Buffalito Bundle

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  I did my best to look inscrutable and simply bowed my head at the compliment. “You’re welcome to concede,” I said. “I respect an opponent who knows when he’s beaten. There’s no need to take things further.”

  He chuckled at that. “But you forget one thing, Conroy. Even left with just the knowledge of my own cards, I’m still the better player. And you are playing completely blind.” Ignoring the dummy hand, he placed his cards down on the inner table, then picked up the token that indicated his mode of play. He rolled it around in one hand a moment, and placed it alongside his cards, his hand lightly blocking my view of his choice.

  I handed Reggie back to John and watched as the gambler retreated to the corner again. Seljor Thu stared at me, a faint whuffle of air emerging from his bullish nostrils. I could feel the Taurian’s eyes on me, and I imagined his gaze penetrating my skull and probing deeper.

  “I’ve left you an opening, Conroy. Will you use the dummy hand without me?”

  It was an obvious lure to further muddy the outcome, bringing into play the added complication of interactive rules that would have helped me if we were evenly matched in other respects. I doubted that was the case.

  “I wouldn’t put myself at that kind of disadvantage. I’ll play the cards I was dealt.” I whispered another trigger to myself ending the perceptual dance and the shifting cards in my hand settled into place.

  Across the table Seljor Thu slapped the table in one-handed applause. His cards were down and he was committed. I studied my own cards, trying to choose the best configuration for all four possible modes of matter. I tried to remember everything John had taught me, everything he’d told me.

  I sighed and laid my cards down on the inner table. I picked up my token, John’s lessons racing through my mind. I set the token plasma side up, covering it with my hand, though I knew full well that Seljor Thu saw the choice in my mind.

  “You have played well,” he said. “A far better game than I expected of you. With a bit more practice you might have beaten me. I almost feel bad about taking the contract for free, but a wager is a wager.” He pulled his hand away from his token and reached to turn over his cards.

  A professional gambler admits when he’s over-matched and knows how to accept defeat gracefully. I’d seen John do just that on those rare times he lost. But I’ve always been more of a kick-the-table-over type. Instead, just before Seljor Thu touched his cards, I twisted a tiny dial on the ring on my right hand.

  Left-John Mocker screamed.

  “John?! Reggie?!” I shouted, shoving my chair back and rising to my feet, one hand pointing over Seljor Thu’s shoulder to the corner where Left-John Mocker stood. The big gambler had dropped my buffalo dog. He clutched at his left eye with both hands; wisps of smoke drifted from between his fingers. Reggie tumbled to the floor, bleating in panic. He bolted to me for safety. I scooped him up with relief.

  Seljor Thu caught my concern for my pet in my mind. He turned to look at John, only for an instant. It was all the time I needed.

  I spun the inner table one hundred eighty degrees. My cards and token now lay in front of Seljor Thu, and his rested before me. Seljor Thu turned back to regard me silently. I tried my best to look apologetic.

  “Sorry, John. I must have accidentally activated the surveillance jammer in my ring.” I took my seat and turned the cards face up on the inner table. I looked over to the Taurian. “Shall we finish our game? All that’s left is for you to reveal your hand.”

  Seljor Thu laughed. “This may be my hand, now, but they are not my cards. I have underestimated you again, Conroy.”

  I shrugged. “This is Matter. Beyond the rules of the game, the game has no rules.”

  “Just so,” he said. “I will have my staff draw up a new set of contracts. The entertainment and education I’ve received tonight more than justifies the added cost. As for the introductions, I have some appointments to attend in the next few days, and then if it pleases you, we can meet again to compare schedules and arrange those meetings.”

  I bowed my head. “Thank you. I’m sure you’ll be happy with the results of our arrangement. It’s a pleasure to deal with a professional who knows how to accept a loss.”

  “Oh, I haven’t lost, Conroy. Today, perhaps, but this is just one battle. We will play again, some day, and I will be better prepared for your tricks.” He stood, still smiling, and walked away, summoning his staff with a curt gesture. Papers flurried, and moments later the Taurians, their lawyers, and my lawyers had all left the Golden Turtle Palace. I let out a sigh and hugged Reggie close.

