Ball Lightning

by Cixin Liu

  More than a month passed. I gained weight. My thinning hair began to grow back. And I frequently counted my good fortune that I hadn’t come to my senses too late.

  But at times, if only for a few seconds, the past returned like a ghost, usually when I awoke during the night. At those moments, I felt like I was sleeping in that distant subterranean cavern, the trapezoidal platform bearing all of those snaking lines towering in the darkness... until the swaying silhouettes of the outside trees cast onto the curtains by the streetlights reminded me of where I was, and then I quickly fell asleep again. It was like having a corpse buried deep in your backyard: though you think you’re free of it, you always know it’s there, and, more importantly, you always know that you know. Later you learn that to be truly free of it, you have to dig it up out of your backyard, carry it to some faraway place, and burn it, but you don’t have the mental energy to do that. The deeper it’s buried, the harder it is for you to dig up, since you can’t dare to imagine what it may have become while underground....

  But after more than a month, the frequency of my past self’s resurrection decreased dramatically, because I had fallen in love with a college graduate who had just been assigned to our lab, and I could clearly sense that she had feelings for me. On the first morning of the May Labor Day holiday, I dithered in my dorm for a few minutes before making the decision to ask her out. I got up to head over to her second-floor dorm to find her, but then thought that maybe it would be better to call, so I reached for the telephone...

  My new life could have continued smoothly forward: I would have fallen into the river of love, had a family, children, and the sort of career success that others would envy. In sum, I’d have had an ordinary, happy life like so many other people. Maybe, in my twilight years, sitting on the sand at sunset, some of my deepest memories would surface. I’d think of the town in Yunnan, the thunderstorm on Mount Tai, the lightning weapons base outside of Beijing, and the blizzard of Siberia; I’d think of the woman in uniform and the sword tied at her neck... but those would all be so far away, as if they’d happened in a different time.

  But just as my hand touched the receiver, the phone rang.

  It was Colonel Jiang Xingchen, asking if I had plans for the holiday. I told him I didn’t.

  “Interested in taking a ship out into the ocean?”

  “Of course. Really?”

  “Come on over.”

  After setting down the phone, I was a little shocked. I’d only had brief contact with the ship captain, and after meeting him with Lin Yun that one time, I hadn’t heard from him again. So what was behind his invitation? I pulled some things together to catch a plane for Guangzhou. Asking the girl out would have to wait till I got back.

  *

  I arrived in Guangzhou that same day. The climate of war was a bit thicker here than farther inland, and air defense slogans and posters were all over the place. For the captain of the Southern Fleet’s carrier to have any leisure at a time like this was astonishing. Still, the next day, I boarded a small sloop in Shekou and set out to sea. With us was another naval officer and a naval aviator. Colonel Jiang enthusiastically taught me the ABCs of sailing, how to read a chart, and how to use a sextant. I found sailing a ship immensely tiring work, and after getting a finger pinched in the rigging, I was unable to help in any way. Most of the time I sat alone at the bow looking at the azure sky and green sea, at the sunlight dancing on the surface, at the undulating reflections of the glistening white clouds, feeling the wonder of being alive.

  “You spend all your time on the water. Do you really find sailing relaxing?” I asked Jiang Xingchen.

  “Of course not. This trip is for you,” he said cryptically.

  At dusk, we arrived at a small island, only two football fields in size, utterly empty but for an unmanned lighthouse. We were to spend the night there. Just as we were carrying the tents and other supplies in from the sailboat, we saw a strange sight in the distance.

  The sea and sky out to the west were linked by an enormous column, white at the bottom but stained dark red by the setting sun at the top. It twisted lazily in the air like a living creature. The sudden emergence of this giant monster in the placid ocean felt like a bewitching python slithering up to a picnic on the lawn, turning a familiar world strange and savage in the blink of an eye.

  “Okay, now we’ve got something to talk about, Dr. Chen. How big do you think it is?” Jiang Xingchen said, pointing in its direction.

  “Hard to say. This is the first time I’ve seen a tornado. Probably... F2,” I said.

  “Are we in danger here?” the pilot asked nervously.

  “Judging from its heading, I don’t think so,” the colonel said evenly.

  “But how do we know it won’t turn in this direction?”

  “Tornadoes usually move in straight lines.”

  Off in the distance the tornado moved east. At its nearest point to the island, the sky darkened, and we heard a low rumble. I shivered at the sound. Jiang Xingchen remained calm, watching with what almost looked like admiration, until at last it disappeared. Then he turned his eyes away.

  “In meteorology, how far has tornado prediction technology gotten?” the colonel asked.

  “I don’t think it exists. Tornadoes and earthquakes are the most difficult to predict of any natural disaster.”

  “The South China Sea has turned into a high-frequency tornado zone as the global climate has changed. This is a major threat to us.”

  “Really? Aircraft carriers are afraid of tornadoes? Of course, I suppose they’d carry off any planes still on deck.”

