Chapter 92: Camila’s Stand

"Umph!"

Twenty meters deeper into the Grand Bazaar, in a wide vaulted stone alcove that smelled of damp rock and crushed sulfur, Camila set up her stall.

She spread a clean dark blue linen cloth over an empty stone shipping crate, with Aoi standing guard beside her, arms folded and glasses gleaming then, one at a time, Camila unpacked the four moss-lined crates they’d hauled from the garden.

The moment the airtight lids came off, the stale metallic sulfur-choked air of the cavern was wiped away.

A rich impossible aroma rolled outward in a wide sweet wave... It was the smell of sun-warmed soil and rainwater and crisp morning air, sharpened by the mouth-watering bite of vine-ripened tomatoes and green peppers.

Fifty kilograms of fat golden potatoes went onto the cloth, then twenty of sweet green peppers and baskets of tender beans.

In the very center, in woven baskets, sat thirty kilograms of glistening deep-crimson tomatoes with skins so full they looked ready to burst.

Camila smoothed her leather apron over her green skirt with nervous hands and looked out at the crowded avenue.

"Leo..." she whispered, her voice trembling with sudden stage fright. "Do you really think anyone will want them? They look so different from all the glowing mushrooms and algae cakes the other stalls are selling..."

"Give it three seconds, Camila," Leo said, leaning his shoulder against the rough stone pillar beside her stall. "Trust me..."

He was right.

In a mining station that had survived on rehydrated protein cubes for six generations, the scent of real soil-grown food went off like a bomb.

It started with a passing miner, a squat six-eyed crustacean in mottled orange plating with an empty ore sack over its shoulder.

Its long feathery antennae went suddenly stiff and swung toward Camila’s stall, twitching wildly... It stopped dead, turned its armored head and took one slow, dazed step toward the cloth.

"...What... is that scent?" it rasped, its translator collar crackling with awe as its mandibles clicked in rapid succession. "It smells like rain... Like water falling from a sky onto living dirt..."

’I hadn’t thought about it that much but apparently English is a universal language...?’ Leo thought, did that mean that Aliens had English teachers as well? ’Not all of them, some are using translators I think but it’s still a discovery.’

Camila swallowed her nerves and gave it a sweet trembling smile.

She took a clean paring knife, sliced one fat red tomato into eight perfect wedges and set a single glistening slice on a wooden tray, holding it out across the cloth.

"It’s a tomato," she said softly, with tender pride. "From Earth... It’s not toxic at all, it’s full of sweet water and vitamins and minerals. Please... try a piece."

The miner hesitated, its six black eyes moving suspiciously over the red flesh then it reached out with a three-pronged claw, picked up the wedge and slid it past its clicking mandibles.

CRUNCH!

A burst of sweet and slightly acidic juice flooded its mouth as the crustacean went completely rigid.

Its antennae shot straight up and vibrated at a furious pitch.

All six eyes dilated into huge black spheres, and a loud shuddering hiss of pure ecstasy tore out of its respiratory vents.

"BY THE SACRED DEEP WATERS!" it shrieked, slamming both heavy claws onto the stone counter and nearly toppling the scales. "THE TEXTURE! IT IS NOT POWDER! IT IS NOT RECYCLED CELLULOSE! IT IS SWEET LIVING WATER IN SOLID FLESH! HOW MUCH?! HOW MUCH FOR THE BASKET?!"

The shriek echoed down the entire avenue.

Within forty seconds, a chaotic clamoring line of more than fifty miners, prospectors and station residents had formed in front of Camila’s little stall.

...Vorn, insectoid technicians and sleek blue-skinned merchants shoved their way forward waving fistfuls of brass Guild tokens, desperate for even a single slice.

Camila’s stage fright vanished as if it had never existed.

She weighed potatoes and bagged peppers and tucked precious tomatoes into small woven pouches, her bronze hands moving with swift graceful efficiency and her face shining.

"One tomato per customer, please!" she called out, flushed bright rose with excitement. "There are plenty of potatoes and beans for everyone! Please don’t push...!"

