The Three-Body Problem (7 page)

The meeting table, formed by pushing several smaller tables together, was piled with documents and odds and ends. The attendees, their clothes wrinkled, looked exhausted. Those wearing ties had all pulled them loose. It seemed as if they had been up all night.

A major general named Chang Weisi presided over the meeting, and half the attendees were military officers. After a few quick introductions, Wang found out that many of the others were police. The rest were academics like him, with a few prominent scientists specializing in basic research in the mix.

He also found four foreigners in attendance. Their identities shocked him: a United States Air Force colonel and a British Army colonel, both NATO liaisons, as well as two CIA officers, apparently acting as observers.

On the faces of everyone around the table, Wang could read one sentiment:
We’ve done all we can. Let’s fucking get it over with, already
.

Wang Miao saw Shi Qiang sitting at the table. In contrast to his rudeness yesterday, Shi greeted Wang as “Professor.” But the smirk on Shi’s face annoyed Wang. He didn’t want to sit next to Shi, but he had no choice, as that was the only empty seat. The already thick cloud of cigarette smoke in the room became thicker.

As documents were distributed, Shi moved closer to Wang. “Professor Wang, I understand you’re researching some kind of … new material?”

“Nanomaterial,” Wang answered.

“I’ve heard of it. That stuff is really strong, right? Do you think it could be used to commit crimes?” As Shi’s face was still half smirking, Wang couldn’t tell if he was joking.

“What do you mean?”

“Heh. I heard that a strand of that stuff could be used to lift up a truck. If criminals steal some and make it into a knife, can’t they slice a car in half with one stroke?”

“There’s no need to even make it into a knife. That kind of material can be made into a line as thin as one-hundredth of a hair. If you string it across a road, a passing car would be sliced into two halves like cheese—but what can’t be used for criminal purposes? Even a dull knife for descaling a fish can!”

Shi pulled a document halfway out of the envelope in front of him and shoved it back in again, suddenly losing interest. “You’re right. Even a fish can be used to commit a crime. I handled a murder case once. Some bitch cut off her husband’s family jewels. You know what she used? A frozen tilapia she got out of the freezer! The spines along the back were like razors—”

“I’m not interested. Did you ask me to the meeting just to talk about this?”

“Fish? Nanomaterials? No, no, nothing to do with those.” Shi put his mouth next to Wang’s ear. “Don’t be nice to them. They’re prejudiced against us. All they want is to get information out of us, but never tell us anything. Look at me. I’ve been here for a month, and I still don’t know anything, just like you.”

“Comrades,” General Chang said, “let’s get started. Of all the combat zones around the globe, this one has become the focal point. We need to update the current situation for all the attending comrades.”

The unusual term “combat zone” gave Wang pause. He also noticed that the general did not seem to want to explain in detail the background of what they were dealing with to new people like him. This supported Shi’s point. Also, in General Chang’s short opening remarks, he used the word “comrades” twice. Wang looked at the NATO and CIA officers sitting across from him. The general had neglected to add “gentlemen.”

“They’re also comrades. Anyway, that’s how everyone addresses each other here,” Shi whispered to Wang, pointing at the four foreigners with his cigarette.

While he was baffled by how Shi knew what he was thinking, Wang was impressed with his powers of observation.

“Da Shi, put out your cigarette. There’s enough smoke here,” General Chang said as he flipped through some documents. He called Shi Qiang by a nickname, “Big Shi.”

Shi looked around but couldn’t find an ashtray. In the end, he dropped the cigarette into a teacup. He raised his hand, and before Chang could even acknowledge him, he spoke loudly. “General, I have a request which I’ve made before: I want information parity.”

General Chang lifted his head. “There’s never been a military operation in which there was information parity. I have to apologize to all the scholars, but we cannot give you any more background.”

“We are
not
the same as the eggheads,” Shi said. “The police have been part of the Battle Command Center from the start. But even now, we still don’t know what this is all about. You continue to push the police out. You learn from us what you need about our techniques, and then you send us away one by one.”

