Her childhood was hungry and homeless; nevertheless, childhood is the happiest time of life.
Her first May—those spring days on the edge of town—was especially good. The smell of earth and young grass filled her soul with happiness. She felt a piercing, almost unbearable sense of joy; sometimes she was too happy even to feel like eating. All day long there was a warm green mist in her head and her eyes. She would drop down on her front paws in front of a dandelion and let out happy, angry, childish, staccato barks; she was asking the flower to join in and run about with her, and the stillness of its stout little green leg surprised her and made her cross.
And then all of a sudden she would be frenziedly digging a hole; lumps of earth would fly out from under her stomach and her pink and black paws would get almost burnt by the stony earth. Her little face would take on a troubled look; rather than playing a game, she seemed to be digging a refuge to save her life.
She had a plump, pink belly and her paws were broad, even though she ate little during that good time of her life. It was as if she were growing plump from happiness, from the joy of being alive.
And then those easy childhood days came to an end. The world filled with October and November, with hostility and indifference, with icy rain and sleet, with dirt, with revolting slimy leftovers the smell of which made even a hungry dog feel sick.
She was a small, bandy-legged mongrel living out on the streets. But she got the better of all hostile forces because she loved life and was clever. She knew from which side trouble might creep up on her. She knew that death didn't make a lot of noise or raise its hand threateningly, that it didn't throw stones or stamp about in boots; no, death drew near with an ingratiating smile, holding out a scrap of bread and with a piece of net sacking hidden behind its back.
She knew the murderous power of cars and lorries and had a precise knowledge of their different speeds; she knew how to wait patiently while the traffic went by and then rush across the road when the cars were stopped by a red light. She knew the overwhelming yet inflexible power of electric trains and the fact that so long as it was a few inches away from the track, even a mouse was safe from them. She knew the roars, whistles and rumbles of jet and propeller planes, as well as the clatter of helicopters. She knew the smell of gas chimneys; she knew where she might find the warmth given off by heating pipes buried deep in the earth. She knew the work rhythm of the town's garbage trucks; she knew how to get inside dustbins of all kinds and could immediately recognise the cellophane wrapping around meat products and the waxed paper around cod, sea perch and ice cream.
A black electric cable sticking up out of the earth was more horrifying to her than a viper; once she had put a paw to a cable with a broken insulating jacket.
This dog probably knew more about technology than an intelligent, well-informed person from three centuries before her.
It wasn't merely that she was clever; she was also educated. Had she failed to learn about mid-twentieth-century technology, she would have died. Dogs that wandered into the city from some village or other often lasted only a few hours.
But technological knowledge and experience were not enough either; equally necessary for the struggle was an understanding of the essence of life. She could not have survived without worldly wisdom.
This nameless mongrel knew that the foundation stone of her life was vagrancy—perpetual change.
Now and again some tender-hearted person would show pity to the four-legged wanderer. They would give her some scraps of food and find her somewhere to sleep. But if she were to betray her vagrant ways, she would have to pay with her life. Were she to settle down, the dog would make herself dependent on one kind-hearted person and a hundred unkind people.
People thought that the canine wanderer was incapable of devotion, that vagrancy had corrupted her. They were wrong. It was not that life had hardened the heart of the wandering dog; it was simply that no one needed the good that lived in this heart.
She was caught at night, while she was asleep. Instead of being killed, she was taken to a scientific institute. She was bathed in some warm liquid; after this, she had no more trouble from fleas. For several days she lived in a basement, in a cage. She was fed well, but she didn't feel like eating. She missed her freedom, and she was haunted by a sense of imminent death. Only here, in this cage with warm bedding, with tasty food in a clean bowl, did she first truly value the happiness of her days of freedom.
She felt irritated by the stupid barking of her neighbours. She was examined at length by people in white gowns. One of them, a thin man with bright eyes, flicked her on the nose and patted her on the head. Then she was taken to another, quieter room.
She was about to be introduced to the most advanced technology of the twentieth century; she was about to be prepared for something momentous.
She was given the name "Pestrushka."
Probably not even sick emperors or prime ministers had ever undergone so many medical analyses. Thin, bright-eyed Aleksey Georgievich learned everything there was to know about Pestrushka's heart, lungs, liver, pulmonary gas exchange, blood composition, nervous reflexes and digestive juices.
