A Planet for Rent (21 page)

The days when we thought the future belonged to us are over. Now we’re not even masters of our present day, and the glories of the past aren’t enough to live on.

Artists, athletes, scientists... every human who has some physical or intellectual talent dreams of using it as a ticket from Earth and toward making their way in the galaxy. Even if they have to swallow their pride and drink the bitter potion of exile and humiliation in lands of other races.

Women dream of being beautiful and brazen enough to become social workers and find a xenoid who will take them away from their home world forever. Some men do, too.

And the most desperate ones, the ones who aren’t young or beautiful and don’t know how to do anything, the ones who see no other way out, take the risk of playing Russian roulette in space. They’d rather face the infinitude of the cosmos in their homemade ships and float, frozen, perhaps in an eternal dream of arriving some day at some other, better, place.

She dreams of him,
He dreams of going far away...

That’s from the same song. Not the same “him,” of course.

The first “him” is you xenoids. The second “him” is us.

What sort of future can a planet have when its residents dream only of ceasing to reside there?

Exodus. Escape. Today that is every human’s obsession. Running away, forever if at all possible, from the parched, subjugated, defeated, sterile, sick Earth. And you people, the conquering xenoids, the masters of the galaxy, are the virus behind this sickness.

And still you ask me why I came down with it!

“Why do you think we will find you a suitable candidate for us to confer our honorary citizenship upon, please?”

When a man is going to break with his entire past in order to begin a new life, he has to be very careful in selecting the where, the how, and the when. And small details sometimes take on huge importance.

I picked you for reasons of... biological affinity. Neither the Colossaurs nor the grodos are humanoids. My life among them would be much harder than among you people, or the Centaurians. And you are more beautiful, at least...

Oh, I have no illusions of being successful with your exquisite representatives of the female sex. I have already told you that I am not considered handsome even among my own people, and I know full well that the only thing that makes me exceptional, my brain, is something that no females of any race place much value on... at least, not at first sight.

I actually don’t really know why... Maybe there was some inherently masochistic element. I was always a pariah, someone apart, who participated in the game but knew he didn’t belong there. The moments when I was emotionally happy were the ones when I forgot such a thing... temporarily. And, living here in Ningando, amidst so much beauty, I don’t think I could ever forget it.

That sounds like a strange reason, I guess. The desire to feel that you are the only unblessed person in paradise...

And, also, I won’t deny it, I picked you because I’m a hopeless romantic. I suppose there must be thousands of slave brothels in this city, and perhaps hundreds of Cauldars. But I’ll check them out, one by one if need be. In spite of it all, I have hopes of finding Yleka, alive. I’m sure she’ll remember me... Perhaps we’ll get a second chance.

Don’t you think we deserve it?

“Are you certain that no other Earth scientist has heard of this... discovery of yours, please?”

I know perfectly well that the policy on Tau Ceti is not to grant citizenship to every human who comes here begging on his knees for it.

But I believe that you will make an exception for me...

I’m aware of the technoscience quarantine laws that have caused terrestrial science and technology to lag so far behind. I fully understand their true purpose, underneath all the altruistic demagoguery: to knock us out of the competition. To guarantee that we will eternally be a market, not a producer. A buyer, not a seller. Dependent, in a word. To sideline us in the galactic struggle for power.

They don’t allow us know the mechanics of controlled thermonuclear fusion, or how antigrav systems work, or the theory of hyperspace flight...

Especially that last one. Because... can you imagine what would happen to the delicate balance among the races if humans suddenly developed an instantaneous transport system that works across the universe? The chaos that would be unleashed if all the hyperspace shops that xenoids boast were suddenly rendered obsolete?

I have created such a system. Based on classical teletransportation, of course... but capable of transferring a virtually infinite mass between two points separated by galactic distances.

It does not require astronomical amounts of energy or special technical knowledge for installation. It does not even need a corresponding piece of equipment at the point of arrival, unlike systems currently in use. Of course you’d need one to return... but you could send it by teletransport, too. The system is, pardon my immodesty, simply brilliant. Or brilliantly simple, if you prefer the sound of that.

And if you do not grant me Cetian citizenship, I will publish all the details of my discovery.

Imagine every Earthling building his own galactic teletransport booth, and my race spreading across all your worlds like the plague you’ve always tried to contain.

I see that you’re smiling... Perhaps you are thinking that simply wiping my memory clean, or, if worse comes to worst, physically eliminating me will easily put an end to that possibility. Sorry, but I’ve already thought of that.

