Market Value

      “Oh-ho, a customer!” shouts the diminutive figure crouched behind the counter. My implanted translator device has no trouble conveying the eagerness in its voice. “I have just the thing for you, dear sapient!”

           I eye the little being askance. It’s about three feet tall, most of that a long neck balancing an egg-shaped head with pinched features and tufts of white hair. I sincerely doubt it has anything I want, but I know its greeting is all part of an act.

           The bustles toward the back of its stall, beckoning me to come closer. “See here.” It gestures at the rear wall, upon which hang a wide variety of objects, most of which I can’t even imagine the function or purpose. “I have everything here,” it pronounces. “A Kmeri dueling dagger, slightly used, adds character. Or a Toch good luck pendant, guaranteed to change your fortunes for the better.” When I don’t immediately respond, it shakes its head. “Or, for the truly discerning customer, why not combine ornament and function? How about an Iskozani poison ring? Fashionable, deadly, and I can size it to fit any appendage or bodily member.”

Then it spots the case I’m carrying, taking in the titanium exterior, environmental control system, and biometric security lock. “Or perhaps you are selling? I offer excellent prices, even above market value for the right item.” It grins up at me, practically trembling in its zeal to make a deal. “So, what’ll it be, dear sapient?”

           “Directions,” I say. “I’m looking for Bodal Nuck. He has a shop around here.”

           The shopkeeper’s face falls, its mouth twisting in a grimace of frustration. But only for a second. “Ah, I see,” it says, switching tracks with the agility of a Nimbar cloud-dancer. “In that case, I have maps and directories, perfect for finding your way around this magnificent establishment.” He gestures to the doorway of his shop, and what lies beyond. “Now that’s something every newcomer needs.”

           “Just tell me where I can find him.” Reaching into a pocket of my coat, I produce a handful of coins, the metal shimmering in an iridescent array of colors.

           The glimmer reflects in the merchant’s beady eyes. “Take a left out the door. Three quadrants straight ahead, then two hard rights and you’re there.”

           “Pleasure doing business with you.” I drop the coins onto the counter; they barely make a clink against the scuffed surface before the merchant whisks them out of sight.

           “Likewise, dear sapient.”

           Outside the small shop, I pause for a moment, adjusting to the roiling chaos that now surrounds me.

           They call this place the Grand Strange, a gathering place for people from a thousand different planets, a trading and supply post servicing ships from every corner of the galaxy, an immense, raucous swap meet with few laws and one governing rule: be willing to deal. It couldn’t be more different than the world I once knew, the one I went to sleep in so long ago.

           I start off, following the given directions. Around me, various beings stride the narrow lanes between shops, stalls, and kiosks, all of them going about their own business. I sidestep around a hulking Bethaor, looking like a mound of gray clay shrouded in tentlike robes of Akuvian silk, only to have to come to a quick halt to avoid treading on a flock of small, bird-like Tropi, who chirp up at me in annoyance before scurrying off and vanishing into the crowd. Overhead, various non-terrestrial beings swoop and flutter through the artificial atmosphere, casting shadows across the crowd in the light emanating from the miniature sun that powers this place.

           No one I’ve spoken to could tell me much about the origins of the Grand Strange. It’s built into the hollowed remnant of an old deep-space station, a vast sphere, constantly revolving to provide some measure of gravity. An amazingly diverse collection of buildings, most of them of the impermanent variety, cling to the inner surface of the station, trailing away across the gentle curve until they run together into a vague blur of color. The station is huge, by any metric of measurement, with every bit of it devoted to the buying and selling of every commodity imaginable.

           In all of that, however, I’m interested in only one thing.

           All around me, merchants of every species and every description hawk their wares, their bellowed shouts mingling into a sort of white noise. The goods their selling also cover the spectrum, from the mundane to the amazing, filling my sight with colors and shapes, perfuming the air with scents that I can’t name. It’s like a kaleidoscope of sensations, and trying to take it all in is to invite a sensory overload bordering on madness.

           I focus on what’s right around me, following the directions I was given. Even so, it’s almost as overwhelming as the moment I awoke from cryo-sleep. None of the doctors could tell me how long I’d been under, and I can’t remember exactly when or even why I went to sleep in the first place. I only know that the galaxy I awoke to is vastly different than the one I knew, and even after finding a place for myself in it, I couldn’t stop looking for a way to recapture just a little bit of my old existence. When I heard a rumor of something that could do that, I bent all my efforts towards finding it. And that led me here.

           A looming, paunchy, pale being with three arms spots me from an open-air shop. “You! Yes, you, sir! Have you been going through life with a Kalxian Organic Tissue Disruptor?” It brandishes something that looks like some sort of invasive medical device. “Why, you don’t know what you’ve been missing! This fine implement will solve all your vendetta problems with a flick of a switch. Perhaps a demonstration?” It eyes the surrounding crowd, as if looking for a suitable target.

