A Planet for Rent

by Yoss

  It worked. He suddenly set me down on my feet, though he kept his heavy hand draped, kind of casually, across my shoulder.

  He told me, “Look, Leilah, I don’t go around stealing little girls, and I’m not one of those gourmets that like the taste of human flesh. But since it looks like you won’t come with me without making a fuss, I’ll tell it to you straight. I came to Earth on... on vacation, and I need a clever, intelligent girl to help me. I know you won’t be losing anything, because you’ve got nothing to lose. Even your alcoholic grandmother will come out of this with more vodka than she could drink in ten years. I’ll pay you well, and you’ll also get to travel all over your planet for free. And I promise, I’ll never touch you. I know that sounds strange and that you don’t believe me... That’s good. I imagine that a naïve girl wouldn’t have made it to your age. But you’ll have to believe me. Because even if you don’t, I’m very obstinate when I’ve made up my mind... and I’m not going to let you leave. Even if you cry louder,” he commented when I took my bawling up a notch (what else could I do?). “But look, so you’ll see that things won’t be all that bad with me.” He dug in his coat pocket and took out something that gleamed with a metallic sheen. “Give me your hand, Leilah. Please...”

  I hesitated an instant. From the corner of my eye, I was only staring at the huge paw holding me by the shoulder.

  If he’d been a Planetary Security agent, I would have bit off a couple of fingers (I have good teeth) and while he screamed and bled I would have lost sight of him forever.

  But you’d only try biting a Colossaur on the hand if you wanted to save money on the dentist. It wouldn’t do any good, anyway. You could lose all your teeth and he’d never notice.

  Besides, this guy seemed so totally determined to find me wherever I was hiding...

  Reluctantly, I finally stuck out my hand.

  In Barrio 13, you learn fast to accept things the way they are... otherwise you never get a chance to learn anything else.

  He took my fingers, pressed them against the shiny object, and then gave it to me.

  I was stupefied.

  It was a platinum credit card.

  The kind banks give to people who have a million credits or more in their accounts. I had hardly even heard about them. I didn’t know any human who had one.

  It had to be a trick, or a mistake...

  “It was a blank card, Leilah, but now that I’ve recorded your fingerprints on it, you’re the only one who’ll have access to that account,” he explained, then snorted. “Now you can run away if you want to, and make me go through all the trouble of finding you again. Or you can come with me, nice and friendly, and enjoy my gift.”

  I stared and stared at the card. It looked genuine. Of course, since I’d never seen one before, I didn’t have any basis for comparison.

  I looked at the xenoid. The truth was, he’d been very friendly, given his position, my own, and the circumstances...

  “I guess you must be thinking this might be a ploy,” he grunted. “But you must see that if I wanted to rape you, eat you, or send you to a slave brothel, I wouldn’t go to so much trouble with you. I wouldn’t risk losing so much money...”

  “I want to make sure this card is genuine,” I said, trying to make my voice sound steady.

  “Certainly, princess.” He showed me his four rows of teeth. “Will you come with me? You know better than I do that there aren’t any credit machines here in Barrio 13... There wouldn’t be many customers for them, I guess.” He let go of my shoulder and held out his hand as if he expected me to take it.

  I pretended not to notice, of course. I wasn’t born yesterday, to let somebody walk me by the hand through the streets, and anyway I didn’t want to seem too friendly. A girl has her dignity.

  I rubbed my shoulder. They really are strong, those Colossaurs.

  “Do you hand out credit cards to every kid you meet? Why were you looking for me? What’s your name?” I fired off the three questions one after the other, like a minimachine gun.

  He presented me with his caricature of a smile.

  “Sometimes. The one your little friend—Dingo, wasn’t it?—took doesn’t have much on it. A couple thousand... Anyway, it’ll be a fortune to him and the rest of your friends, don’t you think?” He emphasized the word “friends” ironically, and my reaction was what you might expect.

