Chapter 1. You, You, You!

You!…
Through the veil only the black outlines of a male body are visible…
…You!…
She feels the touch of his lips, but these lips are strange…
…You!…

Sabrina wakes.

Springing from the bed, she looks with a sudden, panicked stillness of the heart at the wall clock in her bedroom—it is only four in the afternoon. The girl exhales in relief. She remembers: it is only Saturday. Of late she often falls asleep after noon, worn out by the diligent labour of keeping house, and the habit vexes her. A week earlier she turned eighteen, and Sabrina frets that her own degree of composure and responsibility has not yet risen to the level of her mother’s.

She straightens her blue gingham shirtwaist dress and turns to the full-length mirror nearby. Looking back at her is a pretty girl with long blonde hair bound in two braids, blue eyes, a childish rounded face, very pale skin, a slender yet shapely figure, and a low stature. Even now that she has reached her majority she still resembles a schoolgirl; nevertheless, since she was sixteen every local boy regards her in a manner that is somehow strange. Sabrina never attaches the least importance to this, nor does she now, although the mailbox has long been stuffed with quantities of letters of a loving nature addressed to her. The girl is interested in the career of a housewife and in a fortunate marriage, not in fleeting intrigues.

Descending from the second floor, she glances about her—today she has cleaned with particular thoroughness. She lives alone, while her parents live close by in the neighbouring house. This comic situation arose because her father—then a man of forty-two, Randy Smut—presented her, a year earlier on her seventeenth birthday, with a separate house which he purchased from neighbours who had lately moved away. Randy, a veteran of the Second World War, simply adores his daughter; nevertheless, even Sabrina never succeeds in discovering the true motives of so generous and so strange an action.

Leaving the house, she takes a few steps to the mailbox and finds it literally bursting with letters.

“My God…” Sabrina sighs. “They are mocking me!”

She scoops out some sixty envelopes and begins to search among all these love poems and confessions in prose for a letter from Pussydale College. At that moment a fellow riding a bicycle along the road stares at Sabrina and, as is only to be expected, meets the nearest pole, losing control. It is a fairly common occurrence in Sabrina’s vicinity: men of every age, openly or by stealth, fix their eyes upon her and fall clean out of the world around them.

Finding no letter from the college, the girl at once directs her steps toward the neighbouring house. All serious correspondence addressed to her still arrives at the family address, a circumstance that continually irritates her.

The mailbox, however, proves empty—evidently her parents have already taken the letters out.

*

At this time Mr. Smut sits in the sitting-room on the ground floor of the family house, smoking a pipe and reading the newspaper of that day’s date—the second of May, 1953. Randy and his wife Fanny already know that their daughter has been accepted at the college; the wife is just finishing the cake prepared for the occasion. He sighs. Though he has no wish that his beloved Sabrina should live apart from them, even at a distance of only a couple of minutes’ walk, the sudden hard-on that begins in Randy’s pants whenever he looks at his daughter after she turned sixteen fills him with horror. It is precisely this sudden coexistence of two kinds of love for his daughter in Randy’s heart that served as the chief impulse for the purchase of a separate house for Sabrina—a truth he will carry with him to the grave.

The doorbell rings.

As he opens the door, Randy finds himself face to face with Sabrina, who thrusts the enormous packet of letters toward him and announces triumphantly, “Again! Only this time I didn’t even bother to read them!”

“Oh, my dear…” Randy’s heart quickens. He focuses on the sweet girl’s face and feels a fresh wave of something unbearably painful and delightful overwhelm him.

Sabrina reaches up and kisses her father’s cheek, accepting the envelope he has prepared for her with a letter from the college.

As Randy looks down at his daughter, another pulse of needy intensity passes through him. Her blue eyes sparkle with joy, her youthful face is radiant, her blonde braids are perfectly arranged, and her body—oh, that petite body with its deliciously rounded curves!—fills out the blue gingham so temptingly. Randy forces himself to take only a small step back, clearing space between them.

“Mother has prepared a cake. And yes, we could not restrain ourselves and read it,” Randy says, with warmth in his voice and a slight sense of guilt. “Forgive us. As you have already guessed, you have been accepted. The cake is for that occasion, yes…”

Randy with difficulty tears his gaze from the tempting shapes of his daughter, cursing himself for his thoughts. “I’m definitely going to burn in hell…” thinks Sabrina’s father to himself, while she, carefully opening the envelope that has already been unsealed, reads the letter from the college with delight.

