Tales of the End of the Century

After returning from the mining area, Bai Ye sat under the jujube tree for two nights.

The first night he just sat there, thinking of nothing. The second night he started thinking about the cave—not about the ashes and relics, but about the person. He didn't know his name, his number, which department in Research Institute 17 he worked in, or how he found that mining area after being transferred. He only knew that the person had spent many years deep in the mine. The earliest line of chalk writing on the wall was dated before the Aurora Project's rift period ended. The last stroke on the wall was crooked, pointing towards the crack in the door, as if the chalk had slipped from his hand and fallen to the ground after the last stroke, never to be picked up again.

On the third night, Bai Ye placed the enamel mug on a rock, stood up, walked to the jujube tree, and reached out to touch the various axe marks on the trunk. The one Tie Niu had cleaved with his left hand was the deepest, the bark peeled back and already scabbed over; the last few marks left by the gray-clad man and Vasily before they left were still shallow, the edges without peeling bark; his own mark—the mark left on the bark after his first mishanded cleaving with his left hand—had somehow become the same depth. He withdrew his hand from the trunk, bent down, picked up a pebble, and placed it on top of the pile of pebbles next to the base of the jujube tree.

"I want to go down again."

Tie Niu was squatting against the wall, sharpening his knife. The grinding wheel paused for a moment. "The mining area?"

“Yes.” Bai Ye turned around. “Last time we found that cave. The owner of the cave is no longer in there—he walked out on his own, he wasn’t taken away. Before he left, he folded the blankets, placed the kettle next to the fire pit, and put the enamel mug on top of the mirror on the table. He didn’t leave a note, he didn’t write his name, but he left this cave for those who came after him—a clean water source, spare cans, a kerosene lamp, and a door that couldn’t be bolted from the outside. He wasn’t someone who locked himself inside; he was waiting for someone—waiting for those who came after him, people like us.”

Tie Niu flipped the dagger over and continued sharpening it, the grinding wheel turning two more times. "How did you know?"

"Because he carved arrows at the fork in the road at the mine entrance." Bai Ye squatted down and drew a simple map of the forks in the road on the stone slab with chalk. "The first chamber is a rest area with blankets, canned goods, and water. The second chamber is more hidden, requiring you to pass through narrow alleys and iron gates to find it. The arrows only go up to the first chamber—he assumed that later visitors would stop at the first chamber, where there was food, drink, and a place to sleep, without needing to go any deeper. But if you continue, you'll find the second door. The second door doesn't have an arrow—it doesn't need one. Anyone who gets there isn't lost; they're looking for him."

Lan Susu emerged from the east wing, holding an oscilloscope. The slow signal on the screen—in the direction where Lao Wei had originally been—had faded considerably compared to a few days ago, leaving only a very faint undulation. But in another direction of this old signal, she detected a completely different frequency, deeper and slower than the previous one, as if it had just awakened in the darkness, or as if it were being lifted little by little upwards by something larger. She said this new signal appeared after the last mining operation, its intensity was very low, unlike the spontaneous frequency of someone who had never encountered the fissure before; it was more like a response—someone deep within the mine sensed their arrival and then turned on their lights.

Tie Niu tucked his knife back into his belt, stood up, and walked to the courtyard gate, looking at the jujube tree. The jujube blossoms had all fallen, and the branches were laden with small, unripe jujubes, no bigger than grains of rice, covered with a layer of grayish-white fuzz. He reached out and pinched one; it was pitted. The last time they went into the mine was to track down Old Wei's "spark." They had recovered the spark, but they brought back the old work clothes with the badge, and the note handwritten by Sergei. This time was different—last time there was only a faint signal; this time there were two. The other signal had been silent for even longer than Old Wei's, hidden in a more remote branch, only awakening this time. "That unlocked door wasn't left for him."

Bai Ye looked down at the dates that were slowly growing and sweetening, recalling the feeling of reading the chalk wall in Old Wei's cave. "He's still here. He's gone deeper—not abandoning the rift, but taking it all with him. We have to find them."

Old Hu remained silent, simply placing the enamel mug at his feet and slowly pulling out a cigarette, lighting it. The flame flickered briefly in the night before dimming again. He exhaled a puff of smoke, gazing through the haze at the new pebble beneath the jujube tree. "You brought back so much stuff last time. What are you planning to take this time?"

Bai Ye poured the chilled tea from the jar under the jujube tree roots, reached into his inner pocket, and found the note with Sergei's blue ink—the one he'd found in the tin box last time. The note was thin, almost worn through by the creases, and had been covered with a layer of transparent tape on the back. He placed the note on the stone table and weighed it down with pebbles. "I'm not taking this. It's back." He went inside and took out the reflecting mirror—not the one Lao Wei left behind, but the one he'd brought from the relay station. Next to the old crack on the mirror, there was a new chalk line—the one he'd drawn on Millennium Night. He wrapped it in his trench coat and handed it to Lao Hu. "Leave this here too. Put it at the bottom of the iron bucket, at the very bottom of the toolbox—no need to leave it drying anymore."

Tie Niu walked to the jujube tree and touched the shallow marks left by the gray-clad man and Vasily on the trunk. His voice deepened. "They haven't returned yet." Lan Susu lowered her eyes and opened her notebook. Next to the newly listed signal frame, she marked its origin with another positioning line. "They took the manuscript of the transformation exercise with them—there are people waiting in the north too. Perhaps the people we found in the mining area this time will eventually be brought back to Elm Tree Gully by them."

Bai Ye hung a canvas satchel on a low branch of a jujube tree, carefully picked up the faded old Aurora Project work clothes from the east wing window, and put them into the satchel along with the name tag and photo. Lan Susu prepared blank cassette tapes and spare batteries, and reviewed the hand-drawn map left by Bai Ge, circling several possible hiding places in the northern branch of the mining area that needed further tracking. Tie Niu loaded the spare reflective rope, headlamp, and first-aid kit onto the jeep, and carefully inflated each tire.

The departure time was set for after dawn. Bai Ye squatted under the jujube tree, placed the enamel mug at his feet, and picked up a new pebble and placed it next to the pile of pebbles. Then he moved the pebble that had been illuminated by the sparks over, and the two were placed side by side—one old, one new, with only a finger's width of gap between them, just enough to fit a pebble that he hadn't had time to pick up yet.