by Hao Jingfang
* * *
It was time to get ready for the welcome reception. The whole delegation was supposed to go to the banquet hall together. He changed, fixed his hair, and packed up his portable filming kit.
Just before leaving, he stood by the wall for a moment. With the arrival of dusk, lights were coming on all over Mars City, and everything glowed. From the shuttle, he had been amazed by the architecture of the city. It reminded him of a city constructed out of crystal, with elegant avenues and thoroughfares that connected complicated but transparent structures. The delicate houses, each made of glass and in various shapes, were scattered across the vast plain. The flat roofs, like slanted sails, glowed a deep azure. From a distance they created the illusion of sheets of water slicing into the ground. A network of glass tunnels connecting the houses twisted through the air, like crisscrossing veins or elevated highways. Looking down from the shuttle, he had felt an instinctive yearning. This was a world unlike anywhere he had been on Earth, and its alienness fascinated him.
HOME
Sunlight made Luoying squint as she emerged into the shuttle port terminal.
Having been away from sunrise on Mars for five years, she had almost forgotten how different it felt. The sky on Earth was blue, and the sun was a gentle reddish orange. On Mars, black was black, white was white. There was nothing in the way, no filter.
After deplaning from the shuttle, the students rode the seated escalator down to the ground. After passing through identity verification, they arrived in the vast open space of the terminal, the first place that felt like home.
The terminal had been built during Luoying’s absence. She and her friends walked together, not speaking much. The walls, the hemispherical ceiling, and the ground were all constructed out of glass, like most things on Mars, though the floor was patterned to resemble marble. The walls were bare of ornamentation. Other than the steel girders, the only visible detail in the transparent walls was the pattern made by the insulation gas billowing between the two layers of glass, curling wisps.
Luoying walked next to Chania, and the pair smiled as they watched the confusion among the Terran delegates. The elegantly dressed Terrans, clustered after the Martian delegates but before the students, were clearly ill-prepared for navigation through the shuttle port.
The leader of the Terran delegation, Mr. Peter Beverley, strode confidently at the head of the group. But he paused in front of the fingerprint station, uncertain what to do. The retina scanner swung into his face from the side like a tentacle and made a light popping noise right in front of his eyes as it took a snapshot, which so shocked the man that he jumped backward, bumping into the radiation probe, which beeped loudly.
Everyone in the terminal turned to stare.
Red-faced, Beverley pretended to laugh and held out a hand to calm the still-beeping probe, but the probe only beeped louder in protest. His hand jerked back in surprise.
The Martian delegates ahead of him turned back, grinning, to help.
Luoying smiled and looked away politely. She pulled her luggage through the security line, easily navigating between the various probes that swung out from both sides, as though dancing a practiced routine or greeting the electronic sensors.
Beverley finally made his way through the probes as well. He held in his hand the diplomatic documents that declared his authority as the head of the Terran delegation. But there were no customs officials or passport checkpoints, and he stood in the middle of the terminal, uncertain who to show his papers to.
The terminal was shaped like a slice of pie. The narrow tip led to the shuttles, while the wide arc was where passengers boarded the tube trains for Mars City. Along the two straight walls were vending machines for gifts and snacks like fresh pastries and fruits. In the middle of the terminal floor stood a few glass boards that showed the complicated map of the tube train system, like a colorful tapestry that slowly changed. Between the entrances for the different tube trains hung small terminals. The Martian delegates were already at these, punching in the stations nearest their homes.
Luoying and Chania stood near the entrances, hesitating.
“We’re home,” said Chania softly. It sounded like a question for Luoying, or perhaps she was only talking to herself.
“That’s right.”
“How do you feel?”
“I don’t feel anything.”
“Really?” Chania turned to gaze at her.
“Really.” She nodded for emphasis. “Strange, isn’t it?”
“Not strange at all,” said Chania. “I don’t feel anything either.”
Luoying surveyed the clean, bright terminal. “Tell me, what makes the shuttle port here different from all the airports on Earth we’ve been to?”
“This is a shuttle port; those are airports,” said Chania.
Luoying looked at Chania’s messy hair affectionately. “Get some sleep. We’ve still got the banquet tonight.”
“You take care, too.”
The students said goodbye to one another and scattered into different tubes. They were used to partings and didn’t make a big deal out of it. The alcohol from the night before still lingered in their blood, and their minds were filled with memories of the spinning stars. The terminal was so bright that no one wanted to speak aloud.
Luoying was the last of the students to leave. She watched the Terran delegates clumped at the center of the terminal like a flock of lost sheep. Some were feasting on the snacks from the vending machines, unaware that their visitor accounts were being charged for each bite.
The door at the center of the curved edge of the terminal slid open, and a new group of people strode in. Luoying saw that the man at the head was her grandfather, Hans Sloan. He led a delegation of senior officials to the Terrans, stood facing Beverley, and held out his hand.
