A Planet for Rent

The Rules of the Game

Raindrops? Come on, kid, run!

Damn these cloudbursts!

So crazy, it’s salty as seawater… And these Kevlar uniforms weigh a ton when they’re soaked.

Hurry up, inside!

Whew, out of breath… I can’t run like I used to. Good thing we’re inside now. And the night started out so pretty—you could even see the stars. With all these Auyar suborbital propulsion experiments, the atmosphere of this planet’s gone haywire. It’s as likely to rain as to hail. And always briny. Only thing left is snow in the middle of summer.

Wow, looks like a real gullywasher. Too bad we aren’t baby cucumbers, we’d make some fine pickles. Close the door and take your helmet off, like me. Make yourself at home, you know…

What? So, we won’t be able to control the perimeter?

Kid, use your gray cells, don’t make me change my mind about you. Who’d go patrolling when it’s cats and dogs out there? Looking for what?

Anyway, our only job is guarding this place—not the perimeter. If some cannibal cult was crazy enough to go swimming in this downpour and they decided to enjoy their menu right in front of our noses, it’s their problem, I’m staying put. Our responsibility stops at the electric fence around this place.

It’s a nasty job, you don’t have to tell me. The only worse job to pull is ship patrol—running around up there, chasing those idiots who try escaping the planet in their homemade rockets. Getting bored to death like an oyster out of water, that’s all you can do up there in orbit.

Though at least now and then they save some suicidal maniac from freezing solid up there in space. But this guard duty we pulled here makes about as much sense as searching for deposits of ice in the desert…

Nothing ever happens here in the Body Spares depository. There’s nothing to steal, and you can’t find anything much quieter than a body in suspended animation, human or not. Maybe just an actual corpse.

Truth is, keeping night watch here is a pretty stupid anachronism. A leftover from back when they didn’t really understand xenoid metabolism yet, and the boys upstairs were scared that some restless tourist might crawl out of his tank and cause problems zombying around out there while his mind was in another body.

The good part is, shifts here are two hours shorter than normal. Just to make sure we don’t commit suicide out of pure boredom… Especially in this rain. We can’t even watch people walking by.

Not having anything to do always makes me jittery…

Play cards? Sonny, you know as well as I do regulations say we can’t gamble on duty. Maybe some other time. I love hearts. And poker? Forget about it…

But it occurs to me right now all of a sudden that everything happens for a reason. That’s right, Markus—that’s your name, right?—I think we’re gonna find this salty rain as good as holy water. It’s gonna give us a little time to relax. I’ve been meaning to talk with you for quite a while…

Don’t tense up. Just a little talk between partners, not another exam. Basic training’s over. I just want to talk, one Planetary Security guy to another. Man to man. Forget that I’m a sergeant for now, doesn’t matter.

Truth is, right now we practically are the same rank. You’re a rookie agent, and I’m a sergeant in the doghouse…

No, it’s no secret, and it doesn’t bother me, I’ll tell you what happened: a stupid minor incident. This over-sensitive social worker, at the astroport a couple of weeks ago. Girl named Buca… Her face was smeared with that waterproof makeup they all use now, like a mask. I guess it helps them all look the same. And the xenoids love it.

I swear I tried to be nice to the little slut. I thought it was what she needed; she looked so nervous after one of those suicidal Xenophobe Union maniacs started a shootout. Though we neutralized him right away. And one of my agents got a little rude with her. I tried to fix things up—and, see what you get. Seems the girl didn’t like my style. And she complained to headquarters.

Happens every day. Normal procedure is, you file the complaint and that’s that. But some grodo had picked this Buca for incubation, so I was screwed. Complaints from the xenoid big fish always cause a stink in the corps—and that’s never good for us little guys. Something you’d better start learning now. Result? Sergeant Romualdo gets a full month of street patrols, night patrol every third night, and a cut in salary.

Hope nothing like this ever happens to you.

Though, if my nose isn’t mistaken, you’ll go far. Think that’s funny? Whatever. Sergeant Romualdo Concepción Pérez rarely goes wrong in his predictions. I see a very promising career here waiting for you in Planetary Security. As clear as I see your face right now. I’d even dare to bet that, if you put nose to the grindstone a little, you’ll make NCO at least in a couple of years.

Me? Been sergeant twelve years now. But don’t think I envy you for that. In this life, everybody gets as far as they’re gonna get. I have no complaints, sergeant’s fine with me. When it comes right down to it, though I’ve picked up some culture, I’m still a poor ignoramus who has a hard time reading.

But you, with the schooling you’ve got… IQ of 148, and you can tell you’re educated. Mind if I ask you a question? Just out of curiosity, why didn’t you finish your degree in fission engineering, if you were already in your fifth year and you just had two more to go?

Oh, sure, financial problems. Can I guess? Your parents were paying for college, and all of a sudden business slowed down for them… Oh, an aerobus accident? Sorry, kid… Guess you’d rather not talk about it…

Lots of guys go into Planetary Security for the same reason. As unpopular as the corps is, it’s one of the few places that’s always posting new jobs. And compared with the crumbs you get paid for any other job on this planet, our 350 credits a month isn’t so bad, is it? Especially when you think that they don’t require prior experience or training. Everything you need they teach you in the Academy, eh?

How do I know what you studied? Come on, kid, I just read your file… Sure, it’s supposedly private, only officers know the access code and blah blah blah… but being practically an oldtimer in the district gives you certain privileges, even on the computer.

Illegal? No, I wouldn’t go so far as to say illegal. Just… unconventional. If we’re going to be partners, it’s only logical I oughta be a little curious about your bio, right?

Besides, I don’t know what you have to be ashamed of, your record’s impeccable.

I could tell from the start, you were good material. I’ve been observing you for days, and I like what I see: enthusiastic kid, a little impulsive, only natural at your age. Twenty-four, right? But you think before you act. In this line of work, that’s the key thing.

Besides, I’ve come to like you, though you’re pretty quiet. Or maybe that’s why. Listen before you talk. I hate those smart-alecky cadets who graduate from the Academy and think right away they know everything because they’ve had a few practice hours on the simulators. The best school, the only school that really matters, is the street. Here in the daily grind, this is where you truly learn. Your whole life long. Tell me if it isn’t true: you never graduate from the street, and you never finish learning all its rules.

The rules of the Great Game.

Yep, Markus…. Life is a Great Game, and an agent has to know its rules like the back of his hand… especially if he hopes to advance his career, like I suppose you do. To be a winner, not a loser.

You don’t catch where I’m going? Oh, kid, come on…

I’m gonna tell you a little story to help you understand. You like stories? Good thing.

