![]() The bartender didn't flinch or otherwise indicate that she had noticed my bad behavior. A server would only approach when every Rikrik in a nest raised the topmost appendage in unison or when every human in a party did the same. Bypassing the hostess, who would have led me into the human section, I went right up to the serving platform, though Rikrik custom dictated that patrons, both human and Rikrik, be led to an exchange nest and wait for a server to approach. I went to the Lerva Bar, a place that specialized in Rikrik beverages, comestibles, and behavior-cushioning. The Rikrik were about to arrive in masses for Recombo Night. I dressed in my best I'm-not-going-to-be-here-long-enough-to-take-my-consequences tourist garb, and went to my next job. If an administrator wanted to test an employee's capacity to suck up the pain and keep on smiling, hey, enter me. People in the service industries needed to be difficult to irritate. On a station like Confetti, where three different alien-to-each-other races came to celebrate their very varied holidays and religious rites, there was a lot of bumping into each other's sore spots. You would think there wouldn't be much demand for this talent. That wasn't the technical term for it, but that was what I was good at. My special talent was pissing people off. Yes, behind his dignified demeanor, chiseled features, and sharp tongue, Breva Harathla was nothing but a flirt. Establishing a rapport between the sSuryn and humans required unprecedented tact from both sides, but they still managed to express their feelings for each other in buried messages. Breva had never explicitly said that, of course, but Gianna had gathered as much from their conversations over the last decade. ![]() In addition to the literal translation, it was also a colloquialism for the sSuryn's biological equivalent of a female orgasm. Gratitude was the word that snagged Gianna's attention. He expressed his desire to extend gratitude for humanity's generous offer to share their planet with the sSuryn, who'd lost theirs to a fungal blight that decimated their ecosystem. ![]() In less than twenty-four hours, twelve billion people would hear Breva's message-a message of peace, hope, friendship, and excitement over the impending meeting of their two races. A smile curled up at the edges of her mouth as she caught the double entendre that no one on Earth would notice except her. Gianna Nero played the recording back for the fifth time, noting the odd inflections and guttural clicks in Breva's message. ![]() Not the avians, nor the giant blue placard for the restroom designed especially for the spatially challenged.ĭr. Not the generic fish symbol for the aquatics. Not the symbol of the humanoid man, nor the humanoid woman. Curious enough to enter through that doorway, the one with the symbol on the front that you can't quite decipher. You're something of an amateur anthropologist, after all, and a curious one at that. And when an Undulite consumes its still living mate right in front of you, you don't judge. You don't blink an eye when a proboscis appears from a rift in space-time and oozes purple acid onto freshly killed Frall. You see them in the mess hall, slurping up trans-dimensional slugs, gnawing on Yuvvian bark, sipping pink clouds from see-through thermoses, and dining on the finest spiced lava rock this galaxy has to offer. On Vero-Avalon Station, with its hundred and fifteen sapient species, it'd be weirder not to wonder about the alien biology of your cohabitants. Being a little curious doesn't make you a deviant. ![]()
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