Chapter 2 Part One August 34th Chapter 1

In the summer when he was twelve years old, that is, the summer when the stars began to fall in the sky, the boy Isaac discovered that he could distinguish the east from the west with his eyes closed. Isaac lives on the edge of a large inland desert on the continent of Equatoria.The equatorial continent is located on a planet connected to the earth, and mysterious creatures (so-called hypothetical intelligent creatures) use arches to connect the two planets together.Most people will call this planet with all kinds of exaggerated, mythical or cold scientific terms, but most people use one of hundreds of languages ​​to simply call it the New World; It's Equatoria.Isaac learned these things in what was sort of a school.

He lived in a brick and mud paddock far from the nearest town.He is the only child here, and the adults who live with him like to keep a discreet distance from other people.They are special, especially because they don't like to discuss.Isaac was special, too, and they'd told him so many times, but he took them with a grain of salt.He doesn't think he's special.He often feels that he is far from special. Occasionally, the adults would ask Isaac if he was lonely, especially Dr. Duvale and Mrs. Rebuka.He is not lonely.He has a library of books and videos to fill his time.He is a student and can learn at his own pace, if not quickly, but steadily.In this, Isaac guesses, he may have let his caretakers down.Books, videos and courses fill his time, and when he can't read books or videos, there is nature around him.The natural world has become a silent and indifferent friend: the grayish-green hillsides with a bit of earthy brown extend to the barren plain at the edge of the desert interior, stretching into a scene of stones and sand.Vegetation is difficult to grow here because rains only come in the first few months of spring, and even then, rain is scarce.Plants with dull names grew on the dry ground, such as cylindrical cucumbers and belt vines.A garden was set up in the paddock yard, planting native flowers and trees: purple flowers, hairy cacti; tall green trees with cobweb-like flowers to absorb moisture in the air.Sometimes a man named Raj would irrigate the garden with a pump that was driven deep into the soil.On watering days, the morning air smells like mineral water: a steely smell that can linger for miles.Rock rats dug under fences and comically rolled across bricked yards.

In the early summer of Isaac's twelfth year, the days passed with gentle invariance, just as they had always been.But on the day of the old woman's arrival, this drowsy calm ended. ☆ Miraculously, she came here. That afternoon, Isaac left the paddock and climbed a short slope to the granite shed on the hill.Rock sheds protrude from the hillside like the prow of a ship jutting out of a sea of ​​stone.The afternoon sun scorched the rocks.Isaac wore a wide-brimmed hat and a white cotton shirt to keep him safe from the scorching sun.He sat on a shaded ridge under a ledge overlooking the horizon.The desert throbbed in bursts of rising furnace heat.He was alone, motionless, floating in the heat like a castaway on a dry yellowstone raft.Just then, the woman appeared.At first she was just a speck on a rough road.The road leads all the way from distant towns where Isaac's caretakers go to buy food and supplies.She walked slowly, or seemed to walk slowly.It was nearly an hour before he recognized it was a woman, then an old woman, and then an old woman with a burden on her back.A bow-legged figure with what appears to be a stubborn, determined gait.She is wearing a white robe and a sun hat.

The road approached the rock, almost directly below it.Isaac didn't want to be seen for some inexplicable reason, so he quickly ran behind the boulder and crouched down as she approached.He closed his eyes and imagined feeling the volume and weight of the ground below.The old woman's feet scratched the desert skin like a worm crawling on the body of a sleeping giant.He sensed something else too, buried deep in the earth: a great still beast, moving in the long sleep of the far west The old woman stopped for a while under the rock shed, as if she could see someone hiding.Isaac felt the rhythm of her shuffling break, or she simply stopped to take a sip from the water jug.She said nothing.Isaac doesn't move, which he's good at.

Then the footsteps continued.She walked and walked from the road to a path that curved towards the paddock.Isaac looked up at her back.At this time, she was already several meters away, and the long afternoon sun shone on her, dragging a long shadow from her body, like a caricature of a character with long legs.He took one look before she stopped and turned.At that moment, the eyes of the two seemed to meet.Isaac moves away hastily, not sure if he's been seen.He was startled by the accuracy of her gaze, and hid for a long time until the setting sun penetrated into the mountain pass.He even hides from himself, quietly like a fish, lurking in the pool of memories and thoughts.

