A Planet for Rent

The Platinum Card

He appeared in my life on a Tuesday in August, in the middle of the afternoon. One of those summer days when heat is like a sticky spider’s web that you can’t get off you.

The stifling air above the asphalt played at looking like water or a mirror in the distance. All Barrio 13 looked lethargic. I had left my Abuela sunk in her alcoholic dreams after her third bottle of Seven Rats vodka, and had gone down to hang out with my gang.

They had just finished blowing up a fire hydrant with a smidge of plastic explosives that Dingo picked up off the street after the latest Triad robbery. All us kids were having a great time goofing around out in the gush of water that filled half the street. More kids than ever. Even a few sullen adults decided to join in: it was so hot, and there aren’t any air conditioners or swimming pools in Barrio 13. They were almost smiling when they came out of the water, looking ten years younger.

We were having even more fun because we knew it wouldn’t last. Less than half an hour later the buglickers from Planetary Security showed up with the repair crew. To run us off and look for whoever was responsible for the “sabotage” while the others were fixing the leak.

He showed up wrapped in a gray overcoat, trying not to draw attention. Sort of hard to do when you’re ten feet tall and your reddish Colossaur armor is peeking out through the folds of your clothes. Really hard to do on Earth. Impossible here in New Cali, Barrio 13, where we can smell a xenoid ten light-years off, even if he’s mounting a human “horse” from Body Spares. Which wasn’t the case.

When Dingo saw that it was a Colossaur and that he was alone, he gave a signal and the triplets ran out to ask the visitor for “some credits, Your Excellency, please.”

If he had been from any other race and not a native of Colossa, maybe we would have all ganged up on him. To beat him up and rob him, of course; what else could a xenoid wandering around alone in Barrio 13 expect?

But fifteen kids are no match for one of those armored monsters, not even in the sort of dirty fight we all love. Better use cunning, not strength.

Bubo, Babo, and Bibe were the best beggars in the gang: they knew how to make genuine-looking wounds with printer ink and sandpaper. Their specialty: Colossaurs. They’re always moved by what they think are magenta disease sores, and their guilt complex makes them more generous. Since the virus is endemic among them, and they were the ones who brought it to this planet…

How come I wasn’t suspicious of him from the start? He didn’t try to shoo the triplets away for fear of disease, like all the others of his race do. But he didn’t give them a single credit, either. Very strange… And since everything strange is suspicious, it was very likely we would have tried stoning him right there. Just to frighten him so he’d run off. We couldn’t have even tickled those armored plates—even rifle shots just bounce off of them.

Then, in that hoarse voice they all have, he said, “Kids, I’m looking for Leilah, Friga’s daughter. They told me she lives around here…”

That’s when we stopped playing and gathered around him, feeling surprised and keeping quiet but trying not to look too interested. The first thing you learn on the street is that giving away your emotions is always a bad move.

Some of the guys in the gang had joined so recently they only knew me by my street name, Liya. The ones who did know me stared at me out of the corners of their eyes. Like they were inspecting me, checking to see how much I might be worth, for that xenoid to show so much interest in me, how much woman there was in the nine-year-old girl I was. And it wasn’t much at all. I pretended I didn’t notice them sizing me up.

Even if I hadn’t seen Dingo make a sign, I’m not such an idiot I would have identified myself just like that to the first xenoid who came around looking for me. In Barrio 13, when they come from the outside looking for you, it’s hardly ever for anything good.

Of course, I had no way to know that this day and this Colossaur were going to change my life forever.

“Leilah… Sounds familiar,” Dingo said grudgingly, looking down at the ground.

“Do you guys know her?” the Colossaur insisted.

“Maybe yeah, maybe no.” Our gang leader sort of casually stuck his hand out palm-up, one of the few gestures that doesn’t need any translation anywhere in the galaxy. Money always talks, same on Earth as on Colossa.

And moving so fast we could barely see it, the xenoid grabbed him around the waist with his huge three-fingered hand and hoisted him in the air. His tiny sunken eyes shined when he looked at him from close up, and though some of the guys picked up rocks, something told me Dingo wasn’t in any real danger.

“I like that… Business sense from a young age,” he told Dingo, nearly sticking his tongue into the short, bristly chestnut hair that gave him his street name. “You people will inherit the Earth… or what’s left of it when we finish.” He brought Dingo closer to his snout. Dingo wrinkled his nose: must have smelled bad.

“What’s your name, future businessman?” asked the Colossaur.

“Jeremí… Dingo.” Dingo was scared to death. But as the head of the gang he had to look just the opposite, or every snot-nosed brat would challenge him to a fight for the leadership. If he survived this one.

“Ah. Jeremías, and they call you Dingo?” The wide mouth filled with sharp teeth bent in a caricature of a smile. “Look, Jeremías, you look like an intelligent kid, and I’d love to have a nice long talk with you… but I don’t have much time.” He pointed at us with his other hand. “Which of them is Leilah? I’m not going to eat her, and I’m not from Planetary Security. I have some business that might concern her…”

“I could…” Dingo dared suggest, seeing a chance for the gang to maybe make a profit and trying to get back some of his authority, which had been placed in doubt.

“I don’t doubt you could, perfectly well… But she’s the one I want,” the Colossaur shook his head. “For, let’s say… sentimental reasons.”

“Leilah’s still a virgin. I have an eleven-year-old sister who’d be cheaper for you,” piped up Silk, who’d never exactly been subtle or had a sense of timing. He’d basically just admitted that I was there, the moron.

“Shut up, stupid!” I hissed, furious, and jumped him, trying to pull his cap down over his nose.

The part about my virginity was true… But it wasn’t the sort of thing a girl was supposed to let a guy talk about in front of the whole gang. And it’s not like it did Silk any good to go around saying it: the two of us were steady, and everybody knew it… So if I was still a virgin, it was mainly his fault. Ten years old and still not able to get up an erection that was worth the trouble. Aside from his baby face and his corn-silk hair, Silk was a perfect idiot. I don’t know what I saw in him…

He resisted, of course, and we wrestled. He was stronger, but I was angrier, and I would’ve gotten him in the end. But before I could pull his cap all the way down to his neck, the Colossaur grabbed me with his other hand and picked me up to look me over.

I stuck out my tongue and put on my best Down syndrome face, cursing the moment I decided to start playing in the hydrant water. I’m normally so dirty that nobody notices my face… We call it “Barrio 13 makeup.” It’s very handy for keeping people from giving you a second glance, and keeping those Cetian pigs who’re always hunting for little girls from carrying you off to one of their slave brothels.

My Abuela always told me that my coffee eyes and chocolate skin would be my downfall one of these days. And if this wasn’t the day…

“Hello, Leilah,” the monster said to me. He was trying desperately to sound polite.

“She’s not Leilah!” the whole gang screamed together, even Dingo. “She’s…”—and that’s when they really gave me away, because some of them said “Liya,” my street name, others “Mary Jane,” which is like saying John Doe or Juan Pérez. That is, nobody.

I was done for.

“Ah, well. If she isn’t Leilah, she’ll do just as well.” The Colossaur set Dingo down and gave him something. “Here you go, chief… For your trouble. You have half an hour to use it up… Then I’ll report it missing and they’ll close the account.”

