“I don’t like it—too long,” I said right away. “Can I call you Ettu? How long do I have to stay with you? Can I tell my Abuela?”
He grunted a few times, like a dog barking; apparently that’s his race’s idea of laughter.
“Do you always ask questions three at a time?” he said. “Sure… Ettu is fine. About how long, I guess a month should be enough. And you can call whoever you want… Liya. Come on.” And he set off walking at his fast but heavy pace.
I let him get a few yards ahead before I followed. I didn’t want him to think I was dying to go with him, either. A girl has her pride, and after being practically kidnapped she has to keep a certain… distance.
But he’d called me by my street name, the one I had picked myself. Adults never do that.
At least, not my Abuela. She always calls me Leilita and makes me feel like a baby, even though I’m nine years old.
Ettu seemed different. Like someone who’d take me seriously and forget about my stupid age. The idea of spending a month with him was starting to sound interesting, at least.
I went with him to his hotel. After the gold card and the platinum card, it didn’t shock me to find him staying in the New Cali Galaxy itself. The doorman frowned when he saw me walk in, as you might have expected—and that was after I’d taken that fire-hydrant bath and was looking almost presentable. I bet he thought I was a little xenoid from some unknown race, not a nine-year-old girl.
At first I tried to act like I was used to all that superluxury. But I couldn’t keep my jaw from dropping for more than three seconds. I was almost drooling in amazement, and I kept tripping over my own feet trying to look at everything while I walked.
There were six levels to the lobby, and the middle three floated in the air without any visible supports. Stable antigrav technology. So expensive, no other building in the city has it that I know of.
Cryogel waterfalls cooling the place down nicely.
Vending machines for drinks, drugs, every piece of junk that could have occurred to me… and lots I’ve never imagined.
Thousands of xenoid tourists entering, leaving, jabbering in a thousand dialects. Social workers and their disguised male counterparts swarmed all over, more or less brazenly approaching every visitor who came near.
The Planetary Security pigs in their dress uniforms looked almost friendly, almost trustworthy… but they kept their eyes peeled, and they didn’t miss a trick.
I saw them incapacitate a young man with an elegant flick of the electroclub when he tried protesting the stingy sum a dolled-up Centaurian lady had paid him for his services. While he flopped down onto the carpeted floor, the buglickers greeted her slavishly, and she stepped unperturbed over his limp body. Flesh to be used and discarded, she must have been thinking. Earth was a good place…
Private aerobus drivers were whispering their prices, always lower than what the Planetary Tourism Agency charges. People selling fake folklore junk were displaying their merchandise mysteriously in the folds of their overcoats. None of them should have been there, in theory. But they all paid a percentage to the buglickers for their relative impunity.
You could find the whole tourist trap freak show of every street in the city there in that lobby, only more refined and more concentrated. Of the whole Earth, even.
Ettu passed right through that vile bedlam like an icebreaker through an polar sea. Xenoid or human, whoever didn’t get out of the way of that determined hulk was shoved aside without a second glance. The basic etiquette of force.
He took me to the spa and handed me over to two experts who obviously owed their goddess-like bodies and doll-like faces to nanosurgery. All smiles, they toiled to scrub nine years of grime off me. The water, the gel, and the ultrasound were delicious, and I would even have enjoyed the hydromassage if it weren’t for the fact that as soon as the Colossaur stepped out for a second, the sluts started asking me how I’d met him and who I was… with a hint of envy that I didn’t like one bit. And I really hated the provocative way they suddenly started to caress me. Asking if I wanted rings on my nipples, an exotic hairdo for my pubis…
I don’t know if they were pedophiles, lesbians, or just trying to get me to recognize their erotic skills so I’d convince Ettu to use them… But I had decided a long time before that when I was ready to lose my virginity, I’d rather do it with a man. Dingo always said that gay sex is like dessert—refined and superfluous, exquisite. But that straight sex is like meat and potatoes: what really counts, what feeds you.
He’d know. He always said he’d go in for freelance social work as soon as he turned fourteen… and he had all the required equipment. And no scruples.
Luckily, Ettu showed up in time to save me. He brought me a plastisilk sweater and a pair of self-sealing boots my exact size, and when I whispered to him what the bath attendants had insinuated, he got me out of that spa as fast as he could. He hardly left them a tip.
In the changing room, he gave me the clothes he’d bought for me and told me to get dressed. He didn’t even watch me dressing, which really confused me. I had gotten the idea, I don’t know why, that maybe he was the type who only enjoyed watching other people…
With my squeaking-new clothes and the platinum card safely tucked deep in my pocket, I went with Ettu to the hotel shops. He let me enter first, while he waited outside for a few seconds, enjoying the show.
When I entered, the looks I got from the saleswomen (more goddess-bodies and doll-faces—apparently plastic surgeons mass-produce them for the Galaxy hotels) weren’t exactly friendly. What’s this little girl doing here? Toys are another department! There’s only expensive, super-exclusive things here! One even tried shooing me off with a languid wave of her perfectly manicured hand, the way you’d shoo a bothersome insect. But a girl doesn’t survive Barrio 13 by worrying much about how people look at her or the gestures they make. Condescending gazes and scornful gestures don’t break bones. I have eyes, too—and insolent ones, my Abuela says. I made do with sticking my tongue out at them all and then ignoring them. I had plenty to look at…
Then Ettu walked in, patted my hair kind of casually, and they stood up straight and immediately put on their professional smiling masks. If I was with him, nothing was off limits for me.
Running around the store, selecting this and that, was like the birthday I’d never had before. I bought everything I’d always dreamed of: urban camouflage outfits, mirrored dresses, spinning skirts, high-speed leather pants, a color-shifting dress, shoes with hydraulic soles… Even a long plastisilver dress, which of course they didn’t carry in my size, but the cybertailor trimmed and mended it in a few seconds with his nanomanipulators. If the Colossaur planned to take me with him everywhere, a more grownup dress might come in handy. Maybe he wouldn’t always want to be seen with a nine-year-old girl dressed like a jungle explorer or a jetskate racer…
When it became obvious that I wasn’t just looking, far from it, the saleswomen’s looks went from scornful to envious and intrigued. Suddenly attentive, they gathered around to “help” me. I continued to ignore them. Ettu winked at me and we both laughed. Some social workers shopping nearby came over, attracted by that barking sound of his, so obviously xenoid, smelling a potential client with credits to burn. But I held tight to his hand and looked at them defiantly, as if to make clear that this one was mine. And we laughed again.
The ice was broken.
Though I still hadn’t realized that it wasn’t just a dream. Maybe that’s why I was so calm.
The platinum card did have credits on it. Lots, apparently. I could tell when it was time to pay. The employees’ attitudes, already obliging and astonished, became absolutely servile when I showed them my treasure. What does young Madame desire? Would she like to see our perfumes? Might we accompany her to the toy department?