Vagabonds

by Hao Jingfang

  “That would require stars to be able to communicate with one another, to send messages back and forth like neural transmitters. That’s not easy to achieve. The stars are very far apart, separated by vacuum.”

  Reini’s words echoed in the empty skydeck like a mystical oracle.

  “Dr. Reini, may I ask how old you are?”

  “Thirty-three.”

  “Do you remember what happened on Mars eighteen years ago, when you were fifteen?”

  “Let’s see, that would be year 22 of the Martian calendar, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was a pretty eventful year.” Reini’s voice was pregnant with meaning.

  “Do you remember what happened?”

  “Everyone who went through that time remembers. It was the year 2172 by Earth reckoning, the beginning of what we think of as the détente.”

  “The détente?”

  “Back then, Earth and Mars had been completely isolated from each other for some time. During the first two decades of the war, Terrans held on to some bases on Mars, and Martians used to raid the supply convoys to those bases. Later, as Terrans pulled out of their Martian bases and began to conduct the war solely through space bombardment, Mars was completely cut off from Earth. At that point, everything Martians needed had to be produced on Mars: food, water, clothing, and so on. It was an incredibly difficult feat. Without the success of those early revolutionaries, we wouldn’t be here.

  “During the first decade after the conclusion of the war, there was no contact between Mars and Earth at all. Many of the leaders of the early republic argued that we must not show weakness to the Terrans by begging for aid. But Garcia insisted that we could not sacrifice our long-term future over pride. He was only thirty-three at the time, and essentially appointed himself our chief diplomat. I don’t know how he managed it, but he succeeded. In year 10 of the Martian calendar, Garcia took over Maearth, and two years later he negotiated the first trade deal between the two worlds. In exchange for a microchip technology, Earth gave us a shipment of nitrogenous chemicals, and our two planets reestablished contact.

  “In the decade after that, we bartered technology for necessary resources, but each side distrusted the other. Everything happened on Maearth, and no Martian set foot on Earth, just as no Terran touched the soil of Mars. This state of affairs continued until year 22 of the Martian calendar, the start of détente. The central archive has a lot of material covering that time, as it was the end of one historic epoch and the beginning of another.”

  “Was that when the first Terrans visited Mars?” Luoying asked.

  “Yes. They came primarily to study technology. It was our decision to take the first step, to welcome them to learn about our advanced technology and to guarantee their delegates’ safety. It was a risk, since our only advantage against Earth was our technology. However, decision-makers felt that if we didn’t take the risk, ultimately we were the ones who would be harmed the most in a state of continued mutual isolation. Earth could survive on its own, but Mars could not. So eighteen years ago the first Terran delegates arrived. There were ten of them, focusing on five Martian technologies.”

  “One of them was full-fidelity holographic filming?”

  “That’s right. That was a key technology at the time. One of the Terrans decided to stay on Mars.”

  That must be Mom’s teacher, thought Luoying, and also Eko’s teacher. He wasn’t a sculptor, but he talked about art with her parents. He reawakened their childhood dreams about art and brought Earth’s sense of limitless freedom, of a life of movement and flow. They discussed the history of ideas in her parents’ study, seeking a way to unify the different lifestyles of the two planets. The study would always contain memories of his presence, his images, his words. His coming coincided with her own birth, and that was why her mother spoke of her as light, as the coming of communication.

  Without him, her parents wouldn’t have died. Without their deaths, she wouldn’t have gone to Earth. Without going to Earth, she wouldn’t have wanted to find out about the past. Everything was already written. Thirteen years after her birth, she was fated to begin this journey to discover her own past. It was her destiny, determined at birth.

  She gazed at the stars, searching for that lonely, silvery ship. The captain was on that ship, alone between a group of twenty million human beings and another group of twenty billion, neither of which understood him. But the sky was too vast for her to find the ship, and she could only imagine it in her mind’s eye. She imagined Garcia shuffling alone through the passageways of the ship, his figure slowed down by age. She imagined him stopping at the bow of the ship, gazing down at the city he loved but to which he would never return.

  She missed the carefree life on Maearth. On the ship she had also sat like this, embraced by the endless stars. Time seemed to have stopped. She and her friends ran across the ship, drinking Gio in front of the windows of the spherical observation deck, laughing at all the outdated equipment on Maearth. They tumbled and twisted and glided through the weightless gym, enjoying the freedom of unrestrained movement as game balls drifted by them. They kicked, turned, flew, wiped off their sweat, hugged each other, and partied without going to bed.

  On the ship, she couldn’t wait to go home, thinking that once she was there, she would be away from all worries and doubts; but once she was home, she discovered that the ancient ship had been a haven of tranquility. Her life there had been simple and pure. There was no fear, no conflict between one human and another, between the individual and the world, between one world and another.

  “Dr. Reini, do you know my grandfather well?”

  “Well enough.”

  “Then … can you answer a question honestly?”

  “What’s the question?”

  “Is my grandfather … a dictator?”

  “Ah, did you hear that from the Terrans?”

