Лю Цысинь - Hold Up the Sky

A beat formed out of night and day.

They looked up and saw the flashing star, now just a blinding, dimensionless point of light in space. “A pulsar,” said the Chinese president.

The remains of a supernova, a whirling neutron star, the naked hot spot on its dense surface turning it into a cosmic lighthouse, its revolution sweeping the beam emitted by its hot spot through space, and giving Earth a brief moment of daytime as it swept past the solar system.

“I seem to recall,” the secretary general said, “that a pulsar’s frequency is far faster than this. And it doesn’t emit visible light.”

Shielding his eyes with a hand and struggling to adjust to the crazy rhythm of the world, the US president said, “The high frequency is because the neutron star retains the former star’s angular momentum. The mirror may be able to somehow drain that momentum. As for visible light… do you really think that’s something the mirror can’t do?”

“There’s another thing,” the Chinese president said. “There’s no reason to believe that the pace of life for all beings in the universe is like that of humanity. The beat for their music might be on a completely different frequency. The mirror’s normal beat, for example, may be faster than even our fastest computers.”

“Yes,” the US president said, nodding. “And there’s no reason to believe that what they perceive as visible light is the same EM spectrum.”

“So you’re saying that the mirror’s music is benchmarked to human senses?” the secretary general asked in surprise.

The Chinese president shook his head. “I don’t know. But it’s got to be based on something.”

The pulsar’s powerful beam swept across the empty sky like a four-trillion-kilometer-long baton, still growing at the speed of light. At this end, played on the sun by the mirror’s invisible fingers and transmitted to the cosmos at the speed of light, the sun concert began.

SUN MUSIC

A rustle like radio jamming or the endless pounding of waves on sand occasionally offered up hints of a vast desolation within its more abundant chaos and disorder. The sound went on for more than ten minutes without changing.

The Russian president broke the silence: “Like I said, we can’t understand their music.”

“Listen!” Clayderman said, pointing at the sky, but it was a long moment before the rest of them heard the melody his trained ears had picked out at once. A simple structure of just two notes, reminiscent of a clock’s tick-tock. The notes repeated, separated by lengthy gaps. Then another two-note section, and a third, and a fourth… paired tones emerging ceaselessly from the chaos like fireflies in the night.

Then a new melody emerged, four notes. Everyone turned toward Clayderman, who was listening attentively and seemed to have sensed something. The four-note phrases multiplied.

“Here,” he said to the heads of state. “Let’s each of us remember a two-note measure.” And so they all listened carefully, and each found a two-note measure and then focused their energy on committing it to memory. After a while, Clayderman said, “Very well. Now concentrate on a four-note phrase. Quickly, though, or else the music will grow too complex for us to pick them out…. Yes, that one. Does anyone hear that?”

“The first half is the pair of notes I memorized!” called the head of Brazil.

“The second half is my pair!” said the head of Canada.

They realized that every four-note phrase was made up of two of the previous note pairs, and as the four-note phrases multiplied they seemed to be depleting the isolated pairs. Then came eight-note phrases, similarly formed out of sets of four-note phrases.

“What do you hear?” the secretary general asked the people around him.

“A primeval ocean lit by flashes of lightning and volcanoes, and small molecules combining into larger ones… of course, that’s purely my own imagination,” the Chinese president said.

“Don’t constrain your imagination to the Earth,” the US president said. “The clustering of these molecules may be taking place in a nebula glowing with starlight. Or maybe they’re not molecules, but the nuclear vortices inside a star…”

Then came a high-pitched, multi-note phrase that repeated like a bright spark in the dim chaos. “It’s like it’s describing a fundamental transformation,” the Chinese president said.

Then they heard a new instrument, a sustained violin-like string sound that repeated a gentle shadow of the standout melody.

“It’s expressing a kind of duplication,” the Russian president said.

Now came an uninterrupted melody from the violin voice, changing smoothly as if it were light in curvilinear motion. The UK prime minister said to the Chinese president, “To borrow your idea, that ocean has something swimming in it now.”

At some point the background music, which they’d nearly forgotten about, had begun to change. From the sound of waves it had turned into an oscillating rush, like a storm assaulting the bare rock. Then it changed again, into wind-like bleakness. The US president said, “The swimmer has entered a new environment. The land, or perhaps the air.”

Then all the instruments played in unison for a brief moment, a fearsomely loud sound like an enormous physical collapse, then they abruptly dropped out, leaving just the lonely sound of the surf. Then the simple note pairs started up again and turned gradually complex, and everything repeated….

“I can say with certainty that a great extinction was just described, and now we’re listening to the revival afterward.”

After another long and arduous process, the ocean swimmer ventured again into other parts of the world. Slowly, the melody grew grander and more complicated, and interpretations diversified. Some people thought it was a river rushing downhill, others imagined the advance of a great army across a vast plain, others saw billowing nebulae in the darkness of space caught in the vortex of a black hole, but they all agreed that it was expressing some grand process, an evolutionary process. The movement was long, and an hour had passed before the theme at last began to change. The melody gradually split into two vying parts that smashed wildly into each other or tangled together….

“The classic style of Beethoven,” Clayderman declared, after a long stretch immersed in the grand music.

The secretary general said, “It’s like a fleet smacking across huge waves on the sea.”

“No,” said the US president, shaking his head. “Not that. You can tell that the two forces are not essentially different. I think it’s a battle that spans a world.”

“Wait a moment,” interrupted the Japanese prime minister, breaking a long silence. “Do you really imagine you can comprehend alien art? Your understanding of the music may be no better than a cow’s appreciation for a lyre.”

Clayderman said, “I think our understanding is basically correct. The common languages of the cosmos are mathematics and music.”

The secretary general said, “Proving it won’t be difficult. Can we predict the theme or style of the next movement?”

After a moment’s thought, the Chinese president said, “I’d say next will be an expression of worship, and the melody will possess a strict architectural beauty.”

“You mean like Bach?”

“Yes.”

And so it was. The listeners seemed to hear a great imposing church and the echoes of their footsteps inside that magnificent space, and they were overcome by fear and awe of an all-encompassing power.

Then the complicated melody turned simple again. The background music vanished, and a series of short, clear beats appeared in the infinite stillness: one, then two, then three, then four… and then one, four, nine, and sixteen… and then increasingly complex series.