The two groups stood in two parallel lines, and hands shook as though reaching across the emptiness between two planets. The Martians, having grown up with less gravity, were much taller than the Terrans, which made the scene asymmetrical. The two groups examined each other as they went through the ritual of introductions.
This was no time to greet her grandfather, Luoying decided. She turned away from the tall, slender figure of the consul of Mars and punched in the coordinates for home.
* * *
Five years earlier, Mars picked the first group of students to go study on Earth.
The Boule took forever to deliberate on the matter. Three months of fact-finding were followed by three weeks of public commentary, which were followed by three days of nonstop debate in the Boule. Finally, the consul, the education minister, and the archons of all nine systems had to vote in the Boule Chamber of the Capitol, facing the bronze statues of the founders of the Martian Republic. To engage the whole citizenry and the most important governing organs of the state in the matter of the education of a few children was without precedent in the forty years since the conclusion of the war. The last time anything like it had happened was at the founding of the republic, when all the teachers had placed their hands on the name of Arsen, the great Martian educator, and swore to teach in order to create.
In the end, the vote was six for and five against. When the small gavel slammed down against the strike plate, the sound reverberated among the treelike columns situated throughout the black-walled Boule Chamber. The fate of these children became part of history.
To be honest, even those who voted in the final tally had no clear idea as to what the students would experience on Earth. The decision-makers had been born on Mars, and they had only heard accounts of the noisy bustle on Earth, legends of a previous generation. The entire Martian Republic consisted of a single city, a habitat enclosed in glass. Here the land was literally a thing of the people, managed for the commonweal. There was no private ownership in real estate, no smuggling, no buying on credit, no banking. No one knew how children who had grown up in such a place would react to the grand bazaar that was Earth, where commerce was the only r
ule, and advertisements would bombard the children day and night. Before their departure, the students sat through numerous lessons that tried to explain the system on Earth to them. But no matter how much the teachers tried to impress upon the children the severity of the challenges they faced, it was impossible to teach young hearts how to grow up in a classroom.
Luoying leaned against the transparent wall of the homeward-bound tube train, deep in thought.
The scenery outside was tranquil and vivid. Through the blue-tinted glass, sunlight struck the trees lining the tube, casting their shadows against her face through the glass ceiling. She was the only one in the car, and she saw no one through the wall. Everything was so quiet that it seemed unreal. The walls and floor of the car were clear as ice, and as the train glided over some houses, she looked down and saw the trees standing still in the courtyards.
The confusion she had tried to suppress for days now flooded her heart.
She didn’t know why she had gone to Earth. On Maearth, she had discovered that she was unqualified.
One night, as the students sat chatting next to a viewport, someone brought up one of the questions on the qualifying examination that had been used to pick members of the Mercury Group five years earlier. Others soon chimed in, and they pieced together the outline of the test from collective memory. Recollection of that shared rite of passage was joyful, festive.
But Luoying soon fell silent. Based on the answers the other students recalled giving, she soon realized that she couldn’t possibly have scored as high as the rest of them. She was ashamed, like a star dimmed by the bright full moon.
She wasn’t sure if her suspicion was true. If she was wrong, then everything ought to continue as before. But if she was right, then it meant that she was added to the Mercury Group because someone had interfered with the selection process. The conclusion was chilling, not only because it meant that she wasn’t as talented as she thought, but also because it meant that her life had been planned by someone else. She thought she had seized an opportunity, but the reality was that an opportunity had captured her.
My grandfather? He seemed the only one who could have had such influence. She didn’t know why he would have done such a thing.
She wanted to go home and confront her grandfather, but she wasn’t sure how. They weren’t particularly close; he had moved in to live with her and Rudy only after the death of their parents. He had given her whatever she wanted, but he rarely hugged her. The Terrans called him “the great dictator.” He always took walks alone.
Did she dare to ask him? Perhaps it would be better to ask Rudy for help. As the older brother, Rudy had always protected her and tried to cheer her up. But Rudy was someone who insisted on striving for the future. She didn’t know if he would understand why she cared so much about the past.
The train continued to glide silently through the glass tube, like a speeding memory. She passed by assembly halls, tree-lined promenades, the playground she had once frequented, a garden with a slide. The silence made everything seem to be a dreamscape. Occasionally she saw mothers chatting with each other, strollers temporarily stopped along the sidewalk.
Why do I care about this so much?
At first, she had felt a restlessness that she thought was driven by curiosity, but soon she realized that there was a deeper anxiety about fate. She had thought of fate as just a part of nature, something to be faced and borne, but now she realized that there was another kind of fate, a kind subject to manipulation by others, with hidden agendas and secret motivations, a kind that could be questioned and perhaps abandoned. This second kind of fate required her own participation and choice. Until she understood the truth, she couldn’t move forward.
Why did I go to Earth? She had asked herself this question many times, but this time was different. She had walked many roads on Earth—so many that she was no longer fazed by roads and choices. But she never knew why she had gone there in the first place.
