She paused. “This is kept confidential, I presume.”
“Oh yes. We have strict laws against unauthorized disclosure.”
She gave the information requested, about both her personal finances and her business’s. But she balked when she read further into the questionnaire. “I’m not putting up with it. Look at this list. Does the subject have any criminal convictions; what was the subject’s standing in school; what titles has the subject held; what awards have I won; who are my family members for two generations forward and back and out to third cousins; are any of them convicted felons, who are my business associates and clients, what are their status ratings… it just goes on and on. You ask everything except whether my clients molest their household pets. Check my father’s Who’s Who listing if you want to know about my family, but I’m not giving out information about my clients.”
“I must calculate your exact rank so I will know what size body you should have. It only needs to be done once. After that your records always will be on file.”
“Stand not upon the order of your going. I don’t give a… look, just give me any size body you want. Or turn me down and I’ll go to one of your competitors.”
“I can probably correlate your data with enough other public information to get what I need,” the rental clerk said. He stared blankly at his computer for several seconds, then continued, “I believe, possibly, I have sufficient data to analyze your height equivalent. Wait one moment while I match you to a suitable body.”
Rabinowitz waited considerably longer than a moment. Then the clerk said, “All is ready. Prepare for joining.”
No matter how often she did it—and she’d done it more often than most people on Earth—melding with an alien body was always disorienting. People of every planet constructed mechanical rent-a-bods as much like their own as possible, making them awkward for anyone who was shaped differently. Some races had more than two arms, and a human could only leave some of them dangling limply; some had fewer, and a human felt handicapped. Some saw in wavelengths incomprehensible to Earth people, while others heard in ranges humans couldn’t make out.
Worst of all, though, were the ones that were almost humanoid, like the Jenitharp. They had two arms and two legs, but the arms came out at the waist, halfway down the body, in a strangely jointed arrangement that could by no means be called shoulders. The waldo hands were too far away from the head. It felt like she was living inside a funhouse mirror.
Rabinowitz found herself standing beside the clerk, looking down at him. “I’ve notified the police,” he told her. “They will arrive shortly to escort you. They asked that you wait here.”
“Fine. I prefer a little time alone with a new body so I can learn how to work it.”
“If you wish it, now that we have your height on file, we can charter you a permanent body for a slight additional charge. A body would be permanently reserved for you and you could visit Jenithar whenever you wished without going through such inconvenience again.”
“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind if I’m ever forced to do more business here.”
The clerk departed, leaving her alone. The room was crowded with racks of rental bodies of all different height ranges—many smaller than hers, some considerably taller. Her body felt heavy. Many races built their visitors’ bodies out of plastic or other lightweight materials. Some even grew them from living tissue. The Jenitharp made theirs of clanking, cumbersome metal. This body was covered with a fake greenish-brown marabou. Given her size and color, she was apparently of a decent ranking.
Rabinowitz hobbled to a clear area near the center of the room and started moving around. The leg motions weren’t too bad if she took lots of tiny steps, as though she were wearing a very tight kimono. The long, thin arms felt useless and dangly; they seemed to flop about like rubber hoses, and she practically had to dislocate her own shoulders to move them. They were more tentacles than arms, no real joints to them. “You have to be a Balinese dancer to make these things move right,” she muttered.
After fifteen minutes, she felt comfortable enough not to embarrass herself too badly. Fortunately, no one expected an alien in a rented body to be graceful. Every race had its own jokes about how clumsy alien visitors were.
A couple of newcomers entered the room, one somewhat taller and paler than the other. There was no immediate way to determine their genders. “Ms. Rabinowitz?” said the taller one, who was still shorter than she was. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Feffeti rab Dellor, third level constable. I am grateful you’ve agreed to assist our investigations. If you kindly would accompany me, we shall visit the site of the murder.” He did not bother to introduce his shorter companion.
“Lay on, MacDuff,” Rabinowitz replied.
The constable paused. “I’m sorry. That failed to translate well.”
“Never mind. It was a literary allusion. I shouldn’t be giving those away for free, anyway.”
Constable Dellor and his companion led Rabinowitz through a crowded hallway to an elevator, where they shoved into a large car with many other people. They descended sixteen floors before Dellor indicated they’d reached their level. They got out and walked through still more crowds to a public vehicle stop. The crowds parted for them as they walked; perhaps Dellor had some police insignia Rabinowitz couldn’t recognize, or perhaps the people were being respectful of her height, which was greater than almost everyone else around her.
Apparently even the police took public transportation here. They claimed the very next cab in line, jumping ahead of everyone else waiting. Dellor gave the driver, who was considerably shorter, a police override code and a destination, and the cab sped off.
Rabinowitz’s only previous experience on Jenithar was in Levexitor’s veer-space, so her first “real” looks at it fascinated her. The sky was overcast, and even though her artificial body couldn’t discern normal ranges of temperature or humidity the weather felt muggy. The sky was bright despite the clouds; Rabinowitz had read that Jenithar’s sun was an F-class, slightly brighter than Earth’s. Her rented body’s filters cut down the light to manageable levels, but they did strange things to her depth perception and made colors seem washed out and unnatural.
This particular region was a city crammed with enough skyscrapers to make any Manhattanite feel comfortable, but that same New Yorker would have gaped open-mouthed at how clean it all was. Legions of municipal workers were employed solely to keep the buildings and streets immaculately scrubbed and litter-free. Rabinowitz might have thought this stemmed from some sense of civic pride if her previous reading hadn’t explained it was part of a full-employment program.
There were people everywhere, constantly in motion. They formed long lines of pedestrians beside the streets, arranged in rows according to height, with each sidewalk dedicated to one-way foot traffic. There was a swirl of colors and shapes, but surprisingly little sound. Being forced to live so closely together, the Jenitharp developed strict rules about invading someone else’s privacy with their own noises.