A Planet for Rent

by Yoss

  But I said nothing. And right then, the idea came to me.

  If he doesn’t like virgins, maybe now...

  That night I waited up for him. After the daily artist-beggar left, happy and disgusted, and before Ettu could shut himself up in his mysterious room, I ran upstairs and confronted him.

  The huge round unmade bed lay between us like the arena between two gladiators. I had made myself up like I had always seen the social workers in my barrio do: waterproof cosmetics forming a virtual mask to cover my face, long fake eyelashes, shiny hair.

  I was naked, the subtle allergen stiffening my nipples, the aroma of the perfume that I had spread over my carefully straightened pubic hair filling the whole suite.

  I was tired of waiting. If he didn’t do it, I would take the first step.

  “Ettu... I’m not a girl anymore,” I remember telling him.

  And I stepped forward. My high-heeled shoes wobbling on the springy mattress.

  I was ready to do anything.

  “You’ve been very kind to me, Ettu. I want to pay you.” I kept talking. “I don’t want to owe you anything...”

  Looking him in the eye the whole time, defiantly... but quite ready to start weeping if he scorned me.

  Ettu said nothing. He walked right past, toward his secret room, opening the door.

  I ran after him. I almost tripped because of the stupid stilettos that I didn’t know how to walk in.

  I wanted to go in; he stopped me. I only got a slight glimpse of medical equipment, antigrav stretchers, and bottles of serum, before his enormous body blocked my view.

  “Ettu, I love you...” I insisted, pressing my body against his reddish carapace, banging my fists against his armored abdomen, grinding my pubis against him. With the desperation of a cat in heat and the blind obstinacy of the young girl I still was. And crying unrestrainedly.

  He stretched out his enormous tridactyl hand and picked me up, like on the first day. It seemed to take more effort. Either I weighed more, or he was weaker.

  He looked at me for a long time, and his eyes shined.

  Then, in one motion, he tossed me on the bed the way you might toss something that you disdain, that’s no good. The shoes with the stiletto heels clattered as they hit the floor, freed from my feet.

  I thought he was furious and I shuddered, thinking of my grief. Then I suddenly remembered Dingo’s head and the twisted bodies of the triplets, and I grew afraid. I curled into a ball to protect myself. I realized I was naked as a worm, ridiculous, my precious mask of acting the grownup woman broken.

  In one step he was there, and I closed my eyes, expecting the blow.

  But his voice only sounded strangely sad when he said, “No. Liya... Not you. Forgive me, if you can... I think things with you haven’t turned out the way I planned. I’ve let myself go too far. Goodbye.”

  Then he shut the door, and I stayed there crying, and fell asleep crying. But crying from happiness. He had forgiven me! Everything would go back to the way it was before, or better, and maybe, with time, he would...

  The next day, when I woke up, I found the mysterious room open. And empty. There wasn’t a trace of the well-stocked medical lab I had glimpsed.

  Ettu wasn’t there. Not in the room, not anywhere in the house.

  I made inquiries. Planetary Security is very efficient in New York. They had seen him take a cybertaxi to Manhattan, the place where shuttles launch, late that morning. Walking slowly, as if he were tired. With no luggage.

  His name was in the registry at the embarkation point for Colossa.

  He had left Earth to return to his world.

  Perhaps running away from me...

  I knew I’d never see him again.

  Then everything became a nightmare. Except for the educational programs and other details, the Castle and the animals and almost everything was in his name. I could hardly keep anything—it all went to the government. A ten-year-old girl has no legal personhood.

  Less than two weeks later, with no more luggage than a few thousand credits and a box of educational holovideos, I was sent by a Planetary Security aerobus back to Barrio 13 in New Cali. Back to the tiny one-bedroom apartment, my Abuela, and her constant drinking.

  Of course, I wasn’t the same any more.

