A Planet for Rent (2 page)

Then her lips twisted into a bitter smile and she looked at Selshaliman with barely concealed hatred.

There was also the other past.

The one described in elementary school interactive texts. One of the few things the Planetary Tourism Agency handed out free to every inhabitant on the planet.

A relatively recent past. When people were already traveling to the cosmos in primitive ships, but many of them still refused to believe in xenoids. When Earth had different countries and lots of tongues instead of the one unified Planetary language. Cattle, crops, fish, and game in abundance, but also plenty of hungry people. When civilization was always on the verge of collapse. Because of nuclear war, pollution, the demographic explosion, or all of it together.

But Contact happened.

The minds of the galaxy had been keeping an eye on humans for thousands of years. Without interfering. Waiting until they were mature enough to be adopted by the great galactic family. But when the total destruction of Earth seemed inevitable, they broke their own rules and jumped in to stop it. Their huge ships landed in Paris, in Rome, in Tokyo, in New York. Their desire to help and their resources seemed endless...

Terrestrial leaders, jealously protective of their power in the presence of vastly superior minds and technologies, deemed this altruistic intervention an invasion. And their reaction was violent. Arguing that offense was the best defense, they sounded the trumpets and shouldered arms.

Nuclear arms.

The surprise attack caused a few atomic explosions, like the one that wiped out Old Paris. But there was no nuclear war. The xenoids prevented the rest of the missiles from going off, and then they revealed their full might. When they deployed the geophysical weapon, Africa disappeared beneath the waves. They gave one week’s warning, but the obsession with secrecy among the governments and the disbelief of the masses were the real reasons for the deplorable disaster. More than eighty million humans perished in a matter of hours. When it would have been so easy to evacuate them...

After that horrendous incident, the extraterrestrials delivered their famous Ultimatum: since the terrestrials were incapable of intelligent self-government or of using their natural resources rationally, from that moment on they would cease to be an independent culture. And so they entered the status of a Galactic Protectorate.

To reestablish the damaged ecological balance, the planet’s new masters instituted draconian measures: Zero use of fossil or nuclear fuel. Dismantling the great industrial and scientific centers. Zero demographic growth.

There were global protests, which were put down efficiently and bloodlessly. Total deaths: not even a quarter of a million.

Less than a century later, Earth was once again the natural paradise that had seen the birth of man. With practically all its non-green surface turned into a giant museum, tourism was the major (and almost the only) source of income for the planet and all its inhabitants. Tourism, controlled by the nearly omnipotent Planetary Tourism Agency, with huge investments of extraterrestrial capital and deep concern for the future of Homo sapiens. A brilliant future awaited human beings, under the benevolent tutelage of the galactic community, into which they would be accepted one not very distant day, with the rights of full membership...

At least, that was the official version.

Buca, like everybody else, knew that the truth was something else entirely.

If it were up to the xenoids, humans would never be a race with equal rights.

Xenoid altruism wasn’t what had motivated Contact. And it wasn’t the hope of saving humanity that had made them interfere, cutting off any possibility of the planet’s independent development at the root.

Jowe had explained the real motives to her. He knew something about Galactic Economics—one of the subjects most strictly forbidden by Planetary Security. You could study it in the secret cells of the clandestine Xenophobe Union for Earthling Liberation. No wonder they were persecuted. Or that he had been condemned to Body Spares just for suspicion of having links to them. Though, most likely, the Yakuza had played some part in the affair...

Jowe used to say that the whole galaxy was engulfed in a cruel war. Like all wars, it had offensives and counter-attacks, diversionary movements and tactical retreats. But this was commercial warfare: for new technologies, for markets, for clients, for cheap labor.

Mankind had been a loser in that conflict from the get-go. And as such, it was condemned to be a client, never a rival, not even potentially. Earth barely produced enough food, clothing, and medicine to satisfy a quarter of its own population. And what it manufactured was of such low quality that it couldn’t compete with the worst, cheapest products of xenoid technocracies. There was little use for earthly products except as folklore and tourist trinkets.

