“I wouldn’t mind if you took off right now,” she said.

Which was, in fact, the truth. They had reached a mutual parting of ways. He had been able to reach this point with all of his previous lovers, never early or late. He was especially pleased with his control over the pace this time. He had known her for just one week, and the breakup proceeded smoothly, as elegantly as a rocket discarding its booster.

He backtracked to an earlier topic: “Hey, it wasn’t my idea to establish cosmic sociology, you know. Do you want to know whose it was? You’re the only one I’m going to tell, so don’t get scared.”

“Whatever. I can’t believe most of what you say anyway, apart from one thing.”

“Uh … forget it. What one thing?”

“Come on and get up. I’m hungry.” She picked up his clothes from the carpet and threw them on the bed.

They ate breakfast in the main restaurant of the hotel. Most of the occupants of the tables around them looked serious, and at times they could catch snatches of conversation. Luo Ji didn’t want to listen, but he was like a candle on a summer night. The words, like insects crowding around the flame, kept working their way into his head: Escapism, socialized technology, ETO, transformation to a wartime economy, equatorial base, charter amendment, PDC, near-Earth primary warning and defensive perimeter, independent integrated mode …

“Our age has gotten really dull, hasn’t it?” Luo Ji said. He stopped cutting his egg and set down his fork.

She nodded. “I agree. I saw a game show question on TV yesterday that was really moronic. Hands on buzzers.” She pointed a fork at Luo Ji in imitation of the host. “One hundred and twenty years before the doomsday, your thirteenth generation will be alive. True or false?”

Luo Ji picked up his fork again and shook his head. “It’s not going to be any generation of mine.” He folded his hands as if in prayer. “My grand family line will die out with me.”

She gave a dismissive snort. “You asked me which of your lines I believe. That’s the one. You’ve said it before. That’s the sort of person you are.”

So that’s why she was leaving him? He didn’t want to ask about it for fear of complicating the issue, but she seemed to read his thoughts, and said, “I’m that sort of person too. It’s really annoying to see certain things about yourself in other people.”

“Particularly in a member of the opposite sex,” Luo Ji said, nodding.

“But if you need to justify it, it’s perfectly responsible behavior.”

“What behavior? Not having kids? Of course it is.” Luo Ji pointed his fork at the people around them discussing economic transformation. “You know what sort of lives their descendants will be living? They’ll be spending their days slaving away in the shipyards—the spaceship yards—and then they’ll line up at the canteen, bellies rumbling as they hold out their lunch pails waiting for that ladle of porridge … and when they’re older, it’ll be Uncle Sam Wants … no, Earth Wants You, and it’s off to find glory in the army.”