The Effort

by Claire Holroyde

  “Quartz clocks are better than pendulum clocks that depend on gravity, which changes from valleys to mountaintops,” her mother added.

  She smiled and pointed to Zhen’s school backpack.

  “May I see your drawings?”

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT, ZHEN woke with a painfully full bladder. She tried to fall back asleep, but it was inevitable that she would need to use the washroom. Zhen wiggled her feet into slippers and stood in the moonlight. Tiptoeing soundlessly, Zhen heard noises from her parents’ bedroom. She pressed her ear against the door and heard the creaking and metallic plings of shifting weight on a wooden bed frame and coiled box springs. Her mother’s voice was muffled but understandable as she spoke to her husband.

  “I want Zhen to be tutored in languages like Kuo.”

  Zhen held her breath. The world outside of China was still an exotic mystery that she had only begun to experience secondhand. Foreign students had returned to China’s universities in the last several years. Zhen’s father had invited several to his home to teach his son languages like Russian, German, and Italian. His wife served tea at the rosewood dining table, where lessons were conducted. Zhen helped her mother so she could hover and listen. She felt like her cryptographer grandfather, on a mission to decode the hidden order of what sounded like a babble of noise.

  Zhen had even seen a few American movies. They were dubbed in Mandarin, but still—they were American! China’s president Li Xiannian had been the first to set foot on American soil just last year. In this new era of history, who could guess what the future would bring as it opened wider?

  “Tutors are a large expense,” her father said, taken aback and wary that his wife might insist.

  He knew her too well. She said that the tutoring would only be necessary for two years, until Zhen would be full grown and ready to apply to university. Zhen’s jaw dropped with such an equally exciting and terrifying prospect. She would be fourteen in two years, which was two years younger than her brother when he left for England, and four years younger than the average student. Would a four-year age gap make her peers kinder or crueler?

  “And I’ll go back to work one day,” Zhen’s mother added wistfully.

  She didn’t need to elaborate. Zhen’s mother, the other Comrade Liu, had been an engineer before she became a wife, daughter-in-law, and mother of two children. It was an unspoken understanding that she would return to her calling when her father-in-law was dead and her children grown.

  “Why?” Zhen’s father finally asked. “Why does Zhen need to learn languages when we can’t afford to send her abroad like Kuo? And why does she need to apply to university so young?”

  Zhen felt heat radiate from her cheeks. Her father worked so hard for the family that Zhen rarely saw him. When he was home, he tried to spend time with his dying father and visit the grave of his mother. Troubling him with Zhen’s own desires and well-being seemed shameful; it would make her the most selfish child in Chongqing. Zhen squinted her eyes shut as she waited and worried over her mother’s answer.

  “Because Zhen is my daughter, and I want this for her.”

  She spoke as if the matter was already settled. Zhen’s mother was dutiful and quiet, but strong willed—a confusing mix. The mattress squeaked; she must have shifted and turned over on her shoulder to face the wall, ending their conversation.

  THIRTY

  Skin Armor

  Kourou, French Guiana

  May 4

  T-minus 18 hours to extended launch

  ZHEN WAS LATE reaching the Final Assembly Building. She insisted on remaining at the infirmary to check on the remaining Chinese soldiers from Cayenne. Only days ago, two had died within hours of each other, their bodies too weak to fight kidney failure. Zhen held their hands and listened to their last words. They were not alone, as much as anyone cannot be alone at death.

  Zhen visited the infirmary as much as she could and let the staff know her soldiers were important. As for her own importance, it was beyond question. Zhen’s reputation as the possible savior to humanity had spread throughout the Effort. All eyes now looked to her with wonder and gratitude. There was little doubt that she was the reason the Cayenne soldiers were still treated well, while other patients disappeared mysteriously, leaving empty cots stripped of their sheets.

  “Zhen! Over here!”

  Zhen was several meters from the exit when she heard her name. She turned to see a very old man lying in one of the beds with an IV drip. He became more familiar as she walked over and began to resemble the photographs of a younger, healthier, clothed Professor Tobias Ochsenfeld.

  “We finally meet in the flesh,” he said. His grin was first earnest and then wry as he added, “As disappointing as that may be.”