For commercial expediency, they turned the Earth into a souvenir-world—another of Jowe’s phrases, Buca recalled.

Right... Because, no matter what the ads said, Earth was no paradise. Getting by was a day-to-day struggle. For every person like her who lucked out, thousands more were left by the wayside. Magnificent people, many of them. Like Yleka. Like Jowe.

Buca was almost sure that the real reason Jowe was arrested and sentenced had nothing to do with the Xenophobe Union, but something else much more petty. Until they caught him, Jowe was a freelance “protector.” And one of the best; he raked it in. The protection racket was theoretically illegal, but it could be even more profitable than being a social worker. Riskier, too; if a freelancer got sloppy about paying off the Mafia, the Triads, or the Yakuza every month, tough luck. If Jowe gave her a half-price discount just two months after he started protecting her, only because he’d fallen in love with her beautiful eyes, maybe he’d been naïve enough to do the same for others. Too dangerous. Organized crime didn’t like it when other people gave away their money. The arm of the Yakuza was as long as Planetary Security’s... and they were tougher when punishing time came around.

Her conscience was clean. The truth of it was that she hadn’t tricked Jowe. He had set his own trap. The overly idealistic kid believed that sex, cuddles, and sweet talk meant she loved him, too... She didn’t force him to do it. He was just trying to do her a favor, relieve her debts. And since you weren’t supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth...

She had liked him, too, but... Love your neighbor as yourself. But not more than yourself. That was another motto of hers. Even though Jowe was one of the few men who had known how to treat her like a human being, not like a beautiful piece of meat, an expensive toy with holes for satisfying his sexual desires. He spoke to her mind, which he thought was sharp, though uneducated. He was tender and patient. Really... Not like Daniel, the super-tall Voxl player. The hometown hero, the smooth talker who, years ago, had figured out the right lies and tall tales to take away the trophy of her virginity...

Now she was always hearing Daniel’s name on the sports news. His rise had been meteoric; he must actually be a good player. They’d made him captain of Earth’s Voxl team, and in a few days he’d be defending the planet’s “honor,” playing against a visiting team from the League. Biggest sports event of the year, though the humans had never won it. Yes, Daniel Menéndez had achieved his dream. He was in first place. Jowe, on the other hand, was just another loser in the pile...

But she’d never forget that last look he gave her when Planetary Security came to take him away. A mute plea not to forget him. The leathery face of the sergeant who arrested him. The face of a man who knows that somebody’s got to do the dirty work, but that doesn’t mean he enjoys it. Who’s seen it all and doesn’t believe in anything anymore.

Jowe... Saying goodbye: kissing him, crying with him, hugging him... and something like a knot formed in her stomach.

She gulped. Yes, it had been a sign of weakness... but it was the least she could do for him. She never could have made it without him. Without what he had saved her in protection money, she still wouldn’t have saved up enough to buy the translucent leather dress that showed off her healthy animal body and her slender muscles to such advantage. And Selshaliman would never have noticed her at that party.

Getting picked by a grodo was one of the surest ways of leaving Earth... and one of the hardest. Other than luck, it required absolute health. Zero cosmetic or medical implants. Zero genetic or psychological disorders. Zero drug consumption, not even the soft stuff.

Even when Yleka made fun of her, she always kept faithfully to her daily exercise routine, and she detested the facile escape of artificial paradises. Chemical and electronic drugs went in and out of fashion. More and more expensive all the time, but always leaving a trail of incurable addicts in their wake. Telecrack yesterday, neurogames today, who knows what tomorrow. It was easier to replace one addiction with another than to recover.

Buca gave a pitying look to several boys hooked up to consoles. Neuroplayers. Isolated in the private worlds of their direct-access cortical implants. Rich kids, you could tell. By their tailor-made clothes and the fact that no burned-out street neuro would have access to the middle ring of an astroport. These guys had to have enough credits in their accounts to bribe the Planetary Security men. And to pay for hours, not just minutes, of time in play-cyberspace, where they could forget they were living on a planet with no future and a repulsive present.

