“Port of Call”

[Col. C.E. Harper 0]

“Port of Call”

Harper Log 01.10.07

August 2, 2397

Perseus Arm, Ieu’ani Market

 

Harper was on ‘working leave.’ She had beamed down with a small team to meet with some the local officials and negotiate a trade agreement. Seeing as she didn’t really expect to get any other time planetside, she’d opted for a beam-point a ways from the main Bargaining Hall in order to walk through the market. It seemed the colorful imaginings were accurate after all, except that the place was a good deal cleaner than one would expect with this many animals about.

 

One of the animals in question dropped out of a tree, gliding in front of her so close her eyes crossed trying to track it. The thing looked a bit like a Terran flying squirrel rolled on an artist’s palette; it was as brightly colored as any tropical bird. There were other about, sharing no color pattern she could detect, gliding from branch to branch in the trees that lined the streets and filled the courtyards, darting between shoppers’ feet to scamper back up the trunks, swooping down on any bit of discarded food that touched the street. They seemed to have no shyness of people; quite the opposite. Harper watched one brazen creature with blue and crimson fur nip in to steal a piece of fruit from a bowl sitting on a fountain rim. The shopper sitting beside the bowl, talking energetically to another patron that was a good two and a half meters tall and hairy, noticed too late to protect his snack. He retrieved the bowl, shaking his fist with good-natured wrath at the fuzzy thief, which chittered back from the safety of its tree.

 

The crowds filling the streets seemed almost universally good-humored, haggling spiritedly over prices but ending in laughter and smiles when the goods were exchanged. The mix of races was as varied as any Federation port, from the native Ieu’ani in their richly colored, fluttering silk draperies and glittering jewelry, to the tall hairy sort by the fountain, to something that resembled nothing so much as a lobster walking on its back legs while being swallowed by a squid. Accustomed to exotic species as she was, Harper still had a difficult time tearing her eyes off that one. The rest of the population might look less strange, but no less diverse. She even thought she’d caught a glimpse of the avian Umbari down a side street. The various patrons seemed to get along, for the most part, though there were some hard-edged looks that might have meant grudges, and once there had been a tense moment when a reptilian creature had stepped out of a spice-seller’s stall directly into the path of a lamia-like snake woman. Fangs, claws, and blades of various sorts were suddenly in evidence, and the pedestrians nearby all drew back a little, until both antagonists turned sharply, pointedly ignoring one another.

 

Fortunately for the Agincourt, replicator technology seemed unknown here. That meant their trade goods would be limited only by their energy supply and the Ieu’ani’s interests. Harper had worked out an arrangement with the Bargainers – apparently the best approximation of a planetary government these people had – allowing Agincourt crew to spend trade-tokens in the shops, which would be redeemed by the shopkeepers at the Bargaining Hall, and the total sum ‘billed’ to Agincourt as a list of requested trade goods. On the whole, she much preferred Starfleet supply requisitions.

 

At least they now had a neutral port of call. If they got into another tangle, they could probably return here, provided they didn’t bring trouble with them. The Ieu’ani must have had either one heck of a well-armed military hidden somewhere, or a mountain of promissory notes from all of the local races; no one seemed inclined to mess with this market thing they were running, ripe target for piracy though it seemed to be. That could be to Agincourt’s benefit. And maybe they could trade for some less physical commodities as well… Information, too, had its price.