“And you buy someone a meal to make them your friend? This is not a contract structure I am familiar with. Pfahrn do not require purchasing meals to be friends. The humans on my crew do not require that, either.”
“It’s a pleasantry. A social construct among humans.” The longer I stand here, the more I’m fighting not to lean in and lick them. “If that makes you uncomfortable, though, would you like to go eat somewhere with me?”
They seem to be considering it. “You are obviously born far from here, are you not?”
“Yeah, I guess I am.”
They make a soft noise sort of like an amused sigh. “Do you already have a hotel selected?”
“The one on the twelfth level, main hub. The Borridian.”
“I have never stayed there but I have heard positive things about it. There is a restaurant two units down from it. The Ch-loran. I could meet you there after my shift ends. The food is good, the prices are reasonable, and they have contracts. That should give you ample time to check in to your room and get settled.”
Hope soars within me, even though I think the phrase about contracts might be a translator glitch. “Great! Thank you, Olarte.” After confirming local time, and when they’ll be off their shift, I shake hands with them once more before I head toward the Customs area to get checked out.
No escaping that process. Fortunately, because I never carry anything off a ship which will trigger an alert, I’m through Customs in a matter of minutes and making my way to the public lifts.
It takes me about fifteen minutes to make my way to the hotel and locate their main desk. Nice thing about having my own porta-sled is that I don’t ever have to deal with luggage carts or bellhops. It’s narrow enough to fit through nearly any standard doorway or hatch I encounter. The rare times it hasn’t fit, I just unload it, flip it on its side, move it through, and reload it. That’s only happened to me twice, on two ships I served on early in my career.
The room is nice, with a holo-vid port that simulates having a real viewport. In all honesty, I prefer having the vid over the real. It means I’m not on the outside of the station. I know I travel through space all the time in a ship far smaller than this space station is, but I like that little extra bit of protection.
Were I actually on Pfahrn, damn right I’d be paying extra for a room with a view. If I’m on a planet, I want to be able to stare out a real window at the local landscape.
I haven’t decided if or when I’ll move to the planet’s surface yet. I want a day or two off from the ship’s schedule to decompress.
After setting an alarm on my com unit so I don’t lose track of time, I treat myself to a soak in a tubful of hot water and damn near fall asleep in there. I’m in the restaurant fifteen minutes early, sitting out in its vestibule and eagerly awaiting Olarte’s arrival.
I don’t know why I’m feeling like this about them. It literally isn’t something I’d normally do when faced with an uncertain outcome from someone who apparently is clueless that I was cruising them. It’s even more confusing to me because I’m not having this reaction to other Pfahrn I’m encountering.
Is it because Olarte is the first Pfahrn I met?
I’ll unpack that later.
Because now that they’re walking up to the restaurant, all I want to do is talk with them.
“Hi!” I realize I’m sounding crazy again. “Glad you could make it.”
“This is something different for me to do.”
The Pfahrn greeter hands Olarte a tablet and they read through its contents before signing with their finger.
“Do we have to pay first or something?” I ask as I watch the process. I’m a little confused.
“Non-Pfahrn usually do not require a contract,” the greeter tells me. “Although if you would like, I can offer you a contract.”
As with Olarte, I’m unsure of their gender, so I mentally default to “they.” Like Olarte, they have similarly green skin, the reddish hair, and are taller than me. Although they are shorter than Olarte. And their eyes are closer to brown than the gorgeous golden color of Olarte’s.
“I…don’t need one?” I half-ask, half-comment.
“It is a social construct amongst Pfahrn,” Olarte says. When I look up, I suspect the way their lips are slightly pursed means that they just made a joke, referencing what I’d said earlier about buying them a meal.
I nod despite still having no clue what they’re talking about. “Gotcha.”
Chapter Six
Olarte
No, I am not sure why I agreed to take a meal with Davies. None of my coworkers have ever offered to buy me a meal.
