The Effort

by Claire Holroyde

  “I’ve seen ’em before,” Ned said. “More important that I take a big leak.”

  Maya slowed to a stop and tugged on Jack’s hand. Her head cocked sideways as she looked at Ned more closely.

  “Are you drunk?” she asked, with the corner of her mouth tilted up.

  Ned snorted a laugh and shrugged.

  “Whoa,” Jack said. “And I thought I was the troublemaker.”

  “You are,” Ned agreed, looking at the couple’s clasped hands. “But who gives a fuck anymore. Since we are stuck out at sea, might as well hit up the stashes we keep for going on leave. A smoke ’em if ya got ’em kinda thing.”

  Jack remembered the flask hidden in his duffel bag.

  “I got ’em!” he said.

  “Me too!” Maya piped up.

  She smiled wide and flashed those exciting incisors. Ned smiled back and nodded.

  “Why don’t you join us in the Coastie lounge?” he offered, before turning and ambling down the corridor. “And bring your troublemaker friends.”

  Jack and Maya looked at each other, surprised. The two lounges were territorial, each forbidden to the other.

  “I’ll try and get some of the scientists outta their rooms,” Maya said.

  It was a great excuse to knock on doors and tell others to stop crying, stop drowning slowly in this existential nightmare, and come out and get blind drunk with the Coasties.

  “Meet me back at my door,” Jack said, and hightailed to his stateroom.

  * * *

  GUSTAVO WATCHED JACK rummage around in his duffel bag as the young man extended an invitation.

  “You should come,” Jack said, head bent down. “It’ll be fun. And it’d be good for you to get out of this cramped room.”

  Jack found what he was looking for and held it up: a silver flask.

  “I’ll come,” Gustavo said.

  “Wait, what? You will?”

  Jack blinked and asked if he was sure. Gustavo nodded and extended his hand for the flask. As far as his bunkmate knew, he took a polite sip. But in truth, Gustavo didn’t part his lips. Hard alcohol made him vomit and blackout. Still, he would play along. Drunken sprees were an important part of communal life. At least they always were for his people, the Wayãpi of the Amapari River in the Amazon forest.

  Caxiri beer was brewed in his village from cassava, sweet potato, and saliva from the sweet mouths of women. Exclusions were reserved for the ill, for those practicing shamanistic ritual, and for women either menstruating or heavy with child, but all others were expected to partake. The sprees began with body painting using red urucu and black genipa dyes. Then one drank until they vomited, making room for more beer. At twilight and again at dawn, there would be dancing and singing by flickering lumps of burning resin. It was a time of joy and freedom from restraint.

  Of course there were costs that came with the drunken sprees: fights often broke out; a man might beat his wife; a youth might be found hanging from a tree by his neck. But pain was expected and absorbed. Pain was a certainty in life, but joy…joy was the beautiful, elusive thing one clawed toward.

  Jack gave his bunkmate a warm smile as Gustavo handed back the flask.

  “My friend,” Jack said, “you are full of surprises.”

  There was a soft knock on their door. Jack went to answer it but waved for Gustavo to follow along. Two people waited in the corridor illuminated with that strange, red light that flipped on at night. One was a young, tall, and bearded white man. The other was Maya, the small pretty woman he had met briefly the first time she stood in the doorframe while Jack rummaged around his closet. Gustavo could tell from the way Maya’s body drew close and brushed against Jack’s, the way she had to drag her gaze away from him to look Gustavo in the eyes, that they had become lovers.

  Jack no longer slept in their shared room, but he didn’t disappear altogether. He left his luggage and returned to get fresh clothes and give Gustavo food stolen from the galley. Sometimes Jack even visited their room for no other reason that Gustavo could gather, other than to make sure he was all right.

  “Sir?” said the bearded stranger standing behind Maya. “If I may?”

  Ceremoniously, he handed Gustavo a book and a ballpoint pen. Gustavo tilted up the cover and saw his own name in print. It was his most famous poetry collection, The Majesty. Its cover had a crude drawing of a Brazil nut tree with its roots and branches reaching, reaching. Gustavo refused to publish the collection without that drawing included.

