Vagabonds

by Hao Jingfang

  Popper, Russell, Schrödinger, Simmel …

  The faster they walked, the more sentences they encountered. The names were from two planets, across three thousand years, covering diverse fields. Some of the quotes were from men and women Eko had heard of, but others were new to him. He saw; he read; he remembered; he felt. All the quotes entwined with the words of Ronen, with the words of Davosky, like strands of different materials, of diverse colors, all twisted into a single stalk that rose into the sky. He immersed himself in the quotes, melded with the white light in the tunnel, lost all sense of direction, lost all judgment of distance.

  Abruptly the tunnel ended, and he found himself in the open. It was like waking from a dream, and everything he saw was as sharp as a blade’s edge. He remembered the last quote before he had emerged.

  Beauty is the eternal and pure light of the One expressed dimly through matter.

  —Plotinus

  He stood rooted to the spot, as did Luoying next to him. They were in a wasteland, and in the middle of the wasteland was the tower.

  The wasteland was not particularly different from other wastelands seen on Earth. Clumps of weeds popped up here and there, and the earth itself was a dry white-gray. Roiling clouds hung over the horizon.

  But the tower was something else. The cylinder was broad at the base and narrow at the top, where it disappeared into the sky. The wall of the tower was made of cloud and mist, constantly rising, falling, swirling, twisting. And so the tower appeared to change form and shape from second to second. Attached to the tower were bridges and passages in every direction, in different shapes and made from different materials: mechanical arms, numbers, musical notes, watercolor-like smears. All the passages emerged from the mist-cloud cylindrical wall and then stretched far into the distance until they disappeared, as though entering other worlds.

  As Eko stared at the tower, understanding sparked to life in his heart. It was as though a clear, pure stream of water had fallen from the air to wash away all his doubts in a moment. He stared at the gigantic tower, a pillar suspended between heaven and earth; he stared at the mist-cloud wall and the multiplicity of passages, all converging into one source, like pieces of a single unity. He read the five letters among the clouds: B-A-B-E-L.

  It was Babel that integrated generalized language, that accommodated science, art, politics, and technology within the same spirit. Humanity was building a second Babel, a second attempt at climbing to heaven. The conversion of language and mutual understanding. Babel. The tower’s name was Babel. Its first letter was B.

  Eko raised his hands to the sky. He closed his eyes and shouted silently. His ears seemed to fill with a deafening rumbling.

  Teacher, is this where you wanted to be laid to rest? Is this your last wish? Did you want to stay here, keeping watch over the unity of human languages, a guardian and guide like Ronen?

  If so, I will exhaust all my power to help you achieve your wish.

  He felt a breeze caress his face. He knew it wasn’t real. In virtual reality there was no wind and no sand. But he preferred to believe that it was real.

  YINGHUO

  The wind blew through her heart, and dust swirled over the virtual sand. Luoying looked at the sky, the endless wasteland, and the roiling clouds. Shock and grief wound around each other and throbbed like plaintive violin strings in heaven. She could not describe how she felt. For the first time she saw Babel, the tower of languages, the tower of worlds, the languages of different worlds, the worlds of different languages. Words and colors swirled up the side of the tower, a magnificent music of the spheres.

  The tower spun in the air, rising from nothing, reaching into nothing. The light of the tower was indescribable: there was no part of the tower that emitted light, and yet it was bright everywhere. The tower itself was light, and the symbols that covered its skin were dim, glowing only by the illumination of the tower.

  In that light, visions could be dimly glimpsed. Figures and scenery entwined with one another, appearing and disappearing between the letters and numbers, as though worlds were blending with each other.

  At the foot of the tower, Luoying stepped over death. She saw Ronen’s smile as a winter sun. He will not die; he has already died; he will not die again. At the foot of the tower he had found peace. He had guided her here so that she could understand him.

  Care about the form of the world. Piece incomplete reflections together into the truth.

  She didn’t fully understand what he meant, but she would remember his words, as she had remembered what he had told her when she was eleven.