“Sabrinomania” in their little town of Pussydale in the state of Illinois began at the same time as the onset of Sabrina’s puberty, and in the past week, since the moment she reached her eighteenth year, it has attained its peak. Wherever Sabrina appears, men of every age deliberately or “by chance” direct dozens of fixed glances upon her. Their friendly Midwestern community shudders not on account of ordinary crime, nor even from fears of the communists that are fed by the constant news from the newspapers and the radio, but on account of this sweet blue-eyed blonde girl with features that are altogether too childish for her age, with plump little lips and a height of four feet eleven inches when she wears shoes.

Worst of all is the fact that the young boys suffer most severely from such a state of affairs; they frequently become the objects of a peculiar treatment in the struggle against masturbation. The strongest drama unfolds in the case of Richard Cummings, a contemporary of Sabrina’s who has been closely friendly with her from an early age. Richard belongs to a Baptist family and at the age of sixteen was placed in the Clinic of St. Piety situated in the neighbouring state of Indiana. Richard never confesses the true reasons for his masturbation, yet it is clear to everyone that the cause is Sabrina. Sabrina and Richard correspond regularly—yet all the letters undergo obligatory censorship, depriving their intercourse of privacy. Sabrina is even forbidden to call Richard in her letters by the shortened form Dick, by which everyone has always called him in childhood—in order to avoid relapses. Sabrina frets greatly over her best friend and hopes that he will soon recover.

Sabrina finishes reading the letter and leaps for joy.

Randy watches his daughter’s joyful leap with pride and a growing ache in his chest. Her blue gingham dress rides up slightly, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of snow-white thigh as she bounces on her toes. He quickly averts his eyes, his pulse quickening despite himself.

“Oh, daddy, I’m so happy!” Sabrina exclaims, throwing her arms around Randy’s neck. Her soft, pliant body presses against him, the warm curves of her soft, small breasts and hips molding to his frame. A jolt of unwelcome desire courses through him, and he feels himself hardening against her.

Fanny, hearing the commotion, emerges from the kitchen with a tray of steaming cups and a plate piled high with cake. “Congratulations, sweetie!” she calls out, her own curves accentuated by the tight fit of her dress.

Randy looks at his wife.

“Damn it…” flashes through his thoughts.

Fanny is dressed in almost the same shirtwaist dress as Sabrina’s, which differs only in its other—pink—gingham check. Fanny looks very young for her forty years. So much so that many people, on first meeting her, take her for Sabrina’s elder sister, and accordingly for Randy’s daughter. This circumstance undermines the poor Mr. Smut’s mental state still more strongly, in addition to his obsessive feelings toward Sabrina.

“By the way… Today is a fine Saturday, after all,” Randy says in a cheerful tone, driving off the uncomfortable thoughts. “Sabrina, perhaps you might telephone and invite one of your girlfriends to celebrate this event?” He straightens his white shirt and thrusts his hands into the pockets of his black trousers. “I believe young Miss Butts is at home, as always.”

One of Sabrina’s close friends, named Lovely, is indeed distinguished by her stay-at-home ways. This plump-faced, dark-haired girl with two large ponytails and black-framed glasses is marked by a certain reserve, preferring to spend the greater part of her free time buried in a heap of fiction.

Sabrina sighs sadly. “Dick… Lately I keep thinking of him all the time. I should so much like him to be here now. When will they release him already?” She looks at her father with hope, and his heart contracts.

Sabrina has fretted strongly over this whole situation from the very beginning. She does not share her thoughts directly with anyone, yet she considers such a fate for her close friend unjust. “Is this what Jesus taught?! He clearly would not have approved of it. Besides, he himself was a man—perhaps he masturbated too?”—Sabrina has tormented herself with thoughts of this kind for many months already.

Randy sighs, answering Sabrina concerning Dick.

