This is a fan translation of Road to Mars (Дорога к Марсу) by fifteen Russian science fiction writers.

This chapter was written by Evgeni Garkushev.

I claim no rights to the contents herein.

Note: Footnotes can be found at the end of the chapter.

Chapter 21

Jumping Salmon

If two weeks ago someone had told journalist Ognev that the heroine of his story—or the potential victim, which was basically the same thing—was going to get his number with the promise to call back, and he would be patiently waiting for two weeks without worrying or trying to get in touch himself, he'd have laughed in their face. A shark had to keep swimming to survive.

Then again, Ognev was surviving just fine. Quite fortunately, Semyon's quill caught a story on an invasion of mutant racoons in Odintsovsky District of the Moscow Region. The journalist's financial situation was further improved by an order of red caviar from an unknown well-wisher, likely from some extremist environmental group. Well, not just red caviar, of course, but material on Asiatic cholera being found in some caviar cans produced by Cute Salmon. Not some complex nanovirus, but a Gram-negative, facultative anaerobic, motile bacterium of the Vibrio genus. His readers were chewing over the shocking data and groaned in horror and revulsion at the pictures of the caviar. And Ognev was under no risk of a lawsuit since he had the results of the study. Maybe the study was fake, but it had all the right seals and signatures. The well-wishers had done their job well. And the public opinion was entirely on his side.

After the story with the cholera caviar, Ognev felt himself a useful member of society and treated the adoration of the citizens he'd saved as a given. As a bonus to the ecologists, he was planning on shocking the readers in a few months with information that house moths that ate fur was the primary carrier of tuberculosis. It would be nice to find a sponsor for the project, of course, maybe a company that manufactured cheap but high-quality synthetic clothes…

Basically, the journalist was riding the wave and, when the screen of his work phone displayed an unknown number, and a deep, sensitive female voice came from the speaker, Semyon wasn't surprised in the least. He squared his shoulders, turned on the camera—after all, he wasn't in his cluttered office or his kitchen piled with dirty dishes, he was in his new car—and smiled at the phone.

"Hello! I need your help." A spectacular brunette appeared on the screen. Big eyes, a bob haircut, and dark-red lips…

"I'm always prepared to help, pretty lady," Semyon replied, trying to figure out what a woman like that wanted from him.

"You don't recognize me?"

"Hmm… Have we met?"

"We have. And in an intimate setting."

Ognev felt heat. Was there a problem? Who was she?!

"I'm cosmonaut Kartashov's wife," the brunette introduced herself.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Yana…"

Ognev instantly remembered the huge spider, the nearly naked young woman on the bed, and his own unfinished space project.

"Come over tonight," Yana declared simply and with dignity, as if she knew that refusal was out of the question. "You remember the address."

"If his mat was not straight, he did not sit on it," [Footnote 1] Hu Jun announced triumphantly. "Our mat turned out to be straight."

"Except we learned about it only weeks later," Zhang Li snorted in displeasure. "What if the center's calculations are mistaken?"

"There may be those who act without knowing why. I do not do so. Hearing much and selecting what is good and following it; seeing much and keeping it in memory — this is the second style of knowledge," the commander of the Millennium Boat replied.

"Are you quoting Confucius again?"

"I am. We need to keep to our traditions and do our duty. I believe the data from the probe. The calculations will be correct. We will overtake the golden sail of the Big Noses."

"And slam into the Red Planet."

"No. We're not going to slam into Mars because we're aiming for Phobos," the Commander explained yet again. He was calming not only Zhang but also himself. "If it was just our probe that was affected by an anomaly, then maybe there would be some doubt. But no! The Russians were looking but didn't see. The anomalies in the flight of their Phobos 2 probe gave us a chance to suspect the moon's capabilities. The moon repels massive objects approaching it at a great speed. The Russians didn't realize it because they were approaching slowly and were looking for other reasons for the inaccuracies. There are no sensible explanations for the behavior of spacecraft near Phobos because antigravity technology is still inaccessible to humans. But is it not barbaric to vaporize meteorites that threaten your base? Isn't it simpler to adjust their course while also using the kinetic energy to raise your orbit? Is it an accident that Phobos is located beyond the Roche limit? Maybe the tidal forces affecting the moon are being used to charge the antigravity generators, similar to our self-winding watches."