  “Dr. Chen, you’re being naïve,” the naval lieutenant said. “The carrier’s structure can usually only withstand an F2 tornado. If anything larger makes contact, the main deck would be ripped apart. That would be utter disaster!”

  The ocean water funneled up by the tornado began to rain down in a short, intense storm. The storm dropped fish onto the island, which we ate for dinner.

  That night, the colonel and I walked along the beach under clear stars that reminded me of my night on Mount Tai.

  “When you left the ball lightning project, Lin Yun was very upset. The project can’t go on without you, so I’ve taken it on myself to convince you to go back. And I’ve promised Lin Yun I will succeed,” he said.

  The sea was dark at night, but I could imagine the colonel’s smile. It would take incredible confidence to undertake such a mission for a lover, but perhaps somewhere in him was a disdain for me on Lin Yun’s part that he wasn’t even aware of.

  “Colonel Jiang, it’s hopeless research.” I sighed deeply toward the night and the ocean.

  “Lin Yun told me that you were hit hard by that trip to Russia. But you really shouldn’t be frightened by their enormous investment and lengthy time frame. I noticed something in Lin Yun’s explanation after she got back: by applying rigid arms research mechanisms to the study of a basic phenomenon of the natural world, the Soviets left no room for innovative thinking. They lacked imagination and creativity.”

  His comment, though brief, was incisive. And categorizing ball lightning research as a basic question showed a measure of foresight.

  “Besides, you were once prepared to devote your entire life to the goal of exploring ball lightning. Or that’s what Lin Yun told me, anyway. If that’s the case, then you shouldn’t give up so easily. Take me, for example. My dream was to be a scholar of military strategy, but for various reasons I ended up on this path. Even though I’ve reached the position I’m in, in my heart, I’m still a little disappointed.”

  “Let me think it over,” I mumbled.

  But our subsequent conversation showed me that things were far more complicated than I had imagined.

  “As colleagues for so many years, I’d say I know Lin Yun fairly well. Her thinking contains certain... elements of danger. I’d like you to help her avoid that danger.”

  “Do you mean a danger to herself, or to... others?” I a
sked.

  “Both. Let me tell you a story. She could not accept the Ottawa Treaty banning land mines, since she felt mines were anti-invasion weapons. A weapon accessible to the poor. The first year of her doctoral program, she and two classmates developed a new type of mine, using their nano-lab to design it. Her goal was to develop a mine undetectable to soldiers using conventional methods, something strictly banned by the treaty. She accomplished it. Her mine appears very simple.”

  I interrupted: “I’ve seen the bamboo segment hanging in her car.”

  He waved a hand dismissively. “No, no. That’s just a toy compared to what she created. She invented a liquid mine. It looks like nothing more than a colorless transparent liquid, but it’s actually nitroglycerin altered through nanotechnology to remove the material’s sensitivity to vibration and increase its sensitivity to pressure, so the depth at which the material can be stored is strictly limited. It is carried in vessels divided into lots of non-interconnected layers, to prevent the lower layers from detonating due to pressure from above. Deployment means simply pouring out this liquid on the ground, where it will detonate when stepped on, to incredibly lethal effect. Totally undetectable by conventional soldiers. She recommended the mine to her superiors and requested that troops be equipped with it, but naturally she came under heavy criticism. She swore that she would make them see the potential of the mine on the battlefield.”

  “From what I know of her fascination with weapons, new-concept weapons in particular, that’s not hard to imagine.”

  “But you might when you hear what happened next. In the first half of last year, those mines turned up in the war between Chile and Bolivia and caused considerable harm.”

  I looked at the colonel in surprise as I realized the implications of this information.

  “Even harder to believe is the fact that both the Chilean and Bolivian armies were using the mines.”

  “What?” I stopped in my tracks, my shock turning to fear. “But she’s only a major. Did she even have access to those channels?”

  “Apparently she didn’t tell you much about herself. She doesn’t tell much of this to anyone.” He looked at me, and while I couldn’t see his expression in the dark, I knew it must have been meaningful. “Yes. She had access.”

  *

  Back at the tent, I couldn’t sleep, so I pulled open the flap to look at the lighthouse, hoping that the regular on-off pulsing would have a hypnotic effect. It did, and as my consciousness gradually slipped away, the body of the lighthouse dissolved into the night, until eventually only the on-off blink remained suspended in midair, visible when it was lit, but leaving only infinite night when it was extinguished. I found it somehow familiar, and a small voice sounded in my brain like a bubble floating up from the ocean depths to burst upon the surface. It said: The lighthouse is always there, but you only see it when it’s lit.

  A spark went off in my mind. I bolted upright and sat there for a long while as the surf sounded around me. Then I nudged Jiang Xingchen awake. “Colonel, can we go back right away?”

  “What for?”

  “To study ball lightning, of course!”

  General Lin Feng

  After landing in Beijing, I gave Lin Yun a call. What Jiang Xingchen had told me had made me inexplicably afraid, but when I heard the major’s gentle voice, something in my heart melted, and I yearned to see her.

