Alien Exodus by Mary Margaret Branning
Kitty LeMieux walked the corridors of her ship. Kitty was human - though almost none of her employees were - and space born. She stopped to gaze through an opaque wall at the gymnastics that Upender and Tailgunner were performing for their client, who lived on the splendid blue planet that was spinning slowly above the Anything Goes.
Blue planets were Kitty’s favorite, although she’d never lived on one.
She could see Up’s and Tail’s silhouettes through the opaque wall, but decided not to clear it, because that might distract them. Both commanded high fees for their services because they specialized in species most of the other sexers could not entertain. It was the age old problem of incompatible physiology.
Only the richest of the rich could afford those two together, and they’d been with this particular client for over an hour. The client was wealthy, he seemed athletically fit, and he was masterful at postponing the inevitable. He was giving Up and Tail quite a workout.
Kitty turned on the audio.
The client demanded something in his language which the software translated into Infinite Standard for Up and Tail. He didn’t sound breathless at all.
Tailgunner did sound breathless when he said, “Up, get your ass out of my face, I can’t find his sclorpin!”
She listened to him trying to control his breathing with deep gasps.
Those kinds of verbal expulsions were filtered out of the client’s audio feed. There was a holographic copy of the client in the room with them, so they could best manage the movements of the braindeads. It was important not to knock your client out, unless that’s what he paid for.
“It’s on your left. Move your left hand. Now down. No, the other down!”
Up and Tail were manipulating the two robots, also called braindeads, affectionately and exasperatingly referred to ‘bots or ‘deads by the sexers, which the client had ordered from her. The other operators usually used computers and holotoys to please their clients. Up and Tail specialized in braindeads, which were made in the bowels of the Anything Goes by expert technicians - also Kitty’s employees - according to the client’s wishes, and at great expense. They were delivered to private homes planetside in the buyers’ personal crafts. Kitty didn’t deliver.
Braindeads were designed to react to instructions sent by operators on Kitty’s ship, and to nothing else. While the holotoy operators sat at computers and used various manual or voice commands to create motion in the holographs on planet, Up and Tail had to strap on special suits and make the exact motions the client wanted his ‘bots to make. The suit interiors were anatomically correct for Up and Tail’s anatomy, and, in the client’s living room, the ‘bots were anatomically correct to the client’s, or clients’, body, or bodies. Customers sent detailed data regarding their species to her ship’s computers after they signed Kitty’s contracts, so she could customize the ‘deads to their physiology.
Up and Tail were creative at finding ways to perform their paying playmates’ demands, in suits that looked nothing like either of them. And they got the big bucks for doing it - after Kitty took her rather large cut. She had a business ship to run, after all.
Kitty tuned out and moved on. In the next playpen, two hundred and twenty-four operators in various states of repose, before terminals, were making customers’ holotoys behave to their wishes while the players on planet did the various things they did to please themselves. Most of the sexers looked bored; their clientele was the cheapest, desiring nothing more than your basic suck, lick, and fuck, or whatever their species equivalent was.
The Anything Goes had visited Earth several times since the population had strangely changed species. Where the human clients had gone, Kitty couldn’t guess. A species change of an entire planet had never occurred in Kitty’s extensive experience before. She didn’t know what to think of it.
The new clients’ preferences had been discussed after the first visit, had been standardized, and were already programmed in. The operators just tweaked the holotoy programs when necessary to comply with the client’s immediate desires. They could change speed, order of acts, and even entire routines, in only the time it took to touch or speak the correct command.
Kitty moved on. She didn’t continue on to Playpen Three, however, from where somewhat more complicated virtual sexual acts were being directed. She took the lift to her office. There, the accounting program was displaying the current, up to the moment take from Earth, converting it into demes. Demes were the monetary unit Kit banked in on a planet that had specialty banking services. The screen blinked D-1,234,468,754/245. Then it blinked D-1,254,484,618/641. By the time the Anything Goes left orbit on his way to the planet Makenz, the total would read nearly D-45,987,287,511.860. Earth was always a good haul, though this species was a fairly new client. Kitty would do more advertising here next time.
And yes, the Anything Goes was a he. He was Kit’s ship, and his gender was hers to determine. A.G. was definitely a he. He was her protector and provider. She was the brains and the beauty. Although Kit was now nearing ninety, the medical programs kept her in pretty fair condition, for an old broad. She hadn’t known many humans in her lifetime, but her old ma had lived into her hundred and twenties.
Kit’s dad had been a skip; she’d never known him and had never needed him, because by the time she’d been born her ma had already started a brothel on the ship she’d been living on. Ma’d put Kit through business school, and Kit advanced her and her mother into their own ship and business.
Ma died just after finishing with a client in Playpen Seven. She’d passed away doing what she’d loved, pleasing a human woman on one of their military ships. Ma had adored those space rangers, especially Lieutenant Colonel Sylveline Collette. Sylveline had been devastated when Kit told her of her mother’s death.
Kit herself loved males, and spent a lot of time with Felcher, although, not felching, or being felched. That wasn’t Kit’s style. Felcher wasn’t human, but he was close enough. He had comparable parts of the appropriate size, and when he was with Kit, nothing else was on his mind. She didn’t know or care if he was acting when he was with her; he was so convincing. When they orbited certain planets he was in great demand because of his specialty, on others not so much, on most, none at all, and so he filled in with the other operators doing the regular work.