Learning to Swear in America (26 page)

Yuri nodded and pushed through the crowd, chasing Fletcher’s receding head. People turned, recognized him, and reached out, patting his shoulders, wanting to talk about his work and antimatter containment, but he kept his eyes focused, and by the time Fletcher neared his office, Yuri was right behind him.

Fletcher turned.

“Did you need something?”

Yuri stared at him for a moment.

“Uh, I need bathroom.” He pointed to the men’s room door. “Have to go every five minutes, seems like.”

“Yeah,” Fletcher said. “We’ve all got nerves.”

Yuri walked ten feet to the bathroom, pushed open the door and reached for his cell phone. He hadn’t made a call with it in the United States—how expensive would that be?—but he still had it on him. The door hinged on the left, which was perfect. Yuri stepped into the restroom, made sure it was empty, and tapped the phone until he had the video function up.

Fletcher snagged a cot from the hall and stood in front of his office, balancing its tubular frame on the toe box of his shoe. Yuri stood concealed by the partially closed door, raised his phone, and recorded the director tapping the number pad outside his office. As Fletcher stepped in, wrestling the cot, Yuri sank back into the bathroom.

He watched the video in a stall thirteen times before he was sure he had the combination.

Yuri sauntered casually back to the conference room. Simons was stationed right inside the door, just standing there, not jostling to examine the math on the marker boards, not conversing in low tones.

“Hey,” Yuri said. “Do you know where Director Fletcher is?”

“He’s in his office, but don’t disturb him. He’s taking a nap while we have our last look at this. He wanted to get his mind clear.”

“Oh. Well, do you know when he’ll be out?”

“He asked me to wake him in half an hour.” Simons glanced at his watch. “There’s nineteen minutes left.”

Nineteen minutes?

Yuri looked at the wall clock and nodded dumbly.

“Um, I’m not feeling so good. I think maybe I’ll skip meeting, go lie down in my office.”

“The hell you will,” Simons said sharply. “You’re the man of the hour. Any questions anybody’s got, you’re the one who’s going to have to answer them. You’re the last guy who can skip out.” Simons squinted at him. “If you disappear again, Fletcher will send the Marines after you. No joke.”

Yuri nodded. “I think I’ll just use men’s room.”

His bladder was going to get a reputation.

There was no one in the hall, and he couldn’t risk waiting any longer. Would Fletcher be asleep yet? He had to be exhausted. They all were. Yuri tapped in the code he’d taken off his cell phone: 051755. He bet it was Fletcher’s birth date. Awesome security, but the director probably felt it was just a formality.

The door popped with a slight click and Yuri eased it open and slipped inside. Fletcher was lying on his side on the cot, his back to the door. His face toward the computer. Were his eyes closed? Yuri shut the door behind him, releasing the knob slowly. The only light came from the glow of electronic devices—green spots on the printer and computer, a red spot on a wall outlet.

Yuri walked past Fletcher’s feet. He had seen the computer before, but hadn’t paid attention. Last time he broke into the director’s office, he was after files. The computer was a normal desktop. No gleaming white case with random lights. No biometric access, either. The screen was dark, and when Yuri tapped the space bar
the room instantly brightened. He squinted at Fletcher, but he didn’t stir.

Yuri clicked on an icon and a password screen appeared.
Sukin syn
, he thought,
son of a bitch,
but didn’t say it out loud. He tried the door code, 051755, and red words flashed, telling him he had two more tries
. Mat’ tvoyu
. He thought for a moment. He tried the Fibonacci sequence, 11235813, because it was mathematical, easy to remember, and one of the most common passwords in the world. Red letters flashed. One more attempt.

His fingers hesitated over the keys. Fletcher was a straightforward guy. Not tricky. The kind of guy who labeled his file drawers and used them, the kind of guy who used his birth date for his office keypad. Yuri lowered his fingers to the keyboard and typed “BR1019,” and then hit “enter” with his right pinkie.

A list of files came up. He squeezed his eyes shut and exhaled. Yuri clicked on the file marked “Equation, Final,” and there was their work, elegant, pretty even, a whole that was so much more, or so much less, than its parts. He scrolled through, found the targeting information, and used his index finger to hit “backspace” and erase the end code.

He pulled Ellenberg’s graphs from his back pocket, folded into quarters, the pages that would direct a final backward shot. He slowly unfolded the papers, but the crackle was painfully loud. Fletcher grunted and Yuri stayed still, crouched in front of the computer. He waited until he heard deep, even breathing again, then counted to thirty before he started tapping keys. It was a lot to enter. Not a short sequence. He resisted the impulse to check his watch.

He entered his data, hit “save,” and started to slink out of the room. Six minutes to spare. He allowed himself a grin.

Then he realized there must be a redundant file. No way this went through without a fail-safe. You had to enter your password twice just to make an online purchase. The computer would compare the two files, making sure they matched, to prevent human error. He was sure of it.

He crept back to the computer, found the second file, and deleted the end code all over again. He could go faster this time. He opened the original, highlighted his work, hit “copy,” then pasted it into the redundant file. He checked the beginning and end to make sure they were seamless, that he hadn’t missed a digit somewhere. He checked for a third file, but it was just the two.

Yuri exited and slipped past Fletcher’s feet to the door. He touched the handle, but there were voices down the hall. Someone he didn’t know, and Simons.

“I have to wake him in a minute,” Simons was saying.

“Yes,” Yuri wanted to shout. “One minute. You’re not supposed to be here for one more minute.”

He could leave the office, but they would see him. There would be questions, and Fletcher would check the computer. Yuri glanced back at it, saw the glow. What if Fletcher realized it should be on screensaver?

Yuri crept back, got into Fletcher’s screensaver control and changed the setting so that it came on immediately. Then he did the only thing he could do—as the computer went dark, he
crouched behind the desk, where a stack of drawers reached all the way to the floor.

