by Yoss
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.
“Bel
ieve 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.
“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.
Mestizos
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.
