“Who was that young woman’s mother?” Wang asked.
Da Shi grinned. “Fucked if I know. Just a guess. A girl like that most likely has mother issues. After doing this for more than twenty years, I’m pretty good at reading people.”
“I bet you’re happy to be proven right. There really was someone behind all this.” Wang forced himself to smile, hoping Da Shi could see it.
“Buddy, you’re the one who was right!” Da Shi laughed, shaking his head. “I would never have thought that actual fucking aliens would be involved!”
25
The Deaths of Lei Zhicheng and Yang Weining
INTERROGATOR: Name?
YE WENJIE: Ye Wenjie.
INTERROGATOR: Birth date?
YE: June 1943.
INTERROGATOR: Employment?
YE: Professor of Astrophysics at Tsinghua University. Retired in 2004.
INTERROGATOR: In consideration of your health, you may stop the interrogation temporarily at any time.
YE: Thank you. I’m fine.
INTERROGATOR: We’re only conducting a regular criminal investigation now and won’t get into more sensitive matters. We would like to finish quickly. We hope you’ll cooperate.
YE: I know what you’re referring to. Yes, I’ll cooperate.
INTERROGATOR: Our investigation revealed that while you were working at Red Coast Base, you were suspected of murder.
YE: I did kill two people.
INTERROGATOR: When?
YE: The afternoon of October 21, 1979.
INTERROGATOR: Names of the victims?
YE: Base Commissar Lei Zhicheng, and my husband, Base Engineer Yang Weining.
INTERROGATOR: Explain your motive for murder.
YE: Can I … assume that you understand the relevant background?
INTERROGATOR: I know the basics. If something is unclear I’ll ask you.
YE: Good. On the day when I received the extraterrestrial communication and replied, I learned that I wasn’t the only one to get the message. Lei did as well.
* * *
Lei was a typical political cadre of the time, so he possessed an extremely keen sense for politics and saw everything through an ideological lens. Unbeknownst to most of the technical staff at Red Coast Base, he ran a small program in the background on the main computer. This program constantly read from the transmission and reception buffers and stored the results in a hidden encrypted file. This way, there would be a copy of everything Red Coast sent and received that only he could read. It was from this copy that he discovered the extraterrestrial message.
On the afternoon after I sent my message toward the rising sun, and shortly after I learned that I was pregnant at the base clinic, Lei called me to his office, and I saw that his terminal displayed the message from Trisolaris that I had received the night before.…
* * *
“Eight hours have passed since you received the first message. Instead of making a report, you deleted the original message and maybe hid a copy. Isn’t that right?”
I kept my head down and did not reply.
“I know your next move. You plan to reply. If I hadn’t discovered this in time, you could have ruined all human civilization! Of course I’m not saying that we’re afraid of an interstellar invasion. Even if we assumed the worst and that really did happen, the outer space invaders would surely drown in the ocean of the people’s righteous war!”
I realized then that he didn’t know that I’d already replied. When I placed the answer into the transmission buffer, I didn’t use the regular file interface. Luckily, this got around his monitoring program.
“Ye Wenjie, I knew you were capable of something like this. You’ve always held a deep hatred toward the Party and the people. You would seize any opportunity for revenge. Do you know the consequences of your actions?”
Of course I knew, so I nodded. Lei was silent for a moment. But what he said next was unexpected. “Ye Wenjie, I have no pity for you at all. You’ve always been a class enemy who views the people as your adversaries. But I’ve served many years with Yang. I cannot bear to see him ruined along with you, and I certainly cannot allow his child to be ruined as well. You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
What he said wasn’t idle speculation. During that era, my deeds would certainly have implicated my husband if revealed, regardless of whether he had anything to do with them.
Lei kept his voice very low. “Right now, only you and I know what happened. What we must do is to minimize the impact of your actions. Pretend that it never happened and never mention it to anyone, including Yang. I’ll take care of the rest. As long as you cooperate, you can avoid the disastrous consequences.”
I immediately knew what Lei was after. He wanted to become the first man to discover extraterrestrial intelligence. It really was a great opportunity to get his name into the history textbooks.
I assented. Then I left his office. I’d already decided everything.
I took a small wrench and went to the equipment closet for the processing module of the receiver. Because I often needed to inspect the equipment, no one paid attention. I opened the main cabinet and carefully loosened the bolt that secured the ground wire to the bottom. The interference on the receiver suddenly increased and the ground resistance went up from 0.6 ohms to 5 ohms. The technician on duty thought it was a problem with the ground wire, because that kind of malfunction happened a lot. It was an easy diagnosis. He would never have guessed that the problem was at this end, at the top of the ground wire, because this end was securely fastened, out of the way, and I told him that I had just inspected it.
