A History of What Comes Next

by Sylvain Neuvel

  Nourah asked where her mother was. The king’s envoy said she was gone and would not come back. He explained that all the money from the horses had been returned to him. In exchange he promised to take care of Nourah as his own. Nourah ran outside and screamed her mother’s name. She screamed and screamed until she couldn’t. Lost and hopeless, she packed her small belongings and sat in one of the chariots next to a father she did not know. She did not look back as the caravan left Quwê, never to return.

  A few miles north, Ishtar cried herself into oblivion. She woke alone at sunset and prepared a fire. Ishtar looked to the stars and begged the dead for forgiveness.

  —I have betrayed you, Mother. I have broken my promise. I have abandoned our ways and forsaken my blood. I do not expect absolution, for I would not offer it in your place. What I did, I did for my child. What comes of my soul is irrelevant. My daughter knows nothing of our past. I have not told her where we came from and why. She will never hear our stories, for that knowledge is a death sentence and my child is innocent. I have seen our blood spilled, our homes burned. I have heard our screams. Our ways have brought us pain and death and I refuse to watch my daughter suffer for a promise she did not make. I will not force her into a life of fear and violence. I will not deprive my daughter of the peace she deserves and guilt her into doing the same to her child. The cycle ends now. I have betrayed nine generations of us to save the next hundred. I give my life for my daughter’s, as you have done for me. We are the Kibsu. We are the Ten, and we shall be the last.

  When the fire went out, Ishtar had taken with her all the knowledge she possessed.

  Nourah spent only a few years with her adoptive father. The king’s envoy died of consumption when she was ten. He had made her feel at home as best he could, but Nourah never stopped longing for her past. Every night, she rocked herself to sleep reciting the rules her grandmother had taught her. Nourah buried the man she had spent half her life with and rode her horse back to where they first met.

  She bred horses in Quwê, as her mother had done before her. She met a man, had a child of her own. Nourah looked at the infant and knew that she was more than a mother. She was the eleventh. The eleventh of what, she did not know for certain, but she was part of something larger than herself. She was one and many, and neither she nor her daughter would ever be alone. Nourah spent her nights studying the sky. She lived a quiet life, careful not to draw attention to herself. When her daughter was of age, Nourah gave her all that she had to give: the necklace her mother had left her, and a handful of rules that had guided her home when she was lost and alone.

  ACT  VI

  51

  Death of an Angel

  1956

  She’s gone. I still feel it. It’s hard to describe. It’s not … It’s not anything. Just nothing where there once was something. I never heard her, but she was there. Her little heart thumping in the background, always, like the refrigerator motor. One of a thousand sounds you don’t notice until they’re gone. It’s quiet now. Deafening silence.

  I thought I was dying. I was. I was bleeding out. I can’t say that I wanted to die, but I had … accepted it. Everything went dark, and I waited. For something, anything. I never believed in the afterlife, that my soul would somehow outlive my body, but part of me expected something more. Maybe my life flashing before my eyes would have been enough. I don’t know, but I really wanted it. It wasn’t for me. I wanted there to be more for her. My child never lived. I wanted death to be … worthwhile, somehow. I remember being angry about it. I welcomed death and it disappointed me.

  They sent two men down with ropes to get me. They patched me up as best they could, then drove me to the nearest city with a decent hospital. It was three hours away, enough time for Korolev to learn about what happened and call Mother. He said I’d lost a lot of blood and he needed to know my blood type. Korolev saved me. In the shape I was in, a transfusion would have killed me. Mother told him I had a rare hereditary condition and she was the only one I could get blood from. He told the hospital to wait and had her flown in. I can still see Mother’s face when I woke up in that hospital bed. I asked if Billie knew and she didn’t answer. That’s when it hit me. They had my blood. The room was covered in it. Mother had already set it up. A body from the morgue. A fire. Don’t leave a trace. I died that night, in fucking Kazakhstan. We were on a plane by morning.

