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What most people don’t tell you about the aftermath of a big project is the amount of paperwork that goes into it. Eva knew, of course—her entire life has been paperwork, ever since she left university and leveraged her organizational skills and knowledge of human history to make her way up to where she is now. She knows it is only a matter of time before the powers-that-be turn on her. Human memory is short after all, and humanity always needs a scapegoat when things start to go wrong.
And they will start to go wrong, she knows. Project Hail Mary is a longterm mission, and the Earth will continue to get worse as the years go by. It will be four years until the astronauts wake up, and then who knows how long it will take for Yao and Ilyukhina and Grace to engineer a solution to their astrophage problem, plus another four years for the beetles to come back.
And that’s if nothing catastrophic happens. She thinks of Grace’s impotent anger as he sat resigned in the cell she put him in. She thinks of the way he fought against the guards after they injected him, the slow way he went limp, like a fox caught in the jaws of a hound.
If the memory alteration drug doesn’t work, she’s not sure what will happen. She doesn’t think Grace has it in him to outright sabotage, and she thinks his love for children on Earth will push him to do what needs to be done, but she’s not sure how long he will wallow first, once his memories start trickling in.
She shakes her head and flips through the endless paperwork at her desk, pausing when she sees the divorce papers tucked in at the bottom, long forgotten in the stress leading up to the launch. Ah, she thinks.
“Whoa,” a voice says, hovering over her shoulder and she flinches back in surprise. “Didn’t know you were married.”
She looks up and Dr. Ryland Grace stares down at her, yellow raincoat on like the last day she saw him, glasses hanging ridiculously off of one ear. She didn’t think her sanity had cracked this badly, but now she’s not so sure.
“Guess I really was the only one here with nobody to miss me if I left, huh,” he says and she inhales and exhales slowly, turning back to the papers and resolving to ignore him.
“Commander Stratt?” her assistant’s head peaks in. “The president of the United States is on the line for you.”
Eva sighs. She’s been expecting this call ever since Dubois and Shapiro died in the astrophage explosion and Grace was announced as the last minute replacement. It’s bad optics to send a schoolteacher into space, even if said schoolteacher was the leading expert on astrophage and had been involved in the project since its inception. “Patch him through.”
She hears Grace whistle through his teeth, knows that if she looked over at him he’d be watching her like he always used to, gauging her responses like he was trying to see if she was a real human and not just an unfeeling robot.
“Good evening sir,” she begins and she shoves the divorce papers to the bottom of the pile again, to be dealt with later.
The Grace problem, as Eva has mentally dubbed it, has not gone away. She has been preparing the shutdown of the launch location and base camp they had all been living on throughout the duration of the project and Grace follows her around, either eerily silent or talking her ear off. She knows she’s more distracted than usual. Dr. Lokken, who never much liked her on the best days and is now constantly looking at her with wary suspicion, seems to pick up on it the most.
“Where will you go after this?” Dr. Komorov asks her and Eva drags her eyes away from Grace where he hovers just behind Dimitri’s shoulder.
“Yeah, where will you go after?” Grace echoes, and Eva manages a polite smile.
“That depends on what the world does,” she says. She’s under no illusions about the role she has played, knows this project is likely to see her living the rest of her days in the darkness of a jail cell, once the novelty of the entire launch wears off. She thinks of the divorce papers still on her desk, waiting for her to sign.
“What will happen with the astrophage farms? How will we stop it from being used for war?” Dr. Lokken asks and Eva inhales deeply.
“I’m afraid that is need-to-know,” Eva says.
Grace snorts. “Need-to-know my butt,” he says. “We created a monster and now it’s unleashed. You told me you’re a history major. You know exactly what it’ll be used for.”
Eva ignores him.
“You all will go back to your posts?” she asks. Dimtiri at the Russian Federation for Space, continuing to study astrophage, Lokken back at the European Space Agency, probably designing more ships and movable centrifuges, using what they discovered during the Hail Mary project.
“I suppose,” Lokken says, frowning.
“Seems strange, no? To just…go back. After all of this?”
