Learning to Swear in America (4 page)

They kept playing, none of them looking at Yuri.

He wondered suddenly what it must be like for them, being in the NEO building, swabbing floors, and not really knowing what was happening. How many experts had they passed that week, these men in uniforms that made them invisible? He’d spent a few years being ignored, too, because he was young—and he guessed his age was the reason they were talking to him now. It made him the only approachable physicist in the place.

He told them the truth. It was an issue of respect. “If it hits, there will be concussion—shock waves—not when it hits Earth, but when it enters atmosphere. That will kill people in California. It’s because leading edge will get hotter than trailing edge. So it
explodes in air, you understand? If there’s any rock left—and there probably will be—impact on surface will raise dust cloud with global effects and regional calamity. And then tsunami may follow.”

“Jesus,” the white guy said. “Is it gonna be like the one that killed the dinosaurs?”

“No,” Yuri said. “It’s not Earth-killer. Worst case is we lose western United States, and maybe in hundred years some plants can get foothold here again, start over. But, that’s Plan B. Plan A is we stop asteroid, and everybody lives.”

“I like Plan A,” one of the men said, and the others muttered agreement.

“You have another problem, too,” Yuri said, standing to go. He nodded to the Hispanic guy. “I can count cards, and I think you have one too many jacks in your hand.”

He was around the corner before the janitors understood. He smiled as he heard three of them howl, and one start rapidly explaining about a faulty deck.

One day closer to impact.

Time became a blur of work and paper and numbers. By the second day Yuri had his shoes and socks off and his hair stood on end like haystacks, the result of holding it in his fist as he bent, elbow on the table, over his work.

The math became life. He could see it when he shut his eyes. He dreamed once, sitting at his desk, of the calculations stretching out from Earth to the asteroid, the rock hitting the far number, hesitating, then hurtling downward, splintering exponents and integers, their shards flying into space. He jerked awake and walked to the conference room for a cup of tepid tea.

He drank half the cup and pitched it, then walked into the front office to see the woman who answered when he dialed “1.” She had a no-nonsense look, but she smiled when he walked in. “Dr. Strelnikov. What can I do for you?” They hadn't been introduced, but of course she knew him. People always knew
which one he was. He wondered if he'd miss that when he was forty.

“I want to set up Skype call … to Russia,” he said.

“Sure. When do you want to call?” she asked.

He thought for a moment. It would be evening in Russia, late enough that his mother should be home from the hospital, early enough that she probably hadn't been called back in yet. Probably.

“Can I do it now?”

“I think so.” She smiled again, and he was glad she hadn't asked who he wanted to talk to. There was nothing wrong with it, skyping with his mother, and he hadn't let her know he'd arrived safely. He should rectify that.

Fifteen minutes later Yuri was sitting in his office chair, staring into his computer. The Dial 1 woman was standing by the door. She'd said she'd leave as soon as she was sure the call had gone through. Yuri waited, gently kicking a desk leg with the side of his foot, and then his mother's face appeared on the screen. She had short blond hair and the blue eyes she'd given him. She looked tired and didn't have makeup on.

“Yuri?”

He smiled. “Hi,” he said in Russian.

“What's going on?” Her tone was sharp. “I got a phone call from an American setting this up.” She waved her hand vaguely at the computer. “Why is some American calling me?”

“Um.” He was conscious of the woman in the corner. Did she speak Russian? His mother spoke English. They'd probably set it up that way. “I wanted to let you know I'm okay.”

She was silent for a moment.

“Well, good. But why wouldn't you be?”

The blood rose in Yuri's face. Guess his mother hadn't been worried about plane crashes after all.

“Yuri? Where are you? Did they repaint your office?”

He blinked. His office? Had he not told her? Had he not told his mother he was going to America? And then he realized he hadn't. It had been so sudden, and he'd had to pack. He made sure the physics department knew, and his colleagues …

“Um, no. I'm in someone else's office.”

They were silent for a moment.

“Do you need something?”

“No. I guess I don't.”

He should at least tell her where he was. He didn't know why he didn't. “You probably have to get up early.”

“Yeah, at four thirty.” She didn't say anything else.

“Um, well. Good night, then.”

“Good night.” And she clicked her computer off, and the screen went blank.

The Dial 1 woman rushed forward. “Oh, shoot. We lost it. I think I can …”

“No,” Yuri said, his face flaming. “That was all.”

The woman was silent for a moment. “Oh. Okay, then.” She slipped quietly out of the room.

He stayed in his office for the rest of the afternoon, working. When he needed a break he ran in place, instead of walking to the conference room for another cup of crappy tea. At dinner time
Simons came to Yuri's office by himself. Pirkola was in the hospital, having his kidney stone exploded with a laser. Waiting hadn't worked.

Yuri speared a green bean and twirled his fork, but didn't eat it.

Simons took a bite of his chicken, then spoke with his mouth full. “You look worried.” He swallowed.

“Of course I'm worried.” He wasn't—he was thinking about the girl with the sparkly green eye shadow. Not something he cared to admit.