When I was a rookie agent like you, I also served with an old sergeant, like me now. I remember him like it was yesterday. Aniceto Echevarría was his name. A good guy, generous, brave. The wackos from the Xenophobe Union wiped him out, and to avenge him we spilled a lot of blood. Whoever we wanted.

How time flies. It’s been a long time since then, yeah…

Well, turns out poor Aniceto was crazy about raising fish. He read lots of stuff about it and he was always talking about exotic species of saltwater fish and freshwater fish, artificial food, live bait, temperatures, the pH of the water… And about his “little collection,” as he called it, with more love in his voice than some parents show when they talk about their own kids.

One day, two weeks into partnering with him on street patrol, he invited me over to his house, and… Stop thinking those nasty thoughts, Markus: Aniceto was all man. Me too. So wipe that little smirk off your face or I’ll get angry.

Ok, that’s better.

It was a tiny one bedroom, but beautiful. Nice furniture, full of appliances, but no glitz or ostentation. What especially caught my eye was how many huge fish tanks he had everywhere. His “little collection” was almost better equipped than the Great Aquarium of New Miami, believe me. With aerators, a gas recycling system… the works. And he had so many fish—and what fish! No lie, old Aniceto had managed to put maybe half a million credits worth of fish behind those glass walls.

And when I, dazzled by all that beauty, naively asked him how he could support such an expensive hobby on a sergeant’s pay, he just smiled. He stroked his mustache and showed me something I’ll never forget.

At the bottom of one of his saltwater fish tanks he had this huge thing. It looked like a flower with a thick stalk and semitransparent reddish petals that swayed in the gentle current of the water. A beautiful underwater flower…

But it was a voracious animal. What I had thought were petals turned out to be tentacles that could release a powerful toxin. In the middle was its mouth, always hungry.

What? It’s called an anemone? Well, if you say so… I’m a simple ignorant sergeant. What do I know about critters.

Aniceto told me to keep an eye on the anemo-thingy. It was beautiful. Really beautiful. And I thought it was even more beautiful when a mid-sized fish swam by and got caught by its lethal tentacles, torn to shreds, and gulped down in a matter of seconds. There was an innocent cruelty in that act.

The best part is that earlier, lots of other much smaller fish had been swimming around it, and nothing had happened to them.

I called Sergeant Aniceto over to show him, amazed. But he just glanced at the deal and told me, “Keep on looking. Look very closely now, Romualdo.”

And that was when I realized, Markus, that this wonderful, deadly creature was now surrounded by other little fish. Red, blue, and violet, painted like clowns. They were nibbling at the remains of the bigger fish that had gotten stuck in the tentacles, and they seemed immune to the terrible toxin. Now and then they would corner some unlucky little animal that had lost its way in the forest of tentacles, and they would devour it. The huge beast let them do it. Afterward they even hid out among the poisonous tentacles.

Oh… symbiosis, you say? Okay, then, symbiosis.

So Aniceto put his arm over my shoulders and said, “That poisonous animal is the Law. Or all of Planetary Security, if you prefer. It’s like a blind net, but it has a mind. It doesn’t care about the tiny fish, so it lets them be. Same with the really big fish, which are so strong they might cause problems. It’s just the mid-sized fish that are food. Those, it attacks.”

“And those painted clowns, what are they?” I asked, amused by what I thought was his two-bit philosophy.

“They’re us,” replied the old sergeant. “We help make sure the Law is carried out, that Planetary Security works. Make sure the garbage doesn’t accumulate and clog the net or strangle the hungry beast. In exchange, we prosper in its powerful shadow, with impunity. The monster recognizes us and identifies us by our uniforms. That’s how things work in this world. Do you get it, Romualdo?”

You bet I got it, Markus. So well, I’ve never forgotten it.

Do you get it now?

We lost a great actor when you decided to enter the Academy, kid! You’re blushing like a virgin overhearing guys talking about an orgy. But you don’t have to pretend you’re naïve or innocent around me: If you still haven’t figured out, at the age of twenty-five, that the salary Planetary Security pays us, big as it might seem, isn’t enough even to pay for the wax we use to shine our service boots, I’m gonna start thinking you cheated on your IQ test.

You aren’t that big an idiot, I don’t think.

Oh, I know—something else has you worried. You’re afraid of the bloodhounds from Internal Affairs, eh? Prudent kid. I know all the symptoms: the twitchy eyes, the constant glancing around, like a trapped cat…

But tell me honestly: do I look like an undercover Internal?

And I assure you there aren’t any hidden microphones or nanocameras. In here we’re totally safe from indiscreet eyes and ears. Why do think I insisted on going inside? The rain wasn’t really all that bad…

It’s because electronic recording gizmos don’t work in here. The science guy from headquarters can explain it better than me. Something to do with the electromagnetic pulse they need to keep some of the weird types in anabiosis. Like the polyps from Aldebaran.

That’s exactly why we’re talking in here. I like to look out for myself, too.

Oh, and the guys from Internal Affairs… Don’t believe everything you hear about them. They aren’t so mean as they’re made out to be. We’re in the same boat, all of us. Even they need a present for the girlfriend now and then, or something extra for their kid’s registration in the University, and then they come to us. Coworker to coworker, get it?

Of course, if you go overboard and try to become a millionaire in one month, you’ll stick out like a bonfire on a dark night. Then they won’t have any choice but go after you like hunting dogs. That’s their job—keeping up appearances, maintaining the façade. It has to look like the system is working perfectly.

Don’t look like that, son. It’s about time you figure out, once and for all, that the whole business of Protect and Serve, the thin wall between Earth and Chaos, and all that stuff they made you learn by heart in the Academy—it’s pure veneer. Working for Planetary Security isn’t what you imagined it was, Markus. Believe me, not your instructors.

I was already patrolling this city when they were still playing with their robot nannies. The devil knows as much as he does because he’s old, not because he’s the devil. Forget your hypnopedia articles about the agent’s duties, paths of glory, keepers of public order, and on and on. That’s all cosmetic, to impress the civilian sheep who pay our salaries with their taxes.

This is drudgework. Breaking your back and risking your skin day after day for a bunch of civilian ingrates who’ll never see you as their savior, but their enemy. Never as the sheepdog guarding the herd, just another wolf, and that’s how they treat us. They despise us, they exclude us… Why do you think we almost always marry women who are also in the corps?

All that for poverty wages and a pension that’s not worth shit—if you even make it to retirement age.

I bet you’re wondering, if this is such a nasty life, why are there still any agents? Why hasn’t everybody in Planetary Security thrown away their vibrobadges and said the hell with it? Why is it still so hard to get into the Academy and why do all the young people fight to make it? I mean, it must’ve been pretty hard even for you with your big IQ, eh?