  “Yes,” Luoying replied, nodding. This was the first time she had shared this particular experience on Earth with anyone. “The first time I heard it was at a large international conference, the Symposium on the Future of Humanity. My friends and I were invited as guests of honor because we were from Mars. There were so many well-dressed men and women in a brightly lit hall. The hall had a long history, and we were told that, hundreds of years ago, revolutionaries had signed a document of great meaning there, proclaiming a new way of life. The ceiling was tall and stately, covered in religious murals, as though the gods were gazing down at us.

  “We were all a bit intimidated, and we sat carefully in our seats, hoping to represent Mars well. The conference itself was quite boring. Expert after expert got up to deliver a talk, most of which we didn’t understand. Just as we were discussing ways of exiting politely, a professor started to talk about Mars.

  “ ‘Everyone,’ he said, ‘despite the warnings of Orwell in 1984, of Huxley in Brave New World, of Kafka in everything he wrote, humanity seems hell-bent on realizing their dystopian visions step by step. Humans live in blindness, not unlike the poor souls in that ancient flat classic, The Matrix. An Age of Machines is coming. It’s no exaggeration to say that the System is going to rule over the human race. There is a powerful autonomous system taking shape, a system that treats human beings as so many fungible components. It’s pressing down upon us, devouring and assimilating each individual. It’s an expert at disguise, often showing itself as a beautiful, ideal garden. But whether it shows its true terror or conceals it with sweet deception, its true nature is the enslavement and extinction of human nature. Mars is our best example. Think about it, everyone: without the help of a system of machines to help him, how can a single dictator sustain his mad rebellion for so long? How can he take so many intelligent men and women and convince them to embrace betrayal, to give up survival, to march toward death?’ ”

  Reini broke in. “Did he know who you were?”

  “I think he did,” said Luoying. “I saw him glancing my way a few times, even smiling. He went o
n: ‘And so, honored guests, I want you all to remember this: we must be ever vigilant against those who would reduce humanity to components of a dictatorial system. The future of humanity lies only in such eternal vigilance. The tragedy of Mars must not be allowed to repeat on Earth.’

  “I felt so cold at the time, and my lips must have turned white. Chania, who sat next to me, gripped me by the hand. Her hand was cold, too. As I looked over the audience, I thought I was looking at a featureless sea of human heads. The light was so bright, and his voice boomed at me from speakers in every direction. I was terrified, and I remained sitting only by force of habit. I think it was the longest day I could ever recall.”

  Reini waited until she was a bit calmer before saying, “Don’t mind his nonsense too much. A man who would deliberately attack you like that is not someone whose opinion is worth listening to.”

  “I’m all right now,” said Luoying. “After experiencing attacks like that a few times, I grew used to them. I think perhaps he wasn’t trying to attack me on purpose. Instead, the pleasure I sensed in his voice was the pleasure of speaking truth. I don’t care if he intended to hurt me; I only want to know if what he said was the truth.” She looked up at Reini. “Tell me … did my grandfather punish my parents?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Were they … convicted of treason against Mars?”

  Reini didn’t answer her directly. He knelt down next to her and gazed into her eyes warmly. “That was in the past. The crime they were convicted of doesn’t matter. What matters is what your grandfather hoped you would learn from Earth.”

  “What I would learn?” Luoying was surprised.

  “Your grandfather … He in fact supported many of the things your parents said. But because he’s the consul, he couldn’t and can’t support such opinions.”

  “Support … what opinions?”

  “Economic freedom and freedom of careers. Your parents wanted these more than anything else, but he couldn’t possibly show any support. If he did, the entire unity of the central archive and the unity of our economy would collapse. He understood the necessity of ordering Martian life in this manner, but he also understood that the spiritual freedom of creation is often conditioned upon the freedom of the individual to direct their own life, their environment. Yet, as the consul, he couldn’t voice an opinion like that. Do you understand?”

  “Which system, theirs or ours, does Grandfather believe is better?”

  “It’s not a matter of which is better but a question of whether we could even choose. The only reason we won the war was centralization: we gathered all our knowledge into one space and made decisions based on total knowledge. The electronic space of the central archive is in fact older than our republic. All our arts and politics in peace have been built upon this foundation. It wasn’t a question of how to choose but what path was determined by history. And your grandfather knows better than anyone that we don’t get to choose our history.

  “Five years ago, as the whole republic debated the question of whether to send you and the other students, your grandfather’s vote was crucial to the final passage of the proposal. Can you understand why? As the consul, he presided over a crisis during which those for and against were evenly matched, and his vote virtually determined the final outcome. Indeed, he was the one who chose the name for you and your friends: Mercury. He invoked the messenger of the gods, the god of communication.”

  “Are you saying that my grandfather sent me to Earth … so that I could understand my parents?”

  Instead of directly answering her question, Reini sighed. “I’ve heard him say several times how much you remind him of your mother.”

  Luoying remembered the first dusk in her bedroom after her return to Mars. She felt a lump in her throat.

  “What kind of man is my grandfather, really?” she asked.

  After a long pause, Reini said slowly, “Your grandfather … is an old man with too much on his shoulders.”