Several other police officers in attendance whispered to Shi to shut up. It surprised Wang that Shi dared to speak in this manner to a man of Chang’s rank. But Chang’s response surprised him even more.

“Da Shi, it seems that you still have the same problem you had back when you were in the army. You think you can speak for the police? Because of your poor record, you had already been suspended for several months, and you were about to be expelled from the force. I asked for you because I value your experience in city policing. You should treasure this opportunity.”

Shi continued to speak roughly. “So I’m working in the hope of redeeming myself by good service? I thought you told me that all my techniques were dishonest and crooked.”

“But useful.” Chang nodded at Shi. “All we care about is if they’re useful. In a time of war, we can’t afford to be too scrupulous.”

“We can’t be too fastidious,” a CIA officer said, in perfect Modern Standard Mandarin. “We can no longer rely on conventional thinking.”

The British colonel apparently also understood Chinese. He nodded. “To be, or not to be…” he added in English. “It’s a matter of life and death.”

“What is he saying?” Shi asked Wang.

“Nothing,” Wang replied mechanically. The people before him seemed to be speaking out of a dream.
Time of war? Where is this war?
He twisted to look out one of the floor-length windows. Through the window he could see Beijing in the distance: Under the spring sun, cars filled the streets like a dense river; on a lawn someone was walking a dog; a few children were playing.…

Which is more real? The world inside or outside these walls?

General Chang said, “Recently, the enemy has intensified the pattern of attacks. The targets remain elite scientists. Please begin by taking a look at the list of names in the document.”

Wang took out the first page of the document, printed in large font. The list seemed to have been generated in a hurry, containing both Chinese and English names.

“Professor Wang, as you look through these names, does anything strike you?” General Chang asked.

“I know three of the names. All of them are famous scholars working at the forefront of physics research.” Wang was a little distracted. His eyes locked onto the last name on the list. In his mind, the two characters took on a different tint than the names above it.
How can her name appear here? What happened to her?

“You know her?” Shi pointed to the name with a thick finger, stained yellow from smoking. Wang did not reply. “Ha. Don’t know her. But
want
to know her?”

Now Wang Miao understood why it made sense for General Chang to have asked to have this man who was once a soldier under his command. Shi, who appeared so vulgar and careless, had eyes as sharp as knives. Maybe he wasn’t a
good
cop, but he was certainly a fearsome one.

*   *   *

A year earlier, Wang Miao had been in charge of the nanoscale components for the “Sinotron II” high-energy particle accelerator project. One afternoon, during a brief break at the Liangxiang construction site, Wang was struck by the scene before him. As a landscape photography enthusiast, Wang often saw the sights around him as artistic compositions.

The main component of the composition was the solenoid of the superconducting magnet they were still installing. About three stories high and only half completed, the magnet loomed like a monster made of giant blocks of metal and a confusing mess of cryogenic coolant pipes. Like a junk heap from the Industrial Revolution, the structure exuded inhuman technological grimness and steel-bound barbarity.

In front of this metal monster stood the slim figure of a young woman. The composition’s lighting was fantastic as well: The metal monster was buried in the shadow of a temporary construction shelter, further emphasizing its stern, rough quality. But a single ray of light from the westering sun coming through the central hole in the shelter fell right on the woman. The soft glow lit up her supple hair and highlighted her white neck above the collar of her overalls, as though a single flower was blooming in a metal ruin after a violent thunderstorm.…

“What are you looking at? Get back to work!”

Wang was shocked out of his reverie, but then realized that the director of the Nanotechnology Research Center wasn’t talking to him, but to a young engineer who had also been staring at the woman. Having returned from art to reality, Wang saw that the young woman wasn’t an ordinary worker—the chief engineer stood next to her, explaining something respectfully.

“Who is she?” Wang asked the director.

“You should know her,” the director said, waving his hand around in a large circle. “The first experiment on this twenty-billion-yuan accelerator will probably be to test her superstring model. Now, seniority matters in theoretical physics, and normally, she wouldn’t have been senior enough to get the first shot. But those older academics didn’t dare to show up first, afraid that they might fail and lose face, so that’s why she got the chance.”

