#37813, your hibernation is at an end. You have been in hibernation for 62 years, 8 months, 21 days, and 13 hours. Your remaining hibernation allotment is 238 years, 3 months, 9 days. This is Asia Hibernation Center #1, Bunker Era, Year 11, May 9, 2:17 P. M.
37813号，您的这一阶段冬眠已经终止，您已经冬眠62年8个月21天13小时，您的剩余冬眠时间权限为238年3个月9天。亚洲一号冬眠中心，掩体纪元11年5月9日14点17分。
The small information window hovered in front of the just-awakened Cheng Xin for no more than a minute before disappearing. She looked at the smooth metallic ceiling. Out of habit, she stared at a certain spot in the ceiling. During the age she last entered hibernation, doing so would have caused the ceiling to recognize her gaze and bring up an information window. But the ceiling didn’t respond. Although she still didn’t have the strength to turn her head, she was able to see part of the room: All the walls were made of metal and there were no information windows. The air remained empty as well, with no holographic displays. The metal in the wall looked familiar: stainless steel or aluminum alloy, no decorations.
这个小小的信息窗口在刚刚苏醒的程心面前显示了不到一分钟，然后就消失了。程心看到了光洁的金属天花板。她习惯性地盯着天花板上的一个点看，在她最后一次进入冬眠的那个时代，如果这么做的话天花板就会感应到她的注视，然后弹出信息窗口，但这个天花板没有反应。虽然还没有力气转动头部，但她还是可以看到房间的一部分，触目所及全是空荡荡的金属墙壁，没有信息窗口，空气中也是空荡荡的，没有任何全息显示。墙壁的金属看上去很熟悉，像是不锈钢片或铝合金，看不到任何装饰。
A nurse appeared in her field of view. She was very young and didn’t look at Cheng Xin. Instead, the nurse busied herself around her bed, probably disconnecting the medical equipment attached to her body. Cheng Xin’s body couldn’t sense what the nurse was doing, but something about the nurse seemed familiar to her — her uniform. During the last age Cheng Xin was awake, people wore self-cleaning clothes that always looked brand new, but this nurse’s white uniform showed signs of wear. Although it was still clean, she could see signs of it being old, signs of the passage of time.
一个护士出现在程心的视野中，她很年轻，没有正眼看程心，而是在她的床周围忙碌了一会儿，可能是在拆除与她连接的医学设备。程心的身体还感觉不出她做了些什么，但却从这个护士身上看到某些熟悉的东西。程心很快知道，是护士的衣服。在程心最后所处的那个时代，人们的服装都是用自清洁衣料制作，极其洁净，任何时候都如全新的一般，但这个护士身上的白色护士装却能看出些旧的样子，虽然也还整洁，但能看出穿用的痕迹。时间的痕迹。
There were many pedestrians in the hallway, and no one paid attention to Cheng Xin. She concentrated on the clothes people wore. A few were medical personnel in white uniforms, and the rest wore simple, plain clothing that resembled work overalls. Cheng Xin had the impression that many people here seemed to be from the Common Era, but soon realized that she was wrong. The Common Era was a long time ago, and the human race had changed eras four times already. It was impossible for so many Common Era people to be around.
走廊里人很多，没人注意程心。程心首先仍是注意到人们的衣着，除了不多的穿白衣的医务人员外，人们的衣服也都很简便平实，色彩单一像工作服。程心首先感觉这里似乎有许多公元人，但她立刻否定了这个想法，现在距公元世纪已经很远了，人类纪年都改变了四次。不可能再有这么多的公元人。
The hallway was made of empty metallic walls as well. Other than some ceiling lights, there were no other decorations. The lights looked ordinary enough, and Cheng Xin saw that the frame around one of the lights was loose and dangled from the ceiling. Between the frame and the ceiling she saw… wires.
走廊中看到的也是空荡荡的金属墙壁，除了顶板上的灯，没有任何装饰，那些灯看上去都很普通，程心看到一盏顶灯的灯框脱落了一半，在灯框与顶板之间她竟然看到了——电线。
The ceiling began to move. Cheng Xin’s bed was being pushed out of the awakening room. She was astonished to find that the nurse was pushing the bed — the bed actually needed someone to push it to move.
天花板在移动，程心看到自己的床被推出这间苏醒室，她吃惊地发现现，是那个护士在推着她走，活动床居然需要人推。
Cheng Xin struggled to recall the information window she had seen upon first awakening, but she couldn’t be certain it had really been there. It now seemed a hallucination.
程心努力回想意识恢复之初看到的信息窗口，却不敢肯定她真的看到过那东西，仿佛是个幻觉。
Cheng Xin’s bed was pushed into a small room. “Number 37813 awakened without irregularities,” the nurse called out. “She’s in recovery room twenty-eight.” Then the nurse left and closed the door. Cheng Xin noticed that she had to pull the door shut.
程心被推进了一个小房间。“37813号苏醒正常，进28号恢复室！”护士不知对谁喊道，然后走了，她出去的时候关上了门，程心注意到房间的门是手动的。
The men who had disappeared during the Deterrence Era had returned. This was another age capable of producing men.
在威慑纪元消失的男人又回来了，这是一个能产生男人的时代。
Everyone seemed to be in a hurry. This seemed to be another swing of the pendulum: the leisure and comfort of the last age had disappeared, and it was once again a harried society. In this age, most people no longer belonged to the leisure class, but had to work for a living.
人们行色匆匆，看上去都有事在身，这似乎又是一个轮回，上一个时代那种闲适和惬意已经消失，忙碌的社会再次出现。在这个时代里。大部分人不再是有闲阶级，要为生活奔忙了。
Her impression was due to the fact that she saw some men who looked like the men she was used to.
之所以产生这种感觉，是因为她看到了男人，外形是男人的男人。
She was left alone in the room. For a long time, no one came to check on her, a situation in total contrast to the previous two awakenings she had experienced, when she had received a great deal of attention and care. She was certain of two things: First, in this age, hibernation and awakening were common events. Second, not many people knew that she had awakened.
房间里只剩程心一人躺在床上，很长时间没人来打扰她。与前两次苏醒她受到的大量关注和照顾完全不同。她现在能确定的有两点：首先，在这个时代，冬眠和苏醒是一件极平常的事；另外。她的苏醒可能没有多少人知道，就像当年罗辑在危机纪元末的苏醒一样。
She suddenly wondered if she had just awakened from a long dream. The Deterrence Era, the Broadcast Era — they were all dreams. Although the memories were clear, they seemed too surreal, fantastic. Perhaps she had never leapt across time on three occasions, but had been in the Common Era all along?
她突然有一种幻觉：自己是不是刚从一场大梦中醒来？威慑纪元、广播纪元的一切都是梦，那些记忆虽然清晰，但太超现实，太像梦了。也许，自己根本没有三次跨越时问，仍身在公元世纪？
After Cheng Xin recovered some motor control, she moved her head and saw the window. She remembered the world before she had gone into hibernation: The hibernation center had been a giant tree at the edge of the city, and she had been in one of the leaves near the top, from where she could see the grand city-forest. But now, outside this window, she could only see a few ordinary buildings erected on the ground, all of them the same shape and design. Based on the sunlight glinting off them, they were constructed of metal as well. The buildings gave her the feeling of having returned to the Common Era.
程心的身体渐渐恢复知觉，她的头能够转动了，随即看到了房间的窗户，她仍记得冬眠前看到的世界，那时的冬眠中心是城市边缘的一棵巨树建筑，她当时在最顶端的叶子里，从落地窗可以看到玄伟的城市森林。现在从这扇窗看出去，只看到几幢普通的楼房，建在地面上的楼房，外形整齐划一，从反射阳光的表而看，像是金属结构的。这些建筑让程心再一次感觉回到了公元世纪。
A holographic display window appeared next to her bed, removing her doubts. The window contained only a few simple buttons that could be used to call for the doctor and the nurse. The place seemed very familiar with the hibernation recovery process: The window had appeared just as Cheng Xin recovered the ability to lift her hand. But it was only a small window; the hyperinformation society where information windows filled every surface was gone.
一个全息信息窗口在床边出现了，让程心打消了这个幻觉。信息窗日中只有几个简单的按钮，可以用来呼叫医生和护士。这里似乎对苏醒者的身体恢复过程十分了解，程心刚刚能够抬起手来，窗口就出现了；但也仅仅是这一个小小的窗口，那个信息窗口铺天盖地的超信息社会消失了。
Unlike the previous two awakenings, Cheng Xin recovered very quickly. By the time it was dark out, she was already able to get out of bed and walk about a bit. She found that the center provided only the simplest services. A doctor came in once to give her a cursory examination and then left; she had to do everything else by herself. She had to bathe herself while she still felt weak all over. As for meals, if she hadn’t asked for them through that tiny holographic display, she might never have gotten to eat. Cheng Xin wasn’t annoyed by this lack of solicitousness, as she had never completely adjusted to that excessively generous era where every person’s every need was taken care of. She was still a Common Era woman at heart, and she felt at home here.
