“Skinny human, may I ask a question that could cause emotional distress?”
“You can always talk to me,” I told Hanuš.
“Why do you wish so strongly for a human offspring? I have discovered from your fictional television programming about soap that your species does not always utilize sexual intercourse solely for breeding.”
I removed the motherboard cover and it floated toward me like a heart still attached at the arteries.
“I guess it’s insurance against being a nobody,” I said.
“Who is a nobody?”
“Well, it’s the opposite of being a somebody. Of having a body people can ask about.”
“The written records of your language do not explain the word well. Is every human not a somebody?”
I plugged my tablet into the motherboard and ran diagnostics. Ferda’s sensors and analytics were 100 percent functional. Hooray, Petr messaged via my e-tablet.
“It’s about doing things that matter,” I said. “It’s about loving things and being loved in return. Acknowledged.”
“It is love that counters your luxury of breeding by choice. I’ve had many pieces of offspring, skinny human. On every Eve, we shoot our seed into the vacuum, and wait to receive it as it showers down. The ceremony is law, and refusal to engage would mean death. One must shoot well into the distance to ensure one does not receive one’s own seed. This would cause severe embarrassment. The entire galaxy glows on Eve. We carry the smaller me’s until they hatch from inside our bellies. One does not miss an Eve. It is a very refreshing day. The consistency, the moisture, the solidity of seed. To you, an offspring is a choice, but the pleasure of this freedom is negated by the blackmail of love. If you love a partner, you crave to breed. Once you receive a human offspring, you are bound by love to care for its needs. Such attachments go against the concept of choice as defined by humanry, yet the planet of Earth is filled with these obligations. They define you.”
I replaced the grating and fastened the screws. These tasks—tinkering with Ferda, the diagnostics coming back at 100 percent—were supposed to be the climax before the climax, the great pleasure of the mission as I anticipated the dust cloud and its possibilities. But without Lenka, my excitement for Chopra was muted.
“Someday, I’d like to see your Eve,” I said.
“That won’t be possible.”
“Why not?”
Hanuš never answered. In fact, he ceased speaking entirely, and seemed to disappear from the ship altogether until the next morning.
FOUR DAYS UNTIL my arrival at Chopra, between my many videoblogs and interviews with the Czech media (Mr. Procházka, what do you think of the man behind your mission, Senator Tůma, becoming prime minister of the country? Fantastic, I told them, or something like it. Will your wife be present at the national screening event of your triumph, or will she watch from the comfort of your home? Certainly, yes, she will be watching very closely, I told them, or something like it. As you await the encounter, can you tell us—do you have time to watch football? What did you think about the country’s performance in World Cup Latvia? What is the polite version of “I don’t give a shit about any of this, don’t you see I can’t say what I really want to say”?), Hanuš said, “I have observed you dreaming of death. There is a pleasure to it. A sense of relief. Why is this, skinny human?”
In place of an answer, I brushed my teeth and opened yet another disposable towel. I regretted not having kept track of how many I had used since the beginning of the mission. The compost container holding the soiled towels was too full to count, with the towels not producing enough bacteria to properly dissolve along with my underwear.
The question followed me around. I was mostly silent during my dinner with Hanuš.
“What is troubling you, skinny human?” he asked.
“You keep asking questions,” I said, “but you don’t tell me anything. Where you come from. What you think, feel. Where your planet is, and all of your… tribe. Yet you get to browse my thoughts whenever you please. Is that not troubling?”
He left without an answer. I watched a video of Norman the Sloth visiting a cooking show. Norman dipped the tip of his finger into Alfredo sauce and curiously licked it. The studio broke out in laughter.
The dreams Hanuš had mentioned not only continued but intensified, until I lost the ability to sleep at all, even with the help of medication. As I sat in the Lounge, a newly minted insomniac, and played solitaire on the Flat (the simplicity of the game soothed me; I no longer wanted to play complicated computer games, watch complicated films, or read the news; it all pertained to Earth and Earth did not pertain to me; I was a telecommuter), a shadow passed by the observation window, an interruption to Venus’s golden glow. I floated to the glass and again the object passed, this time so close I recognized a small canine snout, a white line leading up the dark forehead fur, ears perked up, black eyes wide-open and reflecting the blinking lights of infinity, a slim body bloated at the stomach, strapped into a thick harness.
I softly pulled the eyelid from my eyeball, felt a parting pop—a trick my grandmother taught me to determine whether I was conscious. I was awake, and this was real. It was her, the outcast of Moscow, the first living heroine of spaceflight, a street bandit transformed into a nation’s pride.
It was Laika the dog. Her body preserved by the kindness of the vacuum, denying the erosive effects of oxygen. I thought about attempting a spacewalk to recover the body, but I was tired, and too close to Chopra to receive approval from Central. Why bring her home anyway, to rot in the ground or lie next to Lenin’s embalmed corpse in Moscow’s catacombs when here she was the eternal queen of her domain? The comrade engineers cried for her as she died in agony, and the nation built her a statue to repent for its sins. Earth could provide her with no further honors, while the cosmos gave her immortality. The dryness had evaporated most of the water in her body, leaving her skin pale, her ears perked up. The individual hairs of her fur waved back and forth, like sea reeds. With the biological decomposition suspended, Laika’s body could float for millions of years, her physical form surpassing the species that had sentenced her to death. I thought of snapping a photo, sending it to Central, but we were not worthy of the honor of this witnessing. Laika’s eternal flight was her own.