  Surveying the wasteland covered in sandstorms, she realized what Grandfather and his friends were defending. Grandfather, Ronen, Garcia, Galiman—they took off from the wasteland of Mars to defend this virtual tower, a tower that was more real than reality. Every world had its own myths, and Mars was no exception. When she was on Earth, she had read many myths, from the west and the east, from the arctic and the tropics. Having shuttled between worlds, she found that the myths of each world were unique to that world. In the east, the immortals came and went alone. In the west, the giants lived by tribe and race. At first, she couldn’t understand such differences in spiritual nature, but later, when she saw the stark cloud-shrouded peaks of the east and the broad grasslands and forests of the west, she understood why. The peaks were suited to lone wanderers, while the broad expanses were fit for warring clans. The myths were the gifts of Nature, and all the gods were guardians of their homelands.

  The myths of Mars were generated by the endless red deserts. The myths had wings that took off from dust storms. They were rough, fresh, speedy, barren, devoid of the romance of verdant hills and babbling brooks, bereft of the mysteries of dark forests. All they had was striving flight, leaving behind dust, passing through swirling sand, dodging explosions to head for the sun, to embrace the desert, as hard as iron, as light as birds. Faced with the gigantic steel warships of Earth, the Martians were like moths plunging toward the flame, tragic and resolute. Grandfather and his companions were parts of this myth, and the tower in the wasteland was their spiritual spring.

  Luoying cried tearlessly. A world was always the unity of its land and its gods. Only those who had wandered through different worlds could lose that unity.

  * * *

  The day of the performance arrived.

  The lights in the Grand Theater dimmed. Row by row, the golden seats rose up along the curvature of the wall and stopped at different heights. The domed ceiling was as dark as the empyrean until silvery lights, starlike, peeked out. The whole theater seemed suspended in space.

  At one end of the egg-shaped dome appeared the image of Earth, and at the other end was red Mars. Gradually both approached the audience, becoming clearer in their view.

  One planet was blue and green, veiled in wisps of white clouds; the other was red soil and shadow-limned mountains. Two giant planets loomed at the two ends of the theater while the audience between them drifted like insignificant specks of space dust, floating on gravity waves. The whole theater was solemn and dark, and music filled the hall.

  Luoying was backstage, preparing for her performance. Mars, Yinghuo, she repeated to herself.

  Red land, home in the darkness.

  Her first Mars was the glowing dot in the sky, glimpsed hazily from the ground. It was a form clear on the tongue but blurred in the mind, a childhood memory that could not be pinned down, each and every dusk devoted to remembering and to the suppression of those memories.

  Her second Mars was the strange description in books, the odd world depicted in videos and images. It was blood exploding in vacuum; numbers; thunderous, continuous warfare. It was the tremble of fear in people’s voices, the curious questions of children and their fantasies of evil. It was the ancient god of war, an old enemy.

  Her third Mars was the window that let in starlight and sunlight, the small plaza seen through the open shutters, the fan-shaped lawn in the plaza, the white flowers on th
e lawn, the tube train speeding beyond the flowers, the glass houses connected by the tube train tunnels, the crystal city made from all the glass houses, the only republic in which the girls grew up, studied, dreamed, designed, created, married, made a home, chose a life. It was an ordinary life, a simple home.

  Mars. Yinghuo. One thousand and eight hundred days of separation. Red land, home in the darkness.

  Luoying stood backstage, just out of the audience’s view. She stretched out her arms, her wrists together before her chest, fingers splayed away from each other. In the darkness, the golden threads in her cuffs glowed faintly like the Milky Way across the night sky over a wilderness. Gradually, the dark theater was filled with a soundscape: howling winds, a distant clarion, cowhide drums, and singing zither. Elders telling legends from a thousand years ago by the sea, blood and glory trembling between teeth and tongue, dead souls dancing in the wind. The clarion faded as a bamboo flute began to play. Memory traversed space, and the show began.