与前两次苏醒不同，这次程心恢复得很快，当外面天色暗下来的时候，她已经能够下床走动了。她发现这里只提供最简单的服务，其间只有一个医生进来简单地察看了一下就走了，一切都靠自理，在仍然浑身无力的情况下，第一次沐浴得全靠自己。再比如用餐，如果不在那个小小的信息窗口中要求，她苏醒后的第一餐可能永远也不会送来。对这些程心没有感到不快，她从来就没有完全融人那种对每个人都照顾得无微不至的人性化时代，她习惯的仍是公元世纪的生活，现在有一种回归感。
The next morning, a visitor came to see her. She recognized Cao Bin right away. This physicist had once been the youngest Swordholder candidate, but now he was much older, and a few strands of white appeared in his hair. Cheng Xin was certain, though, that he had not aged by sixty-two years.
第二天上午，有人来看程心。她一眼就认出来人是曹彬，这位物理学家曾经是最年轻的执剑人候选人，现在看上去老了许多，头上出现了少许白发，但岁月并未在他身上留下六十二年的痕迹。
“Mr. Thomas Wade asked me to come and get you.”
“托马斯。维德先生让我来接你。”曹彬说。
“We’ll talk about it after we get there.” Cao Bin paused, and then added, “I’ll take you around this new world before then so that you can make the right decision based on facts.”
“到那里后再说吧。”曹彬略微停顿后说，“这之前我先带你看看这个新世界，以便你能对情况做出正确的判断。”
“What happened to you? You weren’t awake these last sixty years,” Cheng Xin asked.
“那你呢·这六十多年你不会一直醒着吧？”程心收回目光说。
“There have been some developments… We’ll talk about it later.” Cao Bin clearly didn’t relish the topic.
“有些进展……以后再说吧。”这方面的事显然是曹彬不愿意很快提及的。
Cheng Xin glanced at the undistinguished buildings outside the window; she didn’t feel the world was new.
程心看看窗外那几幢外表平常的建筑，并没感觉到这个世界是新的。
“What happened?” Cheng Xin’s heart sank as she recalled the conditions for her awakening.
“出什么事了？”想到自己被唤醒的条件，程心的心沉了下来。
“How’s the curvature propulsion project going?”
“曲率驱动飞船项目怎么样了？”
“I went into hibernation at about the same time you did. Seventeen years later, the circumsolar particle accelerator was operational, and I was awakened to research basic theory. That took fifteen years. Later, the research work turned to technical applications, and I was no longer needed, so I went back into hibernation until two years ago.”
“我差不多是与你一起冬眠的，十七年后环日加速器投人运行，我就醒来搞基础理论。搞了十五年。再后来，研究开始进入技术方向，我就没用了，又冬眠，两年前才醒来。”
Cheng Xin looked outside again. A breeze passed by, and a small tree in front of the window rustled. A cloud seemed to pass overhead, and the glint given off by the metallic buildings dimmed. How could such a commonplace world have anything to do with lightspeed spaceships?
程心又看看外面，一阵微风吹过，窗前的一棵小树发出了沙沙声，好像有云遮住了太阳，那几幢建筑的金属表面的反光暗了下来。这个平凡的世界，能与光速飞船有关系吗？
Half an hour later, Cheng Xin, dressed in a white outfit appropriate for this era, came onto a balcony of the hibernation center with Cao Bin. The city spread out before her, and Cheng Xin was again struck by the feeling that time had flowed backwards. After she had awakened for the first time during the Deterrence Era, the impact of seeing the giant forest-city for the first time was indescribable. After that, she never thought she would again see a cityscape so familiar: The plan for the city was very regular, as though all the buildings had been erected at once. The buildings themselves were monotonous and uniform, as though designed solely for utility with no consideration for architectural aesthetics. All of them were rectangular with no surface decorations, and all sported the same metallic gray exterior — reminding her strangely of the aluminum lunch boxes of her youth. The buildings were neatly and densely arranged as far as she could see. At the horizon, the ground rose up like the side of a mountain, and the city extended onto the mountainside.
半个小时后，程心穿着一身与这个时代相称的白色套装，与曹彬一起来到冬眠中心的一个阳台上。城市在她面前展开，唯一令程心感慨的仍然是这种时光倒流的平凡感。在威慑纪元第一次苏醒后，当她看到城市的巨树森林时。那种震撼难以言表，她本来以为永远也看不到这样平凡的城市景观了。城市规划得很整齐，好像是一次性建成的，建筑的外形单调划一，似乎只考虑实用性，没有任何建筑美学方面的设计，都是长方体形状，外表没有任何装饰，甚至表面的色彩都是一样的金属银灰色，很奇怪竟让她想起小时候见过的铝饭盒。这些整齐的建筑密集地排列着，直到目力所及的远方，在那里，是向上升起的山坡，城市延伸到坡上。
Cao Bin followed Cheng Xin’s gaze and laughed. “You must feel the same as when I first awakened — rather disappointed in this era, aren’t you?… If you are up to it, let’s go outside and take a look.”
曹彬也随着程心的目光看看窗外，然后笑了起来，“你肯定和我刚醒来时一样，对这个时代很失望……如果你现在感觉恢复得差不多了，我们出去看看吧。”
The clouds began to dissipate, revealing a large opening. Through the opening, Cheng Xin did not see a blue sky; instead, she saw… more ground.
这时，云层开始始消散，出现一道迅速扩大的云隙。透过云隙，程心并没有看到蓝天，她看到的天空仍是大地。
The sun was below the clouds.
太阳在云层前而。
“Where is this?” Cheng Xin asked.
“这是哪里？”程心问。
“Hmm, why is it overcast again? We can’t see the other side.” Cao Bin didn’t answer her question, but shook his head at the sky in disappointment, as though the weather had something to do with Cheng Xin’s understanding of this new world. But soon, she saw how strange the sky was.
“见鬼，怎么又是阴天？看不到对面了。”曹彬没有回答程心的问题，而是看着天空失望地摇摇头，好像阴天对程心认识这个新世界有很大影响似的，但程心很快发现了天空的异常。
The ground in the sky was studded with the buildings of a city very similar to the city around her, except she was now looking “down”– or “up”– at it. This must have been the “other side” Cao Bin referred to. Cheng Xin realized that the rising “mountainside” in the distance wasn’t a mountain at all, but continued to rise until it connected with the “sky.” The world was a giant cylinder, and she was standing on the inside of it.
空中的大地上是与周围相似的城市。只是她在远远地仰望或俯瞰，这就是曹彬刚才说的“对面”。程心发现，远处那升起的地面并不是山坡，而是一直上升与“对面”连在一起的。她回头看，发现相反的方向地面也在远方上升。也是一直升到“对面”——这个世界是在一个大圆筒中。
The new world that had seemed so common a moment ago now stunned her. Cheng Xin felt that she had finally, truly awakened.
新世界就这样展现在程心面前，所有的平凡瞬间变为震撼，她感到自己这时才真正苏醒过来。
“This is Space City Asia I, in the shadow of Jupiter,” Cao Bin said.
“这是亚洲一号太空城，在木星的背面。”曹彬这才回答程心刚才的问题。
By custom, the central axis of the space city was treated as oriented north-south. They got on a bus outside the hibernation center — this was a real bus that moved along the ground; probably running on electricity, but it looked indistinguishable from an ancient city bus. The bus was crowded, and Cheng Xin and Cao Bin took the last two seats at the back so that additional passengers had to stand. Cheng Xin thought back to the last time she had taken a bus — even during the Common Era, she had long ceased riding crowded public transportation.
他们在冬眠中心的外面上了一辆公共汽车，这是真正的公共汽车。在地面行驶。可能是电力驱动，但从外形上看，即使放到古代，也不会被误认为是别的东西。车上人很多，程心和曹彬找到了最后的两个座位，后面上来的人只能站着。程心回想她最后一次乘公交车是什么时候。即使在公元世纪，她也很早就不再坐这样拥挤的车了。
In the afternoon, Cao Bin brought Cheng Xin on a trip to the gateway terminal at the northern end of the city.
下午，曹彬带程心去北边的城市出入端。按惯例，太空城的长轴为南北方向。
The bus moved slowly, so she could take in the view leisurely. Everything now held a new meaning for her. She saw swaths of buildings sweep past the window, interspersed with green parks and pools; she saw two schools with exercise yards painted in blue; she saw brown soil covering the ground on the sides of the road, looking no different from soil on Earth. Broad-leafed trees resembling Chinese parasol trees lined the road, and advertising billboards appeared from time to time — Cheng Xin didn’t recognize most of the products or brands, but the style of the ads was familiar.
车速不快，可以从容地观赏外面的城市风景，现在，这一切在程心眼中都有了全新的含义。她看到大片的楼群从车窗外掠过，其间有小片的绿地和水塘。她还看到两所学校。校园里有蓝色的操场。她看到公路之外的地上覆盖着褐色的土壤，看上去与地球的土地没有太大区别，路边种着一种很像梧桐的阔叶树，还不时出现广告牌。上面的商品程心大多认不出是什么，但广告的风格却不陌生。
The main difference from a Common Era city was that the entire world seemed to be constructed out of metal. The buildings were metallic, and the inside of the bus seemed to be mostly metal as well. She saw no plastic, and no composites either.