  John pushed away from the wall. He scowled at me and rubbed his eye.

  “Does it hurt much?” I asked.

  “Nyah,” he said. “Just stings a bit. Mostly it just scared the hell out of me. Worth it though, to see you surprise a telepath.” He reached for Seljor Thu’s cards and turned them over. “He lost,” he said. “How did you know? Between the stacked deck and the hypnotic tricks you pulled, and with neither of you pulling from the dummy hand, you had a fair chance of winning against another player by calling plasma. What made you spin the table like that?

  “I didn’t think Plan B was going to work, and that was the best Plan C I could come up with on the spot. You said he was a pro, and he kept boasting about being the better player. I just took him at his word.” I glanced down at the winning hand I’d acquired from Seljor Thu. “Looks like he was right.” I sighed again. Thirty introductions to alien corporate leaders. I’d just overextended my company by an order of magnitude and more. Betsy was going to kill me.

  Yesterday's Taste

  I met Colin Harvey at the 2009 Worldcon in Montréal. We'd known each other for years as members of Codex, an online writing community, but Colin lived in the UK and I'm in the US. That long weekend in Canada was our first time face-to-face and we really hit it off. Some months later, Colin informed me he would be editing a new anthology from Æon, a small press out of Ireland, and asked me if maybe I would submit something for it. The requirements of the anthology lined up with an idea I'd been tinkering with in the back of my mind, one that involved Conroy, a gourmet chef, and certain concepts of memory that I'd dabbled with back in my professor days. And the timing of it corresponded with an anonymous competition being run by that same online community, Codex. As such, the first versions of the story lacked any mention of buffalo dogs, and the protagonist had a different name. After I washed out of the contest I added Conroy and Reggie and it all worked. The result was “Yesterday's Taste.” I emailed the story to Colin late at night in April of 2011. When I woke up in the morning and checked my email, a note from Colin was waiting for me, telling me he loved the story and offering to buy it for his anthology. The following August I was in Reno, Nevada running the eighteenth annual conference of the Klingon Language Institute, a couple days before the start of another Worldcon, when I received word that Colin had died suddenly of a stroke. Colin's publishers honored his contracts and Transtories came out a few months later at the end of October. I'm very fond of this story, because it always makes me think of Colin Harvey, who was taken from us far too early.

  When Dugli, the most powerful and feared food critic in the galaxy, invited me to join him at a restaurant so exclusive even billionaires like me have to wait two years for a table, I didn’t stop to ask why. I packed a bag, scooped up my buffalo dog, and headed for a planet so far off the trade routes that Dugli had sent his private shuttle to ensure I’d come.

  Bwill is not a tourist destination. The people smell, the air tastes funny, and the local language will make your ears bleed. But alongside other more common sea creatures, its oceans teem with lithic ichthus, a species of silicon-based fish hard as corundum and ugly as sin. They thrive there. Imagine a swimming creature made of rock. Rock fins, rock gills, rock scales. The culinary masterminds of Bwill prepare them using a series of marinades that permeate the minerals of these creatures, and over the course of months render them as tender and delicate as mering
ue, and exquisitely safe to be ingested by us carbon-types.

  Dugli’s shuttle delivered me to Bwill, and a waiting sloop took me from the splashport straight to the dock of Stone Fin, a restaurant created by master chef Plorm. A crowd of Bwillers—with a handful of offworld foodies—loitered in front, waiting for their reservations. I was probably the only human on Bwill and Dugli the only Caliopoean. A dark, otterish pelt covered him from crown to heel, with tiny flaps where humans would keep their ears and a whiskered nose that gave him an astonishing palate. We spotted each other at once.

  “Conroy!” Dugli’s webbed hand pulled me from the sloop and before I could say a word he had frogmarched me past the outraged stares of would-be diners and into the restaurant. Reggie, my buffalito, clattered after on tiny hooves, desperate not to be left out. We were expected. Plorm herself took us through the curtained maze typical of Bwill style and seated us at an elegant table of polished onyx and chalcedony.

