A Planet for Rent (3 page)

Armored, with four slender but incredibly strong arms and another four matching legs, grodos were rapid fighters, whose strength was second only to that of the massive Colossaurs, and not by much. Besides, they had that stinger, good for injecting their lethal venom into their victims.

And for doing other things, as Buca knew all too well...

The inner ring of the astroport was empty of any sort of cyberaddict or social worker. Only travelers had access to this zone.

Through the large windows you could see the runway with the shuttles waiting in an orderly line, broken here and there by the occasional squat, aerodynamic suborbital patrol ship.

Buca smiled, amused: It appeared that, despite all of Planetary Security’s boasts about “maintaining control,” the problem of illegal departures from the planet kept getting more and more serious. They’d had to buy so many of these ships from the xenoids to control the fugitives that their own astroports weren’t enough to serve them all.

Buca had never entered an astroport’s last ring before. The simple fact that she was able to walk through these corridors was almost a guarantee that Selshaliman would make good on his promise. That before you knew it, she would be boarding the shuttle, and then the hypership, leaving Earth. Forever.

Nostalgia invaded her, with its troop of memories.

She remembered her birth on the small island whose name she would rather forget. Her mother, happy to finally have the daughter she had wanted, baptizing her with the name María Elena. Her father, a bearded astronaut in the satellite-hunting patrol, only an occasional presence at home, between one trip and the next. She remembered her childhood, free of poverty, free of dependence on Social Assistance, believing that Planetary Security agents existed only to protect her. Believing in terrestrial hospitality and the goodness of xenoids... And her mother, looking at her and sighing, as if to say, “Play and enjoy life now... There will be plenty of time for suffering later.”

And was there ever.

But nobody could take those years of happiness away from her.

Later, everything came all at once. When she was ten, she discovered the lie of the Galactic Protectorate, the cruelty of the Ultimatum, what xenoids really were. Her birthday present was a one-week trip to Hawaii, all first-class. They even went to the astroport to take the suborbital shuttle. She loved it! Never suspecting that it would be the last time her whole family would be together. Her mother and father cried the whole time, whenever they thought she wasn’t looking. They were hugging all the time, and Buca couldn’t understand why.

Until, after they had been sitting for hours in the cosmodrome waiting area, it was officials from Social Assistance who came to pick her up. And she knew she would never see her parents again.

Driven to the brink by their mounting debts, they had sold themselves for life to Body Spares. In return for that farewell trip, and for a clause guaranteeing room and board for their daughter until she turned fifteen. And also for canceling the debt she otherwise would have had to pay in her parents’ place, which would have made her a lifelong slave of the Planetary Tourism Agency.

She never forgave them.

Boarding-school hell, surrounded by kids rescued from the streets and marked for a life of crime almost from birth. A happy and sheltered childhood was a handicap there. Common girls, who had grown up keeping their distance from the turf wars between the Yakuza and the Mafia and making fun of the xenoids who prowled for healthy young native girls, had a mean streak that she lacked. They were as strong and aggressive as wild animals, and they hated and envied her for not being one of them. For being good-looking and having manners, for being tall and strong-boned. They hated her and they let her know it. Making fun of her. Humiliating her. Hitting her.

It was hard. But she adapted. Learned. Toughened up. So when the money that her parents (by then long dead, both driven insane) had gotten from Body Spares ran out, she ran away from boarding school rather than let other people decide what to do with her. She already knew what she wanted: to leave Earth, no matter the cost. She had no talent for art or sports, and nothing beyond basic education. And she sure wasn’t going to risk her life on a wild kamikaze attempt at an unlawful space launch.

She knew what the surest way was to carry out her plan: become a freelance social worker and get a xenoid to take her. Galactic tourists really seemed to appreciate the sweetness and good cheer of human females, and especially their ability to pretend that their relationships were not mercenary. As for herself... She had ceased to be a virgin and innocent years ago. She was beautiful, cheeky, brave, and eager to get by. And utterly enraged at the world.

