Claire Holroyde - The Effort

Ned let it be known that he was a mix of Scottish, German, and Norwegian descent. (Although, Zhen had to admit, he might as well have been full Neanderthal from the Ice Age when physically compared to these Amerindians.) What’s more, Ned added in a raised voice, he had had to partake in diversity and inclusion training along with all other Coast Guard personnel—a course these Wayãpi had obviously skipped.

Ned disappeared for a few days after that. Gustavo and Dewei grew worried, but Zhen asked that they give him some time alone in the forest. She had realized, with a tug on her heart, that Ned—a strapping and well-proportioned American white male—had never been an ugly outsider until this moment. And inside the isolated Wayãpi gene pool so perfectly adapted to the literal polar opposite environment, that is all Ned would ever be.

They reached a gas station on the edge of town.

“I hate this place,” Gustavo said.

He stared down the abandoned store and empty pumps like an enemy. Zhen knew that this was where Gustavo’s twin brother was murdered. She and Ned said nothing as they kept walking. All of them had lost their real families, and only time could ease that pain.

The asphalt paving soon ended, and they continued onto a red-dirt path and wide clearing that cut through the forest toward Wayãpi lands like a trailing wound. The unpaved road stopped just short of the village, constructed and then abandoned in the 1970s when the Brazilian government ran out of funding. This had saved the mostly secluded Wayãpi, while other tribes were exposed to the modern world and wiped out.

Gustavo halted and pulled his T-shirt over his head. Zhen and Ned turned around to give him privacy as he took off all his clothes and tucked them into his canvas bag. When they turned back, Gustavo had tied cotton twine around his waist and draped two pieces of red fabric over his groin and buttocks.

“I don’t think you’ll have any more attacks in the rain and flooding,” Gustavo said, “but stay alert.”

Ned was already pretending to dust off one of his shoulders. Gustavo gave a half smile but looked to the pink and purple scars on the other man’s forearms and biceps. The deeper gashes had dark dots at the edges where Zhen had tried to stitch the flesh together with sutures and a curved needle from her first aid kit. The scars hidden under his shirt were even larger. At least they had healed without too much infection to leave Ned ready for the next raid.

“Try and stay on the other side of a knife,” Gustavo said kindly, and he reached up to embrace the bravest of fighters.

Ned hugged back hard and closed his eyes for a brief moment. You never knew when you would see someone again, if at all. Gustavo hugged Zhen next and promised to return to town when the rains stopped. She and Ned watched the back of Gustavo set off under a high noon sun. His long hair was still fully black, while Zhen’s was lightly streaked with strands of steel gray. He told them Wayãpi hair was always black: black at birth and black at death.

By nightfall, Gustavo would arrive at his village, made safer now that the small town of Pedra Branca was willing to stand together and fight off raiders from the southeast. Gustavo’s village had his wife, formerly his brother’s wife but a widow no longer. It had Gustavo’s nephews, whom he had adopted as sons. This village had everything Gustavo had ever wanted.

AT DUSK, THERE was a visitor outside Zhen’s bedroom on the second floor of the parish. Zhen had used her chamber pot minutes before hearing the knock. She tried to breathe through her nose to determine how bad the smell was. Without modern amenities, they were faced with their animal nature again, noses rubbed in it.

“Zhen?”

It was Ned come to return the missing collection of poetry to the priest’s library now that the light had died. Ned had to report for a night shift with the militia, but still he lingered.

“I, ah, when I came to pick out a book, I peeked at your little nest over there,” he said awkwardly, and pointed to a corner of the room where Zhen had collected cellphones, laptops, bedside radios with alarm clocks, car antennas, wires, and various other equipment, all under a plastic tarp.

“Nest?” Zhen repeated.

She smiled wide without covering her scars with her hand.

“Yes! My nest for a xǐquè !”

“What?”

“ Xǐquè. It is the name of a bird. They are curious collectors. I think they line their nests with shiny objects.”

“Magpie?” Ned guessed.

Zhen nodded and said that the English word sounded right, but she wasn’t sure.

“I have a favor,” Zhen said, suddenly remembering. “There’s a large satellite dish high up on the roof of a building. I’d like you to get it for me without breaking your neck.”

Ned clapped his hands together with excitement.

“Yes ma’am. Do you think any satellites are still working?”

“As you say, only one way to find out.”

Ned laughed and said, yes, he did say that.

“You think four years is enough for the great human race to get their act together?”

“No,” Zhen admitted. “But maybe someday? I wonder what that would even look like. Have we seen it in a past civilization, or would it be something new?”

Zhen sighed as she tried to skim her knowledge of the last several millennia. So much went wrong, she had to admit, but so much went right. How could they bring back the good without making the same mistakes all over again?

“Maybe that someday when we do get our act together,” Ned said, “maybe that will be the day when I help Dr. Zhen Liu get to where she is needed most?”

But they were in the most remote forest left on the planet. It was a natural barrier that protected them from grave danger, but it was also a barrier blocking the way back to what was once modern civilization. They had crossed that barrier once, but they had Gustavo as a guide, the Wayãpi villages by the Oyapock River as safe havens, and a lot of luck to keep from starving along the way.

“They’ll need someone like you. Whoever they is,” Ned continued. “But the journey will be so dangerous. You’ll need me, and I’ll need a mission. You got to be the hero. I want my turn.”

“You are already a hero,” Zhen said simply.

Ned bowed his head. That he didn’t protest with false modesty meant that he knew it was true. Zhen walked over and lifted the tarp covering her collection. Her fingers itched to get to them. Soon…

The lead engineer from the Effort in French Guiana always referred to scenarios of the future. As Zhen saw it, her magpie nest had several. Scenario 1, worst case, Zhen would enjoy moments of nostalgia as she touched and tinkered with these artifacts of great human endeavor. Scenario 2, Zhen could build two short-range radios so that the town could warn the Wayãpi village in Aramirã of attacks. Scenario 3, the best of the possibilities, Zhen could build a radio strong enough to bounce off the ionosphere so she could listen for others. She would listen for Ben Schwartz, Amy Kowalski, Love Mwangi, Jin-soo Lee, and all the others. The Defense Effort for Comet UD3 had completed its mission, but would there be any survivors who could join a new effort for a new world?

Ned squatted beside Zhen and picked up a cellphone with a dead battery.

“The professor on the show Gilligan’s Island jiggered a battery out of coconut shells, seawater, pennies, and, like, hairpins.”

“What?”

“It was a joke,” Ned said quickly. “Sorry about the American pop culture. I mean to say, Imagine what you could do with all this crap on your floor! Dewei said you’re a genius that can solve the impossible. You did it at the Effort.”