The old woman went to the gate of the paddock and stayed there as long as she went in.Isaac followed her until it was all dark.Will the grown-ups, he wondered, introduce him to the old woman?Maybe at dinner time. Almost no outsiders have ever come to the paddock, and most of those who come want to stay. ☆ Isaac showered, put on clean clothes, and walked to the restaurant. This is where the entire population gathers every evening.There are thirty adults in total.Breakfast and lunch are optional, as long as you are willing to cook for yourself, you can eat whenever you like.But dinner was a group effort, so it was always crowded and always noisy.

Usually Isaac likes to listen to the conversations of adults, but he rarely understands them, except when it's their turn to go to the city to buy supplies, how to repair the roof, or how to improve the well and so on.These grown-ups consisted mostly of scientists and theorists, whose conversation now and then turned to the abstract.Although Isaac heard it in his ears, he couldn't remember the details of their work, only the general idea.They always mention time, the stars, and hypothetical intelligent beings; technology and biology; evolution and metamorphosis.Although these conversations usually revolved around words that he could not understand, they sounded very elegant and noble.Are hypothetical intelligent beings properly called beings or conscious entities?Or are they some kind of vast, mindless process?Such debates often become heated, with arguments defended and attacked, like military objectives.Isaac felt that it was like a room close at hand, but they closed the door and disassembled and reassembled the universe at will.

Tonight, the murmurs and murmurs have diminished.There was a newcomer present, the old woman on the road.Isaac took a seat timidly between Dr. Duval and Mrs. Rebuka, and peeked at her.She didn't look back, and in fact she didn't seem to care about his presence.Isaac studied her face every chance he got. She was older than he thought.Her skin was dark and wrinkled.Both eyes were bright and clear, looking out from deep-set eye sockets.She held the knife and fork with long, slender fingers with pale palms.By now she had changed from her desert attire to something more like other grown-ups: jeans and a buff cotton shirt.Her hair is thin and cut very short.No ring, no necklace.There was a piece of cotton tape taped to the crook of the arm, and Mrs. Rebuka, the community physician, must have taken her blood sample.Every newcomer gets this treatment.Isaac wondered: Did Mrs. Rebuka have a hard time finding a vein in that small, sturdy arm?Don't know what to test for?Did Mrs. Rebuka find what she was looking for?

The newcomers did not receive special attention at dinner.She also joins the conversation, but the topic is always superficial.It seems that no one is willing to reveal any secrets before this stranger is fully recognized, accepted and understood.It wasn't until the dishes had been washed and pots of coffee were placed on the long table that Dr. Duvali introduced Isaac to her. Isaac, he began, the boy stared uneasily at the table, this is Sulian.Moai.She came all the way to see you. all the way?What does it mean?Also, see him? Hello, Isaac.said the newcomer.Her voice was not the rough one he thought it was, in fact it was sweet, although a little hoarse and Isaac had an inexplicable feeling that her voice was quite familiar.

Hello.he said, but still avoided her eyes. Please call me Su Lian.she says. He nodded cautiously. I hope we can be friends.she says. ☆ Of course, he didn't tell her right away about his newfound ability to tell the direction of a compass needle with his eyes closed.He told no one, not even the stern Dr. Duvale or the more sympathetic Mrs. Rebuka.He was afraid that what he said would lead to a series of detailed investigations. Su Lian lived in the paddock and came to see him every morning after class and before lunch.At first Isaac was terrified of meeting him.He was shy, and even more afraid of Su Lian's age and frail appearance, but she was always friendly and polite.She respected his silence, and her questions were rarely embarrassing or offensive.