Dingo’s eyes shone with greed when he realized it was a gold card. The bank only gives them to people who have more than a hundred thousand credits in their accounts… and not to all of them, either. I’d never seen one outside of a holodrama.

“But… she…” He pointed at me, insisting almost as a formality, but his impatient feet gave away his desire to run off with his fortune and forget about me. The dirty bastard…

I looked at him, sulking. Judas! I would have insulted him, but I wasn’t sure I could say three words in a row without starting to cry. All that talk about group solidarity, all that “One for all and all for one,” all that “us against the world,” but he was selling me for a few credits, the rat! I was going to crack his skull with a rock, and the gang would be mine… if I got out of this.

For a second everything seemed to stand still.

“The buglickers!” Babo screamed, and fifteen kids ran off at top speed before the armored Planetary Security aerobus could land in the middle of the asphalt. For the first time in my life I was glad to see them. If that’s how the gang was going to betray me, at least the Law wouldn’t let me be kidnapped in my own neighborhood. Now this xenoid would know what’s what… I only had to ask them for help, and…

I thought better of it and kept quiet.

My captor greeted my supposed saviors with a slight wave of his free hand and walked off holding me tight against his chest, like it was nothing. Sure. A xenoid, even if he’s wearing a recently severed human head as a hat, will always be just fine, everything in order, for his lackeys the buglickers. When it comes down to it, they’re the masters, the ones who pay their salaries. And we people in the Numbered Barrios are basically just human trash.

The Colossaur went striding off. Farther and farther from my street and from Barrio 13. He seemed to know where he was going… and I didn’t like that one bit, if you know what I mean. It isn’t what you’d expect from a xenoid. They’re supposed to get lost every couple of seconds in our urban labyrinths, and give us poor natives a chance to make a living…

Later on I would find out that he knew much more about the good and the bad of my planet than I did.

His carapace was so rough, it was scraping my knees… I couldn’t hold back any longer, and the tears started to flow.

I was furious with myself, but I decided that if I was going to cry, I’d really sob my eyes out, so three seconds later I was bawling like a baby goat that just got weaned. If it didn’t stop him from taking me off my turf, at least it should bother him a little… and that would give me a better chance to escape.

It worked. He suddenly set me down on my feet, though he kept his heavy hand draped, kind of casually, across my shoulder.

He told me, “Look, Leilah, I don’t go around stealing little girls, and I’m not one of those gourmets that like the taste of human flesh. But since it looks like you won’t come with me without making a fuss, I’ll tell it to you straight. I came to Earth on… on vacation, and I need a clever, intelligent girl to help me. I know you won’t be losing anything, because you’ve got nothing to lose. Even your alcoholic grandmother will come out of this with more vodka than she could drink in ten years. I’ll pay you well, and you’ll also get to travel all over your planet for free. And I promise, I’ll never touch you. I know that sounds strange and that you don’t believe me… That’s good. I imagine that a naïve girl wouldn’t have made it to your age. But you’ll have to believe me. Because even if you don’t, I’m very obstinate when I’ve made up my mind… and I’m not going to let you leave. Even if you cry louder,” he commented when I took my bawling up a notch (what else could I do?). “But look, so you’ll see that things won’t be all that bad with me.” He dug in his coat pocket and took out something that gleamed with a metallic sheen. “Give me your hand, Leilah. Please…”

I hesitated an instant. From the corner of my eye, I was only staring at the huge paw holding me by the shoulder.

If he’d been a Planetary Security agent, I would have bit off a couple of fingers (I have good teeth) and while he screamed and bled I would have lost sight of him forever.

But you’d only try biting a Colossaur on the hand if you wanted to save money on the dentist. It wouldn’t do any good, anyway. You could lose all your teeth and he’d never notice.

Besides, this guy seemed so totally determined to find me wherever I was hiding…

Reluctantly, I finally stuck out my hand.

In Barrio 13, you learn fast to accept things the way they are… otherwise you never get a chance to learn anything else.

He took my fingers, pressed them against the shiny object, and then gave it to me.

I was stupefied.

It was a platinum credit card.

The kind banks give to people who have a million credits or more in their accounts. I had hardly even heard about them. I didn’t know any human who had one.

It had to be a trick, or a mistake…

“It was a blank card, Leilah, but now that I’ve recorded your fingerprints on it, you’re the only one who’ll have access to that account,” he explained, then snorted. “Now you can run away if you want to, and make me go through all the trouble of finding you again. Or you can come with me, nice and friendly, and enjoy my gift.”

I stared and stared at the card. It looked genuine. Of course, since I’d never seen one before, I didn’t have any basis for comparison.

I looked at the xenoid. The truth was, he’d been very friendly, given his position, my own, and the circumstances…

“I guess you must be thinking this might be a ploy,” he grunted. “But you must see that if I wanted to rape you, eat you, or send you to a slave brothel, I wouldn’t go to so much trouble with you. I wouldn’t risk losing so much money…”

“I want to make sure this card is genuine,” I said, trying to make my voice sound steady.

“Certainly, princess.” He showed me his four rows of teeth. “Will you come with me? You know better than I do that there aren’t any credit machines here in Barrio 13… There wouldn’t be many customers for them, I guess.” He let go of my shoulder and held out his hand as if he expected me to take it.

I pretended not to notice, of course. I wasn’t born yesterday, to let somebody walk me by the hand through the streets, and anyway I didn’t want to seem too friendly. A girl has her dignity.

I rubbed my shoulder. They really are strong, those Colossaurs.

“Do you hand out credit cards to every kid you meet? Why were you looking for me? What’s your name?” I fired off the three questions one after the other, like a minimachine gun.

He presented me with his caricature of a smile.

“Sometimes. The one your little friend—Dingo, wasn’t it?—took doesn’t have much on it. A couple thousand… Anyway, it’ll be a fortune to him and the rest of your friends, don’t you think?” He emphasized the word “friends” ironically, and my reaction was what you might expect.

“Those rats…” I muttered, remembering how they’d abandoned me.

“Your second question, I’d rather keep quiet about—for now,” the xenoid went on. “But you’ll find out later on, I promise. Someday… Let’s say it was for reasons of… nostalgia. Not for you, of course; I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

“For my mother?” I speculated, intrigued.

I only had one holovideo of her, and holonet recordings about her trials and sentences. And my Abuela didn’t talk about her much to me, not even on the rare occasions she was sober. But knowing the kind of life she led, it wouldn’t have surprised me at all if this xenoid had known her. Even intimately… If anybody could find my mother’s huge muscles attractive, it would probably be a Colossaur male. And Friga didn’t have an ugly face, to tell the truth. Abuela always said I was her living portrait.

“Could be,” he said, mysteriously. “As for my name… I’m afraid you humans find it unpronounceable. But I had a… a great friend who called me Ettubrute…”

“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?

What disgusting people!

The worst is that you could tell their friendliness wasn’t the least bit sincere, that they were burning with envy on the inside, wondering: What does this skinny little kid have that we don’t? What does he see in her?

Ettu told me we were going to the restaurant, and I didn’t dare refuse anything he wanted, though I would have preferred to eat something light, by myself, anywhere… There had already been too many emotions for the first day.

