The Effort

by Claire Holroyde

  Rivka and Lamar followed Lincoln Avenue. It was eerily empty except for abandoned cars parked along the curb, their four doors spread open. They were being watched. Rivka saw the whites of a boy’s eyes before he scurried around a building. She wished she had food to give him. She also wished their trash bags weren’t so glaringly white and noisy. They came across a body lying in the wide road in a patch of moonlight. Rivka could smell it better than she could see it.

  “Keep moving,” she whispered, when Lamar started to slow.

  “What if I know him?” he asked, swiveling his head back and forth on the lookout for Keisha.

  “Keep. Moving.”

  Her whispers were hisses. Their hands clenched so hard they hurt. Lamar helped her through the absolute darkness of the Deegan Expressway overpass. Closer to the river, they saw an ugly glow illuminate plumes of smoke in the sky. Rivka smelled burning things that were never meant to be burned: plastic, polyester, rubber, and tar. Underlying the toxic fumes was the smell of human waste. Untreated sewage from the water treatment plants must have leaked into the river.

  Lamar helped Rivka climb a chain-link fence and step over train tracks to reach shoreline two hundred yards south of the burning Third Avenue Bridge. Rivka flipped on her flashlight and pointed its beam across the river. It was still too dark to see their salvation in the form of park benches and tall lampposts, but they could see flashlight beams probing the dark of their destination on the other side.

  “If those people catch us trying to sneak in, they could kill us,” Lamar whispered.

  Rivka shrugged.

  “They can’t blame us any more than we can blame them,” she sighed. “We all want to live.”

  They both stripped down to their underwear and breathed through their mouths to avoid the stench. Rivka tucked her flashlight in her jacket pocket before stuffing her clothes down the sides of her bottle-filled trash bag. She was a good swimmer, but her muscles might seize up, and then she would need a makeshift lifesaver as well.

  Rivka told Lamar to hold on to each deep breath; lungs were like balloons. Lamar stood shivering, looking up at the brilliant Milky Way stretching across the sky. He had never seen it, given the city’s light pollution. They both studied it for a moment, seeing only a glimpse of the infinity that was the universe. Rivka took Lamar’s hand and led him to the embankment. They might both drown in the next hour, but there wasn’t much choice. Rivka thought of the orchestra on the Titanic who played as their ship lowered into the icy water. Sometimes you need to keep doing until the very end.

  The water was rancid: a mix of ash, algae, rot, shit, and who knows what else. The temperature was a shock. Rivka told Lamar to kick, kick as hard as he could. Then she forced herself forward until she was up to her neck and gasping hard. Rivka pulled on the drawstrings of her trash bag as her body stiffened.

  Kick! Kick!

  The current wasn’t strong, but it was difficult to make her muscles unclench. Rivka’s nose kept dipping into the foul water. She fought to keep her head up and risked a look back. Lamar was flailing, his trash bag strained like an anchored buoy in a wake, but there was nothing they could do for each other now. She kept heading for shore.

  Kick! Kick!

  There was room in her mind for this one word only. Even as she bumped into something half submerged in the water, a something that was most likely dead, there was only that one word for that one action. Even when a flashlight beam shone into her face, she kept kicking toward it. Lamar overtook Rivka; he was a fast learner with strong legs. Once he lifted his body out of the water and onto the barrier ledge, he caught his breath and then screamed her name.

  Rivka kicked until she felt Lamar grab her shoulder and haul her up. She started to weep, but he was already pulling her by the arm toward a metal railing atop the barrier. Flashlight beams blinded them. Rivka saw a semicircle of shadowy figures that did nothing as Lamar struggled to pull Rivka and their two trash bags over the railing and onto solid ground, just as they did nothing to help the couple reach the ledge. Killing strangers was one thing, but doing nothing as they drowned…that was easier. Doing nothing was always easier.

  Lamar and Rivka stood by each other on wobbly legs. They held hands and shivered violently in the harsh light. For a time, no one made the first move. It was a good sign. Lamar finally set his trash bag on the ground.

  “Step away from the bags,” a man barked. “Or you’re going back in that river.”