“Wish I could say the same,” Grace says and Eva does flinch then, surprised, nearly knocking the bottle of beer over.
“Apologies,” she says, getting up.
“What is with her?” she hears Lokken say in Norwegian and Grace is still watching her, a halfway-amused smile on his face that makes her skin crawl.
“Thank you both for your work on the Petrova Taskforce and the Hail Mary project,” she says stiffly. “Your work has been commendable. The world thanks you.”
And she turns around to leave. She is not running, she thinks, when she hears Dimitri says, “Wait!” But she walks faster, until she is in her office, doors closed, breathing hard.
“Well, that went well,” Grace says with forced cheer, and Eva’s fingers curl into fists, nails biting into her skin.
When she sleeps, she doesn’t often dream. She never has, it’s not really in her nature to do so. But lately, she has been dreaming of ships, swaying in the currents. Of nickering horses, snorting in the cold winter air. She used to horseback ride, when she was younger. She was quite good at it, preferred the brutal discipline of dressage, the way the horse would dance under her, the connection electric and precise.
But now she dreams of baying hounds and screaming foxes, of a horse pawing at the ground, muscles flexing beneath her legs, eager for the hunt. Of something wild and violent, a beast inside her ready to claw free.
She dreams of chasing the hounds as they’re let loose, of loosening the reins, letting her horse have its head, galloping in time with the beat of her heart. A dog bays for blood and she and the horse are one as they turn, as they descend on a mass of exciting yipping and snarling, one hound with its mouth around the fox’s neck, her horse rearing high up and she wakes with a start as it comes down, the caught fox’s cries ringing in her ears.
She breathes hard in her silent room, fingers clenched in the sheets.
“Bad dream, huh?” Grace asks dully and she flinches, not looking at where he stands at the foot of the bed. She can see his cardigan out of the corner of her eyes.
“I guess you are as human as the rest of us,” he says quietly. “I guess you do feel.”
Her mouth is dry as she tries to swallow and she grabs the water by her bed. 2:30am, the clock says. She licks her lips and reaches for the pill bottle on her nightstand.
Her cell phone rings as she is packing up papers to be shredded.
She stares at the caller ID for a long minute.
“Hallo,” she says after a moment. It takes her brain a second to switch to Dutch, so used to speaking in English these days.
“Have you signed it yet?” Nils asks brusquely and she glances at the divorce papers still on her desk. Grace swings his legs as he sits on the edge of it, watching her silently. He’s been silent more than talkative lately, a shadow following her every move.
She remembers when she met Nils—twenty one years and freshly out of college, a history degree and no idea what she wanted to do with herself. She remembers taking a job in a sociopolitical think tank—her talent with managing people and her knowledge of the Cold War and the way countries reacted during conflict evident even then. He was an anthropologist, interested in how societies worked under duress. The weather even then had become more violent and erratic—countries going through famine and drought and cities like Venice and New Orleans flooded beyond repair.
She was a lost woman then, and did what she thought was expected of her. Meet a man, get along with him. Get married, have a child. A daughter that she didn’t take to like she knew she should’ve. She never stopped working though, and eventually made her way through different agencies until she found herself as an administrator with the European Space Agency. Her marriage had been fine. Her life, passable.
And then she received a call from the United Nations.
(“Are you cheating on me?” Her husband had asked one Sunday night while she was on the ship base camp, hushed after Elise was put to bed. He didn’t know where she was—everything was need-to-know and he never had the clearance. “With a—an astronaut or scientist or someone over there?” Unbidden, Grace’s awkward gesture at the karaoke night came to her, his earnest desire for connection.
“No,” she said, voice taking on an edge.
He had sighed. “I…I wish you were. It would be easier.” She knew what he meant—it was not easy to assign blame when the other party was currently trying to save the dying planet.
Anger flashed through her, sharp and sudden. “Either send the papers or not,” she snapped. Her anger faded as soon as it came and she deflated, exhausted. “I do not have time for this.”
They were silent for a long time.
“Goodnight, Eva,” he said, a note of finality in his voice, and he had hung up before she could reply.)