  The Professor’s bleary, bespectacled eyes still managed an intense, observant stare that he now trained on Zhen’s facial scars. The left was slightly shorter than the scar on her right, skewing her upper lip by only a few degrees. Here was a renowned astrophysicist and mathematician that Zhen held in the highest regard, and yet his eyes went where all eyes went.

  “Does my face offend you?” Zhen asked. “With our insistence on symmetry as a selection effect?”

  The Professor’s face suddenly animated.

  “You’ve read my essays!” he exclaimed. “Ah, that…that is a treat. So few of my peers even bother.”

  It took him longer than a pause to scoff, like it was a waste of breath to add such an obvious statement. “But of course you’re beautiful. All young and healthy people are beautiful. They’re just too stupid to know it.”

  He said peer, Zhen thought. He said I was a peer who was beautiful. Zhen had to cut their conversation short, but she rolled this thought around in her mind, like the tongue rolls a savory morsel. Outside of the infirmary, Zhen breathed in the night air and stopped to look up. Until she had arrived in French Guiana, Zhen had never seen stars with her own eyes. With all the pollution and light in Chongqing, space equated only to mathematics and images on computer screens or Xeroxed scientific papers.

  Staring up at the infinite cosmos left Zhen awestruck. Here was the magnificent and mysterious universe whose reality reached even further than the expanding view of humanity, from elusive particles of matter to swirling galaxies in deep space. Even as Zhen tried to study the stars above, they remained sharp in peripheral vision but faded in direct line of sight, deliciously unknowable.

  Dewei, the loadmaster, caught up with Zhen just as she was about to step into a jeep. He and the two Xi’an Y-20 pilots were lucky enough to make a full recovery. Standing before her in a clean military jumpsuit, Dewei had regained a healthy amount of weight.

  “I’m a good engineer,” he said in Mandarin. “I can work. Please, I need to leave this place.”

  Zhen smiled and said that the work of the HYCIV team was already finished. The rest would be up to others.

  “Come see for yourself,” she added, and motioned to the jeep.

  Dewei eagerly hopped into the back seat beside Zhen. On the drive, she explained that the Ariane rocket had already traveled by rail from the Integration Building to the Final Assembly Building. So close! There was only one step left in their launch campaign: placing the HYCIV into the rocket’s upper stage and capping the nose cone.

  The peacekeeper in the front passenger seat of the jeep radioed ahead of their arrival. As they pulled into the front parking lot of Final Assembly, Zhen spotted Jin-soo in a military jumpsuit, impatiently pacing back and forth. She hadn’t seen him without his cleanroom mask, cap, and bunny suit for some time. Jin-soo’s hair had gone from steel gray to white, as if the mission had sucked the color and life out of every fiber. They were all husks—but today, they were happy husks.

  “It’s nearly topped out,” he said, breathless. “Hurry!”

  Jin-soo grabbed Zhen’s hand and pulled her toward a building comprised of two joined rectangular structures—one narrow and stretching almost ninety meters tall, and the other
long and squat. Dewei jogged to follow them into the long half, where there was a gowning room to suit up. When they all entered the other half, Zhen craned her neck to marvel at the fifty-meter-tall Ariane rocket. Jin-soo wouldn’t let Zhen stop moving.

  “This is your last chance to see the HYCIV,” he said, frantic.

  Dewei remained gaping on the ground floor, dodging scurrying engineers as Jin-soo led Zhen to a lift elevator built into the lattice of scaffolding that zigzagged floor to ceiling. There was a mass of metal everywhere in beams, cranes, steps, and four platforms with guardrails that bridged the distance from two opposing walls out to the rocket at the center of the room. Engineers in white suits swarmed around the infrastructure like mites that grew smaller as Zhen ascended to the highest platform. She tried not to look down as Jin-soo pulled her out to the center, which curved to encircle one side of the rocket.

  Two people standing in the bend both turned to greet Zhen with utmost respect. Zhen had yet to meet any of the Europeans on the Ariane integration team. The man introduced himself as Marcel, the director of the spaceport, or what was the spaceport before it was transformed into the Effort. He was a substantial man with distinguished wrinkles around freakishly blue eyes. The woman introduced herself as Anneke, the assistant director. She was the tallest woman Zhen had ever seen.

