As the sun set and the tribe headed back east, Varkida turned and saw the horror they had left behind. Thousands of headless corpses lay in a sea of red. A mound of heads broke the sky. Her heads, she thought. They were given to her. She got off her horse and vomited what was left of her soul. At that moment, Varkida understood that she and the Tracker were the same. She knew who it was they were saving people from.
Varkida looked at her daughters and granddaughters and realized what she had done. She began as one, but they were now five. If each of the girls did the same, the Kibsu would soon be twenty-one, then eighty-five. In two hundred years, there could be sixteen million of her. Another two hundred and—she did not know if the planet could hold that many.
Varkida ordered a celebration to honor the fallen. The women drank and smoked and shared stories of the dead. When the night was winding down, she retired to her hut with her family. She told them about the future and her plan to change it. She told them they could not fight like the Tracker or they would become him. They had to be better. Varkida told her eldest daughter it was time for her to lead, and to teach her daughter to abide by the principles she had set. She gave them a set of rules they should live by and made everyone recite them a dozen times.
Preserve the knowledge.
Survive at all costs.
Don’t draw attention to yourself.
Don’t leave a trace.
Fear the Tracker.
Always run, never fight.
There can never be three for too long.
The Kibsu would live, she said, but they would live as mother and daughter. One daughter, never more. She prepared an infusion from haumala plants she had gathered herself. She poured three cups, kept one for herself, and handed one to each of her youngest. The family held hands for a few minutes before they drank the hot liquid. They all knew what would happen next. They had used this poison on their enemies before. One by one, their muscles would seize until paralysis spread to the heart and lungs. Varkida hoped it would be painless. Before her breathing stopped, Varkida asked the eldest to lean forward. She took off the necklace her mother had given her and placed it around her daughter’s neck before whispering in her ear.
—You are the Eight now…. Take them to the stars, before we come and kill them all.
ACT IV
30
Nature Boy
Dear Sarah,
It has been almost two years since I last heard from you. I can only hope your silence is not the result of indisposition and that you are in good health and spirits.
There is so much to tell, I do not know where to begin. After three years on the East Coast, I am returning to Caltech. While I greatly enjoyed teaching at MIT, I missed the hands-on thrills of rocketry and the camaraderie I had only found in California. I could not pass up the opportunity to work with Professor von Kármán again. They honored me with his former title and I am now the Robert H. Goddard Professor of Jet Propulsion. I have also been named director of the Guggenheim Jet Propulsion Center.
I was recently gifted another title, one I accepted with more trepidation. My wife Ying gave birth to a beautiful boy last October. We have named him Yucon. My son was born here and, with great encouragement from my colleagues at Caltech, I have recently mailed in our application for citizenship.
While I welcome this new life as an American family, I fear for the safety of my Chinese one. My father-in-law is a Kuomintang official and it has become clear that the civil war that has plagued China for so long will soon end in a communist victory.
Perhaps it is my inexperience as a father that is showing, perhaps it is the uncertainty about the world my child will live in, but I find the weight of responsibility somewhat difficult to bear. My son is but a fragile new life and already he has inherited a thousand years of baggage. His life will be shaped by choices he did not make. He will face problems others created for him and be judged for their actions before his. I did not create the injustice my son will face but I chose to bring him into a world that is filled with it. His presence brings me more hope than I dared imagine, and a hefty dose of guilt I did not expect.
I do not wish to burden you with the complaints of a fearful parent. It is, all things considered, a time of joy for us and I hope it is one for you as well.
31
Still a Fool
Whatever I am, wherever we are, I know we weren’t always the prey.
I keep telling myself I didn’t know but it’s a lie. I blocked those memories, somehow, but I knew. It’s in me. It starts with a tingling, hair standing on end. Heightened senses. Everything becomes clearer, crisper. There’s a monster inside me. I keep it caged up but it’s there, constantly clawing at the walls. I thought I could control it, tame the beast. I thought I was stronger than it but I was wrong. It won’t fetch or heel.
For months I thought it was just me, what I am, but I look around now and I see it in everyone. Every time someone cuts the line at the store, every time people bump shoulders in a crowd. They can control it most times, but their first instinct is violence, hatred. Deep down, people are built to kill, exterminate.
Now they can do it on an even bigger scale. The Russians have the bomb. They nuked a small village this morning. They built it in the middle of nowhere, Kazakhstan. It had houses, a store, even a little bridge. They watched their fake little town burn when the nuclear device exploded. First Lightning, they called it. Lavrentiy Beria was in charge, Stalin’s right-hand man. Basically, anything really bad, Beria handles. Stalin’s absolute priority after the war was to get that weapon. He has it now. It’s what we wanted, but having Beria in charge makes my skin crawl. This monster had twenty-two thousand Polish prisoners executed in 1940. Soldier, civilian, priest even, it didn’t matter. Beria had them all shot and piled the corpses in mass graves. He did the same to ten thousand Georgian nationalists before the war. They gave him a medal for it.
I heard the scientists on his nuclear project were told in advance of their reward or punishment based on today’s outcome. Get the Order of Lenin if it goes boom, life in a gulag if it doesn’t. Beria loves his gulags. He’s the one who got most of them built. Those who played a more critical role would get higher honors or a bullet in the head. Lots of smart people here breathed a sigh of relief when that village was vaporized today.
I bet you things are a little more tense on the other side of the Atlantic. The balance of power moved a hell of a lot in one day. The Americans finally closed their concentration camps for Japanese-Americans. Just watch. They’ll fill them up with communists before the decade’s over. Got to have someone to hate, even if it’s your own people.