Markus, in case you didn’t know it, those kids from the gutter are worth their weight in gold for certain “jobs.” Not especially legal ones, of course. Since they were never registered by their parents or families, they don’t have Social Security numbers, which makes them unidentifiable citizens. That means they can get in anywhere without being detected.
That’s why they’re allowed to live. Too bad their bosses pay them chicken feed, which is why they have to risk small-time robberies on their own account. A street orphan’s life is tough. Only one out of a hundred reaches the age of fourteen.
When some xenoid who’s paying more attention than average discovers that one is lifting her purse, and she calls for help, that’s where you step in. The whole “Stop that thief!” scene: you chase him down, catch him, return the purse to the extraterrestrial, just like the Manual says, and they either give you a tip or they don’t… But then you throw out your instructions, and you ask the kid who his boss is.
A street kid’s master is always ready to pay. Ahimasa would’ve paid you a handsome sum for you not to tattoo his boy. A nice bargain, and everybody’s happy—even the kid. He might get a bit of a whipping, more for his clumsiness that for the purse-snatching itself, but at least he’d still be alive and still have a job.
If it troubles your sense of morality for the kid to get off without being punished for stealing, I assure you that the beating Ahimasa would have given him when we turned him over would have taken away his appetite for robbery for quite a while. The guys in the Yakuza are heavy-handed, and they don’t hold back with the neurowhip. If that boy ever tried it again, he’d be a lot more careful not to let his victim detect him.
Instead, what do they have now? Just a registered kid who’s worth nothing and who knows too much. Ahimasa will have to rid himself of him as quick as possible.
So, all on account of you, because you followed the regulations just as they’re laid out in the Manual and you don’t know the rules of the game, we now have a businessman—maybe not a totally legal one, but honest after his own fashion—who’s forced to contract a hitman to get rid of a poor kid. A kid who, for all we know, he might have even come to like. And a minor, a runaway, scared to death, who’ll be very lucky to escape with his life. A waste of time, credits, and human resources, and so much trouble…
That’s not how things are done, Markus.
Have you seen how many people greet me when we’re making our rounds? Some of them were kids like him, years ago—and I’m sure that every night, before they go to sleep, they still give thanks to God and the Virgin that I was the one who first caught them. I feel proud to be a member of Planetary Security every time I recognize one of them… They’re alive and they’ve grown into men thanks to me.
That’s what it means to be generous and to serve the public interest, Markus.
Do you understand the difference?
So you see, things are always more complex that they seem. The stuff they told you in the Academy, that there’s a war between our forces and crime that’s being fought on the streets across this planet—forget it, right now. There aren’t two sides. We’re equals. All fish swimming in the same water. The only thing that makes us seem different is this uniform.
You’re an educated kid, Markus, so I imagine you must have heard of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his social contract.
Well, there’s another social contract at work on Earth today, and we’re the guardians of it. Since nobody could survive if they followed all the laws, we’re the ones in charge of turning a blind eye to the minor infractions that are necessary to stay alive—so long as the violators don’t question the system itself too much.
Every seemingly honest citizen is breaking the law, one way or another. You yourself: sincerely, have you always paid your taxes properly and on time? Have you never rigged an energy meter? Aha, you see?
We make sure that the narrow margin of illegality we all live in is kept under control. Kept at a level acceptable to everyone. No serial killings or xenophobic terrorism, but everything else? Illegal gambling, soft drugs, unincorporated services, small-time pickpockets, minor robberies… Those aren’t the enemy, the others are. The xenoids, you understand?
How did you insult agents when you were little? What did you yell at them? “Buglickers,” am I right? Servants of the extraterrestrials, that’s what you thought we were. Don’t deny it…
In a way, those people from other planets pay our salaries so we’ll keep the peace in their tourist and finance paradise. And they could care less whether we kill each other, or eat each other—just as long as we don’t bother their sacred inhuman selves.
This planet could be blown to smithereens; if no xenoid gets hurt, it wouldn’t even be third-class news in the galaxy. But all it takes is for one stupid tourist to cut a tentacle, and all hell breaks loose.
It’s like the story of the boy who was playing with the leash of the organ-grinder’s monkey; nothing happened, the monkey didn’t react. The boy got bolder, touched the animal, and—chomp! He started screaming about how the monkey had bitten him. And what did the owner say? “You asked for it. Play with the leash—but don’t touch the monkey.”
On this planet, the monkey is anyone from another planet.
Still, you should know that the secret motto of the Planetary Tourism Agency also applies to us: “Take their credits at all costs and by any means.”
Which, translated into our slang, means something like: “The tourist is always at fault, and must pay for it.” And I’m talking about paying credits, for the record.
It isn’t that difficult.
Fortunately, the xenoids who visit us have considerable inherent respect for the Law and its representatives. Maybe things work differently on their worlds, and people in our line of work really do follow their Manuals to the letter there. Though I can’t imagine how that could be possible…
Fact is, if you’re intelligent, authoritative, and likeable enough, the way they expect public authorities to be, they’ll always believe you. That’s just what you need. Get them to believe that they were the ones at fault in the aerobus accident where a human with his lights off crashed into their vehicle from behind. Or that they are guilty for being robbed because they were carrying their pile of credit cards in a bag strapped across their bellies, where it’s child’s play for any pickpocket with a razor to swipe it.
Trip them up with all the legal technicalities ever invented. Make them feel guilty. That’s the key point. And get them to pay you to get rid of their guilt.
That last bit, most of all.
I’m probably underestimating you. You must know all this already. If you decided to join us, I bet it wasn’t out of civic duty or because you were wowed by the guns and the uniforms or the power and the authority you’ll represent to your old neighborhood friends and to social workers and girls in general.
Though that’s another advantage we have. Kid, if I told you half my sexual experiences, you’d spend half a year masturbating. I’ve never gotten married. What for? I’ve got everything I could want and more.
Inexperienced teenage beauties who take to the streets out of poverty, ignorantly wander into the forbidden areas in the astroport, and are willing to do anything if you just won’t start a file on them for being illegal underage workers. Hey, Markus, I do mean anything…
I’ve deflowered more virgins than a Cetian millionaire.
And the legal ones, the girls who have health insurance and everything, the real sex artists—don’t they know how to thank you when you intervene in time and free them from some client with more sadistic tastes than usual.