Vagabonds

by Hao Jingfang

  “They couldn’t.”

  “Then why were you punished?”

  “Someone always has to be punished after an accident.”

  Reini put down the sculpting knife. His tone was placid, emotionless. More than ten years had passed since the accident, and he wasn’t expecting anyone to bring it up again. He saw the expression on Luoying’s face, an expression of genuine concern and confusion, which moved him. Once, many asked him about what had happened; some asked out of pity, while others asked out of politeness. Very few truly thought about his situation.

  “Only the person responsible should be punished,” insisted Luoying. “How could they scapegoat a random person?”

  “But it was impossible, given the wreckage, to determine the precise source of the malfunction.”

  “I read the defense report you drafted for yourself. You offered persuasive reasons for why the design wasn’t at fault.”

  “I suppose I did.”

  “Then why did you retract it later?”

  Reini didn’t answer right away. The events of those tense days replayed in his mind.

  “Let me try to explain this to you through … accounting. At the time, it was necessary that some form of punishment be imposed. But the question was how many would be punished. If the problem was with the design, then the only one punished would be me. But if the issue was with production, then many more would have to be held accountable.”

  * * *

  Reini was the designer of the component at fault, a key sensor in the quarry machine. On the day of the committee meeting, leaders from both systems involved in the quarry operation were seated solemnly at the table. The legislators presided over the meeting while a row of observers from the Security System sat to the side. On the walls, videos of the production process played, and a prototype of the destroyed machine sat at the center of the chamber, with everyone gathered around like hunters encircling a captured beast. Reini sat in the back of the gallery as everyone listened to the investigators give their reports. As analyses and summaries circled the air, his childhood habit resurfaced, and once again words and phrases began to pile up in his heart like building blocks.

  On Mars, holding responsible individuals accountable was taken extremely seriously. After every failed trial or accident, an exacting investigation followed. Reini had tried to understand the meaning behind this cultural obsession. It came not only from the meticulousness required of engineering projects but the very operation of the Martian system.

  The Martian system was at once a government and an enterprise, and everyone’s survival required its stable operation. Quality assurance was vital to this goal. But in a production team monopolized by the system, there were no customers to win over and no competitors to keep one honest, and it would be easy to compromise quality and to cover up mistakes and negligence without a powerful and severe accountability system. Since resources were so constrained on Mars, to ensure efficiency, ateliers only competed for funding at the planning stage. Once a project was funded, it was the only one of its kind to go into production, and the production team had to be fully accountable for the results.

  The reality that the system was equivalent to the entire industry had two consequences. On the one hand, the system and every atelier in the system, like any team, had a tendency to protect its members. On the other hand, the system, as the representative of every citizen in every area of life, had to ensure the fair and just application of the law. Thus, the system imposed on every high-level administrator a double identity: insider and outsider, leader and investigator, protector and punisher. Even with the Security System in place, the duality persisted.

  Accountability. The key was accountability. If one were accountable only to the team, then it was only necessary to optimize future production. But if one were accountable to those outside the team, to all the citizens of Mars, then it was necessary to pursue those responsible without regard to consequences.

  At the time of the accident, to pursue management negligence, to punish the lack of care up and down the production chain, would have led to the loss of many individuals to the process, which would have been damaging to the project itself. And the leader of the project was the most authoritative expert in the field.

  Accountability. To both inside and outside. In the back of the gallery, Reini pondered the subtle implications of the word. One investigator called on him and asked him a question. Still lost in his thoughts, he didn’t hear the whole question, only the last part.

  “… do you feel you bear responsibility?”

  “Responsibility?” he answered almost instinctively. “What kind of responsibility?”

  Was it responsibility to the elucidation of facts or to the need for production?

  The investigator asked more questions and announced more conclusions, but again he heard only the last part.

  “… your manager has the responsibility to deal with you appropriately.”

  “What kind of responsibility?” he asked again.

  Was it the responsibility to maintain the integrity of the system, or to maintain the stability of the system?

  As sentence piled on sentence, forming an edifice, he didn’t know where to place his steel beam. The dual meanings split responsibility apart. Erecting the beam or laying it flat led to completely different results. Like a child, he hesitated, toy block in hand, trying to evaluate the different possibilities.

  No one paid attention to him. The discussions and decisions continued; data and charts scrolled over the walls. The investigators, engineers, and legislators whispered and debated, looking serious. As Reini gazed at them, he felt very distant. Hair and beards turned into blurred images, and he had the distinct sensation that the final result was about to be announced.

  Two days later Hans Sloan, the consul, visited Reini personally. Before he had said a word, Reini knew all that he needed to know. Hans pinned the medal for valor that he had won as a young man on Reini’s loose gray shirt, stating that it represented both gratitude and regret. The words on the medal spoke of Defense of the Homeland, not Defense of the Truth.