  Now … Now I just hurt. My insides are still throbbing. I feel pain when I sit or stand. Regular pain, I can handle. I’ve felt it before. A knife wound, a broken toe. That pain is familiar. The other pain is the one I can’t stand. I keep touching myself. I feel my stomach without thinking and I remember that she’s gone.

  I lost a husband. Korolev went to my funeral, said his goodbyes to a closed casket. He buried me. I lost my work. We were so close, I could almost touch it. There are so many things we could have done with Stalin out of the way. Moscow hadn’t changed, really, but the air was filled with such promise. Hope is a powerful thing, and it’s beautiful to watch. I won’t see it. I lost that, too.

  I lost Billie. I’ll never see her face again, never watch her staring at me with that … undecided look. She said she didn’t know what to make of me, but it ran both ways. I think that’s what I miss the most, the uncertainty, the eternal discovery. I miss those brief moments of understanding, glimpses of the unknown. I miss me with her, our noses getting in the way, the way our bodies interlocked, the contrast of our skin. Do we truly care for people, for their empirical selves, or do we care for how we experience them? Is this a universal question or is this also about me? Whatever it is, I want more. I want to run my finger down her spine again. I want to bury my face in her hair and hide in that warm darkness for a long minute. It felt like the safest place on Earth.… I want to know how she got that scar. She wouldn’t say.

  I don’t know why but I keep thinking she’d like California. It’s warm, for starters. Billie never liked the cold. I don’t think she’d ever seen the ocean. To me, LA feels … unreal. Everything is bright and colorful. I feel … so gray.

  I hurt of anger. I should be sad—I am—but mostly I’m angry. I’m mad at myself, mad at the whole world. There’s so much anger it feels like I’m drowning, and I can’t stop it. I can’t make it end. I’m here. It happened. I can’t change any of it even if I can’t bear another minute of my own existence. I’m helpless, impotent.

  I’m not the only one hurting. Mother won’t say but I know she took it hard. She feels responsible. She shouldn’t. She warned me that evil was coming. I chose not to listen. This is all on me.

  Back in Moscow, there were these crooked houses across from Billie’s. They were old—both were built at the turn of the eighteenth century. Whoever owned them clearly didn’t have the money or the will to fix them, and they were slowly falling apart. Their foundations were sinking, and both houses would have collapsed, should have, really, if not for the fact that they were leaning on each other in just the right way. Billie said they had been like that for decades. That is what we are, Mother and I, two broken things in a complete state of disrepair, leaning on one another. We keep each other alive. For now that will have to be enough.

  52

  Little Bitty Pretty One

  Life magazine, October 21, 1957

  RUSSIA’S SATELLITE, A DAZZLING NEW SIGHT IN THE HEAVENS

  THE FEAT THAT SHOOK THE EARTH

  A glittering metallic pinpoint of light streaking across the predawn sky last week gave the U.S. its first look at Soviet Russia’s great feat, the artificial moon Sputnik. After the satellite’s first hundred or so orbital trips around Earth. Americans were settling into uneasy familiarity with the unarguable fact that Russia’s moon was passing over them four to six times a day. In fact, there were three satellites girding Earth—Sputnik, a section of the launching rocket, and its nose cone. The famous “beep beep” from Sputnik’s radio turned into a steadier squeal for varying periods. Scientists and lay spotters went sleepless to trac
k the little satellite’s travels with all the equipment they had or could throw together.

  All the tracking fervor and growing familiarity with Sputnik did nothing to soothe Americans’ shock at the original announcement of the Soviet breakthrough into space. It was becoming all too apparent Russian scientists are as good as any in the world—or better.…

  … Russia promised shortly to launch a second satellite twice as big as Sputnik. Even without this, Americans knew that for a long time they would have ample reminder of Soviet scientific excellence whirling through their previously inviolate sky.

  —I can see it, Mia! How did you do this?

  —How did I do what?

  —Make it visible?