           “No, thank you,” I say, continuing on.

           “Starships for sale!” A small, rotund creature flutters up to me, its tiny wings a moving blur. “The best in the sector! Transports! Shuttles! Warships! You want it, I got it! Financing available!”

           “No, thank you,” I say, waving the salesman out of my face.

           Three quadrants later, at the last corner, a very strange thing sits—or stands…or maybe hangs? It’s a spindly form, all long, tentacle-like appendages, with two or three bulbous…things…that might be its torso or something. I can’t make out anything that seems like eyes or a mouth. The way it’s just sitting there, either leaning on a tall pole or hanging from it, I can’t tell whether it’s a living being, some sort of weird trophy, or someone’s dinner. When it shifts in place, one limb lifting to undulate toward me, I start in surprise.

           “Hey there, handsome.” Its voice is a burbling ripple in the air, but my translator conveys its meaning all-too-clearly. “Lookin’ for a good time?”

           I take a step back before I can help myself. “No, thank you…Miss?” I hurry on my way, my face burning.

           “Maybe later, sweety,” the being calls after me. “My, my, it’s a treat just to watch you walk away.”

           I can’t help but smile. I’ve spent most of the forty years since I awoke serving as a negotiator and merchant, learning enough to become a veteran of interspecies diplomacy and trade, but in the Grand Strange, the hits come fast and hard. It’s amazing, it’s wonderful, and it’s too much for me.

           Fortunately, my goal is now in sight. No signs hang outside the business I’ve been seeking, nothing to announce the presence of one of the most notorious interstellar smugglers and dealers in contraband. Just a simple doorway, nestled at the end of a short alleyway, sandwiched between a shop with a titanic combat robot looming through its open roof and an abandoned eatery that—judging by the claw marks and old bloodstains—looks as if its food stock made a successful break for freedom.

           I duck through the doorway, to find that the inside of the shop is as small and dark as it looked from the outside. There’s nothing in the way of decoration, or even furnishings, just bare metal walls, floor, and ceiling. But across from the opening rests what I can only call a magnificent shell, a coiling spiral of glistening pearlescence, like a nautilus. Or a snail. Fitted to the shell are a series of mechanical armatures, robotic limbs that clutch a variety of apparatuses.

           “Hello, Nuck,” I say.

           There’s a loud slurping noise, like someone emptying a tube of protein paste in one go, and a slimy form exudes itself from the open end of the shell. It slides out onto the floor, a mucus-coated creature nearly two meters in length, one end distinguishable from the other only because of the fleshy stalks that protrude both above and below the narrow slit of a combination nose/mouth orifice.

“I was wondering when you’d show up,” the being says in a wet wheeze.

“Let’s just say you live in an interesting neighborhood,” I say, eyeing the sloppy form before me. “You’re looking well, old friend.”

“Why, thank you. You’re looking…well, disgusting, but I know you can’t help being—what is it?—oh, human.”

“The universe takes all kinds.” Under normal circumstances, I could banter like this for hours, but with what I’m here for, I’m eager to complete the transaction. “So, Nuck, you have what I asked for.”

“I do,” Nuck replies. “So long as you have what I asked for.”

“Never fear, my friend.” Setting down the case I carry, I reach into my coat and extract a datacard, which I extend to Nuck with gravity fitting the situation.

One of the armatures on its shell reaches out, plucks the card from my grasp, and feeds it into a reading device, connected to Nuck’s shell by multi-colored leads. I don’t know exactly how a being without eyes perceives the data, but I’ve stopped wondering about such things.

“Oh, my.” Nuck breathes out the words. “You have delivered, my friend.”

“Don’t I always?” I respond with a smug grin. “As requested, the deed and official title to one planet. Located in a stellar life-zone, atmosphere within your specified tolerances, resource-rich, no indigenous sapient species. All yours.”

“Hah hah!” Nuck shouts triumphantly. “Just the place to settle my shell and retire. And all seventeen of my mothers always said I’d never amount to anything. If she wasn’t so far along in the digestive process, I’d regurgitate the last one just to tell her how wrong she was.”

I wince at the image this conjures. “Right. Now, to the last bit of our business…”

“Of course, of course.” Several of Nuck’s mechanical appendages dip behind his shell and come back into view carrying a crate of gleaming metal, sealed and locked, bearing an amazing number of customs seals and shipping labels, in standard print, tactile text, and even scent marking. Clearly, this box has been all over the galaxy.

The armatures lay the box at my feet, and for a moment I can’t move. This is it. What I’ve waited so long to find. I’m almost afraid to open it, to see if its contents are genuine.

“Everything all right?” Nuck says, breaking my paralysis.

“Yes,” I say. “You’ll understand if I need to verify the contents?”

“Naturally,” Nuck says, all magnanimousness.

