Business, Not Quite as Usual

Posted on Sat 23rd Mar, 2019 @ 12:14pm by

855 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: A Diplomatic Affair
Location: Deck 635, Scent of Love
Timeline: MD 3, closing time

"Thank you for your business," Herodia smiled, handing a mixed-flower bouquet, wrapped and tied with a yellow bow, to the short, attractive customer. "I hope you enjoy the scent of the flowers in your home."

The big-eyed woman returned the smile, but simply replied, "I'm sure I shall," before turning away.

Herodia watched her walk out of the shop, then checked for any remaining customers. Finding none, she used the remote locking device to secure the front door and turn down the lights. It took only moments for her practiced hands to clear away the check-out counter, and lock down the computer so she could help her mother in the back.

Flavia looked up as her oldest child came through the door into the workroom. There were times when it shocked her that she could have a daughter who was well into young womanhood. It seemed as if she, herself, had barely grown up enough to be a wife and mother, and now her first child was almost there. Hopefully, Herodia would take her time completing the journey.

"Everything closed down?" she asked, returning to her task of culling the red orchids and roses in the water-filled container in front of her. She added two drops from a bottle of liquid and walked over to the cooler to return the bucket of flowers. "Why don't you take the yellow buckets? I'm almost finished in this cooler."

"Sure," the girl answered, opening the door and pulling out a lovely loose collection of daisies, roses, lilium and Dutch Hyacinths. "Ms Lantz was in today, wasn't she?"

Her mother looked up from the blue bucket she had just set on the work counter. "She was. It was a day early, so how did you know?"

"No yellow orchids," Herodia laughed. Her mother nodded, half-smiling and began to cull the blooms.

"There was another one of those people with the really big eyes, just as I was closing," the girl said.

"Really?" Flavia glanced up. "A lot of them have been coming in the last couple of weeks. They do like flowers!"

"They do," Herodia agreed. "But who are they, Mom? I've never seen anyone with eyes so large. What do you know about them? Spill it, lady!" she teased her mother, who seemed to know everything about everyone. It was a puzzle her daughter was still trying to figure out.

"There's not a lot of information, but I did talk to one of them when they first started showing up. They're from a high-gravity world. Remember when we talked about Jovian planets? Something like that, which I guess accounts for the size of their eyes - either natural or artificial genetic mutation for better vision. What I find fascinating is the rainbow colors of their hair. They hardly seem realistic, but for the Besm, they are natural."

"Besm? Is that what they're called? Are they from around here, I mean this quadrant of space?" Herodia asked.

Flavia stopped what she was doing to look at her daughter, struck again by how pretty she was, and had always been. "I didn't think to ask, but there's probably something in the database. That can be your assignment for tomorrow morning, to find out everything you can about their world, their culture. I haven't had time to look, so you'll satisfy both our curiosities."

With a slight groan, her daughter agreed. "I'll do it right after breakfast, but did you learn anything else? What are they doing here?"

"Colonizing," the florist said. "Their ... I think she called it Council of Geneticists? Anyway, someone on their home world decided that they needed to spread out their population. Not have all their eggs in one basket, sort of. These days, that makes sense. The Besm we've seen are the first comers. I understand they've been given a deck and they are making it habitable for their people. I don't know how they'll imitate the heavy gravity, though."

"Won't that be bad for them," Herodia frowned. "Don't they need the same gravity to stay in good physical condition?

"Great question. You can see what you can find out about that, while you're looking." Flavia wasn't going to tell her daughter everything, but that had been a question she'd asked her customer, too. The starbase had all kinds of species living in proximity to one another, some happier in their environment than others, she was sure. It would be interesting to see how successful the solution the Besm engineers had designed would be.

"I've rather liked the ones I've met," she told her daughter. "I haven't seen any children yet, so that will be interesting and tell me a lot about what kind of people they are. They are attractive, even with the differences in what we think of as the human form."

"Earth prime form," Herodia nodded. "It's one of the great things about living on the base, seeing so many variations on that."

"That's my girl," Flavia smiled, returning to the job at hand. "Remember always that different doesn't mean better or worse."

"It just means interesting," the girl chimed in.

 

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