  We soon had to move. I had nurtured the hope that the gang and the rest of the barrio would forgive and forget. But when they scrawled the word “Buglicker” in excrement across our front door, after fleeting shadows on a street corner threw rocks at me twice, and a group on jetskates ran over my Abuela in one of her drunken stupors and broke her hip, I knew I was marked. Forever.

  We left Barrio 13 for Barrio 5, higher rents and quieter neighbors. So quiet they didn’t even have gangs. I spent all day with the holovideos, learning, trying to fill the gaps in my education... trying not to think about everything I’d left behind. Especially not about Ettu. Now it really did all seem like a dream. A lovely dream, the sort you feel sorry to wake from when it ends. My Abuela was drinking up hundreds of credits every night and lurching home at dawn to beg for more. I never denied her; it was easier than listening to her complaints and threats if she didn’t have alcohol. Maybe I also had the cynical hope that she would drink enough that cirrhosis would soon free me from her... and I wasn’t wrong.

  “There’s no hope, unless you can afford a liver transplant. And you don’t look like you could,” said the old doctor in Social Assistance when I took her to the hospital after finding her unconscious and burning with fever, and her aged skin as yellow as parchment. The doctor barely glanced under her eyelids before saying, cynically and harshly but without euphemisms, “Galloping cirrhosis, I’d say. How many bottles a day did she drink? Most likely she won’t regain consciousness. You’re the granddaughter, right? Well, you choose for her: a week of suffering and expensive drugs, or euthanasia now.”

  I chose euthanasia. At the age of forty-two, my Abuela had drunk and lived enough. Now it was my turn. Without her, it would be easier.

  Though I didn’t know what would become of me. I always knew that a girl born in Barrio 13 doesn’t have many options for the future... but it’s harder after seeing everything you’re going to lose.

  I continued to miss Ettu. I felt it was my fault everything had gone wrong and come to an end. By trying to turn him into a lover, something tangible, I had lost the closest thing to a father or a friend I’d ever had. I didn’t really understand why I’d done what I did, why he was what he was... but I didn’t care. I was ready to do anything if it would bring him back... To follow him on foot to the end of the world, to make his bed every time he finished enjoying his repulsive artists, even to stop asking him any more questions, ever.

  In the hospital, while I was filling out the forms to have my Abuela cremated, I found out about the epidemic. And I started putting two and two together.

  The magenta illness, the terrible venereal disease of Colossaurs, was wreaking havoc in the artist community. Some fifty of them had died, their flesh covered almost entirely with the purple sores that were the stigma of the disease. The Health Department of Planetary Security couldn’t understand the cause of the contagious outbreak that the disease seemed to be following and was adopting measures to fight the plague while searching desperately for the illness’s new vector. Because it seemed unlikely that it could have been transmitted by the usual means...

  Even before I heard their names and saw their faces, I already knew who they were. In the final stages of the disease, their faces didn’t show much of that satisfaction I’d seen on them when they came downstairs from Ettu’s bedroom. But they did show the same disgust, and a horrible despair.

  Naturally, they never told how they had acquired the disease. They just painted, worked, created like crazy, knowing the end was near. At least they got that much out of the price they’d paid Ettu for their lives and heal
th. And then they died.

  One day the package arrived. By Hyperspace Shipping, direct from Colossa. I knew who it was from long before I opened it, of course. But the contents truly surprised me.

  A letter, on plain paper, written by hand. A thick, wobbly hand. It wasn’t very long.

  Hi, Liya. How are you? They tell me you’re doing okay. Sorry about your Abuela. But without her, your life will probably be more... bearable. A lone wolf always gets ahead... And pardon me if I sound inhuman. Don’t forget what I am.

  I’ve seen the news from Earth. I think you’ll have already figured out that I’m the vector they’re looking for. And that it won’t do much good for you inform them. Magenta illness is incurable... And anyway, by the time this letter is in your hands, nobody will be able to take any measures against me.