At a secret and secure location in my lab at the Center—and at five other sites, just in case—I have left computers with all the data stored in their memory. Each is connected to the holonet. If I return, or if I disappear; if my name or fingerprints or retinal scan show up on any list of passengers to Earth, or if I simply fail to send a specific signal each month, everyone will learn of my invention.

I suppose you could consider this blackmail. But at the same time... don’t you think that is more than sufficient reason to declare me suitable for becoming an honorary citizen of Tau Ceti right away?

“Do you consider yourself a mentally sane individual, please?”

My galactic teletransport system is really very simple. But it is based on a very original set of principles and theories, which run diametrically counter to the concepts that advanced science currently employs on Earth. This fact is a logical consequence of my characteristic mental model of reasoning...

As I have mentioned, I am one of that odd class of mental freaks that some call “idiot savants,” and others, such as Hermann and Sigimer, much more euphemistically call “natural geniuses.”

My emotional and social activity is almost entirely atrophied in favor of the disproportionate development of my logic, intuition, and memory skills. I have limitations, of course. For example, you will have noticed that my capacity for abstract thinking is merely... average. Although I have recently been getting better and better at expressing my thoughts in the abstruse system of physical and mathematical formulae that seem to be the lingua franca of science, I am still more comfortable working with physical objects or analogies than with hypotheses. My mind works better with images than with words or concepts. I’m a born empiricist, not a theorist. That was what allowed me to make my... discovery.

Of course, I also have a photographic memory... which means that I may have given you the impression of having a much greater facility for social analysis than I actually do. That was a purely involuntary effect; I merely repeated verbatim a few analyses of the situation on Earth that have fallen into my hands by means I would prefer not to mention—but whose points of view I share one hundred percent, though I admit that I would never be able to draw such conclusions on my own.

I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve no doubt caused you. Constantly drawing on my automatic memory predisposes me towards a bit of logorrhea and incoherence... towards digressing and answering questions that I haven’t been asked yet, or that I was asked long ago.

My mother always told me that I had all the answers. That my real problem was finding the questions that went with them.

Perhaps that is the dilemma of man and of all intelligent life.

But enough of cheap, sentimental philosophy. With regard to your question, specifically, I think that from a statistical point of view it would be simply impossible for another human being to have reached the same discovery at the same time as me.

Absolutely not.

^^^^^^

“Fine... The assessment interview has concluded. Alex Gens Smith, you have been determined suitable for receiving honorary Cetian citizenship. Our colleagues will inform the rest of your delegation of this decision. Your personal belongings will soon be transferred from the accommodations reserved for humans where you have been staying. An official request will be sent to Earth asking to have any personal objects you wish to keep immediately sent to you. Including your recordings of Joanman Uelser Rat. You will be provided with all the information you will have to learn in order to adjust as quickly as possible to life in our society.

“Welcome to Ningando, Alex.

“Forgive my previous coldness. We are no Centaurians, but that is our... official attitude in cases such as yours.

“Now, speaking unofficially, I’d like to pass on some information to you that you are obviously unaware of... and to ask you a question of a more... private nature.

“Your ‘discovery’ of galactic teletransportation was made eight years ago by us—the xenoids. It is currently in the experimental, pilot project phase. If it hasn’t been widely deployed yet, that is because, as you inferred, it will drastically change the entire system of transportation lines across the galaxy, rendering the huge investments of various races in the hyperspace transport fleet useless and obsolete.

“Three years ago, another human physicist, Dr. Dien Lin Chuan of the University of Beijing—perhaps you have heard of him—appeared before our Centaurian colleagues
with the same discovery
. And he filed a request identical to yours. I am authorized to inform you that Dien Ling Chuan is currently a Centaurian citizen with full rights...

“My question is: Are you
fully aware
of the fact that this interview has concluded favorably for you
exclusively
because it is in the interest of the races you call xenoid to prevent the species to which you belong from having any chance of technological development?”

^^^^^^

Madness is very relative, don’t you think?

An anonymous ancient Arabic poet and philosopher once said, “In this mad world, the greatest madness is to claim to be sane.”

I have also heard it said that madness is any behavior or way of thinking that diverges from what is “normal.”

My life can’t be considered very “normal,” I don’t think. And every man thinks as he has lived.

So, according to both these views, I must be crazy... and I don’t care. On the contrary, I’m proud of it.

^^^^^^

“I would like to understand you, Alex, sincerely. You are a very peculiar individual. In all my years of experience here in the Bureau of Human Affairs, I have never met a terrestrial like you.

“Pardon me if my curiosity seems excessive. I am not a government official all the time. I also have my family, my hobbies... and one of them is human nature.

“But, tell me, Alex... Don’t you feel like... like a deserter? Like a traitor to your race and to your planet?”

