Vagabonds

by Hao Jingfang

  Luoying felt the distance between them. Her brother was no longer the boy she had known, and she was no longer the girl he had known. She wasn’t sure if that sense of distance between them wasn’t her biggest loss after her vagabond life on Earth. Politics clearly was where Rudy belonged, but she didn’t know where she would feel at home.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, Eko had just buckled his seat belt on the shuttle. Outside, the rough, flat landscape reflected the sun’s golden rays, and craters and rubble stretched all the way to the horizon. On one side of the shuttle, the slender skybridge connected the fuselage to Mars City. The bridge’s frame consisted of elegant curves made up of neatly fitted metal girders, and the glass between them shined brightly in the sun. The shuttle port was a marvel of mechanical precision, and skybridges extended in every direction as aircraft and spacecraft of every description lay in silent slumber.

  The shuttle began to taxi. It lifted off, and the last connection between him and the city was broken.

  Eko took a last peek at the terminal. He saw Janet Brook’s figure through the glass in one corner. She hadn’t come with the official Martian farewell delegation but was by herself. Eko saw that she was in a loose white dress, perhaps even the same one she had worn when she had watched Arthur Davosky take off a decade ago.

  Eko tried to imagine Davosky’s mental state at that moment. Maybe he, like Eko, had sat next to the window and waved at Janet, thinking about his next visit. Maybe Davosky had been full of ambitious dreams, like Eko himself at this moment; and maybe Eko, like his teacher, would never return. He began to understand the complicated feelings his teacher had harbored for this planet. The more he was plunged into the despair of never being able to return, the more he yearned to return, to hope.

  Janet had helped him lay his teacher to rest. After that, Eko never entered the central archive again. He didn’t know if Davosky’s membody was doing well and whether, like Ronen, he was joyfully carrying out his eternal watch in the tower of wisdom. Maybe he would even get to chat with Janet from time to time. Eko wouldn’t witness any of that, but he hoped it would all come true.

  Theon, who sat next to Eko, was occupied with some documents on a screen. Eko knew that Theon considered himself one of the greatest beneficiaries of this round of negotiations. The magnetic walls of the Grand Theater would enhance the Dreamscape parks in twenty cities immensely, giving guests an even greater sense of immersion. He had hesitated between Gielle’s Mystify and the theater technology, and in the end settled on the latter.

  “Why did you choose to deal with Rudy instead of his sister?” Eko asked. He knew his own interference had nothing to do with it.

  Theon smirked. “Because I could tell what he wanted. He was responsible for the magnetic walls, and if a deal with Earth could be made, he would have many years of stable research funding and a growing staff under him. I could tell the kid was ambitious and wanted to climb up the ladder as quickly as possible. Dealing with that kind of person is easiest, since we both get something out of a good deal. Luoying, on the other hand, is like a black box. I couldn’t tell what she wanted at all.”

  For Theon, someone who didn’t seek to maximize their own profit was literally incomprehensible. He was knowledgeable about all kinds of economic utility functions, but all sought to maximize some kind of profit. He was skilled at reading moods and emotions, but he had to confess that he couldn’t understand Arthur Davosky or Luoying Sloan. That was all right. He wasn’t bothered by it. There were many people he couldn’t understand, so he sought only to understand those he could. He had found the best doctors for Arthur, bought him the best house, visited him as a best friend, but never bothered to understand him.

  Eko knew that he shouldn’t blame Theon. Theon was a man who did what he believed was good at the moment, who calculated the price of everything with precision, who computed possibilities and optimized the result. He didn’t believe the world held any ideals higher than that, and so he didn’t try to understand those who pursued ideals.

  There was one thing Theon had said that Eko had to agree with. When the results of the negotiations were publicized, Theon told him with a laugh that mutual suspicion was the foundation of stability. As it turned out, he was right. The Terran delegates were so obsessed with making sure that no one else got a better deal that they all ended up caving in to Theon’s demands. Theon was how they crafted their images for the public, and images were what mattered to the electorate. The fall in IP stocks was a major blow for buyers and speculators and creators in every country, but Theon escaped unscathed. He was simply there to provide a platform for buyers and sellers, and collected his commission. He had long predicted such a market correction, and he foresaw that, after the fall, the governments of every nation-state would become even more reliant on his services. The trip to Mars was proving to be a golden business opportunity. From the start, he had settled on the strategy of allying himself with the Martians to keep the Terran delegates in a stable state of mutual suspicion, despite Professor Jacques’s absurd idea that the Terrans should band together against the Martians.

  Other than Theon, there was yet one more member of the Terran delegation who was very pleased with the trip: Peter Beverley. He had been promised the role of global ambassador for the Thales Group’s next generation of theme parks. These new parks would be based on Mars and green living. Beverley would also spread his image across the globe as a result of this trip. He didn’t really understand how it had happened. He and Theon had both maximized their own utility, unaware of how narrowly they had averted war.