Fact is, maybe the salary doesn’t go far enough, but the uniform gives you certain opportunities… I prefer to call them “unadvertised rights.” Sheer justice. There has to be some sort of benefit in it for you, when it’s your hide on the line when one of those drugged-up wack jobs from the Xenophobe Union for Earthling Liberation tries to make mincemeat of a grodo just because he’s been scared of bugs since he was a kid.

Corruption, you say? Oh, Markus, that’s a real big word, and real ugly.

I can see you and me have a serious problem with terminology. I’d rather call it compensation. But if you insist, sure. Corruption. Call a spade a spade.

But don’t start trembling at the sound of those three syllables. Cor-rup-tion. And not just here in Planetary Security; it’s practically the official sport of this planet. All those officials who pretend to be so pure, who love to give holonet interviews where they spout off diatribes against the “intolerable venality” of our corps—they take in tons more than we do, and for less risk. Criticizing your neighbor for being dirty is still the best method for concealing the dirt you’re covered in yourself. So forget about them and live your own life, son.

That’s how it is.

But at the same time, you shouldn’t think that you’re a god because you have a gun on your hip and a vibrobadge ID. And you can’t let people get away with anything just because there’s some money in it. You’d make a huge mess of things, and it would end up costing you.

We’re the ones who keep order—even if it isn’t the same order the Manual talks about. But it’s a lot different from chaos, is that clear? And a lot better. Chaos is bad for everyone, even the Mafia and the Yakuza, the biggest fish. That old saying about “good fishing in troubled waters” is bunk. Nobody comes out ahead when things are messed up.

That’s why there are rules that everybody follows. To keep the system working, Markus. And that’s what I’ve been trying to explain to you from the beginning… Sorry if all that about Aniceto’s aquarium sounded like a shaggy dog story.

At least it’s a good story, isn’t it?

I’m not very good with words. I could never have made a good instructor sergeant. Luckily I prefer to be on the street. I’m more used to using my electroclub and my minimachine gun than my tongue. And that’s even after all the education I’ve gotten since I joined the force.

Look, to get to the point… This is all about what happened the other day. When we were patrolling around Little Havana and that small-time pickpocket snatched the Cetian lady’s purse. You had fast reflexes and you were very fast when you ran after him through the middle of that crowd. Perfect, that’s what’s expected of you… And your legs are a lot younger than mine.

You caught him and returned the purse to that xenoid lady, all dolled up in phosphorescent flowers. Just like you’re supposed to do. And her? All she can do is say, “Thanks, officer, these Earthlings are awful”—as if you’re a Colossaur, not a human. And not a single credit. Bad luck—tourists are almost always more grateful. But that’s work.

The bad part is, afterwards, you acted like a total idiot. You wasted time and money, and you created unnecessary problems.

In spite of all the signs I was making, you announced publicly that you were going to drag the poor kid down to headquarters. Even worse, you actually did it. You didn’t care about his tears, you didn’t care that he said he was on Ahimasa’s list, you entered him into the computer. Just like the Manual says.

Now the little thief has his arm tattooed with the ultraviolet marker, and there’s no way to mistake him for anyone else. I bet you feel proud about what you did? Branding a juvenile delinquent, making it easier to follow him and keep him from committing more crimes in the future. What a model public servant. You even think you were generous with him, dropping the charges. Because if you had reported him, he would have ended up with a couple of months in Body Spares, right?

Well, let me tell you what you really did. You condemned him to death… Unless he’s brave enough to amputate that piece of flesh from his arm by himself. That’s the only way he’ll get rid of that tattoo.

And I’d like to imagine you did it out of ignorance. Because if I thought you had done it on purpose… Better not even mention what might have become of you by now. Here in Planetary Security, the worst sin you can commit is to lack esprit de corps. Break the rules and you’re automatically out of the game.

Markus, in case you didn’t know it, those kids from the gutter are worth their weight in gold for certain “jobs.” Not especially legal ones, of course. Since they were never registered by their parents or families, they don’t have Social Security numbers, which makes them unidentifiable citizens. That means they can get in anywhere without being detected.

That’s why they’re allowed to live. Too bad their bosses pay them chicken feed, which is why they have to risk small-time robberies on their own account. A street orphan’s life is tough. Only one out of a hundred reaches the age of fourteen.

When some xenoid who’s paying more attention than average discovers that one is lifting her purse, and she calls for help, that’s where you step in. The whole “Stop that thief!” scene: you chase him down, catch him, return the purse to the extraterrestrial, just like the Manual says, and they either give you a tip or they don’t… But then you throw out your instructions, and you ask the kid who his boss is.

A street kid’s master is always ready to pay. Ahimasa would’ve paid you a handsome sum for you not to tattoo his boy. A nice bargain, and everybody’s happy—even the kid. He might get a bit of a whipping, more for his clumsiness that for the purse-snatching itself, but at least he’d still be alive and still have a job.

If it troubles your sense of morality for the kid to get off without being punished for stealing, I assure you that the beating Ahimasa would have given him when we turned him over would have taken away his appetite for robbery for quite a while. The guys in the Yakuza are heavy-handed, and they don’t hold back with the neurowhip. If that boy ever tried it again, he’d be a lot more careful not to let his victim detect him.

Instead, what do they have now? Just a registered kid who’s worth nothing and who knows too much. Ahimasa will have to rid himself of him as quick as possible.

So, all on account of you, because you followed the regulations just as they’re laid out in the Manual and you don’t know the rules of the game, we now have a businessman—maybe not a totally legal one, but honest after his own fashion—who’s forced to contract a hitman to get rid of a poor kid. A kid who, for all we know, he might have even come to like. And a minor, a runaway, scared to death, who’ll be very lucky to escape with his life. A waste of time, credits, and human resources, and so much trouble…

That’s not how things are done, Markus.

Have you seen how many people greet me when we’re making our rounds? Some of them were kids like him, years ago—and I’m sure that every night, before they go to sleep, they still give thanks to God and the Virgin that I was the one who first caught them. I feel proud to be a member of Planetary Security every time I recognize one of them… They’re alive and they’ve grown into men thanks to me.

That’s what it means to be generous and to serve the public interest, Markus.

Do you understand the difference?

So you see, things are always more complex that they seem. The stuff they told you in the Academy, that there’s a war between our forces and crime that’s being fought on the streets across this planet—forget it, right now. There aren’t two sides. We’re equals. All fish swimming in the same water. The only thing that makes us seem different is this uniform.

You’re an educated kid, Markus, so I imagine you must have heard of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his social contract.