On our way to that gourmand’s paradise we passed by the toyshop. My eyes almost popped out of my head, seeing all those marvels, but I put on my bravest face and walked right on by. If Ettu wanted a girl who acted grownup, he’d have her. And I could always slip out early in the morning and look at all those things… and even buy something, with a bit of luck, if my card hadn’t used up its magic yet.

I couldn’t get used to the idea that the platinum card and the account behind it were really mine. Mainly, I think, because I knew I hadn’t done anything to deserve it—and I didn’t want to think about what I might have to do. As nice as Ettu might seem, by the age of nine a girl has already long figured out that nothing’s free in this life. And possibly in no other life, either—if there are other lives.

Dinner was more a theater performance than anything. Platinum and jade cutlery. A table big as an astroport landing strip. Six waiters in their ridiculous penguin suits just to serve the two of us. And talking the whole time in a language that had nothing in common with Planetary, which I only learned a couple of weeks later was French. The language of haute cuisine.

And the menu… If I had eaten a different dish every day, it would have taken me a year to try half the dishes that appeared in a holoimage over the table. And they all looked so generous and appetizing it made my mouth water, but I couldn’t decide which to order.

In the end I trusted Ettu, who ordered a Chicken Bellomonte for me, the same thing he got for himself. Except he asked for nine servings. And he ate so fast, he was almost done when I was still absent-mindedly gnawing the last bits off the bones of my chicken, wiping my fingers on the immaculate natural silk tablecloth under the horrified gaze of the waiters.

And the wines… For me, who had never tried anything but my Abuela’s Seven Rats vodka and the explosive concoctions that the gang brewed up in the still that Dingo built, they didn’t taste like alcohol, but something different, very different. And delicious. I drank so much that Ettu had to restrain me… after I had mixed red wine and Champagne, port and Madeira, Tokay and Bordeaux, one glass from each bottle, constantly fearing it was all just a dream from which I’d awake at any moment.

I was feeling deliciously tipsy when Ettu brought me up to his suite. His room was so big, they could have played several Voxl games there at once. And the bed—round, enormous, central, dominating the scene.

I remember thinking in my stupor that if my virginity was the price for living a few more nights like this one… it was a good price. And I stumblingly pulled off my clothes, not caring whether he saw me, and lay down face up on the bed, opening my legs as wide as I could, and likewise squeezing my eyes and fists as tight as I could.

If it was going to happen, let’s get it over with quick, and better now when I’ll barely notice…

But when I woke up the next day, I was lying in the same position… alone. No blood on the sheets, no pain in my insides. Ettu hadn’t slept in that enormous bed.

There was a smaller door on one side of the vast bedroom, shut and locked. I couldn’t open it.

And when I got a horrible suspicion and ran to check my pocket… The platinum card was right there where I’d left it the night before.

From that moment I trusted Ettu completely. I didn’t understand why he was doing it, but at least I knew why he wasn’t doing it. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. When you’re living in paradise, you don’t ask too many questions. Especially if you’re from Barrio 13, which is to say, from hell.

For five days Ettu let me wander around freely, as if he were getting me used to the wonders of the Galaxy.

It was strange and delightful to be able to behave for once like a little girl, without always having to think about the consequences or the price that had to be paid for everything.

I swam in each of the six pools, from the huge one that was open to everyone to the small, superprivate hot pool, where I cavorted naked around three bored Cetian and human couples and a contemplative polyp from Aldebaran that remained underwater.

I ate as much candy and ice cream as a nine-year-old girl can digest without any stomach disasters. I bought enough toys for a whole elementary boarding school. Magazines and books I’d always wanted to read, from holographic comic books to the classics that grownups talk about, which I didn’t have the time or the desire to do more than leaf through.

I wore myself out in the hotel’s magnificent gym, more playing with the equipment than really exercising my childish muscles.

I spent hours in front of the suite’s enormous holoscreen, flipping from channel to channel among the thousands that I had free holonet access to as a hotel guest. I saw holodramas that were on their thousandth episode, documentaries about the flora and fauna of Earth and other worlds, dance and theater spectaculars that bored me, concerts of those traditional music groups that all the xenoids love, cartoons, and all sorts of pornography for every taste.

During my frenzy of trying everything and acquiring everything, Ettu was only a fleeting reddish presence I barely glimpsed when he was entering or leaving my suite and locking himself behind his secret door. I gave him friendly smiles, but I didn’t know what to say to him, and I couldn’t think of any good topics of conversation. An indiscrete question might put an end to this fantastic dream forever, and I wasn’t about to risk it. He seemed very busy, but he was always observing me. And that toothy grin of his seemed permanently painted on his thickset face. As if to say, “Keep it up, Liya—what you’re doing is great, but there’s still more…”

And there was more.

By the fifth day, I was like that grodo in the fable who, after crossing a vast desert, thought his thirst was endless, so he dived headfirst into a lake, planning to drink it all. And after drinking for three days and three nights, he discovered that the lake level hadn’t gone down so much as a centimeter. And yet, not only had his thirst disappeared… so had his desire to drink any more water, ever.

The material world, the world of luxuries and objects I’d never had, didn’t do me any good if I was alone. My new possessions were worthless if I couldn’t show them off, brag about them, share them with others, watch them be astonished about it all. And most of all, the fact that it had been so easy to get it all, the fact that I hadn’t had to pay anything for the treasures cramming my room, took away most of their value.

On the sixth day I ran away. I used my platinum card to get a cybertaxi, a wide aerobus that I packed full of toys, clothes, candy, books… and even so, I had to leave some behind. And I went back to Barrio 13. Where else?

I had already talked with my Abuela, but she was prudent and as allergic to the mob of kids as any other woman, so in the middle of her drunken stupor she’d had enough common sense not to tell anyone where I was. Whereas I was so naïve, I asked them to let me off right there on the street, instead of at my house, when I saw the gang—my gang—playing.

Everything would be just like before, except better…

I was ready to forgive them. I had to.

They had sold me to a Colossaur. They were worse than rats, but they were my rats. The only real family I had—much more family than my alcoholic Abuela. Ettu, in spite of his tolerant generosity, was nothing but a strange xenoid who was up to something weird with all the interest he showed in me…

For Dingo and the rest of the gang, my return was a total surprise. Alive, happy, and loaded with marvels. When the cybertaxi let me off in front of them, they stopped playing soccer and just stared at me. As if they didn’t believe it, as if I were just a ghost. As if I had to be dead.

“Hey, guys,” I said, happy. “Did you miss me?”

Then, without a word, without Dingo giving them any sort of signal, they all ran at me. I thought they were going to hug me, to congratulate me for my cleverness and my good luck. But, too late, I saw the anger twisting their faces.

They fell on me. Kicking me, biting me, spitting on me, shouting at me. Ripping everything I had so happily brought to share with them out of my hands. I felt their hatred, their envy, and their simple need to destroy me so they could keep on being themselves. And those feelings were like a monstrous shell that turned them into something very different from the gang, my gang.

