Хосе Гомес - A Planet for Rent

Step on up, ladies and gents, right this way!

But only if you’re xenoids, it goes without saying.

We don’t want any humans…

A once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity!

An offer you won’t be able to turn down!

For rent, one planet!

One whole planet, with its oceans and its mountains, with its glaciers and its deserts, with its plains and its forests.

For rent, one planet, with all its climates, its fauna, its flora, its minerals, and its moon.

And what’s more, with all its intelligent populations.

A real bargain!

For rent, one planet, with all its history, with all its monuments and wonders. With its works of art and its pride, with its spirit and its faith in the future.

For rent, one planet, to the highest bidder, for an indefinite period of time, no conditions, no restrictions, no scruples.

For rent, one planet, whole or by shares. Whether you’re an investor from Aldebaran or Regulus, or a tourist from Tau Ceti or Proxima Centauri, or a grodo or Auyar capitalist, you can’t let this opportunity slip away.

For rent, one planet that’s lost its way in the race for development, that showed up at the stadium after all the medals had been handed out, when all that was left was the consolation prize of survival.

For rent, one planet that learned to play the economics game according to one set of rules but discovered once it started playing that the rules had been changed.

For rent, one planet, for pleasure or spite, like an old social worker who’s fallen on hard times and who’ll let anyone be her master for a few hours in exchange for a couple of credits.

For rent, one planet whose inhabitants have stopped believing in the future… in any future, and all they have left is the pride of their solitary past to help them face up to their irksome, everyday, xenoid-filled present.

For rent, one planet, for you, innocent child of a culture and race that won the lottery, for you, privileged only because you’re from some other solar system, because you grew up under the light of some other star.

For rent, one planet!

Cheap!

Don’t miss your chance!

Sign your contract now!

Let’s just warn you, in good faith… you might want to read all the fine print first.

Because maybe, thinking you’ve just rented the planet, you’ll find out you’ve actually bought it. For all eternity. And, instead of paying with the credits you’ve rightly earned with your hard work and the sweat of your brow under the light of another sun, the purchase price was your soul.

But anyway… if none of that bothers you, come on: we’re waiting for you.

Don’t forget.

Tell all your friends, right away.

For rent, one planet.

The cybertaxi pulled up at the astroport entrance. Lifting the hatch, Buca extracted her long legs from the cab. First the right, then then the left. Then she straightened up with studied languor, hewing to her motto: Always be sensual.

On the other side, Selshaliman imitated her, and she envied his naturally dignified movements. With their shiny, grayish chitin exoskeletons, grodos had the rigid look of men wearing medieval armor. And majesty, plenty of it.

A Cetian would have looked nicer, in any case. Svelte, almost feline, so sensual; no wonder half the young people on earth imitated their way of walking.

But a grodo also had his advantages. She watched Selshaliman pay for the taxi with his credit appendage. His rapid, quasimechanical gestures were still extremely unsettling to Buca. Like he was a gigantic spider or praying mantis. But the image became more bearable when she recalled that she would soon have the human equivalent of a credit appendage: a subcutaneous implant reflecting the generous bank account that this exotic had just established in her name.

They went inside. Buca drank in the last terrestrial sights she would see for a long while. The microworld of the astroport.

The astroport and the neighborhood around it were swarming with traffic, as always. Xenoids just arriving, looking for excitement, and already being hailed by the network of tour operators from the Planetary Tourism Agency. Xenoids leaving the planet, exhausted and loaded down with cheap, picturesque souvenirs.

All sorts of them were there. Non-humanoids, like the enormous polyps of Aldebaran with their slow rolling motion on that one round, muscular foot; or the guzoids from Regulus, long, segmented, and scaly; or the Colossaurs, stout and armored. And also humanoids: Cetians and Centaurians. The former, svelte and gorgeous; the latter, blue and distant.

There were also humans, like that group getting off an astroport shuttle and practically racing to get inside. They looked like scientists, all of them very nervous. They were probably off to some conference, and they were all clustering around one fairly young guy who seemed to be the lead investigator. Though he looked pretty confused, too; this was obviously their first trip off the planet. But they were also privileged in their own way. Buca envied them a little. Earth allowed its citizens to leave only on very rare occasions, and only under very special circumstances. Probably some xenoid scientists wanted their human colleagues to attend their event and had paid all the travel costs and taken care of the paperwork.

You could even see a few mestizos here and there. Like that girl with the large eyes and the bluish skin. The Centaurian with her might be her father. Ramrod-straight, like all the rest.

The girl had to be famous, because her face looked pretty familiar to Buca. Maybe some simstim star, or a rich heiress… Or more likely a social worker like herself, but higher ranking. She couldn’t quite remember. Bah, it’d come back to her later. It wasn’t all that important, anyway.

Selshaliman moved his antennas nervously; he would rather have taken a teletransport booth to the central ring instead of crossing the whole thing on foot. He seemed uncomfortably aware of being the only grodo around.

These insectoids were crazy about security. They had their own network of teletransport booths and private communication circuits. A silly, overpriced whim, in Buca’s opinion. But if they could afford it… After the mysterious Auyars, the grodos were the most powerful race in the galaxy.

They were telepaths. That was the foundation of their vast commercial empire. Maybe they couldn’t read the thoughts of other species, but picking up on the moods and emotions of everyone they talked with put them at a very appreciable advantage in all their commercial deals.

She looked at him distrustfully. People said they were incapable of picking up and interpreting the thoughts of humans as sharply as they could those of their fellow grodos. But still… Selshaliman couldn’t seriously believe that she might be in love with him…

But just in case, she closed her mind, humming the opening bars of a catchy current technohit. A trick she had picked up from her friend Yleka.

A freelance social worker had to be very careful. Never let her guard down. She couldn’t rest till the hypership had taken off. So many stories were going around… Some social workers had put their trust in xenoids who later turned out to be humans, disguised with bioimplants. And they’d paid for their gullibility with months or years in Body Spares…

She looked around her. In the astroport, too, the unspeakable booths were everywhere. Inside them, bodies in suspended animation. Waiting for a client…

As if in reaction to her gaze, at that very instant the door to one opened and its occupant came wobbling out. Buca tried not to, but… she looked him in the eyes, as if hypnotized. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw it wasn’t him. Ever since Jowe had been arrested, every time she saw someone come out of a booth she was afraid of finding him with empty eyes.