Maybe it was stupid, but she couldn’t shake her guilt complex…
Some races, such as the Auyars, were biologically incompatible with the terrestrial biosphere. To enjoy the tourist paradises that the planet had to offer, they had created the system of Body Spares.
All of the parameters of the “client” (memory, personality, intelligence quotient, motor skills) were computer-encoded and then introduced into the brain of a host-human. The xenoid gained both mobility and access to all the skills and memories of the “spare body.”
There was just one “minor” detaiclass="underline" forty percent of the time, the person whose body and brain were occupied by the extraterrestrial remained conscious.
That must feel like being a marionette, moved by another’s will…
When the process was in its experimental phase, being a “horse” (a term derived from Voodoo) was voluntary, and almost well-paid. But there weren’t enough volunteers anymore, not once it became clear that there could be aftereffects. Nowadays, the sentence for any criminal offense was a certain number of days, months, or even years in Body Spares.
It was the modern equivalent of Russian roulette; not all “riders” took equally good care of their “horses.” Some tourists pushed them to exhaustion, then simply paid the resulting fine. It was so cheap… Many humans lost their minds after being treated that way for five or six weeks. There were even rumors floating around that at Body Spares they tried to get all the spares to lose their minds. A suspiciously ambiguous law stipulated that you only had full civil rights if you enjoyed perfect mental health. Any obligation to return the use of a body to its legitimate owner would automatically vanish if he went schizophrenic.
Buca thought of Jowe, so sensitive and delicate. He wouldn’t last two months. He was probably wishing he would die already…
But maybe—the idea was unlikely, she knew, but it was comforting—since he was young and graceful, some wealthy and powerful xenoid would have picked him. And now he’d be wrapped up in important negotiations with top officials from the Planetary Tourism Agency. That would be so ironic…
She only prayed that he wouldn’t be “mounted” by an Auyar. They didn’t mind paying the fines, no matter how steep, and they always destroyed the bodies they used as “horses.” The grodos seemed trusting and naïve by comparison with the Auyars, for whom paranoia seemed to be second nature. They were ultraprotective of their privacy. Nobody knew what they truly looked like, or many facts about them…
Human and grodo, they walked through a giant hologram of Colorado’s Grand Canyon. Ahead of them, two Aldebaran polyps were silently talking with their tentacle gestures, completely engrossed. Buca watched them in amusement: following the fluorocarbonate pollution of the twentieth century, and after being strip-mined for minerals by a mining corporation from Procyon, the place wasn’t even a shadow of that image.
She noticed with pride that Selshaliman was also stopping to admire the panorama. One of the few things the terrestrials could feel proud of was the well-oiled machinery of their advertising and xenoid tourism industries.
Buca had been with an ad designer for a couple of months, and she knew some of the tricks of the trade. Colors imperceptible to the human eye. Infrasound and ultrasound. And recently, even telepathic waves for the grodos…
What’s good for the goose… It was a bit of poetic justice if the Planetary Tourism Agency exploited the xenoids’ special abilities to drain their bank accounts.
They were coming up to the first checkpoint, which was surrounded by the inevitable Court of Miracles: self-employed businessmen, illegal moneychangers, drug peddlers, and freelance social workers. And, standing discreetly apart, waiting for offers, very elegant in their tight black synleather clothes, the tall, handsome young men who did male social work… It was completely against the law, and Planetary Security cracked down hard on it. In theory.
All of them struggling against each other and with the tourists to earn some credits. Just a month earlier, in a different astroport, Buca had been part of the show, not a witness to it.
But the show was always the same, and with the same actors.
The Disabled Veteran who would show you his radioactive stumps for a few credits. The Victim of Body Spares, drooling piteously and holding out a trembling hand for alms. The Persecuted Believer, begging for help to finish his sacred pilgrimage. The Poor Mother And Her Dirt-Stained Daughter, lying in a corner, both watching everything with the eyes of abused animals. The Rich Man Down On His Luck, feigning dignity to sell his skilled forgeries, the alleged remnant of a family inheritance. The Endangered Species Vendor, with his hidden cages full of solenodons, talking parrots, or leopard cubs. The Orphan Girl, who for a hundred credits would show off her family photos… and everything else, and then she’d try to con or assault her extraterrestrial benefactor. The Fun-Seeking Young University Student, who wasn’t poor (that had to be clear) but wouldn’t sneeze at a few credits or a polite invitation to eat, if some generous humanoid who shared his same-sex tastes were to invite him…
The fauna that all the tourism guides warned about.
They only existed because they were tolerated: Buca recalled Jowe’s words. A façade of false naturalness, a risky alternative for thrill-seeking tourists. The black market of self-employed tour operators. Their homemade products and services made the sophisticated efficiency of the Planetary Tourism Agency look good merely by contrast… and the agents of Planetary Security were keeping watch in the background, making sure the “self-employed” never became a real danger to the tourists.
Among them all, the freelance social workers stood out. Super-tall fluorescent platform shoes forcing them to walk with a gait that could look sinuous or simply unsteady, like balancing on stilts. Clothes tight as a second skin, too short, semi-transparent, or featuring a seductive play of light. Designs meant not to be suggestive but to put everything right out there on display. To leave just the smallest possible portion of the meat for sale to the client’s imagination.
Buca looked at the women, half amused and half repulsed.
They were her past.
She compared them with her reflected image in the polished plastometal walls. She wasn’t one of them anymore. She had ceased to dress in the lascivious uniform of desire.
She was wearing a pseudosilver ensemble that molded itself to her svelte form, suggesting it without clinging shamelessly to her body. The hues of the fabric shifted, interacting with her biofield. Only her face and hands were exposed; she had already displayed enough skin to last her a thousand years. This was the sort of dress the elegant humanoid ladies of Tau Ceti or Alpha Centauri wore.
Her skin was almost pallid enough for her to be taken for a Centaurian…
Maybe she should have bought that skin dye. Pastel blue. It would have heightened the illusion, and Selshaliman wouldn’t have minded. Over and above the childish cult for xenoids and for imitating their looks and customs, xenoid women were simply more… distinguished.
Being with Selshaliman was all it took for her to breeze through the second checkpoint without being bothered. Only authorized social workers could enter this ring freely. Freelancers had to be accompanied, at least for the time being, by a xenoid to get inside.
The sudden pandemonium of colors and sounds bewildered Buca for a second, as it always did.
The middle ring of every terrestrial astroport was a zone of carefully controlled tolerance, restricted to travelers passing through or tourists eager to take advantage of the reduced customs duties. Social workers of every race and size, each dressed more provocatively than the last. And their male counterparts, in their black uniforms. Native crafts, souvenir shops, all the tourist paraphernalia you found everywhere, all over the planet. But more artificial, cheaper, and more concentrated.