In the middle of the frenzy, a tall elegantly dressed alien pushed his way to the front of the line.

He was slender and multi-jointed, with smooth pale lilac skin and four long fingers, and his high-collared velvet robe bore the gold insignia of the most expensive restaurant on the station, the Astral Hearth.

He leaned over the counter with his four nostrils flaring as he breathed in the remaining tomatoes, and his eyes burned with professional desperation.

"Young female!" he gasped, slamming a heavy velvet coin pouch down on the cloth with a loud clatter. "I am Chef Vond of the Astral Hearth! I will buy every vegetable left on your cloth at double your price and I will pay you ten thousand Zuni, right now, for a single pouch of the seeds that grew these miraculous spheres! Ten thousand! Immediate transfer...!"

The crowd around the stall went deathly quiet.

Elena’s eyes widened slightly.

Harper let out a low whistle, and Aoi took half a step closer with her brows drawn together.

Ten thousand Zuni would solve everything at once... It would push them past the landing fee with thousands to spare.

Camila looked at the heavy velvet pouch sitting on her linen cloth as she looked up at the desperate pleading lilac face of the chef then she looked down at the small embroidered canvas pouch tucked into the breast pocket of her apron.

Inside it were the seeds from the galley.

She could still see Leo standing at the counter in that cold kitchen, slicing a tomato straight through the middle and scooping the pale seeds onto a paper napkin with the tip of his knife, then cutting open a green bell pepper and showing her the crust of seeds around its core. Back then none of them had known whether they’d live through the week.

She’d carried that napkin down the corridor pressed against her heart, and she’d held onto the seeds she hadn’t planted ever since, sewn into this little pouch, counted every night before she slept.

...They were the last living pieces of a planet that no longer existed, and every plant in the garden had come from them.

Camila’s face didn’t change at all.

She picked up the velvet pouch and gently pushed it back across the counter into the chef’s slender hands.

"No," she said softly, with a gentle firmness that left no room at all. "I’m sorry, Chef Vond... You can buy the fruit to feed your guests, and you can buy the potatoes to make your miners strong but the seeds stay with me... They belong to my home, and they belong to my ship."

The chef stared at her.

His lilac shoulders sagged in deep disappointment, but whatever he saw in her hazel eyes made him let out a long sorrowful sigh and bow his head.

"A true grower guards her lineage," he murmured, with respect. "Then I will take forty kilograms of your tubers, all of your remaining red spheres and every bean you have. Two thousand four hundred Zuni for the lot..."

"Sold!" Camila beamed, and her smile was so warm that everyone standing near the stall seemed to relax at once.

Behind the counter, Harper let out a long breath and sighed.

"Ten grand... She just turned down ten grand like it was a stale cookie."

"Did you expect anything else?" Aoi said quietly, and there was a note of real respect in it.

Harper looked at Camila, bagging potatoes with her cheeks pink and her eyes shining, and slowly shook her head.

"Nah," she admitted. "Not from her..."

While Camila and Jin-Ah packed the last of the potatoes and stacked the fresh tokens into the lockbox, Leo stayed leaning against the basalt pillar, watching the crowd with a relaxed and satisfied smirk.

A soft rustle of silk drifted up beside him, carrying a sharp heady fragrance of night-blooming orchids and sweet fermented spice.

He turned his head.

Barely thirty centimeters from his shoulder stood a merchant striking enough to stop traffic.

She was one of a feline-humanoid species, tall and extraordinarily slender, with smooth dusky lavender skin and a long graceful tail tipped with a tuft of silver fur that swayed in slow hypnotic arcs behind her ankles.

Her face had high sculpted cheekbones and a small upturned nose, and her large almond eyes were pure molten gold with narrow vertical pupils.

She wore a daring translucent tunic of shimmering silver silk that clung to the generous curves of her hips and chest and split high along both thighs.