I wasn’t one of them anymore, and this was their way of showing me. In a way they had killed me by selling me to that xenoid. They had thrown me out of their world, which up until five days earlier had also been mine. I should have at least had the decency to stay dead. Not to remind them of what they hadn’t had any choice but to do.

We children are capable of endless cruelty. Because we don’t have anything to tell us, deep down inside, “That’s enough, stop.” And in Barrio 13, grownups tend not to get involved in kids’ business. If they kill one? Okay… one less mouth to feed. One less who’ll end up with the Triads or the Yakuza when he grows up.

At first, greed made Dingo and the others restrain their rancor. They controlled themselves to keep from breaking any of the “riches” that I had so naïvely brought them. Perhaps if I had shown complete submission it would have appeased them—I now know that this is how it works in the group rituals of lower primates such as baboons. But when Babo tried to rip the clothes off of me, when I kept my platinum card in my pocket, and I resisted, they forgot everything else and turned into bloodthirsty rats.

Surrounded by the smells of broken perfume bottles, trampled chocolates, caviar dumped on the ground, and wine spilling from smashed bottles, thirty hands and thirty feet went at my body. I fought like mad, like the girl accustomed to Barrio 13 gang fights that I was. But when I tasted my own blood running from my broken lips and split nose, and I realized that they would never stop, I was terrified like never before in my life. I screamed, begging for the help I feared would never come.

I screamed and shouted for my Abuela, for my mother, for the neighbors, for Planetary Security, for anyone who would help me, for mercy.

I screamed for Ettu, when I couldn’t take the pain any more.

It was killing me.

Then he showed up.

He was swift, brutal, and effective. Two swipes of the tail, one blow of the hand, two kicks, and one snap, and the gang fled in terror. My Colossaur angel, without a word, led me by the hand like a father leads his daughter, and practically dragged me out of there.

I was bleeding, had a dislocated shoulder, and felt dazed by the pain and the shock, but I’ll never forget the spectacle of two of the triplets twisted into unnatural, broken positions on the asphalt, and the body of Dingo, headless.

Dingo, the leader of my gang.

The same gang that had attacked me…

It couldn’t be. If it had all been a dream before, this had to be a nightmare.

When I got back to the suite, I slept almost fifteen hours straight. Maybe they gave me some drug, but I needed it. I have a vague memory of Ettu and the three hotel doctors caring for me, the sharp jab of pain when they snapped my arm back in place. Afterwards, through a fog, being moved and lifted somewhere.

When I woke up, I was in another almost identical suite, but half a world away. According to the brochure, it was also the Galaxy—but in Tokyo. I dug into my pocket, looking for the blessed card… and it wasn’t there.

I remembered that Babo and the others hadn’t managed to snatch it from me. So it had been him. The Lord gave it to me, the Lord took it away… Cursed be the Lord. Cursed be the xenoid Lord, who saves my life and takes from me the possibility of enjoying it.

That was the end of my buying frenzy. And the ice floes that had almost completely melted loomed up once more between us.

Ettu continued to pay unflinchingly for every meal, every item I needed—or that he realized or thought I needed—though I never asked him for anything again. I felt that when he took away the platinum card, he took away his trust, so why should I give him mine? He was a xenoid, I was a human. No trust was possible…

The silent, roving period had begun.

After Tokyo there was no more rest. We traveled as if we were pursuing something, or fleeing something. Ettu talked and talked, revealing the world to me, the Earth I had never known. I just followed him everywhere, quiet, but like an affectionate puppy that follows in its master’s footsteps. Though it was less affection than fear. Fear of losing him, too, after he had taken my gang away from me.

Fear because I knew how useless I was, since Ettu could manage on his own perfectly well. He didn’t need anyone’s help to rid himself of the moochers who crowded around in every city, or the people offering him a “pretty girl, real cheap, will do everything,” or a “good room with antigrav and holonet connection, good price,” or “traditional food, satisfaction guaranteed, cooked naturally, organic ingredients.” He didn’t even pay attention to the ones who came up to him pretending to be old friends or to have a predilection for his race, much less to those who talked about terrestrial hospitality and then wanted at all costs to invite him to their house. None of the vultures who always circle round the xenos, all the same in every city on Earth, could faze him.

We never slept two nights in the same hotel. After the Tokyo Galaxy he preferred simpler, more anonymous hostels. Maybe he wanted to go unnoticed… or he might have had some other reason. He never consulted with me about his decision. It couldn’t have been to save money, because he kept spending it hand over fist.

In any case, even the grubbiest hotel (and we never spent the night in one that was actually grubby) would have been much better than my tiny apartment in Barrio 13. Ninety-seven square feet, including bath and kitchen, filled with the smell of my Abuela’s alcohol, vomit, and old age, day and night…

Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, New Bombay, Beijing, Florence, Berlin, Stockholm, New Paris, Barcelona, New York, Havana, New Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires… In less than a month, we tied a bow around the world.

The key question was still the same: what did Ettu need me for? It wasn’t to be a guide for him: at the age of nine, I’d never left New Cali, hardly even the microworld of Barrio 13. He knew how to get around better than me in every city we passed through.

In each city we repeated the same routine. Arrive, find a hotel, eat, drop off the luggage… and wander. We walked around looking at everything, for hours at a time, snubbing the taxis and aerobuses. Until my legs started to ache, when he, always perceptive, would carry me on his armored shoulder, though I never complained. Or thanked him.

He was never interested in the nightclubs where his people hung out, or the shows for tourists, or any part of the well-planned spider’s web for emptying xenoid bank accounts that the Planetary Tourism Agency had woven around the planet.

His thing was the past. And of the past, art.

He seemed thirsty to look, to touch, to measure step by step every portion of Earth’s artistic past. He knew so much about human architecture and its convoluted relationship with history! He talked to me about every fountain, every palace, every plaza and monument, with a sense of wonder, of respect, and at the same time of bitterness, which at the time I grasped or understood only in the vaguest way.

He seemed to know it all. Whichever city it was, he knew where to go and what to find.

The austere sand gardens of the Zen monasteries and the graceful palaces of the Japanese. The lovely pagodas and ornate wooden palaces in China. The stupas and the temples bursting with reliefs in India. The orgy of curves in the Arab mosques and minarets, the orgasm of color in Florentine marbles and cupolas. The solidity of German cathedrals, the profuse richness of the Spanish Baroque, the fake Eiffel Tower and its steel stylishness, the symphony of cement and glass in Scandinavian and Catalan modernism. The fusion of European spirit and indigenous patience in Brazil, the pretentious Europeanization of the palaces and avenues in Buenos Aires, the fiesta of colors in Caribbean eclecticism. And to sum up the world, the Steel Babel, where all styles cross paths and are refined by their dizzying combinations.

New York. That’s where we would stay…

There was still much more…

Ettu talked about the bold human feat of conquering height and volume, overcoming the resistance of form, using only inadequate primitive materials. But he passed by the ultramodern living edifices of grodo architecture, not built but grown, without a glance. He disdained the perfect glass-steel and synplast angles of astroports in favor of the musty glory of medieval European castles. For him, human architecture had had its childhood, youth, mature adulthood… and its senile decay was the obscene and perfunctory perfection that had been brought to Earth by all the races of the galaxy.