  Lamar and Rivka did as they were told. They could hear their teeth clicking together. The man stepped forward. Light outlined his body in a stark halo. His rifle was pointed at the newcomers.

  “You two alone?”

  Rivka could only nod.

  Please be human, she prayed, repeating both the verb and noun in her head. Be human. Be human…

  Please.

  In the halo of light, Rivka saw a camouflage pattern. She stepped forward and held out her shaking hands to grab the man’s sleeve. He tried to hold her back at arm’s length, but Rivka’s numb fingers clumsily brushed the embroidered lettering on the chest of his jacket.

  “Mm-McDevitt,” she managed to read aloud.

  The rest of the lettering spelled out US ARMY. The soldier’s elbows buckled when he heard his name, and he let Rivka cling to his torso.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, patting her slick bare back.

  “We should’ve helped you two, but we’re nearly out of supplies and we’re getting overrun…”

  The soldier McDevitt sighed but seemed to remember his humanity as he removed his jacket and wrapped it around Rivka’s shivering shoulders.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Impact Scenario 123

  Kourou, French Guiana

  January 10

  T-minus 22 days to launch

  AMY HAD CAUGHT a second wind. Her actions now had a vitality that was lean and feral with all its fat starved off. In the Effort, Amy had found her home, and, improbably, it was right back on a military base.

  The irony wasn’t lost on her; for the first half of her life, Amy wanted to be anywhere but a military base. Much of her teenage years was spent holed up in a tiny bedroom, living in fantasy through books, graphic novels, comics, Magic: The Gathering cards, and used D&D game sets. Soon as Amy hit eighteen, she fled like a bat out of hell, leaving military life and avoiding all the negative associations she had foresworn: blind obedience, religious dogma, monoculture, and strict cleanliness.

  Amy ventured west to bustling cities and reveled in the freedom and diversity that they attracted. She went to live music festivals, visited museums, attended a campaign rally, ate at ethnic restaurants, and loitered in public libraries. The only cause to look back on her former life was the aching loneliness and depression that soon set in. Amy was a social creature used to the human bonds of a tight-knit community. As a transplant living with other transplants in cramped apartments, relationships were all new and mostly transitory. She left the friends she made as she moved away, or they left her for new jobs, new locations, or the challenge of newborn babies.

  And here, in the last place she might look, a spaceport turned international military base while facing planetary annihilation, Amy had finally found that familiar feeling of caring cooperation and shared purpose—but with the right tribe this time, her chosen tribe. These were the men and women saving Earth, just like her beloved science fiction stories, only now it was real.

  This was the realization running through Amy’s mind as her body suddenly vaulted forward against a seat belt. The jeep skidded to the shoulder of the road.

  “Get down!”

  Both UN peacekeepers in the front seat yelled for Amy to duck down. Her eyes caught the glare of headlights reflecting off white fabric; there was a human figure in the middle of the road wearing a lab coat. The driver kept one hand on the wheel while the other unstrapped his walkie-talkie to radio headquarters. The peacekeeper in the passenger seat unholstered his gun and called back to Amy without taking his eyes of
f the figure.

  “Ma’am—”

  “For the millionth time, call me Amy.”

  “We don’t mean to overreact, but we have to be cautious.”

  Because of Ben, Amy thought. She was the glue holding him together, barely.

  “Unidentified person is unarmed,” said the driver, relaying information back to headquarters. “Looks to be alone. Wearing a security badge. Asian—”

  “Chinese,” Amy stated.

  The engineers from mainland China all wore white lab coats as a formality.

  “The Chinese engineers are testing the solar arrays back at payload prep,” she added.

  The jeep was less than two miles from the building, but what an engineer was doing out in the dark, standing in the middle of road, Amy couldn’t say. Static crackled from the walkie-talkie.

  “There’s a security detail nearby,” said a voice from headquarters. “Wait for backup.”

  “This could all be a fuss over nothing,” Amy muttered.

  “He’s approaching!”

  The peacekeeper on the right jumped out of the jeep, shouting and aiming his gun. Amy heard the Chinese engineer shout back—but in English. She opened her window and stuck out her head for a better look. The figure in the lab coat was closer now, squinting in bright headlights.

