Death's End

Trisolaris remained very wary of the humans on Mars. The two droplets recalled from the Kuiper Belt spent most of their time patrolling the space above the Martian city. Unlike the resettlement process on the surface of the Earth, although the Solar System Fleet had essentially been disarmed, people living on Mars still had access to modern technology—required for maintaining the habitability of the city. But the people living on Mars dared not engage in any adventures such as building a gravitational wave transmitter. The sophons certainly would have detected a large-scale venture like that, and people hadn’t forgotten the terror of the Doomsday Battle. The Martian base was as fragile as an eggshell, and the depressurization caused by a single droplet impact would have meant complete disaster.

The space resettlement process was completed in three months. Other than the Martian base, there was no more human presence in space in the Solar System, save for empty cities and ships drifting in orbit around the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and through the asteroid belt. They seemed to form a silent, metallic graveyard, where humankind’s glory and dreams were buried.

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From the safety of Fraisse’s house, Cheng Xin could only find out the situation in the larger world through TV. One day, she saw a live broadcast from a food distribution center. The holographic broadcast made her feel as if she were right there. The technology required ultra-broadband connections and was reserved for extremely important news these days. Most news was broadcast via simple 2-D.

The distribution center was located in Carnegie, on the edge of the desert. A gigantic tent appeared in the holographic display, like a broken half of an egg dropped in the desert with people spilling out of it like albumen. The crowd was rushing out because a new shipment of food had just arrived. Two flying transports, small but powerful, dangled a huge cube of packed food in nets.

After the first transport gently set down its cargo, the crowd surged like a flood from a burst dam and quickly overwhelmed the food pile. The security barrier formed by a few dozen soldiers collapsed at once, and the few food distribution workers climbed back into the hovering transport in terror. The pile of food disappeared into the crowd like a snowball thrown into muddy waters.

The lens zoomed in. People were now snatching food from those who had grabbed it from the pile. The bags of food, like rice grains in a swarm of ants, were quickly torn apart, and the mob fought over whatever tumbled out. The second transport deposited another pile in an empty space a bit farther away. This time, there were no soldiers to provide security at all, and the distribution workers didn’t dare get out of the plane. The crowd swarmed this new pile like iron shavings toward a magnet and quickly covered it.

A figure in green, slender and supple, leapt out of the transport and gracefully landed on the food pile about a dozen meters below. The crowd stopped. They saw that the figure standing atop it was Sophon. She was still dressed in camouflage, and the black scarf around her neck flapped in the hot wind, highlighting her pale face.

“Form a line!” Sophon shouted.

The lens zoomed in again. Sophon’s beautiful eyes glared at the crowd. Her voice was very loud and could be heard over the rumbling of the transport engines. But the crowd below only paused briefly before resuming their agitated motion. Those closest to the pile began to cut through the netting to get at the food bags inside. The crowd became more frenzied, and a few daring ones began to climb up the pile, ignoring Sophon.

“You useless things! Why aren’t you out here keeping order?” Sophon lifted her face and shouted at the transport. In the open door of the transport stood a few shocked officials from the UN Resettlement Commission. “Where are your armies? Your police? What about the weapons we allowed you to bring here? Where is your responsibility?”

The chair of the Resettlement Commission stood at the door of the transport. He held on to the doorframe with one hand for support, and waved his other hand at Sophon, shaking his head helplessly.