Хосе Гомес - A Planet for Rent

It was too easy. Too artificial. I wanted more.

And I thought I knew how to get it.

One of the few times they allowed me to leave the Center, I escaped from the pair of spies they had set to watch me (without my knowledge, or so they thought).

I had taken every precaution. I disguised my body odors so that the mutant bloodhounds couldn’t track me. I used interference to make the locator they had implanted subcutaneously in my sternum go haywire. In a word, I disappeared.

I wanted to live life on my own, for a little while at least. I had provided myself a phantom credit card that they couldn’t trace, so I had no lack of means. I flew to New Paris, the city of love. I rented a room and got ready to enjoy the dolce far niente . And I trusted to luck for finding the woman who would make my heart throb.

But regular women didn’t find me attractive. I’m no model of male beauty… Of course, I could have had plastic surgery, but I like this face. It reminds me of my family every time I look in the mirror.

After a week of solitude, when I was starting to adjust really well to everyday life, I went back to the pros.

For three nights I spent my money hand over fist, until I was bored once more of sex and of love for sale, and I returned to my inactive solitude.

One night, when I was walking through the recreation of the Latin Quarter, I met Yleka. A woman of emerald and chocolate on the outside, a panther of honey and fire on the inside, as a verse of Valera’s puts it. Are you familiar with him? I suppose not. What a pity. Try reading him.

Yleka had been left stranded in Paris by a smooth-talking Centaurian. She didn’t have a credit to her name or a roof to sleep under. I did, and I felt lonelier than ever… We slept together. And all the rest. But I didn’t tell her I was rich. I wanted to see if that was so important.

It was a great week. She was tender and funny, and she didn’t care too much that I wasn’t very good with anything but objects and machines. That I hardly talked. She talked for us both, and I loved listening to her.

For those seven days she stopped wearing her supertight plastiskin body stocking, and she didn’t go out looking for xenoids. She said I was enough. And it wasn’t enough for me to spend all day long with her.

I think we each lost several pounds.

Things could have gone on like this a lot longer, I guess. If I had managed to keep my restless brain calm. I tried to continue my work on the silence generator, using homemade tools in my rented room, but it wasn’t the same. I missed the labs at the Center and their almost unlimited resources. A habit’s a habit.

I think my subconsciousness betrayed me, and I started making mistakes, minor acts of negligence. Leaving a trail. Doing all my shopping at the same store, going to inventor fairs, stuff like that. I wanted them to find me… and, of course, they did.

Back at the Center, it wasn’t three days before they brought Yleka back to me. But it wasn’t the same. The magic was dead. Now that she knew the balance in my bank account, I only interested her as a client. Human, not xenoid, but otherwise identical. Her orgasms seemed fake to me, no matter how passionate they were. Though she insisted that she still loved me…

Maybe her coldness was her revenge on me for lying to her. For not being just what I pretended to be. For smashing her illusions of finding happiness with a good, simple man. Even a social worker can have dreams, can’t she?

When it was obvious that things weren’t working like before, I told her I wouldn’t be seeing her any more. It was a mistake. She cried buckets and swore she loved me. But how could I know if she loved me or my credits? I told her that her love was unprovable.

Then she called me a “damned autistic” and an “unfeeling monster.” That’s the only thing that has always made me angry. Call me a stupid idiot savant, I let it pass. But to say I’m cold and heartless… I used to fight my brothers over less than that until I was out of breath and covered with bruises. Until they also started fighting anyone in our town who said it to me.

I lost control, we argued, I yelled at her… I hit her. Just once, but I felt horrible. If I hadn’t restrained myself, I would have kept on beating her. For her own good, I asked the guards to take her away.

I hated her for forcing me to do that.

And my anger made me pressure the people at the Center: it wasn’t enough to get her out of my life; I wanted them to destroy her. Not kill her, but harm her badly, forever. Or else I’d never work again.

At first they ignored me.

Then Hermann and Sigimer tried to convince me the nice way.

Later on, they used drugs, but it’s impossible to force a brain to think if it doesn’t want to.

After not touching the machines for two weeks, they gave in. They’re capable of doing anything to get what they want. And I knew it, and took advantage. They were only interested in the stuff I could do. And only indirectly, in a secondary fashion, in how I felt. I was one more instrument. Expensive, like a radiotelescope or a synchrophasotron… and as such, they had to take care of me and keep me happy.

Another reason why I’m here. I got tired of wearing an invisible inventory number on my forehead…

One week later they showed me holovideos of Yleka. She had already become a human wreck. They had gotten her addicted to telecrack. I felt I had my revenge, but that didn’t make me any happier.

I worked and worked. All the years since, I’ve done nothing but work. Solving very interesting, morbidly fascinating problems in physics and math. To keep from thinking about her.

Every now and then I’d ask for a social worker, and we’d have sex—pure, paid for, and without any implications. Mere gymnastics to relax the body.

One day, months ago, when I was having a few drinks with Lieutenant Dabiel, an officer in Planetary Security’s Special Section at the Center and one of the few humans I can call my friend, he told me how easy it had been to get Yleka addicted. How she had received the drug as a blessing… because she only wanted to forget. To forget me.

That was when I knew she had really loved me.

Then I regretted the wrong I had done and wanted to undo it. I secretly ordered to have it checked into… I know that cures exist for any addiction, no matter how powerful, and I was ready to pay any price. What is money good for if not to satisfy your whims?

But Dabiel and his guys informed me that it was too late: Yleka had left with Cauldar, a Cetian who was recruiting workers for a slave brothel in Ningando. And Planetary Security’s power and jurisdiction stop at the border of Earth’s atmosphere.

So… no. I don’t have any stable or permanent emotional relationships. And I never have, actually.

But I’m here to remedy that…

“What is your opinion of the current science policies of the government of Earth, please?”

For years I’ve been practically an inmate in the Center for Physics and Mathematical Studies.

My work is ninety-nine percent secret in nature, and its results aren’t even leaked to the holonet. I don’t get published in the science journals and I don’t regularly attend conferences or symposia of any sort on the planet, much less off-world. The Special Section of Planetary Security keeps me under a close watch. My life is insured for millions of credits. I’m considered a Planetary Scientific Reserve.

I’ve never participated in any seminars or courses before, nor have I wished to. As an unknown in my field, I’ve never been invited before, either.

My trip to this planet of yours to attend the 309th Galactic Conference on Hyperspace Astrophysics is no accident. It came about through a carefully laid but seemingly random plan. The final objective of which was to get to this building and confront this assessment interview… and especially its consequences.