“What? Yang Dong is … a woman?”

“Indeed,” the director said. “We only found out when we finally met her two days ago.”

The young engineer asked, “Does she have some psychological issue? Why else wouldn’t she agree to be interviewed by the media? Maybe she’s like Qian Zhongshu,
11
who died without ever appearing on TV.”

“But at least we knew Qian’s gender. I bet Yang had some unusual experiences as a child. Maybe it made her somewhat autistic.” Wang’s words were tinged with a hint of self-mockery. He wasn’t even famous enough for the media to be interested in him, let alone to turn down interview requests.

Yang walked over with the chief engineer. As they passed, she smiled at Wang and the others, nodding lightly without saying anything. Wang remembered her limpid eyes.

That night, Wang sat in his study and admired the few landscape photographs, his works he was the most proud of, hanging on the wall. His eyes fell on a frontier scene: a desolate valley terminating in a snowcapped mountain. On the nearer end of the valley, half of a dead tree, eroded by the vicissitudes of many years, took up one-third of the picture. In his imagination, Wang placed the figure that lingered in his mind at the far end of the valley. Surprisingly, it made the entire scene come alive, as though the world in the photograph recognized that tiny figure and responded to it, as though the whole scene existed for her.

He then imagined her figure in each of his other photographs, sometimes pasting her two eyes into the empty sky over the landscapes. Those images also came alive, achieving a beauty that Wang had never imagined.

Wang had always thought that his photographs lacked some kind of soul. Now he understood that they were missing
her
.

*   *   *

“All the physicists on this list have committed suicide in the last two months,” General Chang said.

Wang was thunderstruck. Gradually, his black-and-white landscapes faded into blankness in his mind. The photographs no longer had her figure in the foreground, and her eyes were wiped from the skies. Those worlds were all dead.

“When … did this happen?” Wang asked mechanically.

“The last two months,” Chang repeated.

“You mean the last name, don’t you?” Shi responded with satisfaction. “She was the last to commit suicide—two nights ago, overdosed on sleeping pills. She died very peacefully. No pain.”

For a moment, Wang was grateful to Shi.

“Why?” Wang asked. The dead scenes in those landscape photographs continued to flicker through his mind.

General Chang replied, “The only thing we can be sure of is this: The same reason drove all of them to suicide. But it’s hard to articulate. Maybe it’s impossible for us nonspecialists to even understand the reason. The document contains excerpts from their suicide notes. Everyone can examine them after the meeting.”

Wang flipped through the notes: All of them seemed to be long essays.

“Dr. Ding, would you please show Yang Dong’s note to Professor Wang? Hers is the shortest and possibly the most representative.”

The man in question, Ding Yi, had been silent until now. After another pause, he finally took out a white envelope and handed it across the table to Wang.

Shi whispered, “He was Yang’s boyfriend.” Wang recalled that he had seen Ding at the particle accelerator construction site in Liangxiang. He was a theoretician who had became famous for his discovery of the macroatom while studying ball lightning.
12
Wang took from the envelope a thin, irregularly shaped sheet exuding a faint fragrance—not paper, but birch bark. A single line of graceful characters was written on it:

All the evidence points to a single conclusion: Physics has never existed, and will never exist. I know what I’m doing is irresponsible. But I have no choice.

There wasn’t even a signature. She was gone.

“Physics … does not exist?” Wang had no idea what to think.

General Chang closed the folder. “The file also contains some specific information related to the experimental results obtained after the completion of the world’s three newest particle accelerators. It’s very technical, and we won’t be discussing it here. The first focus of our investigation is the Frontiers of Science. UNESCO designated 2005 the World Year of Physics, and that organization gradually developed out of the numerous academic conferences and exchanges that occurred among world physicists that year. Dr. Ding, since you’re a theoretical physicist, can you give us more background on it?”