Хосе Гомес - A Planet for Rent

Or they got death.

He stared at the triple diamond for several seconds, like a defenseless bird peering into the hypnotic eyes of a cobra. The Auyars paid really well. Better than anyone. A contract from them could make him rich forever. But at a price: being left with a mind as blank as a newborn child’s. Stripped of the only true wealth he had managed to amass in his not-very-long life: his memory.

Moy trembled and tore his gaze from the triple diamond with an almost physical effort. “I should think about something else or I won’t be able to do anything today,” he mumbled, feeling beads of sweat slide down his forehead. “It’d be so nice right now to take a hit…”

A hit, a hit… No .

Shouldn’t even think of it.

Telecrack had nearly scrambled his brain. Ettubrute had sworn he’d tear him to pieces if he caught him using it again, after all it had cost to rehab him. And the worst thing about Colossaurs was that they always made good on their promises.

“It was all his fault… He shouldn’t have let me feel so lonely,” Moy grumbled bitterly. “I had to find company in the tele—”

He gulped. Just mentioning the drug and remembering the incomparable feeling as it entered his veins had set him to trembling. He had to lean against a corner of the tent to keep from tottering over.

Of course it had been the Colossaur’s fault.

Why hadn’t he ever told him that telecrack’s supposed ability to grant you telepathic powers was all a fake? If he was his manager, why hadn’t he helped him manage his earnings better those first few months? Invest them, like he did himself?

Well, the truth was, the only thing Ettubrute could have done to keep him away from telecrack and the other easy pleasures would have been to forbid them outright. But Moy had been so eager to have credits and spend them however he wanted, maybe that wouldn’t have worked either…

“It’s hard to learn from somebody else’s veins,” he muttered, smiling.

With a sad smile, he recalled the consumerist frenzy of his early months. Amazed by the utter novelty of his performance, the xenoids were perfectly happy to lavish their credits on him. And he was perfectly delighted to squander them.

Everything he’d ever yearned for on Earth but had never had. Everything he thought of as a symbol of status, of power, of wealth. Expensive clothes. Exotic food. Sensuous Cetian hetaerae. He bought gifts for his whole family and sent them by teletransport. A condominium in the most expensive neighborhood. Credits, credits… And, finally, telecrack.

The excuse he gave himself for trying it was pitifully trite. It went something like this: after a certain point every creative artist has to develop his parapsychological faculties if he wants to keep going further. What great performances he could have created if he could read the audience’s mind! The perfect, divine feedback loop…

“Ha,” Moy laughed drily. “The divine zilch.”

Deep down inside, he’d always guessed that telecrack was a fraud. Turning a human being into a temporary telepath was ridiculous, impossible. What he found attractive about the drug wasn’t so much its dubious effects as its ability to create permanent addiction. And the brain damage it could cause as a side effect. Playing with death…

Hits and more hits. Russian roulette by drug.

Telecrack, even off Earth, was an expensive drug.

He spent thousands and thousands to fill his veins with venom.

Until one day Ettubrute, tired of bearing witness to his self-destruction, forcibly locked him up in a detox center. Moy was barely a shadow of a man, down to ninety wretched pounds and lucky he could even breathe.

They took care of him at the center. Real good care.

They freed him from his addiction forever.

Well, they were supposed to. That’s what they were there for.

The incredible thing was, they did it in just eight days.

Eight days during which he came to know all the colors and flavors of hell. It had been bad. Real bad.

Knowing that was more than enough.

He didn’t want to remember the details… Or, he couldn’t. The Auyars weren’t the only ones who could erase memories.

He got out, restored to health, having put on sixty pounds and gotten back almost all of his old self-control. Having gained total respect for xenoid medicine, which had done the miraculous and freed him from a drug that nobody on Earth ever escaped.

And a feeling of gratitude mixed with resentment toward Ettubrute. He’d saved his life, true… But he charged the full cost of the treatment to Moy’s account.

It was only once he’d combed through his finances that he understood how much money he had wasted. Between the detox center’s bill (effective treatment was expensive anywhere in the galaxy) and what he had spent on telecrack, he owed the Colossaur nearly half a million. And the worst of it was, his agent was close to washing his hands of the whole business and suing him for breach of contract. Leaving him stranded in a foreign world, without a credit… It would have been almost like murdering him.

It had taken begging, pleading, and invoking the “old friendship” between them — and a promise to pay off his debt in full, plus fifty percent — to get Ettubrute to loan him enough to be able to eat and fix up the equipment for his performance piece. The bare minimum he needed to start over. From zero…

The Colossaur had bled him with the skill of a parasite. And the ironic thing was, he was still supposed to be grateful to him for agreeing to keep on bleeding him for a while.

Naturally, he’d had to sell his tailor-made clothes and his luxury condo and give up the expensive whores and the exotic food. But, lesson learned. Once and for all.

“And here I am, in the thick of it,” he sighed. At least he’d been strong enough not to give up. He’d already lived it up enough. Maybe too much. He knew everything you could do with money. And he knew he would be able to earn more. Next time would be different.

At least there’d be a next time.

He’d had to tighten his belt, the last few months… but he’d already practically covered his debt to the Colossaur. Before long, what he earned would be his again… minus the agent’s usual twenty-five percent.

“Leech,” he muttered, but without real anger. Yes, it was an exorbitant percentage. No xenoid artist turned over more than ten percent to his agent. But he was human, a terrestrial… Trash, that is. And he could never give enough thanks to his good luck and to Ettubrute for allowing him a chance to leave the cultural and financial hole-in-the-wall that was Earth.

There were thousands of human artists who would envy his situation, that he was sure of. Many artists, better and more original than him, would have sold their souls to the devil just to get out.

He thought with satisfaction about his upcoming triumphal return visit, with enough credits to buy a whole city on Earth. And enough firsthand experience of xenoid art to put his own work light-years ahead of any competitor’s, in concept, theory, and development.

They could stop him from talking about what he’d seen, but they couldn’t stop those experiences from seeping into his art…

He had nothing to complain about. It could have been a lot worse. Ettubrute, after all, was almost his friend.

He thought again about Kandria, that holoprojection artist he had met on Colossa. A beautiful mestizo woman, half-human, half-Centaurian, truly talented. Some of her “Multisymphonies” were genuinely good. And the girl was just fantastic at making love. Too bad they’d barely had two weeks together. Moy wouldn’t have complained about getting involved in a longer and more serious relationship with her. Though Kandria’s Centaurian agent might have.