与公元世纪城市的唯一区别是，这个世界几乎全部是用金属建成的。建筑物都是金属构造，看看车内。除金属外也很少见到其他的材料，没有合成板，也没有塑料。
Cheng Xin paid the most attention to the other passengers on the bus. Across the aisle sat two men, one of whom dozed with a black briefcase on his lap, while the other wore yellow work overalls with black oil stains. Next to the man’s feet was a tool bag, and some instrument Cheng Xin did not recognize poked out of it: It resembled an ancient power drill, but was translucent. The man’s face showed the exhaustion and numbness of someone who performed physical labor. The last time Cheng Xin had seen such an expression was on the faces of migrant laborers in Common Era cities. In front of her sat a young couple. The man whispered something in the woman’s ear, and the woman giggled from time to time while spooning something pink out of a paper cup — ice cream, since Cheng Xin picked up the sweet fragrance of cream, no different from her memory of more than three centuries ago. Two middle-aged women stood in the aisle — they were of a type familiar to Cheng Xin: The drudgery of everyday life had ground away their glamour, and they no longer took care with their appearance or were fashionable. Women like that had disappeared during the Deterrence Era or the Broadcast Era. Back then, women always had smooth, delicate skin, and no matter how old they were, they looked beautiful and refined, appropriate for their age. Cheng Xin eavesdropped on their conversation:
程心更多注意的还是车里的人。在另一侧的座位上坐着两个男人。其中一个夹着黑色的公文包在打磕睡，另一个穿着一身带有黑色油污的黄色工作服，脚旁放着一个工具袋，一件程心不认识的器具从袋中露出一半，像是古代的冲击钻，不过是半透明的，这个男人的脸上露出体力劳动者的疲惫和漠然。前排坐着一对情侣，男孩伏在女孩的耳边不停地说着什么，女孩不时地傻笑一阵，并用一个小片儿从纸杯中刮出粉红色的东吃，显然是冰激凌，程心甚至闻到了奶油的甜香味，与她记忆中三个世前的味道没有什么不同。旁边站站着两个没有座位的中年妇女，是那种程心曾经十分熟悉的女人，被生活磨去了风韵，变得市井且不修边幅。这样的女人在威慑纪元和广播纪元是不存在的，那个时代的女人皮肤永远细腻白嫩，在各个年龄段都有着相应的精致和美丽。程心听到了这两个女人的对话……。
“You got it wrong. The morning market and the evening market have similar prices. Don’t be lazy. Go to the wholesale market on the west side.”
“你没弄对。早市菜价和晚市差不多的，不要嫌麻烦，到西头批发市场去。”
“They don’t have enough, and they won’t sell at wholesale prices anyway.”
“那里量不够也不按批发价卖。”
“You have to go later, after seven or so. The vegetable vendors will be gone, and they’ll sell at wholesale prices.”
“你得等到晚一些，七点以后吧，那些菜贩子走了，多少都能按批发价。”
“It’s not right to charge separately for the heat; that should have been included in the electric bill.”
“收供暖费就不合理，应该已经包含在电费里了。”
“If they had subbed for that fool earlier they wouldn’t have lost so badly.”
“早点把那个傻瓜换下来也不会输那么惨。”
She overheard snippets of other conversations in the bus as well.
车内其他人的对话也断断续续地传来。
“The city government is different from the atmospheric system, much more complicated. When you get there, pay attention to the office politics. Don’t get too close to anyone at first, but don’t hold yourself apart either.”
“市政部门与大气系统不同的，比较复杂，你才需要多长心眼，开始和谁都别太近，也别太远。”
“The other day, when they had to make an orbital adjustment, Park Four’s water spilled again and flooded a large area.”
“前天位置维持，四号公园的水又溢出来了，淹了一大片。”
“Don’t be so disappointed. I’ve been here since the city was built, and how much do you think I make every year?”
“知足吧，我还是城建时期的老人呢，我一年才挣多少？”
“That fish is no longer fresh. Don’t even think about steaming it.”
“那鱼都不新鲜了，怎么能清蒸呢？”
Cheng Xin’s heart felt warm and content. Ever since she had awakened for the first time during the Deterrence Era, she had been searching for this feeling. She had thought she’d never find it. She absorbed the conversations around her as though slaking a thirst, and didn’t pay much attention to Cao Bin’s narration of the city.
程心的心中沫起一种温暖的感觉，自从威摄纪元第一次苏醒后她就在寻找这种感觉。曾以为水远也找不到了。她几乎是贪婪的倾听着这些话音，对曹彬介绍太空城的话倒是没有太注意。
“If she doesn’t like him, he should just give up. All that effort is just going to be wasted.”
“人家看不上他就算了，何必呢？你说他累不累呀……”
“That can’t be authentic. I don’t even think it’s a high-quality imitation. Are you kidding me? At that price?”…
“不是正品，高仿的都不是，那个价钱？”……
Space City Asia I was one of the earliest to be built as part of the Bunker Project. It was a regular cylinder that simulated gravity with the centrifugal force generated by spinning. With a length of thirty kilometers and a diameter of seven kilometers, its usable interior surface area was 659 square kilometers, about half the size of ancient Beijing. Once, about twenty million inhabitants had lived here, but after the completion of newer cities, the population had decreased to about nine million, so that it was no longer so crowded…
亚洲一号是掩体工程最早建设的太空城之一，呈规则的圆简形，旋转产生的离心力模拟重力，长四十五千米，直径八千米，内部面积三百五十九平方千米，大约相当于过去地球上北京市市区面积的一半。这里最多时曾生活过两千多万人，现在由于新城不断建成，人口已经降至九百万。不再那么拥挤了……
“The space city was adjusting its position,” said Cao Bin.
“这是太空城的位置维持。”曹彬说。
Cheng Xin saw another sun appear in the sky before her. Cao Bin explained that there were a total of three artificial suns in the space city, all of them floating along the central axis, each separated by about ten kilometers. These produced energy by nuclear fusion, and brightened and dimmed on a twenty-four-hour cycle.
这时，程心发现前方的天空中又出现了一个太阳，他们位于两个太阳之间。曹彬告诉她，太空城中共有三个人造太阳，都悬浮在太空城失重的中轴线上，相互间隔十千米左右，都是由核聚变产生能量，按二十四小时一昼夜调节明暗。
Cheng Xin felt a series of jolts. The bus was already at a stop, and the tremors seemed to originate from deep within the ground. She felt a force pushing against her back, but the bus remained unmoving. Outside the window, she could see the shadows cast by the trees and buildings suddenly shift to a new angle as the artificial suns abruptly shifted positions. But soon, the suns moved back into place. Cheng Xin saw that none of the passengers seemed surprised by this.
程心突然感到一阵震动，这时车正好停站，震动似乎来自大地深处。她感到背部有微微的推力，但车这时并没有开动。车窗外，可以看到树和建筑的影子突然移动了一个角度，这是天空中的人造太阳在突然移位，但很快，太阳在空中又慢慢移回了原位。程心看到周围的人对此都毫不在意。
The bus arrived at the last stop after about thirty minutes. After getting off the bus, she saw that the everyday scenes that had so intoxicated her disappeared. In front of her was an enormous wall whose immense size made her gasp. It was as though she was standing at the end of the world — and indeed, she was. This was the “northernmost” point in the city, a large circular disk eight kilometers in diameter. She couldn’t see the entire disk from where she stood, but she could tell that the ground rose up on both sides of her. The top of the disk — the other side of the city — was about as high as the peak of Mount Everest. Many radial spokes converged from the rim of the disk to the center, four kilometers above. Each spoke was an elevator shaft, and the center was the space city’s gateway.
公交车行驶了约三十分钟后到达终点。程心下车后。让她陶醉其中的平凡景致结束了，眼前赫然出现一面顶天立地的高墙。它的高大广阔让她倒吸一口冷气，仿佛到了世界的尽头。事实上这确实是这个世界的尽头，这是太空城的最“北”端，是一个直径八千米的大圆盘，在地面看不出圆形来，只能看到大地从两侧升起。圆盘顶端的高度与珠峰差不多，连接着太空城的另一面。有许多辐条从环绕圆盘的地面会聚到四千米高的圆心，每根辐条都是一条电梯轨道，圆心就是太空城的出人口。
Before entering the elevator, Cheng Xin cast a lingering glance back at this city that already seemed so familiar. From here, all three suns were visible in a row toward the other end of the city. It was dusk, and the suns dimmed, turning from a blinding orange-white to a gentle red, bathing the city in a warm golden glow. Cheng Xin saw a few girls in white school uniforms chatting and laughing on a lawn not too far away, their hair wafting in the breeze and drenched in the golden glow of the evening sun.
程心在进人电梯前，恋恋不舍地回头看了一眼她似乎已经熟悉的城市。在这个位置上三个太阳都能看到。它们排成一排伸向太空城的另一端。这时正值黄昏时间，太阳正在暗下去，由耀眼的黄白色变成了柔和的橘红，给城市镀上一层温馨的金光。程心看到，在不远处的草地上有几个少女，穿着白色的校服。坐在草坪上快乐地说笑着，她们被风吹起的长浸透了天顶上夕阳的金色光芒。
The interior of the elevator car was very spacious, like a large hall. The side facing the city was transparent, turning the car into an observation deck. Every seat was equipped with seat belts because, as the elevator rose, gravity quickly diminished. As they looked outside, the ground sank lower, while the “sky,” another ground, grew clearer. By the time the elevator reached the center of the circle, gravity had completely disappeared, as well as the sensation of “up” and “down” when looking outside. Since this was the axis around which the city spun, the ground surrounded them in every direction. Here, the view of the city was at its most magnificent.