  “What is your name?” Gustavo asked as he opened to the title page.

  “Carl,” said the young man.

  “Did you know, Carl, that my friend drew the picture on the cover years ago? His name was Zé Cláudio.”

  Gustavo didn’t say that it was a dead friend from the Brazilian state of Pará, a murdered friend who died next to his wife as they sat astride their motorcycle; their two bodies pressed comfortably together made for an easier target.

  * * *

  THERE WERE MORE than twenty-five Coasties gathered in their lounge. Maya spotted Ned seated at a circular table in the corner, playing cards. Soon as Ned saw the small party—two scientists and two guest passengers standing in the doorway—he smiled and called out, “They’re with me!”

  On his left was Healy’s man-overboard dummy Ralph, propped up in a chair by the table for comic effect. Ned had his arm around the dummy and held up his fan of cards for the both of them. On Ned’s right was Malcolm, the crane operator, who smiled at Maya from behind his own closely held cards. Malcolm looked a good deal more sober and had a good deal more poker chips.

  The other Coasties milling about were friendly and bleary-eyed as they passed around bottles and flasks. Maya held her bottle of Bordeaux tightly. She had a corkscrew in the pouch of her sweatshirt, but it didn’t feel right to open the bottle without Charlie. She had tried to tempt him out of his stateroom, but he hadn’t answered her pleading from the corridor. When she bent down and looked through the hole in his door, she only saw an empty desk and dark interior.

  Two women approached to say how happy they were to see Gustavo out and about. The first was Ensign Camila Ortiz and the second was Ensign Leigh Ann Gates from the Morale Committee, who loudly hiccupped and slapped her hand over her offending mouth. Maya took the opportunity to ask them to check in on the chief scientist. Dutifully, they went, hiccupping down the corridor.

  Jack offered to help Maya as she fumbled with the corkscrew.

  “I’m okay,” she assured him. “Go play.”

  So he did. Jack went to the poker table and sat on Ralph the dummy’s lap. He offered his flask around and made a joke about mouth herpes. The players at the table all barked and sniggered with laughter. Jack was so hard not to like. Maya herself had tried and failed spectacularly. As if he could feel her eyes on him, Jack turned to her and smiled. Every hour they had spent together had the intensity of seven. They lived in dog years now with the fear of UD3.

  There were Styrofoam cups on the long table in the center of the room, probably swiped from the Java Hut. Carl the postdoc brought over a stack for Maya to pour out small portions of wine to pass out. Everyone was grateful and lifted their cups to her.

  “To the Arctic,” Maya said, and lifted her cup as well.

  The wine was delicious. For a brief instant, Maya closed her eyes and thought of home. When she opened them, a Coastie offered her a swig from his own flask. Maya accepted and winced at the fiery liquor. More flasks and bottles were passed around. The more they shared liquor and saliva, the more they clapped each other on the back and felt like old friends.

  It didn’t take much alcohol to make Maya tipsy, with her small body mass and low tolerance. She usually wasn’t good at parties, but she tried to talk to everyone in the room and memorize all their names and ranks. Even the poet Gustavo grew more talkative, although his Styrofoam cup of wine never seemed to diminish. No one could bring up their families back home, so they talked about their big adopted family on H
ealy. For a time, they had good drink and stories of high adventure at the top of the world. In each other, they had solace and the hope of things returning to normal.

  Conversation died as the two ensigns returned to the lounge looking bereft. Ensign Ortiz now spoke to Maya in Spanish, as if they were alone. Camila’s face drew tight as she said that Dr. Charles Brodie was gone. Maya shook her head.

  “We opened his door when he didn’t respond,” Ensign Gates whispered, looking between the two Spanish speakers. “He wasn’t there. We searched several floors of the ship. If he doesn’t turn up, it’s likely he jumped overboard.”

  Camila handed Maya a folded piece of paper that the scientist had left on his desk. Maya recognized Charlie’s scrawl:

  Maya,

  I am so sorry. I fear I am losing my mind.

