A Planet for Rent (4 page)

“No, it won’t be like you’re thinking.” The sergeant had a decidedly disagreeable laugh. “Grodos are hermaphrodites. They only reproduce once, and then they die. But they have to deposit their eggs in another living being. The ‘incubator’ has to be warm-blooded, and as intelligent as possible. I guess that’s so she won’t kill herself, like a sensible wild animal would do if it saw it was as good as dead. So she’ll last long enough... So the eggs can hatch and the larvae can eat her guts with all the calm in the world. And apparently we human beings, especially if we’re free from drugs or implants, are perfect fits. When? Well... from the color of its carapace, it’s got to have a few more years to go. Our girlfriend will have everything she wants until he-she feels it’s time to worry about the continuity of the species. But I wouldn’t want to be in her place then...”

Buca couldn’t take it anymore. Removing her arm from Selshaliman’s with a violent gesture, she gave a half-turn to confront the sergeant.

The man had already taken off his helmet.

Those leathery features...

Buca gulped, recognizing him.

Those eyes, sick of seeing all the world’s misery, gave her such a look that she was only capable of muttering, indistinctly, but with a calm that she never would have thought herself capable of:

“True. But I’m leaving, and you two are stuck here.”

And she went back to her grodo lord and master. Rage and impotence burned in her eyes. Fortunately the makeup she had on was waterproof. Tearproof, too. And it formed a veritable mask over her face.

The day they took Jowe away she hadn’t been wearing makeup.

It wasn’t likely the sergeant had recognized her... Even so, the prudent thing was to get away.

As soon as she found an opportunity, she would beg Selshaliman to use his influence to have him... punished, somehow. She was sure he’d do it, to please her.

Just by thinking about this, she could feel the calm returning to her soul. Though maybe she would be coming down too hard on the man... He seemed to know a lot about grodos, and he had confirmed what Selshaliman had told her: until his grayish carapace turned completely dark, the time hadn’t come yet.

Several years. And then...

What would it be like? Selshaliman had told her something...

The ovipositor stinger, smoothly and painlessly penetrating her vagina to deposit its precious cargo in the best protected of human organs, the uterus. It could even be pleasant.

And the eggs, so delicate they sometimes took years to hatch... and for some girls, they never did. Maybe she’d be lucky, like she’d been so far. Or maybe she could even, with some metabolic poison...

She looked at Selshaliman out of the corner of her eye and went back to repeating the catchy lyrics of the technohit in her head. Better not to try anything. Better not even think about it. If the grodo suspected she’d even considered such a possibility, he’d drown her in acid. Or worse.

Several years...

It’d be better to resign herself to the idea right now. After all, she had enjoyed the best part of her youth. And as the saying goes, die young, leave a beautiful corpse. It wouldn’t hurt; from what the grodo told her, the larvae secreted a very powerful analgesic. She’d enjoy it all right up to the very end, with the same dying vitality as a guy doped up on feline analogue...

And how she’d enjoy it! All her whims would be fulfilled. It was hard to imagine how big Selshaliman’s fortune was. In any case, more than enough to buy the best dresses in the universe, to eat the most exotic delicacies, to travel to the most exquisite and most fashionable resorts. She’d have all the lovers she wanted... She’d already talked it over with the grodo: the very concept of faithfulness made no sense to a hermaphrodite being. She could even afford to take one of those pale, perverse, and beautiful Cetians.

She’d only be forbidden to have children. For the good of her expensive and precious uterus... But who would think of wasting time giving birth?

She’d learn to present herself well in galactic high society, to which Selshaliman, who no doubt had a prominent position in the caste hierarchy of his race, would be delighted to introduce her.

Of course, it was about time she convinced him to dump that horrid Arab name of his. He needed something trendier, more impressive, more modern, something to wow her girlfriends. Because he was going to pay to have some of them travel from Earth, you bet. And maybe, if he was still alive, Jowe... She owed him that.

Smiling, Buca walked through the last doorway in the astroport and boarded the shuttle that would take her to the orbiting hypership.

A Japanese name would sound nicer... Those are all the rage now. Four syllables, the way they like. Horusaki, something like that. It was important to pick one, as soon as possible.

August 24, 1993.

