Wang took off the V-suit and panoramic viewing helmet. His shirt was soaked with sweat, as if he had just awoken from a nightmare. He left the Research Center, got into his car, and drove to the address given to him by Ding Yi: the house of Yang Dong’s mother.
汪淼摘下V装具后，发现自己的内衣已被冷汗浸透了，很像是从一场寒冷的班梦中醒来。他走出纳米中心，下楼开车，按丁仪给的地址去杨冬的母亲家。
Chaotic Era, Chaotic Era, Chaotic Era…
乱纪元，乱纪元，乱纪元……
The thought turned and turned in Wang’s head. Why would the path of the sun through the world of Three Body be devoid of regularity and pattern? Whether a planet’s orbit is more circular or more elliptical, its motion around its sun must be periodic. Total irregularity in planetary motion is impossible…
这个概念在汪淼的头脑中萦绕。为什么那个世界的太阳运行会没有规律？一个颗状星的行星，不管其运行轨道是正圆还是偏长的椭圆，其围绕恒星的运动一定是周期性的，全无规律的运行是不可能的……
Wang grew angry with himself. He shook his head, trying to chase away these thoughts. It’s only a game! But I lost.
汪淼突然对自己很恼火，他使劲地摇头想赶走头脑中的这一切，不过是个游戏嘛，但他失败了。
Soon, Wang found the answer. He had not played any computer games for years, and the hardware for gaming had clearly advanced greatly in the interim. The virtual reality and multisensory feedback were all effects he had not experienced as a young student. But Wang also knew that the sense of realism in Three Body wasn’t due to the interface technology. He remembered taking a class in information theory as a third-year student in college. The professor had put up two pictures: One was the famous Song Dynasty painting Along the River During the Qingming Festival, full of fine, rich details; the other was a photograph of the sky on a sunny day, the deep blue expanse broken only by a wisp of cloud that one couldn’t even be sure was there. The professor asked the class which picture contained more information. The answer was that the photograph’s information content — its entropy — exceeded the painting’s by one or two orders of magnitude.
很快，汪淼找到了答案。他已经有很多年没有玩过电子游戏了，这些年来电子游戏的软硬件技术显然已经进化了很多，其中的虚拟现实场景和附加效果都是他学生时代所无法比拟的。但汪淼明白，《三体》的真实不在于此。记得在大三的一次信息课中，教授挂出了两幅大图片，一幅是画面庞杂精细的《清明上河图》，另一幅是一张空旷的天空照片，空荡荡的蓝天上只有一缕似有似无的白云。教授问这两幅面中哪一幅所包含的信息量更大，答案是后者要比前者大一至两个数量级！
Chaotic Era, Chaotic Era, Chaotic Era…
乱纪元，乱纪元，乱纪元……
Damn it! Stop! Why am I thinking about this? Why?
见鬼！别去想它！！为什么非想它不可？为什么？！
At the foot of the apartment building, Wang saw a graying, thin woman, about sixty years old. She wore glasses and was struggling to go up the stairs with a basket of groceries. He guessed that this was the woman he had come to see. A quick greeting confirmed his guess. She was Yang Dong’s mother, Ye Wenjie. After hearing the purpose of Wang Miao’s visit, she was grateful and appreciative. Wang was familiar with old intellectuals like her: The long years had ground away all the hardness and fierceness in their personalities, until all that was left was a gentleness like that of water.
在要去的那栋楼门口，汪淼看到一位六十岁左右的头发花白、身材瘦削的女性，戴着眼镜，提着一个大菜篮子吃力地上楼梯。他猜她大概就是自己要找的人，一问，她果然就是杨冬的母亲，叶文洁。听汪淼说明来意后，她露出发自内心的感动，她是汪淼常见到的那种老知识分子，岁月的风霜已消去了他们性情中所有的刚硬和火热，只剩下如水的柔和。
Wang let his mind wander back to the world of Three Body.
汪淼放松了思想的疆绳，任其回到《三体》世界。
Flying stars! The key must be in the flying stars. One flying star, two flying stars, three flying stars… what did they mean?
