A History of What Comes Next

by Sylvain Neuvel

  There’s a concrete footway going from this building to the next. Whoever designed it made it turn at a right angle. Aesthetics, I guess. People, of course, took the direct route. The dirt path they made is three feet wide, and a good eight inches deep. It would take … megatons of cumulated pressure to do that. Droves of starved people in striped uniforms walking to a slow death over and over again. This whole town was built by slave workers; so were the rockets. This is a place of science, and a place of oppression, and a place of suffering.

  Countless died—That’s not true. I’m sure the Germans counted them. They all died and not a single person here ever did anything to stop it. Not the young SS staring at me in his one-size-too-big uniform. Not the engineers, not the accountants. Certainly not Wernher von Braun. His rockets rained on London by the thousands—death falling from the heavens—but they killed more people making that weapon than they did using it. I doubt he could have stopped any of it, but we’ll never know because he didn’t try. His commitment never wavered, even after the Gestapo arrested him for treason. Von Braun is a man of science. He’s also an SS officer. How many good men own an SS uniform?

  I suppose it doesn’t really matter. The US would want him if he hunted kittens for sport, and I won’t come out of here alive without his help. If von Braun is a true believer, he’ll turn me in to the SS. If he’s a bad actor, he’ll turn me in to the SS. If he wants to surrender to the Soviets, he’ll turn me in to the SS. All he has to do is stay here if that’s what he wants. Russian troops are less than a hundred miles away.

  I’ve been waiting for a good thirty minutes now. Something’s wrong, I know it. I’m not sure I can make it out if things go south. Maybe. Grab the kid’s rifle with my right hand, raise it under his chin. Force his trigger finger with my left. I can take him, but there’s lots of open space once I get out of here. I need to be rea—Oh shit, that’s him. That’s von Braun.

  Dear God. The groomed hair, the tan. He looks more like a Hollywood actor than a physicist. Mother might be right. I see vanity here, not conviction. This is a man who does research in a fancy suit. He doesn’t have to be a good man. He just has to be smart enough to realize the Germans have lost. Selfishness will do just fine. I just hope his ego wants to hear what I have to say. He’s coming this way. Be ready.

  —Lili!

  A smile. I’ll be damned. This might just work.

  2

  The Honeydripper

  —Sit down, Lili. I’ll be back in a minute.

  He doesn’t speak a lick of English, but all I hear is Cary Grant. He’s all smiles and graces. I don’t think he ever turns the charm off. This is a man who likes to be liked. I wouldn’t be surprised if he slept with half the secretarial staff here. His office is meant to impress. Mahogany desk, fancy carpet, wall-to-wall bookshelves. The room belongs at Oxford, not in a concrete building littered with metal scraps. I suppose most of this would feel normal if it weren’t for the war outside, but right now it reeks of denial. This is wall-to-wall pretend, like a movie set. He’s made himself the star of his little world. All I need now is to convince him I deserve a role in it. Only I don’t know how. I sure don’t feel like Katharine Hepburn.

  I feel like a child. I certainly look like one. I cut my hair. I don’t know why I did it. I was leaving for Germany the next day. There were a million things to do but I went out and got my hair cut. There is this fancy salon not far from our house. I walk by it almost every day. I see rich people coming out of there and they look so … happy, confident. I wanted that. I never wanted it before but I did then. Going on a secret mission for the government. It was scary, but exciting. I wanted to feel … special. Ha!

  Shoulder length, and bangs. As soon as I looked in the mirror, I knew I’d been lying to myself all along. It was stupid, really. I told myself I wanted to feel special, but I wanted to feel different. It’s the first time I’ve done anything by myself. Me. Just me. I didn’t want to look like my mother. Now I look like my mother when she was a teenager. I’m sure I inspire about as much confidence as I have in myself. I don’t think I’d follow me if I were in von Braun’s fancy shoes.

  Not like my mother … Funny. Who else is there? I don’t even know who I am without her. I don’t know why I can force a door open without breaking a sweat, why I find people more cryptic than differential equations. Mother is the only person I relate to. I am exactly like her. I look like her, think like her. There is nothing but my mother. I spend my life following the rules she taught me, pursuing the one goal she told me to pursue.

  Take them to the stars, before Evil comes and kills them all. My mother’s words. Her mother’s words, and her mother’s, and her mother’s. Our lives boil down to a single sentence, a handful of symbols on an ancient piece of jewelry. I thought it was a gift when Mother said I could wear it. Now that necklace hangs heavy like a manacle.

  The world is doomed, and we must get people off of it. That’s what’s important. Not this war, not the first one or the next one. Not the woman in the river. Our fight is against gravity, and von Braun can help us win it. Mother said all that, of course. She’s the one who believes. I only know we’re the same, so I follow. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to work.

  3

  Begin the Beguine

  —Do you know who I am? Look around you. I created all this. I made the V-2! If the Americans were serious about this, they would not have sent a little girl.