"Russians often make great discoveries," Zhang nodded. "But the fruits of their labor are always used by others."

"And the meteorite craters on the surface are just camouflage," Hu went on. "Or traces of strikes with beam weapons."

"Or… design elements of the alien base?" Zhang suggested.

"Exactly."

Hu touched the key activating the information panel, and a picture appeared on it in green lights: the Millennium Boat rushing towards certain death but then seemingly entering invisible atmosphere, slowing down, activating retrorockets, and sliding down to the Martian surface.

"A miracle. We're going to be saved by a miracle," the Commander said quietly.

"Do you believe in it?" Zhang asked.

"I believe that a toddler can turn on a TV and even find a channel they like. But only if their parents have plugged the TV in. And if the TV itself was built in some distant factory by true masters. We're the toddlers, Zhang. And our competition is like racing toy cars across our father's estate. We laugh, imagine something, think that we know why our electric car moves. Indeed, it's all very simple: we're pushing the pedal! And that's all we know, that we need to keep pushing the pedal! But the electric car has a motor, a gearbox…"

"Is our father going to punish us for looking under the hood?" Zhang asked.

"Oh no. Our father doesn't interfere," Hu shook his head. "But it's very difficult, almost impossible to break his things. For that you need fingers that are a lot stronger and, more importantly, brains that are a lot more developed."

Nothing in the woman's appearance or behavior was suggestive, but that was how Semyon took her invitation. Maybe it was the fur boa he kept remembering. Or that she'd called him a man when urging him to help her in the bedroom. After all, he really was a man, while Yana's husband had been stuck between Earth and Mars for the past hundred days or so…

"Is there a spider that needs killing?" Ognev tried to joke.

"Maybe," Yana drawled thoughtfully.

A few hours later, the cleanly-shaven and perfumed Ognev was speeding down the streets of the evening Moscow. A bouquet of roses and a bag holding a jar of red caviar, a baguette, a box of chocolates, and a bottle of champagne were lying on the passenger seat. Sure, one bottle wasn't enough for both… But he couldn't very well bring an entire bar with him, could he? Maybe she had some alcohol at home.

The journalist was at the front door to the apartment building at precisely 7 pm. It seemed that Yana had been expecting him, as she answered the intercom right away and then greeted him at the apartment door.

"Hello, Yana! I took the liberty… Of assuming that there will be tea… So I brought something for the tea…"

Unexpectedly, the experienced journalist was at a loss, as the woman looked far too attractive. And very domestic. A silk robe, furry slippers in the shape of a dog… She smelled of expensive bitter perfume.

"Nice roses," Yana noted, taking the bouquet and placing it on the coffee table. Then she peered into the bag. "Oh, champagne… Caviar. I think you're going to need it all. Although vodka would be better…"

"Vodka? Me?" Semyon was at a loss.

"Yeah. Listen, you wanted to ask me about Kartashov, right?"

"Sure," Ognev said carefully.

"Would you like to visit Mars yourself?"

"What?"

"Let's go to the bedroom. I need to show you something."

Semyon hadn't expected it to go so quickly. In the bedroom, Yana took him by the shoulders, turned him away from the bed, and pressed her body against him. Only instead of warmth and arousal, Ognev felt icy cold. His eyes went dark, and he dropped into the wide soft bed, unconscious.

Yana Korshun's path to the Energy and Information Threat Opposition Agency, known to those few who knew of its existence as the Department, wasn't at all easy. Ever since she was a child in the town of Zheleznogorsk, Kursk Oblast, she'd known that she was capable of getting others to give her whatever she wanted. Convincing a teacher not to ask her to deliver a report because power had supposedly been out the previous night, and she hadn't been able to prepare? Easy. Calming down a neighbor whose window had been broken by some boys playing socker and keeping him from lodging complaints? Simple. Sure, all pretty girls were probably capable of that, especially if they had fluffy braids and an elegant bow (and Yana loved bows and was very proud of her braids). But it was unlikely even they could've simply walked into a store and asked for a bag of candy as a gift. It was never difficult for Yana.