The alien leaned against the pillar right beside him with her bare lavender elbow resting on the rock, tilting her head so her wild silver mane tumbled over one shoulder.

Her golden eyes traveled slowly down his chest, lingering with open appreciation on the line of his shoulders, the dark hair at his collar and the glowing stone resting against his shirt.

"Well, well..." she purred, her voice a low vibrating rumble like warm cream poured over hot silk. "What a magnificent exotic specimen wandering the dust of Driftmark. Broad shoulders, long dark hair and eyes like deep unmined obsidian..."

She lifted a single slender lavender finger and traced a slow tantalizing circle in the air a centimeter from his collar with one polished black claw.

"Tell me, handsome traveler..." she whispered, her golden eyes flashing with wicked invitation while her tail brushed lightly against the back of his boot. "Does a wild captain like you need a guide to the private suites of the upper ring? I keep a lounge where the gravity is soft and the wine is chilled... and the accommodations are very accommodating for a man with your stamina."

Leo blinked, completely caught off guard and a bright red flush climbed straight up his neck as he cleared his throat.

"Uh... well, I’m actually a little busy with my crew right now, miss..."

The temperature around the pillar dropped fifty degrees.

Harper took one heavy aggressive step forward with her bare arms crossed tight over her chest and planted herself squarely between Leo and the lavender merchant with her grey-blue eyes narrowed into murderous daggers.

"Back off, cat-lady," she snapped. "His stamina belongs to the ship’s maintenance schedule, and he doesn’t need a guide to find an overpriced litter box..."

At the produce counter, Elena slowly lowered her ledger slate.

Her eyes traveled over the translucent silk, and her lips curled with profound aristocratic disgust as she glided to Leo’s other side with her chin at its most devastating angle.

"How delightfully crude," she drawled, smooth and lethal as poisoned wine. "A frontier courtesan soliciting in the middle of a vegetable market... Tell me, creature, does your species always conduct business dressed in a discarded shower curtain, or is the immodesty an occupational requirement?"

Aoi stepped forward last and said nothing at all.

She stood perfectly still with one hand resting lightly on the butt of her sidearm, and the lantern light caught her glasses in two blank glaring squares as she stared at the silver-tipped tail with cold, terrifying focus.

The feline merchant’s golden eyes flicked between the three of them, and her tail curled in amused delight as she let out a soft throaty purr.

"My, my... what a territorial little pride of kittens you keep, Captain. A man who commands that kind of protection must be truly exceptional behind closed hatches."

"Alright, that’s enough," Leo said, still a little pink, and gently nudged Harper back half a step before giving the merchant a polite firm shake of his head. "We’re not interested... Have a good cycle."

She gave him a slow wicked wink, ran her tongue over one sharp fang and sauntered off into the crowd with a fluid hypnotic sway of her hips.

Harper glared at her back until she vanished around a corner.

"Disgusting. Did you see that tail?! Completely unhygienic!"

"Her attire was an insult to public decency," Elena muttered, smoothing her lapels with an aggressive snap.

Leo rubbed his forehead.

"...I’m standing right here, you know."

Through all of it, Chloe hadn’t turned her head once toward the cat-woman.

She stood three paces behind Camila’s stall with her boots rooted to the stone and her hands hidden in her sleeves.

Her bangs threw a deep shadow over her face, and beneath them her green eyes moved with tiny precision along the edge of the crowd.

...Sour milk.

She’d caught that smell again five minutes ago, drifting out of the narrow alley between two scrap-metal stalls, and it had been creeping closer to Camila’s back ever since.

It was the hooded thing from the concourse, hunched low in the alley mouth.

Its patchy grey fur showed under its filthy tunic, its naked snout twitched over yellowed incisors, and its long wire-thin fingers ended in hooked claws with a short vibro-blade was strapped to its thigh.

It had watched Camila refuse ten thousand Zuni for the seeds, and Chloe had watched its whiskers go still when she said no...

Now its beady black eyes were locked with ravenous greed on the little embroidered pouch in her apron pocket.

The thief waited.