  “Oh, I knew Xingchen would do it!” she said with excitement.

  “It’s mostly because I suddenly had an idea.”

  “Really? Come over for dinner with my family.”

  The invitation caught me by surprise, since Lin Yun had always avoided talking about her family. Even Jiang Xingchen hadn’t mentioned anything about it.

  As I left the airport, I ran into Zhao Yu. He had resigned from the Mount Tai Meteorology Station and had some things he wanted to do. He had lots of ideas, things like installing lightning attractors on large swaths of farmland to harness it, in order to produce fertilizer or repair the polar ozone holes. He even brought up lightning weapons, which Lin Yun had discussed with him on Mount Tai, but he was of the opinion that they were unlikely to work.

  “You’re done with taking it easy?” I asked.

  “With the current state of things, everyone’s nervous, and there’s not much fun in taking it easy.”

  Zhao Yu was a smart man, and if he put in the work, he could accomplish many things. Looking at him, I realized that sometimes a philosophy of life might be set in stone, unchanging throughout one’s life, but at other times it could be incredibly weak. The direction of a man or woman’s life might be determined by the era they found themselves in. It’s impossible for someone to distance themselves very far from the times they live in.

  Before we parted, Zhao Yu remembered something: “I paid a visit to school recently, and I saw Zhang Bin.”

  “Oh?”

  “As soon as he saw me, he asked about you. He has leukemia. It’s incurable. I suspect it’s the result of long-term emotional stress.”

  As I watched him leave, the words of the Siberian called Levalenkov echoed in my mind:

  Sometimes you fly all the way only to discover it would have been better to have fallen halfway.

  A fear of the unknown future seized hold of me once again.

  *

  I was met at the airport not by Lin Yun but a second lieutenant driving a car common to senior officials.

  “Dr. Chen, Major Lin sent me to pick you up,” he said after saluting. Then he politely asked me to get into the Red Flag. Along the way, he concentrated on driving, saying nothing. We eventually entered a guarded compound that contained a neat row of residential buildings, all 1950s-style buildings with broad eaves—the sort of building that if you were asked to say the first word that came to mind, it would no doubt be “father.” We passed several rows of poplars and parked at the base of a small two-story building in the same style.

  The second lieutenant opened the car door for me and said, “They’re both at home. If you please.” Then he saluted, and watched me as I walked up the steps.

  Lin Yun came out the door to greet me. She looked a little more haggard than before, evidently tired from recent work. The change felt sudden, and I realized that in the time we had been apart, I had kept a place in my heart for her, where she lived in her former appearance.

  Inside, Lin Yun’s father was sitting on a sofa, reading a newspaper. When he saw me come in, he stood up and shook my hand. He was thin but strong, and his hand was powerful.

  “So you’re the academic who’s studying lightning? Greetings! Xiao Yun has talked about you often. Her other friends are mostly from the army, but I say that’s not a good thing. Soldiers shouldn’t limit themselves to a small circle. Otherwise, in times like these, their thinking will calcify.” He turned to Lin Yun, and said, “Auntie Zhang’s probably swamped. Why don’t I whip up a couple of my specialties for Dr. Chen?” Then he said, “It wasn’t just Xiao Yun who invited you today. I did as well. We’ll talk in a bit.”

  “Don’t use too much hot pepper, Dad,” she called after him as he went off.

  I watched him until he disappeared. We’d met for less than a minute, and already I sensed in him some ineffable dignity which, combined with his amiable approachability, lent him a very unusual demeanor.

  All I knew about Lin Yun’s father was that he was in the military, possibly a general. I had caught a sense of his job from scraps of conversation from the people around her, but military ranks weren’t my forte and I couldn’t make a good guess, so even now it was completely unknown. But her father’s easy manner relaxed me. Sitting on the sofa, I smoked the cigarette Lin Yun passed me and surveyed the living room. It was simply furnished, with very little decoration. An entire wall was practically covered by large maps of China and the world. A large desk caught my eye—definitely a working desk—with two telephones, one red and one white, as well as what appeared to be files. The living room was apparently also an office. M
y eye finally rested upon a clothes rack set up beside the door on which hung a military uniform; from my vantage point I could see one of the epaulets. I took a closer look, and then dropped my cigarette.

  There were three stars on the epaulet.

  I hastily snatched up the cigarette and put it out in an ashtray, and then set my hands on my knees, like a schoolboy sitting at attention.

  Lin Yun laughed when she noticed my posture. “Relax. My dad’s got a science background and gets along well with technical people. He never supported lightning research, and now it looks as if he was right. But when I brought up ball lightning, he was pretty interested.”

  Now a black-and-white photo on the wall caught my attention. It showed a young woman with a strong resemblance to Lin Yun wearing a plain military uniform.

  Lin Yun got up and went over to the photo, and said simply, “My mom. She died in the border war in ’81.... Let’s talk about ball lightning instead. I hope you haven’t forgotten it entirely.”

  “What have you been up to?”