Claire Holroyde - The Effort

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.

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.