Well, there’s another social contract at work on Earth today, and we’re the guardians of it. Since nobody could survive if they followed all the laws, we’re the ones in charge of turning a blind eye to the minor infractions that are necessary to stay alive—so long as the violators don’t question the system itself too much.

Every seemingly honest citizen is breaking the law, one way or another. You yourself: sincerely, have you always paid your taxes properly and on time? Have you never rigged an energy meter? Aha, you see?

We make sure that the narrow margin of illegality we all live in is kept under control. Kept at a level acceptable to everyone. No serial killings or xenophobic terrorism, but everything else? Illegal gambling, soft drugs, unincorporated services, small-time pickpockets, minor robberies… Those aren’t the enemy, the others are. The xenoids, you understand?

How did you insult agents when you were little? What did you yell at them? “Buglickers,” am I right? Servants of the extraterrestrials, that’s what you thought we were. Don’t deny it…

In a way, those people from other planets pay our salaries so we’ll keep the peace in their tourist and finance paradise. And they could care less whether we kill each other, or eat each other—just as long as we don’t bother their sacred inhuman selves.

This planet could be blown to smithereens; if no xenoid gets hurt, it wouldn’t even be third-class news in the galaxy. But all it takes is for one stupid tourist to cut a tentacle, and all hell breaks loose.

It’s like the story of the boy who was playing with the leash of the organ-grinder’s monkey; nothing happened, the monkey didn’t react. The boy got bolder, touched the animal, and—chomp! He started screaming about how the monkey had bitten him. And what did the owner say? “You asked for it. Play with the leash—but don’t touch the monkey.”

On this planet, the monkey is anyone from another planet.

Still, you should know that the secret motto of the Planetary Tourism Agency also applies to us: “Take their credits at all costs and by any means.”

Which, translated into our slang, means something like: “The tourist is always at fault, and must pay for it.” And I’m talking about paying credits, for the record.

It isn’t that difficult.

Fortunately, the xenoids who visit us have considerable inherent respect for the Law and its representatives. Maybe things work differently on their worlds, and people in our line of work really do follow their Manuals to the letter there. Though I can’t imagine how that could be possible…

Fact is, if you’re intelligent, authoritative, and likeable enough, the way they expect public authorities to be, they’ll always believe you. That’s just what you need. Get them to believe that they were the ones at fault in the aerobus accident where a human with his lights off crashed into their vehicle from behind. Or that they are guilty for being robbed because they were carrying their pile of credit cards in a bag strapped across their bellies, where it’s child’s play for any pickpocket with a razor to swipe it.

Trip them up with all the legal technicalities ever invented. Make them feel guilty. That’s the key point. And get them to pay you to get rid of their guilt.

That last bit, most of all.

I’m probably underestimating you. You must know all this already. If you decided to join us, I bet it wasn’t out of civic duty or because you were wowed by the guns and the uniforms or the power and the authority you’ll represent to your old neighborhood friends and to social workers and girls in general.

Though that’s another advantage we have. Kid, if I told you half my sexual experiences, you’d spend half a year masturbating. I’ve never gotten married. What for? I’ve got everything I could want and more.

Inexperienced teenage beauties who take to the streets out of poverty, ignorantly wander into the forbidden areas in the astroport, and are willing to do anything if you just won’t start a file on them for being illegal underage workers. Hey, Markus, I do mean anything…

I’ve deflowered more virgins than a Cetian millionaire.

And the legal ones, the girls who have health insurance and everything, the real sex artists—don’t they know how to thank you when you intervene in time and free them from some client with more sadistic tastes than usual.

We protect them, and they pay us back the way they know best. Think of it as an exchange of professional services.

Though that’s only one option, obviously. Some prefer hard cash, even if it comes from one of them. But an agent’s life is unstable and solitary… Patrolling the streets, there’s not much chance you’ll meet the girl of your dreams. And even less that you’ll keep her.

If the only way to get voluntary sex is from paid professionals, I prefer to get it for free at least, and do it with ladies I know and who are grateful and almost friends to me. I feel safer with them than with a social worker who’s a stranger. With one of them, you can never be sure she doesn’t keep a stiletto under her pillow, waiting for you to fall asleep so she can kill you and rob you.

Of course, that’s my taste. You can do whatever you want.

There are some things you can’t allow. And if they try to take advantage of your inexperience and bribe you to turn a blind eye, I want you to tell me about it right away. I’ll take care of those dealer bastards…

I’ve read a bit of history, and I know that in the past they also went after drug dealers. But for all drugs.

How ridiculous. Our system is a lot more rational: you can get whatever you want in the Medical Amusement Centers. Good prices, quality guaranteed, and under the care of trained toxicology experts. It’s one of the basic attractions for tourists who can afford it.

That’s why guys who deal dirt-cheap, presumably adulterated drugs underground are a discredit to the planet and a threat we can’t tolerate. No mercy for them. The guidelines when we catch one of them are hard and clear: take no prisoners. They don’t even want that scum in Body Spares. They’re almost always addicted to the same junk they sell, and no extraterrestrial in his right mind would want to “mount” a body with such a wasted metabolism.

On the other hand, there are priorities. It goes without saying that if some xenoid perishes under suspicious circumstances, we have to drop all other business and focus on the investigation into the cause of death. And if no guilty party turns up… one has to be invented, by hook or by crook. Too much depends on our efficiency in such cases.

Always bear in mind how they wiped Philadelphia off the map: Somebody, probably fighting over a skirt, slit the throat of some Cetian nobody, and the local district guys didn’t manage to find out who it was. And the reprisal by the fellows from Tau Ceti: two million humans, evaporated. I doubt you’d like to see the demonstration repeated in another city—with you in it.

There’s only one thing more urgent than discovering who killed a xenoid. And that’s giving anyone who kills one of our own what they deserve. Making sure they never even make it to trial… alive. That’s solidarity and esprit de corps. It’s plenty comforting to know you’ll get your revenge if the worst happens.

But don’t look like that, Markus; it isn’t all risk and revenge in this job of ours. There’s also lots of ways a clever agent can pick up a few extra credits, when he’s off duty, pretty safely.

For example, the protection business.

The Yakuza and the Triads monopolize it; they even control most of the freelancers. But if you want to earn every credit that goes into your account through honest labor, and you want to spend your free time doing it, the organized crime guys won’t interfere.

Though there are some very good freelancers, lots of retailers think that contracting a Planetary Security agent is the best. It means contracting quality. There’s a good reason why we earn our reputation in physical training and gun-handling skills. And just as important, we’re permitted to keep and use our guns, even off duty. The Agent’s Personal Protection Clause, remember?

That’s how it is, Markus: this protection deal has the advantage of not even being illegal. So long as you don’t wear your uniform, of course, ha ha! If anything happens, you just state that you were “passing by” and you “fired in self-defense.” The Homicide officer who takes the case will know how to exonerate you of any charges. Esprit de corps, get it?