  “Those rats...” I muttered, remembering how they’d abandoned me.

  “Your second question, I’d rather keep quiet about—for now,” the xenoid went on. “But you’ll find out later on, I promise. Someday... Let’s say it was for reasons of... nostalgia. Not for you, of course; I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

  “For my mother?” I speculated, intrigued.

  I only had one holovideo of her, and holonet recordings about her trials and sentences. And my Abuela didn’t talk about her much to me, not even on the rare occasions she was sober. But knowing the kind of life she led, it wouldn’t have surprised me at all if this xenoid had known her. Even intimately... If anybody could find my mother’s huge muscles attractive, it would probably be a Colossaur male. And Friga didn’t have an ugly face, to tell the truth. Abuela always said I was her living portrait.

  “Could be,” he said, mysteriously. “As for my name... I’m afraid you humans find it unpronounceable. But I had a... a great friend who called me Ettubrute...”

  “I don’t like it—too long,” I said right away. “Can I call you Ettu? How long do I have to stay with you? Can I tell my Abuela?”

  He grunted a few times, like a dog barking; apparently that’s his race’s idea of laughter.

  “Do you always ask questions three at a time?” he said. “Sure... Ettu is fine. About how long, I guess a month should be enough. And you can call whoever you want... Liya. Come on.” And he set off walking at his fast but heavy pace.

  I let him get a few yards ahead before I followed. I didn’t want him to think I was dying to go with him, either. A girl has her pride, and after being practically kidnapped she has to keep a certain... distance.

  But he’d called me by my street name, the one I had picked myself. Adults never do that.

  At least, not my Abuela. She always calls me Leilita and makes me feel like a baby, even though I’m nine years old.

  Ettu seemed different. Like someone who’d take me seriously and forget about my stupid age. The idea of spending a month with him was starting to sound interesting, at least.

  ^^^^^^

  I went with him to his hotel. After the gold card and the platinum card, it didn’t shock me to find him staying in the New Cali Galaxy itself. The doorman frowned when he saw me walk in, as you might have expected—and that was after I’d taken that fire-hydrant bath and was looking almost presentable. I bet he thought I was a little xenoid from some unknown race, not a nine-year-old girl.

  At first I tried to act like I was used to all that superluxury. But I couldn’t keep my jaw from dropping for more than three seconds. I was almost drooling in amazement, and I kept tripping over my own feet trying to look at everything while I walked.

  There were six levels to the lobby, and the middle three floated in the air without any visible supports. Stable antigrav technology. So expensive, no other building in the city has it that I know of.

  Cryogel waterfalls cooling the place down nicely.

  Vending machines for drinks, drugs, every piece of junk that could have occurred to me... and lots I’ve never imagined.

  Thousands of xenoid tourists entering, leaving, jabbering in a thousand dialects. Social workers and their disguised male counterparts swarmed all over, more or less brazenly approaching every visitor who came near.

  The Planetary Security pigs in their dress uniforms looked almost friendly, almost trustworthy... but they kept their eyes peeled, and they didn’t miss a trick.

  I
saw them incapacitate a young man with an elegant flick of the electroclub when he tried protesting the stingy sum a dolled-up Centaurian lady had paid him for his services. While he flopped down onto the carpeted floor, the buglickers greeted her slavishly, and she stepped unperturbed over his limp body. Flesh to be used and discarded, she must have been thinking. Earth was a good place...

  Private aerobus drivers were whispering their prices, always lower than what the Planetary Tourism Agency charges. People selling fake folklore junk were displaying their merchandise mysteriously in the folds of their overcoats. None of them should have been there, in theory. But they all paid a percentage to the buglickers for their relative impunity.

  You could find the whole tourist trap freak show of every street in the city there in that lobby, only more refined and more concentrated. Of the whole Earth, even.

  Ettu passed right through that vile bedlam like an icebreaker through an polar sea. Xenoid or human, whoever didn’t get out of the way of that determined hulk was shoved aside without a second glance. The basic etiquette of force.

