enough not to blister his mouth before touching it to the taste pad covering the inside of his upper lip.
“Well?” Remrath asked sharply.
Gurronsevas thought that he could detect the presence of three different forms of vegetation, but they had been so thoroughly mixed and overcooked that he could not separate the individual tastes, much less relate them to foods already known to him. No condiments, sauces, mineral or chemical flavorings were present, and not even a trace of the salt which must have been available from Wemar’s seas. Plainly the food was being prepared too far in advance and the subsequent overcooking had destroyed any complementary or contrasting taste possessed by the original constituents.
“A little bland,” said Gurronsevas.
Remrath made an untranslatable sound and said, “You are being much too diplomatic, off-worlder. You have tasted our staple dish, a meat and vegetable stew without the meat, and by the time it reaches table it will be scarcely warm. Bland is a polite description for this unappetizing mess, but it is not the word we or our pupils would use.”
“It needs something,” Gurronsevas agreed. Deliberately, he directed all four of his eyes towards the empty cold cabinet he had noticed earlier and went on, “Doubtless the meat would improve the taste, but you do not appear to have any. Is meat a part of their normal diet?”
In his head-set Prilicla said warningly, “You are in a very sensitive area, friend Gurronsevas. Remrath’s emotional radiation is disturbed and angry. Tread gently.”
That was a ridiculous thing to ask a physically massive Tralthan to do. Even though he knew what the empath meant, he was in the kitchen and the Wem must surely expect him to ask questions about food.
“No,” said Remrath sharply. When Gurronsevas had decided that he must have given offense and it was not going to speak further, it proved him wrong by saying, “Only adults are entitled to eat meat, if and when it is available. It is forbidden to the young, but that rule is relaxed when, as is the case here, many of them are nearing maturity. The pupils who are old enough are occasionally given it in small quantities to add taste to the vegetable dishes, as a preparation for and a promise of their approaching maturity and the status they can expect as brave hunters and providers for their people.
“Our hunting party is due to return soon,” Remrath ended in a quiet voice that sounded angry despite the emotion-straining process of translation. “But in recent years they have had limited success, and they will not share their meat and their mature strength with children, so they keep it all for themselves”
Plainly some kind of verbal response was needed, Gurronsevas thought worriedly, preferably a sympathetic or encouraging or innocuous one that would not increase the Wem’s anger. Not knowing what to say, he tried to play safe by making a harmless and obvious statement of fact.
“You are mature,” he said.
If anything Remrath became even angrier. So loudly that the two cooks at the other end of the kitchen looked up from their work, it said, “I am very mature, stranger. Too mature to take part in a hunt, or to be given the smallest share of the kill. Too mature to have my past hunts remembered with gratitude or my feelings considered. Occasionally, out of kindness or sentiment, a young and newly-mature hunter will throw me a scrap or two of meat, but those we use to add a little taste to the meals of the older children. Otherwise we eat what everyone else eats in this place — a tasteless, lukewarm vegetable mush!”
In his time Gurronsevas had heard and dealt with many complaints about food, although rarely when it had been prepared by himself, and felt able to speak without risk of giving offense.
He took a deep breath and said carefully, “I have met or know of many different kinds of creatures, intelligent beings like yourselves who have developed civilizations more advanced even than that of the Wem of many centuries past, and who eat nothing but vegetation from the time they are weaned from their mothers’ milk until they die. Their meals are served hot, as are yours, or uncooked and served in a variety of different—”
“Never!” Remrath burst out. “I can believe that they eat vegetable stew until they die, because we older Wem are forced to do the same. In all probability it precipitates our dying. But it is simply a matter of filling an empty and growling stomach with tasteless organic fuel, and eating vegetation is shameful and demeaning for any adult.
“But eating raw growing things like a, like a rouglar!” it ended fiercely. “Off-worlder, you risk making me sick.”
“Please excuse my ignorance,” said Gurronsevas, “but what is a rouglar?”
“It used to be a large, slow-moving meat animal which ate and digested foliage all day long,” Remrath replied. “A few of them are rumored to exist in the equatorial regions, but elsewhere they are extinct. They were always too slow and stupid to escape the hunters.”
“With respect, you are wrong,” said Gurronsevas. “Many intelligent species are herbivorous and suffer no feelings of shame because of it. Neither do they have feelings of mental or physical inadequacy among the carnivores and omnivores who eat meat only or a combination of both, as do you. Charge Nurse Naydrad, that is the one you will see with the long, silver-furred body and multiplicity of legs, eats only vegetation and is slow neither in its thoughts or movements. Differences in eating habits are not a cause for shame or pride or any other emotions except, perhaps, pleasure or displeasure over the taste, quality of the cooking or preparation of the food. They are just differences. Why do the Wem feel shame?”
Remrath did not reply. Had his question given offense, Gurronsevas wondered, or was the answer even more shameful? Rather than ask questions it might be safer to continue giving information while noting the other’s reaction to it.
“Food is a fuel regardless of its type,” he went on, “but the process of refueling is, or should be, a pleasurable experience. The taste can be enhanced in various ways by the addition of small quantities of substances that are animal, vegetable or edible mineral. Or a meal can be improved by using different constituents which complement or contrast with each other and make the taste more interesting. I have some small experience in this area including the preparation of …”
Briefly, he wondered how the subordinate kitchen staff at the Cromingan-Shesk would have reacted to such a ridiculous and uncharacteristic piece of understatement, but his listener knew nothing of multi-species cooking and would not be impressed by gratuitous displays of expertise that were completely beyond its understanding or, hopefully, its present understanding.
When he continued, Gurronsevas tried to keep the information as simple and basic as possible because this aged Wem cook, regardless of its advanced years, was the merest child in culinary matters. But as he warmed to his favorite subject and the minutes slipped past unnoticed, he grew aware that Remrath was showing signs of restlessness and possibly impatience. It was time to taper off before positive boredom set in.
“There is much more that I could tell you about food preparation,” he went on, “including the fact that my efforts are wasted on a few rare and very unfortunate beings. The shape-changer Danalta is one. It eats anything, vegetation, meat, hard woods, sand, most varieties of rock, all without being able to sense any difference in taste.”
He stopped suddenly with the realization that the conversations in his head-set were indicating that the medical team were boarding
Or had it.
Standing against a poorly lit section of the wall behind the kitchen doors Gurronsevas remembered, there had been a wooden cask with the shafts of several brooms and mops projecting from the open top. Now there were two casks, identical but for a knothole in one of them that had the wet, transparent look of an eye — which slowly winked at him. Danalta had joined them.
“We must continue this conversation at another time,” the Wem said before he could speak, “because now we have much to do. Watch if you wish, but kindly stand aside and avoid hampering our movements.”
Gurronsevas moved away to stand beside the cask that was not a cask. The movements that he was not supposed to hamper, he saw, were painfully slow. Remrath and its kitchen staff were ladling helpings of the vegetable stew onto deep-rimmed dishes which they placed two to a tray before adding two wide, flat spoons and two cups of drinking water taken from the entry pipe of the free-running sluice. The platters were unwarmed and some of them were still damp from washing. One by one the loaded trays with their two-place servings were carried to the outer room and placed on the big table until its entire surface was covered. While this was happening,