飞星！关键在于不引人注意的飞星，一颗飞星，二颗飞星，三颗飞星……这分别意味着什么？
Three Body was the same. Its enormous information content was hidden deep. Wang could feel it, but he could not articulate it. He suddenly understood that the makers of Three Body took the exact opposite of the approach taken by designers of other games. Normally, game designers tried to display as much information as possible to increase the sense of realism. But Three Body’s designers worked to compress the information content to disguise a more complex reality, just like that seemingly empty photograph of the sky.
《三体》正是这样，它的海量信息是隐藏在深处的，汪淼能感觉到，但说不清。他突然悟出。《三体》的不寻常在于，与其他的游戏相比，它的设计者是反其道而行之——一般游戏的设计者都是尽可能地增加显示的信息量，以产生真实感：但《三体》的设计者却是在极力压缩信息量，以隐藏某种巨大的真实，就像那张看似空旷的天空照片。
As he had that thought, he found himself at his destination.
正想着，车已开到他要去的小区大门了。
Wang carried the grocery basket up the stairs for her. When they got to her apartment, it turned out to be not as quiet as he had expected: Three children were playing, the oldest about five, and the youngest barely walking. Ye told Wang that they were all the neighbors’ kids.
汪淼拿过菜篮子同她一起上了楼，走进她的家门后发现，这里并不像他想象的那么冷清——有三个孩子在玩耍，最大的不超过五岁，小的刚会走路。杨母告诉汪淼，这都是邻居的孩子。
“They like to play at my place. Today is Sunday, and their parents need to work overtime, so they left them to me… Oh, Nan Nan, have you finished your picture? Oh, it looks great! Shall we give it a title? ‘Ducklings in the Sun’? Sounds good. Let Granny write it for you. Then I’ll put down the date: ‘June 9th, by Nan Nan.’ And what do you want to eat for lunch? Yang Yang, you want fried eggplant? Sure! Nan Nan, you want the snow peas like you had yesterday? No problem. How about you, Mi Mi? You want some meat-meat? Oh, no, your mom told me that you shouldn’t eat so much meat-meat, not easy to digest. How about some fishie instead? Look at this big fishie Granny bought…”
“他们喜欢在我这儿玩儿。今天是星期天，他们的父母要加班，就把他们丢给我了……哦，楠楠，你的画儿画完了吗？嗯，真好看，起个题目吧！太阳下的小鸭子，好，奶奶给你题上，再写上六月九日，楠楠作……中午你们都想吃什么呢？洋洋？烧茄子？好好；楠楠？昨天吃过的荷兰豆？好好；你呢，咪咪？肉肉？不，你妈妈说了，不要吃那么多肉肉，不好消化的，吃鱼鱼好吗？看奶奶买回来的这么大的鱼鱼……”
Wang observed Ye and the children, absorbed in their conversation. She must want grandkids. But even if Yang Dong were alive, would she have had children?
她肯定想要孙子或孙女，但即使杨冬活着，会要孩子吗？看着杨母和孩子们投入地对话，汪淼心想。
Her suggestion, tagged on at the end as though it was the most natural thing in the world, made Wang anxious. Clearly, she had figured out the real purpose of his visit. She turned around and went back into the kitchen without giving Wang another glance, and so avoided seeing his embarrassment. Wang was grateful that she was so considerate of his feelings.
杨母最后一句看似无意的提议令汪森陷入紧张和不安之中。她显然看出了汪淼此行在内心深处的真正目的。她说完就转身回到厨房，没有看汪淼一眼，自然看不到他的窘态，她这几乎天衣无缝的善解人意令汪淼一阵感动。
Ye took the groceries into the kitchen. When she reemerged, she said, “Xiao Wang, I’m going to soak the vegetables for a while.” She had slipped effortlessly into addressing him by an affectionate diminutive. “These days, they use so much pesticide that when I feed the children, I have to soak the vegetables for at least two hours — Why don’t you take a look in Dong Dong’s room first?”
杨母将篮子提进厨房。出来后对汪淼说：“小汪啊，我先去把菜泡上，现在的蔬菜农药残留很多，给孩子们吃至少要泡两小时以上……你可以先到冬冬的房间里看看。”
Wang walked past the three happily playing children and entered the room that Ye had indicated. He paused in front of the door, seized by a strange feeling. It was as if he had returned to his dream-filled youth. From the depths of his memory arose a tingling sadness, fragile and pure like morning dew, tinged with a rosy hue.
