by Yoss
Vasily recovered from his exhaustion and stress after a couple of days. Then, surprise of surprises, the aliens awarded him a supreme honor, one no human had ever been given before. In addition to granting him the practical equivalent of conditional freedom, they invited him to visit the Grodo home world, no less.
Well, invited is a polite way of putting it.
To be more precise: they ordered him.
Actually, every alien who knew anything at all about Psi was very interested in the curious form of synergy manifested in his probabilistic duel with Makrow 34. So the Cetian and Colossaurian scientists also “extended their invitations.” But Escamita’s people were able to push the fact that Lofty Sniffer-Out of Commercial Possibilities That Will Leave His Adversaries Weeping Over Their Empty Coffers had been the victim of criminals from the other two species. In other words: all three species of aliens trying to screw each other over, as usual.
In short, life on board the Burroughs seemed to be returning to its normal rhythms.
With a few notable changes. For example, the Grodos insisted on having Einstein accompany Vasily to their planet. Not exactly as a bodyguard, either.
Who said an artificial intelligence can’t feel genuine scientific curiosity? My buddy seemed to have devoted himself wholly to physics and related sciences.
After a couple of conversations with me, in which he was skeptical of the temporal chaos I told him about, Einstein finally had the (brilliant!) idea of replaying the Module 14 holotapes at ultra-slow speed, slowed by a factor of ten thousand. That was what it took to make the scene of our double sacrifice, Slovoban’s and mine, entirely visible, and to convince Einstein that no tricks were involved. The clashing powers of two Gaussicals could produce the same time dilation effect generated by transit through a hyperspace portal.
I admit, I didn’t get much out of his enthusiastic explanation—but it seems that the Grodos did. A little of it got through to me, though:
Broadly speaking, it seems that there had been a couple of important empty boxes in the general framework of Psi phenomena. Among all the races of the galaxy, no beings capable of teleportation or of foreseeing the future had been found.
But the probabilistic duel between Makrow and Vasily had led first Einstein and then the alien specialists to hypothesize that perhaps there was a way (rather twisted, but a way after all) to get around the Law of Causality and catch a little glimpse of the future.
And my friend might be the key to that way.
So: almost a happy ending, at least for him and Einstein.
In any case, nothing could alter the fact that they will be, respectively, the first Homo sapiens and the first positronic robot to pass through a hyperportal and leave the Solar System. I hope all goes well for them.
In other words, I hope that they can both return (someday), that my buddy doesn’t get dismantled, that instead he gets his secondname (I suppose he’ll pick Bohr or Newton or some such), and that El Afortunado gets treated better than the average guinea pig.
The last time I saw him was at the ceremony where we scattered Old Man Slovoban’s ashes. Not in orbit around his beloved planet Earth, as the indomitable Romani probably would have preferred, but out of a hatch on the Burroughs. But something’s something, isn’t it?
El Afortunado was wearing a space suit and I wasn’t, so naturally we didn’t speak. Nor did we say goodbye. Maybe it was better that way. Man-to-man conversations, or even man-to-positronic robot, are never easy. I know we had a lot of things to say to each other—and I also know that neither of us would have known how to start.
The formidable Chimera destroyer was found orbiting Neptune’s moon Triton—with only a handful of energy crystals on board. The rest of the fabled trove? A mystery. The Treasure of Makrow 34 will probably turn into one of any number of myths about the Solar System.
As Slovoban had guessed, the government of Colossa never deigned to reveal the name of their wayward behemoth. A curious sense of honor, to say the least. Something like “he was a fucking traitor, but he was our fucking traitor.”
As for me, “in recognition of my outstanding service,” the aliens put a little pressure on my buddies to grant me nothing less than the privilege of a secondname.
I think I surprised everybody with my choice.
Oh, I suppose they all expected me to pick Chandler. Sure. But I figured that would be like naming a dog Dog. Too commonplace.
Hammett, Spillane, Himes, or even Tracy (after old Dick) would also have been on the list of unsurprising choices for those who knew me. I imagine more than one might have bet on Fernández as a logical pick—after all, without Vasily and his powers, Makrow 34 would still be a thorn in everyone’s side, and I’d still be just plain Raymond.
But Slovoban? Nobody saw that coming. An old gypsy mafioso I’d only met twice? (Though the second time around he did save my life, of course.) A heroic death, but a suicide, after all.
I hope Vasily finds out what I did someday, out there among the Grodos. He left before I was given the honor.
Some have told me that this story shouldn’t get filed away in a bureaucratic report. They say I should write it all down, in words, old style, the way Chandler would have done it. The original Raymond.
And maybe I will. Someday.
If I do, I’d like to begin this way:
The desert wind was blowing that night, loaded up on red dust….
Rome, October 23, 2002
About the Author
Born José Miguel Sánchez Gómez, Yoss assumed his pen name in 1988, when he won the Premio David in the science fiction category for Timshel. Together with his peculiar pseudonym, the author’s aesthetic of an impenitent rocker has allowed him to stand out among his fellow Cuban writers. Earning a degree in Biology in 1991, he went on to graduate from the first ever course on narrative techniques at the Onelio Jorge Cardoso Center of Literary Training, in the year 1999. Today, Yoss writes both realistic and science fiction works. Alongside these novels, the author produces essays, reviews, and compilations, and actively promotes the Cuban science fiction literary workshops Espiral and Espacio Abierto. His novels in English include A Planet for Rent, Super Extra Grande, Condomnauts, and Red Dust, all translated by David Frye.
About the Translator
When he isn’t translating, David Frye teaches Latin American culture and society at the University of Michigan. Translations include First New Chronicle and Good Government by Guaman Poma de Ayala (Peru, 1615); The Mangy Parrot by José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi (Mexico, 1816), for which he received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship; Writing across Cultures: Narrative Transculturation in Latin America by Ángel Rama (Uruguay, 1982); and several Cuban and Spanish novels and poems.
Copyright © 2004 Yoss
Translation copyright © 2020 David Frye
First published as Polvo rojo in Premio UPC 2003
by Ediciones B, Barcelona, 2004
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted without the prior written permission of the publisher.
First Restless Books paperback edition July 2020
Paperback ISBN: 9781632062468
eISBN: 9781632062475
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018956661
This book is supported in part by an award from
the National Endowment for the Arts.
Cover design by Edel Rodriguez
Typesetting, text design and eBook by Tetragon, London
Restless Books, Inc.
232 3rd Street, Suite A101
Brooklyn, NY 11215
www.restlessbooks.org
[email protected]
Restless Books is an independent, nonprofit publisher devoted to championing essential voices from around the world, whose stories speak to us across linguistic and cultural borders. We seek extraordinary international literature that feeds our restlessness: our hunger for new perspectives, passion for other cultu
res and languages, and eagerness to explore beyond the confines of the familiar. Our books—fiction, narrative nonfiction, journalism, memoirs, travel writing, and young people’s literature—offer readers an expanded understanding of a changing world.
Visit us at restlessbooks.org