Some expert advice: if you’re seriously interested in the protection business, the best thing you can do is spend a few credits on a small initial investment in the Logistics officer at headquarters. He’ll give you a Kevlar jacket to protect you, also an unregistered gun. And the price won’t be as steep as it might seem, if you stop to think about it. Keep in mind, it’ll mean that any shots you fire off duty won’t leave a trace on the central computer. To which all our minimachine guns are connected, as they must have told you in the Academy.

The shopkeepers will reward your efforts with a nice, fat bonus. A guard who can fire his gun without worries is always more effective than one who can only turn to it under extreme circumstances, don’t you think?

After the man without the uniform, something about the uniform without the man. And here we’re departing from the Law. In case you’re ambitious and you really like to gamble.

Every once in a while one of these self-employed businessmen, like our friend Ahimasa, will approach you and offer a considerable sum for the loan of your Kevlar-armored suit. A very considerable sum. Don’t hesitate for even a second; give it to him. Without the slightest remorse, and without thinking it makes you an evil traitor to the corps.

There’s nothing wrong with agreeing; they rarely use our uniforms for anything but settling inside scores. And if it turns into too big a mess and we have to intervene… a Kevlar suit won’t guarantee anybody’s life when they’re up against us. Every reputable hitman knows that the hollow-point bullets we use will blast straight through our own armor. Fortunately, no other weapon on Earth has the necessary firepower.

That’s why we’re so relentless in going after the arms traffickers who sell masers and rocket-propelled explosives. If gizmos like that started circulating widely in the black market, we’d completely lose control of the situation.

Oh, a couple of details. When you rent out your uniform, never forget two precautions: first, and it’s so obvious it’s hardly worth saying, remove the ID vibroplate and any corps badges, in case your “clients” get captured. Second, put in a request for a new uniform because your old one was stolen. And make sure the request is backdated to at least three days before you “loaned” it. If they return your suit without any problems, you cancel the request. But if your “clients” are caught or killed, it’ll be your best alibi: Another stolen uniform, not your fault, you told them about it in plenty of time, what a pity, there’s no decency anymore, somebody from your neighborhood who hates you must’ve stolen it off the hanger to sell it to those killers, what a coincidence…

And don’t protest if the service officer charges you a little more for your new Kevlar-armored uniform. He’s no fool, and since he hardly has any contact with the outside world, he has to make his extra profit somehow, don’t you think?

We all have a right to live.

Oh, about food sellers…

Even though you look like the sort who’s obsessed with organic vegetables and meat without synthetic hormones and all that old ecological stuff, let me tell you something: It’s been years since I’ve spent practically anything at all on food. My microwave has the immaculate gleam of a machine that never gets used. But I eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day like an emperor. Look at the belly I’m starting to get… And that’s after spending half an hour every day on the jogging simulator.

My secret? Easy…

One of the hardest subjects in the Academy was Commercial Hygiene. Was it for you, too? I don’t know about you, but I had such a tough time learning the basic regulations about transporting, storing, preparing, and selling foodstuffs. But I have to admit that it turned out to be the most useful subject I took, out of all my preparatory classes. Because, surprise! Hardly any of those regulations are applicable to real life.

It’s like everything here on Earth: if food retailers tried to follow to the letter every one of the thousand specifications that the Law demands, they’d go broke. They know it, we know it… the Law knows it. There used to be a corps of inspectors who got all the gifts for pretending to have bad eyesight. And the rest of us, twiddling our thumbs and dying of envy. Fortunately, five years ago Amendment 538 gave us total power by turning us into the only control force all over the planet. No more than what we deserved, if you ask me.

So, if you see a grocer selling vegetables that smell like dextrinone, or chickens that are a little swollen from synthetic steroids, and he invites you to breakfast—don’t hesitate, accept. Sure, it’s a bribe… but you can bet he won’t set his own table with any of the garbage he sells. Most likely that’s stuff he keeps for extraterrestrials, so you won’t be harming any humans with your “laissez faire.”

And I assure you, in exchange for being tolerant, you’ll eat true delicacies. Those are the great pleasures of life, the most basic ones: sex and food. A man has a right to pamper his palate, doesn’t he? After all, he isn’t some xenoid with a brass gullet.

Yeah, because those bugs don’t care whether they’re eating crap or caviar so long as the chef swears that it’s some exotic Earthling dish. Idiots.

Aside from sybaritic pleasures, my advice is that, if you want to be a father someday, don’t sink your teeth into any of the succulent produce you see in the windows, or let yourself be tempted by the cheap, juicy ten-day chicks that look as big and fat as forty-day chickens. They don’t do much harm to the metabolisms of the weird guys from other worlds, but those synthetic hormones can really mess up your innards—or your children’s, if your wife and you decide to have any in the natural way. Though, personally, I’d invest a few extra credits and get a good custom genetic design. Clean, safe, efficient.

As for the rest, you have to be tough on the retailers and small industrialists who contaminate the environment by dumping their rotting and carcinogenic waste and their untreated sewage straight down the drain. Fine ’em! As often as you have to! So they’ll learn once and for all that in the long run it’ll be cheaper for them to install a waste treatment plant than to keep breaking the environmental protection laws.

As you can see, even though I make fun of it, I’m halfway on your ecology and conservation bandwagon. Simple pragmatism: survival instinct, not religious fervor about bugs and flowers.

Earth is our planet, isn’t it? Just because the guys from beyond Pluto own it now, it doesn’t mean that we don’t care anymore, or that we should commit suicide by drowning in our own shit. Not to mention, that would also mean losing the tourism that still barely keeps us afloat, which depends so much on our virgin forests and all that…

What else…

Oh, yeah. Practically the most important thing: They must have talked to you about staff rotation in the Academy. Three months here on patrol, three in Deterrent Force, three in Homicide, and so on and so forth. A cute little system that one of the big bosses must’ve dreamed up—with the idea, I guess, of preventing the poor agents and regular old sergeants from feeling too tempted to fall into the horrendous venial sin of corruption… No doubt the moron thought he was an absolute genius for coming up with that.

But don’t let it get you down. Every law has its loophole: we’ve come up with our own system. They never rotate an entire department all at once, so when it’s time for us to separate and you know what your new post is going to be, I’ll personally tell you who makes the rules over there… And he’ll give you the instructions, the contacts, everything you’ll need to take over from the agent you’re replacing, in every sense.

Understood? Yep, Markus, you’re a smart boy, just like I thought. Quick on your feet. And you smile. I’m glad you like these proposals. As you see, belonging to the glorious Planetary Security force isn’t as bad as lots of people think.