“The doctors at St. Piety know best, honey,” Randy says, his voice strained with a forced gentleness. “It’s a difficult road to recovery, but faith and discipline will see him through.” His words feel like ash in his mouth. Every time Sabrina mentions Richard, Randy feels a fresh spike of guilt. He knows exactly what he would do if he were in Dick’s position—the boy isn’t being punished for a sin, but for a natural, agonizing attraction to a girl who doesn’t even realize she’s a walking provocation.

“I suppose you’re right,” Sabrina murmurs, a small pout forming on those full lips. “But it’s just so sad. I’ll make sure to write him tonight.”

Fanny sets the tray down on the coffee table, the aroma of fresh vanilla cake filling the room. “Now, no more sad faces! Let’s eat.”

*

Neither Sabrina, nor Randy, nor Dick, nor any of the people living in 1953 has the slightest suspicion of what is occurring at this moment in space.

“Playing with telepathy again?” Frigidis Hysteris leans over the one lying on the floor of the enormous hall of the lunar base Grand Erectus Shaft LXIX, better known among friends simply as Grand Shaft.

“I’m not playing. I’m researching.” Grand opens his eyes and looks at his friend with displeasure. Both of them belong to the same subspecies Dobermannus of the race Canis Amatoris. In simpler terms for humans, they look like anthropomorphic Dobermans.

In combat spacesuits.

On a high-technology base on the dark side of the Moon.

“What are you researching? Fucking Stinkius Nematodicus? Strange tastes you’ve got, boy.” Frigidis smirks, scratching her comrade behind the ear.

“Oh, fuck off!” Grand waves her away, rising from the floor. “I’m not fucking that kind of filth. And she doesn’t live in this system. There’s just…”

“Doesn’t matter.” Frigidis scratches her nose. “Commander Libidus is waiting for you. My job’s guarding the base with the girls. And you Casanova Dogs are sort of spies and saboteurs. So work according to your profession, Grand. It’ll be a disgrace if the son of the ruler of the empire gets kicked out of service a week after joining. You’ll have to sit in the palace again and fight off a beautiful carefree life.” She says it in a mocking tone and leaves the hall.

“Go fuck yourself, Frigidis!” Grand shouts after her in anger. “Stupid bitch!”

He calms down, catching his breath. The telepathic connection had been unstable. Even with the base’s specialized equipment, reaching across interplanetary distances was difficult, and the signal had been too weak to render her face. But that female ape was attractive. Very much so. Too bad the face never loaded… But her long blonde fur… And the body…

Grand shakes his head, trying to pull himself together and come to his senses. He looks around the empty training hall and walks to the briefing room.

“Oh, Grand, brace yourself—Libidus is tearing the place apart in there.” One of Grand’s pals in the corridor warns him, carrying a large box of holodiscs.

The Casanova Dogs differ from the regular Canis Amatoris army, and the command structure here is rather peculiar, yet effective—only the empire’s system of succession can compare with it. Still, every fighter on the base knows: the ones truly in charge right now are commanders Libidus and Magnificus.

Entering the briefing room, Grand finds the discussion at the very peak of emotion.

“WHAT THE FUCK DID THOSE FUCKERS SHOOT DOWN OUR RECONNAISSANCE CRAFT FOR, FUCK?!” Libidus yells at one of the subordinates, whose image is on the video-link screen.

“HAVE YOU ALL COMPLETELY LOST YOUR SHIT OUT THERE TODAY?!”

It seems the poor scout on the screen has gone pale in the fur.

“It’s just these Chinese…” he begins.

“I DON’T GIVE A FUCK WHAT THESE APES CALL THEMSELVES! YOU GOT SHOT DOWN BY FUCKING PRIMATES WHO HAVEN’T EVEN GONE INTO SPACE YET! AND THEY’RE LEFTIES ON TOP OF THAT!”

Libidus falls silent, leaning on the instrument panel. The crowd gathered in the briefing room remains awkwardly silent.

A couple of seconds later Libidus speaks, still staring at the instrument panel in front of him. “Next report.”

The image on the screen changes to another scout, who looks as if he regrets ever becoming a scout.

“To the north of the so-called PRC there is a state of still more primates, which they call the USSR… And…” The scout makes an awkward pause. “There’s communism there too. More than that—it’s the first communist state on this planet. They support communist movements in other states.”

“What is the affected area?”

“Approximately 15% of the planet’s land surface, not counting the satellite countries and…” the scout mumbles.