Pestrushka realised that neither the cleaners, nor the laboratory technicians, nor the generals covered in medals were the masters of her life and death, of her freedom, of her last agony.
She understood this, and her heart gave all its still unspent love to Aleksey Georgievich, and all the horror of her past and present could do nothing to harden her against him.
She understood that everything—the injections and abdominal taps, the nauseating journeys in centrifuges and vibration chambers, the aching sense of weightlessness that suddenly poured into her consciousness, her front paws, her tail, her chest, her back paws—she understood that all of this was the fault of her master, Aleksey Georgievich.
But this understanding made no difference. She was always waiting for the master she had found; she pined when he wasn't there; she was overjoyed to hear his footsteps; and when he left in the evening her brown eyes seemed to moisten with tears.
After an especially difficult morning session Aleksey Georgievich usually visited Pestrushka's quarters. Panting, her tongue hanging out, her large head resting on her front paws, Pestrushka would look up at him meekly.
In some strange and incomprehensible way this man, who had become the master of her life and fate, was mixed up with her sense of that green spring mist, with the sensation of freedom.
She looked at the man who had doomed her to imprisonment and suffering, and what sprang up in her heart was hope.
Aleksey Georgievich took some time to realise that he felt pity and tenderness towards Pestrushka, that he was not simply taking his usual interest in the practical details of a project.
Once, looking at a laboratory dog, he had thought how absurd it was that people who rear animals—millions of them, all over the world—should feel devoted love for the pigs and chickens they are preparing for execution. And now his feeling for these kind eyes, this damp nose pressed trustfully into the hand of a killer, was no less absurd.
Time passed; soon it would be the day of Pestrushka's journey. She was now undergoing experiments in the space capsule itself. The four-legged creature was preparing the way for man; her journey into the far distance was going to be a rehearsal for his farthest and longest flight.
Aleksey Georgievich was disliked by his subordinates. Some were frightened of him; he was short-tempered and he often treated his laboratory workers harshly. His superiors disliked him too.
Nor was he easy to get on with at home; often he had severe headaches and would feel irritated by the slightest noise. He suffered from heartburn because of low stomach acidity and he believed that his wife didn't give him the right diet, that she was secretly helping her countless relatives instead of taking proper care of her husband.
His friendships were no easier; he was always losing his temper, suspecting friends of envy and indifference. He would quarrel with them, feel upset and then have to struggle to make peace with them again.
Aleksey Georgievich was no less harsh with regard to himself. Sometimes he would mutter sourly, "Yes, everybody's fed up with me, and there's nobody more fed up with me than I am."
The bandy-legged mongrel took no part in laboratory intrigues, could not be accused of failing to look after Aleksey Georgievich properly and seemed free of envy. Like Christ, she returned good for evil, paying him back in love for the suffering he caused her.
He examined electrocardiograms, or analyses of blood pressure or reflexes, and the dog's brown eyes gazed at him devotedly. Once he began explaining out loud to her that people went through the same training and that they found it difficult too. It was true, he went on, that the risks she was being exposed to were greater than the risks to which they would expose a human being; nevertheless, she was far better off than poor Laika, whose death in space had been a foregone conclusion.
Once he said to Pestrushka that she would be the first creature, since life had begun on earth, to glimpse the true depth of the cosmos. A wonderful fate had befallen her. She was breaking through into cosmic space—the first envoy of free reason to be sent out into the universe.
The dog seemed to understand him. She was, after all, unusually clever—in her canine way. The laboratory technicians and cleaning staff used to joke: "Our Pestrushka must have completed elementary technology!" Life amid scientific apparatus was not difficult for her; she seemed to understand the various appliances and to be able to find her bearings quickly in a world of clamps, screens, electron tubes and automatic feeders.
More than anyone, Aleksey Georgievich had the ability to summon up a complete picture of the vital functions of an organism flying through empty space, thousands of miles from any earthly laboratory.
He was one of the founders of a new science: cosmic biology. This time, however, he was not just entranced by the complexity of the project; bandy-legged Pestrushka had somehow made everything a little different.