The genes of
Homo sapiens
are moderately compatible by nature with those of humanoid species with very similar biotypes and evolutionary histories, such as the Cetians and Centaurians. Species that, to be sure, cannot produce fertile cross-breeds with each other, a fact that has given biologists and anthropologists from across the galaxy a lot of room to debate about interstellar migrations of humanoid or prehumanoid races, and other more or less harebrained theories.

The possibility that two different germ cells could fuse and produce a viable zygote is vanishingly small. Of ten million potentially fertile couplings, only one will give rise to a hybrid.

Mestizos are always sterile, they usually lack developed sexual organs, and sometimes they do not even have a definite sex. But by the laws of genetics, they also possess what is called “hybrid vigor”: they are more robust, more disease-resistant, and often more handsome than the members of either of the races that gave birth to them.

The Centaurians’ blue skin and large eyes, combined with a human bone structure, produce spectacular results. Same with the feline elegance and vertical pupils of the lovely Cetians.

Likewise, hybrids seem especially gifted in the arts. Music, dance, visual arts are almost second nature to these exotic beings, whose ranks include some of the greatest talents in the galaxy today.

Cases of mestizo children can be found in every human social group. But, as is statistically logical, most mestizos are born to social workers, who are in most frequent contact with extraterrestrial humanoids.

It is a curious fact that, despite the risk of pregnancy, professional sex workers use no birth control methods in their relations with Cetians and Centaurians. As they normally do whenever they couple with a native of Colossa...

There are two main reasons for this “carelessness.”

The first is purely medical: while Colossaurs can transmit the incurable magenta disease, which is endemic among them and whose origins and structure are unknown, extraterrestrial humanoids suffer from almost no such illnesses. And any diseases they do have can easily be treated with conventional medicines, much like terrestrial syphilis, gonorrhea, or AIDS.

The second and more important reason is, well, economic. The Planetary Tourism Agency provides free medical care and pays large bonuses to any worker who gets pregnant by a humanoid—bonuses that grow even larger if the hybrid is born successfully.

In exchange for that generous pile of credits, the mother merely has to sign over all her legal rights to the newborn, who is handed over to the Agency’s specialized teachers and experts for raising and education.

Young mestizos are given a costly and painstaking education aimed at developing their inborn artistic talents. An education that might go on for a few years, or for many, and that only comes to an end when a buyer appears.

Well-to-do xenoids are more than willing to spend large sums to acquire, more or less permanently, the talents of a humanoid mestizo. Mestizos, for their part, due to the exceptional peculiarity of their births, not only automatically enjoy all the advantages of double citizenship, terrestrial and xenoid, such as freedom to travel and so on, but in view of their valuable talents they generally also have much higher incomes and life status than any ordinary human.

The large number of credits that all mestizos must regularly pay to the Planetary Tourism Agency, regardless of where they live, is considered a tax on extraterritorial citizenship, perfectly legal according to galactic norms. Or fitting compensation for the huge investment made in their artistic education.

The rental-purchase of mestizo artists is currently one of the most significant sources of revenue for Earth, which is thus amply paid back for its investments in their education. In fact, the ineffable Auyars are investigating a project to achieve hybridization (artificially, at least at first) between non-humanoid races and terrestrial genes. Though the project is still in its experimental phase, they have already received thousands of requests for human-Colossaur mestizos, grodo-human mestizos, and other, yet more exotic combinations.

The Planetary Tourism Agency’s only concern is the high risk of the “human” factor in their investment. The psychological stability of hybrids is abnormally low. Despite all efforts to the contrary, it appears that the predisposition of mestizos toward depression, neurosis, and other psychic complaints remains very high, though the relevant statistics are kept secret.

Some social psychologists hypothesize that the very sense of non-integration, of uprootedness, of having one foot in each camp, of not belonging, the very identity crisis that makes hybrids seek a solitary refuge in art, is also responsible for the fact that they have the highest suicide rate and the lowest life expectancy of any known “human” group.

Nevertheless, the Planetary Tourism Agency is conducting encouraging studies on the subcortical implantation of suicide blockers, similar to the blockers that xenoids implant in all humans who travel beyond Earth to prevent them from revealing what they’ve seen when they return.

Some behavioral specialists doubt the effectiveness of this method and suggest that depriving mestizos of the “relative escape” of suicide could result not only in the total collapse of their own psyches, but might also place their masters or purchasers in great danger. Unable to take their own lives, they might become highly aggressive toward others, seeking death by any means.

