and rely on my rockets alone to travel untethered, skimming over the surface of the sail while everything is moving at a fraction of the speed of light. The very idea is enough to make me dizzy.
And s
uddenly my father is next to me again, suspended in space below the sail. We’re playing a game of Go.
“Look in the southwest corner. Do you see how your army has been divided in half? My white stones will soon surround and capture this entire group.”
I look where he’s pointing and I see the crisis. There is a gap that I missed. What I thought was my one army is in reality two separate groups with a hole in the middle. I have to plug the gap with my next stone.
I shake away the hallucination. I have to finish this, and then I can sleep.
There is a hole in the torn sail before me. At the speed we’re traveling, even a tiny speck of dust that escaped the ion shields can cause havoc. The jagged edge of the hole flaps gently in space, propelled by solar wind and radiation pressure. While an individual photon is tiny, insignificant, without even mass, all of them together can propel a sail as big as the sky and push a thousand people along.
The universe is wondrous.
I lift a black stone and prepare to fill in the gap, to connect my armies into one.
The stone turns back into the patching kit from my backpack. I maneuver my thrusters until I’m hovering right over the gash in the sail. Through the hole I can see the stars beyond, the stars that no one on the ship has seen for many years. I look at them and imagine that around one of them, one day, the human race, fused into a new nation, will recover from near extinction, will start afresh and flourish again.
Carefully, I apply the bandage over the gash, and I turn on the heat torch. I run the torch over the gash, and I can feel the bandage melting to spread out and fuse with the hydrocarbon chains in the sail film. When that’s done I’ll vaporize and deposit silver atoms over it to form a shiny, reflective layer.
“It’s working,” I say into the microphone. And I hear the muffled sounds of celebration in the background.
“You’re a hero,” Mindy says.
I think of myself as a giant Japanese robot in a manga and smile.
The torch sputters and goes out.
“Look carefully,” Dad says. “You want to play your next stone there to plug that hole. But is that what you really want?”
I shake the fuel tank attached to the torch. Nothing. This was the tank that I banged against one of the sail beams. The collision must have caused a leak and there isn’t enough fuel left to finish the patch. The bandage flaps gently, only half attached to the gash.
“Come back now,” Dr. Hamilton says. “We’ll replenish your supplies and try again.”
I’m exhausted. No matter how hard I push, I will not be able to make it back out here as fast. And by then who knows how big the gash will have grown? Dr. Hamilton knows this as well as I do. He just wants to get me back to the warm safety of the ship.
I still have fuel in my tank, the fuel that is meant for my return trip.
My father’s face is expectant.
“I see,” I speak slowly. “If I play my next stone in this hole, I will not have a chance to get back to the small group up in the northeast. You’ll capture them.”
“One stone cannot be in both places. You have to choose, son.”
“Tell me what to do.”
I look into my father’s face for an answer.
“Look around you,” Dad says. And I see Mom, Mrs. Maeda, the Prime Minister, all our neighbors from Kurume, and all the people who waited with us in Kagoshima, in Kyushu, in all the Four Islands, all over Earth and on the Hopeful. They look expectantly at me, for me to do something.
Dad’s voice is quiet:
“The stars shine and blink.
We are all guests passing through,
A smile and a name.”
“I have a solution,” I tell Dr. Hamilton over the radio.
“I knew you’d come up with something,” Mindy says, her voice proud and happy.
Dr. Hamilton is silent for a while. He knows what I’m thinking. And then: “Hiroto, thank you.”
I unhook the torch from its useless fuel tank and connect it to the tank on my back. I turn it on. The flame is bright, sharp, a blade of light. I marshal photons and atoms before me, transforming them into a web of strength and light.
The stars on the other side have been sealed away again. The mirrored surface of the sail is perfect.
“Correct your course,” I speak into the microphone. “It’s done.”
“Acknowledged,” Dr. Hamilton says. His voice is that of a sad man trying not to sound sad.
“You have to come back first,” Mindy says. “If we correct course now, you’ll have nowhere to tether yourself.”
“It’s okay, baby,” I whisper into the microphone. “I’m not coming back. There’s not enough fuel left.”
“We’ll come for you!”
“You can’t navigate the struts as quickly as I did,” I tell her, gently. “No one knows their pattern as well as I do. By the time you get here, I will have run out of air.”