电梯内部很宽敞，像一间大厅，朝向城市的一面是全透明的，成为一个宽阔的观景台。每个座位上都有固定带，随着电梯的上升，重力很快减小。向外看，地面渐渐降低，而作为“天空”的另一个地面则渐渐清晰。当电梯到达圆心时。重力完全消失，向外看去，上和下的感觉也完全没有了。因为这里处于圆筒太空城的轴心，大地在四周环绕一圈，在这个位置，太空城展现出最为壮观的景象。
The three suns had dimmed to the level of moonlight, and their colors shifted to silver. Viewed from here, the three suns — or moons — were stacked on top of each other. All the clouds were concentrated in the gravity-free zone, forming an axis of white mist extending through the center of the city to the other end. The “southern” end, forty-five kilometers away, could be seen clearly. Cao Bin told Cheng Xin that that was where the city’s thrusters were located. The lights of the city had just come on. In Cheng Xin’s eyes, a sea of lights surrounded her and extended into the distance. She seemed to be looking down a giant well whose wall was covered with a brilliant carpet.
这时，三个太阳的光度已经降到月光的程度，它们的色彩也变成了银色。从这个位置上看，三个太阳（月亮）几乎是重合的，它们的周围又出现了云，云都集中在零重力区，在圆筒的轴线上形成一道白色的云轴，一直通到太空城的另一端。从这里可以清楚地看到四十五千米远处的“南”端，曹彬告诉程心，那是城市推进器所在地。城市华灯初上，在程心的视野中，这灯海三百六十度环绕着自己，并向远方延伸，她仿佛在从一口环壁覆盖着璀璨光毯的巨井顶部向下看。
Cheng Xin casually locked her gaze on a certain spot in the city, and found the arrangement of buildings there very similar to the residential district of her home back in the Common Era. She imagined a certain ordinary apartment building in that area and a certain window on the second floor: Through blue curtains, a gentle light seeped, and behind the curtain, her mom and dad waited for her… She could not hold back her tears.
程心随意把目光锁定在城市的某处，发现那里楼房的布局很像公元世纪自己家所在的小区，她想象着那里某幢普通的楼房二层的某个窗口，蓝色的窗帘透出柔和的灯光，窗帘的后面，爸爸妈妈在等着自己……程心一时抑制不住自己的眼泪。
Ever since awakening for the first time during the Deterrence Era, Cheng Xin had never been able to integrate into the new eras, always feeling like a stranger from another time. But she could never have imagined that she would once again feel at home more than half a century later, here behind Jupiter, more than eight hundred million kilometers from the Earth. It was as if everything that she had been familiar with from more than three centuries ago had been picked up by a pair of invisible hands, rolled up like a giant painting, and then placed here as a new world slowly spinning around her.
在威慑纪元第一次苏醒后，程心一直无法融入新时代，感觉自己是另一个时间的外来者。她万万没有想到，半个世纪后，在这距地球八亿千米的木星背面竟找到了回家的感觉。似乎三个多世纪前那熟悉的一切被一双无形的巨手卷起来，像画幅一样卷成圆筒状安放到这里，成为这在她眼前环绕一圈的世界。
Cheng Xin and Cao Bin entered a weightless corridor. This was a tube in which people moved by pulling themselves along handholds on cables. The passengers riding up from all the elevators along the rim gathered here to exit the city, and the corridor was filled with streaming crowds. A row of information windows appeared around the circular wall of the corridor, and the animated images in the windows were mostly news and ads. But the windows were few in number and neatly arranged, unlike the chaotic profusion of information windows in the previous era.
程心和曹彬进人了一条失重走廊，这是一条圆形断面的大管道，人在里面抓着失重牵引索上的把手前行。各个方向上来的电梯中的乘客都集中到这里出城，走廊中人流密集。在走廊的圆壁上显示出一排信息窗口。窗口中的活动画面大多是新闻和广告，但窗日的数量有限。排列有序，不像上一个时代信息窗口层层叠叠铺天盖地的样子。
Cheng Xin had long since noticed that the overwhelming hyperinformation age had apparently ended. Information appeared in this world in a restrained, directed manner. Was this the result of changes in the Bunker World’s political and economic systems?
在此之前程心就注怠到，让人眼花缭乱的超信息时代消失了，这个世界中涌现的信息量变得有节制而有序，不知是不是掩体世界政治经济体制的变化所致。
Emerging from the corridor, Cheng Xin first noticed the stars spinning overhead. The spin was very rapid and made her dizzy. The view around her opened up dramatically. They were standing on a circular plaza with a diameter of eight kilometers “atop” the space city. This was the city’s spaceport, and many spacecraft were parked here. Most of the vessels were shaped not too differently from those Cheng Xin had seen over sixty years ago, though these were generally smaller. Many were about the size of ancient automobiles. Cheng Xin noticed that the flames at the nozzles of the spaceships as they took off were far dimmer than what she remembered from more than half a century ago. The glow was a dark blue and no longer so blinding. This probably meant that the miniature fusion engines were much more efficient.
一出走廊。程心首先看到头顶旋转的星空。星空转得很快，初看让人有些头晕。周围的视野豁然开阔，他们正站在太空城顶部直径八千米的圆形广场上。这里是城市的太空港，停泊着大批的太空飞行器，其中大部分是太空艇。外形与程心六十多年前看到的没有太大区别，但体积普遍缩小了，有许多大小与古代的小汽车差不多。程心注意到，太空艇起飞时发动机喷口的光焰比半个世纪前她看到的要暗许多，不再刺眼，呈幽蓝色，这也许意味着小型聚变发动机的效率提高了。
It was very cold here. Only when a nearby vessel took off did the engine’s heat bring a brief feeling of warmth. Cheng Xin shuddered — not just from the cold, but because she realized that she was completely exposed to space! But the air around her and the air pressure were real, and she could feel cold breezes. It appeared that the technology to contain an atmosphere in a nonenclosed area had advanced even further, to the point where an atmosphere could be maintained in completely open space.
这里很冷，只有附近的太空艇启动时发动机喷出的热量才带来短暂的暖意。程心打了个哆嗦，并非仅仅因为冷，而是她突然意识到自己竟完全暴露在太空中！但周围的空气和大气压是实实在在的，还能感到阵阵寒风。看来，程心曾看到的在非封闭的太空环境中保持大气压的技术进一步发展，已经能够在全开放的太空生成大气层了！
Cheng Xin saw an eye-catching red-glowing circle all around the exit, with a radius of about a hundred meters. She quickly understood its meaning: The space city was spinning, and, outside the circle, the centrifugal force became very strong. Moving outside the warning circle meant a dramatic increase in centrifugal force, and vessels parked out there had to be anchored, while pedestrians needed to wear magnetic shoes lest they be thrown out.
程心看到出口周围划出了一个醒目的发光红圈，半径约百米。她很快明白了这红圈的含意：太空城在旋转中，圈外的离心力能产生明显作用，且再向外会急剧增大，所以圈外停泊的太空艇需要锚固，人在那里行走时也需穿黏性鞋，否则会被甩出去。
Cao Bin saw her shock and said, “Oh, right now we can only maintain an atmosphere about ten meters thick above ‘ground.'” He hadn’t been in this world for too long, either, but he was already jaded by the technology that seemed like magic to Cheng Xin. He wanted to show her far more impressive sights.
曹彬看到了她的震惊，说：“哦，目前只能在距‘地面’十米左右形成正常气压的空气层，再厚就做不到了。”虽然来到这个世界的时间也不是太长，但他已经对这种在程心眼中神话般的技术不在意了，他只是想让程心看那些更震撼的东西。
Against the background of the spinning stars, Cheng Xin saw the Bunker World.
在旋转的星海的背景上，程心看到了掩体世界。
From here, most of the space cities behind Jupiter could be seen. She saw twenty-two cities (including the one she stood on), and there were four more blocked by the city they stood on. All twenty-six cities (six more than planned) were hiding in the shadow of Jupiter. They were loosely lined up in four rows, and reminded Cheng Xin of the spaceships lined up behind the giant rock in space more than sixty years ago. To one side of Asia I was North America I and Oceania I, and to the other side was Asia III. Only about fifty kilometers separated Asia I from its neighbors on either side, and Cheng Xin could feel their immensity, like two planets. The next row of four cities was 150 kilometers away, and it was difficult to tell their size visually. The most distant space cities were about one thousand kilometers away, and looked like delicate toys from here.
从这个位置可以看到木星太空城群落的大部分，能看到二十二座太空城，还有四座城市在下面被挡住的方向。这二十六座太空城（比计划多建了六座）都处于木星的阴影之中，它们排成不太整齐的四列纵队，让程心想到了六十多年前躲在那块太空巨石后面的太空艇。亚洲一号的一侧是北美一号和大洋洲一号，另一侧是亚洲三号，亚洲一号与两侧太空城之间的距离仅五十千米左右，能感觉到它们的巨大，像两颗星球一般。但另一排的四座太空城距这里一百五十千米，已经很难从视觉上把握它们的大小；最远处的太空城距这里一千千米左右，看上去如玩具般小巧玲珑。
Cheng Xin thought of the space cities as a school of tiny fish hovering in place behind a giant rock to avoid the torrents in the river.
