Cixin Liu - The Dark Forest

“Well, I think it looks like eyes.”

“The eyes of twilight, no?”

“The eyes of twilight? That’s a marvelous way to put it, Mr. Luo.”

“Dawn or twilight? You prefer twilight, do you?”

“That’s right. How did you know? I love painting the twilight.” Her eyes shone crystalline in the firelight, as if asking, What’s wrong with that?

The next morning, after the rain had cleared, Luo Ji felt as if God had washed out this Garden of Eden to prepare for Zhuang Yan’s arrival. When she saw its true appearance for the first time, what Luo Ji heard was not the squeals and fussing and exclamations that young women like her usually made. No, in the face of such a magnificent vista, she fell into an awed and breathless state and was unable to speak even one word of praise. He could tell that she was far more sensitive to natural beauty than other women.

“So you really like to paint?” he asked.

She stared speechless at the distant snow peak, and it was some time before she recovered her senses. “Oh, yes. But if I’d grown up here, I probably wouldn’t.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’ve imagined lots of wonderful places, and when I paint them it’s like I’ve been there. But this place has everything from my dreams and imagination, so what would a painting do?”

“That’s true. When the beauty in your imagination becomes reality, it’s really…” He trailed off, and glanced at Zhuang Yan against the sunrise, the angel who had stepped out of his dream. The happiness in his heart rippled like the waves on the lake sparkling in the light. The UN and the PDC never imagined that this would be a consequence of the Wallfacer Project. If he died now, he wouldn’t care.

“Mr. Luo, if it rained so much yesterday, why hasn’t the snow on that mountain been washed away?” she asked.

“The rain fell below the snowline. That mountain has snow year-round. The climate here is very different from back in China.”

“Have you been to the mountain?”

“No. I haven’t been here very long.” He noticed that the girl’s eyes never left the mountain. “Do you like snowcaps?”

She nodded.

“Then let’s go.”

“Really? When?” she exclaimed in excitement.

“We can set off now. There’s a simple roadway that runs to the foot of the mountain, and if we go now, we can be back by evening.”

“What about work?” Zhuang Yan tore her eyes from the mountain and looked at Luo Ji.

“Work can be set aside for now. You just arrived,” he said perfunctorily.

“Well…” She tilted her head, giving his heart a jolt. The naïve expression was one he had seen on her countless times before. “Mr. Luo, I’ve got to know what it is I’m doing.”

He looked into the distance and thought for a few seconds, then said with finality, “I’ll tell you when we’ve reached the mountain.”

“Great! Then we should be off, shouldn’t we?”

“Right. It’s easier if we take the boat to the other side of the lake and then drive from there.”

They walked to the end of the pier. Luo Ji noted that the wind was favorable, so they could take the sailboat. The direction would change at night so they would be able to catch it again coming back. He took her by the hand to help her into the boat. It was the first time he had touched her, and her hands were exactly like the ones he had first clasped on that winter night in his imagination, so soft and cool. She was pleasantly surprised when he raised the white spinnaker. When the boat left the pier, she plunged a hand into the water.

“The lake water is very cold,” he said.

“But it’s so clean and clear!”

Like your eyes, he said to himself. “Why do you like snowcaps?”

“I like traditional painting.”

“What’s that got to do with snowcaps?”

“Mr. Luo, are you aware of the difference between traditional painting and oil painting? Oil paintings are brimming with rich colors. A master once said that in oil painting, white is as precious as gold. But it’s different with traditional painting. There’s lots and lots of blank space, and blank space forms the painting’s eyes. The scenery is just the border for that blank space. Look at that snowy peak. Doesn’t it look like the blank space in a traditional painting?”

This was the most she had ever said to him. She lectured the Wallfacer, pouring out words and turning him into an ignorant schoolboy, without any sense of being out of line.

You’re like the blank space in a traditional painting: pure, but to a mature appreciation, infinitely appealing, he thought as he looked at her.

The boat docked at a pier on the opposite shore, where an open-top Jeep was parked next to the trees. The driver who had parked it there was gone.

“Is this a military car? I saw troops around when I arrived, and had to go past three sentry points,” she said as they got into the car.

“That doesn’t matter. They won’t bother us,” he said, starting the engine.

The road passing through the forest was narrow and rough, but the car drove smoothly on it. In the forest, where the morning mist had not yet lifted, the sun penetrated the tall pines with shafts of light, and even through the engine sound they could hear the calls of birds in the trees. A sweet breeze whipped up Zhuang Yan’s hair and tossed it about on Luo Ji’s face, and the itching made him think of the winter road trip two years ago.

Everything about their surroundings was completely remote from Mount Taihang and the snowy northern China plains, but his dreams from that trip were so seamlessly connected to today’s reality that he found it hard to believe that it was actually happening to him.

He turned to look at Zhuang Yan and found her looking back at him. She had been for a long time, it seemed. The look in her eyes was one of slight curiosity mixed with goodwill and innocence. Sunbeams flickered over her face and body. When she saw Luo Ji looking at her, she did not turn away.

“Mr. Luo, do you really have the ability to defeat the aliens?” she asked.

He was completely overcome by her childlike nature. The question was one that no one but her would ever ask a Wallfacer, and they had known each other so briefly.

“Zhuang Yan, the core meaning of the Wallfacer Project is to encapsulate humanity’s real strategy in the mind of one person, the only place in the world that’s safe from sophon spying. They had to choose a few people, but that doesn’t mean those people are supermen. Superman doesn’t exist.”

“But why were you chosen?”

That question was even more abrupt and outrageous than the previous one, but it sounded natural coming from Zhuang Yan’s lips, because in her transparent heart, every sunbeam was transmitted and refracted with crystalline clarity.

Luo Ji slowed the car to a stop. She looked at him in surprise as he stared straight ahead at the patches of sun on the roadway.

“Wallfacers are the most untrustworthy people in history. The world’s greatest liars.”

“That’s your duty.”

He nodded. “But, Zhuang Yan, I’m going to tell you the truth. Please believe me.”

She nodded. “Mr. Luo, please continue. I believe you.”

He was silent for a long while, increasing the weight of the words he then uttered. “I don’t know why I was chosen.” He turned to her. “I’m just an ordinary man.”

She nodded again. “It must be very hard.”

Those words and Zhuang Yan’s look of innocence again brought tears to his eyes. It was the first time he had received such an acknowledgement since becoming a Wallfacer. The girl’s eyes were his paradise, and in that clear gaze he saw no trace of the expression that everyone else directed at the Wallfacers. Her smile was paradise for him, too. It wasn’t the Wallfacer smile, but a pure, innocent smile, like a sun-drenched dewdrop falling softly into the driest part of his soul.