“And the same China. All clear. This planet cannot be saved. Fine. We’ll have to carry out singular nullification.” Libidus sighs.

By singular nullification he means tearing the given planet into pieces with the help of a specially created black hole.

In Grand’s memory the image of that mysterious female primate floats past.

“Hold it!” He approaches the commander with a quick step. “Libidus, have you lost your mind?”

Libidus smirks, turning toward him. “By name and without rank? I’d smack you in the snout right now, soldier, if you weren’t the son of our emperor and, incidentally, a disgrace to the meritocratic order of our society.”

The commander folds his arms. “Grand, we’re out in the middle of nowhere. In this part of the universe not a single one of the intelligent races has ever been before. I mean truly intelligent… Not these.” He nods toward the operations table, on whose screen a map of Earth is displayed. “Given that these bald apes are somehow blowing up our recon craft, I’m not going to repeat the disgrace…”

Grand looks him in the eye with a challenge. “Yes, I know what happened on that planet. I’m genuinely sorry. But our mission is supposedly to save intelligent races from lefties, not destroy them along with the lefties. Or has something changed in the last twenty-four hours?”

A long, tense silence ensues.

Grand Shaft continues. “I’m not just some rookie, Libidus. I’ve had training. I know our mission parameters.”

He moves closer to the holographic display of Earth, his human-like fingers hovering over the glowing continents. “These primates might be backwards, but they show promise. They’ve developed nuclear technology, built cities, created complex social structures. That counts as intelligent life.”

His dark brown eyes narrow, focusing on the commander. “We can’t just wipe them. It goes against everything Canis Amatoris stands for—protecting and nurturing intelligent species, not destroying them. Even if they are a little… primitive.” He pauses, an image of that tantalizing female ape flashing through his mind again.

Libidus sighs heavily, looking around.

“All right, I…” He sighs again. “Anyway, nullification requires a lengthy protocol… And stop looking at me like that!” he shouts at everyone gathered in the room. “Enough thinking of me as if I were some kind of monster! Anyone would go mad from your failures!”

Libidus catches his breath and looks at Grand.

“I remember that conversation of ours. Congratulations—either you found what you were looking for, or you’re the biggest fucking idiot in the universe.”

“We’ll manage,” Grand answers quietly, almost syllable by syllable.

Without taking his eyes off the emperor’s son, Libidus says, “What do we have on the opposite hemisphere of this so-called planet?”

“It’s not so bad there. There’s something called the USA. Quite a large state, and they’re fighting communism. They’re rather narrow-minded, but they understand the danger of leftism well.” answers the soldier responsible for that region, checking the incoming information on one of the terminals. “Oh… They were the first to invent nuclear weapons! Very pleasant analytical language, a developed strong economy… It seems this is the most adequate place on this planet at the present moment!”

Libidus grunts, his expression shifting from rage to a calculating curiosity. “Adequate, huh? Fine.” He looks at Grand with a sharp, knowing glint in his eyes. “You want to save these apes? You get to do it the hard way. You’re a Casanova Dog—go prove you’re more than just a royal headache.”

*

Meanwhile, in the USSR near Moscow, it is midnight. Two privates—Akaky Durakov and Autonom Choblya—are unloading a warehouse of trophy property from Lend-Lease. Both lads are about eighteen or nineteen, but on account of their exhausted faces from bad living conditions they look outwardly about thirty. Both are dressed in kirza boots, soldiers’ gymnasterkas, and breeches.

“Ah… Blya…” Autonom says, sitting down on the nearest stump. “Let’s take a break. This is fucked. Why the hell did they send us to dig through all this at night? Couldn’t they wait till morning?”

“Well, it’s… sort of urgent, you know…” Akaky says, scratching the back of his head and frowning. “Listen, what are we now, like these…”

“Internationalists we are, yeah!” Autonom says, making an incomprehensible gesture, and looks toward the tower. The soldier who was supposed to keep an eye on them has gone off somewhere to drink.

