Russ Franklin - Cosmic Hotel

“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.”

“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.”

“You’re hearing the music from downstairs.”

“No,” she said. “It’s different music. It’s comes from inside me. I feel it too, like vibrations. Like music-box music.”

“Sweetheart,” he said, matching her quiet tone, “you have been through a lot.”

There was only the light coming through the curtains flapping in the breeze.

“You are hallucinating because your mind, well,” he said, “you’re overloaded. You’re struggling, and you have conflicting instincts. Your mind is looking for some way for there to be something that will make you feel better about having feelings for this. .” He waved his hand over her belly.

“Fetus?” she said.

The room was silent. The curtains still.

“Are you hearing it now?” he said.

“Maybe. I shouldn’t have told you.”

He said, “I can assure you that in reality, there is no music.” His ear was against her chest. “There’s no music.”

“How do you know? You’re on the outside.”

When Ruth had been aboard the spacecraft Infinity , and she’d found out she was pregnant — this was after she’d listened to the broadcast for Van Raye — she’d started packing to come back to Earth, stuffing personal items in her bag, and then grabbed the gain amplifier just in time because Cosmonaut X stuck his head in her quarters and asked what she was doing.