The Planetary Tourism Agency always paid compensation to the family members of the unlucky victims of dematerialization, giving the evergreen excuse that on Earth they didn’t have enough experience managing such advanced equipment… because extraterrestrial technicians were reluctant to train human crews to run teleport booths. Maybe there was a bit of truth in that. Surely newly trained human teletransport specialists would pull every string and try every trick to get off the planet as fast as they could. Like any sensible person who had any skill that xenoids might value. Artists, scientists, athletes—they all ran from their birth world as soon as the dazzling glare of extraterrestrial credits made them understand where true happiness could be found.
Of course, they never stopped shooting their mouths off about Liberating the Earth, Fighting for the Rights of the Human Race, and other such hot-air slogans. Buca despised them. It was so easy to talk about ideals from the outside, on a full stomach. And so hypocritical. She’d never make fun of the people who stayed behind on Earth, and she’d never “show solidarity with their just struggle”….
Blam… Blam… Blam…
Three isolated bangs.
Then the too-familiar rattle of small-caliber automatic arms.
Buca was stretched out on the ground before she understood what was happening. Her reflexes had betrayed her; you’d never survive in the suburbs if you insisted on standing after you heard shots fired. A little annoyed over her broken dignity, she watched.
The Planetary Security men were cornering a lone terrorist. He was jumping from column to column with incredible agility, evading them and firing a prehistoric repeating rifle. Doubtless he had taken an enormous dose of feline analogue, a non-addictive military drug that endowed any human with the tremendous agility and fast reflexes of cats.
The Xenophobe Union for Earthling Liberation guys often used it during their commando operations. The side effects were devastating exhaustion and depression, which left you totally defenseless. But a new dose would eliminate those effects. You could keep up the cycle indefinitely, or until you perished, all your physical and mental reserves drained, but active to the last second.
Beaten by numerical superiority and better arms, the man who thought he was a cat fell, hit point-blank by the Security agents’ bursts of fire. They kept on firing until unrecognizable remains were all that was left of the body. The feline analogue also made you incredibly resistant to wounds. More than one agent had discovered in the flesh that a terrorist with a dozen shots to the chest could still open his belly with one blow.
When the astroport clean-up people picked up what was left of the body and traffic returned to normal, Buca got up and glanced around, looking for Selshaliman. She suspected a last-minute betrayal. That would have been the height of irony, to leave her stranded there in the middle of the astroport…
“Your identification, please,” the Planetary Security agent’s voice resounded behind her with a mix of courtesy and authority. The barrel of a gun, still hot, poked insistently at her shoulder.
Buca turned around, infuriated: if he had ruined her dress, that idiot would see…
“I thought freelancers weren’t allowed in here.” There was disdain in the voice that emerged from beneath the helmet covering the agent’s features. Any courtesy had disappeared. “Pretty dress… Too bad a monkey’s still a monkey, even in a silk dress. Come along with me, sweetheart. You and me are going to go clear up a few things in private… And you’d better be very nice to me if you don’t want me to accuse you of being that poor moron’s accomplice.” He pointed with his minimachine gun at the pile of scraps that his buddies had turned the terrorist into.
“Wait, you’re making a mistake, I came here with…” Buca tried to explain, trembling with fear and rage at once. That was the usual deal the Planetary Security guys offered women in her profession: sex for impunity. Didn’t she know it… But how had he recognized her in spite of her super-expensive dress? She suddenly felt as naked and vulnerable as when she used to go around the other astroport dressed only in a translucent jacket and a scanty fluorescent loincloth.
“I don’t care who you came with. You’re going with me, princess,” he impatiently interrupted her. And he stuck out his gloved hand to grab her brusquely by the arm.
Buca closed her eyes and cringed, like a child waiting for his father’s belt to strike. Where had Selshaliman gone? Was it all just a dream? She should have suspected; it was too good to be real, for it to be happening to her…
Zasss…
The sound, right next to her, like a whip. Something fell, over there.
The gloved hand had never touched her. She opened her eyes.
Selshaliman was at her side, antennas up and the light reflecting wonderfully off his faceted eyes. He had never looked so beautiful to her before. The Planetary Security agent, sitting on the floor several yards off, rubbed his aching chest.
“Are you all right, Buca? Did he hurt you?” the insectoid’s vocal synthesizer chirped.
“Believe me, we are very sorry for this… incident. She is perfectly fine. My man didn’t even touch her. We didn’t know that she was with you…” The voice of another Planetary Security man, a sergeant to judge by his stripes, sounded conciliatory. “To make up for your trouble, we’ll give you top priority on the shuttle…”
“You had better do so. Come, Buca,” Selshaliman pronounced majestically, barely touching her. Buca leaned on him, trusting and deeply moved. At that moment she could even have loved him.
He’d hit a Planetary Security guy just to protect her! The sergeant and his man were nothing but trash to a tourist, especially a grodo… but it was the gesture that counted. She walked on Selshaliman’s arm, feeling on top of the world.
But she didn’t move away fast enough to avoid hearing what the sergeant said while he was helping his buddy back to his feet. Or maybe he said it so loud on purpose:
“Come on, to your feet, stupid… He hit you hard, but your armor absorbed it well enough. And you know what? You deserved it for being an idiot. For not paying better attention. That’s not any old social worker… The grodo has picked her; she’s going to be incubated, and that makes her a thousand times more valuable than you or me, or a hundred of us.”
Buca didn’t want to hear more. But Selshaliman’s measured pace forced her to hear the rest, too. The expert sergeant explaining things to the rookie. What she had known from the beginning. What she’d rather not remember.
“No, it won’t be like you’re thinking.” The sergeant had a decidedly disagreeable laugh. “Grodos are hermaphrodites. They only reproduce once, and then they die. But they have to deposit their eggs in another living being. The ‘incubator’ has to be warm-blooded, and as intelligent as possible. I guess that’s so she won’t kill herself, like a sensible wild animal would do if it saw it was as good as dead. So she’ll last long enough… So the eggs can hatch and the larvae can eat her guts with all the calm in the world. And apparently we human beings, especially if we’re free from drugs or implants, are perfect fits. When? Well… from the color of its carapace, it’s got to have a few more years to go. Our girlfriend will have everything she wants until he-she feels it’s time to worry about the continuity of the species. But I wouldn’t want to be in her place then…”
Buca couldn’t take it anymore. Removing her arm from Selshaliman’s with a violent gesture, she gave a half-turn to confront the sergeant.
The man had already taken off his helmet.
Those leathery features…