A few more bits of advice. Sorry if I’m starting to sound pedantic. I’m getting old, and not having kids of my own has made me feel a little paternal towards young rookies like you who don’t know anything about life yet. Besides, I really do like you.

Get used to improvising. Forget the Manual. There’s no system of rules that can cover every possibility. Every day, an agent runs into situations that don’t fit the standards.

For example, if you’re patrolling a dark street and you find a minicontainer with two kilos of telecrack in it, and there aren’t any witnesses… Or if some cloned Cetian damsel is impressed by how tight you wear your uniform trousers and wants to know what your favorite brand of sex lubricant is… The decision is up to you.

I have a personal rule: Never let a child, a woman, or an addict down. You can always go a little bit out of your way for your neighbor, don’t you think, Markus?

Of course, if you attract some Colossaur’s attention, I recommend that you start coming up with excuses faster than an aide in the diplomatic corps. They say even their vaginas are armored.

Not to mention the acetic acid that the guzoids of Regulus secrete… I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.

Ha. The spicy stories I could tell you…

You don’t know how lucky you were to join Planetary Security when you did. A few years ago, an agent who refused too often might end up in suspended animation, inside one of these tanks. The xenoids practically owned us, and they didn’t like any kind of refusal.

Now we have certain rights.

And we’ve fought good and hard to get them, I swear. Ten years ago, saying “Planetary Security agent” was the same as saying “piece of garbage.” To make them take us into account, we had to show those stuckup xenoids that there was no way they could control Earth without us. At least not without wiping out three quarters of the population.

Out of curiosity, where were you born, Markus? Right here in New Miami? Thought so. A smart urban kid. I’m a clever country boy. From a little hamlet on the bank of a river off in the boondocks, between the hills and the jungle: Baracuyá del Jiquí. They still haven’t figured out that we’re in the twenty-first century yet. They’re still living in the nineteenth there.

Every time it rains a little, the Jiquí River bursts its banks; the main street, which is the one and only street in my town, turns into a lake, and you have to get around by raft instead of on foot. We didn’t have access to the holonet in my house—not even electricity. We carried our water in buckets from the river.

I didn’t see my first aerobus till I was ten. Up until that moment, my highest ambition when it came to transportation was to have my own horse. My mother and father didn’t have many entertainment alternatives or any idea what contraceptives were, so they had fifteen kids—nine sons, six daughters. Ten of us survived. Seven boys, three girls. At the age of forty-three, my mother looked seventy.

I wasn’t old enough for them to take seriously, or young enough for them to pamper. I got the worst of both worlds, being in the middle. My older brothers beat me because they were stronger, and I had to take care of the little ones because they were younger.

By the time I was I was ten, I realized I wouldn’t inherit so much as the dust from the little bit of land my father farmed. I wasn’t too fond of spending the whole day glued to the field, anyway. What I most wanted was to live in a real city, not die making scratches in the Earth. And since I was always pretty dense, and not even any good at sports in spite of having this big old body, the only way I could figure to make my dream come true and get out of there was the uniform. So as soon as I turned sixteen, I ran away from home, with my little bundle of clothes and my one pair of shoes. I listened to those holoposters that promise you heaven and Earth, and I enlisted in the Planetary Security corps. I would have done it sooner if I could’ve fooled them and pretended I was older than I was. Even though I looked twenty, they’d only have to run the numbers to figure out I wasn’t even eighteen yet.

Ah, Baracuyá del Jiquí. Sometimes I get nostalgic and wonder what my brothers and sisters are up to. Whether they ever got married, whether I have nieces and nephews, whether they got beaten to death by the Earth. Whether Mama and Papa are still alive. They must be really old. I never went back, never even sent them a holovideo. It was hard, but I told myself, “Romualdo Concepción Pérez, not one step back, not even to get a running start.” And I stuck to it.

Most of the old guard in Planetary Security came from places like my village—or worse. Our boss, Colonel Kharman, is from the Dayaks on Borneo. A tribe that still lives in primitive communities, bones through their noses, shrinking the heads of their dead enemies.

Back then, no wimp from the big city would want to wear this uniform or put on this badge. Well, not today, either—you’re the exception, not the rule. Your little city friends think anything’s better than being a “fink,” as some imbeciles still call us.

Did I have a hard time at the Academy? You bet I did. I had to learn how to use the sanitary facilities, the computer terminals… how to fight, like it or not. That’s something I had in my blood. If I hadn’t learned how to defend myself, to dish it out and to take it without crying, almost before I learned how to walk, my four older brothers would have beaten me to a pulp. Or my own father would have beaten the stuffing out me for being a wimp and a crybaby.

Back then, we only took one year of preparatory classes, and then they set us loose on the streets. There was real urgency. If we survived the first three months, it’s because we were good students. If we were left by the wayside… Well, the xenoids from the Selection Committee had millions of applicants to fill any vacancy in the corps.

At first, with no friends or acquaintances, without the slightest idea how things worked here in the cities, we tried to follow the Manual to the letter. Bringing the full weight of the law down equally on anyone who broke it, not taking anything into account. For anybody.

As for me, nobody was going to send me back to Baracuyá del Jiquí for going easy on a civilian. They might be as poor as me and as desperate as me—but if it was them or me, it was going to be them. Same with strikes. If you had to give a good dose of electroclub to a bunch of uranium miners who were asking for better antiradiation suits instead of working, you let ’em have it. They might be as wretched as us… but that’s why they were paying me, dressing me, and letting me live here. And in this life everything has its price.

Pickpockets, pushers, the Mafia, Triads, Yakuza? To me, they were all the same shit. Tough on everybody. Those were brutal times.

It was in those days that the legend of a street war between crime and us was born. Because they didn’t pull punches. For every Yakuza we sent to Body Spares, his friends rubbed out one agent. Till things started to even out.

It’s only now I realize how stupid I was. If it hadn’t been for that lesson old Aniceto taught me with the fish-eating critter in the aquarium in his apartment, I’d probably be dead now. Like lots of guys who graduated with me but who weren’t lucky enough to meet someone who could explain the rules of the game to them.

I can’t complain, for sure. I’ve made out like a prince.

When I’d already been working on the street for a couple of years, and the Yakuza and the Mafia knew who I was and looked out for me like I was pure gold, Amendment 456 came out and made everybody in Planetary Security an automatic citizen of the city where he worked. Me, Romualdo Concepción Pérez, born in Baracuyá del Jiquí… a citizen of New Miami!

I felt on top of the world. A couple months later, I made sergeant, they assigned me my own tiny apartment, and I moved out of the common dorm. That’s how I’ve lived all these years.