In museums, he looked at paintings and sculptures, and sometimes even talked to them, with the sort of affection and familiarity you see between old friends. The Chinese bronzes, the delicate Japanese calligrams, the erotic reliefs of the Hindu temple at Konark, the Greek Orthodox icons and the unique brilliance of Flemish primitives—for him, it was all a cause of wonder. The unbridled colors in paintings by the blacks of Africa and America, the abstractions of European modernism… he preferred it all to the cold geometry of the Cetians’ networks of lights, the Centaurians’ fractal kaleidoscopes, the living surfaces of grodo bioarchitecture. The beauty of imperfection, of life, was what human pictorial art was all about for him.

I’ve lost many of his words, but some of them remain etched in my memory, like drops of water that splash from the stream and sprinkle the rock and so remain for a while. Insufficient in themselves, isolated, but giving an idea of the torrent.

I listened shyly, amazed that an all-powerful xenoid would pay so much attention to our dead and obsolete art. I didn’t understand his obsession with unearthing our past glories. It made no sense in him, one of the masters of the present and future. His rapture over colors was stupid, since as everybody knew, his species could only see shades of gray, not the miracle of colors.

I understood a little better when I met some other Colossaurs, beasts concerned only with force and power, for whom art was a waste of time and a stupid weakness.

Then I began to comprehend Ettu.

His tragedy was to have been born in the wrong star system, under the wrong sun, in the wrong time.

Not long ago, much later, I read about a king, Ludwig of Bavaria, and I realized that one of the descriptions applied to him would have fit Ettu perfectly: mad for beauty.

He was a stranger among his own kind, a freak, a leper, a pariah. And the arts of the rest of the galaxy were too elevated, abstract, and perfect for his crude yet refined and terribly heightened sensitivities. The history of human art was exactly what he would have wanted his own history to be. Elemental, imperfect, sometimes naïve, feeling and stumbling its way to what others already knew from the start. But vital, never giving up…

And of course, there was his human friend, the mysterious Moy…

In Barrio 13, nobody asks questions about anybody’s past. I didn’t either, but curiosity demanded that I learn more, and I simply listened more closely.

Sometimes he talked to Moy as if he were there. At first it terrified me—a crazy Colossaur isn’t exactly the safest person in the universe to be around. But later, picking up bits here and bits there, putting together this monologue and that, the puzzle began to take shape, and I calmed down.

Moy had been a human artist, he was dead, and Ettu knew it perfectly well. He had been Moy’s agent, the one who made him famous. He was also, after a fashion, his friend. No matter where they went, they were each as lonely as a drop of water in the desert… They ended up getting intimate. Logical, right?

That would have been enough for me, once. In Barrio 13, a girl learns that when you dig until you get to the bottom of anything, you’ll find sex… and that’s it. It can be dangerous to your sanity to wonder what lies beyond. It’s almost always something slobbery, gross, malignant, yet pathetic. Like a wad of phlegm that comes to life and tries to speak.

All the same, I felt I knew enough about Ettu for nothing to gross me out. I kept listening between the lines.

That’s how I found out it was Moy who named him Ettubrute, early in their relationship. Later, what started off as a caustic joke must have turned into a kind of affectionate nickname.

In any case, it was clear that their relationship was never obvious or easy. They pretended at mutual hatred, but they needed one another. Moy was always complaining that his agent exploited him, but he never questioned any of his numbers. Ettu pretended to put up with the human only because of the money he made from him, but it was his vitality and his very presence that gave him the strength to bear his fate as a hopeless creampuff from a race, a world, and an ethic of brutal titans like Colossa.

I never found out what kind of art Moy made. I suppose he was a painter or an architect, given Ettu’s tastes. Colossaurs may have very keen ears, but they have no sense of rhythm or melody, so they lack even the most basic skills needed for producing or appreciating music. And among humans, the olfactory arts were never our forte.

Moy, the painter or architect, did something with his body, something impressive, savagely beautiful and risky. Something that wore him out so much that he almost died every day, or something like that. Ettu admired his talent and his complete devotion. And his bravery. But he was always ready to protect him from anything—especially from himself. Moy became addicted to telecrack, and Ettu got him over his dependence.

I guess neither of them really realized how much they needed each other… until it was too late.

But I only discovered the why and the how of that “too late” afterward. At the end.

When we’d been all over Earth, when Ettu seemed to realize that a thousand lives wouldn’t be enough for him to see the whole history of human art, only then did we settle in New York. The house he rented on Staten Island was remote, huge, and safe, and I immediately christened it the Castle. And he devoted himself to artists.

It seemed logical to me. After the dead art of past eras, the living creators.

Logical. I couldn’t imagine how terribly logical it was.

We started frequenting exhibits and performances by the most famous artists of the moment. Well, not exactly the most famous. The most famous ones who still lived on Earth.

I learned the meaning of the word “patron” when I saw him in action. Though he was a very odd patron.

He gave his credits away lavishly, without drawing up contracts, without committing himself to support anyone’s career. But they were just small contributions—“to relieve the artist’s situation,” as he put it himself while smiling his toothy grin.

I couldn’t see the sense in what he was doing. Was he planning to devote himself seriously to the art business? The big xenoid dealers had cornered the market on exports from Earth, as everyone knew. Ettu could buy all the art produced on the planet; if he didn’t get the okay from the galactic sharks in the field, no collector would buy any of it from him.

And if he was really aiming to help human artists, why toss around these relatively insignificant amounts, which might relieve their lives for a month or two but not longer? Why not pick three or four truly talented artists and give them some real support?

Not long ago I saw the fishers in the Bay of Fundy. Before spreading their nets, they dumped the guts and scraps from their previous catch into the water. This clever operation, which attracted all the fish eager to devour the blood and entrails of their unfortunate peers, is called “baiting.”

Ettu did know exactly what he wanted. And how to get it. But I did not understand what that was until later. Much less why he wanted it. Though in practice, those amounted to the same thing.

During the time when the Colossaur was playing patron, our trust blossomed again. As if trying to make up for lost time, we became closer than ever.

After pretending to be distant and pretentious at every art show, Ettu would let off steam with me. He enjoyed being just as childish as me, dropping the serious talk and the businessman mask. We played a lot. I soon realized that under that armored carapace of his, he was more of a playful puppy than a terrible machine of destruction like the one I’d seen when he saved my life from the attack by my former gang.

He loved to carry me on his back, playing horsey with me. Day by day, I found it easier to see him not as a dangerous, almighty xenoid but as my ideal accomplice in all sorts of games and pranks. Slowly, without imposing himself, he pulled off the miracle of getting me to stop missing the companionship of Dingo and the others, which I could never get back now.

When we went to art shows and the high-society afterparties, he dressed me like a miniature woman, like a living doll, and I went along with the masquerade, feigning a grownup’s serious and affected dignity and taking great care of my clothes. When I got bored of all the chatter about abstruse theories like transmodernism and holofigurative representation, all it took was a glance at Ettu’s tiny eyes for me to understand that it was all a kind of secret grand masquerade, in which only we were real and only we knew there was nothing behind the others’ masks. A brief annoyance we had to put up with before going on with genuine life. The life of games and jokes in the Castle.