He would look into the dog's eyes. These kind eyes, not the eyes of Niels Bohr, would be the first to look into the cosmos, to see cosmic space that was not limited by the earth's horizon. A space with no wind and only weak gravitational forces, a space where there was no rain, no clouds, no butterflies, a space of photons and electromagnetic waves.
And it seemed to Aleksey Georgievich that Pestrushka's eyes would be able to tell him what they had seen. And he would read and understand that most arcane of cardiograms, the secret cardiogram of the universe.
Everyone who knew Aleksey Georgievich—superiors and subordinates, family and friends—were aware of strange changes in him; never had he been so easy, so gentle, so sad.
This new experiment was special. It was not merely that the capsule, disdaining the ease of orbit, would pierce deep into space and leave the earth a hundred thousand kilometres behind. No, what was special was the presence of a living creature, penetrating the cosmos with its psyche. Or rather the other way round—the cosmos would penetrate the psyche of a living being. This was what mattered—not just questions of overload, vibrations, the sensation of weightlessness…
Before these very eyes the earth's flat surface would begin to bend; the eyes of a living animal would confirm the truth of Copernicus's vision. A globe! A geoid! And more, much more. A younger sun, throwing off the weight of two billion years, would rise up out of black space before the eyes of a small, bandy-legged bitch. Earth's horizon would slip away—in orange, lilac and violet flame. That miraculous globe covered in snow and burning sand, full of wonderful, restless life, would not only slip away from under the dog's feet—it would slide right out of her field of awareness. Then the stars would acquire body; they would grow thermonuclear flesh—brilliant, burning substance.
The psyche of a living creature would be penetrated by a kingdom not covered by the warmth of the earth, by soft cumulus clouds, by the damp power of phlogiston. Living eyes would see for the first time the airless abyss, the space of Kant, the space of Einstein, the space of philosophers, astronomers and mathematicians; they would see this space not through speculation, not in the guise of a formula, but as it is—without mountains or trees, without skyscrapers, without village huts.
No one around Aleksey Georgievich could understand what was happening to him.
It seemed to him that he was discovering a new form of knowledge, higher than the knowledge derived from differential equations and the testimony of instruments. This new knowledge was transferred from soul to soul, from living eyes to living eyes. And everything that angered him, that made him feel suspicious or spiteful, had somehow ceased to matter.
It seemed to Aleksey Georgievich that a new quality was about to enter the life of terrestrial beings, enriching this life and elevating it—and that with this new quality would come forgiveness and justification for the life he had lived himself.
The spaceship took off. As if through a hole in the ice, an animal plunged into space. The dials and screens were arranged in such a way that, wherever it turned its head, the animal saw only space, losing all sense of what was earthly and familiar. The universe was penetrating the brain of a dog.
Aleksey Georgievich was convinced that his connection with Pestrushka remained unbroken; he could feel this connection even when the capsule was a hundred thousand kilometres from earth. And this had nothing to do with the automatic radio signals telling him about Pestrushka's racing pulse and the sudden jumps in her blood pressure.
The next morning, laboratory technician Apresyan said to him, "She was howling, howling for a long time." He added quietly, "It's scary—a solitary dog, alone in the universe, howling."
The instruments all worked with total, unbelievable accuracy. The grain of sand that had gone out into space found its way back to the earth, to the grain of sand that had given birth to it. The braking systems worked flawlessly; the capsule landed on the chosen point of the earth's surface.
Apresyan smiled and said to Aleksey Georgievich, "The impact of certain cosmic particles will have restructured Pestrushka's genes and she'll have puppies with outstanding creative ability for everything in the realm of higher algebra and symphonic music. The grandsons of our Pestrushka will compose sonatas as good as Beethoven's. They'll construct the cybernetic machines of new Fausts."
Aleksey Georgievich did not reply to this joker.
Aleksey Georgievich travelled to where the capsule had landed. He had to be the first to see Pestrushka; no assistant could take his place.
Their meeting was everything Aleksey Georgievich wanted it to be.
She rushed at him, shyly wagging the tip of her lowered tail.
It was a while before he was able to see the eyes that had taken in the universe. The dog kept licking his hands as a sign of obedience, a sign of her eternal renunciation of the life of a free wanderer, a sign of her acceptance of everything that was and will be.