The body vanished. When I turned, Hanuš was with me. I asked him whether he had seen her too.
“Would you truly care to know?” he said.
ANOTHER EMAIL ARRIVED from the ministry of interior. I hesitated before reading.
… subject is not, I repeat, not currently engaged in a sexual relationship, at least not at her place. Analysis of bedsheets, sofa cover, bathroom towels…
… no traces of bodily fluids…
… in the afternoon, the subject engaged in a phone call with a journalist who had managed to track down her new phone number. The subject claimed that she was on simple holiday, and colorfully asked the journalist to cease his harassment. After hanging up, the subject recovered the photograph of J. P. from underneath the bed and briefly covered her face with her hand. After this episode, the subject ordered pad thai from a local…
… based on Zdeněk K.’s deeply intimate relations with another man outside the bar Kleo, it is clear the subject was not engaged with Zdeněk K. on any level other than friendly and platonic, and thus J. P. can rest easy knowing that he was not abandoned for another man, at least not this one…
… eight o’clock in the morning, the subject walked to a local ob-gyn office. Agent was not able to penetrate the building in a manner that would allow eavesdropping on the conversation between the subject and the healthcare provider, but another sweep of the subject’s apartment revealed a positive pregnancy test wrapped in two Kleenex tissues. Might indicate subject is in the early stages of…
… agent sent urine sample for analysis to ensure it belongs to…
For a moment, I lost my vision. The black letters and white background spilled from the screen a
nd coated my surroundings. I bent over and with a great force of will suppressed the bile building in my throat. I coughed and felt chunks of acidized tortilla at the tip of my tongue. Hanuš floated behind me.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I told Hanuš.
“The human cub could be yours, skinny human,” Hanuš offered.
“She wouldn’t be gone, then.”
“As I have learned from all self-reflecting resources of humanry, your motives are not drawn as line segments.”
“I don’t understand anything,” I said.
“The cloud of Chopra is days away, skinny human. All other things can be understood later.”
I responded to the report: Is the child mine? And can I get a picture of her?
A response came almost immediately: Will find out. What kind of picture?
A nice one, I wrote.
I pressed my middle finger onto the screen and closed the browser. In the kitchen, I counted my remaining whiskey bottles. Three.
Damn Central and their regulations. Dr. Kuřák’s asinine obsession with every human being as an alcoholic in training. The bottles were not enough, but I decided to drink properly instead of saving the goods to spread throughout the rest of the mission. Yes, wasn’t this the way to live in modern times, to consume and forget the rest? Civilization could fall apart any day now.
As I opened the bottle, Hanuš appeared behind me.
“Want some of this?” I asked.
“Ah, Earth’s spiritus frumenti. I have read much about its destructive effects.”
“You must’ve skipped the chapters on healing.”
I offered the bottle. Hanuš closed his eyes.
“I am afraid I have already sacrificed my impulses to hazelnut spread, skinny human. I do not desire further disruptions to my functioning.”
“More for me,” I said, and slurped.
“You grieve over your human love,” he said.
“Can I ask you something? Or do you already know?”
“I may or may not, but do ask. Your speech comforts me.”
“When I caught you in my room. Looking for the box.”
“Yes. The ash of your ancestor.”
“Why?”
Hanuš made his way out of the kitchen, and I followed him into the Lounge. There, he tapped on the computer screen, activating it.
“Please, do open the window,” Hanuš said.
I pressed the command button for the window cover. Ahead of us, the universe opened.
“I am interested in human loss,” Hanuš said. “It pertains to me and my tribe in a particular way.”
“What are the particulars?”
Hanuš turned toward me, and for the first time, his eyes split in two different directions—the left half looking directly at me, the other staring absently into Space.
“I have deceived you, skinny human, but I cannot any longer. I do not approve of the physiological sensations associated with such actions. I will not be bringing the news of Earth to my Elders. I cannot.”
Hanuš’s form sagged toward the floor. He gazed out the window with longing, reminding me of those weeks I had searched for my parents, as if eyesight alone could penetrate space and time and the edges of mortality. His was the look of not knowing, a look that seemed to be shared and recognized by all species.
“I have traveled through galaxies,” he said. “I have raced with meteor showers and I have painted the shapes of nebulas. I entered black holes, felt my physical form disintegrate with the chants of my tribe all around me, then appeared again, in the same world but an altered dimension. I traced the outlines of the universe and witnessed its expansion, a turn from something to nothing. I swam in dark matter. But never in my travels, or in the collective memory of my tribe, have I experienced a phenomenon as strange as your Earth. Your humanry. No, skinny human, you were not known to our tribe. I was not sent here by them. We considered ourselves the only spirits in the universe, privy to all of its secrets—but you were kept from us. As a human would say, I encountered you by pure coincidence. Not by mission.”