  “We’ve taken good care of it,” Anneke said, lifting her strong chin toward the HYCIV already nestled within the main stage of the rocket.

  Zhen walked over for one last look. She could see the top of the HYCIV’s box shape with its two high-gain antennas like foil-wrapped dinner platters. On its side, there was the ion engine of her Tianlong ready to power through space to save precious, precious time. Zhen knew every circuit, every centimeter of its structure. Its image blurred as her eyes watered.

  “I dreamed it would find alien life on an asteroid,” Zhen said wistfully. “But its destiny is the destruction of a comet.”

  “It will destroy a destroyer, yes?” Anneke said.

  Zhen had to smile. Yes.

  The sound of weeping made her turn around. Jin-soo was a mess of tears.

  “I am amazed…” he gasped.

  Marcel patted his shoulder and nodded in agreement.

  “I turned out to be a better scientist than even my most arrogant imaginations. And I’m a Frenchman!” he laughed. “I suppose we all have UD3 to thank.”

  But no one wanted to agree out loud. Anneke took his hand in her own and smiled to show she understood. Marcel took her hand gratefully and brought it to his mask, forgetting the fabric in front of his lips. Of course, thought Zhen. Under these extremes, acquaintances became intense lovers or enemies, or both. And how could they not, even if the woman was a full foot taller, which Zhen couldn’t help finding awkward.

  Marcel gave the order to lower the rocket’s six-meter conical nose from a ceiling crane. They watched in silence that was broken with a loud “Zhen!”

  Only one person would shout with such a rough and raspy voice in such a large echo chamber: Amy. Zhen steeled herself and leaned over the guardrail to look all the way down. Most of the suited figures on the floor were indistinguishable except for the two waving up at her. Amy was one, of course. Love the interpreter was probably the other. Zhen waved back as Amy made her way to the lift elevator.

  “Zhen!” she heard Dewei call out from the opposite end of the floor.

  Everyone wanted her attention. Zhen’s raw emotions were sparkling-hot colors, like fireworks.

  “Zhen!”

  She saw him standing by the mobile launch table, pointing to the side of the rocket and bouncing on his feet with excitement. Technicians had just peeled a sheet of adhesive off its glossy white surface, leaving three black stencils. The first was a black rectangle, but the other two were Chinese characters.

  “Usually we require a six-month lead time for artwork,” Anneke said, “but we made an allowance.”

  Zhen assumed she was joking but couldn’t be sure.

  “Now, will you tell us what everything means?” Anneke prodded.

  Zhen was honored with naming rights for the rocket. Ben Schwartz insisted until she agreed and submitted two Hanzi characters. The first represented a stretched animal hide, starting with a head of horns and ending with the tail:

  革

  The second represented a turtle shell and could signify armor, a protective shell, or fingernails.

  甲

  Paired together they were gé jiǎ, or skin armor, in the literal English translation. Zhen explained to the Europeans that their HYCIV spacecraft was the armor that would save the planet from UD3, if all went according to plan.

  What Zhen didn’t explain was the name’s personal significance. Be brave, her mother said of the insults raining down on her daughter. Remember this and wear your skin armor…

  And here was that same shameful girl now a woman and the Effort’s hero, the Professor’s deus ex machina—scars and all. Her mother would stand tall and burn bright with vindication if she knew, in the small chance that she was still alive.

  Amy exited the lift at the top platform and strode over, speaking to Anneke and Marcel like she was already in the middle of their conversation.

  “Zhen gave the rocket a name and I gave it a flag—but not for any one nation. The Effort is international, and honestly, there are no nations anymore,” Amy added. “This is bigger. This is everything.”

  Everyone on the platform looked to the black rectangle, the new flag of their defense effort, and saw a cut-out circle exposing the white surface of the rocket. Here was planet Earth centered in a dark universe, everything surrounded by nothing.