  “I know her!” Amy screamed out the window.

  Her gravelly voice rose above the others.

  “She’s an engineer with valid clearance. Put your gun down!”

  Amy continued to scream until the peacekeeper lowered his gun, but he kept a hand raised with palm out.

  “We have a positive identification,” the driver whispered into his radio. “Female—”

  “Zhen,” Amy said. “The engineer’s name is Zhen.”

  Dr. Zhen Liu, Amy remembered as she reached for the door handle.

  “Just wait,” the driver pleaded.

  Amy grunted but did as he advised. Another jeep sped up to a quick stop alongside them. Three peacekeepers exited with flashlights mounted on their helmets. The one in the lead was a handler with a German Shepherd on a leash. Poor Zhen looked terrified, but the large animal was all business as he dutifully sniffed her clothes and shoes for explosives. The second peacekeeper waited with his semiautomatic rifle lowered as the third patted down Zhen’s lab coat for weapons and scanned her badge with a handheld device. He lifted a thumbs-up.

  “Clear,” said the driver. “And her badge checks out.”

  “I could have told you that,” Amy insisted. “I’m the one who processed her at security.”

  The driver listened to his radio and the shouts of the peacekeepers outside simultaneously.

  “The engineer asked for you by name,” he told Amy. “She wants to talk to you in private, but it isn’t safe.”

  Amy didn’t blame the peacekeepers for their apprehension. They didn’t know that there was little to risk when the Effort was doomed to fail. The mission had been fucked from the beginning. Even as every simulated and imaginable scenario all led to failure (as Ben divulged in frantic whispers), the Effort continued with hope of the unimaginable, the irregular. And if anyone was irregular, it was the engineer standing in the middle of the road: the only woman out of twenty-three engineers sent to represent China, also the only one fluent in multiple languages.

  Amy had a burning itch to google the engineer’s name. Ben said that China had majorly upped its game as a spacefaring nation. Last year, it even led the world in orbital launches. What if this engineer was a part of that? Unforgivably, the logistics team flat-out refused to grant Amy special access to the internet. She had to fly blind, aside from her own observations—and others’.

  When Amy approached Jin-soo weeks ago in the payload prep facilities, he was already aware of Zhen’s potential, having received multiple reports of her methods to accelerate completion and then testing of the HYCIV’s solar arrays. Her methods were completely unique, Jin-soo said in a hoarse whisper. And I’ve seen a lot in my day. It was only after admitting Zhen’s singularity that Jin-soo finally agreed to show Zhen the planned construction of the HYCIV spacecraft.

  Amy dashed out of her jeep. The driver lunged out and tried to block her path, but Amy continued until their bodies collided. She put her flat hand on his chest and leaned in. The intimate gesture startled the man, as she knew it would. Amy stepped past him and waved back the security detail until they gave her a wide berth.

  Zhen finally stood alone, shielding her eyes against the headlights with both hands. The black hair framing Zhen’s round face lifted in the tropical night breezes and grazed her full cheeks. She motioned for Amy to come closer. Noise levels from the layers and layers of barracks surrounding the space center security gates inhibited quiet conversation. Amy walked slowly until she was close enough to see the two linear scars on Zhen’s upper lip, like shiny lines of candle wax stretching to her nose. The surgeries that had repaired her bilateral cleft palate were many decades in the past but still present.

  Zhen’s English was accented but surprisingly rapid and precise, just as Amy remembered.

  “You asked Dr. Lee to show me the plans for the HYCIV,” she whispered.

  Amy nodded. She had a theory about Zhen’s abilities and very little time to test it. So Amy had gone straight to Jin-soo with the hope he would consult Zhen on his HYCIV build.

  “It would take two years to build that HYCIV model,” Zhen ventured to say to Amy, “using all the donated subassemblies on the list.”

  But Earth didn’t have two years.

  “Do you have any suggestions?” Amy asked, putting an edge in her voice.

  That was the whole goddamn point, after all.

  “Only one,” Zhen said, nervously checking her watch to gauge the passing time. “There may be a way to save us. But I need your help. I must know if there is a Chinese cargo plane still parked at the airport.”