汪淼转身穿过快乐的孩子们，走向杨母刚才指向的那个房间。他在门前停住了，突然被一种奇异的感觉所淹没，仿佛回到了少年多梦的时节，一如清晨露珠般晶莹脆弱的感受从记忆的深处中浮起，这里面有最初的伤感和刺痛，但都是玫瑰色的。
Wang walked up to the tree-stump desk. It was plainly furnished, and nothing on it betrayed a hint of femininity or scholarly interest. Maybe all such objects had been taken away, or maybe they had never been there. He noticed a black-and-white photograph in a wooden frame, a portrait of mother and daughter. In the picture, Yang Dong was just a little girl, and Ye Wenjie was crouching down so that they were the same height. A strong wind tangled the pair’s long hair together. The background of the photograph was unusual: The sky seemed to be seen through a large net held up by thick steel supporting structures. Wang deduced that it was some kind of parabolic antenna, so large that its edges were beyond the frame of the photograph.
汪淼走到树桩写字台前。上面的陈设很简单，没有与学术有关的东西，也没有与女性有关的东西；也许都已经拿走了，也许从来就没在这里存在过，他首先注意到一张镶在木镜框中的黑白照片，是杨冬母女的合影，照片中的杨冬正值幼年，母亲蹲下正好同她一样高。风很大，将两人的头发吹到一起。照片的背景很奇怪，天空呈网格状，汪淼仔细察看支撑那网络的粗大的钢铁结构，推想那是一个抛物面天线或类似的东西，因为巨大，它的边缘超出了镜头。
Gently, he pushed the door open. The faint fragrance that filled the room was unexpected, the smell of the forest. He seemed to have entered the hut of a ranger: The walls were covered by strips of bark; the three stools were unadorned tree stumps; the desk was made from three bigger tree stumps pushed together. And then there was the bed, apparently lined with ura sedge from Northeast China, which the locals stuffed into their shoes to stay warm in the cold climate. Everything was rough-hewn and seemingly careless, without signs of aesthetic design. Yang Dong’s job had earned her a high income, and she could have bought a home in some luxury development, but she chose to live here with her mother instead.
汪淼轻轻推开门，扑面而来的淡淡的气息是他没有想到的，那是森林的气息，他仿佛进入了一间护林人的林间小屋。墙壁被一条条棕色的树皮覆盖着，三只凳子是古朴的树桩，写字台也是由三个较大的树桩拼成的，还有那张床，铺的显然是东北的乌拉草。这一切都很粗糙、很随意，没有刻意表现出某种美感。以杨冬的职位，她的收入是很高的，可以在任何一处高尚社区买下房子，可她一直同母亲住在这里。
“It’s okay,” Ye said from the door. “Those are pictures Dong Dong drew when she was little.”
“你看吧，那是冬冬小时候的画儿。”杨母在门口说。
Next, Wang noticed a thick notebook at the corner of the desk. He was baffled by the material the notebook was made of until he saw a line of childish writing scrawled across the cover: Yang Dong’s Birch-bark Notebook. “Birch” was written in pinyin letters instead of using the character for it. The years had turned the silvery bark into a dull yellow. He reached out to touch the notebook, hesitated, and retracted his hand.
汪淼注意到的第二件东西是放在写字台一角的一本厚厚的大本子，首先令他迷惑的是本子的材质，他看到封面上有一行稚拙的字：“杨冬的hua（桦）皮本。”这才知道这本子是桦树皮做的，时光已经使银白色的桦皮变成暗黄。他伸手触了一下本子，犹豫了一下又缩了回来。
Wang picked up the birch-bark notebook and gently flipped through it. Ye had dated each picture for her daughter, just like she had been doing for Nan Nan in the living room.
汪淼捧起桦皮本，轻轻地一页页翻看。每幅画上都有日期，明显是母亲为女儿注上的，就像他刚进门时看到的那样。
In the picture, little Yang Dong’s eyes gave off a fright that made Wang’s heart ache. She seemed terrified by the world outside the picture.
