Хосе Гомес - A Planet for Rent

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 from 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.

I ate as much candy and ice cream as a nine-year-old girl can digest without any stomach disasters. I bought enough toys for a whole elementary boarding school. Magazines and books I’d always wanted to read, from holographic comic books to the classics that grownups talk about, which I didn’t have the time or the desire to do more than leaf through.

I wore myself out in the hotel’s magnificent gym, more playing with the equipment than really exercising my childish muscles.

I spent hours in front of the suite’s enormous holoscreen, flipping from channel to channel among the thousands that I had free holonet access to as a hotel guest. I saw holodramas that were on their thousandth episode, documentaries about the flora and fauna of Earth and other worlds, dance and theater spectaculars that bored me, concerts of those traditional music groups that all the xenoids love, cartoons, and all sorts of pornography for every taste.

During my frenzy of trying everything and acquiring everything, Ettu was only a fleeting reddish presence I barely glimpsed when he was entering or leaving my suite and locking himself behind his secret door. I gave him friendly smiles, but I didn’t know what to say to him, and I couldn’t think of any good topics of conversation. An indiscrete question might put an end to this fantastic dream forever, and I wasn’t about to risk it. He seemed very busy, but he was always observing me. And that toothy grin of his seemed permanently painted on his thickset face. As if to say, “Keep it up, Liya—what you’re doing is great, but there’s still more…”

And there was more.

By the fifth day, I was like that grodo in the fable who, after crossing a vast desert, thought his thirst was endless, so he dived headfirst into a lake, planning to drink it all. And after drinking for three days and three nights, he discovered that the lake level hadn’t gone down so much as a centimeter. And yet, not only had his thirst disappeared… so had his desire to drink any more water, ever.

The material world, the world of luxuries and objects I’d never had, didn’t do me any good if I was alone. My new possessions were worthless if I couldn’t show them off, brag about them, share them with others, watch them be astonished about it all. And most of all, the fact that it had been so easy to get it all, the fact that I hadn’t had to pay anything for the treasures cramming my room, took away most of their value.

On the sixth day I ran away. I used my platinum card to get a cybertaxi, a wide aerobus that I packed full of toys, clothes, candy, books… and even so, I had to leave some behind. And I went back to Barrio 13. Where else?

I had already talked with my Abuela, but she was prudent and as allergic to the mob of kids as any other woman, so in the middle of her drunken stupor she’d had enough common sense not to tell anyone where I was. Whereas I was so naïve, I asked them to let me off right there on the street, instead of at my house, when I saw the gang—my gang—playing.

Everything would be just like before, except better…

I was ready to forgive them. I had to.

They had sold me to a Colossaur. They were worse than rats, but they were my rats. The only real family I had—much more family than my alcoholic Abuela. Ettu, in spite of his tolerant generosity, was nothing but a strange xenoid who was up to something weird with all the interest he showed in me…

For Dingo and the rest of the gang, my return was a total surprise. Alive, happy, and loaded with marvels. When the cybertaxi let me off in front of them, they stopped playing soccer and just stared at me. As if they didn’t believe it, as if I were just a ghost. As if I had to be dead.

“Hey, guys,” I said, happy. “Did you miss me?”

Then, without a word, without Dingo giving them any sort of signal, they all ran at me. I thought they were going to hug me, to congratulate me for my cleverness and my good luck. But, too late, I saw the anger twisting their faces.