程心感到，太空城群落像是河水中一队静静地悬浮在岩石后面避开激流的鱼群。
One of the space cities in front suddenly emitted a blue light. It was as though a small blue sun appeared in space, casting long shadows of the people and spaceships on the plaza. Cao Bin told Cheng Xin that this was because the space city’s thrusters had been activated to adjust its position. The space cities revolved around the Sun in parallel with Jupiter, just outside its orbit. Jupiter’s gravity gradually pulled the cities closer, and the cities had to constantly adjust their positions with thrusters. This operation required a great deal of energy. Once, the suggestion had been floated to turn the cities into Jupiter’s satellites that would only shift into new orbits around the Sun after the issuance of a dark forest strike warning. But until the advance warning system had been further refined and proven to be reliable, no space city wanted to take the risk.
这时，前排一座太空城突然发出蓝光，像是太空中出现了一个蓝色小太阳。把人和太空艇的影子深深地印在地面上。曹彬告诉程心，这是太空城推进器启动了，在进行位置维持。太空城群落并非是木星的卫星，而是在木星轨道外侧与木星平行绕太阳运行，这样才能使城市群落长期隐藏于木星的背阳阴影中。木星的引力不断拉近太空城与行星的距离，这就要靠城市推进器来不断维持太空城的位置，这是一项耗能巨大的操作。曾有一个设想，让所有太空城成为木星的卫星，当打击警报出现时，再改变轨道成为木星阴影中的随木星一起围绕太阳运行的太阳卫星。但在太阳系预警系统进一步完善并证明其可靠性之前，没有一座太空城敢冒这个险。
Behind the other three gas giants were three more space city clusters, consisting of a total of thirty-eight space cities. Twenty-six were behind Saturn, four behind Uranus, and eight more behind Neptune. Those space cities were in safer locations, though the environs were even more desolate.
在另外三颗巨行星背面，还有三个太空城群落，共三十八座太空城其中，土星背面二十六座，海王星背面八座，天王星背面四座，那些太空城群落所处的位置更加安全，但也更为边远冷寂。
North America I, closest to Asia I, was a pure sphere. It and the cylindrical Asia I represented the two extremes of space city design. Most of the other space cities were football-shaped, though the ratios of major to minor axes were different in each. A few other space cities took on unusual shapes: a wheel with spokes, a spindle, etc.
最靠近亚洲一号的北美一号是一个纯球体，它与亚洲一号的圆柱体代表了太空城形状的两个极端；大部分太空城都是介于两者之间的椭球体。只是长短轴的比例不同；也有一些特异形状的太空城，如轮辐形、纺锤形等，但数量很少。
“Lucky you! Now you get to see a sight that happens only once every three days.” Cao Bin pointed into space. Cheng Xin saw a tiny white dot in the distance, gradually growing bigger. Soon, it was a white sphere as big as a Ping-Pong ball.
“你运气不错，遇到了三天一次的奇观，看！”曹彬指着一侧的太空说。程心在那个方向远远地看到了一个小白点。白点渐渐扩大，很快变成一个乒乓球大小的白色球体。
“That’s right. We’re very close to its orbit right now. Watch your footing and don’t be scared.”
“是，木卫二，我们现在离它的轨道很近，你站稳了别害怕。”
Cheng Xin tried to figure out what Cao meant. She had always thought of celestial bodies as moving slowly, almost imperceptibly — as they did in most Earth-based observations. But then she remembered that the space city was not a Jovian satellite but remained stationary relative to it. Europa, on the other hand, was a satellite that moved very fast. She remembered its speed was about fourteen kilometers per second. If the space city was very close to Europa’s orbit, then…
程心想着他最后一句话的意思，同一般人一样，在她的印象里，天体在肉眼的视野中显示的运行速度都是很慢的。大部分在短时间观察中无法觉察到其运动。但她立刻意识到一个事实：太空城并不是木星的卫星，它们与木星是相对静止的，木卫二是运行速度很快的一颗卫星，她记得达到每秒十四干米，这样木卫二与太空城的相对速度也是这么高，如果太空城与它的轨道很接近的话……
“Europa?”
“木卫二？”程心问。
The white sphere expanded rapidly — so fast that it seemed unreal. Europa soon took up most of the sky, and turned from a Ping-Pong ball into a giant planet. The sensation of “up” and “down” switched in an instant, and Cheng Xin felt as if Asia I were falling toward that white world. Next, the three-thousand-kilometer-diameter moon swept overhead so that for an instant, it took up the entire sky. The space city was skimming over the icy oceans of Europa, and Cheng Xin could clearly see the crisscrossing lines in that frozen landscape, like lines in a giant palm print. The air, disturbed by the passage of Europa, whipped around her, and Cheng Xin felt an invisible force dragging her from left to right — if she weren’t wearing magnetic shoes, she was sure she’d be pulled off the ground. Whatever was nearby that hadn’t been secured to the ground flew up, and a few cables attached to spaceships also drifted into the air. A terrifying rumbling came from below her — it was the immense frame of the space city reacting to the rapidly shifting gravity field of Europa. It took only about three minutes for Europa to hurtle past Asia I, and then it was on the other side of the city and began to shrink rapidly. The eight space cities in the two front-most rows all activated their thrusters to adjust their positions after the disturbance caused by Europa. Eight fireballs lit up the sky.
没容程心细想，那个白色球体迅速增大，其膨胀速度给人一种不真实的感觉。木卫二很快占据了大半个太空，由一个白色小球转瞬间变成一个巨大的星球，空间的上下感也瞬间改变，程心感到亚洲一号正在向那白色的世界坠落下去。接着，这个直径三千多千米的世界从他们头顶快速移过，那一刻全部太空都被它占据。这时，太空城实际上是在木卫二的冰冻海洋上空飞行，可以清晰地看到冰面上纵横交错的条纹，像白色巨掌上的掌纹。被木卫二引力扰动的空气层中刮起了疾风，程心感到一股无形的力量从左向右拉扯着自己，如果不是穿着磁性鞋，她肯定会被拉离地面。旁边没有固定的小物体都飞了起来，几根与太空艇连接的管缆也飞舞着飘起，一阵让人心悸的隆隆声从脚下响起，是太空城巨大的结构框架在木卫二急剧变化的引力中产生的应力引起的。木卫二掠过太空城仅用了三分钟左右的时间，然后在另一侧把它的另一面显现出来，同时急剧变的位置和姿态，太空城顿时亮起八个光团。
Cao Bin found the dinghy he had taken to come here. It was tiny, shaped and sized like an ancient automobile, capable of seating only two. Cheng Xin instinctively felt unsafe going into space in such a tiny vehicle, even though she knew her fear wasn’t reasonable. Cao Bin told the AI to go to North America I, and the dinghy took off.
曹彬找到了自己来时乘坐的太空艇，是最小的那种，外形和大小都像古代的小汽车，只能乘坐两个人。乘这么小的一架飞行器进人太空让程心本能地不安。虽然她知道这种担心是多余的。在艇内不用穿太空服，曹彬只是对A.I。说了声去北美一号，太空艇就启动推进器起飞了。
“The closest approach, like you experienced just now, was a hundred and fifty kilometers, basically brushing right by us. We don’t really have a choice. Jupiter has thirteen moons, and it’s impossible for the space cities to avoid them all. Europa’s orbit is inclined only slightly from the equator, and so it’s very close to these cities here. It’s the main source of water for the Jovian cities, and we’ve built a lot of industry on it. But when the dark forest strike comes, all of it will have to be sacrificed. After the solar explosion, all of the Jovian moons’ orbits will shift dramatically. Maneuvering the space cities to avoid them at that time will be a very complicated operation.”
“最近的时候距这里一百五十千米，几乎是擦边而过。没办法。木星有十三颗卫星，太空城群落不可能完全避开它们。木卫二的轨道与赤道倾角很小，所以与这一排城市距离很近。它是木星城市群落的主要水源，上面还有很多工业，但一旦打击到来，都是要牺牲掉的。太阳爆发后。木星所有卫星的轨道都要发生大变化，到时候太空城要避开它们，那可是一个复杂的操作。”
“How… how close was that?” Cheng Xin asked in an unsteady voice.
“天啊，刚才它有多近？！”程心惊魂未定地问。
Cheng Xin saw the ground receding quickly, and the dinghy flew along at a tangent to the spinning city. Soon, the eight-kilometer-diameter plaza came into view, followed by the entirety of Asia I. Behind the cylinder was a vast expanse of dark yellow. Only when the edge of this yellow expanse appeared did Cheng Xin realize that she was looking at Jupiter. Here, in the shadow of the gas giant, everything was cold and dark, and the Sun seemed to not exist at all. Only the phosphorescence of the planet’s liquid helium and hydrogen, diffused through the thick atmosphere, formed patches of hazy light roving about like eyeballs behind the closed eyelids of a dreamer. The immensity of Jupiter astonished Cheng Xin. From here, she could only see a small portion of its rim, and the rim’s curvature was minuscule. The planet was a dark barrier that blocked out everything, and once again gave Cheng Xin the feeling of standing at a giant wall at the end of the world.
