“You can always talk to me,” I told Hanu?.
“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?”
Hanu? 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 T?ma, 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”?), Hanu? 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 Hanu?.
“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 Hanu? 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, Hanu? 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…