Cixin Liu - The Three-Body Problem

After Shi Qiang finished speaking, he stood and waited a few seconds. Then he raised his hands, said to the stunned crowd, “That’s it,” turned, and left.

The air seemed frozen. Everyone present stayed still like stone statues. Even the droning from the computers all around them seemed more careful.

After a long while, someone timidly broke the silence, “Professor Wang, is ‘Flying Blade’ really in the form of filaments?”

Wang nodded. “Given our current molecular construction technique, the only form we can make is a filament. The thickness is about one-hundredth the thickness of human hair…. Officer Shi got this information from me before the meeting.”

“Do you have enough material?”

“How wide is the canal? And how tall is the ship?”

“The narrowest point of the canal is one hundred fifty meters wide. Judgment Day is thirty-one meters tall, with a draft of eight meters or so.”

Wang stared at the cigars on the table and did some mental calculations. “I think I should have enough.”

Another long silence. Everyone was trying to recover from their astonishment.

“What if the equipment storing Trisolaran data, such as hard drives and optical disks, is also sliced?”

“That doesn’t seem likely.”

“Even if they were sliced,” a computer expert said, “it’s not a big deal. The filaments are extremely sharp, and the cut surfaces would be very smooth. Given that premise, whether it’s hard drives, optical disks, or integrated circuit storage, we could recover the vast majority of the data.”

“Anyone got a better idea?” Chang looked around the table. No one spoke. “All right. Then let’s focus on this and work out the details.”

Colonel Stanton, who had been silent the whole time, stood up. “I will go and ask Officer Shi to come back.”

General Chang indicated that he should remain seated. Then he called out, “Da Shi!”

Da Shi returned, grinning at everyone. He picked up the cigars on the table. The one that had been lit he put into his mouth, and the other he stuffed into his pocket.

Someone asked, “When Judgment Day passes, can those two pillars bear the force applied against the Flying Blade filaments? Maybe the pillars would be sliced apart first.”

Wang said, “That’s easy to solve. We have some small amounts of Flying Blade material that are flat sheets. We can use them to protect the parts of the column where the filaments are attached.”

The discussion after that was mainly between the naval officers and navigation experts.

“ Judgment Day is at the upper limit in terms of tonnage that can pass through the Panama Canal. It has a deep draft, so we have to consider installing filaments below the waterline.”

“That will be very difficult. If there’s not enough time, I don’t think we should worry about it. The parts of the ship below the waterline are used for engines, fuel, and ballast, causing a lot of noise, vibration, and interference. The conditions are too poor for computing centers and other similar facilities to be located there. But for the parts above water, a tighter nanofilament net will give better results.”

“Then it’s best to set the trap at one of the locks along the canal. Judgment Day is built to Panamax specifications, just enough to fill the thirty-two-meter locks. Then we would only need to make the Flying Blade filaments thirty-two meters long. This will also make it easier to erect the pillars and string the filaments between them, especially for the underwater parts.”

“No. The situation around the locks is too unpredictable. Also, a ship inside the lock must be pulled forward by four ‘mules,’ electric locomotives on rails. They move slowly, and the time inside the locks will also be when the crew is most alert. An attempt to slice through the ship during that time would most likely be discovered.”

“What about the Bridge of the Americas, right outside the Miraflores Locks? The abutments at the two ends of the bridge can serve as the pillars for stringing the filaments.”

“No. The distance between the abutments is too great. We don’t have enough Flying Blade material.”

“Then it’s decided: The site of operation should be the narrowest point of the Gaillard Cut, a hundred and fifty meters across. Add in some slack for the pillars… let’s call it a hundred seventy meters.”

Wang said, “If that’s the plan, then the smallest distance between the filaments will be fifty centimeters. I don’t have enough material for a tighter net.”

“In other words, we have to make sure the ship crosses during the day,” Da Shi said, blowing out another mouthful of smoke.

“Why?”

“At night the crew will be sleeping, which means they’ll all be lying down. Fifty centimeters between filaments leaves too much of a gap. But during the day, even if they’re sitting or crouching, the distance is sufficient.”

A few scattered laughs. The attendees, all under heavy stress, felt a bit of release tinged with the smell of blood.

“You’re truly a demon,” a female UN official said to Da Shi.

“Will innocent bystanders be hurt?” Wang asked, his voice trembling.

A naval officer replied, “When the ship goes through the locks, more than a dozen cable workers will come onboard, but they’ll all get off after the ship passes. The Panama Canal pilot will have to accompany the ship the entire eighty-two kilometers, so the pilot will have to be sacrificed.”

A CIA officer said, “And some of the crew aboard Judgment Day probably don’t know the real purpose of the ship.”

“Professor,” General Chang said, “do not concern yourself with these thoughts. The information we need to obtain has to do with the very survival of human civilization. Someone else will make the call.”

As the meeting ended, Colonel Stanton pushed the beautiful cigar box in front of Shi Qiang. “Captain, the best Havana has to offer. They’re yours.”

Wang could not even tell that he was in a foreign country. He knew that to the west, not too far away, was beautiful Gatun Lake. To the east was the magnificent Bridge of the Americas and Panama City. But he had had no chance to see either of them.

Two days earlier, he had arrived by direct flight from China to Tocumen International Airport near Panama City and then rode a helicopter here. The sight before him was very common: The construction work under way to widen the canal caused the tropical forest on both slopes to be quite sparse, revealing large patches of yellow earth. The color felt familiar to Wang. The canal didn’t seem very special, probably because it was so narrow here, but a hundred thousand people had dug out this part of the canal in the previous century, one hoe at a time.

Wang and Colonel Stanton sat on lounge chairs under an awning halfway up the slope. Both wore loose, colorful shirts, with their Panama hats tossed to the side, looking like two tourists.

Below, on each shore of the canal, a twenty-four-meter steel pillar lay flat against the ground, parallel to the shore. Fifty ultrastrong nanofilaments, each 160 meters long, were strung between the pillars. At the end on the eastern shore, every filament was connected to a length of regular steel wire. This was to give the filaments enough slack so that they could sink to the bottom of the canal, aided by attached weights. The setup permitted other ships safe passage. Luckily, traffic along the canal wasn’t quite as busy as Wang had imagined. On average, only about forty large ships passed through each day.

The operation’s code name was “Guzheng,” based on the similarity between the structure and the ancient Chinese zither by that name. The slicing net of nanofilaments was thus called the “zither.”