On the third day after witnessing the destruction of Trisolaris, Sophon invited Cheng Xin and Luo Ji to tea. She said that she had no ulterior motives. They were old friends, after all, and she missed them.
The UN and Fleet International were intensely interested in the meeting. The expectant, lost attitude prevalent in society posed a terrible danger. Human society was as fragile as a sand castle on the beach, prone to collapse with a passing gale. The leaders wanted the two former Swordholders to gather some information from Sophon that would reassure the people. In an emergency session of the PDC convened for this purpose, someone even hinted to Cheng Xin and Luo Ji that even if they couldn’t get such intelligence from Sophon, perhaps it was acceptable to manufacture some.
After the universal broadcast of six years ago, Sophon had retreated from public life. Once in a while, she might appear in public, but only to serve as an expressionless speaking tube for Trisolaris. She had remained in that elegant dwelling hanging from a tree branch, though most of the time she was probably in standby mode.
Cheng Xin met Luo Ji on the bough leading to Sophon’s house. Luo Ji had spent the Great Resettlement with the Resistance. Although he did not directly participate or lead any operations, he remained the spiritual center of the resistance fighters. The Earth Security Force and the droplets had made every effort to seek him out and kill him, but somehow, he had managed to evade them. Not even the sophons could locate him.
To Cheng Xin’s eyes, Luo Ji appeared to have retained his upright, cold demeanor. Other than the fact that his hair and beard appeared even whiter in the breeze, the past seven years seemed to have left no mark on him. But then, without speaking, he smiled at her, and the gesture made her feel warm. Luo Ji reminded Cheng Xin of Fraisse. Though the two were completely different, they both brought with them some mountainlike strength from the Common Era, and gave Cheng Xin the sense that they could be relied on in this strange new time. Wade, the Common Era man who was as evil and vicious as a wolf and who had almost killed her, also had it—so she found herself relying even on him. It was an odd feeling.
Sophon welcomed them in front of her house. Once again, she was dressed in a splendid kimono, and she wore fresh flowers in her bun. That vicious ninja dressed in camouflage had disappeared completely, and she was once again a woman who resembled a bubbling spring nestled among flowers.
“Welcome, welcome! I wanted to pay a visit to your honored abode, but then I wouldn’t be able to properly entertain you with the Way of Tea. Please accept my humble apologies. I am so delighted to see you.” Sophon bowed to them, and her words were as gentle and soft as the first time Cheng Xin had met her. She led the two through the bamboo grove in her yard, across the little wooden bridge over the trickling spring, and into the pavilionlike parlor. Then the three sat down on tatami mats, and Sophon began to set out the implements for the Way of Tea. Time passed tranquilly, and clouds rolled and unfurled across the blue sky outside.
A complex mix of feelings flooded Cheng Xin’s heart as she watched Sophon’s graceful movements.
Yes, she (or they?) could have succeeded in wiping them out, and had almost succeeded several times. But each time, humanity had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat through tenaciousness, cunning, and luck. After a three-century-long march, all Sophon had managed was to see her home annihilated in a sea of flames.
Sophon had known of the destruction of Trisolaris four years ago. Three days earlier, after the light from the explosion had reached the Earth, she had given a brief speech to the public. She recounted the death of Trisolaris in simple words, and made no denunciation or judgment of the cause—the gravitational wave broadcast initiated by two human ships. Many suspected that four years ago, when Trisolaris had been wiped out, those who had controlled her from four light-years away had perished in the fiery flames, but her current controllers were more likely on the spaceships of the Trisolaran Fleet. During the speech, Sophon’s tone and expression had been calm. This wasn’t the same as the woodenness she had shown when she had merely acted as a speaking tube, but a manifestation of her controllers’ soul and spirit, a dignity and nobility in the face of annihilation that humanity could not hope to equal. People now felt an unprecedented awe toward this civilization that had lost its home world.
The limited information provided by Sophon and the Earth’s own observations drew a rough picture of Trisolaris’s destruction.
