He didn't know. However, there seemed to be no help for it now; he
would have to wait until they reached the next town, unless the girl,
seeing him reappear in the same guise, would guess what had happened
and tell her husband. He himself had been a fool to admit to her that
the hulk he inhabited was a sick one; he still couldn't understand
how he could so casually have entrusted her with so vital a piece of
information.
* * * * *
The Vinzz had been locking antennae with another of his kind. Now they
detached, and the first approached the man once more. "There is, as it
happens, a body available for a private game," he lisped. "No questions
to be asked or answered. All I can tell you is that it is in good
health."
The man hesitated. "But unable to pass the screening?" he murmured
aloud. "A criminal then."
The green one's face--if you could call it a face--remained impassive.
"Male?"
"Of course," the Vinzz said primly. His kind did have certain ultimate
standards to which they adhered rigidly, and one of those was the
curious tabu against mixed games, strictly enforced even though it
kept them from tapping a vast source of potential players. There had
also never been a recorded instance of humans and extraterrestrials
exchanging identities, but whether that was the result of tabu or
biological impossibility, no one could tell.
It might merely be prudence on the Vinzz' part--if it had ever
been proved that an alien life-form had "desecrated" a human body,
Earthmen would clamor for war ... for on this planet humanity held
its self-bestowed purity of birthright dear--and the Vinzz, despite
being unquestionably the stronger, were pragmatic pacifists. It had
been undoubtedly some rabid member of the anti-alien groups active on
Terra who had started the rumor that the planetary slogan of Vinau was,
"Don't beat 'em; cheat 'em."
"It would have to be something pretty nuclear for the other guy to take
such a risk." The man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "How much?"
"Thirty thousand credits."
"Why, that's three times the usual rate!"
"The other will pay five times the usual rate."
"Oh, all right," the delicate young man gave in. It was a terrific
risk he was agreeing to take, because, if the other was a criminal, he
himself would, upon assuming the body, assume responsibility for all
the crimes it had committed. But there was nothing else he could do.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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