Had the director left anything on his desk?

His glasses. Fletcher’s glasses were on the desktop, next to the mouse. Yuri reached a hand up and scooted them to the front edge, close to the cot.
No reason to come around. You can grab them from there.

There was a soft knock on the door. Fletcher grunted. Another knock, a little harder.

“Karl? It’s time.”

Fletcher groaned and Yuri heard his joints crack as he stood. It must be hell getting old. He wondered if he’d ever have the chance.

“Yeah, I’m coming. Just gotta find …”

There was a light scrape as Fletcher grabbed his glasses, then the office flooded with light as he opened the door.

“Strelnikov down there?”

“He better be. I told him we needed him,” Simons said.

Fletcher yawned and the angle of light in the room narrowed until it was a line, then disappeared.

Yuri exhaled, and it was only then that he realized he hadn’t been breathing. He waited fifteen seconds, then ran down the hall away from the conference room, turned right, then right again, so he’d join the group from the other side, away from the director’s office.

He wandered into the conference room, hands thrust in his pockets. All he felt was relief at having escaped detection, and a sucking fatigue.

Fletcher was up front by the whiteboards, asking if there were questions. He saw Yuri standing at the back and gave a slight nod, and Yuri nodded back, thinking that there was remarkably little security around the computer, particularly considering what was at stake. Apparently it hadn’t occurred to them that anyone would try to break in—nobody in the building, anyway. But it had only taken him a cell phone and fifty seconds to hack in—not because he was a genius, but because he was a teenager.

Yuri worked his way to the front, where someone had brought in sub sandwiches, snagged a roast beef, and returned to his spot. He stood by the back wall of the conference center, feeling his heart rate return to normal, paying more attention to the sandwich than to what Fletcher was saying as he gestured at the screen they’d set up. There weren’t many questions—it was too late for that, really.

“Reflect on the enormity of what you’ve done here,” Fletcher said. “I’m not much for speeches—you know that. But I want you to know that I’m proud of you, and your selfless efforts, regardless of the outcome.” He pointed to Yuri. “And I’m glad we brought a physicist into our astrophysics club. It’ll be interesting to see what happens up there.”

For a moment everyone turned to look at him, and there was a smattering of applause.

A drop of mustard dripped out of Yuri’s sandwich and hit the blue carpet. It was mild American stuff, bright yellow. It made him think about accidents, and mistakes. He shifted his foot to cover the stain.

“I’m going to go send the models now,” Fletcher said. That brought Yuri’s head up. “They’re going to need some time to do the inputs and get the missiles ready. God have mercy on us all.”

The director walked through the assembled scientists and they parted for him, clapping softly. He acknowledged them with a slight bow of his head, caught Yuri’s eye and gave a wan smile. Yuri wondered if he would review the work before hitting “send.” Surely it was too long, too complex? But if he did, would he catch the switch?

And if the asteroid did hit, how far out would the initial impact kill? Yuri wondered if his mother would notice that the world was out of control. Probably not. She never had before.

Would the collision be enough to knock people’s clothes off? He knew an overinflated tire could explode with enough force to blow fabric apart, not from any practical experience with cars, but from an ill-conceived elementary school science project, and one very angry teacher. Would girls get horny as Earth shuddered in its orbit? Would there be a few hours of orbit orgy? Would it be wrong to hope for that?

Fletcher reentered the conference room.

“It’s done.”

An awful silence fell on the room. Somewhere in the Pentagon someone would be shouting orders. At some installation,
engineers would be scrambling to take their computer code and put it into guidance for the high-flux antimatter accelerator. Somewhere people had just gotten real busy. But not at JPL.

Most people loitered in the conference room, making feeble jokes to ease the tension and pass the time until launch. Yuri went back to his office, sat on the floor and leaned his back against the desk, and called Dovie.

“Speak.”

“Um. Pardon?” Yuri said.

“Hey, it’s the Spockovskii! How you doing, man?”

“Hey, Lennon. We’re done working here. Just thought I’d call.”

“Yeah? So are we gonna live?”

“It’s going to be spectacular show, but yes, I think we are.”

“Hot damn! Spockovskii says we’re good!”

“Hot damn?”

“That’s just happy swearing, man. Don’t you know how to happy-swear in English?”

“They didn’t teach much swearing in my English classes, and your sister refused to explain it.”

“You have an incomplete education, my man.”

“That’s true. I’m specialist. I’ve never had any course in art or literature.”

There was silence on the line for a moment.

“Never? Not
Hamlet
? Not even Pushkin?”

“No.”

“Pushkin’s your national poet, dude. Even I know that.”

“I know. I just don’t know what he wrote.”

“Okay, this requires real swearing. Repeat after me, ‘Goddammit, I am a gnome-kissing monkeyfucker who doesn’t appreciate my national poet.’”

Yuri stretched a leg out and pushed his door shut with his toes.

“This is bad words, yes?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think I want to say this. May I speak to Dovie?”

“Not until you admit to being a gnome-kissing monkeyfucker who doesn’t appreciate your national poet.”

“I didn’t say I don’t appreciate …”

“Say it.”

“I, apparently, am gnome-kissing monkeyfucker who doesn’t appreciate my national poet.”

“Hmm. All right, apology accepted on behalf of normal people everywhere.”

“I wasn’t apol—”

“Now, English has three basic swear words: ‘damn,’ ‘shit,’ and ‘hell.’ The fourth is the f-word, or ‘fuck.’ That’s nasty stuff, man. You shouldn’t go around saying that one.”

“Didn’t you just have me—”

“No, you said ‘monkeyfucker,’ which is just a disgusting thing to say. Never appropriate. Shame on you, man. You kiss your mother with that mouth?”