  Amy looked back to her jeep and said that they could all drive to the Kourou Airport in less than ten minutes. It was easily accessible and secure within the outer Effort perimeter. Any unauthorized aircraft trying to enter the no-fly zone were radioed warnings and then shot out of the sky if they continued on course. (The noise was awful. Last time it happened, Amy covered her ears with her hands and kept moving. You had to keep moving…)

  “Not Kourou,” Zhen said, shaking her head. “I mean the airport where the Chinese all landed. The airport in Cayenne.”

  The difficulty of her request increased by an order of magnitude with that destination. The international airport in Cayenne was an hour’s drive from the Effort perimeter, heading southeast along the coast. Zhen would need special clearance and a large security detail.

  “If the plane is still at the airport in Cayenne, you must arrange a meeting,” Zhen insisted. “I will need to speak to Dr. Schwartz and Professor Ochsenferrrd about the plane’s cargo. We must be alone. No one can know.”

  Zhen finally stopped to let her words sink in. When Amy tried to ask about the solution to a timely spacecraft build, Zhen interrupted.

  “If the plane is still at Cayenne, I will explain it to Dr. Schwartz and Professor Och—Ochsenferrr—”

  “Just call him Professor. I can’t say his name either.”

  Amy waited for more, but Zhen only looked at the glowing face of her watch and said that she had to return to her team at the payload prep facilities.

  “And,” Amy prodded, “if your plane isn’t at the Cayenne airport?”

  Zhen couldn’t put the horror of that alternate fate into words. And she didn’t need to; Amy could read them on her faltering expression: Then the Effort will fail. Then humanity is living on borrowed time.

  * * *

  AMY HAD TO ask Ben to slow down and enunciate into his phone. Whenever he got manic, Ben spoke too quickly for the majority of brains to comprehend. Only the Professor could follow in real time.

  “Slower,” Amy insisted.

  They argued more and more as time ran out, but really it wa
s Ben shouting at her like he shouted at everyone else.

  “Min-i-mal. In-terr-up-tion!” Ben said with exaggerated pause and menace.

  Amy hung up and swallowed the lump in her throat.

  No crying, she told herself.

  This went against the advisement of Effort doctors, whose recommended procedure for extreme emotional turmoil was to (1) alert your supervisor to a necessary absence; (2) pick up a small pillow from dispensaries located at all major exits and corridors; (3) seek out privacy, because emotions are contagious; (4) cry, weep, and scream into your pillow for up to five minutes; (5) discard your pillow by the side of the dispensary; (6) alert your supervisor upon your return; and (7) continue your work.

  No crying, Amy insisted, and skipped to the last part—continue your work. Amy had Troy Andrews from UN leadership reserve a small conference room in the Janus building right after one of the space flight team’s sessions. Amy and Troy took the same jeep to Janus and waited for the allotted time.

  “You brought the drone footage?” she asked.

  Troy nodded and lifted his leather briefcase. Amy could remember when she first met him, soon after he flew down from Manhattan. He had looked like a successful stockbroker with gelled hair and a sterling silver clip holding his designer tie in place. But that was the beginning of August. In the following weeks, Troy stopped shaving and started wearing cotton T-shirts, but he still looked alert, as if he still belonged to New York’s cultural and financial elite and was only playing safari. No longer. Troy was now haggard, sleep-deprived, and sweat-stained, like everyone else.

  “Remember that silver tie clip you used to wear?” Amy asked, while they waited in the hallway for their allotted time.

  Troy nodded. “The things I used to care about…”

  Amy nodded. She still bleached her hair so that Ben didn’t worry over the creeping growth of her roots and the passing time that they implied, but she was otherwise unadorned: no makeup, no jewelry, no perfume. She smoothed her greasy hair back into a half-ponytail with elastics she kept on her wrists. Amy had also done away with regular clothes, like many of the engineers, and wore an unmarked camo jumpsuit. With her unblemished pale skin, wide eyes, and platinum hair, she looked like a Victorian doll, only inked with a tattoo and dressed in military fatigues. Instead of looking like a joke, it somehow fit Amy.