  NINETEEN

  Through a Telescope

  Kourou, French Guiana

  November 19

  T-minus 74 days to launch

  BEN GOT A CRICK in his neck as he stood in the largest cleanroom in the payload prep facilities, looking up at two massive solar arrays. Each consisted of five segmented panels that were supported on rigs running in parallel. Ben, Chuck, and Jin-soo stood between them, turning in circles for a panoramic view. The arrays spanned more than a hundred feet from tip to tip with glossy black solar cells filling in like scales on a dragon’s wing.

  “The arrays are nearly operational,” Jin-soo said, his voice muffled by a mask.

  All engineers were required to wear white cleanroom suits, nicknamed “bunny suits,” with masks, hoods, gloves, and boots.

  “They will be complete and tested within a month. Ahead of schedule.”

  “Impressive,” Ben admitted.

  The light that brightened Jin-soo’s eyes quickly dimmed as he remembered the reality: impressive, but not enough. Propulsion by solar power would be slow and wouldn’t buy them any time to complete the hypervelocity comet intercept vehicle. It was this factor that dictated timing of the February 1 launch now counting down. On reflex, Ben checked his watch. And checked it again as Jin-soo and Chuck headed to the adjoining cleaning room.

  “Love!” Ben called out.

  She had been floating around the groups of engineers, translating between language groups. There were just under a hundred of them, the maximum number of persons allowed while still keeping a controlled level of contamination. After Ben waved her over, Love strode to his side.

  “Engineers say the arrays will be ready ahead of schedule,” she said. “That’s good, right?”

  Ben made a noncommittal noise, something like Hmm. As if to answer Love’s question, a partially built HYCIV spacecraft was mounted on a wheeled gurney in the adjoining room. Its skeletal frame was a seven-foot cube shape with interior mechanisms exposed. Two engineers peeled off from a larger group surrounding the spacecraft. It took Ben a few seconds to recognize Ed and Stan (aka Ponytail Guy) from the core team. They walked over to Jin-soo’s side and waited in silence with their shoulders slumped.

  “Love, why don’t you go offer your talents?” Ben said quietly. “Please.”

  Love gave him a wary stare before she joined the engineers circling the HYCIV and making adjustments. Once she was out of earshot, Jin-soo gave a status update. His team had to create and model the spacecraft while they were physically building it because there wasn’t time to do the steps in sequence. The skin of Jin-soo’s brow looked ashen and pinched as he quickly noted a miscalculation that cost his team precious time to reconfigure.

  “My fear,” Jin-soo said softly, “is that either we will not complete the HYCIV by launch or we will rush production to the extent that it will malfunction after deployment.”

  “That’s everyone’s fear,” Ben sighed.

  Jin-soo nodded. No one objected when he quickly transitioned into the latest modifications. It was a better topic of discussion for all of them.

  Under any other circumstances, Ben would have zero tolerance for denial, hypocrisy, or bullshit of any kind. But in the case of the Effort, everyone had to ignore the elephant in the cleanroom, even as that elephant continued to smoke cigars, blare a horn, and tell inappropriate limericks while popping a giant erection. What elephant? I don’t see an elephant. Nope, no elephant here. Because they needed to keep hope. Without hope they were possibly dead, possibly extinct.

  The last thing Ben remembered clearly was his pondering a theory of comets and asteroids in the back of his mind. It was supposed that one of these foreign bodies could have struck primordial Earth and deposited the very organic molecules that became the building blocks of early life. Now a foreign body was threatening to wipe out all the brilliant creation of the last 3.8 billion years. Whoever said The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away wasn’t kidding.

  There was darkness afterward, the same nothingness of unconsciousness. Ben was jolted out of this state with the feeling of falling and losing all balance and orientation. When Ben opened his eyes, Chuck was supporting a good portion of his weight.

  “You were about to black out again,” he explained.

  “No I wasn’t.” Ben stood up straight on his own. “Jin-soo was talking about the lead impactor—”

  “He was ten minutes ago,” Chuck said.

  Ben could swear that no time had passed, but the digital numbers on his watch said otherwise. Jin-soo looked at the floor.