  Reini was thus punished. In the end, the investigative committee concluded that the cause was negligent design, which resulted in the fewest people possible being punished. It was a critical time in Martian history, when the mining operation required every hand, and the project leader was the only one who could move it forward. Reini believed that his own design was not flawed, but he didn’t argue against the conclusion. Whether his design was problematic wasn’t the most important question; rather, the most important question was accountability. The fire had burned any clues left in the wreck into a tangled mess, but the Boule still had to pick a direction. They chose the responsibility to maintain the stability of the system, to protect the people needed for the greater good, to continue the production necessary for survival. Reini wasn’t a fool; he understood what was needed.

  Hans, sitting across from Reini, looked down and sighed. As he looked at the old man, Reini felt a sudden pang of sympathy. He could tell that Hans hadn’t wanted to see such a result either, but he had come here to face Reini himself, to hand him the medal that he had earned by risking his life.

  Since part of Reini’s punishment was removal from the engineering lab, Hans asked him which atelier he would prefer to join next, which Reini understood to be Hans’s way of apologizing. Since he had a childhood friend who was a neurologist at First Hospital in Salilo District, he decided to go join him there, switching from the senses of machines to the senses of humans.

  He wasn’t angry. In any event, in a complicated structure of crisscrossing beams, there was no place to insert resentment. Once in a while he did feel desolate, much as he did as a child sitting by the playground, a thicket of towering equipment that was empty of the presence of people. Emptiness was not unusual, and neither were thickets; only when his individual emptiness met with the system’s thicket did he feel this sense of desolation.

  In reality,
Reini didn’t much care where he was assigned. He had grown tired of the pressure at the engineering lab, and he thought it would be nice to go somewhere else, to have more time for reading and writing. His life at the hospital was uneventful, and Hans occasionally stopped by to visit. Gradually they grew to be friends. Reini told him that he wanted to write history, and Hans gave him access rights to the Registry of Files.

  * * *

  “Don’t you feel unfulfilled?” asked Luoying.

  Reini smiled. “To feel that requires one to fail to achieve what one wants to do or is suited to do. A piece of iron left out of the steel frame of a new edifice would feel unfulfilled, but a piece of stone would not feel the same.”

  He picked up a small yellow sandy rock from the table and hefted it.

  “Not everyone wants to be part of a steel frame,” he said. “I prefer to sculpt.”

  Luoying picked up the rough, irregularly shaped rock and examined it. She sat down and placed both arms on his desk and rested her head on one hand. She gazed at the rock and then at Reini. She made as if to speak then, but in the end said nothing.

  Behind them, a lion sculpted out of sand watched them.

  * * *

  An hour later Luoying pushed open the door to the rehearsal space.

  She was inside a large, abandoned warehouse. Tall black steel racks lined the walls, and the ground was a featureless gray expanse. In one corner of the vast, empty warehouse was a simple stage built from old racks torn off the walls.

  Spotlights lit up the stage, which seemed tiny from where she was. Some figures were reciting lines on the stage, while others busied themselves below. From a tall rack behind the stage hung the backdrop, on which were painted a cartoonish palace and a throne. Two actors were rehearsing a scene: their voices, rising and falling, fast and slow, spiraled up into the air, surrounded by the noise of the rest of the crew, and echoed in the vast, open space.

  Slowly she approached the stage, her shadow stretching behind her on the floor like a long, slender train.

  “Luoying!”

  Leon, hurrying toward the prop area, greeted her with a smile. Dressed in a tuxedo, he was carrying a giant cardboard box in his arms, and sweat beaded on his brow. The tux, contrasted with the tools and random objects poking out of the box, brought to mind an elegant duke who suddenly decided to sample the pleasures of manual labor.

  “Did you just get here?” said Mira, sitting at the lip of the stage. “You’re late!”

  Like a hawker at some bazaar, Mira had spread out in front of him a brown cloth on which were scattered broken fragments of colorful glass. Though he was in costume, he wasn’t currently needed in a scene. Instead, he rested his chin in one hand and watched the stage without care, whispering from time to time with the stage manager next to him.

  “You made it,” said Sorin, the director, running up to her. “Let me show you around.”

  They kissed each other on the cheek. After asking about the progress of her recovery, Sorin pointed at the chorus standing at the back of the stage, showing Luoying her place. A hat kept his hair out of his lean face, and his bright eyes darted about with efficiency. As soon as he was done with Luoying, he ran for Kingsley, who was in charge of the lighting.

  Luoying surveyed the stage. The chorus stood in two separate arcs at the back, surrounding the lead actors. One arc was dressed in white robes and the other in black, like two walls of angels observing the world. Anka’s tall figure, in a white robe, stood out at the center of the group on the left. Lyric sheets in hand, he nodded at her, his eyes glowing brightly out of the dimness in back of the stage.

  She walked toward her assigned place with some trepidation, because it was her first rehearsal.

  Standing next to the stairs at the left side of the stage, Anita was waiting for her cue with a large bedroll in her arms. She smiled at Luoying and glanced at her ankle with an inquiring look.

  Luoying nodded. “I feel good.”

  Anita’s elaborate updo and heavy, exaggerated stage makeup made it clear that she was playing the role of a wealthy woman, a grand lady used to being obeyed.