  Amy joined Zhen at the guardrail and leaned against her shoulder. Zhen was always surprised at how easily and confidently Amy touched people—surprised and also pleased with the comfort it gave. They hadn’t spoken about the world outside the bubble of the Effort and probably never would. Dr. Clayton had checked in on Zhen a few times to pull her into a quiet corner of a room and ask how she was coping. The doctor’s blue eyes pierced Zhen like a needle: to extract in as painless a way as possible. But Zhen didn’t say much, wanting to focus all her energy on the Effort to reach moments like this.

  A narrow section of the wall slowly slid upward, eventually leaving a rocket-sized opening speckled with stars. The fully integrated Ariane rocket was ready to travel by rail to the launch pad, marking twelve hours to scheduled launch.

  It was such a grand spectacle, such a hopeful step toward survival as an Earth-bound species, that no one noticed the Disasters step from the lift elevator onto the platform. Amy only turned around when Dr. Clayton touched her lightly on the arm. Amy blinked at the doctor’s Red Cross vest as the realization sank in. She asked what she always asked: “Is it Ben?”

  This time the answer was yes.

  * * *

  May 5

  T-minus 22 minutes, 43 seconds to launch

  ZHEN NUDGED HER way through tightly packed, camo-clad bodies in the Jupiter building’s VIP room. The air-conditioning blasted to combat the rising heat. Maximum capacity had to be capped at a squished 275 occupants; only the Effort’s team leadership could gain entry and witness the mission control room on the other side of the glass partition. Others had to watch the monitors mounted in all the space center buildings or listen to the countdown by radio.

  “Move aside!”

  Zhen looked toward the direction of the voice and saw Stan from the HYCIV team. Ben always referred to him as “Ponytail Guy,” but here he was with a fresh buzz cut close to the scalp. Stan continued to shout at people to move out of Zhen’s path. No one complained once they turned, saw her thin scars, and realized who she was. Bodies parted to make a narrow path toward the glass partition. As Zhen squeezed through, she saw more familiar faces. Ziggy from the nuclear team lit up with a smile to see her.

  “So close,” he whispered with shaking fists.

  Jin-soo said nothing as she passed, but he reached out to graze her cheek l
ovingly. Zhen had never been touched this way. She had to turn and look ahead to stay in control of her emotions. Chuck waved her over to his side, where he was speaking with Marcel in front of the glass partition. His paunch tightly stretched against the middle fabric of his jumpsuit. Both men paused their conversation to offer nervous smiles. Marcel looked ill.

  “I’ve launched more than five hundred Ariane rockets from that room, but I’ve never felt like this. Wish I had a cigarette.”

  Zhen looked through the glass to the mission control room. Anneke stood, but all the other Europeans on the launch team sat in rows in front of touchscreen tablets, telephone docks, microphones, metric screens, and dials. Spanning the far wall above them was a ten-meter mounted screen with split views of live feeds. Larger views captured the launch pad at different angles. A smaller view on the bottom left captured a room with more than thirty seated individuals: the space flight team. A smaller view on the bottom right was all black except for back-to-back universal and countdown times.

  The room suddenly vibrated with the sound of a soft tearing from above. Chuck told Zhen that the security team had fighter jets and helicopters patrolling the no-fly zone in case there was a country still capable and dumb enough to launch a missile attack.

  “Excusez-moi,” Marcel said. “I need to go vomit.”

  As soon as the Frenchman was out of earshot, Chuck moved to reassure Zhen.

  “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “The launch will be recorded for Ben. And the history books, of course. Ben won’t have to miss it completely.”

  As soon as the HYCIV and Ariane rocket were both on tracks bound for the Final Assembly Building to be mated, Ben Schwartz had collapsed. Breathing and blinking but otherwise nonresponsive, doctors diagnosed him with UD3 catatonia. There wasn’t much they could do but hook up an IV drip and hope for the best.

  Chuck told Zhen that Amy had broken the historic rule of conduct: Don’t punch the messenger in the face. Not only had she punched Dr. Clayton after she had delivered the news, but she knocked out a front tooth as a result. Chuck didn’t hide his admiration then or now as they heard her rusty-nail voice in the VIP room. Zhen saw the crowd part down the middle with griping on both sides about jutting elbows and stepping on toes. The Professor emerged in his wheelchair with Amy pushing from behind. They must have come straight from the infirmary.