Cosmic Hotel

by Russ Franklin

  When the computer had kicked out the anomaly, Van Raye had been alone in the control room of the Big Dish antenna, and he’d done something he always promised he wouldn’t do at that moment: He piped the actual sound through a headset and listened. The edges of the signal were empty, like an open line on a phone, like a calmer outside layer of a whirlpool, but then fine-tuning onto the planet produced the electronic sparks and pulses, washing of waves, and burps.

  Eight hours later, he’d contacted Ruth aboard Infinity. She was shocked to hear his voice and see his face on the monitor. He was charming as always, calling her “honey” and “sweetheart” and explaining why he’d called.

  Per his request, she’d turned the station’s little-used low-gain antenna to the coordinates he’d given her. Her exact words over the secure link to Earth—after the computer confirmed the chance of this “noise” being a random pattern was of the magnitude of 10-23—her words were: “You got something extraterrestrial.”

  Van Raye, leaning against the doorframe of his balcony now, smoked his pipe and watched the vehicles in his driveway and yard, observed yet another truck turning slowly into his driveway. Not just another construction truck but one with kennels on the back. Animals. Animal control? A gold seal reflected from the door when it opened, and a woman got out, a nice-looking young woman in a tank and a billowing skirt and black tights on her legs and practical tennis shoes, and he heard the dogs in the kennels yelping, lots of dogs.

  She opened a kennel box, stuck her head inside, and Van Raye noticed her shapely calves beneath the black material, and the hounds inside the kennels bayed louder as his thoughts went to shapely calves and she lifted a gray-haired dog and gently put him on the ground. When she came toward his house, Van Raye instinctively hid behind the wall. Did one of those workers have a dog being delivered? It made no sense.

  From the bed, Ruth blinked at him, wondering what he was doing flat against the wall.

  The doorbell rang.

  He put his finger to his lips.

  It rang again.

  “Don’t answer it,” he whispered, though she was only stretching beneath the sheets, giving the headboard an isometric push. “What’s happening?” she said.

  “Nothing.”

  When the hammering and sawing on the first floor stopped, a worker’s voice yelled up the staircase, “Professor? Professor? Someone’s at the door.”

  “Shit,” he said.

  He went down and through the big living room where workers stared at him in his robe and bare feet, a few mumbling, “Morning, professor.”

  He went to the front door, which was propped open with a five-gallon bucket of scrap, and there, on his stoop in the morning light, was the smiling, young attractive woman holding a leash in one hand and an electronic pad in the other. The old gray dog sat calmly on the stones of the stoop, hair shading its eyes.

  The woman saw Van Raye and she simply exclaimed, “Wow,” and began shaking her head, “I can’t believe it’s you . . . I can’t believe . . . ”

  Being recognized was a fine feeling, like Heineken bubbles popping in your mouth. The dog, he noticed, avoided looking at anyone, eyebrows twitching.

  “Hi, darling, what can I do for you?”

  The young woman said, “Okay, I look on my list, right, to see who’s my next client, right, and I see your name, right, and I’m thinking I won’t really see you, but it is you, right?”

  Van Raye leaned against the doorframe.

  “I can’t believe I’m standing on Van Raye’s steps. When I was a freshman, I went to your lecture on redshift galaxy formations.”

  Normally he could have invited her in. “Fantastic, darling, what can I do for you today?” Why are attractive people so fascinating? he thought.

  She bent to give the dog a hearty pat on the shoulder, and he admired her bare back between the straps of her double tanks.

  “Look who we found here!” she said.

  “Who?” he said.

  “I bet you missed this boy, didn’t you?” She held out the leash for Van Raye.

  He took it but then immediately tried to give it back and said, “Oh no, there’s some mistake,” he said. The dog sat obediently, tongue out. “This isn’t my dog.” He shook the leash for her to take back.

  She looked at her electronic pad. “You’ve got to be kidding me. This isn’t Chava?”

  “What did you say?” he said.

  “This isn’t Chava? Isn’t that a girl’s name? Sometimes the scanner picks up another dog in the truck.”

  “Let’s not say that word.”

  “Ah, I’m not saying anything, professor,” she said. “But if this isn’t your dog . . . I am so sorry. What kind of dog do you have?”

  He glanced behind her for possible eavesdroppers, looked up and down the street at the houses.

  “Why do you say that’s its name?” he asked. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Kathy, an associate at the shelter.” She looked at her pad.

  “That’s not my dog. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not mine.” After thinking for a second, he added, “It’s impossible for that to be its name.”

  She squinted her eyes at him and then looked at the pad. “His name is Chava Norma Raye,” she said. “His registered name.”

  “Okay,” he said, “this is not my dog and there is a huge misunderstanding.”

  “Hmm . . . a mix up,” she said.

  She pressed buttons on the pad, knelt and touched the pad to the dog’s neck. The dog held its breath and there was a pleasant chime. “It might have scanned a nearby chip . . . ” she said, “that happens sometimes.”

  “That can’t be the dog’s name,” he said.