  —I didn’t do anything, Mother. The sun has to be really low for us to see it, but it’s just … there.

  —This is fascinating.

  —It’s just a ball, Mother.

  —What does it do?

  —Beep-beep.

  —I do not under—

  —That’s what it does. It sends radio signals. We can listen to it at home if you want.

  —What else does it do?

  —Nothing else. It’s a silver ball that goes beep-beep.

  WHY DID U.S. LOSE THE RACE? CRITICS SPEAK UP

  SEN. GEORGE SMATHERS (D.): “Government ineptness, smugness have produced false sense of security. The President says we aren’t competing with Russia on satellites. But we cannot afford to be second best; the stakes are our survival.”

  HARRY STINE, a rocketeer fired from Martin Co. for speaking out: “Russia listens to men with vision. But we lost five years because no one would heed rocket men. We’re a smug, arrogant people who just sat dumb, fat and happy, underestimating Russia.”

  —Who knows, Mia? Perhaps that silver ball will spin its way into the collective consciousness and get people thinking about space. Regardless, there is a machine orbiting Earth and my daughter put it there. You should be proud of yourself.

  —I suppose I am.

  —You have lost a lot, Mia, but that does not take away from what you have accomplished. That rocket of yours will put a man in space.

  —You really think so?

  —I know it.

  —I really wanted to see it launch.

  —Close your eyes and see it now. Watch your rocket soar. Hear it growl as it plays its tug-of-war with Earth. I am there with you, all of us are. A hundred generations are watching. This is as high as we have ever gone, as close to the stars as we have ever been.

  WE ARE SERIOUS, BUT WITH SMILES

  U.S. reaction to Sputnik, which is Russian for “fellow traveler,” took many forms. To calm customers’ nerves bartenders concocted Sputnik cocktails with vodka as the base.…

  Underneath the levity the U.S. was plainly worried. President Eisenhower said, in reassurance, that the U.S. satellite would be better scientifically than Sputnik. But Sputnik proved that there were great military, as well as scientific, advances in the U.S.S.R. Getting their heavy satellite up meant that Russia had developed a more powerful rocket than any the U.S. has yet fired and substantiated Soviet claims of success with an intercontinental missile.

  53

  Great Balls of Fire

  —I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve seen plenty of launch failures, but this was epic. The rocket eked its way a few inches from the ground, and then it gave up and went down in a blaze of national humiliation.

  Rockets are the last thing I want to think about, but this was national television. The American response to Sputnik. I had to watch.

  —That was your doing, Mia.

  —What are you talking about? I didn’t blow up their rocket. They did that all by themselves.

  —But you did. The Americans were so stunned by your satellite, they rushed to launch anything of their own. They chose a rocket that was not ready. This was supposed to be a test, but they were stupid enough to add a small satellite to the payload. The press was all over it.

  —I’m sure it had something to do with Korolev doubling down and sending a dog up there.

  —Perhaps. That seemed cruel, if I may say so.

  He barely waited a month before launching another satellite. That one did more than beep-beep. It had actual instruments. And a dog.

  —Let’s not talk about dogs, Mother.

  —We could not take Tsygan with us, Mia. We have discussed this a thousand times.

  I don’t know why I’m still mad, but I am. That was two years ago, but I still imagine her waiting by the door. Poor thing.

  —I said let’s not talk about it.

  —The point I was trying to make is that this … catastrophe works to our advantage. The New York Times is calling it a “blow to US prestige.”

  —Ha! That wasn’t a blow, Mother, that was twenty thousand pounds of American pride going up in flames.

  —“Spectators on nearby beaches gasped in awe and dismay as the orange blaze seethed up against a clear blue sky. Within seconds of the outburst, the flame changed to brown-black smoke. This spread into a crudely shaped mass that rapidly dissipated in the morning breeze.” There is a certain elegance to the prose.

  —I’ve read it. I almost feel bad for the guy in charge. He said something about it being a success.