When I turned ten, he threw a surprise party for me that caused a commotion all over New York. All the artists and their minions came. Many of them gave me works of theirs as presents… I still have some: today they’re worth hundreds of thousands of credits, given that the artists who made them won’t produce any more…

Only one thing was missing: children. It wouldn’t have cost Ettu anything to invite three or four dozen kids from any gang in Queens or Harlem, but he didn’t want to. In any case, I had already learned my lesson. Childhood is too precious to share with someone just because you both share the same age.

All my apprehensions about his intentions died once and for all that day. The following week, as a magnificent post-birthday celebration, he skipped exhibits and inaugurations and devoted all his time to me. We went to a thousand amusement parks around the city, bought or rented all sorts of pets and riding animals, which wandered grunting and stamping around the enormous lawns of the Castle, practically driving to distraction the efficient and expensive huborg servants that Ettu had gotten from the Auyars, paying six month’s rent in advance.

Because it soon became obvious that things might go on much longer than the “couple of months” he had mentioned to me at first. Ettu seemed to be in no hurry.

On the contrary, he grew more interested each day in my desires and plans for the future, as if he were expecting us to spend several years together.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be. Ballerina, painter, shuttle flight attendant, executive? Professions that were only a dream for a girl from Barrio 13 now seemed within my reach. And boringly real.

“Liya, one way or another, you have your whole life ahead of you,” he always told me, stroking my head and cutting short my indecisive ruminations. “For now, enjoy life, find out about things, learn. You’ll have to choose later, when you’re grown.”

And did I ever find out and learn! Ettu found the best alternative education programs for me. Education through play, which only the children of the big shareholders in the Planetary Tourism Agency had access to, the sort of education I’d never even dreamed of in Barrio 13.

He even arranged to have some facts about the history of Earth translated for me from the educational materials of other races. That could have cost him some stiff fines, maybe even a memory erasure, if he’d been caught. The facts about how xenoids viewed my race were stark and cruel in their schematic coldness. But they only confirmed what Xenophobe Union for Earthling Liberation leaflets constantly repeat, what every human learns almost subconsciously from childhood: they weren’t our friends, they were our masters.

But to see it written by the xenoids themselves, without all their altruistic rhetoric, was very hard. You always dreamed that it was all just slander, mistakes in Earth’s administration, problems with the transfer of power…

At first I didn’t understand why Ettu revealed it all to me. Revealed the truth, no less terrible for always having been intuitively known.

“Do you feel guilty for me?” I asked him in a fury after stomping on one of the more explicit and difficult holovideos about the political economy of the galactic races toward Earth. “Because just being born on Colossa gave you all the privileges I’ll never aspire to as a human?”

And he smiled.

But I wanted to wound him, and I kept at it. “Do you think adopting me as your daughter will make me forgive the whole galaxy in your name? Do you think I’ll ever love you?”

Then he got serious and told me in a carefully neutral tone of voice, “Liya, I don’t like talking about this. There’s something I’ve never told you: I can’t have children. I’m not… fit. On Colossa, only the biggest and strongest have the right to leave descendants. They let me live—but they sterilized me.”

Of course, I already knew in practical terms what “sterilized” meant: what the Planetary Security guys did when they flew over my barrio with their radiation transmitters “so the shit won’t overflow,” as they put it. Lots of adults protested, yelled, got angry. But the social workers and most of the young people just shrugged and laughed, joking that at least they wouldn’t have to worry about the venereal disease that lasts nine months, followed by a lifelong convalescence.

After my tantrums and my hatefulness, I always went back to him. He was the only one I had… And in a way, I felt… pity? affection?… for him. Those aren’t as different as you might think.

I knew he was alone, much more alone than me. I was on my own planet at least, where I wasn’t anybody, but I was one of many nobodies. He was a stranger, and always would be. A stranger on his own world, where they didn’t consider him Colossaur enough to let him reproduce, a stranger here on Earth, where he was too Colossaur to be anything else.

We didn’t talk much about it. In the middle of our talks about games, about the human history that I was starting to find more fascinating than the best stories, because on top of everything else it was real, sometimes a word about it slipped in. It always sounded strangely alien, and it would practically paralyze us to hear it. Like we were trying to understand the odd word, wondering where it had come from and what it meant, as if we didn’t both know perfectly well.

Children… Friends… Race… Belonging… Loneliness… Love…

No, it wasn’t the words but the ideas they contained that spread the icy silences when I would endeavor to come up with something else to talk about, as if trying to avoid the iceberg whose reflection I saw gleaming in Ettu’s little eyes.

One day he brought the first artist home. They talked for a while, Ettu listlessly and the other almost in a frenzy. Then Ettu invited him upstairs, and they spent a long time in his apartments. Not in the inner sanctum that he never let me enter, but in his bedroom, with the enormous bed that I knew he never slept in.

Later the artist, a pompous little genius of the holoprojections, came down strutting around smugly, but with a strange expression on his face, a mixture of disgust and terror. And Ettu said goodbye with a sad—yet final—smile.

I ran upstairs, with a horrible suspicion… The bed was unmade, as if someone very large and very heavy had been romping in the sheets. Strange liquids were staining the silk. And the smell of sex, which I knew so well, mixed with Ettu’s acrid and cloying scent.

He surprised me there, and I said nothing. I don’t exactly know why, but I felt… betrayed. I thought it was because he had introduced the grownup world into the childhood paradise of the house. But, deep down, I knew it was something else.

Jealousy.

Why them and not me?

I wasn’t such a little girl as I’d been months earlier…

I tore the costly silk sheets in a fury, my eyes moist, like a wronged woman. And I peed on the mattress, vengeful as a hurt child. The following day, Ettu instructed the huborgs never to let me enter his suite until they had finished erasing all traces of his encounters with artists.

I never again found traces of what I thought of as his repulsive xenoid lechery.

Oh, if I had only suspected the truth…

Artists continued to visit. After a while they became a routine. Always different, always urgent, hopeful, skeptical but clinging to that possibility. When I saw them arrive I’d withdraw, as if to express my disapproval of all that. Ettu always had long conversations with them. Sometimes they went upstairs, sometimes not. When he sent artists off without inviting them into his bedroom, their faces had the look of being devastated but, at the same time, sort of relieved. When artists came downstairs after a while, they seemed happy… but always with that shadow of disgust.

As if they’d sold their souls to the devil, it occurred to me to think one time.

I naturally pretended to be playing, though I was really spying all the while. I tried to find out what it was that made some of them eligible for his pleasure and so prizeworthy while others didn’t deserve that “honor.” My feminine instinct told me that the whole pantomime of a long conversation, then going upstairs or not, was very important to Ettu. And that the key lay in the questions he asked and the answers he got.

One day, dying of curiosity, I dared to bring up the subject directly. What was all that? What was he up to? Why make them go upstairs if he was going to give them money? Couldn’t he do that just as well downstairs? Was this what he came to Earth looking for? Why the whole masquerade of acting mad for beauty, hiding the fact that he was only interested in easy, cheap sex, like all the others? Wouldn’t it have been easier, cheaper, and more sincere just to ask them?

“Sometimes, especially when dealing with difficult issues, the easiest road isn’t the best,” he answered, very serious, looking me straight in the eye.