  “Ah, yes.” She stood up. “You are Charles Van Raye. And this is definitely . . . Chava Norma, registered to you at this address.” She turned the pad so he could see. “This is you, and this is Chava. Do you call him Chava or Norma? I think he’s underweight. How long has he been gone? Maybe you don’t recognize him.”

  “He hasn’t been gone,” Van Raye said. “Can you change that?”

  “Change what?”

  “The name,” he said.

  “Sure,” she said. “I mean, you’ll have to fill out the necessary forms, but you can change your dog’s name, though at this age we don’t really suggest it. He’ll always respond to Chava,” and she rubbed the dog’s ears. “Good boy, good boy, Chava.”

  “Please stop saying that!”

  She considered his face and then his robe. Was he crazy? The dog didn’t seem to mind that anything was going on around him. He panted. Slobber was about to drop.

  “I’m very confused,” Van Raye said, “where did he come from?”

  “Probably a Good Samaritan picked him up and brought him to the animal welfare center. Happens all the time. Can you just sign here?”

  “I can’t sign, this isn’t my dog! I’ve never seen this dog in my life.” He looked behind her at the houses across the street as if neighbors would see him.

  “He’s been your dog—the records show . . . ” the woman glanced at the registry, “for seven years.”

  “Seven years? Wait. I have a theory,” he said, “could someone be doing this to me? There are parties interested in harassing me. I have several ex-wives.”

  “Ah, professor . . . ” she said, “this isn’t a joke. These records are meticulous. No one can register you as an animal parent except you. You are accepting responsibility for your family member, aren’t you?”

  “Absolutely not,” he said.

  He thought about the dog’s name. How had that happened? It was the name of the exoplanet, given by some other astronomer years ago, existing in the registry of known exoplanets among several thousands, and he’d discovered the Sound coming from this Chava Norma and now a dog shows up on his steps with the same name. It made no sense. Someone was behind this. He would take the dog and have the name changed with as little ordeal as possible and give the dog back to the shelter and some
one’s little harassing joke would be over. Someone less dense than this woman would understand.

  “Professor?” she said. She handed him a pamphlet and turned to take experimental steps away from him and the dog.

  He realized he was still holding the leash. Van Raye mumbled, “This isn’t my dog, but it will be straightened out.”

  When she was going toward the truck, she glanced over her shoulder and stopped. “Ah, Dr. Van Raye, it is my responsibility to tell you that the Veterinary and Animal Society, and I’m sure the university, takes dog abandonment very seriously. You do know it’s punishable by municipal laws?”

  “I didn’t abandon this dog!”

  “Good,” she said and kept going.

  He started back into the house, kicking a box of construction scrap over with his bare foot. The dog stretched the leash to get away from the sound, and he dropped it but the dog stood still. He heard the animal welfare truck beep backward down his driveway.

  He turned the pamphlet over. It was titled, “How to Welcome Your Dog Back Home”:

  #1: Although you might be angry at your dog for running away, welcome him or her back with open arms, enthusiasm, and love!

  He bent down and unhooked the leash. The dog didn’t move, still panting, cocking his brows. Dogs, he thought, were the best creatures at pretending nothing was going on.

  He left it downstairs, the dog free to go on about its business in the world. Maybe a worker in the other room would take it. He hated them all, them turning his house into something he didn’t want.

  Upstairs, without the dog, he found Ruth standing topless by the open window, wearing only those ugly briefs pulled below her slightly swollen belly. She’d told him that she was eighteen weeks “along,” and to him the belly looked like she’d drunk a milkshake—maybe two milkshakes and a few beers—and the skin was stretched tight enough to be mottled red, and her breasts hung full. She leaned against the wall and smoked as she studied the world outside the open patio doors, the canopy of trees.

  “You shouldn’t be smoking,” he said still standing in the doorway.

  “What was that all about?” she asked.

  Ruth Christmas was the only other person in the world who knew that Chava Norma was the planet in question. The dog had to be Ruth’s doing, he thought, but she wasn’t a person to play a joke.

  He explained to Ruth what had taken place downstairs. His theory, he said, was that someone was harassing him, and he waited for her to show some sign of guilt.

  “Who else have you told about this?” she asked.

  “No one,” he said. “I did tell my son.”

  “Which one?”

  “Sandeep.”

  “The one with money. Not the priest?”

  “He wouldn’t have told anyone,” he said.

  “How do you know?” Ruth held the cigarette beside her head to think. “Someone else obviously knows what you’ve found,” she said. “The dish has logs. Someone can go through them.”

  “That won’t tell anyone anything. It was a scan. It scanned large sections of the sky. This makes me anxious. Time is running out.”

  “For what?” Ruth asked him.

  “I don’t know.” Van Raye got on the bed, flat on his stomach, took his glasses off.

  “Tell me how this would make you feel,” she asked, “if the dog thing, this problem, just disappeared?”

  “Problem? Don’t change this to your problem.” He sighed, not in the mood to be analyzed by the space station’s chief of biomedical problems. She was, ironically he thought, her own biomedical problem.