  It was such a familiar tune. Luoying remembered every rise and fall in the melody, every hidden embellishment. She could recite every myth and truth recounted by the music.

  The flute stopped. Luoying leaped and landed on the stage with the first boom of the timpani.

  This was finally her dance. The world had vanished, leaving only her. Scenes of both planets merged into her solo dance. She remembered every country she passed through. This was her fate, her soul’s journey. She could no longer live within the order that governed her homeland, but she would always remember her homeland’s dreams. She carved those dreams into her bones and packed all the countries into her self.

  When she could no longer assimilate into any world, she wished she could live like her parents and their teacher, a vagabond at heart, gazing at home from afar.

  * * *

  The moment she fell, she heard a low cry. She couldn’t tell where it had come from or who it was. She only knew that as she landed against the hard surface of the stage, someone held her up by the shoulders from behind.

  From the moment she had leaped onto the stage, she felt off. Her body felt too light, and she couldn’t exert force against the ground properly to propel herself. She seemed to be always behind the music by a fraction of a beat.

  A drum section was coming up, and she knew that she had to leap into the air to spin seven times. She prepared herself and pushed off her toes.

  In that instant she lost all feeling in her toes. After she spun through the air, as she landed, her right foot refused to obey her. She crashed to the ground, and a sharp pain wracked her body.

  Bright lights came on, blinding her. She saw Eko behind herself, holding her up by the shoulders. Many others were rushing onto the stage.

  THE HOSPITAL

  Eko and Rudy sat on the sofa in the living room of Luoying’s hospital suite, waiting for her to return from her surgery. The suite was clean and neat, with soft blankets turned down in the bedroom. To help patients rest, the walls of the suite were adjusted to a milky white, and the metal pillars were painted in a soft green. Medical equipment remained out of sight in low cabinets, painted in pretty patterns to calm the patients.

  Eko and Rudy didn’t talk. Rudy had thanked Eko for helping Luoying when she fell on the stage, to which Eko made no reply. After that, the two sat in silence. Eko gazed at the young man, a few years younger than himself, and could sense the waves of concern that came off him. Rudy sat still without fidgeting, but Eko could see that his hands were squeezing each other so tightly that the knuckles had turned white. He was worried about his little sister and acted almost like a parent.

  Eko was worried as well. He was the nearest person to Luoying when she fell. He had seen her toes bend oddly as she landed, unable to support her. At least a few bones were broken, and he hoped that, after surgery, she would fully recover and not be affected as a dancer.

  Time passed slowly, and the air in the suite grew repressive.

  The door opened.

  Rudy and Eko stood up together. But it wasn’t a doctor or Luoying who entered. Two officials in uniforms came in. The first recognized Rudy and nodded at him.

  The official turned to Eko. “Mr. Eko Lu, I presume?” His tone was polite but his face was expressionless.

  “I am.”

  “I’m Carlson, Inspector First Grade, of the Security System. I’m charged with maintaining order and public safety in Russell District.”

  Eko said nothing.

  Carlson waited a beat before continuing. “I’d like to ask for your cooperation in answering a few questions.” Looking intently at Eko, he asked, “At the performance earlier tonight, why were you standing by the stage instead of sitting among the audience?”

  “I was filming the performance and needed to be close to the stage to get a close-up.”

  “Did you obtain authorization?”

  Rudy broke in. “I gave him permission. I’m in charge of the on-site arrangements.”

  Carlson glanced at him. Still stone-faced, he asked Eko, “Did you ever step onto the stage?”

  “No.”

  “Then what was the closest you approached the dancer? Was it within one meter?”

  Eko frowned. “What is this about? Are you suggesting that I—”

  “We suspect that you sabotaged Luoying’s performance in some way, leading to the accident.”

  Carlson’s assistant scribbled in a notepad. Eko sucked in a breath. “I didn’t do anything! I was filming the entire time, and then I ran over when she fell.”