I slurped at the whiskey. Zero gravity or not, the burn was the same: gut full of cotton, blood vessel dilation, bliss. “Go on,” I said.
“Naturally, my curiosity led me to begin my research of humanry immediately. I have lived in your orbit for a decade of human years. I have visited a few astronauts, but all three either ignored me or prayed. The senseless chanting, I confess, repulsed me. I was content as a quiet observer until I learned of what you call comet Chopra.”
I strapped myself into the Lounge chair to make my drinking easier. My calves were numb. Hanuš was truly speaking about himself for the first time. I felt justified to drink the entire bottle. What better response to such progress?
“You see, this comet, it comes from my home world. I was not sure before, but now I am certain. In a way, the dust of Chopra is tied to all of us, and to the Beginning. I must see it, skinny human. I must see it before certain events unravel. Before they come for me.”
“Who? Please, tell me,” I said.
“The Gorompeds will come. I cannot say more. Not yet.”
The Flat monitor pinged. Another email from the ministry of interior, this time with an image attachment. I dropped the bottle, allowed it to travel, its contents spilling all across the Lounge, splashing over my technology, the window, Hanuš’s belly.
I opened the email.
… physician agreed to provide confidential patient information for a sizable payment. It is confirmed that the test was a false positive, and the subject is not pregnant, nor has she been since beginning to visit Dr.…
… then confirmed that this was a case of so-called phantom pregnancy, in which the subject’s body begins to react to the brain’s certainty about conceiving…
Of course. Miracles were nonsense, mere coping mechanisms. Despite the pain in my stomach, I was glad. Lenka would not have to face yet another complication in my absence. I’d left her with enough worry—it was best that growing a human being inside her body was not added to the list.
But I had hoped. I’d hoped that this was the reason for her leaving, that she needed to get away and think about the positive test, before returning and telling me that I was to be a father. It was a kind reassurance while it lasted.
I wished I could travel outside the ship and rip off the solar panels, along with their batteries, and hurl the container holding the water sourcing my oxygen out the door. I would shut off the lights, the hums, the view, and rest in darkness.
Think.
I studied the photograph of Lenka, taken in profile in the strange new bedroom as she prepared for bed. She wore black lace underwear and her face was turned away slightly from the camera. Late sunshine seeping through the curtains outlined her cheekbones and melted the shadows of her curves. My lips were dry. I should have been outraged, outraged with myself for allowing this violation of her, some government goon peering at her through the windows, snapping photos to keep my dread at bay. But the pleasure of the image overwhelmed me. I recalled what it felt like when the black lace grazed my cheeks, what it tasted like between my teeth when I was too eager for her to take the time to remove it.
Why had she gone? I asked the picture. Where have you gone, why have you left me behind? No, wait, I was the one who’d done that. I begged the picture not to let me wander. From the pixels that formed the artificial flesh of my love, I received no answer.
The Burning of the Witches
THE LAST DAY OF April is the Day of the Witches, and for the first time my grandparents, leery of the growing hostility of neighbors, do not wish to attend the ceremonies. Witches is my favorite holiday and I beg and I plead, promise to be careful, and soon they agree to let me go. At the football field, a massive stack of wood rests underneath this year’s witch, her body that of a scarecrow, made of long sticks tied together and clothed in an old army jacket, a teacher’s skirt, and a cape. Rusting wire keeps a broomstick attached to her fingerless ha
nd. The face is a plush pillow with two pieces of coal for eyes and a chili pepper for a nose, and a wad of rabbit turds form a wart at the nose’s tip. The mouth is painted on, a crooked grin and blackened spaces for missing teeth. Boud’a and I each buy a sausage and sit on the benches, plotting to secure beer. I offer the girl at the counter an extra twenty crowns and swear secrecy, and she pours some Staropramen into a black cup.
Just as I get back to the bench the fire is set, and the witch wrinkles, her layers peeling away until her mannequin nudity is revealed. The chili pepper pops and its juice sizzles in the flames, and the witch’s eyes become those of a demon, glowing steadily, burning red until the head finally collapses and the entire village cheers. The older boys start jumping over the fire while women throw old broomsticks into the flames and make a wish for better years ahead. My legs and arms feel numb, my stomach burdened with beer. I toss the emptied cup into the fire and others follow, until soon the fire is absorbing bottles, half-eaten bratwursts, a bandana, paper plates, a deflated soccer ball, whatever offerings we can find to satisfy the forces of good luck. No one is looking at me, no one appears to resent me in this moment, we are all beasts of tradition, slaves to ceremony. I slap Boud’a on the back and stumble across the field, toward the woods, where I unzip and drain the beer that has shot fiercely through me.
The sound of cracking sticks echoes behind me.
I don’t realize it is Mládek until he pushes my face into the tree and something snaps inside my nose. I fall on my stomach and turn my head to see him, skull shaved in the front, messy curls in the back falling on his neck. Next to him is the boy from Prague wearing a Nike shirt and saggy jeans, his bangs drowned in gel. Mládek holds a weakly burning stick in his shaking hand. His eyebrows touch in a nervous scowl intended to be menacing.
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