The top of Radar Peak had an unusual geological feature: a layer of clay more than a dozen meters thick—poor conductivity—covered it. When the ground wire wasn’t buried deeply, ground resistance was invariably too high. However, the ground wire couldn’t be sunk too deep, either, because the clay layer had a strong corrosive effect, and after a while, it would corrode the middle section of the ground wire. In the end, the only solution was to drape the ground wire over the lip of the cliff until the tip was below the clay layer, and then bury the ground terminal into the cliff at that point. Even so, the grounding wasn’t very stable, and the resistance was often excessive. Whenever such problems occurred, the trouble always involved the part of the wire going into the cliff. Whoever was assigned to repair it would have to go over the edge of the cliff, dangling on ropes.
The technician on duty informed the maintenance squad of the issue. One of the soldiers in the squad tied a rope to an iron post and then rappelled down the cliff. After half an hour down below, he climbed back up, soaked in sweat, saying that he couldn’t find the malfunction. It seemed that the next monitoring session would have to be delayed. There was no choice but to inform the Base Command Center. I waited by the iron post at the top of the cliff. Very soon, just as I had planned, Lei Zhicheng came back with that soldier.
To be honest, Lei was very dedicated to his job and faithfully followed the demands placed on political officers during that era: Become a part of the masses and always be on the front line. Maybe it was all for show, but he really was a good performer. Whenever there was some difficult and perilous work at the base, he was sure to volunteer. One of the tasks that he performed more than anyone else was to repair the ground wire, a task both dangerous and tiring. Even though this job wasn’t particularly demanding technically, it did benefit from experience. There were many causes of malfunction: a loose contact due to exposure to open air—difficult to detect—or possibly the location where the ground wire went into the cliff was too dry. The volunteer soldiers responsible for external maintenance were all new, and none had much experience. So I had guessed that Lei would most likely show up.
He put on the safety harness and went over the cliff edge on the rope, as though I didn’t exist. I made some excuse to get rid of the soldier who brought him so that I was the only one left on the cliff. Then I took a short hacksaw out of my pocket. It was made
from a longer saw blade broken into three pieces and then stacked together. With the stacked blades, any cut I made would be particularly ragged, and it would not be obvious later that the rope was cut through with a tool.
Just then, my husband, Yang Weining, showed up.
After I explained to him what had happened, he looked over the cliff edge. Then he said that to inspect the ground terminal in the cliff face required digging, and the work would be too much for just Lei. He wanted to go down to help, so he put on the safety harness left by that other soldier. I asked him to use another rope, but he said no—the rope that Lei was on was thick and sturdy and could easily bear the weight of two. I insisted, so he told me to go get the rope. By the time I rushed back to the cliff with the rope, he had already gone down over the side. I poked my head over the edge and saw that he and Lei had already finished their inspection and were climbing back up. Lei was in the front.
There would never be another chance. I took out my hacksaw and cut through the rope.
* * *
INTERROGATOR: I want to ask a question, but I won’t record the answer. How did you feel at the time?
YE: Calm. I did it without feeling anything. I had finally found a goal to which I could devote myself. I didn’t care what price had to be paid, either by me or by others. I also knew that the entire human race would pay an unprecedented price for this goal. This was a very insignificant beginning.
INTERROGATOR: All right. Continue.
YE: I heard two or three surprised cries, and then the sound of bodies slamming against the rocks at the cliff bottom. After a while, I saw that the stream at the foot of the cliff had turned red.… That’s all I’ll say about that.
INTERROGATOR: I understand. This is the record. Please check it over carefully. If there are no errors, please sign it.
26
No One Repents
The deaths of Lei and Yang were treated as accidents. Everybody at the base knew that Ye and Yang were a happy couple, and no one suspected her.
A new commissar came to the base, and life returned to its habitual peace. The tiny life inside Ye grew bigger every day, and she also felt the world outside change.
One day, the security platoon commander asked Ye to come to the gatehouse at the entrance to the base. When she entered the gatehouse, she was surprised to see three children: two boys and a girl, about fifteen or sixteen. They all wore old coats and dog fur hats, obviously locals. The guard on duty told her that they came from the village of Qijiatun. They had heard that the people on Radar Peak were learned and had come to ask some questions related to their studies.
Ye wondered how they dared to come onto Radar Peak. This was a restricted military zone, and the guards were authorized to warn intruders only once before shooting. The guard saw that Ye was puzzled and explained that they had just received orders that Red Coast Base’s security rating had been reduced. The locals were allowed onto Radar Peak as long as they stayed outside the base. Several local peasants had already come yesterday to bring vegetables.
One of the children took out a worn-out middle school physics textbook. His hands were dirty and cracked like tree bark. In a thick Northeastern accent, he asked a simple physics question: The textbook said that a body in free fall is under constant acceleration but will always reach a terminal velocity. They had been thinking about this for several nights and could not understand why.
“You walked all this way just to ask this?” Ye asked.
“Teacher Ye, don’t you know that they’ve restarted the exam?” the girl said excitedly.
“The exam?”
“The National College Entrance Exam! Whoever studies hard and gets the best score gets to go to college! It began two years ago. Didn’t you know?”
“There’s no need for recommendations anymore?”