In high school, the girl's abilities, against expectations, made her a black sheep, an outcast, instead of the class favorite. And after Yana, with the very best intentions, tried to help with her classmates' romantic problems, and it nearly resulted in one of them committing suicide, the others started to openly fear her. And not just the students, the teachers too. Yana withdrew, became shut-in, spending days lying on the couch, reading fantasy and mystery novels. She satisfied her quite understandable interest for the irrational by surfing the appropriate internet sites. That was how she ran into a strange community whose members called themselves Puppeteers and boasted of their talent to influence people for their own benefit. At first, the Puppeteers treated Yana cautiously, but after she provided them with video proof (the saleswoman at a pastry shop had removed her clothes down to her undergarments after Yana's insistent request), she was happily accepted as one of them. Soon the founder of the community, known as Destiny Master, emailed her an invitation to visit a secret Puppeteer party that was supposed to happen Moscow. Yana wasn't yet sixteen, but it was obviously easy for her to get her parents to let her go. She also had no difficulty getting the money for the train ticket and accommodation. Yana really wanted to save by convincing the train conductor to let her ride for free, but then she decided to play it safe. After all, the conductor might turn out to be immune to her talent (it was rare, but it happened).

Unfortunately, Destiny Master turned out to be one of those immune. After the promised party (mostly involving heavy drinking on a restaurant barge moored not far from the Kremlin), he expressed an interest in speaking with her alone. In the smoking room, he openly suggested that she not waste her talent on trifles and get serious. By "getting serious" he meant all manner of robbery, from exquisite seizures of valuables at a bank (obligingly brought out by its employees after speaking with Yana) to run-of-the-mill street muggings. The girl was outraged at the suggestion, not so much because she was being asked to become a criminal, but because she was being viewed only as a weapon, while she wanted (and already liked) to command. Yana got up and tried to leave. They didn't let her. She tried to influence Destiny Master and his flunkies. It didn't work. So, for the next six months, she ended up having to do what the bandits wanted from her (fortunately, their wishes were limited to participation in robberies and had nothing to do with sex). In-between these activities, Yana lived in very comfortable conditions in cottage in a Moscow suburb. Naturally, under a round-the-clock watch.

It was in that cottage that she was found by Colonel Kirsanov, who'd brought a SWAT team to arrest the particularly daring robbers who kept the entire business community of the capital in fear. Then again, he was only a major back then…

When Yana's role in the gang and the fact that she'd only been engaging in criminal activities under duress were discovered, she went from being one of the accused to being a witness. After the trial was over, Kirsanov made her an offer, a genuine one this time, to work on the other side of the barricade.

Ognev wasn't feeling well. Pierced by an icy arrow, exhausted, he first dissolved, absorbed into the walls, the furniture, and then suddenly crystallized, rose over his body and, gaining speed, flew to the sky, ignoring the walls and the ceiling. Leaving the atmosphere with a pop, like salmon swimming upstream, the journalist puffed up and exploded. And then he came back together on the wide bed of the cosmonaut's beautiful wife. His thoughts were heavy and indistinct.

Yana's eyes were shining excitedly, her hair was disheveled like in a storm. Even her mascara seemed to be running a little — had she been crying? The woman was standing next to a wall and looking at Semyon sadly.

"Yana… What happened?" Ognev could barely work his tongue. "Did you swap me with your husband? I think I was in space… Turned into a salmon…"

"How ridiculous," Yana sighed wearily. "With your fantasy, Perceptin, you really should only be writing about rabid racoons. Go to the kitchen and have some vodka. You'll feel better. You have no idea what's coming…"

Footnotes

1) Analects, an ancient Chinese book with sayings attributed to Confucius.