This Chance Planet (3 page)

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.

How is it that you never hear about how much your friends hate your lover until you get rid of him or her?

Anyway, once that was all taken care of, I went to find my ovcharka friend. This mostly involved taking the Metro out to my station—my
old
station—earlier than I would have usually gotten up for work, and then checking the first car of each train for a wolf-colored passenger. I had a sausage in my bag and a hollow ache in my belly, but mostly what I remember was the grim determination that I would find that dog.

She wasn't on the train.

Instead, she trotted up beside me while I was waiting, sat down like an old friend on my left side, and looked up at me with one front paw lifted. I imagined her saying, “Shake?”

Instead, I broke a chunk off the sausage and offered it to her. “Thank you,” I said.

She was as gentle as before. And if anything, she looked bigger around the middle than last time. She must be nearly ready to have the pups. I pressed a hand to my own stomach, imagining it pushing out like that. That hollow ache got hollow-er.

Someday. After my degree. But it wouldn't be deadbeat Ilya's deadbeat kid. No matter how good he smelled.

The train was coming. I felt the air pressure rise, heard the rattle of the wheels on iron rails.

“How did you know?” I asked the dog. “I owe you one.”

She raised her brows at me, wrinkling her brow.
Expecting an argument?
She didn't wag.

I sighed and said, “Just how smart are you?”

And then Ilya was between us, shoving me out of the way. I hadn't even heard him come up. Hadn't heard the creak of his leather jacket. Didn't react fast enough to keep his elbow out of my ribs. I doubled over helplessly, wheezing for breath. The train's hydraulics hissed. Brakes squealed.

He gripped the dog by her scruff and her tail and slung her into the air. She yelped—more of a shriek—and he took a step toward the platform edge.

“You little bitch!”

He looked at me when he shouted it, and I wasn't sure if he meant the dog or me. But I knew the next five seconds like I was a prophet, like I was a Cassandra, like someone had dropped a magic mirror in my hand.

Ilya was going to throw the dog in front of the train.

Cassandra never got a chance to
do
anything.
I
jumped between Ilya and the platform edge.

The dog slammed into my chest. I pushed her away, throwing her onto the platform. The force tipped me on the platform edge. I pinwheeled my arms, expecting to topple backward. Expecting the next sensation to be the terrible impact of metal and then nothing—or worse, pain. I teetered, that hollowness in my stomach replaced with liquid, sloshing fear.

Someone caught my collar. Someone else caught my wrist. The feeling of relief and gratitude that flooded me left me on my knees. A man and a woman hovered over me. I could not see their faces.

I looked up into Ilya's face. The dog crouched in front of me, growling. Ears laid flat. Ilya lunged at her, and the man beside me grabbed him, twisted his arm behind his back.

“Bitch!” he swore, wrenching at the man who held him.

“Do you know that man?” the woman asked. She put a hand under my elbow and lifted me to my feet. There was a ladder in my stocking. My knee oozed blood.

“I left him,” I said.

“I can see why,” she answered. She patted my back.

Ilya twisted and kicked, rocking back and forth like a kid running against a sling swing. The dog snarled, a hollow trembling sound almost lost in the noise of the train. I thought she'd lunge for him, but she just stood her ground. Between him and me.

He must have wormed his arm out of the jacket sleeve, because suddenly he was off running, and his jacket hung limp in the man's grasp like a shed skin. I heard the thumping of his boots on the marble, shouts as he must have crashed through a crowd, and then nothing.

The man looked at the jacket, then at me.

“I don't want it,” I said.

The police, of course, were nowhere.

*   *   *

There was fuss, but eventually the ring of opinionated observers we'd drawn filtered off to their trains. The two helpful bystanders who had saved my life decided I could be left alone. The woman gave me a tissue. The man insisted I take Ilya's coat. Only then did they feel they had performed their civic obligations and reluctantly leave me alone.

I dropped Ilya's coat on a bench. Somebody would take it, but it wouldn't be me. I hoped his phone was in the pocket, but I didn't bother to check.

Then I looked at the dog.

She sniffed my bloodied knee and looked thoughtful. She tried to lick it, but I pushed her away.

“You set this up, didn't you?” Not Ilya trying to kill her, no. But me finding out about the other woman.

Or maybe it was just one bitch taking care of another.
Do you know your mate is no good?

She just looked at me, squeezed her eyes, and thumped her shaggy tail.
So you should thank me.

I huffed at her—like an irritated dog myself—and turned on the ball of my foot. This time I had the sense to be wearing practical shoes. She waited. I stopped, turned back, and saw her staring after me.

I had the money from the clinic—just as Ilya had suggested—but I sure as hell wouldn't be spending it on Ilya's band. I was going to enroll in classes tonight after work, and pay my tuition in advance. The cocktail job wasn't going away, and it didn't conflict with morning or most afternoon classes.

One of the apartments I had looked at was a student studio flat near the university. It was a complete roach motel, but it allowed pets.

I could do this thing.

I looked at the dog. She needed a bath.

The dog looked at me.

“Well,” I said to her. “Aren't you coming?”

I started walking. The dog fell into step beside me. Her plumy tail wagged once.

 

Copyright © 2014 by Elizabeth Bear

Art copyright © 2014 by Robert Hunt