程心看到地面飞快地退去，太空艇沿城市旋转的切线飞出，很快，直径八千米的城市顶端进人视野，然后是亚洲一号太空城的整体。在这个圆柱体后面，是一片广阔的暗黄色，直到这片暗黄的边界在远方出现，程心才意识到这就是刚才看不到的木星。这是这颗巨大行星的背阳面，一切都处于晦暗寒冷的阴影中，太阳似乎根本不存在，只有木星氢氦的液态表面发出的磷光，透过深厚的大气层形成片片朦胧的光晕，像睡梦中眼皮下滚动的眼球。木星的巨大使程心很震惊，从这个位置只能看到它的一部分边缘，而那边缘只能看出很小的弧度。木星像一堵遮蔽一切的暗壁，使程心又有了站在世界尽头的巨墙前的感觉。
In the following three days, Cao Bin took Cheng Xin to visit four more space cities.
在随后的三天时间里，曹彬带着程心又游览了四座太空城。
Unlike Asia I, small spacecraft could enter the city directly from the gateway at the north pole. Once the dinghy was inside, the entire world spun around it, and the dinghy had to match the city’s spin before landing.
与亚洲一号不同，小型太空飞行器可以直接从北极的入口进人太空城。太空艇进入后，程心发现整个世界都在围绕着自己旋转。太空艇必须自转以与城市的旋转同步。然后才能降落。
Cheng Xin and Cao Bin rode a high-speed rail to go to low-latitude regions, and the train moved far faster than the bus in Asia I. Cheng Xin saw that the buildings here were denser and taller, looking like a metropolis. At the high-latitude, low-gravity regions especially, the buildings’ heights were limited only by the volume of the sphere. Near the polar regions, some buildings were as tall as ten kilometers, looking like long thorns extending up from the ground toward the sun.
程心和曹彬乘坐高速轨道列车前往低纬度地区，速度比亚洲一号中的公路车要快许多。程心发现这里的城市建筑更密集。也更高，显示出宏伟的大都市气派。特别是在高纬度的低重力地区，建筑的高度只受球体空间的限制，在靠近两极的地区都出现了高达十千米的大厦，是球体半径的一半，其顶端距人造太阳也只有几十千米，像从地面伸向太阳的几根细长的尖刺。
The first was North America I, the closest city to Asia I. The main advantage of its spherical construction was that a single artificial sun at the center was sufficient to illuminate the entire city, but the disadvantage of such a design was obvious as well: The gravity changed depending on one’s latitude. The equator had the most gravity, which decreased as you went up in latitude. The polar regions were weightless. Inhabitants in the different regions had to adjust to life under various gravity conditions.
他们首先去的是距亚洲一号最近的北美一号，那是一座纯球体形状的太空城。这种设计的最大优势在于，只需在球心有一个人造太阳即可使所有地区得到相同的光照。但球体构型的缺陷也很明显，主要是不同纬度地区的重力差异较大，赤道地区重力最大，随着纬度升高重力减小，两极地区处于失重状态。这样，在不同地区居住的人必须适应不同重力下的生活。
Here, Cheng Xin got to see a splendid sight that was absent from Asia I: the equatorial ring-ocean. As a matter of fact, most space cities had ring-oceans of various widths, and Asia I was rather unique in lacking one. In spherical or football-shaped cities, the equator was the lowest point in the city’s simulated gravity, and all the city’s water naturally collected there, forming a sparkling, undulating belt for the city. Standing on the shore, one could see the ocean rising on both sides and dividing the “sky” behind the sun. Cheng Xin and Cao Bin took a fast boat and navigated around the sea — a journey of some sixty kilometers. The water in the sea came from Europa, clear, cold, and reflecting rippling light onto the skyscrapers on both sides. The dikes along the edge of the sea closest to Jupiter were higher, to avoid the water spilling out when the city accelerated during position adjustments. Even so, when the city had to engage in unexpected maneuvers, small-scale flooding would occur from time to time.
在这座太空城中。程心看到了一个亚洲一号所没有的壮丽景观：赤道环海。其实，大多数太空城中都有宽度不等的环海，亚洲一号在这方面倒是一个特例。在球形或椭球形城市构型中。在重力方向上赤道是最低处，城市的水体自然集中于此。形成一个环绕城市中部的水环，成为城市的一条波光粼粼的腰带。站在海边。可以看到环海自两侧升起，从太阳后面横跨“天空”。程心和曹彬乘快艇在环海航行一周，航程六十多千米。海水来自木卫二，清澈冷冽，粼粼的波光投映到两岸的摩天楼群上。环海向木星的一侧堤坝较高。是为了防止位置维持时产生的加速使海水溢出，尽管这样，城市在进行非常规推进时还是可能导致小规模水灾。
North America I had been completed early on. With a radius of twenty kilometers and twenty million inhabitants, it was the largest city by population. It acted as the prosperous commercial center for all the Jovian cities.
北美一号建成较早球半径二十多千米，是人口最多的太空城，有两千万人居住于其中，是木星城市群落中繁华的商业中心。
Next, Cao Bin took Cheng Xin to Europe IV, which sported a typical football-shaped design. Its distinguishing characteristic was the lack of a common artificial sun. Every district had its own miniature fusion sun, and the tiny suns hovered about two hundred to three hundred meters high to provide illumination. The advantage of this approach was that the weightless axis could be more efficiently utilized. The axis of Europe IV was taken up by the longest — or tallest — building among all the space cities. It was forty kilometers long and connected the north and south poles of the football. Since the interior of the building was weightless, it was mainly used as a spaceport and commercial entertainment district.
曹彬带程心去的第三座太空城是欧洲四号。这座城市的构型是最典型的椭球形，它的特点是没有公用的人造太阳，每个社区都有自己的微型聚变太阳，这些小太阳在两三百米的高度照亮部分地面。这样做的好处是失重轴线可以充分利用，在欧洲四号的长轴线上建设了所有太空城中最高或最长的建筑物，它长四十千米，连接椭球体的南北极。本身就形成了一根长轴。由于内部处于失重状态，主要用作太空港和商业娱乐区。
Europe IV had the smallest population of all the cities, only 4.5 million. It was the wealthiest city of the Bunker World. The exquisite houses illuminated by miniature suns amazed Cheng Xin. Each house came with its own swimming pool, and a few had wide lawns. Tiny white sails dotted the serene equatorial sea, and people sat on the shore, fishing leisurely. She saw a yacht sail by slowly, and it looked as luxurious as any yacht on ancient Earth. There was a cocktail party being held aboard the yacht with live musicians… She was astonished that such life could be transplanted into the shadow of Jupiter, eight hundred million kilometers from the Earth.
欧洲四号是人口最少的太空城，仅四百五十万人，是掩体世界中最富裕的地方。程心惊奇地看到一大片在小太阳照耀下的精致别墅，每幢别墅都带有游泳池，有的甚至还有宽阔的草坪。宁静的环海点缀着片片白帆，岸边有悠闲的垂钓者。她看到一艘游艇缓缓驶过，其豪华程度较之过去的地球也毫不逊色，艇上正在举行有小乐队伴奏的酒会……她很惊奇这样的生活居然能够搬到距地球八亿千米的木星阴影中来。
Pacific I, on the other hand, was the antithesis of Europe IV. This was the very first city completed by the Bunker Project, and like North America I, it was a sphere. Unlike all the other Jovian cities, it did orbit Jupiter as a satellite.
太平洋一号可以说是欧洲四号的反面。这是掩体工程最早建成的太空城，与北美一号一样是标准球体构型。它最大的特点是不属于木星背面的城市群落。而是绕木星运行。是一颗木星的卫星。
Millions of construction workers had lived in Pacific I during the early years of the Bunker Project. As the project progressed, it was used to warehouse construction materials. Later, as the numerous flaws of this early-phase experimental space city became apparent, it was abandoned. But, after the resettlement to the Bunker World had been completed, people began to live here again, and finally formed a city of their own, with a city government and police force. However, the authorities only maintained the most basic public infrastructure, and society was left basically to run on its own. Pacific I was the only city to which people were free to immigrate without a residential permit. Most of the population consisted of unemployed and homeless wanderers, poor people who had lost social security for various reasons, and bohemian artists. Later, it became the base for extremist political organizations.
在掩体工程的早期岁月，太平洋一号被用作上百万工程人员的居住区，随着工程的进展，又被用作施工材料的大型存储库。后来发现这座早期的实验性太空城有许多设计上的缺陷，最终被废弃了。向掩体世界的大移民结束后，太平洋一号中又开始有人居住，后来也形成了一座城市，有市政府和警察机构，但只负责维持最基本的公共设施的运转，对于城市社会基本上放任自流。太平洋一号是唯一座不需要居留权就可自由入住的城市，城中主要是失业者和流浪者，以及众多因各种原因失去社会保险的穷人。还有潦倒的艺术家，后来甚至成了一些极端政治组织的据点。
Pacific I had no city thrusters, and there was no artificial sun inside. It also didn’t spin, so the interior was completely weightless.
太平洋一号没有城市推进器，内部也没有人造太阳，最重要的一点是它不自转。城市处于完全失重状态。
There was no notion of land ownership in Pacific I because all the buildings drifted around with no permanent location. In principle, each resident had the right to use any space in the city. The city had a large number of homeless individuals who didn’t even possess a shack. All of their possessions were kept in a large net sling to prevent them from scattering everywhere, and the owners drifted along with the net slings. Transportation within the city was simple: There were no cars or weightless cables or personal thrusters. The residents moved around by pushing and kicking off buildings and drifting. Since the buildings were densely packed inside the city, one could navigate anywhere that way, but this method of locomotion required great skill. As Cheng Xin observed the residents flitting around the dense clusters of floating buildings, she was reminded of gibbons swinging easily from branch to branch.
