Then came the awful day when George brought Jose Lermontov home to dinner. Kathy’s younger sister was also dining with them that night, and wrinkled her nose after George’s face faded from the visiphone.
“These revolting Venus colonial diplomats,” said Linda. “He’ll have a swampbeard and a paunch and a wife and six children at home. Kathy, why doesn’t George ever meet anybody newsworthy who’s—well, worthy?”
“He’s a very fine young man, I hear,” Kathy muttered distractedly. “Guerrilla leader against the dictatorship, wrote a fine book about its overthrow. What worries me is the paunch—and what I’m going to put into it.”
Live minutes after meeting the Venusian, Linda slipped into the kitchen to whisper, “Sister . . . please . . . can I have that in my stocking for Christmas?” But even this pleasing reversal did not divert Kathy from the task of preparing to fill the, as it turned out, non-existent paunch.
Dinner, she thought a little later, was going surprisingly well, especially between Jose and Linda. But then George, having speared and destroyed the last pork chop, cleared his throat.
“You must make allowances, Lermontov. Mere pork to a man accustomed to sokalj . . .”
“Mean swamphog?” Jose asked politely, with the usual clipped Venusian avoidance of pronouns and articles.
“And,” George added commiseratingly, “this so-called ‘country gravy’—rather a shock to a man from a planet where they think, thank God, not in terms of gravies, but of sauces.”
“Very good gravy,” said Jose, mopping up the last of his with a slice of Kathy’s own bread. “Imagine ‘so-called’ because first made by those who live in country?”
“Even granting that,” George persisted, “can’t you picture what just a pinch of balj-powder would have done for it? Or perhaps a hint of tinilj?”
“Myself,” Jose replied gravely, “prefer one of your Earth herbs—dash of oregano, bit of savory. Summer savory, of course.”
George gave the matter serious thought. “Possibly. Very possibly. But in either case it demonstrates the pitiful lack of imagination of the average Earth housewife.”
It is conceivable that Kathy made too obvious a clatter in stacking and removing the dinner dishes. In any event, Linda followed her hastily into the kitchen.
“Please, Kathy angel, don’t explode, not just yet. I know George is asking for it, but he’s probably been told already that all Earth-women are shrews and I don’t want . . .”
Kathy controlled herself until the one agreeable result of the evening was reached when Jose asked if he might see Linda home. To her surprise, she went right on controlling herself even after they had left, because by then she had thought of The Plan.
The very next morning, The Plan was well under way.
A: Kathy invaded her favorite bookshop and bought every book in stock on Venusian spices and cooking, and even added such pre-Venusian classics of culinary perception as Brillat-Savarin, Escoffier, and M. F. K. Fisher.
B: She enrolled herself for daily lessons at the Uya Rulj School of Venusian Cookery (formerly the Ecole de Cuisine Cordon Bleu).
C: Knowing that George had a luncheon date in Chicago with his sponsor, she visited the restaurant where her husband normally lunched. It was an unobtrusive chop house in the thirties, far down on Manhattan’s base-level, and the excellent lunch she enjoyed there confirmed her darkest suspicions.
For two weeks she read her books and took her lessons without trying out what she learned except for lunches by herself. And she did learn things. George’s school of thought had its points. For Kathy’s cooking, like that of her eight great-greatgrandmothers, had been not only Earthly but plain American.
There was a fresh delight in learning that the Architect of all things had established on this planet a certain inevitable relationship between tomatoes and sweet basil, and had ordained that caraway seeds should fulfill the destiny of red cabbage—even as on another planet, He had sown tinilj so that the flesh of the swamphog might be even sweeter. And who was to anticipate the masterfully predestined interplanetary blends? The inescapable kinship of garlic and lamb Kathy had long known, but her eyes opened wide on discovering how a pinch of Az^’-powder completed the trinity.
But these discoveries did not weaken The Plan. And that same Architect smiled upon The Plan by allowing the network’s robowaxer to deposit a minutely oversufficient flow upon the floor of the corridor in front of George’s office. On that wax, George slipped and broke his leg.
George probably never admitted, even to himself, that he enjoyed being bedridden: the visiphone calls, the miniscript couriers from the network, the bedside microphone and cameras. But he did begin to admit that he was enjoying Kathy’s cooking.
Where once she might have served steak, she now brought forth grenadine de boeuf à la venerienne. Where once she might have served her asparagus with melted butter, she now ventured on a hollandaise (with five grains of balj-powder replacing the cayenne of ancient recipes). Where once she might have served left-overs simply reheated, she now masked them with a sauce which would cause the recumbent George to smack his lips, roll his eyes, and murmur, “Silj, of course, and chives . . . and a hint of tinilj . . . possibly a whisper of pnulj, probably Earth-grown? Yes, I thought so . . . and . . . what is that?”
“Chervil, darling,” Kathy would say, and he’d answer, “Of course, of course. I would have had it in a minute. You know, Katherine my dear, you are developing an imagination!”
When it was announced that George’s plasticast was to come off that Thursday, Kathy decided it was time for the denouement of The Plan. As she was painstakingly making up her shopping list on Thursday morning, the visiphone rang and it was, miraculously, not the network