I pick up the case I’ve been carrying all over the place. Decrypting its locks, I open it, folding it out to reveal a complicated materials analysis setup. Legs extend to form a table, the surface of which features a variety of control systems and displays. Three other items comes from the case: a hermetically-sealed, temperature-controlled decanter; an urn of old, battered metal, with a dented handle and a spigot, a plunger sticking out of the top; and a small porcelain cup, a little chip missing from the lip, its exterior worn to a shiny patina. The urn and cup look to once have been ornately decorated, but time and use have turned them into objects that might have been salvaged from a scrap heap.

With a flick of a switch, I activate a sterile isolation field around the table. Instantly, the air is cleared of all particulate, rendering it void of foreign microbes and bacteria, and the peculiar, spicy musk that Nuck gives off. Adjusting a few of the controls, I alter the ambient humidity, and introduce a number of strange, exotic elements to the local atmosphere. The air becomes freighted with a cloying, damp warmth, laden with the scents of odd flowers and trees, with stagnant water and algae. It’s the best I can do to recreate the conditions I remember, and it almost takes me back, but there’s still something missing.

Preparations complete, I pick up the box. The lock is a simple number-based combination, set to a certain year. I enter it, pressing the final number with a trembling finger, and with a low click and a loud hiss of equalizing pressure, the container’s lid flips open.

Inside, visible through the wisps of evaporating refrigerant, six cylindrical containers sit nestled in formed packing foam. My hands shake as I pull one free of the clinging material, and my breath catches in my throat.

It’s exactly as I remember, about fourteen centimeters in height, six in diameter. The dominant color is red, but a blue-bordered label of white letters stands out in contrast. The language of the writing is an ancient one; I don’t know if there are ten people in the galaxy who can still read it, but I’m one of them.

“Well?” Nuck’s voice intrudes on my contemplation of the item.

“It…it appears to be the genuine article,” I say. “But to be sure…I have to test it.”

“Right now?” Nuck asks, amazed. “Do you have any idea how valuable that stuff is?”

“Oh, I do,” I say, my voice a whisper.

I set the container down on the table, grip the white lid that tops it, and gently pry it away. To my immense relief, I find that the container is still sealed, a layer of metal lying beneath the lid. Again, with great care, I take a cutting laser and ease its beam, on the lowest setting, around the edge of the can.

The moment the seal is broken, an aroma rises up, one so fragrant and heady that I sway on my feet. The rich, earthy scent is one of a forgotten delicacy, the seeds of a plant that hasn’t grown anywhere in the cosmos for over a thousand years. I stare down at the contents, an even layer of packed granules, dark brown in color.

“Coffee.” I breath out the word, as if it’s the name of a god. I take up a measuring implement, and gently tease a small amount of the substance onto it. “Dark French roast with chicory, the finest example of a beverage ever devised by sapient beings.”

“Eh?” Nuck grunts curiously, stretching out his head toward the barrier of the isolation field.

I hold up hand to forestall him. “Give me a few moments, please.” I measure a precise quantity of the precious coffee grounds into the battered urn, then open the sealed decanter and pour in an equally exact amount of liquid, water, heated right to the boiling point. As the water touches the grounds, the amazing aroma spikes, becoming stronger, more pungent.

I screw the top of the urn back on, and wait, barely daring to breathe, as four minutes pass, with excruciating slowness.

Then, the time expired, I ever so gently depress the plunger handle, moving a screen of mesh down the interior of the vessel, forcing the grounds to the bottom. Then, my hands trembling, I pour out the remaining liquid suspension into the chipped cup. Steam swirls above the mug as I lean close, inhaling the wondrous scent.

Finally, I lift the cup, close my eyes, and take a sip.

It’s…amazing. The flavor that washes over my tongue is more like a time machine than a simple beverage. Suddenly, I’m sitting in a small kitchen, at a table covered in a checkered red and white cloth, reading a newspaper. A gentle breeze wafts into the roof past flower-patterned curtains, carrying the smells of the Bayou to mingle with the scent of beignets frying on the stove. A figure is silhouetted in the light from the window; she turns toward me, and I can just make out her smile against the glow, as I meet her gaze over the rim of my cup…  

“Well?” Nuck’s voice shatters the memory. “Satisfied?’

I give a soft snort. “You have no idea.” Setting down the now empty cup, I deactivate the isolation field, fold the table back into its case, and replace the items in it.

Even without eyes, Nuck watches me carefully. “Is it worth what you paid?”

I pause to look at him. One planet, versus the return, however fleeting, of everything I lost? “Absolutely.”

“If you say so.” Nuck doesn’t sound convinced, even as I replace the coffee in its crate and close it up again. “Still doesn’t seem like much to me.”

A smile plays about my lips. “It’s enough, Nuck.” I pick up the case and turn to leave. “I paid you with a future, my friend, a place where you can grow old and die. But this,” I caress the shipping container, “this takes me back to a past I’d thought I’d never experience again. It takes me home, Nuck, to where I belong. And you simply can’t put a market value on that.”