  “Maybe you should get some sleep—” Stan started to say.

  “Maybe you should cut off that scraggly-ass ponytail, for God’s sake!”

  Several engineers stopped their work and looked over at the shouting.

  “You did cut it off!” Ponytail cried, pointing to the hood of his cleanroom suit. “With scissors! You insisted!”

  Did I really do that? Ben wondered. Hazy images of either memories or dreams suddenly replayed in his head. Oh shit. Maybe I did do that…

  “Go to camp,” Chuck insisted.

  “I can take a quick nap outside with the others—”

  “I’m calling a jeep.”

  Ben started to protest, but Chuck cut him off and asked the other scientists for a word alone. Jin-soo closed his eyes for the briefest moment of relief before walking off to resume his duty and bear their burden.

  “Take care of yourself,” Chuck said to Ben, “’cause I don’t want your job. Don’t make me take it.”

  Chuck turned, but Ben grabbed two fistfuls of his cleanroom suit. They weren’t through, not with a threat like that. Chuck shoved him so hard that he lost his grip and fell backward onto the floor. They had never really compared themselves physically; theirs was a playing field for mental abilities only. As Chuck stood glowering, they both suddenly realized that he could kill Ben with his bare hands. Ben looked up at his friend in tears, like a child betrayed. Chuck’s expression quickly softened. He moved to lift Ben up and hold him by the shoulders.

  “I’m sorry,” Chuck said.

  “Me too,” Ben agreed, with a tear slipping off the long slope of his nose. “I’m just so tired…”

  He started giggling.

  “Do you remember the night after I proposed the duck-and-cover maneuver? Back in 2014?”

  Ben was the first to respond to comet Siding Spring’s initial trajectory with a fully detailed proposal for NASA leadership. Ben delivered the coordinates to gather NASA’s three orbiting satellites on the other side of Mars and use the planet as a shield from comet dust that could cost millions in damage.

  The proposal had been just the beginning. When NASA immediately approved it, Ben and his JPL team were in for the longer haul. He could remember spreading a sleeping bag in front of the desk in his office. He had looked out into the hallway and saw Chuck walking past, flossing his teeth while wearing pajama pants with the Budweiser logo slapped all over them. Before bedding down for a few hours, Ben called his condo’s landline, and Amy answered it for the first time. She, and all of her clutter, had just moved in permanently. When are you coming home? she asked. Ben remembered
her using that welcome word.

  “And we thought that comet was going to be the test of our lives!” Ben snickered.

  Chuck looked like he wanted to embrace Ben but didn’t know how. He squeezed Ben’s shoulders until they hurt.

  “If anyone can save us, it’s you,” Chuck whispered.

  Ben dipped his head in mute humility. That he could have a real friend who believed in him, and entrusted the planet to his care, was not to be taken for granted. For a brief moment, all the voices of doubt and hysteria in his mind went blissfully silent.

  “Can you call Amy and tell her I’ll be at the Penthouse?” Ben finally whispered.

  “Penthouse” was the nickname Ben gave to Love’s private utility closet on the second floor of the Space Museum. After the three of them became fast friends who supported and clung to one another in equal measure, Amy asked if the couple could join Love for a nap. Ben wasn’t too surprised when Love agreed; Amy usually got what she wanted. Now the three of them sometimes nestled together in sleeping bags like pack animals in a warm, safe den.

  Ben shuffled out of the large composite cleanroom in dejected defeat. Love joined him in the gowning room moments later.

  “Why do I always have to escort you out?” she grumbled, as they tossed out their masks and gloves and hung up their bunny suits. “I’m an interpreter, not an enforcer.”

  “’Cause you’re cooler and scarier than the rest of us nerds,” Ben answered. “And you’re my friend. So I listen to you.”

  They headed through a series of fireproof doors to the front exit of the payload prep facilities, made of more than fifteen buildings that looked like connected shoeboxes. Love started to say something and then stopped when two engineers walked past in the opposite direction. Obviously, she wanted to talk to Ben alone, which couldn’t be good.