“Yes,” she lies in response to Nil’s question, sitting down to stare at the papers. Her black fountain pen rests in its case next to it.
He is silent for a long moment. She wonders if their silences were always like this—pregnant pauses hiding their actual thoughts. Or if they were once comfortable. She can’t remember.
“And you have nothing to say about it?”
“What did you want me to say?” she asks.
She hears him huff. “So you will not be fighting for more time with your daughter? You are just fine to give custody to me?”
Oh. Eva tries to muster up some anger at not getting to see Elise regularly anymore. Her daughter has her blonde-red hair, her eyes, but the rest is purely her father. She hasn’t seen her face beyond a video screen in years.
“She is already more yours than mine,” she says, and this time she can feel the judgment in the silence that follows.
“Fine,” Nils says. “I will be waiting for an email from the lawyer.”
“Fine,” she echoes, and hangs up. She looks at the papers for a moment, then picks up her pen and signs it. An era of her life, finally over. She searches for any sadness inside her, and feels nothing. As she caps the pen, she feels Grace’s eyes on her.
Humanity as a whole is something worth protecting. Humans, though, exhaust her.
Eva stares at the resignation form in front of her and then back up at Carl, who watches her with a steady gaze.
“You are sure,” she says, hands flexing around her pen.
From the corner of the room, Grace is for once not looking at her. He’s looking silently at Carl, a strange expression on his face.
“I am,” Carl says.
“Surely this wasn’t the worst thing you’ve done in the name of the government, for the good of the world,” she says and Carl is quiet for a long moment.
“No,” he says. “It isn’t. But isn’t that the problem?” He shakes his head. “I can’t…stop thinking about his face. His screams. I told him he knows who he is. But does he? Will he?”
Grace had been well liked by nearly everyone on the Project Hail Mary task force. It was one of the reasons, beyond his knowledge of astrophage, that she’d made him her second. He was affable where she was cold, approachable where she was untouchable, kind and sympathetic when she could not afford to be so. But despite that, he always held himself at arms length, not making any real connections. Oh, sure, he bickered with Lokken and let Dimitri bully him into spending time at the bar with them. But he never seemed comfortable, at ease. Except with the man sitting in front of her now.
Grace sought Carl out, even while he was working. She would find him with his cup of ramen, talking to Carl with his mouth full while Carl pretended to not listen. Grace was always generous enough with his touch, but more skittish when other people gravitated towards him. But Carl could reach for him and Grace would reach back. When she watched them, she often wondered.
She sighs, clicks her pen and signs the form. “It has been an honor to work with you,” she says. “Please collect your things and you will be escorted off the premises.” She pauses. “If you ever need a recommendation, you have my email.”
He gives her a short nod and begins to stand up.
“Wait,” she says, reaching over to rummage through a cardboard box nearby. She pauses and then pulls out a bound manuscript.
“He would have wanted you to have this, I think.”
She watches him flip it open and sees the way his eyes widen.
“It has already been peer-reviewed and will be published as soon as the research on astrophage is unredacted and publicly available.” She manages a faint smile. “Congratulations on your first co-authorship.”
She sees Grace shift forward, and she knows he isn’t real, knows he’s just a figment of her guilt, but for a moment, it almost looks like he is going to try to reach for him. She averts her eyes to give the man in front of her a semblance of privacy, pretending to not see him push his sunglasses up to wipe his eyes.
“Commander,” he says, voice steady.
“At ease,” she murmurs. “I wish you much success.”
As the door closes behind him she sits heavily in her chair.
“I never thought—I—I wanted to tell him myself,” Grace says, voice catching. “I wanted…I don’t know.”
Eva presses her fingers to the bridge of her nose and rubs. She must be going soft, if this is the Grace her mind comes up with.
“What interview number is this?” Grace asks her, wrapped in his yellow raincoat looking strangely small for a man who was six feet tall. She stares out the window as she waits to be called in. This time it’s the Today Show. It has been four months since the launch of the Hail Mary, and so far the project is still in the public’s good graces. But she is wary of being paraded around like this, knows it just means more visibility for her and that when the blowback happens she will be the person burned at the stake. There must always be an enemy to rally against and soon, they will take a closer look at what she has done to make sure people survive the coming battles.
