Not just people? she asked in Japanese. Dogs too?
Number 47 answered in dogspeech: ANOTHER DOG HAS BEEN HERE.
“It smells like a fucking dead Hawaii in here,” the girl muttered as she stepped through the door into the building. Of course, this was Russia—that made sense. An eternal summer killed forever. Actually, it smelled like a locker room. The smell called up a memory of the time before she turned X years old. Fucking shit… now I’ve got those fucking moneyless assholes in my head, the fucking world…. Shit. A person and a dog, off duty, striding rapidly through the dim interior. The building was laid out along the same pattern as the one they used as their base, so there was no fear of getting lost. She went into the main hall.
The room was at the end of the hall. And now here she was, inside it.
It’s like a yakuza office, one of the branches. The thought hit her immediately. And then she was putting it into words, muttering to herself. It reminded her of the wide-open office her dad’s organization rented, one whole floor of a building shared by various other companies and groups. Only this place had none of the bold, forceful calligraphy hanging on the walls, characters reading “Spirit” and “Kill One to Save Many” and that sort of shit. Instead, there was a map. A really, really old map of the world. Her dad’s office had a little Shinto shrine on one wall, up close to the ceiling, but there was nothing like that here. No Russian Orthodox icons. Instead, there was a television. The first television she had seen in the Dead Town. It wasn’t on. The screen was blank. Of course, there was no one in the room. And yet, somehow, she felt something. A strong sense of something. “I bet there’s a fucking dead body under the floor or something. Can you smell it, Forty-seven?” The dog didn’t answer. The sound of Opera singing echoed down the corridor at the other end of the main hall. As it had before. There was no leather sofa like the one in her dad’s office, but there was a table and some seats. There was a mound of money on the table. Rows and rows of bundled banknotes that seemed, at first sight, to be neatly stacked but weren’t really. No rubles as far as she could see. Look at all this cash, the girl thought, glancing it over. That’s fucking American money, isn’t it? Dollars or whatever?
Yeah, she thought. It is like Dad’s office after all.
Just then, she caught sight of a shrine. Something, at any rate, that felt like a shrine in the context of this room. There were no paper lanterns, and there was no Japanese sword resting on its stands, but it had the same aura. That was it. The source of whatever it was she was feeling. The globe.
It was on a shelf. Displayed. Set out to be seen, regarded. Revered.
That, the girl sensed, was the most important thing in the room.
She knew it right away.
So she went to take it in her hands.
She walked around the table, reached out. She picked it up. She had expected it to be fairly heavy, but it was surprisingly light. It felt like metal, though. It felt old. She had assumed it would be hollow like other globes, but it didn’t seem to be. She turned it in her palms. Rotated the earth. It was bigger than her head.
She sensed it. This isn’t empty.
She sensed it. There’s something here.
She sensed it. Something alive.
But what?
Is it… inside?
She turned it in her palms, looking for a seam. The northern and southern hemispheres looked like they might crack apart. That was the line. Ever so carefully, she opened it. And out it came. Bone. An animal’s skull. It looked like it had been burned… bits of skin or something clinging to it, hanging. Skin like a mummy’s, desiccated.
…what the hell?
Are you kidding me?
Number 47 was trying to communicate something. Trying to tell her something. It had nothing to do, however, with the skull in the globe. He was trying to draw her attention to the figure now standing in the doorway. No, not the figure—the figures. Like the girl and number 47, they were two: a person and a dog.
A person and a dog, both old.
At number 47’s urging, the girl turned around.
“You have opened the coffin, have you?” the old man said.
“What… the hell?” the girl said.
“You wanted to hold it? Is that it, girl?”
The dog standing beside the old man was very old. The girl remembered him, of course—she had seen him before. He was fairly large, stately. This was the same dog that had barked down at her once before, from the roof.
“You wanted to touch the very first dog?” the old man said in Russian. Then, “But it is not Belka, you know.”
“I didn’t break it,” the girl said in Japanese. “I just opened it.” Then, suddenly realizing what was inside, she continued. “Fuck, you asshole, keeping a fucking creepy skull like this, hidden in this thing. What is it… a fucking dog? Is that what this is, you Old Fuck?”
“That is the first great Soviet hero. A dog who did not make it back to the earth alive. Those are her remains. That is not Belka.”
“What the fuck are you saying?” the girl asked.
The old man pointed to the old dog beside him. He looked the girl in the eye.
“This is Belka,” he said.
“It’s a dog, isn’t it… a fucking dog’s skull.”
“You understand, little girl? He is the one dog I did not kill, the year before the Soviet Union, the Homeland, disappeared. I let him go. This Belka. I could not bear to destroy the bloodline I helped to create with my own hands. And yet that was what they ordered me to do.”
“Why do you have a dog’s skull in a shrine? Like some dog religion…”
“That was what Russia ordered me to do. Russian history. I betrayed history. I entrusted this Belka to her, the woman who looks after you, your nurse. I wanted to let him live out his life, nothing more. I had no intention of reviving his line. I did not. I had retired. I was serious about my retirement.”
The old man advanced two or three steps into the room.
This time he pointed down at number 47.
The girl stepped closer to her dog, as if to protect him. Without thinking about what she was doing, she lifted the skull up and rested it on her head.
She was holding it in both hands. Over her head.
“See,” the girl said. “Kind of spiritual, right? Kind of religious?”
“Very amusing.” The old man chuckled.
Number 47 sat like a good dog.
“You are going to put that on, are you?” the old man said in Russian.
“What were you saying about Forty-seven?” the girl shot back in Japanese.
“As it happens, number forty-seven is the child of this Belka. Is that not right, old boy?”
The old man turned to look at Belka. The old dog barked in reply.
“He is old, but he still had what it took, luckily. We made it just in time.”
“Forty-seven is related to that old shit? Is that it?”
“I have the feeling we are getting through to each other. You understand me, little girl? You, with the skull of that great dog over your head, like a dog-clan shaman. Do you understand what I am saying? Seven puppies were born. A new generation. One of them will be our Belka. Or Strelka, if it is a bitch. That will be the name of the leader. Once they graduate from number to name. And number forty-seven may be the one, the next Belka, it looks to me. The possibility is there. There is a good chance.”
“He does look like him, come to think of it. Are you saying that old shit is his dad?”