Why haven’t I moved up in the ranks? I’m going to let you in on a secret, Markus. Take it or leave it. The sergeant is like the keystone in the arch. Come on, son, I can’t believe a kid with your education doesn’t know what that is—the keystone, the stone that holds all the others in place. The one that goes right in the middle. The one that’s most secure.

Who gets it when some spoiled xenoid complains? The lowest-ranking agent. And who has to put his head on the chopping block when they kill some idiot tourist and the xenoids make human heads roll to calm their people? The top brass. And who are the obvious targets for the wack jobs from the Xenophobe Front, every time it they get the bright idea of orchestrating one of their little campaigns against the “finks and buglickers”? The officers. Not one of the guys who started out with me is still around. Oh, sure, some of them were intelligent types who rose like cream: lieutenants, captains, majors, colonels. One of them even made general. And where are they now? Retired without honor on half pensions, in prison, shot dead, begging on the same streets they used to rule over, or recycled like compost in the organoponics. The machinery swallowed them up.

Keep me a sergeant. Not too high, not too lowly.

Avarice broke the moneybag, Markus. Keep it small-scale, personal, and you can control things, and there isn’t too much danger of being turned in. When the racket gets big-time, Yakuza-style, you start getting competition. Sharks bigger than you want a piece of the action… and there’s always some xenoid organization that has more power and will break your back. If you knew how many times I’ve seen a syndicate rise up in Planetary Security, just to fall under the extraterrestrial boot, with these eyes destined for the recycler!

Meanwhile, a good old sergeant has plenty of authority. He’s the one who passes the orders down, the oil that lubricates the machinery. He’s guaranteed his piece of the pie, and nobody messes with him. I never get mixed up in the big operations, especially if I’m not asked to. Live and let live, that’s my motto, Markus. Things’ll go better for you, too, if you live by that rule.

Sometimes you have to play the heavy, that’s true. And it hurts. Man, does it hurt.

A few months back I had to arrest this young kid, and I still can’t get it out of my mind. A freelance protector—at least, that’s what he thought. Truth is, he was too naïve for that racket. His name was Jowe, and he was also an artist. I saw his paintings… Maybe they were good, but I didn’t like them. They were real strange, and I don’t understand all that stuff.

Well, seems like this little painter had forgotten to pay the Yakuza his monthly dues, because he had stopped charging this social worker who was living with him. Girl named María Elena.

I can’t really remember her face. To me, she looked like any old whore—tall and leggy, like all the rest. I didn’t even look at her; I like my women with some flesh on them, it’s the xenoids’ business if they prefer the bones. This Jowe, though, he looked at her like… Markus, I thought I’d done it all, but it broke my heart to have to bring him in. It was like hauling in the son I never had. I even stuck around for the trial, and that was after I’d clocked out for the day. It was over fast, like every trial since the central computer took over judging. He pulled three years in Body Spares… He won’t make it, I’m certain.

It was practically a hit job. Of course, I didn’t haul him in for not paying that debt, but because he was accused of giving money to the Xenophobe Union for Earthling Liberation. Accused by somebody from the Yakuza, it goes without saying. They used us to settle scores with him legally. And the worst part was, it was true… Imagine how idealistic, how stupid that poor kid was, wasting the little bit of money he had, sending it to those drugged-out wackos.

When I was hauling him off, he kept staring at that María Elena. Then she ran over, they hugged and kissed and cried and everything. But he was doing it for real, with all his heart. You could tell he really loved her, poor guy. As for her—well, I’ve seen better acting in our district talent shows.

It was so tough, I still get goosebumps and my eyes still tear up when I remember it… I felt like a rat, Markus. Really.

One last thing, this time I’m not talking as sergeant to agent but as a guy with some experience to a green kid. And take advantage now that I’m getting sentimental. Forget about the honor of the corps if things get really ugly. I really mean it.

Better a live coward than a dead hero. He who runs away saves his hide to fight another day, or do whatever. There’s lots of agents in Planetary Security, but not one of them will give you a new life if you lose yours fighting for a mistaken notion of glory or of taking one for the team. And autocloning is so expensive, it’s just for the top brass. Suckers like you and me only die once… and nobody brings us back.

I’m telling you this because the streets have been calm for years, and I know from experience that on this planet there’s always calm before the storm. I’m sure the pot’s going to start boiling again soon. And even though the electroclub is one of the strongest arguments ever invented, and Molotov cocktails roll off these Kevlar uniforms like water off a duck… details are the devil. An urban riot is serious business. That’s where you really realize how much this planet hates us.

One of those street revolts calling for xenoid blood can always be brought under control. We’ve always been able to control them. Until, every ten or twelve years, suddenly the day comes when the plebs are so desperate they don’t give a rat’s ass if we shoot all their hides full of holes. Until the day comes when they understand they’re so miserable they’ve got nothing left to lose but their messed up shithole lives. And not even that matters much to them, so long as they can take a few of ours with them.

Because it’s really the xenoids’ fault, but there are never any xenoids around to get bashed; those bugs can sniff out a disturbance better than a mutant bloodhound.

When you see the first riot get out of hand and overwhelm your friends in the antiriot squad, forget about corps solidarity and Greek legends. Run, hide your uniform, find yourself a safe hidey-hole—as far from the city as possible. It happens every ten or twelve years, and it always leads to the same result: Nothing.

The bugs from beyond Pluto show up with the heavy artillery, take their people out of there, and melt the place down. They don’t care if us “buglickers” are still here, risking our hides to keep their tourist paradise safe. After all, we’re the native cannon fodder. They cut the problem out at the root: they wipe out the whole city, or the whole continent, if things go too far. Look what they did to Africa in Contact times.

You wouldn’t want to see what a place that used to be a city looks like after everything in it is vaporized—just like that, in a couple of seconds. Not many ruins are left, and hardly any human remains. There’s no harmful radiation or toxic gas, the soil isn’t poisoned, the people who escaped before the disturbances can come back and resume normal lives. If they have anywhere to live. Because otherwise, their only choice is to grit their teeth, bow their heads, swallow their rage, and start working like mules to rebuild their leveled town.

But here and there on the ground, and on some walls that held up, who knows how, there are the shadows left by the volatilized bodies. Like ghosts, motionlessly accusing who knows who. Until the walls are knocked down or repainted.

And nobody cries over them, at least not publicly. The disturbance and the people who kicked it up are forgotten, and life goes on. Until the next explosion.

Once I saw a holovideo about some little animals that look like fat guinea pigs and that live up there in the Artic, eating moss and junk like that. The foxes, the polar bears, the owls, even the Eskimos, all the predators that don’t want to starve to death hunt them and eat them by the fistful. But they reproduce, they reproduce. Like guinea pigs, you follow me, Markus? And there’s more and more of them—until there’s no moss or anything left to eat.