Grace shifts his weight from one foot to another, and Eva is struck at how ratty his sneakers are. Were they always that way or is her mind making it so? When she looks up Grace is staring at her. At least his glasses are on his face this time, is all she has time to think before the PA comes by to get her to the stage.
“So tell us about the astronauts,” the host says halfway into the interview. Without meaning to, her eyes cut to where Grace sits by the stage, his knees pulled to his chin. Again, he looks small. His left shoe is untied.
She clears her throat. “They are sleeping right now, and will be for another three and a half years,” she says. “At least for them. With time dilation we will be waiting longer. Forgive me, though, I am not a scientist and still hardly understand how space works myself.” The host laughs.
“Yeah, we all know about that, but tell us about them! Tell us about the schoolteacher! What was his name…Ryland Grace?”
She feels her smile freeze on her face, and Grace’s eyes bore into her.
“Yeah,” he says softly, somehow loud even with all the noise of the room. “Tell them about me. Tell them about how you took me from my kids, how you dared me to be the one to crack the astrophage problem. Tell them about how I named them. Tell them that you let me go back and then I begged you to keep me onboard because I couldn’t stand the idea of my kids growing up in a world where half of them would die. Tell them how you murdered me.”
She exhales softly. “Ah, yes. He was a molecular biologist who was our leading expert on the astrophage. But I think he considered himself a teacher before anything else.”
“I heard the school is considering changing their name after him. Must be wild to know your seventh grade science teacher is now one of the astronauts who’s going to save the world!”
“It must be,” she agrees stiffly.
“Nobody will ever know, will they?” Grace says, voice cracking, and Eva’s jaw tightens. “You were right. They’ll see me as a hero. And they’ll never know what you did to me.”
“He and the two other astronauts were very brave,” Eva says. “And we can only wish them the best of luck. I only hope to be around to see them succeed.”
“Amen to that,” the host says and she squints against the bright studio lights, feeling every inch of the thick base makeup applied to her. She must feel guilt, she knows. Or else Grace would not be here, watching her, talking to her. But she does not regret what she did. She did what had to be done. And the world will not thank her for it.
She sits quietly in the cell, as she’s been doing for the past two hours. It’s quiet, her fingers twitching for a Blackberry phone she no longer has. For life, they told her. She would be in here for the rest of her life. She thinks of Grace’s yellow raincoat, neatly folded in her flat as it has been for the past four years.
All in all it had taken four years before the blowback happened, before she became persona non grata. After a brutal winter where frigid temperatures killed crops and a record amount of weather-related deaths, attention came back to Project Hail Mary, in a bad way. And as she suspected, the UN threw her into the pyre.
“Kinda reminds me of my cell,” Grace says and Eva huffs softly. “How’s that history major treating you now?”
Exactly as she knew it would. War on the verge of breaking out between multiple countries, starvation and plagues and death trading off like the world’s deadliest card game. She knows the United States has built weapons using astrophage, knows that Russia and Saudi Arabia have done the same. Astrophage is already killing them but humanity will always insist on hurrying it along.
“I will never regret what I did to you,” she says, voice low. Grace looks startled. In all these years, she’s never spoken to him, always ignored him as best as she could. “Regret that it needed to happen, yes. But hell has come to us, like I said. You are just not here to see it.”
And when she looks up Grace is gone. No matter, she thinks grimly. Work must be done.
“Before I say yes, need to know,” Dimitri says, watching her from over his glass of vodka. She rubs her neck, the tattoo long since healed, and glances around in the quiet bar they’ve found themselves in. She’s only been out a week and the world still feels too big when for so long her world was just a small cell.
“What is it?”
Dimitri watches her. “There have been rumors, yes? For a long time. That Dr. Grace did not volunteer.”
