Tress didn't like that woman, and she was sure she would never go back to that shop, even though she liked the cream and pale green scarf and thought it would be a nice present for her mother's next birthday. She had an allowance, and she got extra spending points when she made good grades. She would just have to buy something else, something better. Somewhere else.
"Describe
the woman?" E'bett said, after Tress and Dafna reported the encounter when
all of them had met up again.
The
five of them were in a lift, going up to another level to explore the
arboretum. Fleet botanists were running a long-term experiment, seeing how well
plants from different eco-systems and solar systems shared the same soil and
air, and to see if merging different flora and fauna would make the plants and
animals stronger, or cause a negative reaction.
Tress
and Dafna took turns and corrected each other a few times. The woman looked old
because of all the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, and the creaky tone of
her voice. She was thin and her hair was fuzzy and a weak shade of copper. Her
nose was long, with a hook to the side, not downward. Her voice had a buzz that
made her words sound like they had just been cut out of a sheet of rusty alloy.
E'bett smiled and visibly kept from laughing, when Tress gave that description.
Well, she had heard her father use that description, and it certainly fit the
woman, didn't it?
Her clothes looked like they were all made out of leather, dyed dark purple and black and dirty amber, and she wore a long, sleeveless vest over everything with pockets down each side, nearly to the floor. E'bett nodded when Dafna described the clothes.
"Ah, that explains much. That woman is an O'goali. The Alliance contacted their world about ten Standard years ago. They have been very reluctant to make contact with the rest of the universe. At the same time, they constantly complain about all the rules established for when we make contact with another Human world, to avoid contamination and damage to their culture. They don't want much to do with other worlds, yet at the same time they didn't like how slow the Alliance was to make contact and let them know other Human worlds were out there."
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