Music played in the train car: a faraway cello and a piano near at hand. The music made the scenery feel even richer. Gradually her home appeared in the distance. She could see the small open window upstairs, its brown frame shining peacefully under the domed glass ceiling.
She had imagined the moment of her homecoming many times: trembling excitement, eye-stinging nostalgia, maybe a bit of anxiety. But she had never imagined that she would feel nothing at all, and that very apathy made her melancholic. After five years in the noise of Earth, she had returned to home’s tranquil harbor, but she seemed to have lost that primitive, heartfelt love of home permanently.
The tube train stopped precisely at the platform. Luoying gazed at the familiar red door of her house and cried.
* * *
The car door slid open, and bright, unfiltered sunlight spilled inside. Luoying squinted and shaded her eyes. The air seemed filled with golden sparkles, and she saw a gold-colored bench in front of her: smooth, gracefully shaped, and the rounded cushions and back gave off the sense that it was made out of balloons.
She looked up and saw Rudy waving at her from the second floor, looking like his usual assured self.
She smiled at him and sat down on the bench with her luggage. The bench rose into the air and flew up toward Rudy’s window. She glanced around: the garden shaped like a drop of water, fan-shaped flower patches, umbrellalike trees, the spherical dome overhead, the orange trapezoidal mailbox, the wide-open window upstairs, planters suspended from the beams. Everything looked the same as when she had left.
The bench stopped by the window. Rudy unloaded her luggage and held out his arms. She leaped gracefully into his embrace, and he set her down. The moment her feet touched the floor, she felt a sense of stability.
He was much taller than the last time she saw him. His hair, still blond, no longer curled as much.
“You must be exhausted,” he said.
She shook her head.
“Look at you,” he said, holding out a hand at waist level. “You were just this tall when you left.”
“You exaggerate,” said Luoying, grinning. “Are you suggesting that I managed to gain thirty centimeters in Earth’s gravity?”
Her voice sounded rasping, unreal.
During the five years away, Luoying had grown only five centimeters. Upon arrival on Earth, she was taller than most girls her age there, but by the time she left, she no longer stood out. She knew very well that her body had been weighed down by that more massive world. Her growth had been stunted as her bones and heart were challenged. Every centimeter had been an effort at overcoming herself.
“How’ve you been?” she asked.
“Oh, I can’t complain.”
“What atelier did you pick?”
“Fifth Electro-Mag Atelier.”
“How do you like it?”
“It’s fine. I’m now a group leader.”
“That’s great.”
Rudy noticed her expression. “What’s wrong?”
Luoying looked down. “I don’t know.”
“As in ‘I’m fine, but I don’t know what to say about it’?”
“As in ‘I don’t know.’ ”
“Then something is wrong.”
“No … I just don’t know how to describe how I feel.”
Luoying had lived in many places all over Earth, and the home in her heart had gradually fallen into ruin with each move.
In one of the great cities in East Asia, she had lived on the one hundred and eightieth floor of a skyscraper. The dance school she attended also trained in a studio in the same building. The building itself was a steel pyramid, like a mountain. Inside was a world complete unto itself. Elevators raced up and down the slanted edges, and people came and went like the surging tide.
In Central Europe, she had lived in an old, abandoned house in a suburb, where the metropolis met the open countryside. The land there belonged to a merchant who came there only once a year, and trespassers weren’t allowed. She had gone there in search of inspir
ation for her dance. The fields were full of swaying golden wheat and wild birds. Flowers bloomed and wilted like the coming and going of clouds.
In the open plains of North America, she had lived in the heart of an artificial scenic park surrounded by wilderness. Terran officials had invited all the Martian students to vacation at the park. There, the prairie stretched under the big sky like a song, and loneliness showed itself in every bare tree branch, every passing bird, every cold, glinting star. From time to time, billowing clouds raced in from every direction, and lightning bolts hung from them like tree branches while trees reached up from the earth like frozen lightning.
On a plateau in Central Asia, she had lived in a tent city at the foot of snowy mountains. There she joined Reversionist friends who had gathered there in mass protest. The mountains were pure white at the top where the peaks poked into the clouds. From time to time the clouds dissipated to reveal the golden glow of the sun against the snow. The tent city had been full of passionate youths from around the world who shouted slogans while linking arms, protesting against the system until the system crushed the movement. The tent city was wiped away in a storm of violence, but the snowcapped mountains shone in the sun, unmoved.
Before going to Earth, she had never seen any of these things. They didn’t exist on Mars, and perhaps never would. There were no skyscrapers on Mars, no countryside, no absentee owners of vacation villas, no lightning, no snowcapped mountains.
No blood from dragged-away protesters either. At least not in her memory.
She had experienced so much on Earth, but she didn’t know how to describe it. She had gained so many memories but lost her dream. She had seen all kinds of exotic scenery, but home now seemed out of place. She had no words for any of it, all of it.
She looked into her brother’s eyes, deciding to cut to the chase. “There is something bothering me.”