Say nodded again. “That certainly can be done, but I advise you to accept your current protection, because it is more specialized and reliable than the NYPD.”
“Please answer me honestly. Am I still a Wallfacer?”
Say returned to her desk. Standing beside the UN flag, she smiled slightly at Luo Ji. “What do you think?” Then she motioned for him to take a seat on the sofa.
The slight smile on Say’s face was familiar. He had seen the same smile on the face of the young assailant, and in the future he would see it in the eyes and on the face of everyone he met. The smile would come to be called “the Wallfacer smile,” and it would be as famous as the smile of the Mona Lisa or the grin of the Cheshire cat. Say’s smile calmed him down at last, the first time he had been truly calm since before she had stood on the rostrum and announced to the world that he was a Wallfacer. He sat slowly down on the sofa, and by the time he got situated, he understood everything.
My god!
It took just an instant for Luo Ji to comprehend the true nature of his status as Wallfacer. Like Say had said, before the mission was handed down, the ones who would undertake it could not have been consulted. And once the Wallfacer mission and identity were granted, they could not be refused or abandoned. This impossibility was not due to any individual’s coercion, but because cold logic, as determined by the project’s very nature, meant that once someone became a Wallfacer, an invisible and impenetrable screen was immediately thrown up between them and ordinary people that made their every action significant. And that was what the smiles directed at Wallfacers meant:
How are we supposed to know whether or not you have already started work?
He now understood that the Wallfacers had a mission far weirder than any in history, its logic cold and twisted, yet unyielding as the chains that bound Prometheus. It was an unliftable curse impossible for the Wallfacers to break under their own strength. No matter how he struggled, the totality of everything would be greeted with the Wallfacer smile and imbued with the significance of the Wallfacer Project:
How are we supposed to know whether or not you are working?
His heart surged with a towering fury such as he had never before experienced. He wanted to shout hysterically, to inquire after Say’s mother and the UN’s mother, to inquire after the mothers of all of the delegates at the special session and on the PDC, to inquire after the mothers of the entire human race, and finally to inquire after the nonexistent mothers of the Trisolarans. He wanted to jump up and down and smash things, to sweep aside the documents, globe, and bamboo pencil holder on Say’s desk, and then tear the blue flag to shreds…. But in the end he understood where he was and who he was facing, controlled himself, and stood up, only to fall heavily back upon the sofa again.
“Why was I chosen?” Luo Ji began, hands covering his face. “Next to the three of them, I have no qualifications. I have no talent and no experience. I’ve never seen war, much less led a country. I’m not a successful scientist. I’m just a university professor who muddles through by throwing together crappy papers. I’m someone who lives for today. I don’t want kids of my own, and I could care less about the continuation of human civilization…. Why was I picked?” By the end of this speech, he had jumped up from the sofa.
Say’s smile vanished. “To tell you the truth, Dr. Luo, we’re baffled by this too. And that’s the reason you have access to the fewest resources out of all of the Wallfacers. Choosing you is the greatest gamble in history.”
“But there’s got to be a reason why I was chosen!”
“Yes, but only indirectly. No one knows the real reason. Like I said, you have to find your own answer.”
“Then what about the indirect reason?”
“I’m sorry. I’m not authorized to tell you. But I do believe that you’ll know when the time is right.”
Luo Ji sensed that they had reached the end of their conversation, so he turned to leave, only realizing when he reached the door that he hadn’t said good-bye. He turned around. Like in the assembly hall, Say nodded at him with a smile. Only this time, he knew the meaning behind that smile.
She said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you again. But in the future, your work will be conducted within the framework of the PDC, so you will report directly to the PDC rotating chair.”
“You don’t have any confidence in me, do you?” Luo Ji asked.
“I said that choosing you was a huge gamble.”
“Then you’re right.”
“Right to have gambled?”
“No. Right to have no confidence in me.”
Again with no good-bye, he walked straight out of the office. Relapsing to the state he had been in just after being declared a Wallfacer, he walked aimlessly. At the end of the hallway, he entered an elevator and rode it down to the hall on the ground floor, then exited the Secretariat Building and came once more to the United Nations Plaza. He was surrounded by security guards the entire way, and though he pushed them impatiently a few times, they stuck to him like magnets and followed him wherever he went. It was daytime now, and Shi Qiang and Kent walked up to him in the sunny square and asked him to either go back inside or enter a vehicle as quickly as possible.
“I’m never going to see the sun again my entire life, am I?” he asked Shi Qiang.
“It’s not that. They’ve cleared the vicinity, so it’s relatively safe here. But there are lots of visitors who all recognize you. Crowds are hard to handle, and you probably don’t want that either.”
Luo Ji looked around him. At least for now, no one paid any attention to their small group. He headed toward the General Assembly Building and entered quickly for a second time. His goal was clear and he knew where he had to go. Past the empty balcony, he saw the colorful stained-glass panel. Turning right, he entered the Meditation Room, closing the door to keep Shi Qiang, Kent, and the guards outside.
When he saw the oblong slab of iron ore for a second time, his first instinct was to dash himself into it headfirst and put an end to everything. Instead he lay down on the stone’s smooth surface, whose coolness drained off some of the irritation from his mind. With his body, he felt the hardness of the ore and, weirdly, thought of a problem put forth by his high school physics teacher: How can you make a marble bed as soft as a Simmons mattress? The answer: Dig out a depression in that marble the exact size and shape of a human body. Then when you lie in that depression, the pressure will be evenly distributed and it would feel incredibly soft. He closed his eyes and imagined that the warmth of his body was melting the iron ore beneath him and forming that kind of depression…. Gradually, this calmed him. After a time, he opened his eyes and looked up at the bare ceiling.
The Meditation Room had been designed by Dag Hammarskjöld, second secretary general of the UN, who believed that the UN ought to have a place for meditation removed from the history-making decisions of the General Assembly Hall. Luo Ji didn’t know whether any head of state or ambassador to the UN had actually meditated here, but surely when Hammarskjöld died in 1961 he never imagined that a Wallfacer like himself would be daydreaming here.
Luo Ji felt himself getting snared once again in a logical trap, and once again was convinced that he could not extricate himself.
So he turned his attention to the power in his hands. The least of all the Wallfacers, Say had said, but he would certainly be able to make use of a terrifying amount of resources. Most importantly, he didn’t have to justify his use of them to anyone. In fact, an important part of his mandate was to act in such a way as to keep others guessing, and furthermore, to do as much as possible to engender misunderstandings. Never in human history had there been such a thing! Maybe the absolute monarchs of old had been able to do whatever they wished, but even they ultimately had to account for their actions.