Then they gather, armies of millions and millions of them, and migrate. Like crazy, and nobody can stop them. Not looking for more food or new territory, just looking for the sea. And the wolves, the foxes, all the predators follow them, gobbling them up by the thousands… until the fat guinea pigs dive head-first off the coast and swim out to sea. Then the sharks and seagulls keep on eating them, and thousands and thousands more drown… until there aren’t any left.

And the two or three that didn’t migrate go back to reproducing and getting eaten, until ten or fifteen years later the cycle repeats itself. And repeats, and repeats, and repeats.

I’d like to think, only until one day. Though I’m more of a fox or a hawk than one of them…

What’s that? Lemmings? If you say so. You’re the educated one here. Like I said, Sergeant Romualdo never…

Click.

“That’s enough.” Sweating, Colonel Kharman turned off the recording and wiped his forehead with a silk handkerchief. “The rest is half-baked biological and philosophical speculation. It would not interest you, Murfal, Your Excellency.

“Perhaps it would be… instructive,” the other wondered. His human body moved with the almost imperceptible time lag of a “horse’s” movements. Murfal was an Auyar.

“I don’t doubt it,” Kharman insisted, wiping the sweat from his broad brow. “But we already have more than enough evidence to send that poor devil of a sergeant to Body Spares for the rest of his life. And we know enough about the status and methods of corruption in our corps for us to take appropriate measures… I do not know how to thank you enough for your cooperation.”

“Rubbish,” the Auyar cut him off. “Even you should have realized that the disease has spread too far for home remedies, Colonel. Or perhaps we should investigate you, too?”

Kharman ignored the veiled threat, but started sweating again. It was only after a few seconds had gone by that he was able to ask, in a rather unsteady voice, “Do you… have some concrete proposal?”

“Of course.” The smile on the body of Murfal’s “horse” was like one on a badly built marionette. “Or did you think we supplied you with our huborg prototype just to test it out?”

“I thought that…,” Kharman began.

“I don’t care what you thought,” the Auyar again interrupted. “You’ve already learned that we are capable of building perfect biomechanical replicas of human beings. If we could fool even your sergeant, no Earthling will notice the difference.”

“I was very impressed with the way you were able to create an entire backstory for Markus. Parents, education, everything,” Kharman observed, still sweating.

“Simply routine… But we did not do it as a mere experiment…” Murfal took a long pause and smiled once more. “Your Planetary Security is worthless, Colonel Kharman. It is rotten to the foundations—and we do not like that. We need a sound and incorruptible police force that will fully guarantee tourists’ safety.”

“But… they’re only human,” Kharman tried to argue, wiping his forehead.

“Yes. Regrettably limited, as you all are,” the Auyar agreed. “Hence our idea is to replace you with our huborgs.”

“All of Planetary Security?” The human high official was terrified and started sweating for the third time. His olive skin had gone almost ashen. “But… That’s impossible. They are only biomechanisms… with flexible programming, of course…. but they’ll have to get orders from someone, be supervised, after all… And your tourists won’t want to be cared for by biomechanical replicas of humans, no matter how perfect they are.”

“They’ll never find out,” the Auyar shrugged. “Our huborgs can be more human than humans. Be everything a xenoid tourist expects from a police force officer, even one belonging to a primitive lower race. But don’t worry, Kharman. We’ll only replace your street patrol personnel. The higher officials will still be humans, of course. Though also supervised by our technicians. They will work together, for… technical reasons. Huborgs can be very delicate sometimes.”

“Ah,” was all that Colonel Kharman said, beaten.

“It will not be so terrible,” Murfal consoled him patronizingly. “And there are still many details in our huborgs’ programming that must be perfected. For now we will begin only here, in your district, as a pilot project. It may take a couple of years or longer before the system can be instituted all over Earth. And you cannot deny that we will be saving your planet quite a bit in the matter of salaries. Thanks to which, for example, your own salary could… double.”

Kharman smiled unenthusiastically and stood up. “Well, Murfal, Your Excellency… if everything has been said, I will be going.”

“Wait. I want to ask a favor of you,” the xenoid stopped him. “I am curious about something. Do you have any holoimages of this Sergeant Romualdo? I would like to see his face. He is a clever man, it cannot be denied. He was judicious enough not to lay all his cards on the table until they had gone inside the Body Spares depository. He knew that no electronic equipment could record his words in there…”

“Yes, but he wasn’t counting on your huborg prototype’s photographic memory,” Kharman fawningly reminded him. “He couldn’t have known. It precisely reproduced every word that Romualdo uttered.” The fingers of the former Dayak colonel from Planetary Security flew across a keyboard, and a holoimage materialized between him and Murfal. “Look. This is Sergeant Romualdo.”

The Auyar contemplated the man’s features. A leathery face with the melancholy of a man who’s seen it all and no longer has faith in anything. The face of a man who knows that if he doesn’t take care of the dirty work, somebody else will do it, though no better than he would. Who doesn’t enjoy it… Who’s just doing a painful duty.

“Enough. Turn it off,” Murfal sighed, seeming more human than ever. “Colonel… Could I ask you for another favor?”

“As you wish, Murfal, Your Excellency,” said Kharman, servile but uncomfortable.

“Destroy that recording. I want the secret to remain between you and me. Do not let Internal Affairs take any sort of steps against this Romualdo,” the xenoid said absently. “If possible, have him retire now. With full honors and a double pension. And I will pay for it, if the paperwork is too complicated. Can you do it?”

“Of course, Your Excellency,” Kharman replied, completely dumbfounded. “But… why?”

“Why have I decided to pardon him?” The Auyar stood up with a clumsy gesture. “Because I enjoyed listening to him. Because I like his images: the one of the anemone and the little fish; the one of the child, the organ grinder, and the monkey… And especially the one of the suicidal lemmings. Because, in the final analysis, if Planetary Security is the most venal organization on this terribly corrupt planet, it is not his fault. He said it himself: he never did anything other than follow the rules of the game. The good Sergeant Romualdo did not even invent them. We did. And he had no way of knowing that those rules had begun to change… right now. Goodnight, Colonel Kharman.”

“Goodnight, Murfal, Your Excellency,” said the former Dayak.

The Auyar halted again on the threshold. “One last minor detail… Do you think it would be very difficult to arrange a visit to that… Baracuyá del Jiquí? Now that I am on Earth already, I would very much like to see it. If what the sergeant said is true, it must be an interesting place. Perhaps I will be lucky. Human settlements as… primitive as that are growing rare, according to what I have read in the tourist guide…”