make each other matter.
The man beside you jumps up and down. He’s screaming something. The crowd noise is incredible but you can make out his words. It’s over, he’s saying. We won.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A long time ago, in high school, I wrote a story about two people on a spaceship who encountered this other ship, which was all abandoned and spooky, and one of the people went in to see what was going on, and when he came back, he was infected with something. It was a short story, only a few pages, and most of it was concerned with a stand-off in a corridor between these two people, only one of whom was still human.
I shared this story with my best friend, Freddy, who had a major problem with it. “They don’t fire the guns,” he said. “At the start of the story you say their ship has these huge guns, but they never use them.”
This was true. I did describe huge guns. I was thinking it was clever, because in the end, weapons couldn’t save them. It was ironic. Freddy disagreed. “You can’t have a spaceship with huge guns,” he said, “and not fire them.”
This was my introduction to a storytelling principle known as Chekhov’s Gun, which was a good thing to learn. But it was also an early experience with a reader who disliked a story not because it was implausible, or badly written, or made no sense—the usual reasons—but because it didn’t go right. Freddy was totally on board for a story of infected astronauts. He just felt short-changed about the guns.
I’m endlessly grateful to the people who let me into their minds a little bit and help me figure out what happens when I put different words there. They have been doing it forever, and without them, I would still be writing stories with huge guns that no one fires. I have a lot to learn, but at least I’m not doing that.
For reading early, incoherent Providence drafts, thank you to the usual suspects, especially Kassy Humphreys and Charles Thiesen. For pouncing on later ones and championing them with passion and insight, all my thank-yous to Luke Janklow and Claire Dippel.
For believing in me and this story, and giving me the most wonderfully useful analysis of it, thank you to my editors, Mark Tavani at Putnam and Ruth Tross at Mulholland. Thank you also to Ivan Held, who, before he became my publisher, was on the very first cover of my very first novel, which just goes to show that some people never get punished for anything.
Thank you, you who picked up this book and read it all the way through. There are so many distractions now, so many forms of entertainment that are quicker and easier and only a tap and a swipe away. But nothing beats a good novel, if you can find one. I hope you did.
Thank you, Jen, for everything. You and me to the end.
Freddy—thank you for waiting. I know it took a while. Let me know what I screwed up this time.
Read on for a selection from Max Barry’s Lexicon, available from Penguin Books
[I]
Now when Ra, the greatest of the gods, was created, his father had given him a secret name, so awful that no man dared to seek for it, and so pregnant with power that all the other gods desired to know and possess it too.
—F. H. BROOKSBANK, The Story of Ra and Isis
[ONE]
“He’s coming around.”
“Their eyes always do that.”
The world was blurry. There was a pressure in his right eye. He said, Urk.
“Fuck!”
“Get the—”
“It’s too late, forget it. Take it out.”
“It’s not too late. Hold him.” A shape grew in his vision. He smelled alcohol and stale urine. “Wil? Can you hear me?”
He reached for his face, to brush away whatever was pressing there.
“Get his—” Fingers closed around his wrist. “Wil, it’s important that you not touch your face.”
“Why is he conscious?”
“I don’t know.”
“You fucked something up.”
“I didn’t. Give me that.”
A rustling. He said, Hnnn. Hnnnn.