  I settled Reggie into a booster seat intended for Bwillian toddlers. Dugli waited for the chef to return to her kitchen before speaking. His dark eyes gleamed in the restaurant’s candlelight. “So, Conroy, what’s it been? Three years?”

  “Life is good, Dugli. How’s the galaxy been treating you?”

  “Truth to tell, I’ve been despondent of late. But a few months back, I heard a whisper of a hint of a rumor that turned out to be true, and now I’m the happiest man alive. Or I will be soon. That’s why you’re here.”

  I smiled, waiting for the catch. “If feeding Reggie and me a fine meal makes you happy, who am I to argue?”

  Dugli snorted. I knew he didn’t approve of feeding fine cuisine to pets, particularly given that buffalitos were capable of ingesting literally anything. Moreover, he knew that I knew it, but he didn’t bring it up. That should have been my second clue that he wanted something.

  “It won’t be a good meal, Conroy. It will be a great meal. Plorm studied under Nery, the greatest chef this world ever produced.”

  “I know. I’m looking forward to her stonefish.”

  His head bobbed in agreement. “Exquisite. The second best meal ever found on Bwill. But... What if I said you could have the very best served alongside it? Nery’s seven cheese cribble puffs!”

  “That’s crazy. The secret of Nery’s cribble course vanished with him twenty years ago.”

  “I assure you, I’m completely sane.”

  “Then how? Nery’s dead. Everyone knows that.”

  “What everyone knows is a lie. He’s been lost all this time, not dead.”

  “Lost?”

  Dugli grinned like an otter. “And I’ve found him!”

  At dawn a groundcar waited to take Reggie and me from our hotel. We shared the road with pedicabs and bicycles but passed no other motorized vehicles on our way to the fish market. Picture a series of cracked and stained piers where the denizens of the local fishing industry—which is to say every third person on Bwill—had tied up their boats. I’m normally good at distinguishing among members of an alien race, but that morning I would have sworn my limo driver was the same Bwiller who had bussed our table the night before, having just changed clothes and gone on to his second job.

  We arrived amidst a cacophony of scavenging seabirds and whirring cargoloaders. The pierworkers’ shanties sounded to my ear like a orphanage’s worth of two-year olds in a nursing home of cheek-pinching grandmothers. Even worse than the noise was the smell! The piers reeked of decay, the boats stank from a local sealant made with the rotting remnants of seaweed, and the pungent citrus scent of hardworking Bwillers filled in any olfactory gaps. The fisherfolk of Bwill have an ironic avoidance of bathing that has them banned from traveling offworld; imagine fermented limes and tangerines blended with the funk of human body odor and you’ll get the idea. With Reggie trotting after me, I exited the limo reluctantly, limited by having only two hands and desperately wishing I could cover my nose and both ears simultaneously. Dugli strode toward me, one delicate, webbed hand broadly plastered over his whiskers. He had his aural flaps sealed tight.

  “Conroy! Come on, if we hurry we can catch the last bit of the performance.”

  We rushed down the length of one of the older piers, its shattered and crumbling surface held together by layers of graffiti and little else. At its far end a group of Bwillers milled about with their backs to us. Dugli pulled me toward them.

  The natives of Bwill are humanoid, same as you and me, but on average a head shorter. Their complexions are a bit craggy—though many an adolescent boy on Earth has endured worse acne—and range in color from sunset red to crayon orange. Dugli shoved his way through the throng of locals and yanked me after him. Reggie scampered underfoot, dodging shoes and the thorny toenails of bare Bwiller feet. I muttered apologies, but no one noticed. Everyone was focused on the old man at the edge of the pier who sat chanting in a voice as raspy as sea salt. I could see him easily over the heads of the others, but Dugli pushed us to the front with the determination of a man whose outlook on life includes the certain knowledge that his opinion is infinitely superior to yours.

  “There he is, Conroy. The fish poet. His name is Rhine.”

