Terra #2
“I have records in the system,” he offered.
Terra nodded.
“Good. Show me.”
Taurex moved to the expensive looking laptop in the corner and touched the screen. Several windows appeared.
Terra leaned closer. At least the software looked familiar enough. In fact, it seemed to be the same accounting software she’d been working with in her classes.
She began scrolling…then she stopped.
“Holy shit.”
Taurex looked concerned.
“What? What is it?”
Terra pointed at the screen.
“You have almost eighty-seven thousand dollars in outstanding invoices.”
He frowned.
“Is that unusual?”
“Yes!” Terra exclaimed. She stared at the screen, scrolling down and down. Some of the invoices were more than ninety days old.
“Why hasn't anyone paid these?” she demanded at last, pointing.
Taurex frowned.
“They have all agreed to pay.”
“I can see that,” Terra said.
He frowned.
“Then I do not understand the problem.”
Terra turned to look up at him.
“You never followed up.”
He shook his head, looking confused.
“Followed up?”
“Yes. You know–sent reminders.”
“Why would I remind them?” Taurex asked. “They know they owe me money.”
Terra stared at him for several seconds and Taurex stared back.
Then she started laughing–she couldn't help it. The expression on his face was so genuinely bewildered that the laughter simply came out.
Taurex's ears twitched.
“I fail to understand what is amusing.”
“I'm sorry.” Terra pressed a hand over her mouth. “No, I'm really sorry. It's just…”
She took a breath. “You've been doing business with humans for how long?”
“Three Earth years,” he said stiffly.
“And nobody has explained to you that human companies will sometimes wait as long as possible to pay an invoice unless you remind them?” Terra asked.
His golden eyes narrowed.
“They deliberately withhold money they owe?”
Terra nodded.
“Sometimes. If they think they can get away with it.”
His frown deepened.
“But that is dishonorable!”
Terra shrugged.
“Welcome to Earth.”
Taurex gave a disgusted snort that sounded distinctly bovine.
Terra smiled.
“Okay. First thing we're doing is creating an accounts receivable schedule. Thirty days, reminder. Forty-five days, second reminder. Sixty days, phone call.”
“What happens at ninety days?” Taurex wanted to know.
“At ninety days, we get mean,” Terra told him. She gave him an appraising look. “That shouldn’t be too hard for you. All you need to do is go to their office and look scary.”
Taurex's mouth twitched.
“I believe I can manage that. Humans do tend to find me intimidating for some reason.”
“Maybe because you’re eight feet tall and look like a Greek myth come to life,” Terra murmured.
“A what?” he asked, frowning.
“Never mind. Let’s just see what we can do…”
Terra turned back to the screen and started clicking through the accounts. Within twenty minutes she had found three more problems.
One customer had been charged twice for the same shipment. Another had paid an invoice, but the payment had never been properly credited. A third had received nearly twenty thousand dollars worth of off-world gemstones without a final invoice ever being generated.
Terra stared at the last entry.
“Taurex.”
“Yes?” he rumbled.
“You shipped these people nineteen thousand eight hundred dollars' worth of merchandise.”
“Yes?” he said again.
“Well, you never billed them,” Terra pointed out.
The big Monstrum frowned.
“They know what they owe.”
She slowly turned her head.
“We literally just had this conversation.”
“Yes, but this company has done business with me before,” he protested.
“And?” Terra asked.
“And they have always paid.”
“Because somebody billed them!” she exclaimed. “But this time you didn’t bill them!”
Taurex considered this.
“Oh. It must have slipped my mind,” he said at last.
Terra rubbed both hands over her face and looked back at the screen.
Dear God. He wasn't bad at business–not exactly–that was becoming increasingly clear.
He was actually very good at the parts of business he understood.
Looking through the contracts and shipping records, Terra could see that Intergalactic Imports was bringing in enormous amounts of revenue.
Taurex had trade relationships with suppliers on at least a dozen alien worlds and customers all across the United States and the rest of the Earth.
The goods themselves fascinated her as well as their descriptions.
There were crates of deep blue spice from a planet called Vessara, used by expensive restaurants because apparently a pinch could change flavor depending on temperature.
There were rolls of fabric imported from somewhere called Trellex which adjusted to the wearer's body heat.