  He’s smiling. What a creep! Yes, mister. You’re a big wheel. We’re all impressed. The good news is he didn’t make a pass at me. That and they all agreed they should surrender to the US three weeks ago. The bad news is he won’t listen to anything I say. I don’t know if it’s my gender, my skin, or the fact that I look like a fourteen-year-old nerd. Probably all three, not that it makes a difference. What does he think? That I want to be here? I want to go home and drink a milkshake, listen to Big Boy Crudup while a B-17 carpet-bombs this place. But I can’t. I have to be here, with him. Him and a townful of Nazis. Time for some Olympic-level pride-swallowing.

  —I’m nineteen, sir. And I understand. I do. You’re a very important man, and a brilliant one. I know that, and the United States knows that. They will stop at nothing to make sure you get out safe. You see, they didn’t send a little girl. They sent Patton’s Third Army. All of it. I’m only here to make sure you’re still alive when they reach us.

  —Flattery will get you nowhere, young lady.… How long until they get here?

  He knows I’m fawning over him, but he can’t help himself. Now for the hard part.

  —Soon, sir. Soon. Unfortunately, not before Soviet troops reach Peenemünde.

  —…

  —What I mean is we can’t stay here, sir. If we stay, you’ll be dead in a week. Either dead or learning Russian. I need you to come with me.

  —Come with you where?

  That is a very good question. One that the OSS answered only with “away from the Soviets and towards US troops.” It kind of made sense when they showed me on the map with their small toys. They like pushing toy figures on maps, with a stick. It’s a small map, they could reach with their hands, but they think the stick makes it look serious somehow. Red Soviet figures, blue American figures. Get away from the red toys and head towards the blue toys. Simple enough. What was missing on their little map was about a million little German figures filling all the space in between. One step at a time, I guess. We need to get away from tiny red people.

  —Anywhere but here, sir, and preferably without being fired at. The Germans must know they’ll lose Peenemünde. Do you have orders to go anywhere?

  —I do indeed.

  … Really? That’s it? Maybe it’s a European thing. A friend of Mother’s went to Paris before the war. She said she asked a lady if there was a post office nearby and the lady answered: “Yes.”

  —Where, sir? Where did they ask you to go?

  —How do you Americans put it? Oh yes. Take your pick.

  Wow. I knew G
erman command was a mess, but this … Right there on his desk, ten, maybe a dozen written orders, all from different people. Here’s an army chief who wants him to pick up arms and join the fight on the eastern front. I don’t think we’ll follow that one. Another one asking him to stay put. The wording on these is fascinating. Failure to comply. Blah blah blah. Summarily executed. Blah blah blah. Firing squad. Here it is again. Orders to stay, orders to go. This one is from Kammler himself.

  Technically, Kammler is von Braun’s boss. Official title: Beauftragter zur besonderen Verwendung Heer, Army Commissioner for Special Tasks, something like that. Less technically, Kammler is about as close as you can get to the devil himself. Before dealing in advanced weaponry, Hans Kammler was chief of Office C, the same Office C that built all the concentration camps. Now this asshole is ordering von Braun and his men to Bleicherode in central Germany, near the Mittelwerk weapons factory where they build the V-2.

  —I think Kammler is our best bet, sir. We should head southwest to Bleicherode.

  —No! You said we had to wait for the Americans. Now you want to take us away from them.

  It does sound counterintuitive. We’d like to get out of Germany, not deeper into it. But we’ll never get near the border without getting caught. What I told him was kind of true. The Americans really have no plan to get us out other than to plow their way through the German army until they reach us. The best we can do for now is to bide our time.

  —I know, sir. But we can’t stay here, that means going somewhere else. We also need to stay alive. We’re going to need help doing that, and since we’re in Germany, I think the Germans are in a better position to help us than anyone else. You can’t hide from your own army for weeks, sir. Follow orders, any orders. All we need is time.

  Silence. I think he knows I’m right. Either he doesn’t like what that means for him, or he really doesn’t want to listen to me.

  —Then tell me, Lili—is that even your real name?—I’m the chief scientist in the V-2 program. I have nearly five thousand men under my command. Why would I listen to you?

  —Mr. von Braun, I—

  —You can go back to where you came from, Lili. I will handle this myself.

  I should tell him I have orders to kill him if he doesn’t play along. Maybe I should just kill him and get it over with.

  —Forgive me, sir, but I don’t think you have much of a choice.

  —Who the hell do you think you are?

  I have absolutely no idea, so let’s not go there. I get it, though. Creep or not, he doesn’t know me from Adam. I might not listen to me either, but we’re running out of time.

  —I don’t mean any disrespect, sir. I only mean that your options are very limited at the moment. Unless you want to put your fate in the hands of a Russian general, you have to leave. You can run, but you and I both know it won’t work. You need to understand, you …

  —What? What do I need to understand?

  Here it comes. Kid gloves, Mia. Kid gloves.

  —… You’re a brilliant man, sir. I said that already. The work you’ve done here is impressive, very impressive. But you’re not … irreplaceable.

  —I built the V-2!

  Good Lord! I almost feel bad for what I’m about to do to him, but someone has to shrink him down to size. I need to speak a language he understands.

  —You did. And it’s great, but it’s not perfect. I think a lot of it isn’t your fault. Working conditions haven’t been ideal, but that engine … I suspect you just couldn’t build one that size that fast, without it going BOOM, so you tied together eighteen smaller ones, fed their exhaust into one large mixing chamber, and hoped for the best.