  He took me to the spa and handed me over to two experts who obviously owed their goddess-like bodies and doll-like faces to nanosurgery. All smiles, they toiled to scrub nine years of grime off me. The water, the gel, and the ultrasound were delicious, and I would even have enjoyed the hydromassage if it weren’t for the fact that as soon as the Colossaur stepped out for a second, the sluts started asking me how I’d met him and who I was... with a hint of envy that I didn’t like one bit. And I really hated the provocative way they suddenly started to caress me. Asking if I wanted rings on my nipples, an exotic hairdo for my pubis...

  I don’t know if they were pedophiles, lesbians, or just trying to get me to recognize their erotic skills so I’d convince Ettu to use them... But I had decided a long time before that when I was ready to lose my virginity, I’d rather do it with a man. Dingo always said that gay sex is like dessert—refined and superfluous, exquisite. But that straight sex is like meat and potatoes: what really counts, what feeds you.

  He’d know. He always said he’d go in for freelance social work as soon as he turned fourteen... and he had all the required equipment. And no scruples.

  Luckily, Ettu showed up in time to save me. He brought me a plastisilk sweater and a pair of self-sealing boots my exact size, and when I whispered to him what the bath attendants had insinuated, he got me out of that spa as fast as he could. He hardly left them a tip.

  In the changing room, he gave me the clothes he’d bought for me and told me to get dressed. He didn’t even watch me dressing, which really confused me. I had gotten the idea, I don’t know why, that maybe he was the type who only enjoyed watching other people...

  With my squeaking-new clothes and the platinum card safely tucked deep in my pocket, I went with Ettu to the hotel shops. He let me enter first, while he waited outside for a few seconds, enjoying the show.

  When I entered, the looks I got from the saleswomen (more goddess-bodies and doll-faces—apparently plastic surgeons mass-produce them for the Galaxy hotels) weren’t exactly friendly. What’s this little girl doing here? Toys are another department! There’s only expensive, super-exclusive things here! One even tried shooing me off with a languid wave of her perfectly manicured hand, the way you’d shoo a bothersome insect. But a girl doesn’t survive Barrio 13 by worrying much about how people look at her or the gestures they make. Condescending gazes and scornful gestures don’t break bones. I have eyes, too—and insolent ones, my Abuela says. I made do with sticking my tongue out at them all and then ignoring them. I had plenty to look at...

  Then Ettu walked in, patted my hair kind of casually, and they stood up straight and immediately put on their professional smiling masks. If I was with him, nothing was off limits for me.

  Running around the store, selecting this and that, was like the birthday I’d never had before. I bought everything I’d always dreamed of: urban camouflage outfits, mirrored dresses, spinning skirts, high-speed leather pants, a color-shifting dress, shoes with hydraulic soles... Even a long plastisilver dress, which of course they didn’t carry in my size, but the cybertailor trimmed and mended it in a few seconds with his nanomanipulators. If the Colossaur planned to take me with him everywhere, a more grownup dress might come in handy. Maybe he wouldn’t always want to be seen with a nine-year-old girl dressed like a jungle explorer or a jetskate racer...

  When it became obvious that I wasn’t just looking, far from it, the saleswomen’s looks went from scornful to envious and intrigued. Suddenly attentive, they gathered around to “help” me. I continued to ignore them. Ettu winked at me and we both laughed. Some social workers shopping nearby came over, attracted by that barking sound of his, so obviously xenoid, smelling a potential client with credits to burn. But I held tight to his hand and looked at them defiantly, as if to make clear that this one was mine. And we laughed again.

  The ice was broken.

  Though I still hadn’t realized that it wasn’t just a dream. Maybe that’s why I was so calm.

  The platinum card did have credits on it. Lots, apparently. I could tell when it was time to pay. The employees’ attitudes, already obliging and astonished, became absolutely servile when I showed them my treasure. What does young Madame desire? Would she like to see our perfumes? Might we accompany her to the toy department?