  Eko wasn’t interested in any of this. He understood that the ethics of business had its own calculating philosophy, and the world was founded upon such a philosophy. His attention was elsewhere. He wanted to gather all the mirrors in the world and piece together the broken light. Davosky’s memories were at rest, but his teacher’s legacy needed to be carried on. There was still a spiritual ideal in the world that waited for his approach, waited for him to collect. He observed the shrinking city through the shuttle porthole and silently said goodbye. This was a planet he had first seen when he was fifteen and was seared into his memory at age twenty-five. He was sure he would never forget it.

  The golden land stretched endlessly below him. He thought he could hear the music of bagpipes.

  * * *

  “Rudy, look!” Luoying exclaimed to her brother.

  Rudy stood up and turned to look where she was pointing. The sky was a dark blue, and the gigantic silvery shuttle was climbing up along a curved course. It was flying so fast that the reflection of its wings swept overhead like a meteor that was falling from the ground into the sky, heading for that invisible ancient spaceship.

  Luoying’s mind went blank. She knew that all her connections to Earth had been cut off at that moment. From now on, Earth would only be a memory. One portion of her life had come to an end, and another portion was just starting. She didn’t know what the future held or where to seek her life’s purpose. The stars shone in the sky, and the wide-open land was all silence.

  PART TWO

  CLOUD LIGHT

  PROLOGUE

  “Dr. Reini, why was the war fought?”

  “I guess one would say … freedom.”

  “To free a nation?”

  “I’m not sure that’s right. Even now I don’t think we’d be called a proper nation.”

  “Then … to free a class?”

  “That’s not quite right either. People of all classes joined in the war.”

  “Then what kind of freedom was it?”

  “Freedom of a way of life, I suppose.”

  “Like the war that led to the independence of the United States?”

  “It was a bit like that, but not quite the same.”

  “But the Terrans say we don’t have freedom; only they have freedom.”

  “Who do you think has more freedom?”

  “I don’t know … What’s the definition of ‘freedom’?
”

  “What’s your definition of ‘freedom’?”

  Luoying bit her lip and looked at Reini with anguish. “I don’t know. That’s the biggest question in my life.”

  BOOK

  Looking at Mars from Mars, Mars City was like the Hanging Gardens of ancient Babylon. And like the dream of Babel, the dream of the Hanging Gardens also found a rebirth on this red planet. The city was one vast, unitary whole in which the roofs formed flowing layers and platforms and galleries connected together. Under the glass domes, blooming flowers and lush grass were everywhere, the vitality and frailty of life on full display.

  Mars City’s plan showed a beautiful geometry, like a series of drawings done with compass and straightedge. Looking down from above, the most prominent features were the large edifices at the center of every district. Scattered across the city, they were of different shapes and designs, like sleeping giants or birds at rest with folded wings. They towered over the other buildings like the cathedrals in every European city in the Middle Ages. Footpaths surrounded them and radiated out in every direction. Triangles and circles were inscribed within one another. Martian dwellings were often constructed on hexagonal plots that honeycombed together into a vast sea, with footpaths zigzagging along the edge, leading to the next neighborhood.

  There was no single visual center of the city. To the north stood a string of towers, and to the south loomed large inclined planes. In the west stretched a big ranch, while in the east clustered nine cylindrical water towers. Tube trains arched over the clustered roofs, and, viewed from above, the city resembled a painting of dense curves that evinced planning rather than chaos.

  A city like this was an homage to mathematics. Most ancient civilizations prized mathematics. Vestiges of Sumer’s sexagesimal system could still be seen today, and Egyptian pyramids embodied the pinnacle of geometry. The ancient Greeks, especially, believed that mathematics was the universe, and the harmony of numbers represented the true beauty of the cosmos. Mars City was a metropolis sketched in sand, a dream ex nihilo, and the geometry on the ground was an asymptotic approach to Plato’s cookies in Sofies verden.

  Another point of commonality between Mars and ancient civilizations was the importance of astronomy. Exposed to open space, Martians turned their eyes toward the celestial dome from the start. The night sky was also the day, and darkness was also light. They understood the sky the way those who lived in valleys understood mountains and those who lived on shores understood the sea.

  Mathematics and astronomy were the lighthouses of Mars, and every Martian understood their importance. But their spiritual center was different from that of the ancients. They didn’t use astronomy to divine the will of the gods, and they didn’t employ mathematics as a way to gain the gods’ favor. They simply loved precision, loved the perfect expression of the nature of the cosmos. This was also a kind of divinity. They were an atheistic people, and they shared a faith and abiding trust only in an objective sense of accuracy.

  Few spoke of the internal logic of the Martian belief system. But Reini did. He was a person who wrote history.

  * * *

  Looking at Mars from Earth, Mars wasn’t a real place but only an abstract wasteland, to be found in dry descriptions in books. Luoying could find it only in the library, where no one went. Among the tall stacks, she found books in which Mars was one of many topics like the Big Bang, the Roman Empire, steam-powered cars, and so on. In the middle of a dense wall of text, there was a cutaway diagram of the planet, its internal layers labeled with numbers and external craters pointed to by arrows. It was like seeing a dissected specimen laid out to show all its wounds.