“We'll get the equation done, give the weapons team the targeting they need, and before you know it, you'll be back to skateboarding.”

Yuri's head snapped up. “Skateboarding?”

“You know.” Simons's hand swooped in the chilled office air. “Whatever it is you do with your free time.”

Yuri stared at him.
Skateboarding? Is that what they thought he did?

“I talked with Pirkola before he left. We're on the same page—making progress, and we're thinking the same way.”

“Good,” Yuri said, still visualizing himself skateboarding through the corridors of Moscow State University, where he had earned a doctorate in physics the previous year, at age sixteen. He'd never stepped on a skateboard, but he was pretty sure if he ever tried, he'd kill himself. Then he imagined speeding down the hall past Gregor Kryukov, his advisor, and his anger dissolved into amusement. Kryukov would raise those eyebrows—he must have the strongest forehead muscles in Russia to lift those things—and say … what would he say? Something funny, and then they'd walk together to the little restaurant where Kryukov had been
taking him for years, a run-down place with wobbly tables but the best borscht in Moscow, and that's saying something.

Simons wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, crumpled it, and tossed it into Yuri's wastebasket. For a moment it looked like a blob of sour cream in the soup, then Yuri lost the image of Gregor Kryukov and the restaurant, and felt a sudden stab of homesickness. Even though he'd always wanted to travel. And he'd only been gone a couple days.
Pathetic.

“Let me show you what we've got so far,” Simons said.

Yuri shrugged and stood by his desk as Simons slapped down a paper. Yuri read it, eventually forgetting about the older man standing there. He skimmed at first. Their line of thought matched his own work, but then it began to diverge. He frowned slightly, backtracking, reading more carefully. He put his forefinger on the page to keep his place, scanning back and forth.

“What?” Simons said.

“Surely you're going to use antimatter,” Yuri said.

“We don't know anything about antimatter.”

“I do. We reduce asteroid's size, and then you pulverize what's left.” He shrugged. “That's most effective strategy.”

“Nobody knows how to contain antimatter, let alone keep it concentrated over the kind of distance …”

“
I
know,” Yuri said. “I have unpublished work on this. Is what I was working on before, in Moscow. Before this.”

Simons jutted his head forward. “Has it been published?”

“No. That's typical of unpublished work.”

Payback for the skateboard comment.

“So no peer review? No evaluation by others in the field?”

Yuri flushed. “My dissertation advisor has seen it, and he thinks it's promising.”

“Your dissertation advisor? God, you're young.” Simons shook his head.

“Russian engineering company is already developing prototype for energy production, way to …”

Simons rapped his knuckles on the paper. “This is no time to play with new theories. You know it's at half an AU now? That damn rock is halfway between us and the sun.”

That made Yuri pause for a moment, because at the speed the asteroid was traveling, half an astronomical unit meant it was entering the neighborhood. He squeezed his eyes shut and focused. “Is not new theory. I just did math, that's all.”

“Can you prove it will work? In space conditions, over several kilometers? Because a high-flux antimatter accelerator would have to be that far away.”

“Point isn't proving it. Point is if it's right,” Yuri said, slapping his own work on top of Simons's. He stubbed his forefinger onto the point where the work diverged. “It's right.”

Simons read the critical part of the math.

“Tell you what,” he said. “Get back on track. Stick to known quantities. We don't have time to run experiments and collate data and figure out if you know what you're doing. Then …”

“I know what I'm doing,” Yuri said, louder than he'd meant to.

“Sure. It's just that I don't think there's another physicist in the world who would agree with the direction you're going here.”

“Then every other physicist is wrong!” Yuri immediately felt foolish. Young. His words hung in the air, as though gravity didn't apply to stupid remarks. Simons appraised him soberly.

“This is not about ego. We can't afford to mess up because some teenager wants to prove he's a big shot.”

Yuri felt the heat in his face as Simons rolled his paper and tapped the desk with it.

“It's seventeen days till impact,” Simons said. “
Seventeen days
. We have time to get this done. We don't have time to screw up.” Simons exhaled sharply. “Look it over again, see if you don't change your mind. But if you don't, it doesn't matter—it's two to one, and I'm senior to you, anyway. Whatever results you come up with, there's no way I'm submitting them if you used that process.”

His eyes flicked over Yuri, and around the office.

“You're a long way from home, and you're still a kid. It's a lot of pressure to handle.” He smiled tightly and left.

Yuri stood beside his desk, hands balled. He didn't feel like a kid. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt like a kid, or been treated like one. And the professors at home hadn't patronized him like this since he was a twelve-year-old freshman.

But Simons was right—it wasn't about ego. It was about saving Los Angeles, and that came down to the math. If he submitted the result he was working toward, Simons would override him. And if Yuri went along with Simons's result, part of a continent would be destroyed.

It wasn't ego. It was just that he knew he was right.

“Fire Eye-24s.”

Yuri dropped his pencil and padded, barefoot, to his closed office door. Someone had been talking about Fire Eye missiles by the coffeepots that morning and had stopped when he walked in. It piqued his curiosity.