“No. Anyone can take the exam. Even the children of the Five Black Categories in the village can take it.”35
Ye was stunned. This change left her with mixed feelings. Only after a while did she realize that the children were still waiting with their books held up. She hurriedly answered their question, explaining that it was due to air resistance reaching equilibrium against the force of gravity. Then she promised that if they encountered any difficulties in their studies in the future, they could always come to her for help.
Three days later, seven children came to seek Ye. In addition to the three who had come last time, there were four more from villages located even farther away. The third time, fifteen children came to find her, and even a teacher at a small-town high school came along.
Because there was a shortage of teachers, he had to teach physics, math, and chemistry, and he came to ask Ye for some help on teaching. The man was over fifty years old, and his face was already full of wrinkles. He was very nervous in front of Ye, and spilled books everywhere. After they left the gatehouse, Ye heard him say to the students: “Children, that was a scientist. A real, bona fide scientist!”
After that, children would come to her for tutoring every few days. Sometimes there were so many of them that the gatehouse couldn’t accommodate them all. With the permission of the officers in charge of base security, the guards would escort them to the cafeteria. There, Ye put up a small blackboard and taught the children.
It was dark by the time Ye got off work on the eve of Chinese New Year, 1980. Most people at the base had already left Radar Peak for the three-day holiday, and it was quiet everywhere. Ye returned to her room. This was once the home of her and Yang Weining, but now it was empty, her only companion the unborn child within her. In the night outside, the cold wind of the Greater Khingan Mountains screamed, carrying with it the faint sound of firecrackers going off in the village of Qijiatun. Loneliness pressed down on Ye like a giant hand, and she felt herself being crushed; compressed until she was so small that she disappeared into an invisible corner of the universe.…
Just then, someone knocked on her door. When she opened it, Ye first saw the guard, and then, behind him, the fire of several pine branch torches flickering in the cold wind. The torches were held aloft by a crowd of children, their faces bright red from the cold, and icicles hung from their hats. When they came into her room, they seemed to bring the cold air in with them. Two of the boys, thinly dressed, had suffered the most. They had taken off their thick coats and wrapped them around something that they carried in their arms. Unwrapping the coats revealed a large pot, the fermented cabbage and pork dumplings inside still steaming hot.
* * *
That year, eight months after she sent her signal toward the sun, Ye went into labor. Because the baby was malpositioned and her body was weak, the base clinic couldn’t handle her case and had to send her to the nearest town hospital.
This became one of the hardest times in Ye’s life. After enduring a great deal of pain and losing a large amount of blood, she sank into a coma. Through a blur she could only see three hot, blinding suns slowly orbiting around her, cruelly roasting her body. This state lasted for some time, and she hazily thought it was probably the end for her. It was her hell. The fire of the three suns would torment her and burn her forever. This was punishment for her betrayal, the betrayal that exceeded all others. She sank into terror: not for her, but for her unborn child—was the child still in her? Or had she already been born into this hell to suffer eternally with her?
She didn’t know how much time had passed. Gradually the three suns moved farther away. After a certain distance, they suddenly shrank and turned into crystalline flying stars. The air around her cooled, and her pain lessened. She finally awoke.
Ye heard a cry next to her. Turning her head with great effort, she saw the baby’s pink, wet, little face.
The doctor told Ye that she had lost more than 2,000 ml of blood. Dozens of peasants from Qijiatun had come to donate blood to her. Many of the peasants had children who Ye had tutored, but most had no connection to her at all, having only heard her name from the children and their parents. Without them, sh
e would certainly have died.
Ye’s living situation became a problem after the birth of her child. The difficult birth had damaged her health. It was impossible for her to stay at the base with the baby all by herself, and she had no relatives who could help. Just then, an old couple living in Qijiatun came to talk to the base leaders and explained that they could take Ye and her baby home with them and take care of them. The old man used to be a hunter and also gathered some herbs for traditional medicine. Later, after the forest around the area was lost to logging, the couple had turned to farming, but people still called him Hunter Qi out of habit. They had two sons and two daughters. The daughters were married and had moved out. One of the sons was a soldier away from home, and the other was married and lived with them. The daughter-in-law had also just given birth.
Ye still hadn’t been rehabilitated politically, and the base leadership was unsure about this suggested solution. But in the end, there was no other way, and so they allowed the couple to take Ye and the baby home from the hospital on a sled.
Ye lived for more than half a year with this peasant family in the Greater Khingan Mountains. She was so weak after giving birth that her milk did not come in. During this time, the baby girl, Yang Dong, was breastfed by all the women of the village. The one who nursed her the most was Hunter Qi’s daughter-in-law, called Feng. Feng had the strong, solid frame of the women of the Northeast. She ate sorghum every day, and her large breasts were full of milk even though she was feeding two babies at the same time. Other nursing women in Qijiatun also came to feed Yang Dong. They liked her, saying that the baby had the same clever air as her mother.
Gradually, Hunter Qi’s home became the gathering place for all the women of the village. Old and young, matrons and maidens, they all liked to stop by when they had nothing else going on. They admired Ye and were curious about her, and she found that she had many women’s topics to discuss with them.