  I carried the disease for years... without knowing it. Apparently, sterilization makes us Colossaurs more prone to developing it. It was as an asymptomatic carrier that I gave it to Moy. And not even all the money the two of us made could keep his flesh from being covered in magenta pustules and then dissolving. I killed him, Liya. Nobody but me, who loved him so much, killed him, one of the few people I really cared about in this life.

  In his last days he wanted to have one of the few humans he valued by his side. A guy named Jowe... An artist. He told me to spare no expenses to get him there. Maybe you’ve heard of him. He was the other one who died in the Escape Tunnel, along with Friga, your mother, trying to leave the solar system unlawfully. Because the terrestrial government wouldn’t allow him to come to Ningando, where Moy waited for him to the end...

  But I didn’t find out any of this until I got to Earth. When Moy died, and the first symptoms of the illness were already weakening me, I felt lonely and decided to look for this Jowe. Maybe he would look like Moy, and having our absent friend in common would serve as a bridge. All I wanted was a little affection during my final days, you understand?

  But Jowe was dead, and the last person connected to him was your mother. I don’t know what kind of relationship they had, and I don’t care. When I found out that Friga had left a daughter behind, I set off to find you. You are, in a way, the only thing I have left.

  At that time, I still hadn’t come up with my plan for revenge. The idea came to me while we were traveling the world, one night when I was thinking how sad it was that such a rich planet should also be so poor. Revenge. I had to take revenge for Moy. Revenge on whom? For what? How was it those artists’ fault that Earth was poor? you must be wondering. And I could answer you: no fault at all. Just that I was alone and furious, despised by my own people and not accepted by yours, about to die. Stupid reasons, don’t you think?

  But they were guilty. Guilty of selling their art because they were hungry, of betraying the history of their world, of not seeing beauty. So my revenge, from a certain point of view, was simple justice.

  In case you care to know, I didn’t act indiscriminately, either. Of all the needy artists who came to beg me for help, I only responded to the ones who had known Moy or Jowe. And not all of them, either. Only the ones who could barely remember them... Most of them miserable that they had achieved a degree of success they didn’t deserve. Ambitious sorts who really didn’t even need my modest financial help very much... but who were already so used to selling themselves that they approached me almost as a reflex action, having heard of easy money. Worse rats than the lowest social workers. The fact that they still lived and sometimes prospered, while Moy and Jowe had already fallen by the wayside, also condemned them.

  The magenta illness is extraordinarily contagious. It was because of that, not because I didn’t find you attractive, that I never paid attention to your advances. I may have noticed your intentions before you were aware of them yourself. And I admit, there were times when I seriously considered the idea... But you weren’t guilty of anything. You were the only way for me to feel that everything I was doing wasn’t just irrational destruction and fierce revenge.

  I hope you do well. I hope that when you pick your vocation you will listen to your heart’s desires, and not be looking for money or applause. And, even if you do choose to be an engineer or a flight attendant, I hope that art will be important to you some day. As it was for Moy, for Jowe, whom I never knew... and for me.

  I hope you don’t hate me. That you can understand me, just a little bit at least. That you understand that, in my own way, I loved you like the children they wouldn’t let me have.

  Remember me, Liya. But live your own life. Here, as a goodbye present, is a little something to help you. After all, Moy made me rich... and I had to pick an heir. That, by the way, might be the answer to why I needed you so much...

  Take good care of yourself,

  Ettu

  PS. You always treated me as male. The truth is that, although my race has seven sexes, I’m more like your mother and you than Jowe or Moy. But I liked it when you called me “him.” It made me feel like more of a... protector.

  Wrapped in the letter was a small, oblong object. My platinum card.

  That was six months ago.

  Now I’m living in a small penthouse in New Sydney, studying hard for the aptitude test I have to take to get into the Baryshnikov School of Modern Dance. I have rhythm and flexibility, according to the private tutor I hired, but I need a lot more style. And I’ll need at least as much luck if I want to compete for one of the school’s coveted slots with the teenagers who’ve been going to dance school practically since they learned to walk. But I trust my luck. If I don’t make it this year, I’ll still have next year. And the next one, and the next. With his card, Ettu gave me all the time in the world.

