My relationship with Nerys ended abruptly when the mermaid finally came out of shock, after two weeks of therapy. She didn’t want to see me anymore, not even by holoscreen. She sent me word that a man like me, a man so dirty he’d agree to have Contact with creatures as repulsive as those bugs, had better not come anywhere near her, ever again.
Not very professional of her, was it? Well, I heard she’s going to leave the Department, to Miquel Llul’s dismay.
Jordi Barceló never revealed what it was the Qhigarians did to him, but he also left the fleet. I heard he’s trying to get back into the Navy. Better for him, and for Gisela and Amaya, who almost came with me on this trip. But he left Antares in the Gaudí. Lucky them!
Jürgen Schmodt still isn’t exactly himself. He’s back to looking almost 50 percent anthropomorphic, but he still gets the occasional spasm of chaotic dedifferentiation. I dropped in to visit him before I boarded the hypership to Earth and he didn’t recognize me, poor guy.
Yotuel did, though. He started howling incoherently, saying I was a cockroach disguised as a human and demanding insecticide so he could kill me and prove it. The psychiatrists aren’t very hopeful they can cure him, but I donated a few million credits for them to give it a try.
I don’t hold grudges, and Diosdado wouldn’t have liked to see me being hard on one of his other kids.
I’m closer to Earth now than I’ve been in eight years. And I really am feeling emotional.
Sonya, Narcís’s wife, asked me before I left if I felt like an exile coming home in triumph.
I’m not sure. I don’t feel like a winner, but the truth is, I haven’t done too bad.
I decided to go into exile, and I got real lucky. That’s all.
But I always felt something was missing, and after years of living in denial, I think I’ve finally screwed up my courage to admit to myself what it is—and to come back and find it.
“Josué Valdés,” a voice comes over the speakers. “Please come to the main lounge.”
It’s time. I swallow hard and start walking, leaving the hypnotic panorama of Earth behind.
I once left this planet promising I’d never return. I willingly gave up my childhood, my origins, everything that made me myself—for what?
Well, you can’t keep all your promises, can you? Especially not the promises you make to yourself.
It took years, I had to cross half the galaxy and make Contact with dozens of creatures born under other suns, but I finally figured out for myself something that Diosdado always told us, the moral at the end of one of his patakíes, his orisha fables: it isn’t truly a journey unless it ends right back where it started.
Though a place can never be the same as the one we left behind. Just as we can’t be our same selves, either. You can’t really go back: that’s the true secret behind nostalgia.
But sometimes we find more than acceptable substitutes. And every return is a new departure.
Lucky for me, Abel agreed to meet me here in the Station this first time back. Neutral ground. Meeting him down there, on Earth, in CH, in Rubble City, would have been too rough for me.
I just hope he doesn’t laugh when I give him back the thousand CUCs he loaned me eight years ago. When friendship has been interrupted, it takes a bit of ritual to mend it. Repaying a debt is as good a ritual as anything.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
YOSS (José Miguel Sánchez Gómez). Havana, Cuba, 1969. Stature: 170 cm. Weight: 75 kg. Right-handed. Atheist. Doesn’t enjoy eating avocadoes or cucumbers. Teetotaler. Doesn’t drink coffee, and doesn’t smoke either. Likes spicy food. Biologist, black belt, and an aficionado of pumping iron, speleology, and military history. Dances salsa, merengue, and rock’n’roll. Hates reggaeton. Prefers rock and classical music. Plays the harmonica. Has been the lead singer of a heavy metal band, Tenaz, since 2008. Full-time novelist, essayist, columnist, humorist, raconteur of scientific facts, and chronicler of realist, sci-fi, and fantasy narratives. Considered the foremost Cuban author and one of the leading Latin American authors of these latter two genres. Has published over 30 works, and his writing has appeared in nearly a dozen anthologies.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
When he isn’t translating, DAVID FRYE teaches Latin American culture and society at the University of Michigan. Translations include The First New Chronicle and Good Government by Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala (Peru, 1615); The Mangy Parrot by José Joaquín Fernandez de Lizardi (Mexico, 1816), for which he received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship; Writing across Cultures: Narrative Transculturation in Latin America by Ángel Rama (Uruguay, 1982), and several Cuban and Spanish novels and poems, including A Planet for Rent and Super Extra Grande by Yoss, both published by Restless Books.
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
RESTLESS BOOKS is an independent, nonprofit publisher devoted to championing essential voices from around the world, whose stories speak to us across linguistic and cultural borders. We seek extraordinary international literature that feeds our restlessness: our hunger for new perspectives, passion for other cultures and languages, and eagerness to explore beyond the confines of the familiar. Our books—fiction, narrative nonfiction, journalism, memoirs, travel writing, and young people’s literature—offer readers an expanded understanding of a changing world.
ALSO BY YOSS
A Planet for Rent
Super Extra Grande
Praise for
A Planet for Rent
“Yoss’ smart and entertaining novel tackles themes like prostitution, immigration and political corruption. Ultimately, it serves as an empathetic yet impassioned metaphor for modern-day Cuba, where the struggle for power has complicated every facet of society.”
“In prose that is direct, sarcastic, sexual and often violent, A Planet for Rent criticizes Cuban reality in thinly veiled terms. Cuban defectors leave the country not on rafts but on ‘unlawful space launches’; prostitutes are ‘social workers’; foreigners are ‘xenoids’; and Cuba is a ‘planet whose inhabitants have stopped believing in the future.’ The book is particularly critical of the government-run tourism industry of the ’90s, which welcomed and protected tourists—often at the expense of Cubans—and whose legacy can still be felt today.”
“Some of the best sci-fi written anywhere since the 1970s….A Planet for Rent, like its author, a bandana-wearing, muscly roquero, is completely sui generis: riotously funny, scathing, perceptive, and yet also heart-wrenchingly compassionate…. Instantly appealing.”