I wait until she’s quiet again. “Let us not speak of sad things. I love you.”
Then I turn off the radio and push off into space so that they aren’t tempted to mount a useless rescue mission. And I fall down, far, far below the canopy of the sail.
I watch as the sail turns away, unveiling the stars in their full glory. The sun, so faint now, is only one star among many, neither rising nor setting. I am cast adrift among them, alone and also at one with them.
A kitten’s tongue tickles the inside of my heart.
***
I play the next stone in the gap.
Dad plays as I thought he would, and my stones in the northeast corner are gone, cast adrift.
But my main group is safe. They may even flourish in the future.
“Maybe there are heroes in Go,” Bobby’s voice says.
Mindy called me a hero. But I was simply a man in the right place at the right time. Dr. Hamilton is also a hero because he designed the Hopeful. Mindy is also a hero because she kept me awake. My mother is also a hero because she was willing to give me up so that I could survive. My father is also a hero because he showed me the right thing to do.
We are defined by the places we hold in the web of others’ lives.
I pull my gaze back from the Go board until the stones fuse into larger patterns of shifting life and pulsing breath. “Individual stones are not heroes, but all the stones together are heroic.”
“It is a beautiful day for a walk, isn’t it?” Dad says.
And we walk together down the street, so that we can remember every passing blade of grass, every dewdrop, every fading ray of the dying sun, infinitely beautiful.
© 2012 by Ken Liu.
Originally published in The Future is Japanese
ALIETTE DE BODARD
Aliette de Bodard is an award-winning speculative fiction writer. She is of French/Vietnamese descent, born in the USA, and grew up in Paris. French is her mother-tongue, but she writes in English. She is a Software Engineer specialising in image processing and a member of the Written in Blood writers group.
Immersion, by Aliette de Bodard
In the morning, you're no longer quite sure who you are.
You stand in front of the mirror—it shifts and trembles, reflecting only what you want to see—eyes that feel too wide, skin that feels too pale, an odd, distant smell wafting from the compartment's ambient system that is neither incense nor garlic, but something else, something elusive that you once knew.
You're dressed, already—not on your skin, but outside, where it matters, your avatar sporting blue and black and gold, the stylish clothes of a well-traveled, well-connected woman. For a moment, as you turn away from the mirror, the glass shimmers out of focus; and another woman in a dull silk gown stares back at you: smaller, squatter and in every way diminished—a stranger, a distant memory that has ceased to have any meaning.
***
Quy was on the docks, watching the spaceships arrive. She could, of course, have been anywhere on Longevity Station, and requested the feed from the netw
ork to be patched to her router—and watched, superimposed on her field of vision, the slow dance of ships slipping into their pod cradles like births watched in reverse. But there was something about standing on the spaceport's concourse—a feeling of closeness that she just couldn't replicate by standing in Golden Carp Gardens or Azure Dragon Temple. Because here—here, separated by only a few measures of sheet metal from the cradle pods, she could feel herself teetering on the edge of the vacuum, submerged in cold and breathing in neither air nor oxygen. She could almost imagine herself rootless, finally returned to the source of everything.
Most ships those days were Galactic—you'd have thought Longevity's ex-masters would have been unhappy about the station's independence, but now that the war was over Longevity was a tidy source of profit. The ships came; and disgorged a steady stream of tourists—their eyes too round and straight, their jaws too square; their faces an unhealthy shade of pink, like undercooked meat left too long in the sun. They walked with the easy confidence of people with immersers: pausing to admire the suggested highlights for a second or so before moving on to the transport station, where they haggled in schoolbook Rong for a ride to their recommended hotels—a sickeningly familiar ballet Quy had been seeing most of her life, a unison of foreigners descending on the station like a plague of centipedes or leeches.
Still, Quy watched them. They reminded her of her own time on Prime, her heady schooldays filled with raucous bars and wild weekends, and late minute revisions for exams, a carefree time she'd never have again in her life. She both longed for those days back, and hated herself for her weakness. Her education on Prime, which should have been her path into the higher strata of the station's society, had brought her nothing but a sense of disconnection from her family; a growing solitude, and a dissatisfaction, an aimlessness she couldn't put in words.
She might not have moved all day—had a sign not blinked, superimposed by her router on the edge of her field of vision. A message from Second Uncle.
Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two Page 424