照片中，小杨冬的大眼睛中透出一种令汪淼心颤的恐惶，仿佛照片外的世界令她恐惧似的。
Wang saw that, based on the dates on the pictures, Yang Dong was three when she drew them. Normally, children of that age are able to draw humans and objects with clear shapes, but Yang Dong’s pictures remained only messes of random lines. They seemed to express a kind of passionate anger and desperation born out of a frustrated desire to express something — not the sort of feeling one would expect in a child that young.
汪淼又发现了一件多少让他不可理解的事：从画上的日期看，这时的杨冬已经三岁多了，这么大的孩子通常都能够画出比较分明的人或物体的形状；但杨冬的画仍然只是随意纷乱的线条，汪淼从中看出了一种强烈的恼怒和绝望，一种想表达某种东西又无能为力的恼怒和绝望，这种感觉，是这种年龄的普通孩子所不具有的。
“Dong Dong didn’t argue with me, but I later discovered that she really was different. For example, let’s say I explained a formula to her. Other children might say, ‘What a clever formula!’ But she would say, ‘This formula is so elegant, so beautiful.’ The expression on her face was the same as when she saw a pretty wildflower. “Her father left behind some records. She listened to all of them and finally picked something by Bach as her favorite, listening to it over and over. That was the kind of music that shouldn’t have mesmerized a kid. At first I thought she picked it on a whim, but when I asked her how she felt about the music, she said that she could see in the music a giant building, a large, complex house. Bit by bit, the giant added to the structure, and when the music was over, the house was done…”
“冬冬没有反驳我。到后来，我真的发现她身上有些特殊的东西，比如给她讲一个公式，别的孩子会说‘这公式真巧妙’之类的，她则会说这公式真好看，真漂亮，那神情就像她看到一朵漂亮的野花一样。她父亲留下了一堆唱片，她听来听去，最后选择了一张巴赫的反复听，那是最不可能令孩子，特别是女孩子入迷的音乐了。开始我以为她是随意为之，但问她感受时，这孩子说：她看到一个巨人在大地上搭一座好大好复杂的房子，巨人一点一点地搭着，乐曲完了，大房子也就搭完了……”
Ye slowly sat down on the edge of the bed, her eyes staring at the notebook, lost in thought. Her daughter had died here, ended her life while she slept. Wang sat next to her. He had never felt such a strong desire to share the burden of another’s pain.
杨母缓缓地坐到床沿上，双眼失神地看着汪淼手中的桦皮本，她女儿就是在这里，在安睡中结束自己的生命。汪淼在杨母身边坐下，他从来没有过如此强烈的愿望，要与他人分担痛苦。
Ye took the birch-bark notebook from him and held it to her chest. In a low voice, she said, “I wasn’t good at teaching Dong Dong in an age-appropriate manner. I exposed her too early to some very abstract, very extreme topics. When she first expressed an interest in abstract theory, I told her that field wasn’t easy for women. She said, what about Madame Curie? I told her, Madame Curie was never really accepted as part of that field. Her success was seen as a matter of persistence and hard work, but without her, someone else would have completed her work. As a matter of fact, Wu Chien-Shiung went even further than Madame Curie. But it really isn’t a woman’s field.
杨母从汪淼手中拿过桦皮本，抱在胸前，轻声说：“我对冬冬的教育有些不知深浅，让她太早接触了那些太抽象，太终极的东西。当她第一次表现出对那些抽象理论的兴趣时，我告诉她，那个世界，女人是很难进入的。她说居里夫人不是进入了吗？我告诉她，居里夫人根本没有进入，她的成功只是源于勤奋和执着，没有她，那些工作别人也会完成，倒是像吴健雄（当代最杰出的特理学家之一，在实验物理学研究上取得伟大的成就。她在实验室中首次证明了李政道和杨振宁关于弱相互作用中宇称不守恒的理论推测，推翻了宇称守恒定律。）这样的女人还比她走得远些，但那真的不是女人的世界。女性的思维方式不同于男性，这没有高下之分，对世界来说都是必不可少的。
“No. I failed. Her world was too simple, and all she had were ethereal theories. When they collapsed, she had nothing to lean on to keep on living.”