  This isn’t a nosy neighborhood, and no one here can connect me with the girl Planetary Security is secretly looking for as the accomplice of the Colossaur “epidemic vector.” I’m growing up, I’ve changed my hairstyle... and in a couple of years, I won’t look anything like that skinny, four-foot-eleven Liya.

  The platinum card pays all my bills. Though I avoid showing it whenever possible; people might start asking questions I wouldn’t want to answer. Not long ago, I started using an ordinary plastic card with just ten thousand credits on it. It attracts less attention around here.

  I’ve picked a new name for myself: Ettuya... The reason why is obvious.

  I’m always thinking about him, about Moy, about Jowe, about my mother... And it’s funny, but when I do so, I feel less alone.

  Also, I live across the street from a fourteen-year-old boy who’s not bad at all. He’s studying to get into the Da Vinci Fine Arts School, and we’ve crossed paths a couple of times. He looks like the son of very rich parents...

  One of these days I’m going to ask him out. Probably, no matter how rich his family is, he’ll be amazed to see I have a platinum card.

  He’d be even more amazed if he heard the whole story. But I don’t plan to tell it to him, of course. Most likely they’d never believe a word of it, and I hate to be called a liar.

  I’ll tell them I’m the daughter of a couple who died in an accident, and that their insurance paid for it... Or something like that. Anything that doesn’t sound as unbelievable as the truth.

  The truth... Well, I hardly believe it myself, even now... From a girl in a Barrio 13 gang to the owner of a platinum card, by the work and grace of a xenoid! And without even going to bed with him.

  And they say that reality can’t beat fantasy...

  October 8, 1998

  Acknowledgments

  This book is indebted to many people. Some, because their lives served as its inspirations and raw material. Others, because their works or comments did the same. Though making their names public will not cancel out the debt owed them, I think it may help... a little.

  For their lives:

  To Yanet from San Miguel del Padrón and her two sisters. To Mayelín, Elda’s former sister-
in-law. And to the other “social workers” of L Street between 23rd and 25th.

  To the Arte Calle group. To Cuenca and the other artists of the ‘80s who left to live from their performance art under other skies.

  To the Cuban volleyball teams, male and female. To Duke Hernández, Roberto Urrutia, and other members of “the champions.”

  To my friends Adolfo and Ariel, ex-policemen, for explaining the rules of the game to me.

  To the Biology majors of the Class 1991 (including me) who ended up in Aquaculture, Fishing Bureaus, and Spawning Stations. To those who stayed in the field of science. To those who left for some conference and never came back. To those who are driving old taxis or selling pizzas. To all the Cuban scientists who ever had to pass aptitude and attitude assessment tests.

  To my friend Vlado, who rowed into the Escape Tunnel but returned to tell me the tale. To all the makeshift sailors of the summer of ‘94. Especially to those who never made it.

  To Danilo Manera, foreigner, Italian, for trying to understand us. For becoming another victim of the disease called Cubanitis. And most of all, for giving me the platinum card of his friendship.

  To Cuba and to all its people, because we still do believe in the future in spite of it all, because we have faith in ourselves.

  For their works and comments:

  To Domingo Santos, because his collection of short stories, Futuro imperfecto, gave me the idea for this book, years ago.

  To Frederik Pohl, because his story “The Day the Icicle Works Closed” made me think of what a nightmare Body Spares would be.

  To Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, Carlos Alberto Montaner, and Alvaro Vargas Llosa, because it was thanks to their polemic in Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot that I decided to read Open Veins of Latin America to find out if they were right and it was so awful.

  To Eduardo Galeano, for Open Veins of Latin America. Which turned out to be just the opposite.