  “It’s a mess up there,” she said, indicating the stage with her chin and grinning.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Everyone’s just making it up as we go.”

  “Isn’t there a script?”

  “Well, yes, but there have been so many revisions that no one knows what’s the latest version.”

  “Who are you playing?”

  “A lawyer. Appropriate, no?”

  Anita specialized in law. Luoying nodded and pointed to the bedroll she was carrying. “What’s that?”

  “A corpse.” Anita laughed.

  Startled, Luoying was about to ask for elaboration, but Anita held up a finger to indicate that it was time for her entrance. She climbed up the stairs, swaying from side to side from the weight of the bedroll but planting each foot with determination.

  Luoying followed Anita onto the stage. She edged her way to the back and joined the chorus next to Anka. He held up the lyric sheets so she could follow along.

  She discovered that Anka had been right. The lyrics really were as simple as he had claimed. Most consisted of a single line: “Oh, that’s wonderful, wonderful!” The paper was covered with repeated instances of that line, but there were notes explaining differences in emphasis and tone, the lines of the principals, and cues. Looking at Anka, she lifted a brow and smiled.

  Together they looked to the center of the stage. Anita was just starting her monologue. Apparently she was a widow lamenting the death of her husband. The bedroll was unfurled on the stage, revealing a mannequin with thick eyebrows and a beard painted in black. Anita looked disconsolate and complained about how hard it was to make a living. Another actor approached, and after a few lines of dialogue her face broke into a joyous smile. She clapped her hands and circled the stage.

  “Oh, that’s wonderful, wonderful!” sang Anka and the white-robed chorus.

  Gradually, Luoying became immersed in the story taking shape onstage until it was reality and the rest of the world was forgotten. Since this was the first time she was seeing the play, she was surprised by many of the jokes and almost burst out laughing. In several places she wanted to exclaim “Oh, that’s wonderful, wonderful!” without even needing to read the cues.

  On the opposite side of the stage, the black-robed chorus was mostly singing “Ah, so great, so, so great!” at different lines. The two sets of singers wove a distant harmony and presented a neighboring contrast.

  The plot slowly developed, sliding imperceptibly from farce to realism. At first Luoying had to tamp down the urge to laugh, but gradually she didn’t feel like laughing anymore. She sensed the bitterness under the surface, a rising sense of doom that seized her heart. Her voice grew a bit raspy. From the back of the stage, she saw, for the first time, a possible depiction of reality looming upon her.

  At the end of the rehearsal, Luoying ran to the lip of the stage and asked the others, “What was that ending about?”

  Chania, who was closest, answered calmly, “I didn’t get a chance to tell you about it the other day. Runge discovered something interesting.”

  “What did he discover?”

  “He read some notes written by his mom, who is one of the archivists for the diplomacy files, responsible for recording the details of various negotiations with Earth. Runge found out that three years earlier, when Mars was trying to purchase acetylene and methane from Earth, the negotiations reached an impasse for several months. The Terrans were concerned that it was a trick on the part of Mars, as the volatile cargo could be detonated during the delivery process to launch a surprise attack. From January to June, the negotiators just couldn’t make any progress.

  “But then, a series of dramatic events occurred. On July twelfth, all the students from the Mercury Group went to North America for vacation. On July eighteenth, the final agreement was signed. On August first, Mars took deliver
y and the shipment began to sail for home. On August tenth, we returned to our temporary homes all over Earth. We had no idea what was going on at the time. But do you really think this sequence was a mere coincidence?”

  “So … Runge concluded that we were hostages to guarantee the peaceful delivery of the cargo?” asked Luoying.

  Chania nodded.

  Luoying muttered to herself, “Following that logic, then for five years we were only hostages on Earth to allow trade to proceed. The idea of studying on Earth was simply a cover.”

  Chania held her by the hand. “I know you don’t want to hear this … but if our theory is right, then your grandfather added you to the Mercury Group not because of your parents’ deaths but because you’re the consul’s granddaughter. Having you with us was a way to reassure the other parents so that they wouldn’t see the risks.”

  “The risks …” Luoying’s mind was blank. “You’re saying the goal was to have me share the same risks as the rest of you.”

  “And should it have been necessary, all of us would have been declared heroes of Mars after our deaths.”

  “That’s terrifying!”

  “We also hope it isn’t true,” interjected Sorin. “That’s why we changed the script and added this new ending. It’s a way to gauge the reactions of the top leaders. If our theory is merely the result of hyperactive imagination, then they’ll only be confused. But if our theory is true, they’ll likely explode in rage.”

  “It’s not just aimed at your grandfather,” said Mira. “This is a test of the entire top leadership. It’s possible that the consul didn’t want to do this at all, but others did.”

  Luoying nodded, her heart in tumult. Once again, she heard accusations and suspicions directed against her grandfather, raising her anxiety to a new peak. She didn’t want the others to see how unhappy she was, but she couldn’t find an excuse to get away. Even Anka was nowhere to be found.

  She tried to change the subject. “What about the rest of the play? Where did the ideas come from?”