  —How dare you? What do you know about building rockets?

  —Enough to know there are limits to what the Americans will do for two hundred and three seconds of specific impulse.… I don’t mean this as an insult, sir. I understand. You scaled up your design and the rocket started shaking like a leaf.

  —Nonsense! Are you saying the Americans will kill me?

  I need to make him trust me. Me, not the plan. He has to see me as an ally, a kindred spirit or something. I need …

  —I’m saying … I’m saying you couldn’t find the right geometry to get rid of those transverse gas vibrations. I’m saying maybe you should try adding baffles around the injector face.

  —…

  He’s still smiling, smug as a cat, but I think he understands.

  —And we should follow Kammler’s orders and head southwest.

  —… Baffles, you say? Anything else?

  —No, sir, just the orders.

  Progress. Not much, but progress. At least he’s willing to hear what I have to say.

  —It will not work. There will be checkpoints along the way. There will be checkpoints everywhere. The SS will stop us.

  —We have Kammler’s orders.

  —We have many orders, from people just as important as Kammler. Someone will find out we disobeyed theirs.

  —Who?

  —It does not matter. Any of them. The SS will call the wrong person, and they will arrest us, or they will round us up and shoot us all. We will never make it all the way to Bleicherode with these orders.

  I’m tempted to disagree on principle, but the man does have a point. He also works for the SS. He might know a bit more about them than I do. Problem is I don’t have another plan, so I sort of need this one to work. How do we make sure the SS will let us through? We have good orders, ones we want to follow. We just need to make sure these orders supersede every other set of orders on that table. Problem solved.… I have absolutely no idea how we’re supposed to do that.… Maybe he does.

  —Sir? Is there anyone the SS wouldn’t stop, anything they wouldn’t check on?

  —… It would have to be something above their clearance, some top-secret project they are not allowed to know about.

  So what we need is some sort of school note, from Hitler. Sure. Why not?

  —Could we … forge some documents?

  Von Braun is soooo not going to like this.

  —There is the letterhead …

  What letterhead? Oh, I forgot about their weird manners. I’m probably supposed to ask.

  —What letterhead?

  —We received these from the printer last month. I was about to destroy them.

  He’s fetching a cardboard box from behind his desk. Looks like … paper. One big pile of Nazi paper, eagle, swastika, and all, and the initials “VzBV” across the top. I don’t know what it means. BzBV, with a B, is the department Kammler runs, what von Braun actually works for. This … I’ve never heard of it.

  —What’s VzBV?

  —It’s nothing. It’s a typo.

  —It doesn’t exist?

  —No. Just a misprint.

  Let me get this straight. We need to forge some documents from a secret project and he just happens to have a boxful of letterhead from a place that’s not real, in his office, right now. This all seems a little too convenient, but I’ll take it.

  —Well … There’s your project. VzBV.

  —What does it stand for?

  —I don’t know. It’s your project.

  —Vorhaben zur besonderen Verwendung?

  Project for Special Disposition. I like it.

  —I think it’s perfect. It sounds important but it’s vague enough it could mean anything. How long do you need to get your people ready?

  —A few days.

  Days! How long does it take to throw some clothes into a bag?

  —That seems like a long time, sir. The Russians will be here in a few days.

  —All my research. The Americans will want it.

  —I understand, sir. You have some boxes to pack. That should take a few hours, not a few days.

  —There are nearly five thousand of us. It will take time.

  I don’t know what he’s talking about. We can’t all leave. There are—He just said it. There are nearly five thousand of them!<
br />
  —What? No, sir. I’m supposed to get you out, you and your top scientists. You are … how can I put this?… (Off your rocker. Nutty as a fruitcake. Cuckoo bananas.) … underestimating the risks involved. Those fake papers might be enough for them to let a car through, not a town. A few people, sir. That’s the mission.

  —Then you need to rethink the mission, Lili. The Russians will exterminate anyone we leave behind if the German army does not do it for them. There are families here. We have to take them with us. Those that want to come, at least. I will not leave without them.

  He is insane. Even if half of his staff stays behind, there’s no way we can move thousands of people without being stopped everywhere. He also sounded genuinely sincere right then. He even dropped the radio-host voice for it. I realize I have no idea who that man is. Thousands of people died here building his rockets, and he let it happen. Mother says he only cares about science. I thought that made him a coward, but he’ll apparently risk his life in the thick of war to save the people he works with.

  What does that make him? Did he believe them when they told him who was human and who wasn’t? Or did he just … wish all the horrors away, pretend they didn’t exist? Did he sleep through the rubble and watch yellow fields through the window? Like most things, it’s probably more complicated than this or that. I wanted to save a good man, or kill an evil one. Von Braun might be neither. The world is flooding with egotistical men concerned only with their needs and wants. Another place and time, he might just be … unremarkable in his own self-serving way. Von Braun is no hero, that’s a fact, but this is the first remotely selfless thing to come out of his mouth. If I’m going to do this, I need to believe there is something inside that man worth saving, something other than knowledge.