At last, this lovely phoenix would disappear into the endless sea of flames.
Humanity returned to the world as it had been before Marconi.
As night fell, undulating auroras flooded the sky, even into the equatorial zones.
Facing television screens filled with white noise, most people could only guess and imagine at the situation in that vast land where war raged.
General Baker pushed aside the division commander of the Eighty-second Airborne and the assorted NATO frontline commanders attempting to drag him onto a helicopter. He raised his binoculars to continue surveilling the horizon, where the Russian front was rumbling in advance.
“Calibrate to four thousand meters! Load number-nine ammunition, delayed fuse, fire!”
From the sounds of artillery behind him, Baker could tell that no more than thirty of their 105 mm grenade launchers, last of the defensive heavy artillery, could still fire.
An hour ago, the German tank battalion that had been the last remaining armored-vehicle force in the position had launched an admirably courageous counterattack. They’d achieved outstanding results: eight kilometers away, they’d destroyed half again their number of Russian tanks. But under the crushing disadvantage in numbers, they had disappeared under the Russian army’s roaring torrent of steel like dew under the noon sun.
“Calibrate to thirty-five hundred meters, fire!”
The explosive missiles hissed as they flew, and flung up a barrier of earth and fire in front of the Russian tank lines. But they were like a landslide before a flood, the earth a short-lived impediment against the implacable waters.
Once the earth blasted up by the explosions fell back to the ground, the Russian armored cars reappeared in view through the dense smoke. Baker saw that they were arranged as densely as if they were receiving inspection. Attacking in this formation would have been suicide a few days ago, but now, with almost all of NATO’s aerial and long-distance firepower jammed, it was a perfectly feasible way to concentrate armored-vehicle strength as much as possible, ensuring a break in the enemy line.
Baker had expected that the defensive line would be poorly arranged. Under the electromagnetic conditions on the battlefield, it had been effectively impossible to quickly and accurately determine the direction the main enemy assault would take. As to how the defense would proceed, he didn’t know. With the C3I system completely down, quickly adjusting the defensive dispositions would be enormously difficult.
“Calibrate to three thousand meters, fire!”
“General, you were looking for me?” The French commander Lieutenant General Rousselle came over. Beside him were only a French lieutenant colonel and a helicopter pilot. He wasn’t wearing camouflage, and the medals on his chest and general’s stars on his shoulders shone brightly polished, making the steel helmet he wore and the rifle he held seem incongruous.
“I hear that the French Foreign Legion is withdrawing from the fortifications on our left wing.”
“Yes, General.”
“General Rousselle, seven hundred thousand NATO troops are in the process of retreat behind us. Their successful breakthrough of the enemy encirclement depends on our steadfast defense!”
“Depends on your steadfast defense.”
“Care to explain that comment?”
“You have plenty to explain yourself! You hid the real battle situation from us. You knew from the beginning that the Rightist allies would independently negotiate a cease-fire in the east!”
“As the commander in chief of the NATO forces, I had the right to do so. General, I think you’re also clear on the duty placed on you and your troops to follow the orders given.”
A silence.
“Calibrate to twenty-five hundred meters, fire!”
“I only obey the orders of the president of the French Republic.”
“I do not believe you could have received orders to that effect right now.”
“I received them months ago, at the National Day reception at Élysée Palace. The president personally informed me of how the French army should conduct itself under the present conditions.”
Baker finally lost his temper. “You bastards haven’t changed a bit since de Gaulle’s time!”2
“Don’t make it sound so unpleasant. If you won’t leave, I will stay here without my retinue as well. We will fight and die honorably together on the snowy plain. Napoleon lost here too. It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Rousselle said, gesturing with his French-made FAMAS rifle.
A silence.
“Calibrate to two thousand meters, fire!”
Baker turned slowly to face the frontline commanders in front of him. “Relay these words to the American soldiers defending these lines: We didn’t start out as an army dependent on computers to fight our battles. We come from an army of farming men. Decades ago, on Okinawa, we fought the Japanese foxhole by foxhole through the jungle. At Khe Sanh, we deflected the North Vietnamese soldiers’ grenades with shovels. Even longer ago, on that cold winter night, our great Washington himself led his barefoot soldiers across the icy Delaware to make history—”
“Calibrate to fifteen hundred meters, fire!”
“I order you, destroy all documents and excess supplies—”
“Calibrate to twelve hundred meters, fire!”
General Baker put on his helmet, strapped on his Kevlar vest, and clipped his 9 mm pistol to his left side. The grenade launchers went silent; the gunners were shoving the grenades into the barrels. Next sounded a mess of explosions.
“Troops,” Baker said, looking at the Russian tanks spread in front of them like the veil of death. “Bayonets up!”
The sun faded in and out of the thick smoke of the battlefield, throwing shifting light and shadow onto the snowy plain as the battle raged.
1 A simplified explanation of the electronic battle vocabulary:
Frequency hopping: The transmitter switches carrier frequencies according to a pattern possessed by the receiver.
Direct-sequence spread spectrum: The signal is distributed across a wide range of frequencies to make eavesdropping and jamming difficult.
Adaptive nulling system: An antenna array that nulls out signals coming from the direction of enemy jamming, allowing it to communicate with ally antennae in other directions.
Burst transmission: Transmitting data at a high rate over a short period of time using a wider-than-average frequency range.
Frequency agility: The signal is capable of rapidly and continuously changing frequency to avoid jamming.
2 In 1966, General de Gaulle withdrew all French armed forces from the NATO integrated military command, a serious blow to NATO’s Cold War efforts at the time.
SEA OF DREAMS
FIRST HALF
The Low-Temperature Artist
It was the Ice and Snow Arts Festival that lured the low-temperature artist here. The idea was absurd, but once the oceans had dried, this was how Yan Dong always thought of it. No matter how many years passed by, the scene when the low-temperature artist arrived remained clear in her mind.
At the time, Yan Dong was standing in front of her own ice sculpture, which she’d just completed. Exquisitely carved ice sculptures surrounded her. In the distance, lofty ice structures towered over a snowfield. These sparkling and translucent skyscrapers and castles were steeped in the winter sun. They were short-lived works of art. Soon, this glittering world would become a pool of clear water in the spring breeze. People were sad to see them melt but the process embodied many of life’s ineffable mysteries. This, perhaps, was the real reason why Yan Dong clung dearly to the ice and snow arts.