  —He did. “‘It was a real successful operation in terms of keeping things running smoothly. Toward the close and a little later, this rocket was flying. It wasn’t a long flight—but it was flying.’”

  —Ouch.

  —This is my personal favorite: “There was some doubt that the disaster ought to be technically described as an explosion. He substituted ‘rapid burning.’”

  —It was rapid. That was the biggest ball of fire I’ve ever seen in my life! The press has some interesting names for it. Flopnik, Kaputnik, Oopsnik.

  —Your rocket has given us the race we wanted.

  I think Mother is exaggerating, but I’m glad if this means rocket science becomes more than a military contest.

  —Do you think they’ll give von Braun his chance now that the Vanguard failed?

  —They already have. The Vanguard launchpad was severely damaged and it is the only one they have. They are going to use his Jupiter-C rocket to send their satellite up. Von Braun promised the army he could launch in sixty days. They gave him ninety.

  —Ninety days! That’s nuts!

  —He could use some assistance.

  —From me? I don’t—

  —It is time, Mia.

  —I’m sorry, Mother. I can’t.

  I wish I could. I just … Mother wants me to move on. She wants me to have another child. I don’t know that I can do either. My insides were ripped to shreds when I fell off that platform. Mother said we’ve always been fast healers. Maybe. We did survive a lot worse, if we are to believe our journals. Lost limbs, punctured hearts. The Thirty-Three had her right leg replaced with a metal one, as I recall. She rode a horse with it.

  Even if I could get pregnant, I don’t know that I want to. My daughter’s dead. I won’t … replace her. Besides, I can’t lose Mother now, trade her life for another. I can’t be responsible for her life, or my child’s, or the lives of a hundred fucking more of us. I don’t know if this is mourning, but whatever it is, I’m not done yet.

  54

  Milord

  1959

  —They’re building rockets, Leonard.

  —Who is?

  —Oh, Brother. You do realize it was a launch platform you kicked the daughter off, don’t you?

  —I didn’t think she’d fall off the damn thing! I just meant to knock her out.

  —We have had this discussion many times, Leonard. I am not having it again. I was merely pointing out it was a launch platform you FUCKING KICKED HER OFF!

  —I know what it was!

  —Good. Hence, they’re building rockets.

  —The daughter was working there. That doesn’t mean they—

  —Oh, but it does. It most certainly does.

 
—The girl is dead, Charles. Her mother could be a chef for all we know.

  —Think, Leonard. They lived in Germany before the war. Name one thing that the Germans were good at?

  —Beer? Automobiles?

  —I found out the daughter was in Bleicherode in ’45. Do you know who else was in Bleicherode in ’45? Rocket scientists, hundreds of them. Care to guess where some of these people ended up after the war?

  —Rus—

  —Bingo. Do you realize what that means, Leonard?

  —What?

  —It means they are trying to leave!

  —Leave where?

  —It doesn’t matter!

  —I don’t know, Charles. That seems a bit—

  —Why else would they be working on rockets? I think they want to get off this rock and leave us behind with these … apes. We’ll never find the device if they do.

  —Maybe.

  —What do you mean maybe?

  —I mean I don’t know! All I know is the daughter’s dead. She’s not going anywhere. Call me crazy, but I don’t think the mother’s going to build a fucking spaceship all by herself.

  —Not now, she won’t. But that is how we’ll find her. She will go where the rockets are.

  —She’s alone, Charles. If it were me, I’d find the smallest shithole in the middle of nowhere. I think—

  —Don’t think. Just pack up your things. You’re coming with me.

  —What? I thought—

  —What did I just say about thinking? Don’t make me repeat myself.

  —Fine. Where are we going?

  —The land of the free, Brother. We are going to the land of the free.

  —America? We were just there!

  —We were, but they weren’t. That’s … kind of a big deal when you think about it. As I recall, the goal is to be in the same place, at the same time. Now, when we find the mother, you have to promise me you won’t kill her before she talks like you did with the daughter.