太平洋一号中完全没有地权的概念，所有建筑都在飘浮中位置不定，原则上市民有权使用城内任何一处空间。城市中还有大量的流浪者，他们连棚屋都没有，全部家当都放在一个大网兜里，以防四处飘散，他们就与网兜一起（在）飘浮中生活。城市里的交通极其简单，几乎没有车辆，也见不到失重拖曳索和个人推进器之类的东西，失重中的人们用脚踹建筑物飘行。由于城市中飘浮的建筑十分密集，到任何地方都不是问题，但这种移动方式需要很高的技巧。看着那些在飘浮的建筑间敏捷穿行的人，程心不由得想起了在树枝间悠荡而行的长臂猿。
After entering the city, Cheng Xin saw a fairy-tale world. It was as if a broken-down but once prosperous city had lost gravity abruptly, so that everything floated in the air. Pacific I was a city in permanent night, and each building maintained illumination with a nuclear battery. Thus, the interior was filled with glowing, floating lights. Most of the buildings in the city were simple shacks built from abandoned construction materials. Since there was no “up” or “down,” most of the shacks were cube-shaped, with windows (which also acted as doors) on all six sides. Some were shaped as spheres, which had the advantage of being more resilient, as the drifting buildings inevitably collided against each other.
程心进入城里后，看到的是一个童话般的世界：仿佛一座破旧但繁华的老城市，突然失去了地心引力，一切都飘浮在空中。太平洋一号是一座永夜之城，每座建筑都用核电池维持照明和生活，于是有了漫天的灯火。城市中的建筑大多是简易棚屋，用废弃的建筑材料做成，由于没有上下之分，一般都做成六面全有窗（也是门）的立方体，或者做成球形。后者的好处是在不可避免的飘浮碰撞中强度较高。
Cheng Xin and Cao Bin drifted close to a group of homeless men gathered around an open fire. Such a fire would have been prohibited in any other city. The fuel seemed to be some kind of flammable construction material. Due to the weightlessness, the flames did not rise up, but formed a ball of fire floating in place. The way they drank was also special. They tossed alcohol out of bottles, forming liquid spheres in the air. Then the men, dressed in rags and with unshaven faces, drifted along with them, capturing the spheres with their mouths and swallowing. One of the drunken men vomited, and the vomit rushing out of his mouth propelled him back, sending him tumbling in midair…
程心和曹彬飘行到一群围着篝火的流浪汉旁边，这样燃明火在别的太空城是绝对禁止的。他们用来烧火的东西好像是某种可燃的建筑材料，由于失重，燃烧无法产生上升的火苗，只是空中漂浮的一团火球。他们喝酒的方式也很特别，把酒从瓶中甩出来，在空中成许多飘浮的液球，那些衣衫破旧胡子老长的男人也飘浮着，把火光中那些晶莹剔透的小球一个个吞进嘴里。有一个喝醉的家伙吐了起来，那喷出的呕吐物产生了反推力、使那个醉汉在空中翻滚起来……
Cheng Xin and Cao Bin came to a market. All the goods floated in the air, forming a heterogeneous mess illuminated by a few drifting lights, with customers and vendors drifting among the hovering objects. In this chaos, it seemed hard to tell what belonged to whom, but if a customer examined something closely, a vendor would drift over to haggle. The goods offered for sale included clothing, electronics, food and liquor, nuclear batteries of various capacities, small arms, and so on. There were also exotic antiques on sale. In one place, a few metallic fragments were offered at very high prices. The vendor claimed that it was debris gathered from the outer Solar System from warships destroyed during the Doomsday Battle — it was impossible to tell if he was telling the truth.
程心和曹彬又来到一处集市，这里所有的商品都飘浮在空中，在其中几盏飘浮灯的光亮中形成庞杂的一片，顾客和小贩就在其中飘行。这混浮成一团的货物应该很难分清哪件属于谁，但如果有顾客察看某件东西，立刻有货主过来搭讪。这里的商品有服饰、电器、食品酒类、各种容量的核电池、各种轻武器等等，还有许多稀奇古怪的古董。有几片大小不一的金属残片标出高价，摊主说是太阳系外围空间收集的末日战役中战舰的残片，不知是真是假。
Cao Bin took Cheng Xin to the edge of the city — the inside face of the spherical hull. There were no buildings attached to the hull, and there was no soil — everything was left as bare as the day the city was constructed. It was impossible to tell the curvature in a small area, and they seemed to be standing on a large, flat plaza. Above them, the dense buildings of the city floated, and flickering lights projected onto the “plaza.” Cheng Xin saw that the hull was marked with all kinds of graffiti, stretching as far as she could see. These pictures were vibrant, wild, unrestrained, wanton and full of energy. In the shifting, uncertain light, they seemed to come alive, as though they were dreams deposited from the city above.
曹彬特别带着程心来到城市的边缘，就是太空城的球壁。球壁上没有任何建筑物，也没有土壤等内衬，处于城市刚建成时的毛坯状态，在小范围内看不出弧度，像一片广阔平坦的广场。建筑密密麻麻地悬浮在上空，把斑斓的光影投射到“广场”上。程心看到，内壁上布满了涂鸦的画作，一直延伸到目力所及的远方。这些画色彩浓烈，狂野奔放，想象汪洋恣意，在变幻的光影中像活了一样，仿佛是从上方飘浮的城市沉淀下来的梦幻。
Cheng Xin was surprised to find a vendor who sold antique books. She flipped through a few — these books were not ancient for her. All the books drifted in a cloud, and many had their pages spread open like a flock of white-winged birds in the light… Cheng Xin saw a small wooden box drift in front of her, marked as cigars. She caught it, and immediately a young boy kicked his way over and swore up and down that these were authentic ancient Havana cigars that had been preserved for close to two hundred years. Since they had dried out a bit, he was willing to let them go at a low price that she would not be able to find anywhere else in the Solar System. He even opened the box to let Cheng Xin see what she was getting. She agreed and bought them.
程心惊奇地发现还有一个卖古书的摊位，翻看几本，对她来说那些书并不古老，所有的书也是在空中飘浮成一大团，许多书的书页展开，在灯光中像扑动着白翅的鸟群……程心看到一个木盒飘过眼前，上面标明是雪茄，她刚拿住那个木盒，立刻有一个黑人男孩飘过来，信誓旦旦地向程心保证这是正宗的古代哈瓦那雪茄，已经保存了近两百年，因为有些干了可以便宜些，并打开盒子让程心看，于是她买下了。
Cao Bin also told Cheng Xin that the Federation Government had devoted enormous resources to build a social welfare system here in Pacific I. The six million or so inhabitants here were mostly unemployed, but at least they could get the basic necessities for life.
曹彬还告诉程心，联邦政府投人了大量的财力在太平洋一号上建立社会福利。尽管在这里居住的六百多万人大部分没有工作，但也能保证基本的生活。
Cao Bin didn’t bring Cheng Xin deeper into the city. According to him, the center of the city was chaotic and rather violent. Gangs fought each other, and a few years ago, one of the gang fights had managed to rupture the hull, causing a massive decompression incident. Later, the gangs seemed to come to some kind of unspoken agreement, and settled their disputes in the center of the city, away from the hull.
曹彬没有带程心继续深人城市，因为据他说市中心地带的社会秩序很乱。城里常常发生黑帮火并，前几年的一次冲突竟击穿球壁，造成了严重的大气泄漏事故，后来，仿佛形成了某种不成文的约定，这些冲突只在城市中心区域发生。
“What will happen here in the event of a dark forest strike?”
“如果黑暗森林打击到来，这里怎么办？”程心问。
“Only annihilation. This city has no thrusters, and even if it did have them, it would be impossible to move it into the shadow of Jupiter and keep it there. Look –” He pointed to the drifting buildings. “If the city accelerated, everything would smash through the hull. Then the city would be like a bag with a hole in the bottom. If we receive a dark forest strike alert, the only thing that can be done is to evacuate the population to the other cities.”
“只有毁灭，城市没有推进器，就是有也不可能推进到阴影区与木星成并行运行状态。看这些，”曹彬指指空中飘浮的大群建筑，“如果城市加速。这一切会撞到球壁上，导致球壁破裂，那时城市就会像一个漏了底的袋子。如果打击警报出现，只有把这里的人紧急疏散到别的太空城中去。”
As they left the floating city in eternal night, Cheng Xin gazed at it through the porthole of the dinghy. This was a city of poverty and homelessness, but it also possessed its own rich life, like a weightless version of the famous Song Dynasty painting, Along the River During the Qingming Festival.
在离开时，程心透过太空艇的舷窗感慨地看着悬浮的永夜之城。这是贫穷和流浪的城市，却也拥有色彩万千的生活，像一幅失重状态下的《清明上河图》。
She understood that compared to the last era, the Bunker World was not at all an ideal society. The migration to the rim of the Solar System had caused some toxic social conditions, long eliminated by progress, to reemerge. This wasn’t exactly regression, but a kind of spiraling ascent, a necessary condition for the exploration and settlement of new frontiers.
