Of course, the necessity for symbols did not disappear with Hus. The king hoped that the master’s crimes would simply be forgiven, but the church leaders would not let go of the despised heretic, and demanded his return. They smelled blood and spectacle. The king sent three dozen of his best men to seek a villager who resembled Hus. They found a few, and of these few, a man dying of consumption agreed to take on the role of Hus. In return, the wife and child he left behind would benefit from the king’s generous coin. The man grew out his beard and took a few beatings to look even more like his doppelg?nger before marching onto the platform and burning at the stake. The mob, blind with rage, could not tell the difference. Neither could the church leaders celebrating the death of their dissident.
Following Hus’s death, the people of Bohemia rebelled and a civil war broke out between the Hussites, avengers of their beloved philosopher, and the monarchs, representatives of the dreaded church. Hus told the news of the impending conflict to his widow over tea with milk—calmly, as if the wars were happening in a world he’d never visited. The widow asked him whether he would go back and fight alongside his countrymen. Hus declined.
His death, whether it was his or someone else’s, had unleashed the revolution Bohemia needed to free itself. No amount of fighting he could have done as a living man would have achieved the impact of his death at the stake. He had served his part in history.
Now, Hus could truly live.
PART TWO
FALL
Astronaut Dies for Country
HANU? SLIPPED from my hands. His legs detached, one by one, and dropped into the universe as if they had business of their own. He was nothing more than a small sack of skin whirring with the vibrations of the feeding Gorompeds, his eyes dead, his lips dark. Only after he had floated away did I realize that the Gorompeds, having leaked from his pores, were swarming around my arm, my shoulder, my helmet—and suddenly they were inside my suit, biting into the flesh of my armpit and groin. Hanu? was gone.
I screamed in pain as the gates of the Russian ship opened and from the inside emerged an astronaut clad in a suit so finely cut and fitting it must have been tailored to order. He grabbed me and pulled while the Claw retreated into its lair. The fierce biting around my privates ceased, but I felt the burn of the inflicted wounds. As the crawling sensation around my body faded, I looked at the finger of my glove, where a few Gorompeds exited the suit and disappeared as I tried to grab them. I allowed the astronaut to carry me, to push me wherever he liked. The chute closed and the decontamination fans hummed. I was sick with fever, nausea, my lungs burned at the exposure to fresh oxygen. The fashionable astronaut brought me out of the chamber, between sleek gray corridor walls showing no cables, no control panels, no guts of the ship, as if the vessel sailed on faith alone. Another astronaut approached, suit cut to match wide hips and short legs. Together they brought me into a small, dark room with a single sleeping bag, and unfastened my helmet. Greedily, I breathed, sweat pouring into my mouth.
“Ty menya slyshis?” a female voice inquired.
I tried to speak but couldn’t make a sound. I nodded.
“Ty govorish po russki?”
I shook my head.
“Do you speak English?”
I nodded.
The lights dimmed even more, the darkness became a grain, and some frames skipped, until I could see nothing at all. I tried to shout. I waved my arms, felt my back pushed firmly into the wall, my hands tied down, another set of straps pulled over my shoulder.
“Do you feel thirst?” the woman asked.
Desperately, I tried again to answer in speech, but no trembles resonated through my dry throat. I nodded angrily.
A straw scratched my lips, and I sucked and sucked. My suit was stripped from me, peeled from my scorching skin, and I drank all the while, until not a drop was left and I lost the strength to stay awake.
A tap on the shoulder. Her voice was robotic, distant, meaning she was speaking to me through her suit’s microphone. I was not awake enough to comprehend her words. She held something cold to my cheek. There was a sudden pressure in my mouth, my cheeks filled up, followed by the flavor of pasta, canned beef, and tomato sauce along my teeth and tongue. I chewed, swallowed, felt the heaviness of my eardrums.
“… real… food… toast… three days… do you know?” Her voice was in and out.
I tried to speak, and lost consciousness again.
When I opened my eyes, blurry shapes crept around the room. I could not feel my tongue. Something wet and substantial rested in my Maximal Absorption Garment.
Two thick silhouettes materialized in the doorway.
“Are you awake?” she said, still through her suit’s microphone.
I nodded.
They approached. I looked down to see that my starved body was clothed in nothing but a blue T-shirt and a diaper.
“You are ill. We don’t know what it is. Do you?” she asked.
I observed her companion through the visor of his helmet, broad-shouldered, with a round jawline shaved too cleanly and fat eyebrows merged into one by his insistent frown. I shook my head.
“We don’t know if it can spread to us. That is why we keep quarantine. Is this okay?” she said.
I lifted my hand and scratched air letters with an imaginary pen. She nodded and looked at the man. He left for a few minutes and returned with a notepad and pencil. The woman unstrapped my hands.
Home? I wrote.
“Yes, home. We are setting course for Earth now.”
My shuttle?
“Gone, in the cloud. We barely made it out ourselves. The dust, it finds its way under.”
Only the two of you?
“We have a third. But he rarely leaves his chamber. There has been… an incident.”
She looked down at my diaper, smiled awkwardly, and took the writing pad away. She placed it in the front pocket of my sleeping bag.
“You must rest,” she said, and floated back to the man waiting by the doorway. They drew sticks out of a box. The man drew the shorter stick. The woman left.
He unzipped my sleeping bag, leaving fastened the constraints that held my body to the wall. He pulled off the safety Velcro straps of my diaper, and began sliding it down. I put my hands on his shoulders in protest, but he pushed them away. I took the notepad and wrote furiously: Don’t, I can do