do you like your roomone day she asked. Because he likes to be alone, they let him live in a room by himself.This is a neat little room located on the second floor of the easternmost wing of the big house.There was a window in the room overlooking the desert.Isaac moved the desk and chair to the window, and his bed was propped against the wall on the other side.At night, he liked to leave the shutters open so that the dry wind could blow the sheets and his skin.He likes the smell of the desert. I grew up in the desert.Su Lian told him.A slanting daylight streamed in from the window, illuminating the left side of her body, one arm, and a parchment-like cheek and ear.Her voice was thin, almost a whisper. Is this desert? No, not this desert.But it wasn't too bad. why are you leaving She smiled.I have to go somewhere.At least I thought so at the time. Is this where you're going? In the end, yes. Because he likes her, and because of the inexplicable feeling he has for her from time to time, he said: I have nothing to give you. I don't expect to get anything.she says. others expect. Yeah? Dr. Duvaly and others.They used to ask me a lot of questions: how do I feel, what do I think, what does something in the book mean, etc.But they didn't like my answer.In the end they stopped asking, and they stopped giving him blood tests, psychological tests, and sensory tests. I am very satisfied with your current situation.said the old woman. He wanted to believe her, but she was new here, walking across the desert with the indifference of an insect crawling on a rock in the sun.Her purpose is unknown, so Isaac is still reluctant to tell her his most troubling secret. ☆ All grown-ups were his teachers, though some were more patient, or more serious.Mrs. Rebuka taught him basic biology, Mrs. Fisher taught him the geography of the Earth and the New Worlds, and Mr. Novony taught him the sky, the stars, and the relationship between the sun and the planets.Dr. Duvaly taught him physics, inclined planes, inverse squares, and electromagnetism.Isaac remembers being surprised the first time he saw the magnet pick up the spoon on the table.The whole planet is pulling things down, what power is in this rock that could even reverse that full force of flow?He's only just beginning to figure out Dr. Duval's answer! Last year, Dr. Duvali showed him a compass.The planet is also a magnet, Dr. Duvali said.It has a constantly rotating core of iron, so there are lines of magnetic force that form a shield against charged particles emanating from the sun; and poles that divide into north and south.Isaac had borrowed him the compass, a heavy military compass made on Earth, and Dr. Duval had graciously let him keep it. When he was alone in the room at night, Isaac put the compass on the desk and aligned the red dot of the pointer with the N representing north. Then he closed his eyes and turned his body, then stopped.When the dizziness gradually passed and the eyes were still closed, he could feel what the world was telling him, intuitively realized his position in it, and found a direction to ease some inner tension.Then he held out his right hand and opened his eyes to see which direction he was pointing.He found many things, but most of them were irrelevant. He did this experiment for three consecutive nights.Every night he found himself pointing almost exactly west on the compass plane, W. Then he tried again, and tried again, and tried again. ☆ Shortly before the annual meteor shower, he finally made up his mind to tell Su Lianne of this disturbing discovery.Moai. The meteor shower appears at the end of August every year, and this year it is on the 34th (the months in the New World are also named after the months on the earth, but each month has a few more days than the months on the earth).On the east coast of Equatorial Africa, August marks the beginning and end of the warm summer.Vessels leave the bountiful northern fishing grounds with their last catch to return to Port Magellan before the onset of autumn storms.Here in the desert, August simply means the nights are getting cooler.Isaac felt that the seasons of the desert were only experienced at night: the days were mostly the same, but in winter the nights were painfully cold. Slowly, Isaac let Su Lian.Moai became his friend.Not that they talked often, or about anything particularly important.Sulian was almost as taciturn as Isaac had always been.But she would accompany him on walks in the mountains, and she seemed to be more flexible than her age.She was slow, but she climbed hills as well as Isaac did; she could sit still for an hour, or more, when Isaac sat down.She never let him think it was a duty or a tactic, or something she didn't want to enjoy with him.He always thought that only he had this kind of happiness. Su Lian must have never seen the annual meteor shower, because she told Isaac that she had only been in Equatoria a few months ago.Isaac, a kid who loves meteor showers, suggested that she should find a good place to watch them.Dr. Duvale doesn't seem to fully agree with Su Lianne.Moai, but with his restless permission, on the night of the thirty-fourth, Isaac accompanied Sulian to the flat rock in the mountains.He had been sitting on that rock the first time he had seen her appear on the steaming, swaying horizon in the sun. It was daytime, but now it is dark.The New World moon is smaller and travels faster than Earth's moon.By the time Sulian and Isaac reached their destination, the moon had already crossed the sky.They both carried lanterns to light the way, and both wore thick boots and socks to protect themselves from the sandfish that would sometimes warm themselves on these granite faces while they still steamed from the day.Isaac inspected the site carefully and found no wild animals, so he sat cross-legged on a rock.Su Lian didn't complain, and slowly bent down and sat in the same position.Her face was serene, with a calm expression of expectation.The desert is blacker than the sky.They turned