  Rudy tried to defend Eko as well. “He really is a camera operator. I checked his equipment ahead of time. I’m sure this is a misunderstanding. There’s no reason for him to disrupt the performance or to harm Luoying in any way.”

  Keeping his eyes on Eko, Carlson walked next to Rudy and whispered in his ear. Rudy’s expression changed, then he looked at Eko as though seeing him for the first time. He stopped talking.

  Carlson faced Eko, cleared his throat, and continued. “I want you to think carefully about the answers you’ve been giving. Next, did you enter and browse the personal spaces of Luoying Sloan and Gielle Paylin?”

  Eko knew then that the misunderstanding wasn’t going to be easy to clear up. He nodded. “I did.”

  “What did you do in their spaces?”

  “I read the public entries of their diaries.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing. That was it.”

  “Where else did you go in the central archive?”

  Eko clamped his mouth shut.

  “How did you get an unlimited account for the central archive? Terran delegates are supposed to have only hotel guest privileges.”

  Eko said nothing.

  “Were you directed to steal technical information?”

  Carlson lobbed question after question like darts that unerringly found their mark. Eko could not answer, because revealing how he obtained the account could have terrible consequences for Janet Brook. Without her permission, he couldn’t disclose the secret. He stayed silent and tried to find a way out.

  Though he was anxious, he hadn’t lost his judgment. Things looked bad for him. Not only had he gone to Luoying’s personal space, but he had apologized to her on the record. To a neutral observer, this was evidence of a conflict between them. He had meant to apologize for what his teacher had done, but there wasn’t enough context to absolve him of suspicion. As for the accusation of espionage against Mars, he was in an even worse position. He had browsed Gielle’s technical designs and even gone to the heart of the central archive, the Tower of Babel. His motivation all along was curiosity, but that wasn’t a reason that would clear him. Even if Janet Brook explained what had happened, his actions would still look suspicious. His palms grew sweaty.

  The door to the suite opened again. This time a group of people came in. In the lead was a short, rotund Martian official Eko remembered from the banquet—he had a booming voice and a ruddy face—followed by two lower-ranking official
s. Then came Theon and Colonel Hopman. Bringing up the rear were Peter Beverley and Martian Consul Hans Sloan.

  The living room of the suite was packed full. Terrans and Martians lined up automatically on two sides. The air was extremely tense.

  Hans broke the silence. “Mr. Eko Lu, I believe you’re already aware of our suspicions.”

  “I am.”

  “Can you explain your activities?”

  “I cannot.”

  “Who gave you the account to enter the central archive?”

  “I cannot reveal that.”

  Hans waited, as though giving Eko a chance to change his answer. He stared intently at Eko; there was no threat in his gaze, only a kind of expectancy. Eko did not elaborate.

  “Can you explain why you were wandering around our central archive?”

  “I was … curious.”

  “Only curious?”

  “Only curious.”

  “Why were you curious?”

  Before Eko could answer, the red-faced short official to the side shouted, “Don’t waste time with him! How could you expect to get the truth from a spy? I told you from the start: he’s here to disrupt the vote.”

  “Juan! Don’t jump to conclusions,” said Hans.

  Eko was at a loss. “I don’t know anything about a vote.”

  “Oh, please!” Juan’s face glowed even redder. “I’ve heard enough of your lies. You know that the people of Mars won’t agree to give you the technology for controlled fusion, so you wanted to manipulate the vote by infiltrating the central archive. You hypocrites!”

  “Not at all!” Beverley was all smiles as he tried to make peace. “This is definitely a misunderstanding. We have no intention of interfering in your political process. Eko was acting on his own, and we know nothing about his plans and gave him no orders.”

  Eko could see that Beverley was trying to say that he didn’t care what Mars wanted to do with Eko, so long as he and the other delegates weren’t dragged down with him. But he was too absorbed by other matters at that moment to be angry with Beverley. He knew controlled nuclear fusion was part of the negotiations, but now the words seemed to buzz in the air, and he sensed a sinister intent behind them.