Their philosophy was sound and darkly attractive: Reality is shit? Then run away from it. In the virtual world, time moved at a different pace. In it they could travel to planets they’d never see. In it they could be superheroes. Invulnerable Colossaurs, or beautiful, feline Cetians. Why risk real death by fighting with the morons of the Xenophobe Union for Earthling Liberation? In neurogames, they could enjoy a thousand synthetic deaths a day and liberate the Earth from the xenoid yoke a thousand times...

Convulsing with laughter every time they looked at each other, three authorized social workers passed by, swaying to the effects of what was no doubt one of the first times they had tried telecrack. Buca thought of Yleka. This is how it must start...

Telecrack was incurably addictive. Supposedly it heightened your telepathic potential, letting you establish temporary bonds of empathy, even exchange isolated thoughts with others. According to Jowe, that was all bunk. Human beings lacked telepathic receptors, and nothing could change that. The only effect of telecrack was to overcharge your neural circuits and cause hallucinations. Period.

Yleka used to take a dose before starting with each client. She said it “tuned her in,” and she claimed she worked better that way. Maybe it was true... for the first two or three hours of the night. Later on she always ended up bawling and babbling incomprehensibly about an Alex guy “who was working on something hush-hush, very important.” Her friend’s secret bugged Buca a little at first (she had told Yleka her whole life story), but she soon came to the obvious conclusion that this Alex was just another dumb and meaningless lost love. And all that about his “important hush-hush work,” just Yleka’s romantic idealization.

Poor kid, she must have loved him a lot if she was turning to telecrack to try and forget him. Though perhaps the horse-pill doses she consumed were just an attempt to get out of her own body while she was being subjected to all sorts of degrading manipulations. Being a social worker had a few points in common with being sentenced to Body Spares. In either case, a girl wasn’t in total control of her body...

Yleka took the slow road to self-destruction. Her body deteriorating from addiction, she’d reached the inevitable moment when she could no longer attract clients the way she once had. At least she had managed to get that Cetian, Cauldar, to take her, and she left the planet with him. Where could she be now? And how was she?

Cetian humanoids were the galactic species most like Homo sapiens. But more beautiful, more seductive... and more dangerous. Males and females roamed all over Earth, always searching for candidates for their slave brothels. They paid very well. And nobody made love like they did... Buca had come this close to leaving with Yleka, going off with her and Cauldar. But she decided to take the rumors seriously.

There were horrible stories going around about the dives of Tau Ceti. About girls forced to couple unnaturally with the polyps of Aldebaran or the segmented guzoids of Regulus, leading to their death, mutilation, or exotic, repugnant, and incurable venereal diseases. And there were worse things than the slave brothels. Rumors told of lots of young people, seduced by the Cetians’ angelic looks, who ended up on the organ traffickers’ chopping blocks.

A lot of those stories must have been just made up. How could humans be of any interest, even zoophile interest, to beings that reproduced asexually, like polyps or guzoids?

But after prudently considering that there’s a kernel of truth in every rumor, at the last minute Buca let Yleka leave by herself. Her friend, in a best-case scenario, would now be subject to Cauldar’s every whim. All Cetians concealed an implacable iron will under their sweet external appearances.

A real pity: before she filled herself with drugs, Yleka had an enviable body. Maybe Selshaliman would have taken both of them. For a grodo, two would do better than one girl alone...

Almost without her realizing it, they had entered the inner ring of the cosmodrome, reserved strictly for arriving and departing passengers. The grodo’s movements had grown calmer. He was much more familiar with this area, and he felt safer here than outside.

Though only a human who hated his fellow man would attack an insectoid. The only time a grodo had become the innocent victim of a group of armed robbers, the geophysical weapon spoke again and New London disappeared, swallowed by a tsunami. Lesson learned. Grodos could travel safely anywhere on the planet.

Moreover, if anyone were crazy and suicidal enough to try harming one of these insectoids, he’d find it a hard job to pull off. Selshaliman’s shining chitin carapace was practically invulnerable to every sort of projectile, and it was absolutely forbidden to own or manufacture energy weapons on earth. Planetary Security agents and their minimachine guns made sure the rule was scrupulously followed.