out the lights and let the darkness swallow them up.The sky is full of stars, no one has officially named these stars, but the astronauts have numbered them.The stars in the sky are swarming like insects.Every star was a sun, and many of them, as Isaac knew, shone their light into untouched and unknown places, perhaps even on deserts like this one.There was something among the stars, he knew.These things have a great, slow, cold life, in which a century is but a distant moment. I know why you are here.Isaac said. In this darkness, he could not see the old woman's face, which made the conversation easier and lessened the awkward clumsiness of the bricks in his mouth. Yeah? To study me. no.Not to study you, Isaac.It is better to say that I want to study the sky than to say that I want to study you in particular. Like everyone else in the paddock, she's interested in hypothetical intelligent beings.They rearranged the sky and the earth. You are here because of me. She raised her head and said: Well, that's right. So he started telling her about his sense of direction.At first he spoke intermittently, but seeing that she was just listening and not asking questions, he became more confident as he spoke.He thought about the question she might want to ask: When did you notice this special ability?He couldn't remember, it was just this year, only a few months ago.At first it was just a vague feeling that, for example, he liked working in the paddock library because the desks there faced the same direction as his desks, although there were no windows to look out of the library.In restaurants, he always sat at the side of the table closest to the door, even if the other seats were empty.He also moved his bed so that he could sleep more comfortably, and where was the head of the bed facing? But he can't tell.No matter where he goes, when he stands still, he will always face a direction he likes.It's not a compulsion, just a mild urge that's easy to ignore.He always has a good facing direction, and a less good facing direction. So are you facing a good direction now?Su Lian asked. Actually yes.He didn't realize it until she asked, but he was comfortable on this rock, not looking at the mountains but at the dark inland. West, Sulian said, you like to face west. A little northerly. In this way, the secret was spoken.He had nothing else to say, and he heard Sulian adjust her posture in the silence, adjusting herself to the pressure of the rock.He wondered if it was painful or uncomfortable to sit on a solid rock at this age.Even if it was, she didn't say anything.She looked up at the sky. You are right about meteors.It's been a long time, she said.so beautiful! The meteor shower has begun. Isaac is obsessed with meteor showers.Dr. Duvaly had told him about meteorites, that they weren't really stars at all, just bits of burning stone or dust, the remains of ancient comets that had orbited the New World sun for millennia.But this explanation puzzled Isaac even more.He sensed many things in these evanescent lights: the enactment of ancient geometry; forces in motion long before this planet was formed (or supposedly intelligent beings built it); Isaac listens to the murmur of the night as sparks fly from east to west across the zenith of melodies evolving over the course of a species' lifetime. Just as he was immersed in his own happiness, Su Lian suddenly stood up and looked back towards the mountains.Look, what is that?It looked like something had fallen off. Like luminous rain, like a storm falling through the high pass of the Divide.Sometimes storms do, but this light has no lightning, and it fills the sky and falls continuously.She said: Is this normal? unusual.Isaac said. Not normal at all. Then maybe we should go back. Isaac nodded uneasily.He wasn't afraid of the looming, oh, storm, if it was.Only it carried a meaning he couldn't explain to Surian, something to do with the silent things that lived beneath Rub Al Khali in the Far West Empty, where his personal compass was aimed.They walked briskly back to the paddock, not counting as a run, because Isaac wasn't sure if someone as frail-looking as Suliane could run.After a while, the top of the mountain, which was originally visible to the east, was covered by this strange, misty light wave.When they reached the gate, the meteor shower was completely covered by this novel phenomenon.Something that looked like dust began to fall from the sky, and Isaac's lantern lit up less and less.Isaac thinks the falling things might be snow, which he's seen on video; but Sulian says no, it's not snow at all, it's more like dust.It smells bad, like sulfur. Like dead stars falling, Isaac thought. Mrs. Rebuka waited by the paddock gate and pulled Isaac in with such force that Isaac felt pain.He cast her a surprised and somewhat accusing look.Mrs. Rebuka had never hurt him, no grown-up had ever hurt him.She didn't care about his expression, she just hugged him as if she wanted to hold him, and told him that she was always afraid that he would get lost in this She couldn't find anything to say. In the living room, Dr. Duvali listened to the broadcast from Port Magellan, a large city on the east coast of Equatoria.The adults gathered together. Dr. Duvali said that the signal was relayed by aerostats when passing through the mountains, so it was intermittent, but he learned that the same phenomenon occurred in Port Magellan. There was something like dust falling all over the sky. The reason has not been explained.Some people in the city started to panic, and the next thing the radio, or the aerostat that relayed the signal, completely failed. Isaac returned to his room at Mrs. Rebuka's urging, while the other adults continued their conversation.He didn't sleep, and didn't want to sleep at all.He was sitting by the window, but he could see nothing in front of him, just a deep gray where the light from above streamed into the falling dust.He listened to the silence, which seemed to speak to him.It was a meaningful silence.