“They stuck some drunk on us…” Autonom says, lighting a cigarette and looking at the picture of the rising sun on the pack with the Cyrillic inscription SEVER (note—North). “You know, on the one hand it’s kind of cool that that mustached fucker croaked—Ivan Putout seems a bit better. And that speech of his about the cult of personality…” He makes the incomprehensible gesture again with the hand holding the lit cigarette. “And all of them kept grumbling—tyrant, tyrant… Well, anyway… I don’t know, I’ve got mixed feelings. They brought us out to some godforsaken place, they’re going to give us some vaccination, some supersoldiers… The Germans made supersoldiers too. And where are they now?”

“And what is known about this vaccination?” Akaky asks.

Autonom shrugs. “Nothing. Fuck. If they just want to kill us, then we’ll be in the ground before morning. But something tells me there’s something worse than that.” He stares at the cigarette smoke, exhaling slowly. “And there was some kind of military science officer on the base, a real creepy bastard. All mysterious-like. And I saw him take out some kind of flask of shit that smelled like chemicals. Not alcohol, I’d know that smell. More like antiseptic.”

“Maybe it’s just medical equipment?”

“And they do clinical trials in the middle of the night in some abandoned warehouses?” Autonom’s cigarette ash glows in the darkness. “Something stinks, Akaky, something stinks…”

They sit for about a minute in silence until Autonom notices something in an open box nearby.

“What’s that, medical supplies?”

Akaky looks in the direction Autonom is pointing.

“Ah… Yeah, I noticed earlier but… didn’t really attach any meaning to it.” He says, walking over to the box and pulling out some kind of package made of rough, unpainted gray-brown kraft paper.

Carefully tearing the package open, he pulls out a flattened roll of American toilet paper.

Both privates look at the roll and the package. In the bright light of the moon and two kerosene lamps nearby they see the inscription on the package: U.S. ARMY TOILET PAPER.

“Listen, I… don’t know this American language… This is American, right?” Akaky says thoughtfully, looking at the English letters.

“I don’t give a fuck what language it is. I don’t understand what this is.” Autonom points a finger at the roll of paper.

“It’s tape for cipher machines!” Akaky smiles, raising a finger in the air.

Autonom reaches out and touches the roll. He pokes the stiff, yellowed paper with a calloused finger. It doesn’t yield like fabric or the flexible newsprint they are used to; it feels like dried parchment, brittle and coarse.

“Cipher tape?” Autonom skeptically raises an eyebrow. “Why the hell would the Americans make cipher tape in a roll? And why is it so… absorbent?”

Akaky takes the roll, holding it up to the light of the kerosene lamp. He runs a thumb over the surface. The texture is abrasive, a relic of 1940s industrial production—rough and unforgiving.

“Maybe it’s for scrubbing the machinery,” Akaky suggests, though he sounds unsure. “Or maybe it’s some kind of specialized filter paper for the chemists. Look at the quality. It’s consistent. The capitalists have a machine for everything.”

“Come on… My uncle works as a chemist in Leningrad. I was at his apartment once—I didn’t see any of that kind of shit there.” Autonom says irritably, sitting back down on the stump while Akaky continues examining the roll. “Though maybe it’s a purely Western thing. There’s nobody from that West around here to reveal this great and incomprehensible mystery.”

He is silent for a minute, then addresses Akaky again, who is still studying the roll. “Haven’t you had enough of twirling it around? Looks like it’s not for our minds. Well, paper is paper.” Autonom finishes his cigarette and throws it on the ground, crushing it with his boot. “Eh, I’m sick of everything… Not life but dog shit. Starting from childhood.”

Silence falls.

“They shot my older brother in 1937. I was four then.” Autonom says quietly, looking straight ahead into the distance, somewhere deep into the forest. “On the order of that fucking Georgian. May they all croak, those Georgians.”

He sighs heavily before continuing. “He got hold of some foreign currency. Two banknotes. Like, it was interesting. Two fucking banknotes wrecked my family. Two. Fucking. Banknotes. A great threat to the existence of the Soviet Union, blyat.”

Autonom looks at Akaky with a kind of cold anger and longing in his eyes. “So you’d better drop that shit. A lot of trouble… from paper.”

*

“All right, I’ll keep this short and to the point,” says a solid, muscular Dobermannus from the Casanova Dogs, jabbing a finger at the operations table screen that shows a map of the Moscow region. “Turns out these primates aren’t quite as dumb as Libidus thought. These leftist idiots are cooking up some kind of biological weapon, and from what we can tell it only works on individuals with a particular kind of brain activity. We’ve gotten about as much as we can from remote surveillance, so in a couple of hours you gentlemen are going straight into the main nest of this planet’s communist scum.”