That confused me.

It was strange, contradictory. As if I’d suddenly discovered another Ettu. I’d been innocently living with him for months, and he’d never tried anything. I hadn’t seen that he had any lovers, either. And now, all this interest in sex.

It all came down to sex, always: the perennial means of exchange between humans and xenoids. What every tourist came to find on Earth. But—my playmate, too? Practically my adoptive father, so taciturn at times and other times so communicative?

We never brought up the subject again.

As the scene was constantly repeated—artists showing up buried in debt, heading upstairs after the interview with Ettu and later coming down contented, or else being sent packing—I ended up accepting the inevitable. Yes, sex. He might be a very special sort, but it was still all about sex. Ettu only liked adult human artists. And his respect for me no longer seemed like respect but scorn. The only reason he didn’t touch me was that he wasn’t attracted.

So why did he love me, then? The eternal question.

That night I ran away. I didn’t have the platinum card, but I had a couple of regular ones. With enough money on them to…

To do what? I knew all too well that I had no place to go home to. Even though my Abuela still lived in Barrio 13, accepting my frequent remittances so she could keep on happily destroying her liver, I no longer belonged there. And what’s even worse, after those months of traveling around the planet and living this new life in the Castle, I was starting to doubt whether I belonged anywhere.

If there was any place in the world for me, it was with Ettu. If I cared about anyone and if there was anyone who cared about me, it was him. But that was precisely what I felt least disposed to accept.

I rented a room in a third-rate hotel… In theory a minor shouldn’t be able to do that, but credits work wonders in practice.

The first night, I could hardly sleep. I was restless, tossing and turning all night long. I was furious. Jealous. Of Ettu, much as it angered me to admit it. Why other men and women, and not me? Wasn’t I woman enough for him? Lots of guys would pay a fortune to enjoy a ten-year-old virgin eager to stop being one. That stupid Colossaur and his obsession with beauty—not that the artists were so handsome. Being able to create beauty didn’t make them special or better. They were rotten inside, and he knew it as well as I did. I was more beautiful than all of them together…

The next night I put on my most womanly dress and went to Lolita, a nightclub known as a hangout for teenagers of both sexes—and for xenoids more or less interested in pedophilia.

I drank one kind of wine after another, like that first night in the New Cali Galaxy restaurant. Maybe it was because I was so coldly determined to get drunk that I never fully lost consciousness of what I was doing.

I danced for hours, with humans and grodos, Cetians and Centaurians. I put my whole soul, with all the anger and confusion I was feeling, into every movement; I was the star that night. Everybody was watching me, and I got plenty of propositions. Fewer than I was expecting, I admit. Apparently my obvious need for sex, here and now, frightened away most potential clients.

I smiled politely at each offer, and that was all. I was waiting for him. Just him. Stupid me, completely forgetting that Colossaurs can barely grasp the meaning of music. He never would have gone to a place like that. Or maybe that was why I was so hoping he would come looking for me there… Even if just to have him bring me home like a naughty runaway girl. Because it would have meant that he cared a little about me. That he took me a little bit seriously. That he loved me a little… since I hated to admit that I was the one who loved him.

He didn’t come. I wanted to forget. If it wasn’t him, somebody like him would do. That had to be my night, and no stupid armored Colossaur was going to mess it up for me by not showing up. I kept on drinking; I smoked pot, sniffed coke. I even let a Centaurian who showed more interest than the others give me a dose of telecrack, which fortunately must have been fake.

And at the break of dawn, when I was about to faint from sheer exhaustion, I left with him. For a third-rate hotel, the sort that stinks of half-rotten food and dry semen. Every city has hundreds of these hotels, where xenoids of few means rent one-night rooms to enjoy sex with humans.

I hardly felt him make me a woman. It wasn’t as wonderful or as painful as I’d heard. I didn’t enjoy it much, and it didn’t make me ache. It just… happened. Afterwards I fell asleep, smiling about my triumph, but wanting to cry.

In the morning the Centaurian was gone. Taking my cards and clothes with him, of course. I didn’t feel like reporting him—after all, he’d almost done me a favor. And it wouldn’t have done any good, anyway: apart from the fact that he was a real xenoid and I was just a human, if he’d ever told me his name I’d forgotten.

My head ached as if some monster inside my brain were trying to enter the world through the bones in my skull. And I was dying of thirst, but there wasn’t even a glass of water in the room. My legs ached too, but not much. What did bother me was my stomach, where the humanoid’s blue semen had dried and formed a crust that was starting to itch. I took a shower, and with a few stitches turned the pillowcases into an improvised garment, not very elegant but good enough to pass for a poorly made dress. Luckily he had left my shoes. Maybe he thought he wouldn’t find them easy to sell…

When I went downstairs, Ettu was waiting for me. Sitting calmly in the lobby. As if nothing had happened. He only asked, “Done? How was it? Happy now?”

I looked at him with anger, with hatred. There were so many things I wanted to tell him. Why had he let me do it? Why hadn’t he ripped that Centaurian louse to shreds before he even touched me? Why hadn’t it been him?

What was I? Why did he bring me with him, like one more object, since he didn’t need a guide to the planet, since he knew it better than most of us, its inhabitants?

But I said nothing. And right then, the idea came to me.

If he doesn’t like virgins, maybe now…

That night I waited up for him. After the daily artist-beggar left, happy and disgusted, and before Ettu could shut himself up in his mysterious room, I ran upstairs and confronted him.

The huge round unmade bed lay between us like the arena between two gladiators. I had made myself up like I had always seen the social workers in my barrio do: waterproof cosmetics forming a virtual mask to cover my face, long fake eyelashes, shiny hair.

I was naked, the subtle allergen stiffening my nipples, the aroma of the perfume that I had spread over my carefully straightened pubic hair filling the whole suite.

I was tired of waiting. If he didn’t do it, I would take the first step.

“Ettu… I’m not a girl anymore,” I remember telling him.

And I stepped forward. My high-heeled shoes wobbling on the springy mattress.

I was ready to do anything.

“You’ve been very kind to me, Ettu. I want to pay you.” I kept talking. “I don’t want to owe you anything…”

Looking him in the eye the whole time, defiantly… but quite ready to start weeping if he scorned me.

Ettu said nothing. He walked right past, toward his secret room, opening the door.

I ran after him. I almost tripped because of the stupid stilettos that I didn’t know how to walk in.

I wanted to go in; he stopped me. I only got a slight glimpse of medical equipment, antigrav stretchers, and bottles of serum, before his enormous body blocked my view.

“Ettu, I love you…” I insisted, pressing my body against his reddish carapace, banging my fists against his armored abdomen, grinding my pubis against him. With the desperation of a cat in heat and the blind obstinacy of the young girl I still was. And crying unrestrainedly.

He stretched out his enormous tridactyl hand and picked me up, like on the first day. It seemed to take more effort. Either I weighed more, or he was weaker.

He looked at me for a long time, and his eyes shined.

Then, in one motion, he tossed me on the bed the way you might toss something that you disdain, that’s no good. The shoes with the stiletto heels clattered as they hit the floor, freed from my feet.