^^^^^^

Yes, I am
fully aware
...

But what am I supposed to do about it?

A person has to live, right?

October 1, 1998.

Some sociologists feel that the best sign of a culture’s level of civilization is how much distance it puts between itself and its own excrement.

Some ecologists feel that the best sign of a culture’s level of civilization is how well it recycles its own excrement.

Some individuals feel that the best sign of a culture’s level of civilization is how easily the excrement it produces can be put to good use.

Those people are divers.

There’s nothing new about them.

They didn’t first appear with Contact.

They seem to have always existed: whether among Sumerians and Egyptians, or among Greeks and Romans, there have always been human beings who live from putting to good use (that is, more or less recycling) the garbage that other human beings produce.

They’ve also been called ragpickers, junkmen, and by many other names. It is one of the world’s oldest professions (or cults, as some term it).

The truth is, they don’t make their living from trash but from stuff that is still useful or easily mended, but that other people have thrown away as if it were trash because they don’t have the savings mentality, or the right skills, or the time.

All modern civilizations, swept up as they are in the principle of “use it and toss it,” squander huge quantities of labor in the form of objects that still almost work. But it’s easier and cheaper to manufacture new stuff than fix the old. Even when the new stuff is imported from stars hundreds of light-years away, as is the case for Earth.

Divers, of course, don’t see things this way.

Maybe that’s why the Earth is now full of divers.

They dive into garbage containers, searching for pieces of wood, bits of rare metals, mechanical parts, cybernetic circuit boards that have stopped working, discarded fragments of robotic systems. Almost everything interests them.

They eat the food and wear the clothes that other, more scrupulous humans throw away. It’s good enough for them.

They look like beings from another world: lost in thought, oblivious to the gangs of kids making fun of the way they smell and the rags they wear. Focused on the difficult art of distinguishing between real trash and what can still be used. Some mutter strange chants while their fingers rummage skillfully through the containers, picking out a few things and leaving the rest according to criteria that they alone know. Until they move on, at their slow pace, with all their bags of treasure, to find another goldmine in the guise of a pile of trash, where again they will recover a wealth of wonders.

There are two main types of divers.

The first are those who sell their finds to small-scale raw material recyclers, who are merely divers who’ve gone into the wholesale business and have therefore climbed up a step on the pyramid of the garbage-heap’s dead ecology.

These are the divers who still understand the meaning of money. Sometimes they live in tiny apartments, watch holonet programs on small holoscreens, follow Voxl games... They still have one foot in the world, even if they mumble about their past glories and think of an impossible tomorrow. People can still understand them. The work they do, though repulsive and poorly paid, is a job.

The other divers are very different.

They never sell anything to the recyclers. They prefer to keep their finds. And then, in their refuges under bridges or in dark alleys, they assemble, tie, solder, rejoin parts of old computers with bits of rusty old tubing, pieces of rocket casings with upholstery ripped from old aerobuses. They always smile while they work, as if they can see past the discards that they handle so lovingly. They sweat and toil for hours and hours, their eyes gleaming with hope, and at the end they carefully push the results of their efforts aside and start over again on a new assemblage.

No one knows whether they believe they are creating art. Some art dealers have tried to sell these divers’ exotic, chaotic contraptions as “installations,” but the sophisticated xenoid public finds trash incompatible with the concept of art. End of story.

No one knows whether they believe their strange Frankenstein creatures will work somehow, some day. Or what they might expect them to do. Perhaps be vengeance machines, removing the xenoids from Earth forever and returning it to humans. Or perhaps they would simply destroy all civilization, including human civilization, in order to get rid of all the trash and shame and let some other species—primate or otherwise—start over from scratch. Or maybe they’re hoping that their monstrosities will achieve such a major breakthrough for Earth’s stunted technology that xenoid domination will fall before man’s intellectual dynamism once and for all.

No one knows... and very few wish to find out. Or have time for all this. There are much more important things to do. Such as making money. Such as surviving.

And they keep on going, tirelessly joining fragments, muttering their incomprehensible chants, forgotten by the world.

From time to time a very old one disappears. Simply isn’t seen around anymore, and it’s almost as if he had returned to the bosom of his beloved trash pile. But other, younger ones always come along to take his place. Their skin less wrinkled, their gums more full of teeth, but the same lost stare in their rarely bright eyes.

Older people walk past them and sadly shake their heads. Sometimes they stop mischievous kids from beating them and stealing their “treasures,” and they mumble, “poor crazy people!” They pretend that they don’t see the divers, but they have strange expressions on their faces.

Could it be because they somehow realize the divers possess something that they themselves have already lost forever?