Without documents you could never become an authorized social worker. One of those who turn over part of their earnings to the Planetary Tourism Agency and in exchange get protection: a minimum salary, guaranteed retirement, and free medical care. Nor did she want any of that. Her way was to get by on her own or perish.

At first it seemed she wouldn’t make it. Her first client, a deceptively friendly Centaurian, insisted on the full package. In his hotel room. And she, being treated like a lady for the first time in her life, naïvely agreed...

It was pretty nice at first. She had a few orgasms. But the xenoid kept going and going... and the act became a torture session that went on for hours and hours. She argued, kicked, and clawed, trying to get away, to no avail; the Centaurian was much stronger than she was. She screamed, crazy with pain, pleading for help... but the hotel rooms were soundproof, or else the human employees were too used to the screams of social workers. Nobody came.

The interminable and sadistic coupling finally made her faint. She ended up with her innards swollen, turned to jelly, aching for days. The worst of it was that the bastard took advantage of her unconsciousness not only to sneak off without paying but to steal what little she had saved, too. And he didn’t even pay the hotel bill.

On another occasion she thought a particularly rank Colossaur had infected her with the incurable magenta illness, and she came close to killing herself...

But gradually she learned the tricks of the trade. After being robbed three times by amateur thieves, she contacted the pros to make sure her back was covered. Protection was expensive, but it worked. They never cornered her in a dark alley again. Or made her turn over her hard-earned wages at the point of a vibroblade. Or forced her to give herself up to enliven the night for her assailants.

Now she had triumphed. If she wished, she could return anytime and walk haughtily through the seedy byways where she was once nearly a slave. If she wanted. But she planned never to return.

A teletransport booth opened right in front of her face, startling her. A grodo insectoid emerged in a gust of cold air. Apparently coming from some city in the far north.

She looked with curiosity at the empty booth. She’d never seen one so close, much less used one. They were colossally expensive. Completely beyond the reach of simple freelance social workers, such as she had been up until now.

It was time she started getting used to them. All the xenoids used them when they were in a rush. You got in, a flash of disintegration... and you showed up, with another flash, in a similar booth thousands of miles away.

They weren’t perfect, however. You could only use them to get around on the same planet, and even so, they made small and regrettable mistakes on rare occasions. Very rare occasions, truth be told. For example, the grodos’ private network had never had one of the accidents that periodically filled the news holovideos.

The Planetary Tourism Agency always paid compensation to the family members of the unlucky victims of dematerialization, giving the evergreen excuse that on Earth they didn’t have enough experience managing such advanced equipment... because extraterrestrial technicians were reluctant to train human crews to run teleport booths. Maybe there was a bit of truth in that. Surely newly trained human teletransport specialists would pull every string and try every trick to get off the planet as fast as they could. Like any sensible person who had any skill that xenoids might value. Artists, scientists, athletes—they all ran from their birth world as soon as the dazzling glare of extraterrestrial credits made them understand where true happiness could be found.

Of course, they never stopped shooting their mouths off about Liberating the Earth, Fighting for the Rights of the Human Race, and other such hot-air slogans. Buca despised them. It was so easy to talk about ideals from the outside, on a full stomach. And so hypocritical. She’d never make fun of the people who stayed behind on Earth, and she’d never “show solidarity with their just struggle”....

Blam... Blam... Blam
...

Three isolated bangs.

Then the too-familiar rattle of small-caliber automatic arms.

Buca was stretched out on the ground before she understood what was happening. Her reflexes had betrayed her; you’d never survive in the suburbs if you insisted on standing after you heard shots fired. A little annoyed over her broken dignity, she watched.

The Planetary Security men were cornering a lone terrorist. He was jumping from column to column with incredible agility, evading them and firing a prehistoric repeating rifle. Doubtless he had taken an enormous dose of feline analogue, a non-addictive military drug that endowed any human with the tremendous agility and fast reflexes of cats.