她知道，与上一个时代相比，掩体世界远不是理想社会，向太阳系边缘的大移民使得早已消失的一些社会形态又出现了，但这不是倒退而是螺旋形上升，是开拓新疆域必然出现的东西。
After they left Pacific I, Cao Bin brought Cheng Xin to see a few more space cities with unusual designs. One of them, fairly close to Pacific I, was a wheel with spokes, not unlike a larger version of the space elevator terminal station that Cheng Xin had visited more than sixty years ago.
从太平洋一号出来后，曹彬还带程心看了几座特异构型的太空城，其中距太平洋一号较近的是一座轮辐状城市，就是程心六十多年前曾经到过的地球太空电梯终端站的放大版。
Cheng Xin was a bit puzzled by the designs of the cities. As a matter of engineering, the wheel seemed ideal. It was far easier to construct than the large, hollow shells used by the other cities, and when completed, a wheel was stronger and better able to survive disasters, as well as being easier to expand.
程心对太空城未全部建造成轮辐状一直不太理解，因为从工程学角度来看，轮辐状是太空城最理想的构型，建造它的技术难度要远低于整体外壳构型的太空城，建成后具有更高的强度和抗灾能力，而且便于扩建。
“What?”
“什么？”
There were some other cities with even stranger designs. Most of these were industrial or agricultural centers with no permanent residents. For instance, there was a city called Resource I. Its length was 120 kilometers, but the diameter was only three kilometers, like a thin stick. It did not spin around the long axis, but rather, tumbled about its center, end over end. The city’s interior was divided into levels, and the gravity at each level differed dramatically. Only a few levels were suitable for living, while the rest were devoted to various industries adapted to the different gravities. According to Cao Bin, near Saturn and Uranus, there were cities formed by combining two or more stick-shaped cities into crosses or stars.
还有一些构型更为奇特的太空城，它们大多是工业或农业城市，没有常住人口。比如一座叫资源一号空城，长度达到一百二十千米，直径却只有三十千米，是一根细长的杆子，它并不是绕自己的长轴旋转，而是以中点为轴心翻着筋斗。这座太空城内部是分层的，不同层域的重力差异极大。只有少数几层适合居住，其余部分都是适合不同重力的工业区。据曹彬说，在土星和天王星城市群落，两个或几个杆状太空城可以自中部绞结在一起。形成十字形或星形的组合体。
Cao Bin’s succinct reply to Cheng Xin’s query was “world-sense.”
“世界感。”曹彬的回答很简单。
“The sensation of being inside a world. A space city has to have ample interior volume and wide-open views so that the residents can feel they are living inside a world. Although the usable interior surface area isn’t too different from a hollow-shell design, in a wheel design, people always know that they are living inside a narrow tube or a series of such tubes.”
就是身处一个世界的感觉。太空城必须拥有广阔的内部空间。有开阔的视野，人在里面才能感觉到自己是生活在一个世界中。如果换成轮辐构型，那人们将生活在一圈或者几圈大竹子里，虽然内人面积与整体外壳构型的太空城差不多，但里面的人总感觉是在飞船上。“
Currently, most cities docked along their axis of spin. This way, after docking, the cities could continue to spin as before without changing the distribution of gravity. There were proposals for parallel or perpendicular docking as well, which would allow the combined cities to expand in multiple directions, as opposed to only along the axis of spin. But the spin of such combinations would dramatically change the interior distribution of gravity, and these proposals had not been tested so far.
目前的城市对接方式一般为同轴对接，这样对接后可以同轴旋转，保持对接前的重力环境不变。也有平行对接或垂直对接的设想，这样可以使组合后的城市空间在各个方向更为均衡，而不仅仅是同轴组合的纵向扩展，但由于组合体共同旋转将使原有的重力环境发生重大改变，所以没有进行过实际尝试。
The earliest city clusters of the Bunker Project were built near Jupiter and Saturn. Later, as cities were built near Uranus and Neptune, some new city-design concepts emerged. The most important idea was city docking. In those two clusters at the edge of the Solar System, every city was equipped with one or more standardized docks so that cities could be interconnected. Docking multiplied the space available for inhabitants and created even better world-sense, greatly encouraging economic development. In addition, after docking, the atmospheres and ecological systems of the various cities merged, and that helped to stabilize their operation and maintenance.
掩体工程最早建成的太空城群落是木星和土星群落，在较晚建设的天王星和海王星群落中，出现了一些新的太空城建设理念，其中最重要的是城市接口。在这两个处于太阳系遥远边缘的群落中，每座太空城都带有一个或多个标准接口，可以相互对接组合，组合后的城市居民的流动空间成倍扩大，有着更好的世界感，对社会经济的发展具有重大意义。连通后的大气和生态系统成为一个整体，运行状态更为稳定。
The biggest combined city so far was located at Neptune, where four of the eight cities were docked together along their axis of spin, forming a two-hundred-kilometer-long combined city. When necessary — such as when a dark forest strike alert was issued — the combined city could be quickly taken apart to increase the mobility of each city. People hoped that, one day, all the cities in each cluster could be combined into one, so that humanity would live in four complete worlds.
目前，最大的城市组合体在海王星，八座太空城中的四个同轴组合为一体，形成一个长达两百千米的组合城。在需要的时候，比如黑暗森林打击警报出现时，组合体可以在短时间内分解，以增强各自的机动能力。人们都抱有一个希望——有一天能够使每个城市群落中的所有太空城合为一体，形成四个整体世界。
In total, behind Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, there were sixty-four large space cities and nearly a hundred medium and small cities, plus numerous space stations. Nine hundred million people lived in the Bunker World.
目前，在木星、土星、天王星和海王星的背阳面，共有六十四座大型太空城，还有近百座中等和小型太空城以及大量空间站，在由它们构成的掩体世界中，生活着九亿人。
This was almost the entirety of the human race. Even before the arrival of the dark forest strike, Earth civilization had battened down the hatches.
这几乎是现存人类的全部，在黑暗森林打击到来前，地球文明已经进入掩体。
Every space city was politically equivalent to a state. The four city clusters together formed the Solar System Federation, and the original UN had evolved into the Federation Government. Most of the Earth’s major ancient civilizations had passed through a city-state stage — and now, city-states had reemerged at the rim of the Solar System.
每座太空城的政治地位相当于一个国家，四个城市群落共同组成太阳系联邦，原联合国演变成联邦政府。历史上地球各大文明都曾出现过城邦时代，现在，城邦世界在太阳系的外围再现了。
The Earth was now barely inhabited. Only about five million people remained there. These were individuals who did not wish to leave their home and who had no fear of the prospect of Death at any moment. Many brave men and women living in the Bunker World also traveled to Earth as tourists, though each journey meant gambling with their lives. As time passed, the anticipated dark forest strike loomed larger, and people gradually adapted to life in the Bunker World. Their yearning for their homeland lessened as they busied themselves in their new homes, and fewer and fewer now visited the Earth. The public no longer cared much about news from the home world, and were only vaguely aware that Nature was enjoying a resurgence. Forests and grasslands covered every continent, and those who stayed behind had to carry guns to defend against wild beasts when they went out, but it was rumored that they lived like kings, each with a vast estate and personal forests and lakes. The entire Earth was now only a single city in the Solar System Federation.
地球已经成为一个人烟稀少的世界，只有不到五百万人生活在那里，那是些不愿离开母星家园、对随时可能到来的死神无所畏惧的人。掩体世界中也有许多胆大的人不断地前往地球旅游或度假，每次行程都是赌命的冒险之旅。随着时间的推移，黑暗森林打击日益临近，人们也融入了掩体世界的生活，对母星的怀念在为生计的忙碌中渐渐淡漠。去地球的人一天比一天少了，公众也不再关注来自母亲行星的信息，只知道大自然在重新占领那里的一切，各个大陆都逐渐被森林和草原所覆盖。人们也听说留下的人都过得像国王一样，每个人都住在宽阔的庄园里，都有自己的森林和湖泊，但出家门必须带枪，以防野兽的袭击。整个地球世界目前只是太阳系联邦中的一个普通城邦。
The sun has set.
太阳落下去了。
Cheng Xin and Cao Bin’s small dinghy was now at the outer edge of the Jovian cities. Before the immense, dark Jupiter, these cities appeared so small, so alone, like a few shacks at the foot of a gigantic cliff. From a distance, faint candlelight spilled out of them. Though tiny, they were the only hints of warmth, of home, in this endless frigidity and desolation, the goal of all weary travelers. Cheng Xin’s mind churned up a short poem she had read in middle school, a composition by a long-forgotten Chinese poet of the Republican era:
程心和曹彬乘坐的太空艇现在已经航行在木星城市群落的最外侧在巨大阴暗的木星之畔，这个太空城群落显得那么渺小孤单，仿佛是一面高大山崖下的几幢小屋，它们远远地透出柔和的烛光，虽然微弱，却是这无边的严寒和荒寂中仅有的温暖栖所，是所有疲惫旅人的向往。这时，程心的脑海中竟冒出一首中学时代读过的小诗，是中国民国时期一个早被遗忘的诗人写的：
Delighting in all they can see,
喜悦他们所看见的；
Mountain, tree, rock, river,
山、树、石、河，
People light their lamps with great interest,
人类很有趣地点了他们的小灯：
All the grand buildings are buried in shadows.
一切伟大的建筑都埋在黑影里；
Hoping to find what they wish.
希望找着他们所要的。
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