“不，是失败啊！她的世界太单纯，只有那纯空灵的理论。那些东西一崩溃，就没有什么能支撑她活下去了。”
“Professor Ye, I can’t say that I agree with you. Right now, events are happening that are beyond our imagination. It’s an unprecedented challenge to our theories about the world, and she’s not the only scientist to have stumbled down that path.”
“叶老师，您这么想我觉得也不对，现在发生了一此让我们难以想象的事，这是一次空前的理论灾难，做出这种选择的科学家又不只是她一人。”
“But she was a woman. A woman should be like water, able to flow over and around anything.”
“可只有她一个女人，女人应该像水一样的，什么样的地方都能淌得过去啊。”
As Wang was about to leave, he remembered the other purpose for his visit. He mentioned to Ye his wish to observe the cosmic microwave background.
告辞时，汪淼才想到了来访的另一个目的，于是他向杨母说起了观测宇宙背景辐射的事。
“Oh, that. There are two places in China that work on it. One is an observatory in Ürümqi — I think it’s a project by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Space Environment Observation Center. The other is very close by, a radio astronomy observatory located in the suburbs of Beijing, which is run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Peking University’s Joint Center for Astrophysics. The one in Ürümqi does ground observation, and the one here just receives data from satellites, though the satellite data is more accurate and complete. I have a former student working there, and I can make a call for you.” Ye found the phone number and dialed it. The ensuing conversation seemed to go smoothly.
“哦，这个，国内有两个地方正在做，一个在乌鲁木齐观测基地，好像是中科院空间环境观测中心的项目；另一个很近，就在北京近郊的射电天文观测基地，是中科院和北大那个联合天体物理中心搞的。前面那个是实际地面观察，北京这个只是接收卫星数据，不过数据更准确、全面一些。那里有我的一个学生，我帮你联系一下吧。”杨母说着，去找电话号码，然后给那个学生打电话，似乎很顺利。
“You were a great teacher for your daughter,” Wang said.
“您对女儿的教育真是成功。”汪淼感慨地说。
“You’re all set,” Ye said as she hung up. “Let me give you the address. You can go over anytime. My student’s name is Sha Ruishan, and he’s going to be working the night shift tomorrow… I don’t think this is your field of research, right?”
“没问题的，我给你个地址，你直接去就行。他叫沙瑞山，明天正好值夜班……你好像不是搞这专业的吧？”杨母放下电话问。
“It’s nothing. Please don’t worry.”
”没什么，就是这样儿。”汪淼含糊地说。
“I work in nanotech. This is for… something else.” Wang was afraid that Ye was going to ask more questions about why he sought this information, but she did not.
“我搞纳米，我这是为了……另外一些事情。”汪淼很怕杨母追问下去，但她没有。
Wang accepted the box, warmth filling his chest. His eyes moistened. It was as though his heart, stressed almost beyond the breaking point by the last few days, had been placed onto a pile of soft down feathers. “Professor Ye, I will come visit you often.”
汪淼的心中涌起一股暖流，双眼湿润了，他那颗两天来绷得紧紧的心脏像被放到了柔软的天鹅绒上。“叶老师，我会常来看您的。”他接过木盒说。
“Xiao Wang, you look a bit pale. How’s your health?” she asked, her face full of concern.
“小汪啊，你脸色怎么这么不好，好像身体很虚的。”杨母关切地问。
“Wait a moment.” Ye took a small wooden box out of a cabinet. Wang saw from the label that it was ginseng. “An old friend from the base, a soldier, came to visit me a few days ago and brought this — take it, take it! It’s cultivated, not very precious. I have high blood pressure and can’t use it anyway. You can slice it thinly and make it into a tea. You look so pale that I’m sure you can use the enrichment. You’re still young, but you have to watch your health.”
“你等等。”杨母从柜子里拿出一个小木盒，汪淼看到上面标明是人参，“过去在基地的一位老战士前两天来看我，带来这个……不不，你拿去，人工种植的，不是什么珍贵的东西，我血压高，根本用不着的。你可以切成薄片泡茶喝，我看你脸色，好像血很亏的样子。年轻人，一定要爱护自己啊。”
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