  She went to her duffle bag and pulled something out. “I guess I should give this to you.” It was a box about the shape of a coffee grinder, orange. She tested the weight and then underhanded it to him. The orange box flashed through a streak of sunshine and came toward the bed. He rolled, and it bounced heavy, and he put a hand to stop it from falling off the bed.

  “Jesus!” he said. “What are you trying to do? What is this?”

  There were two white stripes around the box, a handle on one end, Cyrillic letters and multipronged, female outlets on the side.

  “Is this what I think it is?” he said. He had to retrieve his eyeglasses from the floor. “You’ve had this all along?”

  “Courtesy of Roscosmos. It was a backup unit.”

  “Jesus, there was a backup?” He held it in both hands. “Do you know how much this little orange box is worth?” he said.

  “That’s not the point. It’s a loaner until we . . . I don’t know what . . . until we finish. You do want to send something yourself, don’t you? That’s what this delay is about, right?”

  “Yes. Don’t throw it around!” he said.

  “It’s for you. From me. I’m guessing we can use a dish as small, as what, two meters?” She stared out the window, letting the smoke rise from the cigarette. “Sending something? A message from you? It’s not going to reach Chava until long after you’re dead. That’s so unlike you.” She turned her head sideways.

  “Why not? Isn’t it normal to want to send something real before the others do?”

  “When do you care about something that will be around long after you’re dead? You’ll get no reward from sending a message. That signal will take three thousand years to reach the planet. You’ll be dust. I know you and there has to be something you want now, from sending a signal now.”

  He took the gain booster and put it gently on the desk and stared at it.

  “I want to send my own message before the others get theirs off. That’s simple.”

  She blew smoke toward the outside world. “My God,” she said. The smoke balled in the air. “Yes, the size of your ego never fails to impress me. I don’t have the software, by the way. If we don’t have the software that thing’s nothing more than an anchor for a boat.”

  “We can get the software, can’t we?”

  “Yes, I have someone on board who would be willing to trust me with it. He’ll send it to me if I ask.”

  “The father?” he said.

  “What difference does that make?” She stretched her neck.

  He sat on the edge of the bed. “Ruth, you have to tell me something. Are you responsible for the dog thing?”

  She took a second then smirked, stepped back to the window, the sun on her face. The curtains flapped on both sides of the doorway and she gazed into the canopy of trees.

  “Darling,” he said gently, “someone will see you standing there like that, come here.”

  She picked up one of her breasts and inspected it and let it drop, sucked on the cigarette. “Why do you think I would harass you? What would my motive be for doing something as contrived as this? I’ve got other things on my mind.” Her face was beautiful in the light. Her hair, he thought, would grow out and be beautiful again soon.

  She leaned against the doorframe and crossed one foot over the other. There was a bruise on the back of her leg that had been there since she’d disrobed that first night, something suffered on reentry or during the caravan journey out of Mongolia.

  “I have nothing to do with the dog,” she said. “You’ve never had anything bad happen to you, have you?”

  “My mother died when I was twelve. I never knew my father.” Van Raye was looking at the dirty underside of her foot and had been thinking of something his mother always said. His mother called black-soled feet “7-Eleven feet.”

  “Boo-hoo,” Ruth said, “there’s that, but you’ve gotten everything you’ve ever wanted. You’re an expert in your field. You’ve written books that people actually read. Women throw themselves at you. You hold court at every party you attend, but you don’t have any family. Are you okay with that?”

  “Don’t torture me with your analysis. Ruth, why are you here?” he asked. “In this state, why did you come to me?”

  “I am still employed by this university,” she said. “And my car was here.”

  “You hate that car. You’re eighteen weeks pregnant.”r />
  “Nineteen. I came to you, I think, because you’re the only other one. You’re like me, having a family is not your first priority, and you’re all I have to help me figure this out.”

  “Nineteen weeks?” he said.

  She nodded.

  Van Raye got that helpless feeling of an approaching deadline. “Are you at a point when you can’t make a decision?” he said.

  She flicked the cigarette out the door into the backyard.

  “No. Not quite.”

  “But you need to be making arrangements?”

  “Stop,” she said, “okay, I get it. I’m not mother material. I know that.”

  She came and crawled over him and pinned him down by the shoulders. She had one knee up against his crotch and looked down at him. “I’m not the most nurturing person on the planet,” she said.

  Something like a bundle of wood clattered on the floor downstairs.

  “I’m not the most nurturing person either,” he said.

  “Exactly. What’s the matter with us?”

  “Ruth, some people are here for other reasons. Some people have bigger reasons. We’ve been burdened with this task, not anything else.”

  Her eyes were ringed with black construction dust; the dirt and grime surrounding her eyes had been smeared.

  “Have you been crying?” he said.

  “No.”

  The dust covered everything in the house and it was probably on his skin too, and she was breathing it in.

  “Why don’t you make arrangements, go somewhere?” he said.

  She rolled off of him and on her back. She whispered while touching her stomach, “Because I hear something.”

  “You what?”

  She took a deep breath. “I know it’s not real, okay? I know what audio hallucinations are. But anyway, to me, I hear music.”