Despite these objections, which really come from a few isolated voices, the Agency is confident that this new technology will eliminate that deplorable problem forever and that it will no longer have to face claims for damages from xenoids who have seen the mestizos they paid so much for destroy themselves, without their being able to do anything about it...

“Being on top of game today. There being much audience,” Ettubrute said on entering the tent, speaking in the hoarse rattle that was his voice. Then he added, standing next to Moy, who was adjusting the equipment for the umpteenth time, “Not needing more checking... Me having done it two times already.”

“I’ll be on the top of my game, don’t you worry. And let me make one thing clear: I’ll check it a thousand times if I feel like it; it’s my life on the line—not yours, Bruiser,” Moy grumbled without looking up.

The Colossaur growled, more out of habit than because he was actually offended. And it was a matter of habit: from the first, it had bothered him a lot every time the human called him Bruiser.

By the standards of his race, Ettubrute was small and weak. That’s why he’d become an art agent. Like all professions that don’t call for physical strength, dexterity, or aggression, the art business was held in low esteem by the natives of Colossa. The only honorable, ideal jobs for a “normal” Colossaur were bodyguard, law enforcement officer, or soldier. Ettubrute was a poor oddball, to his fellows.

The funny part was that Moy didn’t call him Bruiser to mock him. The “weak” Colossaur who was his agent had a natural armor of bony reddish plates that few weapons could penetrate, and he stood nearly ten feet tall by five wide. Maybe he was a yard short and a hundred pounds too light to be normal-sized for his race... but he was way more than strong enough to beat any human into a pulp with a single blow from his arm, as thick as Moy’s thigh.

“Being better if all turning out better today than ever. If you failing, contract ending.” The Colossaur made a threatening gesture with his enormous tridactyl hand. “Not even earning returning ticket.” He turned and stalked out so violently that the tent’s thin, tough walls of synplast vibrated and nearly shattered.

“Idiot,” Moy muttered, but only after the xenoid’s heavy footsteps had faded away outside. Colossaurs had a keen sense of hearing, and they could be very spiteful.

What he was afraid of wasn’t Ettubrute’s armored fists and huge muscles—the Colossaur would never dare smash him. He was the goose that laid the golden egg, the Colossaur’s best investment.

What truly terrified him was what his agent could do with his earnings, according to that one-sided contract he’d been forced to sign as a sine qua non for that ticket off Earth. Some of its clauses would literally make him Ettubrute’s slave if the xenoid ever decided to put them into effect. And the worst of it was that, since Moy had voluntarily signed it with his fingerprints, voice print, and retinal ID, he had no legal standing to lodge a complaint.

Luckily, you might say that something like a... friendship had developed between him and his agent. Though that was too grand a word to describe any relationship between a xenoid and a human.

Even so, if Ettubrute ever wanted to hurt him...

Better not even go there.

“I’m trapped, trapped, trap-trap-trapped,” he hummed, a habit he’d picked up through months of relative isolation. How long had it been since he’d laid eyes on another human face? Months. Since Kandria, on Colossa. And not even all human; she’d been half Centaurian...

His own face had even started looking weird to him in the mirror. Well, naturally, after seeing so many mugs covered with hair, or scales, or feathers, or stuff that was just indescribable, all up and down the galaxy.

“Didn’t you want to see other worlds, kid? Be careful what you wish for. Tell ’em you don’t want soup, they’ll give you three bowls; tell ’em you do, they’ll give you three hundred. To make you to stop wanting it,” he thought sarcastically. “Only pity is, I’ll never be able to tell anybody about it. I’ve seen so many things...”

His tour with Ettubrute had put him in contact with beings and places you never heard anybody mention on Earth. Some amazing, some terrifying. Beings any biologist or sociologist on Earth would have given ten years of their lives just to meet.

The morlacks of Betelgeuse, with their phosphorescent hides. The two-headed birds of Arcturus. The marsupials of Algol, with that natural teleportation. A hundred other races. The cosmos was a lot bigger than they ever supposed on Earth, and it held more beings that they’d ever imagined.

