The First Rule is the most important: 'Always run, never fight'.
Over 100 generations, Mia's family has shaped Earth's history to push humanity to the stars, making brutal, wrenching choices along the way.
And now Mia finds herself about to help launch the first people into space. She can't take them to the stars, not quite yet. But with her adversary almost upon her, and with the future of the planet at stake, it's becoming clearer that obeying the First Rule is no longer an option.
For the first time since her line's first generation, Mia will have to choose to stand her ground, knowing that the overwhelming odds mean that she risks not only her bloodline, but also the future of the human race.
Showing that truth is stranger than fiction, Sylvain Neuvel weaves a sci-fi thriller reminiscent of Blake Crouch and Andy Weir in Until the Last of Me, blending a fast-moving, darkly satirical look at the 1960s space race with an exploration of the amorality of progress and the nature of violence.
Praise for Sylvain Neuvel
'It's fascinating to see how Neuvel weaves together fact and fiction . . . a blast. Seriously clever' - SFX
'An alt-history with a difference. Traces the true story of the development of rocket science but adds an alien-conspiracy-theory edge . . . Good fun' - Guardian
'Wry narration, wired action . . . Fans of alternate history and intelligent sci-fi will love this' -Publishers Weekly
I watched him die, twice. I stuck a tiki torch inside his skull. Mother blew him up with a fucking missile. And yet there’s more of him, always more of him.
Just another daybreak on Mallorca. Bluish light. Air thick as water. I cut through the morning mist to catch the first batch of ensaimadas out of the oven. I got there early; so said the red cerrado sign on the door. I walked the hilltop, watched the dark sea vent its anger before the sun calmed it down and painted it blue. I took in the town’s quaintness before hordes of strangers defaced its narrow cobbled streets.
He looked right at me.
The baker unlocked her door, scolded the dog when she barged out. She waved at me through the window—I’m a part of her routine as much as she’s a part of mine. I petted Blanca for a minute, wiped the hair off my hands, and followed her back in. Soothing heat, more smells than I could distinguish. “Dos ensaimadas para llevar!” she said. “Cuatro, por favor.” I was starving. I paid, rolled the paper bag, and smiled my goodbyes.
I ran into the Tracker just outside the door. Literally. Our bodies collided, like two old friends chest-bumping after a game. But he didn’t step back, or move, or budge. It was like I’d hit a concrete wall. I looked up from chest to face, and there the devil was staring me down.
Slick warmth running down my legs. Mother’s death flashing before my eyes. I dropped the paper bag. The smell of fat and sugar mixed in with the stench of piss.
He raised his hand to my shoulder and nudged me to the side.
—Disculpe.
He didn’t fucking know me. We killed him twice, Mother and I, but he’s never seen us. Not this one. I watched him step into the bakery. I stood there, deer in headlights. I remember thinking about his accent. British, with a hint of something else. Eastern Europe, somewhere. I was stuck in some kind of trance until I heard the sound of children running up the street.
Running.
Run.
I grabbed the paper bag from the ground and dashed home. I made it in four minutes flat; we were out of there in ten. Lola didn’t ask why. She grabbed her best seashell and waited for me by the door. Lots of memories in that house. All of Lola’s. Crawling on the kitchen floor. First steps, first words. I looked around, tried to remember as much as I could before I poured gasoline all over it. Lola spoke only four words as she watched her world burn in the rearview mirror: “Don’t leave a trace.”
But I didn’t. I fucking didn’t. I was a ghost. Different name, different life. No loose ends. Lola and I laid low. We didn’t stand out; I made sure of that. Stick bugs on a branch. Plain. Ordinary. Vanilla. I’ve made mistakes before, but not this time. I couldn’t have found us.
Lola and I ate cold ensaimadas on the boat to Valencia. Lola didn’t cry—or speak, for that matter. She just looked at me from time to time to gauge how scared she should be—she can read me like a picture book. My daughter is unyielding, stubborn as hell, but she’s smart enough to realize her best option now is blind, unqualified trust. We hitchhiked from the port down to Alicante. One more boat to catch. I screamed at them to wait for us as they unmoored the ferry to Algiers.
Here we are now, casting off into the unknown. The light from Spain is getting dimmer and dimmer. What life we had is fading with it. Thirteen hours until we hit shore and begin a new one. This is … limbo, the in-between. We’re still high on adrenaline. None of this has sunk in yet. We were … a family. Now we’re fugitives, refugees, castaways. The wind is strong on the main deck, but we’ll spend the night up here. I keep staring at the sea, waiting for him to spring out like a shark. Stupid, I know. Regardless, confined spaces just aren’t on the menu right now.
—Mom, can we look at the stars?
—Yes, honey. Let’s get ourselves something to drink.
Every night, Lola and I watch the sky together, sharing a Coca-Cola. Tonight will be no different, not if I can help it. I brought her into the world. I made her prey. The least I can do is let her have these moments. Sorting through loose change. The tumble of the bottle in the coin machine. Pop. Fizz. This is our time. Our five minutes before I put the weight of a hundred lives on her tiny shoulders.
—Show me Venus.
—Venus is … over there, Lola. And that smaller dot above it is Jupiter.
She’s six years old and living on borrowed time. It’s horrible, but that’s not what I find tragic. I think, somehow, she knows.
—Show me … Saturn.
—I can’t. It’s on the other side of the sun.
