Well, people was a relative term in this case. The Buy-All-Sell-All was home to vendors from many different planets and customers came from all over the galaxy. There was a Triblian to Jillia’s right who had to fold his long, giraffe-like neck on itself in order to fit in the tram. To her left, was a Gougan that only came up to her knees and was covered in long, green hair. Jillian thought this kind of alien looked a little like “Cousin It” from the old Adams Family TV show.
Further down, on the tram just ahead of hers, she saw a Trollox climb aboard. The tram groaned alarmingly under the huge creature’s weight and both of its heads cursed at the people who were scrambling to make way for it.
Jillian winced in sympathy with the scrambling passengers. Though interspecies fighting was disallowed and the rule was strictly enforced by the Master of the Market—an omniscient being who lived in the very center of the Buy-All-Sell-All—she was especially careful to avoid Trolloxes.
“They don’t give a fuck for rules,” Hard, Suzanne’s Dark Twin Kindred husband had warned her. “And they like to steal humanoid women to gestate their young in. The problem is, once the Trollox fetus is mature, it chews its way out of the host mother, killing her in the process.”
Jillian had shivered at the awful thought.
“It’s a damn good thing I’m too old to be attractive to that kind of creature,” she’d remarked.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Hard had remarked, looking at her. “There are plenty of warriors who would like a chance to bond with a mature Elite like yourself, Jillian. In fact, I believe that’s why the bride draft age was changed to include females that were older than the original age limits.”
Jillian had thanked him for the compliment, though she thought the Dark Twin was wrong about any Kindred warriors being attracted to her. She’d dreamed of maybe starting a family with Brad during the brief time they had been married, but now she was really glad she hadn’t. Having a child with that bastard would have been a real nightmare.
And anyway, she was happy on the Mother Ship and pretty much adjusted to the fact that she was never going to do the motherhood thing. She liked her life—cooking and being creative with wild new alien ingredients and getting to go to the huge Buy-All-Sell-All market on a regular basis—which was very safe, as long as she gave the Trollox and his kind a wide berth. Sure, she was lonely sometimes and wished she had a man to hold her, but that just wasn’t in the cards for her, she thought, as she stepped off the tram at its next stop.
Jillian had her usual routine all marked out. Since Pat-ar got its regular supplies in scheduled deliveries, she was only here to get the more exotic things she needed for specialty dishes. First she went to the vegetable and produce side of the market. Here, hundreds of stalls selling fresh alien produce covered at least five city blocks.
Jillian pulled her poison checker out of her tote— it was a hand-held device that looked like a stubby pencil with a light at the end of it. When trying new ingredients, you couldn’t be too careful. A fruit from an alien planet that looked luscious and succulent might be stuffed full of some kind of natural poison which was harmless to the native species where it grew, but deadly for humanoids.
She passed the checker over any ingredient that looked interesting enough to try. If the light was red, she left it strictly alone, not even touching its outer skin. But if the light at the end of her poison scanner turned green, she knew the ingredient was safe to use and she would often get some to try.
On that particular day, she looked through the stalls, buying a few verbeena fungus clusters—basically big purple mushrooms that grew together with their stalks entwined—(they had a beefy flavor that tasted like rare steak,) as well as an oing-oing fruit from Veepnur. It had bright pink skin and dark blue flesh that tasted like a cross between watermelon and lychee with some hot cinnamon notes thrown in. Jillian planned to use it for a simple sorbet to cleanse the palate between courses for the VIP dinner. She got a few more things and then she was ready to go.
After finding what she needed in the produce side of the market, she hopped back on the tram and rode it around to the back of the Buy-All-Sell-All. Normally, she would have stopped at the protein and seafood side as well, but she had all the meat she needed back at the Mother Ship. The only thing she lacked for the VIP dinner with the Nebrian Ambassador, was the famously expensive and hard-to-get thaelite.
The back side of the Buy-All-Sell-All was reserved for exotic ingredients. It was also where the entrance to the Dark Market was located.
Jillian had been to this end of the market before, looking for hard-to-get spices and herbs, so she wasn’t worried about getting into any trouble. As long as she stayed back from the pain threads that cordoned off the area and away from the ominous arching entrance to the forbidden zone, which was covered in a long, black curtain cut into foot-wide flaps, she was just fine.
Exactly what went on in the Dark Market, neither Kind or Hard had ever told her. But Jillian got the idea that there might be some kind of humanoid trafficking or illegal substances being sold. Whatever it was, she wanted no part of it and she was quite content to pass it by—though she did notice the huge, two-headed Trollox she’d seen earlier entering the arched opening. It paused before pushing the long black flaps of the black cloth barrier aside.
For a moment, one of the creature’s heads turned and looked directly at her, its yellow eyes narrowing as it scanned her body. Jillian shivered and looked away hurriedly. The Trollox was ten or twelve feet tall and it had grayish-green skin and long yellow tusks sticking out of its drooling mouths. It looked like a cross between an ogre and one of those weird pig-men guards in the Star Wars movies, she thought.
Resolutely putting the giant Trollox out of her mind, she started looking for a stall that sold thaelite. But every proprietor she asked shook their heads.
“Sssoory. Too rich for my blood,” hissed a Saurian, his long, alligator tail swaying gently in negation. “But you might try the Yonnite Missstresss at the end of thiss row of stallss. She often has rare and expensssive ingredientss for ssale.”
Jillian thanked him, making sure to stay well clear of his long, snapping jaws, and made her way to the end of the row. There, she found a rather gaudy-looking shop hung with golden cloth and decorated with rare venga healing crystals in all the colors of the rainbow.
The crystals caught the weak sunlight of Prius Six and spread rainbows over the smooth golden brocade, which covered the front countertop. It looked more like a place that you might find incense and balms and salves with dubious medical properties than actual, usable ingredients to Jillian. But she thought she might as well ask if they sold thaelite, since she was having no luck at any of the other stalls.
There was a tiny silver bell attached to a long rope hanging from the top of the stall’s sunshade. Jillian rang it and waited until the gold brocade curtains at the front of the stall rustled and the Mistress of the stall came out.
Even in a world full of aliens, her appearance took Jillian aback. She was wearing meter-tall heels and a dress that clearly showed her full, bare breasts, which were pierced with large gold hoops and covered only by a thin, transparent piece of silk.
Well, maybe this is how they dress on Yonnie Six, Jillian had thought to herself. She’d heard a little about the female-dominated planet which was run by cruel Mistresses who believed men were only worthy of being servants and bodyslaves, but she’d never met anyone from there before.