Beings he could never talk about: the laws of the galaxy kept strict control of the flow of scientific and technological information that was permitted to the “backward” races. For instance, Homo sapiens. And when he signed his contract, Moy knew that his memory would be blocked before he could return to Earth. To preserve the anonymity of races that didn’t want Homo sapiens to know about them. To keep him from telling anyone about his experiences. A basic precaution to keep Earthlings from getting their hands on information and technologies that they weren’t capable of using “rationally” yet.

“The important thing is what I’ve experienced and what I can remember, even if I can’t talk about it,” he muttered. “Lucky thing I never went to Auya...”

He stopped recalibrating the nanomanipulators for a moment and glanced outside the tent, over his shoulder. The blue, red, and black triple-diamond hologram rotated slowly, floating over the tallest buildings on the plaza. The Auyar symbol.

The wealthiest race in the galaxy. And the most protective of its privacy. Nobody knew what they really looked like. Nobody knew the location of their worlds. Those who visited them always got their memories completely erased....

Or they got death.

He stared at the triple diamond for several seconds, like a defenseless bird peering into the hypnotic eyes of a cobra. The Auyars paid really well. Better than anyone. A contract from them could make him rich forever. But at a price: being left with a mind as blank as a newborn child’s. Stripped of the only true wealth he had managed to amass in his not-very-long life: his memory.

Moy trembled and tore his gaze from the triple diamond with an almost physical effort. “I should think about something else or I won’t be able to do anything today,” he mumbled, feeling beads of sweat slide down his forehead. “It’d be so nice right now to take a hit...”

A hit, a hit...
No
.

Shouldn’t even think of it.

Telecrack had nearly scrambled his brain. Ettubrute had sworn he’d tear him to pieces if he caught him using it again, after all it had cost to rehab him. And the worst thing about Colossaurs was that they always made good on their promises.

“It was all his fault... He shouldn’t have let me feel so lonely,” Moy grumbled bitterly. “I had to find company in the tele—”

He gulped. Just mentioning the drug and remembering the incomparable feeling as it entered his veins had set him to trembling. He had to lean against a corner of the tent to keep from tottering over.

Of course it had been the Colossaur’s fault.

Why hadn’t he ever told him that telecrack’s supposed ability to grant you telepathic powers was all a fake? If he was his manager, why hadn’t he helped him manage his earnings better those first few months? Invest them, like he did himself?

Well, the truth was, the only thing Ettubrute could have done to keep him away from telecrack and the other easy pleasures would have been to forbid them outright. But Moy had been so eager to have credits and spend them however he wanted, maybe that wouldn’t have worked either...

“It’s hard to learn from somebody else’s veins,” he muttered, smiling.

With a sad smile, he recalled the consumerist frenzy of his early months. Amazed by the utter novelty of his performance, the xenoids were perfectly happy to lavish their credits on him. And he was perfectly delighted to squander them.

Everything he’d ever yearned for on Earth but had never had. Everything he thought of as a symbol of status, of power, of wealth. Expensive clothes. Exotic food. Sensuous Cetian hetaerae. He bought gifts for his whole family and sent them by teletransport. A condominium in the most expensive neighborhood. Credits, credits… And, finally, telecrack.

The excuse he gave himself for trying it was pitifully trite. It went something like this: after a certain point every creative artist has to develop his parapsychological faculties if he wants to keep going further. What great performances he could have created if he could read the audience’s mind! The perfect, divine feedback loop...

“Ha,” Moy laughed drily. “The divine zilch.”

Deep down inside, he’d always guessed that telecrack was a fraud. Turning a human being into a temporary telepath was ridiculous, impossible. What he found attractive about the drug wasn’t so much its dubious effects as its ability to create permanent addiction. And the brain damage it could cause as a side effect. Playing with death...

Hits and more hits. Russian roulette by drug.

Telecrack, even off Earth, was an expensive drug.

He spent thousands and thousands to fill his veins with venom.

Until one day Ettubrute, tired of bearing witness to his self-destruction, forcibly locked him up in a detox center. Moy was barely a shadow of a man, down to ninety wretched pounds and lucky he could even breathe.

They took care of him at the center. Real good care.

They freed him from his addiction forever.

Well, they were supposed to. That’s what they were there for.

The incredible thing was, they did it in just eight days.

Eight days during which he came to know all the colors and flavors of hell. It had been bad. Real bad.