  Luoying could no longer hold back her tears. The doubt that had seized her heart for so many days was in those tears, as were the yearning and anxiety that had built up over one thousand and eight hundred days.

  “Dr. Reini, do you make a study of history?”

  “No,” said Reini. “But everyone knows something about history, something unique to their experience and understanding.”

  “Can you tell me more?”

  “It’s too late tonight. Perhaps another day.”

  Reini hugged her and gently patted her shoulder. She held on to him, letting the tears flow silently. She had not cried like this for a long time. As she cried, she bid farewell to her doubts as she bid farewell to dancing, facing the deaths of the past as she had faced her injured leg. She looked at the sky, at the surface of her home planet, at the distant stars that she would never touch.

  * * *

  Reini waited until she was finally calm. “Time to sleep. Everything will be better tomorrow.”

  They left the skydeck, bathed in a dark blue light like the bottom of an ocean, and Reini pushed Luoying back to her suite. The winding, deserted corridors, lit by faint white lights, seemed full of mysteries. The wheels of the chair spun, gliding past the laboratories, instruments, surgical wards, through the corridors, down the elevators, past rooms full of sleeping patients.

  As they turned one last corner and approached Luoying’s suite, two shadows rose up.

  Luoying screamed, and the two shadowy figures, shocked, screamed as well. Reini turned on the bright lights in the corridor, and as Luoying squinted, she made out Anka and Mira.

  “What are you two doing here?”

  “We came to visit you!” said Mira. “When we saw no one in the room, we figured you were still in surgery, so we waited.”

  “We haven’t been here long,” added Anka.

  Luoying was moved. She gently chided, “Why didn’t you at least turn on the light?”

  Mira grinned. “We were sharing stories from when we were kids. Stories always sound better in the dark.”

  Anka said nothing. He and Luoying gazed at each other, and there was a warm glow in his blue eyes.

  “You should eat this while it’s still warm,” he said, picking up a box.

  “What is it?”

  “Old Maury’s pudding.” Anka’s tone was light and casual. “I happened upon it not too far from my home, so I bought a few servings before I went to your performance.”

  “You have no idea how hard it was to find a place to heat this up,” said Mira. “We went to several shops, and they had closed just before we got there, sometimes by just a couple of minutes.” He laughed heartily and held up his pinched thumb and index finger to show how close it was. His dark, round face looked adorable.

  Luoying smiled at Mira. She turned and gazed into Anka’s eyes, but neither said anything. His eyes were as clear as she had always remembered them to be, and it didn’t matter that he said nothing. What was said wasn’t as important as what was remembered. She had mentioned the pudding once; he had remembered.

  She reached into the box and took out a small dessert plate. She took a bite of the pudding, and the sweetness dissolved against her tongue. Laughing, she asked Anka and Mira to join her, but they tried to leave all the pudding to her by claiming to be on diets.

  “No way,” she said. “I’m in charge today. You have to enjoy this with me.”

  The boys each picked up a piece and ate it whole.

  The night was smooth as water, and the bright light lit up laughing faces that had forgotten the time. The deserted corridor extended outside the suite, echoing with the sounds and flavors of home.

  THE HOTEL ROOM AT NIGHT

  Eko stood at the wall of his single-occupancy hotel room and looked up at the dark sky through the transparent wall. Of the three moons, he could see two. The moonlight wasn’t as bright as usual. The wind was strong. Though he couldn’t hear it, he could see particles of sand being thrown against the wall, as though a storm was on it
s way.

  It was late, but Eko didn’t want to sleep. He was exhausted, but he couldn’t rest. As soon as he got back from the hospital, he paced back and forth in the dark room, stood, and sat, talking to himself, talking to invisible fate. He had never doubted himself as much as he did now. On Earth he had been a successful filmmaker. At one point he thought he had found a path to follow for the future, and all that remained was to sustain the passion for fighting and advancing along it.

  The trip to Mars had changed everything.

  Eko had long been opposed to big business. Like his non-mainstream predecessors in generations past, he despised the blockbusters intended for the “big supermarket,” where everything had the same content, the same packaging, the same themes and subjects that had been done a million times. Instead, he made his films for the “artisanal market.” He called mainstream filmmakers “worker drones,” because each of them was responsible for only a tiny part of the final product and had no control over the overall vision. Worst of all, they seemed content with their own repetitive, noncreative work. He almost never set foot in the web space of the “big supermarket.” He mocked films that pandered to the audience in order to make a profit the same way he ridiculed animal crackers. He disdained buyers who bought on the advice of advertisements and followed trends, the same way he derided the empty-headed, status-obsessed aristocrats of the eighteenth century. He created in order to resist, with an instinctual abhorrence of the formulaic. He focused on craft, on the pursuit of the personal and unique. His films warred against the worship of money, against cloying platitudes aimed at dulling the public. He thought he was on the side of truth, critiquing the stupidity of the many to empathize with the suffering of the few.

  But now he was forced to confront himself, to doubt his fundamental beliefs. This journey to the red planet had challenged his imagination. It was only now, as he was about to leave, that he saw a more complete picture, a clearer meaning.