  The pages lay open. Time disappeared among the stacks; peoples and nations migrated like wild geese; weapons clashed; gears spun; frenzied fighting, betrayals, glory; soil mixed with blood. History roared between the lines and, in the quiet sunlit library, turned into fragile dust, weak, dark, untouched. The tiny font reduced the world to numbers, to abstractions, to an illusion that had no substance. Among these was Luoying’s Mars. She had grown up in its embrace, but in these books it was merely a cartoonish ball of dust.

  It was also a worship of the objective, a cold and arrogant sort of objectivity. With a dispassionate tone, the voice delivered its judgment, leaving no room for her to protest and no place for embarrassment. Look, the voice said, this is your world, a simple and desolate place, an ugly bit of dirt.

  Few paid attention to such narratives. But Luoying did. She was a person who sought history.

  * * *

  In one corner of the desert palace, Luoying sat in her wheelchair like a bird resting on the stately walls of a castle.

  In a sense, Luoying was the princess of Mars, but unlike the princesses of ancient civilizations, she had no retinue. Unlike Amytis, who complained that life was so boring in the desert, or Bao Si of Zhou, who grew tired of mountains of gold and pearls, there was no one to build a wonder of the world for her or to light the beacon towers of border walls, summoning the armies of enraged princes just to make her smile. She was a lonely princess. Her brother and grandfather were absorbed by the heated debates in the Boule over engineering policy, and her friends were still adjusting to the pressures of life in the ateliers.

  In ancient times she would be sitting in some sunlit rose garden, an indolent smile on her face as she recounted to her faithful knights the wonders she had encountered on her adventures. But she didn’t live in the legendary past; she lived on Mars, a most solid and real Mars. In front of her was a shallow pool on the hospital skydeck. The ground was smooth frosted glass, done in a pattern of white and beige diamonds. A thick column three meters in diameter held up a large glass dome. At the foot of the wall were lights, and she had to operate the controls for brightness and temperature herself.

  She had no knights at her side. From time to time Dr. Reini visited her. Every evening she came here to watch the sunset, and Reini would stay with her if he didn’t have other patients to attend to.

  Her habit of watching sunsets had been acquired on Earth. Sunsets on Mars were much simpler: the bright white sun sank below the horizon against a dark sky. There were no clouds or the sequential disappearance of colors according to their temperatures. All that happened was the fading of everything into darkness as the distant mountains turned into silhouettes. Though the sight was different, Luoying still enjoyed it. When she watched sunsets, she felt more at peace, and even her memories grew calmer.

  When Reini sat next to her, his back against the glass wall, he would listen to her recount her memories slowly and hesitantly.

  “When I first heard them call Grandfather a dictator, my first reaction was shock and rage. It wasn’t just the natural instinct to defend someone I loved, but, more important, Grandfather was a hero of Mars. I could understand that the Terrans would view him as an enemy but not that he would be called a cold-blooded tyrant. Here’s the difference: an enemy of the Terrans could still be a hero of the Martians, but a tyrant would be an enemy of the Martians as well.”

  “Which do you believe?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been puzzling over it ever since, not daring to ask anyone.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because of fear and shame. It sounds silly when I say it, but I was afraid to be told a truth that I didn’t want to hear. I couldn’t deny it and didn’t want to admit it. I was terrified of how I would react.”

  “That doesn’t sound silly at all,” said Reini.

  Luoying gave Dr. Reini a grateful smile. She didn’t know him well, but she felt comfortable telling him these thoughts because she could sense his generous spirit. He gave off a deep serenity that she wanted to possess one day herself. He was rarely impatient and explained everything to her calmly. From time to time she suffered from bouts of sorrow or anger, and he would try to explain the reasons behind various events, allowing her a chance to contextualize her emotions in the flow of history and time. His explanations felt steady and dispassionate, li
ke trees that defied the storm on a snowy mountain.

  In a way, Dr. Reini didn’t seem to Luoying like a typical doctor but a writer. She often saw him writing at a desk next to a window, empty except for a notepad and lamp. He would sit, supporting his head with one hand, deeply absorbed in some difficult question. From time to time he looked out the window, and the distant light was reflected in his round glasses. She felt that Reini was the only one who could tolerate her doubts. When she wanted to share her thoughts with someone, her ideal listener was someone like this, deep and not easily disturbed. Perhaps he wouldn’t necessarily give her useful guidance, but she knew he would not judge her.

  “The second month I was on Earth, something really shocked me.”

  Luoying paused. The first year on Earth was also the most perplexing.

  “The dance troupe helped me rent my first room, in an apartment on the ninetieth floor of the pyramid tower. The apartment was spacious and comfortable, and the owner was an old woman who lived by herself, elegant and wealthy. Since she was my first landlady, I was particularly careful with my manners, treating her with great respect. The first month we lived together was uneventful.

  “In the second month, during dinner one night, I mentioned something about my life on Mars. My landlady was dumfounded. ‘You’re from Mars?’

  “ ‘I am indeed,’ I said. ‘I thought you knew.’

  “ ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘I know you’re a member of the dance troupe, but I never pry into the business of my renters.’

  “After that, she did something odd. She held my hand, and I saw an expression of pity and sorrow in her eyes. She asked for all sorts of details about my life, and she had never been so solicitous before.