She knows how this story ends, how they all end. I die. She dies. If we’re lucky, her child is born first and the Hundred and Two goes through the motions all over again. We’re the hare at a greyhound race. We can’t win; the best we can do is not lose. It’s not much, but it’s all I have to give. That and a Coca-Cola from the vending machine.
—When can we see all the planets, Mom?
Funny. This is what she wants. Eight dots in the night sky. How I wish I could give her that. She just watched her whole world burn. All her drawings, Roger the stuffed bear. Captain Action. She owns one set of clothes and a fucking seashell, but she wants to see the planets. Yet another thing I have to take away from her.
—I don’t know, honey. Probably never.
2Can’t Find My Way Home
1969
What are we? The eternal question.
We’re … the same. My daughter will look exactly like me when she’s my age. Same sun, different day. I am what my mother was. We’re … copies, I guess. There’s no word for it. We’re like that fish from some river in Texas. All females. They pass on all of their genes to their daughters, every time. We’re like a plant cutting that turns into an identical plant. A twig.
Philoponus of Alexandria wrote about it in the sixth century. “If someone cuts a twig from a walnut tree in Athens and plants it in Patras, two or three years later it will bear nuts that are the same in every aspect, in size and taste and color and every other character, with the ones from the walnut tree in Athens.” Klon, in ancient Greek. Good walnut wisdom, but it doesn’t answer the important question. Is it the same tree? I wish I could spend a day in my daughter’s mind and see if we’re more than each other. Am I … me?
We are different. From everyone else, that is. We’re stronger, better than most when it comes to math and science. We’re … fierce—that’s a diplomatic way to put it—predatory at times. We can be brutal. I have. I’ve killed people. Some deserved it more than others. There’s no erasing the past. All we are is a reminder of what once was. All I can do is make amends. Dilute the bad with a little more good.
We’re prey. The Tracker hunts us, relentlessly. He’s done it for three thousand years. He is many, like us. I killed one of them. Mother took another one with her when she ended her life to save mine. But evil is like the mail. It keeps coming and coming. The one I killed said we both come from a dying world. That I, my ancestors, hid something from them, a device of some sort. If they had it, he said, they could call home and save “our” people by bringing them here. Lies, perhaps. The devil is full of deceit and trickery. As always, we don’t know.
We don’t know where we’re from. We don’t know why we do what we do, only that we chose to do so a hundred generations ago. Some version of us, of me, chose to. Would I make the same choice now? I don’t know. We don’t know—I guess we would as we keep on making that choice.
Take them to the stars, before evil comes and kills them all. That’s what I was born for. That’s what my daughter has to look forward to. If we’re to believe the Tracker, that evil is “our” people—talk about irony. Then again it might be giant squids, little green men, Bible salesmen. We. Don’t. Know.
My ancestors started with nothing, before science, before anything. They didn’t know what a star was, let alone how to get to one. It took us three thousand years, but we have made progress. We found people to help. I did. I got Wernher von Braun out of Germany after the war. The US wanted him bad. They turned a Nazi officer into the poster boy for space exploration. From SS Sturmbannführer to hosting Disney specials. That’s some major-league redemption. Von Braun will return the favor and take them to the moon. Even steven. I helped the other side, too. Sergei Korolev and I built the R-7 rocket in Russia. I did more than help. I married the man. But the Tracker found me and I had to disappear. Korolev is a widower now, but he did send the first satellite into orbit, the first man into space. All in all, I think I did my part.
We do know a few things, six to be precise. We live by a handful of rules we set for ourselves when we knew who we were.
Fear the Tracker. Always run, never fight.
Preserve the knowledge.
Survive at all costs.
Don’t draw attention to yourself.
Don’t leave a trace.
Last, and certainly not least: there can never be three for too long.
I bent a few of those rules in my youth, just a little, and we all paid the price. I lost my unborn child. I nearly died. My mother did, spectacularly. After that, I followed the rules like God handed them to me himself. It worked for a while. I had a life. I don’t know if it was mine to have, but I took it. Lola and I had a home. We had … a beach we called ours, our café, our used bookstore. I had … a friend. Let’s call her a good friend. Don’t get too attached. It’s not one of the rules, but it might as well be. I learned that one the hard way.
It’s gone now, all of it. Because we are the same, and different, predator and prey. No matter how hard we try, there is only one thing we truly know, one inescapable truth.
We are the Kibsu.
3Gimme Shelter
1969
We came here to hide. They came to flaunt their resistance, daring to be seen. Outside, the streets are filled with students, poets, dancers. Inside, a hundred revolutions are brewing. Agitators, rebels, insurgents. Subversives. The Pan-African Cultural Festival is in full swing and, for a few days, Algiers is the Mecca of revolutionaries.
They’ve fought their oppressor for over a century, but things are different now. They started winning. Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, the Mau Mau movement in Kenya, and, of course, the Algerian war. Their fight was the longest, the bloodiest, but no one counts bodies on the winning side. They prevailed, and they inspired a whole fucking continent.
Down with imperialism! Down with colonialism! Intellectuals cerebrate the -isms in smoky hotel rooms while musicians and fire-breathers take to the streets. Everything here is a weapon: guns, words, rhythms. Seditious minds and pulse-pounding drumbeats. This city’s electric. And hot. Fucking hot. Everything here smells of sweat and defiance.
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