The Xenophobe Union for Earthling Liberation guys often used it during their commando operations. The side effects were devastating exhaustion and depression, which left you totally defenseless. But a new dose would eliminate those effects. You could keep up the cycle indefinitely, or until you perished, all your physical and mental reserves drained, but active to the last second.

Beaten by numerical superiority and better arms, the man who thought he was a cat fell, hit point-blank by the Security agents’ bursts of fire. They kept on firing until unrecognizable remains were all that was left of the body. The feline analogue also made you incredibly resistant to wounds. More than one agent had discovered in the flesh that a terrorist with a dozen shots to the chest could still open his belly with one blow.

When the astroport clean-up people picked up what was left of the body and traffic returned to normal, Buca got up and glanced around, looking for Selshaliman. She suspected a last-minute betrayal. That would have been the height of irony, to leave her stranded there in the middle of the astroport...

“Your identification, please,” the Planetary Security agent’s voice resounded behind her with a mix of courtesy and authority. The barrel of a gun, still hot, poked insistently at her shoulder.

Buca turned around, infuriated: if he had ruined her dress, that idiot would see...

“I thought freelancers weren’t allowed in here.” There was disdain in the voice that emerged from beneath the helmet covering the agent’s features. Any courtesy had disappeared. “Pretty dress... Too bad a monkey’s still a monkey, even in a silk dress. Come along with me, sweetheart. You and me are going to go clear up a few things in private... And you’d better be very nice to me if you don’t want me to accuse you of being that poor moron’s accomplice.” He pointed with his minimachine gun at the pile of scraps that his buddies had turned the terrorist into.

“Wait, you’re making a mistake, I came here with...” Buca tried to explain, trembling with fear and rage at once. That was the usual deal the Planetary Security guys offered women in her profession: sex for impunity. Didn’t she know it... But how had he recognized her in spite of her super-expensive dress? She suddenly felt as naked and vulnerable as when she used to go around the other astroport dressed only in a translucent jacket and a scanty fluorescent loincloth.

“I don’t care who you came with. You’re going with me, princess,” he impatiently interrupted her. And he stuck out his gloved hand to grab her brusquely by the arm.

Buca closed her eyes and cringed, like a child waiting for his father’s belt to strike. Where had Selshaliman gone? Was it all just a dream? She should have suspected; it was too good to be real, for it to be happening to her...

Zasss...

The sound, right next to her, like a whip. Something fell, over there.

The gloved hand had never touched her. She opened her eyes.

Selshaliman was at her side, antennas up and the light reflecting wonderfully off his faceted eyes. He had never looked so beautiful to her before. The Planetary Security agent, sitting on the floor several yards off, rubbed his aching chest.

“Are you all right, Buca? Did he hurt you?” the insectoid’s vocal synthesizer chirped.

“Believe me, we are very sorry for this... incident. She is perfectly fine. My man didn’t even touch her. We didn’t know that she was with you...” The voice of another Planetary Security man, a sergeant to judge by his stripes, sounded conciliatory. “To make up for your trouble, we’ll give you top priority on the shuttle...”

“You had better do so. Come, Buca,” Selshaliman pronounced majestically, barely touching her. Buca leaned on him, trusting and deeply moved. At that moment she could even have loved him.

He’d hit a Planetary Security guy just to protect her! The sergeant and his man were nothing but trash to a tourist, especially a grodo... but it was the gesture that counted. She walked on Selshaliman’s arm, feeling on top of the world.

But she didn’t move away fast enough to avoid hearing what the sergeant said while he was helping his buddy back to his feet. Or maybe he said it so loud on purpose:

“Come on, to your feet, stupid... He hit you hard, but your armor absorbed it well enough. And you know what? You deserved it for being an idiot. For not paying better attention. That’s not any old social worker... The grodo has picked her; she’s going to be incubated, and that makes her a thousand times more valuable than you or me, or a hundred of us.”

Buca didn’t want to hear more. But Selshaliman’s measured pace forced her to hear the rest, too. The expert sergeant explaining things to the rookie. What she had known from the beginning. What she’d rather not remember.