Cixin Liu - The Dark Forest

When they had lit their cigarettes, Shi Qiang said, “It’s early yet. Shall we chat?”

“Ask away,” Luo Ji said, head down as he exhaled a cloud of smoke.

“Ask what?” Shi Qiang said, looking at Luo Ji in surprise.

Luo Ji jumped up from the bed and tossed the cigarette aside. “How can you suspect me? You’ve got to know it was just a traffic accident! The two cars collided, and then she was hit by the one behind them as it tried to avoid the crash. It’s plain as day.” He held out his hands, at a loss for words.

Shi Qiang raised his head and looked at him, his tired eyes suddenly alert, as if an invisible malice, honed with practice, were hidden behind the smile he usually wore. “You said that, not me. My superiors don’t want me to say anything more, and I don’t know anything more. To think I was worried we wouldn’t have anything to talk about. Come, sit down.”

Luo Ji didn’t sit down. He got in Shi Qiang’s face and continued: “I’d only known her for a week. We met at a bar next to the university, and when the accident happened I couldn’t even remember her name. Tell me, what could there possibly have been between us to lead your thoughts in that direction?”

“You couldn’t even remember her name? No wonder you didn’t care at all when she died. You’re pretty much the same as another genius I know.” He chuckled. “The wonderful life of Dr. Luo, meeting a new woman every time you turn around. And what women they are!”

“Is that a crime?”

“Of course not. I’m just jealous. I’ve got one rule in my work: Never make moral judgments. The guys I’ve got to deal with, they’re the real deal. If I go and nag them, ‘Look at what you’ve done! Think about your parents, and about society…’ and so on, I might as well be slapping them across the face.”

“I’d rather talk about her, Officer Shi. Do you really believe I killed her?”

“Look at you, bringing up the issue on your own. Saying you may have killed her, even. We’re just having a casual chat. What’s your hurry? You’re new at this, that much is clear.”

Luo Ji stared at Shi Qiang, and for a moment the hum of the fan was the only audible sound. Then he cackled and picked up his cigarette. “Luo, my man,” Shi Qiang said. “Luo, my boy. Destiny’s brought us together. You know, I’ve been involved in sixteen cases that ended in the death penalty. I personally escorted nine of them.”

Luo Ji handed a cigarette to Shi Qiang. “I’m not going to let you escort me. So, if you’ll be so good as to notify my lawyer.”

“Excellent, my boy,” Shi Qiang said, clapping Luo Ji on the shoulder. “Decisiveness is a trait I admire.” Then he drew up close to him and said, through a cloud of smoke, “You can come across all sorts of things, but what’s happened to you is really…” He trailed off. “Actually, I’m here to help. You know how the joke goes: On the way to the execution ground, a condemned criminal complained that it was going to rain, and the executioner said, ‘What have you got to worry about? We’re the ones who’ve got to go back through it!’ That’s the attitude you and I ought to have for what comes next. Well, then. There’s still some time before we get going. Might as well get some sleep.”

“Get going?” Again, Luo Ji stared at Shi Qiang.

There was a knock at the door, and then a keen-eyed young man entered and dropped a suitcase on the ground. “Captain Shi, it’s been moved ahead. We’re leaving now.”

Zhang Beihai gently pushed open the door to his father’s hospital room. Half-reclining against a pillow on the bed, his father looked better than he had imagined. The golden rays of the setting sun that shone in through the window gave his face some color and made him look less like a man at death’s door. Zhang Beihai set his hat on the coatrack by the door and took a seat beside his father’s bed. He didn’t ask about his condition, because the old soldier would give him a straight answer, and he didn’t want a straight answer.

“Dad, I’ve joined the space force.”

His father nodded but said nothing. For father and son, the silence conveyed more information than words. Growing up, his father had used silence rather than speech to educate him, and words were merely the punctuation between the silences. It was his silent father who had made him into the man he was today.

“Just like you thought, they’re building the space fleet on a naval foundation. They believe space warfare will be closest in form and theory to naval warfare.”

His father nodded. “Very good.”

“So what should I do?”

I’ve finally asked it, Dad. The question I spent a sleepless night gathering the resolve to ask. I hesitated just now when I saw you, because I know it’s the question that will disappoint you the most. I remember when I finished grad school and joined the fleet as a cadet lieutenant, you told me, “Beihai, you’ve got a long way to go. I say that because I can still easily understand you, and being understandable to me means that your mind is still too simple, not subtle enough. On the day I can no longer read you or figure you out, but you can easily understand me, that’s when you’ll finally have grown up.” And then I grew up like you said, and you could no longer so easily understand your son. I know you must have felt at least some sorrow at that. But your son is indeed becoming the kind of person you’d hoped for, someone not particularly likeable, but capable of succeeding in the complicated and dangerous realm of the navy. For me to ask this question surely means that the training you’ve given me for three decades has failed at the crucial juncture. But Dad, tell me anyway. Your son is not as great as you imagine. Tell me, just this once.

“Think some more,” his father said.

Fine, Dad. You’ve given me an answer. They’ve told me quite a lot, those three words, more than could be said in thirty thousand. Believe me, I’m listening to them with my whole heart, but I still need you to be clearer, because this is far too important.

“And after I’ve thought?” Zhang Beihai asked, gripping the bedsheet with both hands. His palms and forehead were laced with sweat.

Dad, forgive me. If I disappointed you the last time, then let me go further, go back to being a kid once more.

“Beihai, all I can say is to think long and hard first,” his father replied.

Thank you, Dad. You’ve made it very clear, and I understand.

Zhang Beihai let go of the sheet and grasped his father’s bony hand. “Dad, I’m not going to sea anymore. I’ll come and see you all the time.”

His father smiled but shook his head: “This isn’t anything serious. Concentrate on your work.”

They spoke for a while longer, first of family matters, and then about the establishment of the space force, with his father contributing lots of ideas of his own, including advice for Zhang Beihai’s future work. They imagined the shape and size of space battleships, debated the weaponry of space warfare, and even whether Mahan’s theory of sea power applied to space battles….

But there was little significance in their conversation, just father and son taking a verbal stroll together. The significance was in the three lines their hearts exchanged:

“Think some more.”

“And after I’ve thought?”

“Beihai, all I can say is to think long and hard first.”

Zhang Beihai said good-bye to his father. As he was leaving the room, he turned back at the door to look at him, shrouded in shadow now that the light of the setting sun had departed. His eyes pierced the shadows and noticed one last scrap of illumination on the wall opposite. Although it was about to fade, this was the time when the setting sun was at its most beautiful. The last rays of sunlight shone, too, on the waves that rolled endlessly on the angry ocean and in shafts of light that pierced the jumbled clouds in the west and cast enormous golden bands on the water’s surface like petals fallen from heaven. Beyond the petals, dark clouds loomed over a world black as night as a thunderstorm hung between heaven and earth like the curtain of the gods, and only periodic lightning lit the snowlike spray thrown up by the waves. In one golden band, a destroyer struggled to lift its prow from the trough, and then broke through the wall of the wave with a thunderous crash, the spray greedily absorbing the light like a giant roc stretching enormous glittering wings to the sky.