“Professor?” she said. She handed him a pamphlet and turned to take experimental steps away from him and the dog.
He realized he was still holding the leash. Van Raye mumbled, “This isn’t my dog, but it will be straightened out.”
When she was going toward the truck, she glanced over her shoulder and stopped. “Ah, Dr. Van Raye, it is my responsibility to tell you that the Veterinary and Animal Society, and I’m sure the university, takes dog abandonment very seriously. You do know it’s punishable by municipal laws?”
“I didn’t abandon this dog!”
“Good,” she said and kept going.
He started back into the house, kicking a box of construction scrap over with his bare foot. The dog stretched the leash to get away from the sound, and he dropped it but the dog stood still. He heard the animal welfare truck beep backward down his driveway.
He turned the pamphlet over. It was titled, “How to Welcome Your Dog Back Home”:
#1: Although you might be angry at your dog for running away, welcome him or her back with open arms, enthusiasm, and love!
He bent down and unhooked the leash. The dog didn’t move, still panting, cocking his brows. Dogs, he thought, were the best creatures at pretending nothing was going on.
He left it downstairs, the dog free to go on about its business in the world. Maybe a worker in the other room would take it. He hated them all, them turning his house into something he didn’t want.
Upstairs, without the dog, he found Ruth standing topless by the open window, wearing only those ugly briefs pulled below her slightly swollen belly. She’d told him that she was eighteen weeks “along,” and to him the belly looked like she’d drunk a milkshake — maybe two milkshakes and a few beers — and the skin was stretched tight enough to be mottled red, and her breasts hung full. She leaned against the wall and smoked as she studied the world outside the open patio doors, the canopy of trees.
“You shouldn’t be smoking,” he said still standing in the doorway.
“What was that all about?” she asked.
Ruth Christmas was the only other person in the world who knew that Chava Norma was the planet in question. The dog had to be Ruth’s doing, he thought, but she wasn’t a person to play a joke.
He explained to Ruth what had taken place downstairs. His theory, he said, was that someone was harassing him, and he waited for her to show some sign of guilt.
“Who else have you told about this?” she asked.
“No one,” he said. “I did tell my son.”
“Which one?”
“Sandeep.”
“The one with money. Not the priest?”
“He wouldn’t have told anyone,” he said.
“How do you know?” Ruth held the cigarette beside her head to think. “Someone else obviously knows what you’ve found,” she said. “The dish has logs. Someone can go through them.”
“That won’t tell anyone anything. It was a scan. It scanned large sections of the sky. This makes me anxious. Time is running out.”
“For what?” Ruth asked him.
“I don’t know.” Van Raye got on the bed, flat on his stomach, took his glasses off.
“Tell me how this would make you feel,” she asked, “if the dog thing, this problem, just disappeared?”
“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?”