She takes a breath. She had wondered when someone would ask her this. She honestly is surprised it has taken this long. Nobody knew besides the security guards who caught him and herself, not really. But base camp was small and rumors were rumors. Grace sits at the bar next to Dimitri, and she hears him snort.
“Wow,” he says. “Should have known if anyone was gonna ask you, it would’ve been him. What’re you gonna say, Stratt? You gonna tell him the truth? Lie to him? Tell him how you sent me up there to die even when I begged you not to?”
She ignores him, as she has become accustomed to doing, staring at her glass of wine in contemplation.
“What are you asking me?”
“I think you know, Eva.”
She is asking him for a lot. To work with her again, even when every government on Earth wants to find her. His connections helped her escape, and she should really leave it at that. But she knows she will need her team again, that if the beetles do come back, it will be within the next few years, and she is too old to train a new team, too old to put on that skin she used to wear, and the authority she once held is long gone.
She weighs the risks—honesty and perhaps he will trust her. But perhaps once he finds out the truth the opposite will happen.
She remembers another conversation, long ago.
(“You would go, wouldn’t you?” Grace had asked, peeling the wrapper off his beer bottle, crouching on the balls of his feet as she stared out to the sea.
”Go where?” she asked, even though she knew.
”Out there. One way ticket to the great beyond. Just, whoosh, gone. Never to come back,” he said. He looked small there, staring at the half empty bottle in his hand.
She breathed. “Yes,” she said. And maybe that’s when it all began.)
“Yes,” she says. “It’s true. I had to make a choice and with Dubois and Shapiro gone, it could only have been him. You understand why, yes?”
Dimitri takes a long, slow sip of his drink and Eva watches him. Dimitri has always been expressive, unable to hide his feelings. Right now, he looks concerningly blank.
Grace laughs softly. There are tears in his eyes, bright against the blue of them. “I didn’t think you’d actually do it. You’d actually say it out loud. Dang, I really was just a guinea pig to you. The third backup and didn’t even know it.”
“I understand why,” he says, brows furrowed. “Do not like it, but yes. I understand.” He shakes his head. “Grace was…he did not deserve to go like that.”
“No,” she agrees, watching Grace over Dimitri’s shoulder. “But there was no other choice.”
“The things astrophage have made us do,” he says wearily and she huffs out a surprised laugh.
“Yes,” she agrees. “The things the star-eaters have made us do.”
Eva is old now. She can feel it in her bones, her aching joints and gnarled fingers. Earth is always cold now—she does not remember the last time there was a true summer. The ship sluices through ice blocks and she tugs her beanie down over her ears.
When she glances outside she sees Carl standing guard, Dimitri speaking to a scientist. Even Lokken stands outside, talking to someone else. The beetles are back.
The ship has been her home since her escape, on unincorporated waters so nobody has the authority to bring her back in. And she still had contacts at the ESA and elsewhere. A message from Dimitri, that just said: “They’re back.”
Project Hail Mary, long forgotten, a skeleton crew. And Eva is the only one with the most complete knowledge, the only one who remembers it all. Under the table, she has been brought back in.
Grace has been her constant companion, with his yellow raincoat and fox cardigan, glasses hanging askew on his face. Acerbic at times, silent others. She doesn’t speak to him, not since the one time in the jail cell, but he speaks to her, constant running commentary on her life choices.
He’s silent now and Eva prepares to see him, actually him, for the first time in decades. She clicks play.
“You were right,” Grace says, grainy on the video. He looks the same—floppy blonde hair, knitted cardigan around his body. “I hate that you were right. But you were. I don’t forgive you, but I understand now.” She sees him exhale, sees him look at something over the screen. “Everything you need to start should be on the beetles.” He smiles, and there’s something broken about it. “I won’t be there. I thought I might be but…I have to get Rocky. I have to save him.”
He pauses and she sees him take a breath. “Stratt,” he says. “Anyone who might be watching. Save Earth, okay?”
When she glances next to her she sees that her Grace is gone, vanished as if he was never there. Perhaps he wasn’t. Perhaps she’s finally free.
Save Earth, she thinks, and smiles. She can do that.