There were gemstones that glowed faintly in darkness, medicinal plant extracts, rare hardwoods and several kinds of food Terra had never heard of.
“What is this?” she asked, clicking on a product description.
Taurex came closer and looked over her shoulder.
“Velorian dreamfruit. What about it?”
“What does it do?” Terra asked.
He shrugged.
“It produces mild euphoria when eaten.”
Terra gave him a startled look.
“Wait–you're importing drugs?”
His eyes widened.
“No, of course not. It’s a fruit.”
“A fruit that gets you high?” Terra probed.
He shook his head.
“Only pleasantly relaxed.”
She frowned.
“That doesn’t sound very good.”
“It is legal.” Taurex sounded defensive.
Terra raised her eyebrows.
“You sure about that, big guy?”
He crossed his arms over his chest, his muscles flexing.
“Yes.”
“How sure?” she probed.
The big Monstrum hesitated, and Terra stared at him.
“We are checking. We need to find out for sure before you sell any more of this dream fruit stuff. I promise you, the state of Florida is going to have something to say if you’re selling fruit that gets people high.”
He sighed and spread his hands.
“Very well.”
She opened another folder.
“What about this?”
“Kelvarian silk. One of my most popular imports,” Taurex said.
Terra ran her finger down the description.
“Temperature responsive?”
He nodded.
“Yes. It warms when the wearer is cold and cools when they become overheated.”
“That sounds amazing,” Terra said honestly.
“It is extremely popular with your fashion designers,” he rumbled.
“I bet it is,” Terra murmured.
The more she looked, the more impressed she became.
Taurex had built something real here. This wasn't some eccentric alien's hobby.
Intergalactic Imports was a serious business dealing in goods that humans couldn't get anywhere else.
And despite the chaos in the office, it was profitable–very profitable.
She found the previous year's income statement and nearly choked.
“You made this much?”
Taurex glanced at the number and shrugged.
“Yes. That seems right.”
Terra shook her head.
“And your office looks like this?”
He frowned.
“What does one have to do with the other?”
“Nothing, apparently,” Terra murmured. She took a deep breath. “All right. We're fixing this.”
For the next several hours Terra forgot to be nervous. She forgot about The Doll House and Marty and Orlov. She even forgot, most of the time, that Taurex was the same man she'd been naked on top of only a few nights before.
There was too much work to do to waste time feeling embarrassed.
She made three piles–bills to pay, invoices to collect, and government paperwork.
Then the government pile became four piles because apparently importing goods from other planets involved several different agencies, none of which seemed capable of communicating with each other.
Terra spent the next hour sorting the bewildering mountain of paperwork into categories, and the more she worked, the more she understood why Taurex had looked so harried when he'd opened the door to her that morning.
There were customs forms mixed in with agricultural inspection reports, medical approvals shoved into folders with trade permits, tax documents tucked beneath planetary-origin certifications and entire stacks of papers that seemed to have no logical relationship to one another at all.
Apparently moving merchandise between planets was complicated enough, but once the goods reached Earth, they entered a whole new layer of bureaucracy that Taurex clearly found incomprehensible.
Terra, on the other hand, found herself strangely energized by it. She began making piles, then folders, then carefully labeling each folder in her neat handwriting until the chaos slowly started turning into something that resembled an actual filing system.
Taurex watched her from the other side of the conference table, his golden eyes following her as she shifted papers from one pile to another.
“You understand all of this?” he asked at last.
“Not all of it,” Terra admitted. “But I understand enough to figure out what goes where, and once everything is organized, I can start finding the mistakes.”
“You believe there are mistakes?”
“Oh, I know there are.” She held up one of the forms she'd been studying and pointed to a string of numbers near the bottom. “Take this one. This shipment was classified under the wrong commodity code.”
Taurex frowned.
“The shipment was already inspected.”
“I know it was, but inspection and classification aren't the same thing.” Terra glanced over the form again, doing the math in her head before reaching for the calculator on the table to confirm it.
“Whoever filled this out used a code with a higher import duty attached to it, which means you paid more than you should have.”
His eyes narrowed.
“How much more?”
“About six thousand dollars.”
For a moment, Taurex went completely still. Then his nostrils flared slightly, and his large hands curled into fists at his sides.
“They took six thousand dollars that I did not owe them?”
“Looks that way.”