Valen shook his head.
“I’m afraid you won’t find anything like that here on Ma’shorka Centra. The government forbids visitors to take anything away from the planet.”
“What? Not even a polished rock?” She looked surprised.
“Especially not a rock,” Valen told her sternly. “That definitely counts as a part of the planet and the Ma’shorkan government will prosecute you if you try to take it away with you and reduce their mass.”
“But that’s so restrictive!” she protested, frowning. “I was really hoping to find some things to bring home to the rest of my string quartet and maybe my fellow teachers, too.”
“You’ll have to forget that idea right now,” Valen said, frowning. “Unless you want to end up in a Ma’shorkan prison for a thousand lifetimes.”
She shivered and her eyes went wide.
“I certainly don’t. Okay, I’ll be sure not to take anything with me when I leave.” She frowned. “It sucks that I can’t shop for souvenirs, though! I mean, this is the first time I’ve been to another planet—I really wanted something to remember it by.”
“I dare say you already have plenty to remember, and we haven’t even made it out of the spaceport yet,” Valen said dryly.
“You’re right.” She sighed. “And I suppose I can always take pictures. It just seems like such a draconian law.”
“It is,” Valen admitted. “But it used to be worse. The government used to mandate that every visitor to the planet would be weighed, as well as their luggage. Then they were weighed again, before they boarded their return flight. If they had gained anything during their stay, it was surgically removed before they were allowed to leave.”
“What—like mandatory liposuction?” She looked shocked.
“I’m not sure what ‘liposuction’ is, but it was a mandatory surgery,” he said, seriously. “Visitors to the planet were advised to be very careful of what they ate and drank while they were here.”
Selena looked up at him with wide eyes.
“Why did they change the law to just luggage, then?” she asked.
Valen shrugged.
“I believe the Tourism Bureau complained. Despite Ma’shorka Centra’s many beautiful beaches and mountain resorts, they claimed—and rightly so—that fewer guests wanted to visit, because they might be faced with non-optional surgery before they left the planet.”
“I guess it’s one way to stick to your diet while you’re on vacation,” Selena murmured. “I know I wouldn’t dare to take a cheat day if I knew I might have to have whatever I’d eaten sucked off my thighs before I could go home again!”
Her talk of “diets” and “cheat days” was foreign to Valen, but it made him think all over again that Elites on Earth were made to feel bad for their curves. But since he was about to deliver Selena to the palace guard who was waiting for her and never see her again, he kept his opinions to himself.
“Look just ahead,” he said to her. “That’s the rotunda. Somewhere in the crowd, we should hopefully find the guard who’s supposed to meet you.”
15
Selena looked to where the big Kindred was pointing and saw that the long, straight, spaceport concourse widened out into a vast, broad circle up ahead. All around the circle were little restaurants and kiosks, almost all of them selling food. The air was filled with delicious scents—hot and spicy mingling with sweet and tangy. There were tables and chairs set up, café-style, and people were eating and drinking and talking.
Like tourists you might see anywhere on Earth, Selena thought. Well, except for the fact that a large number of the women were bare-breasted. And all of them had on elaborate breast jewelry, too—either decorative nipple rings or the gold or silver breast harness chains glinted everywhere she looked. It made her ashamed of her own bare breasts, with nothing on them, poking out of the ragged remains of her t-shirt.
Then she realized how ridiculous that was—she had gone from being embarrassed to show her bare breasts, to being ashamed that she didn’t have any pretty jewelry for them.
Well, hopefully, I won’t have to be topless much longer, she thought. If she could talk to the Major Domo of the palace, as Valen had suggested, she was certain she could make him understand what was going on and get him to issue her a new Seal so she could cover up decently again.
She hoped so, anyway.
And anyway, the Ma’shorkans really were too different from humans to be mistaken for regular Earth tourists. Besides the women with bare breasts, and the fact that they all had mottled, camouflage skin tones, at least one in twenty had the odd double-face thing going on, where they had an upside-down nose and mouth on their foreheads.
The women were dressed in long, flowing gowns with fluttering sleeves and the men had on long tunics that fell to the knees with dark trousers under them. Selena felt out of place in her jeans and ragged, stained t-shirt.