When I was hauling him off, he kept staring at that María Elena. Then she ran over, they hugged and kissed and cried and everything. But he was doing it for real, with all his heart. You could tell he really loved her, poor guy. As for her—well, I’ve seen better acting in our district talent shows.
It was so tough, I still get goosebumps and my eyes still tear up when I remember it… I felt like a rat, Markus. Really.
One last thing, this time I’m not talking as sergeant to agent but as a guy with some experience to a green kid. And take advantage now that I’m getting sentimental. Forget about the honor of the corps if things get really ugly. I really mean it.
Better a live coward than a dead hero. He who runs away saves his hide to fight another day, or do whatever. There’s lots of agents in Planetary Security, but not one of them will give you a new life if you lose yours fighting for a mistaken notion of glory or of taking one for the team. And autocloning is so expensive, it’s just for the top brass. Suckers like you and me only die once… and nobody brings us back.
I’m telling you this because the streets have been calm for years, and I know from experience that on this planet there’s always calm before the storm. I’m sure the pot’s going to start boiling again soon. And even though the electroclub is one of the strongest arguments ever invented, and Molotov cocktails roll off these Kevlar uniforms like water off a duck… details are the devil. An urban riot is serious business. That’s where you really realize how much this planet hates us.
One of those street revolts calling for xenoid blood can always be brought under control. We’ve always been able to control them. Until, every ten or twelve years, suddenly the day comes when the plebs are so desperate they don’t give a rat’s ass if we shoot all their hides full of holes. Until the day comes when they understand they’re so miserable they’ve got nothing left to lose but their messed up shithole lives. And not even that matters much to them, so long as they can take a few of ours with them.
Because it’s really the xenoids’ fault, but there are never any xenoids around to get bashed; those bugs can sniff out a disturbance better than a mutant bloodhound.
When you see the first riot get out of hand and overwhelm your friends in the antiriot squad, forget about corps solidarity and Greek legends. Run, hide your uniform, find yourself a safe hidey-hole—as far from the city as possible. It happens every ten or twelve years, and it always leads to the same result: Nothing.
The bugs from beyond Pluto show up with the heavy artillery, take their people out of there, and melt the place down. They don’t care if us “buglickers” are still here, risking our hides to keep their tourist paradise safe. After all, we’re the native cannon fodder. They cut the problem out at the root: they wipe out the whole city, or the whole continent, if things go too far. Look what they did to Africa in Contact times.
You wouldn’t want to see what a place that used to be a city looks like after everything in it is vaporized—just like that, in a couple of seconds. Not many ruins are left, and hardly any human remains. There’s no harmful radiation or toxic gas, the soil isn’t poisoned, the people who escaped before the disturbances can come back and resume normal lives. If they have anywhere to live. Because otherwise, their only choice is to grit their teeth, bow their heads, swallow their rage, and start working like mules to rebuild their leveled town.
But here and there on the ground, and on some walls that held up, who knows how, there are the shadows left by the volatilized bodies. Like ghosts, motionlessly accusing who knows who. Until the walls are knocked down or repainted.
And nobody cries over them, at least not publicly. The disturbance and the people who kicked it up are forgotten, and life goes on. Until the next explosion.
Once I saw a holovideo about some little animals that look like fat guinea pigs and that live up there in the Artic, eating moss and junk like that. The foxes, the polar bears, the owls, even the Eskimos, all the predators that don’t want to starve to death hunt them and eat them by the fistful. But they reproduce, they reproduce. Like guinea pigs, you follow me, Markus? And there’s more and more of them—until there’s no moss or anything left to eat.
Then they gather, armies of millions and millions of them, and migrate. Like crazy, and nobody can stop them. Not looking for more food or new territory, just looking for the sea. And the wolves, the foxes, all the predators follow them, gobbling them up by the thousands… until the fat guinea pigs dive head-first off the coast and swim out to sea. Then the sharks and seagulls keep on eating them, and thousands and thousands more drown… until there aren’t any left.
And the two or three that didn’t migrate go back to reproducing and getting eaten, until ten or fifteen years later the cycle repeats itself. And repeats, and repeats, and repeats.
I’d like to think, only until one day. Though I’m more of a fox or a hawk than one of them…
What’s that? Lemmings? If you say so. You’re the educated one here. Like I said, Sergeant Romualdo never…
Click.
“That’s enough.” Sweating, Colonel Kharman turned off the recording and wiped his forehead with a silk handkerchief. “The rest is half-baked biological and philosophical speculation. It would not interest you, Murfal, Your Excellency.
“Perhaps it would be… instructive,” the other wondered. His human body moved with the almost imperceptible time lag of a “horse’s” movements. Murfal was an Auyar.
“I don’t doubt it,” Kharman insisted, wiping the sweat from his broad brow. “But we already have more than enough evidence to send that poor devil of a sergeant to Body Spares for the rest of his life. And we know enough about the status and methods of corruption in our corps for us to take appropriate measures… I do not know how to thank you enough for your cooperation.”
“Rubbish,” the Auyar cut him off. “Even you should have realized that the disease has spread too far for home remedies, Colonel. Or perhaps we should investigate you, too?”
Kharman ignored the veiled threat, but started sweating again. It was only after a few seconds had gone by that he was able to ask, in a rather unsteady voice, “Do you… have some concrete proposal?”
“Of course.” The smile on the body of Murfal’s “horse” was like one on a badly built marionette. “Or did you think we supplied you with our huborg prototype just to test it out?”
“I thought that…,” Kharman began.
“I don’t care what you thought,” the Auyar again interrupted. “You’ve already learned that we are capable of building perfect biomechanical replicas of human beings. If we could fool even your sergeant, no Earthling will notice the difference.”
“I was very impressed with the way you were able to create an entire backstory for Markus. Parents, education, everything,” Kharman observed, still sweating.
“Simply routine… But we did not do it as a mere experiment…” Murfal took a long pause and smiled once more. “Your Planetary Security is worthless, Colonel Kharman. It is rotten to the foundations—and we do not like that. We need a sound and incorruptible police force that will fully guarantee tourists’ safety.”
“But… they’re only human,” Kharman tried to argue, wiping his forehead.
“Yes. Regrettably limited, as you all are,” the Auyar agreed. “Hence our idea is to replace you with our huborgs.”