Eileen Gunn - Stable Strategies and Others

I start off at the place where I got lost. “What conversion process?”

“The neuterization process,” he says. “Don’t want your new planet to turn into a grossly overpopulated mess like this one. Our genetically-tailored recombinant replacement process yields all the benefits of Type III distribution, and it’s really much more reliable than the cumbersome organic method.”

I get just about every other word, but I get the drift. “Neuter?” I say. “You’re not going to fucking neuter me.”

“Ah,” says the thropo. “English semantic structure can sometimes be most confusing.”

I am about to tell him what he can do with his confusion, but I figure I should cruise it a bit. “This, uh, neuterization process,” I say, “uh, how’d you say it works?” Meantime I’m thinking maybe I should watch the show more carefully, because in a little while I might not be interested in this sort of thing at all.

“Automatic,” says the thropo. “Just wonderful, the equipment we have now. When I first started out, we had to do it all by hand, you know.”

“No, no,” say. “I mean, do you, you know, cut anything? Or is it, uh — ”

“Ah,” he says. “Nothing like that. Just a spot of directed radiation and of course a psychic implant. Inhibits the libido and prevents wasteful energy loss.”

This new angle makes it pretty difficult for me to just sit and watch the show, let me tell you. I mean, who wants to be turned into a zombie and sent off to some weird planet? But those snakeheads, there’s no fooling around with them. The thropos, they don’t give you any trouble, but you don’t mess with their cops. Those people who fought the snakeheads really got fried.

After the show, we ditch the thropo and I tell the guys what he says. This causes some surprise, as you can imagine. The first question is, how come he told it to me, when nobody else seems to have heard about it. Now, I can’t really answer that, except maybe other people know and they’re not telling. But I convince the guys that what I’m telling them is true. I don’t lie to the guys, they know that.

Everybody agrees that life on this new planet, whatever it’s like, would be a hustle and a half compared to life on Pomona. This is despite the fact, which you may not know, that it’s tough to make a living as a nixen these days. Most of the greeners are pretty dumb, but they got these fuckin’ defense systems you need a goddam degree in engineering to get past.

We figure we’re going to have to do something fast. But we don’t know what.

So the next day we’ve got a lookout for the thropo and we catch him standing in line to see a triple feature at the Magnafox, a bunch of Japanese spleebies with titles like Sex Sluts From Beyond the Universe . He’s got his holocorder with him.

We mumble him a little, then we lead him around to what we want to know.

“Who’s in charge of this neuterization program, anyway?” I ask, real casual.

“In this sector?” says the thropo. “I am. And I can tell you, it’s not a job that leaves me much time for field research.”

I don’t have much sympathy for his troubles, but I am very happy to learn that we know the guy in charge. The thropo, however, doesn’t stop there.

“The subtleties of your reproduction ritual and the multiplicity of commercial media depicting its forms leave me with little hope of observing all types of socio-sexual economic interaction first hand.” The thropo waves a tentacle or two at the theater billboard, which is a full-color holoposter of this blonde whiff who is wearing antennas on her head and very little else, being threatened by an ugly-looking monster with a huge dick. When you move, the monster leers and shakes his dick. “When one considers,” says the thropo, “the interpolation of additional thematic content, such as the exploitation of your species’ regrettable xenophobia, the amount of material is simply overwhelming.”

I am beginning to see some possibilities. “You need time, huh?” I say. “This isn’t something you can do after we move to this new planet?”

“The social context is most important,” says the thropo. “Of course, we are assembling great collections of source material — films, photos, printed matter, ritual clothing and devices. But after neuterization, the social context will be lost forever. The other day, for instance, when you and your friends were participating in the performance, tossing objects to the performers and interacting with them, I noticed that many of the other people there, the older men especially, were most introspective. I want to examine that sort of reaction as well, but I simply can’t be everywhere at once.”

The line is getting closer to the door, and I can see that if I don’t get the thropo away, I’m going to lose him entirely. So I talk the thropo into skipping the spleebie for now and joining us in a bar across the street. The bar is the pits, hot and dark, with air that’s been resyked so many times it has garlic on its breath. But I figure at least the thropo will buy the cervesa, so it won’t be a total loss, even if he doesn’t buy my line.

We all cram in around a dirty little table in the corner and I start my rap. “You need time, huh?” I say. “You’re the Man, how come you don’t just make time?”

“So many planets,” says the thropo. “So much material to collect. If I thought the subject important enough, I’d stay here a while, research it more thoroughly. Someday, perhaps, I may wish I had. Difficult to judge.”

“If you stay here,” I say, “will you still be sending people to that other planet?”

“Certainly not,” says the thropo. “Need everyone here. No meaningful research can be done with the remnants of a planet’s population. But I see little justification for staying. Nothing that would convince my superiors, at any rate.”

“There’s lots of stuff,” I say, “that you haven’t seen at all. You just hit the shelves, man. There’s stuff behind the counter, too, you know. And nobody’d show it to a thropo.” I look over to Chico, who I know I can count on to get things right the first time. “Chico,” I say, “run down and get some uc zines from Paco. Rubber, S-and-M, chickens, watersports, whatever you can find.” I look back at the thropo. “You’ll see lots you never seen before.”

While we’re waiting for Chico, I want to keep the thropo busy, so I ask him what he gets off on most.

“Oh, it all fascinates me,” he says. “Just the thought, for one thing, that humans would be interested in watching the mating ritual, when survival theory indicates they should be more interested in participating. How does a watcher maintain its genetic strain in competition with those who exchange germ plasm more readily?” He looks around at us, as if he thinks we can answer this. “In addition,” he says, “there’s the use of this voyeuristic tendency, however it’s inherited, as a means of generating employment. Not only the people who produce this material, but their suppliers, distributors, those who sell them office and living space, these people all benefit. It’s a very valuable service. If there were no demand for it, there would be millions more starving.” He goes on like this for a while, and I am hatching out what I’m going to do when Chico comes back. I figure I will continue to play it by ear, because the thropo seems pretty good at selling himself on whatever he wants to buy.

Finally Chico turns up, and he’s got a good bunch of zines with him. The thropo is high as Jamaica.

“Most unusual material,” he says, and he’s muttering other stuff to himself in a sort of snuffle. “Here, for instance, the subjugation of violence to the purposes of procreation.” He flips through another stack. “A paradoxical denial of the generative religious cult to further the process of generation.” I don’t know where Paco sells all this stuff showing people dressed like nuns, but somebody must buy it. “And these magazines seem to specialize in the use of devices that — ” He goes on and on.