Oh, the laws were strict about misuse of rented bodies.
But the tourist trade was the only flourishing industry left on Altair Nine. The laws remained strict, but they remained unenforced.
Pulcher checked in with Charley Dickon. “I found out why Madeleine got into this thing. She rented. Signed a long-term lease with the Tourist Agency and got a big advance on her earnings.”
Dickon shook his head sadly. “What people will do for money,” he commented.
“It wasn’t for her! She gave it to her husband, so he could get a ticket to someplace off-world.” Pulcher got up, turned around and kicked his chair as hard as he could. Renting was bad enough for a man. For a woman it was- “Take it easy,” Dickon suggested, grinning. “So she figured she could buy her way out of the contract with the money from Swinburne?”
“Wouldn’t you do the same?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Milo. Renting’s not so bad.”
“The hell it isn’t!”
“All right. The hell it isn’t. But you ought to realize, Milo,” the committeeman said stiffly, “that if it wasn’t for the tourist trade we’d all be in trouble. Don’t knock the Tourist Agency. They’re doing a perfectly decent job.”
“Then why won’t they let me see the records?”
The committeeman’s eyes narrowed and he sat up straighter.
“I tried,” said Pulcher. “I got them to show me Madeleine’s lease agreement, but I had to threaten them with a court order. Why? Then I tried to find out a little more about the Agency itself-incorporation papers, names of shareholders and so on. They wouldn’t give me a thing. Why?”
Dickon said, after a second, “I could ask you that too, Milo. Why did you want to know?”
Pulcher said seriously, “I have to make a case any way I can, Charley. They’re all dead on the evidence. They’re guilty. But every one of them went into this kidnapping stunt in order to stay away from renting. Maybe I can’t get Judge Pegrim to listen to that kind of evidence, but maybe I can. It’s my only chance. If I can show that renting is a form of cruel and unusual punishment-if I can find something wrong in it, something that isn’t allowed in its charter, then I have a chance. Not a good chance. But a chance. And there’s got to be something wrong, Charley, because otherwise why would they be so secretive?”
Dickon said heavily, “You’re getting in pretty deep, Milo. Ever occur to you you’re going about this the wrong way?”
“Wrong how?”
“What can the incorporation papers show you? You want to find out what renting’s like. It seems to me the only way that makes sense is to try it yourself.”
“Rent? Me?” Pulcher was shocked.
The committeeman shrugged. “Well, I got a lot to do,” he said, and escorted Pulcher to the door.
The lawyer walked sullenly away. Rent? Him? But he had to admit that it made a certain amount of sense.
He made a private decision. He would do what he could to get Madeleine and the others out of trouble. Completely out of trouble. But if, in the course of trying the case, he couldn’t magic up some way of getting her out of the lease agreement as well as getting an acquittal, he would make damn sure that he didn’t get the acquittal.
Jail wasn’t so bad; renting, for Madeleine Gaultry, was considerably worse.
III
Pulcher marched into the unemployment office the next morning with an air of determination far exceeding what he really felt. Talk about loyalty to a client! But he had spent the whole night brooding about it, and Dickon had been right.
The clerk blinked at him and wheezed: “Gee, you’re Mr. Pulcher, aren’t you? I never thought I’d see you here. Things pretty slow?”
Pulcher’s uncertainty made him belligerent. “I want to rent my body,” he barked. “Am I in the right place or not?”
“Well, sure, Mr. Pulcher. I mean, you’re not, if it’s voluntary, but it’s been so long since they had a voluntary that it don’t make much difference, you know. I mean, I can handle it for you. Wait a minute.” He turned away, hesitated, glanced at Pulcher and said, “I better use the other phone.”
He was gone only a minute. He came back with a look of determined embarrassment. “Mr. Pulcher. Look. I thought I better call Charley Dickon. He isn’t in his office. Why don’t you wait until I can clear it with him?”
Pulcher said grimly, “It’s already cleared with him.”
The clerk hesitated. “But- Oh. All right,” he said miserably, scribbling on a pad. “Right across the street. Oh, and tell them you’re a volunteer. I don’t know if that will make them leave the cuffs off you, but at least it’ll give them a laugh.” He chuckled.
Pulcher took the slip of paper and walked sternly across the street to the Tourist Rental Agency, Procurement Office, observing without pleasure that there were bars on the windows. A husky guard at the door straightened up as he approached and said genially, “All right, sonny. It isn’t going to be as bad as you think. Just gimme your wrists a minute.”
“Wait,” said Puleher quickly, putting his hands behind him. “You won’t need the handcuffs for me. I’m a volunteer.”
The guard said dangerously, “Don’t kid with me, sonny.” Then he took a closer look. “Hey, I know you. You’re the lawyer. I saw you at the Primary Dance.” He scratched his ear. He said doubtfully, “Well, maybe you are a volunteer. Go on in.” But as Pulcher strutted past he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder and, click, click, his wrists were circled with steel. He whirled furiously. “No hard feelings,” boomed the guard cheerfully. “It costs a lot of dough to get you ready, that’s all. They don’t want you changing your mind when they give you the squeeze, see?”
“The squeeze-? All right,” said Pulcher, and turned away again. The squeeze. It didn’t sound so good, at that. But he had a little too much pride left to ask the guard for details. Anyway, it couldn’t be too bad, he was sure. Wasn’t he? After all, it wasn’t the same as being executed. .
An hour and a half later he wasn’t so sure.
They had stripped him, weighed him, fluorographed him, taken samples of his blood, saliva, urine and spinal fluid; they had thumped his chest and listened to the strangled pounding of the arteries in his arm.
“All right, you pass,” said a fortyish blonde in a stained nurse’s uniform. “You’re lucky today, openings all over. You can take your pick-mining, sailing, anything you like. What’ll it be?”
“What?”
“While you’re renting. What’s the matter with you? You got to be doing something while your body’s rented, you know. Of course, you can have the tank if you want to. But they mostly don’t like that. You’re conscious the whole time, you know.”
Pulcher said honestly: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But then he remembered. While a person’s body was rented out there was the problem of what to do with his own mind and personality. It couldn’t stay in the body. It had to go somewhere else. “The tank” was a storage device, only that and nothing more; the displaced mind was held in a sort of pickling vat of transistors and cells until its own body could be returned to it. He remembered a client of his boss’s, while he was still clerking, who had spent eight weeks in the tank and had then come out to commit a murder. No. Not the tank. He said, coughing, “What else is there?”
The nurse said impatiently, “Golly, whatever you want, I guess. They’ve got a big call for miners operating the deep gas generators right now, if you want that. It’s pretty hot, is all. They burn the coal into gas, and of course you’re right in the middle of it. But I don’t think you feel much. Not too much. I don’t know about sailing or rocketing, because you have to have some experience for that. There might be something with the taxi company, but I ought to tell you usually the renters don’t want that, because the live drivers don’t like seeing the machines running cabs. Sometimes if they see a machine-cab they tip it over. Naturally, if there’s any damage to the host machine it’s risky for you.”
Pulcher said faintly, “I’ll try mining.”