Knowing that was more than enough.

He didn’t want to remember the details... Or, he couldn’t. The Auyars weren’t the only ones who could erase memories.

He got out, restored to health, having put on sixty pounds and gotten back almost all of his old self-control. Having gained total respect for xenoid medicine, which had done the miraculous and freed him from a drug that nobody on Earth ever escaped.

And a feeling of gratitude mixed with resentment toward Ettubrute. He’d saved his life, true... But he charged the full cost of the treatment to Moy’s account.

It was only once he’d combed through his finances that he understood how much money he had wasted. Between the detox center’s bill (effective treatment was expensive anywhere in the galaxy) and what he had spent on telecrack, he owed the Colossaur nearly half a million. And the worst of it was, his agent was close to washing his hands of the whole business and suing him for breach of contract. Leaving him stranded in a foreign world, without a credit... It would have been almost like murdering him.

It had taken begging, pleading, and invoking the “old friendship” between them — and a promise to pay off his debt in full, plus fifty percent — to get Ettubrute to loan him enough to be able to eat and fix up the equipment for his performance piece. The bare minimum he needed to start over. From zero...

The Colossaur had bled him with the skill of a parasite. And the ironic thing was, he was still supposed to be grateful to him for agreeing to keep on bleeding him for a while.

Naturally, he’d had to sell his tailor-made clothes and his luxury condo and give up the expensive whores and the exotic food. But, lesson learned. Once and for all.

“And here I am, in the thick of it,” he sighed. At least he’d been strong enough not to give up. He’d already lived it up enough. Maybe too much. He knew everything you could do with money. And he knew he would be able to earn more. Next time would be different.

At least there’d be a next time.

He’d had to tighten his belt, the last few months... but he’d already practically covered his debt to the Colossaur. Before long, what he earned would be his again... minus the agent’s usual twenty-five percent.

“Leech,” he muttered, but without real anger. Yes, it was an exorbitant percentage. No xenoid artist turned over more than ten percent to his agent. But he was human, a terrestrial... Trash, that is. And he could never give enough thanks to his good luck and to Ettubrute for allowing him a chance to leave the cultural and financial hole-in-the-wall that was Earth.

There were thousands of human artists who would envy his situation, that he was sure of. Many artists, better and more original than him, would have sold their souls to the devil just to get out.

He thought with satisfaction about his upcoming triumphal return visit, with enough credits to buy a whole city on Earth. And enough firsthand experience of xenoid art to put his own work light-years ahead of any competitor’s, in concept, theory, and development.

They could stop him from talking about what he’d seen, but they couldn’t stop those experiences from seeping into his art...

He had nothing to complain about. It could have been a lot worse. Ettubrute, after all, was almost his friend.

He thought again about Kandria, that holoprojection artist he had met on Colossa. A beautiful mestizo woman, half-human, half-Centaurian, truly talented. Some of her “Multisymphonies” were genuinely good. And the girl was just fantastic at making love. Too bad they’d barely had two weeks together. Moy wouldn’t have complained about getting involved in a longer and more serious relationship with her. Though Kandria’s Centaurian agent might have.

Her agent was her own father. And even though she swore to Moy a thousand times that the blue-skinned humanoid truly loved her, even a blind man could tell that her father’s supposed “filial love” was nothing more than a well-planned maneuver to make tons of money off his bastard daughter’s talent. Enough money to get his world’s rigid society to pardon him for the sin of mixing his blood with a species as inferior as Homo sapiens.

The affection and considerateness Kandria’s father showed her in public were too exaggerated to be real. Especially coming from a member of a race as cold and distant as the Centaurians. People said they had icicles for hearts and computers for brains. And in Moy’s opinion, that was an understatement.

But he never commented on it. If it made the poor girl happy to believe her daddy loved her, he wasn’t going to break the illusion. At least not while he was enjoying her splendid body every night.

He recalled those meetings with another sigh. Kandria... Her skin, that gorgeous turquoise hue, so flexible, her huge eyes. Her passion... Kandria was a magnificent example of what Ettubrute would cynically call “optimal utilization of installed capacities.” Which were few: like almost all hybrids, she was congenitally sterile. The funny part was how, without a vagina or functioning ovaries, she could show such sexual enthusiasm...