The operation commander looks around at his dogs. “There’ll only be twenty of you. We’re all Dobermannus here, so we know how to fight. I want to see every one of you make it back alive, and I want you all at the extraction point. I’m not pulling you out of some random spot. Trust me—it’ll be bad if we show ourselves too early. Even the dumbest intelligent races can have something nasty up their sleeve.”

One of the soldiers raises a hand. “Question: what’s the lethality limit?”

“There isn’t one,” the operation commander answers, irritated. “That place is already a shambles. Half the planet’s leftist zombies already, if not more. Get the information on whatever shit they’re building—and destroy it. Kill the communists, disintegrate the bodies. A good communist is a dead communist. You’re not children. I shouldn’t have to explain the basics.”

Grand stands at the back of the briefing room, posture relaxed, mind racing. While the other Dobermannus focus on tactical lethality and the destruction of “leftist zombies,” Grand is thinking about the blonde primate he connected with telepathically…

No. Not a primate. A human. A woman.

Her long fur… No, hair. Who is she? Her face never loaded. Grand had been studying maps of Earth, examining its various countries and regions. He had identified the USA, Illinois, and the little town of Pussydale as the place where the mysterious female primate lived. But who was she?

He felt her energy then. She’s beautiful. Extremely so. Healthy, very young—but already clearly ready to mate. How many more like her are there on this planet?

Grand knows what communism is. He knows how communists cripple and deform the females of their own races in every way. He knows how that filthy fucking ideology burns out everything beautiful that exists in this endlessly vast universe. Communism is a cosmic cancer that keeps spreading.

Grand snorts in irritation and clenches his fists. He will protect the women of this planet from any kind of leftist. Even if he personally has to tear every red-soaked bastard from this so-called “USSR” apart with his fangs.

“Easy.” A hand settles on his shoulder. It’s Defensoris, one of Grand’s close friends. Because of their bond, he has access to Grand’s private telepathic channel and managed to catch the edge of his emotions and intentions.

“Easy, Grand. I didn’t catch everything, but I got the gist. Keep it up and the instruments on the base will start glitching.” Defensoris gives a nervous smirk. “I know you. You found some woman among them, didn’t you? Don’t worry. We’ll save her. We’ll save all of them. That red rot will regret it ever existed.”

Grand shifts his shoulders, shaking off Defensoris’s hand.

“I’m not going to Moscow,” Grand says, his voice a smooth, confident baritone that carries over the noise of the briefing room.

The operation commander stops mid-sentence, turning a sharp, predatory gaze toward him. “Excuse me?”

“The source of the contagion is in the East, but the target of the infiltration is the West,” Grand explains, stepping forward.

“I already knew you’d start kicking up a fuss, stubborn prince. You didn’t really think you could hide your motives, did you? I can feel your intentions even in a room full of dogs. I was already an experienced stud while the rest of you were still learning how to walk straight,” the commander says bluntly.

The operation commander, Magnificus, is indeed a skilled telepath. Like the other Canis Amatoris, he can’t read every intention in full detail, but he immediately guessed the reason for Grand’s insubordination.

“If you think that female is really that good—keep an eye on her. We’ll find you a replacement for Moscow.”

Grand doesn’t wait for Magnificus to change his mind. He gives a sharp, respectful nod, though his eyes glint with a rebellious independence. While the other operatives prepare for the frozen hell of the Soviet Union, Grand retreats to the transmutation chamber.

The machine hums, a symphony of shimmering light and molecular rearrangement. Grand focuses on the impressions left by his telepathic contact with the woman from Pussydale—the golden hair, the vague outline of her face, and the emotional impression of youthful innocence that has lingered in his mind. He doesn’t just want a disguise; he wants a form that will blend into the quaint, conservative fabric of the American Midwest while maintaining the physical dominance of a Dobermannus.

When the steam clears, the anthropomorphic dog is gone. In his place stands a towering, athletic young man with chiseled features, a jawline that could cut glass, and eyes that hold a depth of cosmic experience.

“Who are you?” The thought keeps spinning around in Grand’s head. “Who… are you?”