Elizabeth Bear: This Chance Planet

“My name’s on the lease too!”

“And when was the last time you paid a bill?”

He stepped up to me. I thought about slapping him, but that would give him the moral authority. Still, I didn’t step back.

“Next train,” I told Ilya. “I’m not riding with you.” I’d have to push past him to reach the escalator. Instead, I spun around and bolted down the stairs.

When I got to work, I had to run into the bathroom to puke. It’s a good thing Misha the bartender keeps peppermints in his apron, or every single customer I served that night would have smelled it on my breath.

Why the hell hadn’t I been fucking someone more like Misha all along?

Probably because he was gay. But, you know. Besides that.

I was still queasy on the ride home, and the lurch of the late-night train didn’t help me. There were, at least, plenty of seats, though I looked in vain for my ovcharka friend. Nobody got into the first carriage except for me and one middle-aged grandmother in a dumpy coat. We settled down opposite one another.

In direct contravention to all the courtesies about not bothering strangers on trains, I asked her if she had seen the dog.

“Not today,” she answered. “But sometimes. The one with the shaded coat like a wolf, yes?”

I nodded.

She sucked her false teeth. “In the Soviet time the Moscow dogs were hunted, my grandmother said. Then when I was a girl, there were more of them. They prospered for a while. And then people poisoned so many, and shooed them out of the Metro even when it was cold. But they’re smart.”

“The scientists say they’re getting smarter.”

She made a shooing motion with her hand. Get out of here. “I say they’ve always been smart.”

“They’re evolving,” I said. “I read that dogs domesticated themselves. They hung around human middens scavenging. Their puppies played with our children until they—and we—realized we’d be good partners. We evolved in the tropics and they evolved in the subarctic, but we fill the same ecological niche. We’re social pack hunters and scavengers who rely on teamwork to survive. They had teeth and we had fire. They had better hearing and smell and we had hands and better sight. It was a contract, between us and them.”

I took a breath. She looked at me, waiting for me to finish. I said, “Some scientists say evolution is a struggle between female and male in the same species. Males want to make as many babies as they can, anywhere, any time. Females want to make sure the babies they raise are as strong and smart as possible. From the best males.”

“Do you believe that?”

I laughed. “It sounds like something a guy who thinks he’s something special would come up with, doesn’t it? A justification.”

“They’re as God made them.” She raised her brows at me, wrinkling her forehead under her scarf. Looking for an argument. And anybody sensible knows better than to argue with grandmothers. “The dogs are as God made them, too. To be our helpers.”

I nodded, backing down.

“They seek tenderness,” said the grandmother. “They have always been in Moscow. They are like every other Russian. Trying to get by. Trying to get a little fat again before the winter comes.”

“Not just Russians,” I said. “If you take away the few who have everything, the whole world is full of all the rest of us, who are just trying to get a little fat before the winter comes.”

“That may be so.” She smiled. “But the dog knows the Metro better than almost all of them.” Then she frowned at me shrewdly. “Are you having man troubles, miss?”

“It’s that evident?”

She made one of those creaking noises old women make, too knowing to really count as either a sigh or a laugh. “When you’ve been riding the Metro as long as I have, you’ve seen a broken heart for every iron rail. You should get rid of him. Pretty girl like you.”

“I already did,” I said, feeling better. Was I really taking dating advice from Baba Yaga?

That chicken-legged hut was sounding better and better.

“Stick to your guns,” she said. “Remember when he comes crawling back that you can do better. He will crawl back. They always do. Especially when he finds out that you’re pregnant.”

“I—” What ?

As if answering her diagnosis, my stomach lurched again, acid tickling the back of my throat.

She laid a finger alongside her nose. “Babushkas can smell it, sweetheart,” she said. “We always know.”

Ilya was there when I got home, of course. Throwing them out never works. And I knew he was home—I mean, there —before I touched my key to the door.

I could hear the music, his fingers flickering across the six strings of his guitar. He was better then I remembered. Arpeggios and instants, flickers of sound and wile and guile. It was beautiful, and I paused for a few moments with my cheek pressed against the door. Maybe he did have the means to change the world with his music.

So maybe I’ve been unkind.

To his talent, in the least.

Ilya sat on the couch, bent over his guitar as if it were a lover. His fringe fell over his forehead and I found my hand at my mouth. I was biting the tips of my fingers to keep from smoothing that lock.

He looked up, saw me, finished the arpeggio. Set his guitar aside, walked past me, and shut and locked the neglected door. Looked at me, and I could see through his eyes like ice to the formulated lie.

Before he opened his mouth, I said, “I saw you.”

He blinked. I had him on the wrong foot and I didn’t care. “Saw me?”

“With her,” I said. “Whoever the hell she was. I don’t want to hear your excuses.”

He seemed smaller when he asked, “How?”

I didn’t mean to tell him, but some laughs are so bitter and rough that words stick to them on their way out. “Remember the dog?” I asked. “The metro dog? She showed me.”

“I don’t understand—”

“You don’t have to.” I sat down on the floor, all of a sudden. Because it was there. I put my face in my hands for similar reasons. “Fuck, Ilya, I’m pregnant.”

There was silence. Long silence. When I finally managed to fight the redoubled force of gravity and raise my face to him, he was staring at me.

“Pregnant,” he said.

I nodded.

“But that’s great!” he said. And then he stomped on my flare of hope before I even knew I felt it. “You can sell that . The embryo! They’re nothing but stem cells at that point—”

“Sell it,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“To fund your tour?”

“Why else?”

Oh god .

I didn’t realize I’d said it aloud until Ilya stopped raving and looked down at me. “What?”

“Oh, God,” I said. “Fuck you.”

Somehow, I stood up. I remember my hand on the floor, the ache of my thighs as if I were drunk. I remember looking him in the eye. I remember what I said.

It was, “Keep the fucking apartment. I’ll call tomorrow and take my name off the lease.”

“Petra?”

I turned my back on him. He was babbling something about food in the oven. About how was he supposed to make the rent.

I paused with a hand on the knob. “Go peddle it on Tverskaya Prospekt for all I care.”

Of course, I was halfway to the lift before I realized I had nothing but my work clothes, my bag, and two pairs of shoes—one of those quite impractical.

Well, I wasn’t about ruin an exit like that in order to go back and pack a suitcase. No self-respecting chicken-legged hut would have anything to do with me after that, if I had.

It took me two more days to find the dog. The first day, other than work—and I wasn’t missing work now!—was mostly spent at a clinic, getting my name taken off the lease, looking at a couple of apartments, and finding a place to sleep for a couple of days until one of those became available. It turned out Misha the bartender didn’t mind at all if I crashed at his place and neither did his boyfriend, and everybody at work was thrilled to hear that Ilya had been consigned to the midden heap of history.