I thought he was furious and I shuddered, thinking of my grief. Then I suddenly remembered Dingo’s head and the twisted bodies of the triplets, and I grew afraid. I curled into a ball to protect myself. I realized I was naked as a worm, ridiculous, my precious mask of acting the grownup woman broken.

In one step he was there, and I closed my eyes, expecting the blow.

But his voice only sounded strangely sad when he said, “No. Liya… Not you. Forgive me, if you can… I think things with you haven’t turned out the way I planned. I’ve let myself go too far. Goodbye.”

Then he shut the door, and I stayed there crying, and fell asleep crying. But crying from happiness. He had forgiven me! Everything would go back to the way it was before, or better, and maybe, with time, he would…

The next day, when I woke up, I found the mysterious room open. And empty. There wasn’t a trace of the well-stocked medical lab I had glimpsed.

Ettu wasn’t there. Not in the room, not anywhere in the house.

I made inquiries. Planetary Security is very efficient in New York. They had seen him take a cybertaxi to Manhattan, the place where shuttles launch, late that morning. Walking slowly, as if he were tired. With no luggage.

His name was in the registry at the embarkation point for Colossa.

He had left Earth to return to his world.

Perhaps running away from me…

I knew I’d never see him again.

Then everything became a nightmare. Except for the educational programs and other details, the Castle and the animals and almost everything was in his name. I could hardly keep anything—it all went to the government. A ten-year-old girl has no legal personhood.

Less than two weeks later, with no more luggage than a few thousand credits and a box of educational holovideos, I was sent by a Planetary Security aerobus back to Barrio 13 in New Cali. Back to the tiny one-bedroom apartment, my Abuela, and her constant drinking.

Of course, I wasn’t the same any more.

We soon had to move. I had nurtured the hope that the gang and the rest of the barrio would forgive and forget. But when they scrawled the word “Buglicker” in excrement across our front door, after fleeting shadows on a street corner threw rocks at me twice, and a group on jetskates ran over my Abuela in one of her drunken stupors and broke her hip, I knew I was marked. Forever.

We left Barrio 13 for Barrio 5, higher rents and quieter neighbors. So quiet they didn’t even have gangs. I spent all day with the holovideos, learning, trying to fill the gaps in my education… trying not to think about everything I’d left behind. Especially not about Ettu. Now it really did all seem like a dream. A lovely dream, the sort you feel sorry to wake from when it ends. My Abuela was drinking up hundreds of credits every night and lurching home at dawn to beg for more. I never denied her; it was easier than listening to her complaints and threats if she didn’t have alcohol. Maybe I also had the cynical hope that she would drink enough that cirrhosis would soon free me from her… and I wasn’t wrong.

“There’s no hope, unless you can afford a liver transplant. And you don’t look like you could,” said the old doctor in Social Assistance when I took her to the hospital after finding her unconscious and burning with fever, and her aged skin as yellow as parchment. The doctor barely glanced under her eyelids before saying, cynically and harshly but without euphemisms, “Galloping cirrhosis, I’d say. How many bottles a day did she drink? Most likely she won’t regain consciousness. You’re the granddaughter, right? Well, you choose for her: a week of suffering and expensive drugs, or euthanasia now.”

I chose euthanasia. At the age of forty-two, my Abuela had drunk and lived enough. Now it was my turn. Without her, it would be easier.

Though I didn’t know what would become of me. I always knew that a girl born in Barrio 13 doesn’t have many options for the future… but it’s harder after seeing everything you’re going to lose.

I continued to miss Ettu. I felt it was my fault everything had gone wrong and come to an end. By trying to turn him into a lover, something tangible, I had lost the closest thing to a father or a friend I’d ever had. I didn’t really understand why I’d done what I did, why he was what he was… but I didn’t care. I was ready to do anything if it would bring him back… To follow him on foot to the end of the world, to make his bed every time he finished enjoying his repulsive artists, even to stop asking him any more questions, ever.

In the hospital, while I was filling out the forms to have my Abuela cremated, I found out about the epidemic. And I started putting two and two together.

The magenta illness, the terrible venereal disease of Colossaurs, was wreaking havoc in the artist community. Some fifty of them had died, their flesh covered almost entirely with the purple sores that were the stigma of the disease. The Health Department of Planetary Security couldn’t understand the cause of the contagious outbreak that the disease seemed to be following and was adopting measures to fight the plague while searching desperately for the illness’s new vector. Because it seemed unlikely that it could have been transmitted by the usual means…

Even before I heard their names and saw their faces, I already knew who they were. In the final stages of the disease, their faces didn’t show much of that satisfaction I’d seen on them when they came downstairs from Ettu’s bedroom. But they did show the same disgust, and a horrible despair.

Naturally, they never told how they had acquired the disease. They just painted, worked, created like crazy, knowing the end was near. At least they got that much out of the price they’d paid Ettu for their lives and health. And then they died.

One day the package arrived. By Hyperspace Shipping, direct from Colossa. I knew who it was from long before I opened it, of course. But the contents truly surprised me.

A letter, on plain paper, written by hand. A thick, wobbly hand. It wasn’t very long.

Wrapped in the letter was a small, oblong object. My platinum card.

That was six months ago.

Now I’m living in a small penthouse in New Sydney, studying hard for the aptitude test I have to take to get into the Baryshnikov School of Modern Dance. I have rhythm and flexibility, according to the private tutor I hired, but I need a lot more style. And I’ll need at least as much luck if I want to compete for one of the school’s coveted slots with the teenagers who’ve been going to dance school practically since they learned to walk. But I trust my luck. If I don’t make it this year, I’ll still have next year. And the next one, and the next. With his card, Ettu gave me all the time in the world.

This isn’t a nosy neighborhood, and no one here can connect me with the girl Planetary Security is secretly looking for as the accomplice of the Colossaur “epidemic vector.” I’m growing up, I’ve changed my hairstyle… and in a couple of years, I won’t look anything like that skinny, four-foot-eleven Liya.

The platinum card pays all my bills. Though I avoid showing it whenever possible; people might start asking questions I wouldn’t want to answer. Not long ago, I started using an ordinary plastic card with just ten thousand credits on it. It attracts less attention around here.

I’ve picked a new name for myself: Ettuya… The reason why is obvious.

I’m always thinking about him, about Moy, about Jowe, about my mother… And it’s funny, but when I do so, I feel less alone.

Also, I live across the street from a fourteen-year-old boy who’s not bad at all. He’s studying to get into the Da Vinci Fine Arts School, and we’ve crossed paths a couple of times. He looks like the son of very rich parents…

One of these days I’m going to ask him out. Probably, no matter how rich his family is, he’ll be amazed to see I have a platinum card.

He’d be even more amazed if he heard the whole story. But I don’t plan to tell it to him, of course. Most likely they’d never believe a word of it, and I hate to be called a liar.

I’ll tell them I’m the daughter of a couple who died in an accident, and that their insurance paid for it… Or something like that. Anything that doesn’t sound as unbelievable as the truth.

The truth… Well, I hardly believe it myself, even now… From a girl in a Barrio 13 gang to the owner of a platinum card, by the work and grace of a xenoid! And without even going to bed with him.

And they say that reality can’t beat fantasy…