  What disgusting people!

  The worst is that you could tell their friendliness wasn’t the least bit sincere, that they were burning with envy on the inside, wondering: What does this skinny little kid have that we don’t? What does he see in her?

  Ettu told me we were going to the restaurant, and I didn’t dare refuse anything he wanted, though I would have preferred to eat something light, by myself, anywhere... There had already been too many emotions for the first day.

  On our way to that gourmand’s paradise we passed by the toyshop. My eyes almost popped out of my head, seeing all those marvels, but I put on my bravest face and walked right on by. If Ettu wanted a girl who acted grownup, he’d have her. And I could always slip out early in the morning and look at all those things... and even buy something, with a bit of luck, if my card hadn’t used up its magic yet.

  I couldn’t get used to the idea that the platinum card and the account behind it were really mine. Mainly, I think, because I knew I hadn’t done anything to deserve it—and I didn’t want to think about what I might have to do. As nice as Ettu might seem, by the age of nine a girl has already long figured out that nothing’s free in this life. And possibly in no other life, either—if there are other lives.

  Dinner was more a theater performance than anything. Platinum and jade cutlery. A table big as an astroport landing strip. Six waiters in their ridiculous penguin suits just to serve the two of us. And talking the whole time in a language that had nothing in common with Planetary, which I only learned a couple of weeks later was French. The language of haute cuisine.

  And the menu... If I had eaten a different dish every day, it would have taken me a year to try half the dishes that appeared in a holoimage over the table. And they all looked so generous and appetizing it made my mouth water, but I couldn’t decide which to order.

  In the end I trusted Ettu, who ordered a Chicken Bellomonte for me, the same thing he got for himself. Except he asked for nine servings. And he ate so fast, he was almost done when I was still absent-mindedly gnawing the last bits off the bones of my chicken, wiping my fingers on the immaculate natural silk tablecloth under the horrified gaze of the waiters.

  And the wines... For me, who had never tried anything but my Abuela’s Seven Rats vodka and the explosive concoctions that the gang brewed up in the still that Dingo built, they didn’t taste like alcohol, but something different, very different. And delicious. I drank so much that Ettu had to restrain me... after I had mixed red wine and Champagne, port and Madeira, Tokay and Bordeaux, one glass fro
m each bottle, constantly fearing it was all just a dream from which I’d awake at any moment.

  I was feeling deliciously tipsy when Ettu brought me up to his suite. His room was so big, they could have played several Voxl games there at once. And the bed—round, enormous, central, dominating the scene.

  I remember thinking in my stupor that if my virginity was the price for living a few more nights like this one... it was a good price. And I stumblingly pulled off my clothes, not caring whether he saw me, and lay down face up on the bed, opening my legs as wide as I could, and likewise squeezing my eyes and fists as tight as I could.

  If it was going to happen, let’s get it over with quick, and better now when I’ll barely notice...

  But when I woke up the next day, I was lying in the same position... alone. No blood on the sheets, no pain in my insides. Ettu hadn’t slept in that enormous bed.

  There was a smaller door on one side of the vast bedroom, shut and locked. I couldn’t open it.

  And when I got a horrible suspicion and ran to check my pocket... The platinum card was right there where I’d left it the night before.

  From that moment I trusted Ettu completely. I didn’t understand why he was doing it, but at least I knew why he wasn’t doing it. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. When you’re living in paradise, you don’t ask too many questions. Especially if you’re from Barrio 13, which is to say, from hell.

  For five days Ettu let me wander around freely, as if he were getting me used to the wonders of the Galaxy.

  It was strange and delightful to be able to behave for once like a little girl, without always having to think about the consequences or the price that had to be paid for everything.

  I swam in each of the six pools, from the huge one that was open to everyone to the small, superprivate hot pool, where I cavorted naked around three bored Cetian and human couples and a contemplative polyp from Aldebaran that remained underwater.