  I nodded. The oldster was tall for a Bwiller. His burnt orange skin had achieved the clear complexion of the elderly. He wore only a dirty overall, patched and mended beyond its years, and possessed a full beard, which on Bwill generally denoted poverty or at a minimum a healthy disregard for money. Wielding a knife in each hand he balanced, juggled, flipped, and methodically sliced away bits of an enormous, marinated stonefish, all while intoning sonnets with a voice like sandpaper. Fish poetry. Beautiful to watch and painful to hear. I don’t get it, and I probably never will.

  “Dug, you could have sent me a vid,” I raised a hand to pinch my nose shut as a wave of fish art wafted my way, breaking through the other odors that I was becoming inured to. “What’s so special about this guy?”

  “He’s Nery,” said Dugli, his face lighting up like he’d just tasted the best Eggs Montrachet on four planets, and for good reason if he wasn’t wrong.

  “Why are you so sure he’s not dead?” I turned away, my head ringing from phonemes and tones that I couldn’t begin to parse, as a smell thick enough to elbow its way down my throat threatened to push my gorge back along the way it had come. The crowd of art-loving Bwillers parted as I pressed through. I kept walking.

  Dugli followed. “The Bwill government doesn’t permit physical death as punishment, not since the transpersonal faction took power. Instead, they wiped away the man he was and sent him back into society. Nery became Rhine. Rhine the fish poet was once Nery the master chef. The man who invented the legendary seven cheese cribble puff is still alive, and I’ve found him.”

  We were nearly to the limo with its promise of scentless silence. I faced Dugli and shook him by his shoulders. “He was also Nery the master spy. When he wasn’t cooking, he was stealing industrial secrets and selling them to the highest bidder, right up until he was caught, convicted, and killed. The body may be the same, but the mind is gone. Nery doesn’t live in that man’s head any more. The only person home is Rhine. All I saw on the pier was a broken-down fish poet.”

  “Well, sure,” said Dugli, grinning like a young otter caught with one hand in a fishy cookie jar. “Why do you think I brought you here, Conroy? Because your buffalo dog business has made you rich? Nonsense! I know plenty of people richer than you. But you’re the best hypnotist I know.”

  “I’m the only one you know. What do you expect me to do?”

  “Regress him.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t be coy. You’ve done this for me before. Remember that woman on Kaftan’s World? You hypnotically regressed her back to childhood until she remembered a day when she watched her grandmother preparing fireweed kreplach. We recovered the recipe.”

  “Dugli, she hadn’t been on the wrong end of transpersonification. It’s not the same!”

  “You don’t know that. The B
will medical establishment has never heard of hypnosis. The techniques they employ here may not be proof against your own methods. Just imagine it, Conroy, by this time tomorrow we could be enjoying seven cheese cribble puffs!”

  The mere idea of the possibility set my mouth to watering like an old Russian dog. Dugli had rung my bell. “I’ll try, but I make no promises.”

  Dugli hurried off to ‘make arrangements’. I picked up my buffalito and wondered if anyone would bother to ask the fish poet what he wanted.

  Reggie and I spent the rest of the day in our hotel suite with the windows sealed tight and the air controls turned up to full. It wasn’t just to give us a reprieve from Bwill’s aromas. A buffalito’s unique ability to eat any and all matter is eclipsed only by its talent for converting whatever it consumes into flatulence of pure oxygen. I could have kept Reggie from farting by limiting his intake, but there were so many new things for him to taste on Bwill it didn’t seem fair. Instead I’d ordered a variety of small plates from the extensive room service menu, and a steward who could have been the twin of my limo driver delivered them, along with a special bottle of stonefish liquor sent compliments of the manager.

  I scattered the small plates across the floor, pausing just long enough to transfer a small portion of each onto a platter for my own enjoyment. Reggie wound his way through the culinary slalom, sampling a bit before moving on, repeating the circuit several times until he’d consumed every morsel. I finished my own meal before he was halfway through and turned my attention to the unexpected booze.

  It takes months to make stonefish edible, but it takes decades to make it drinkable, and then just barely. The good stuff—and I had to assume the bottle in my hands represented such—could take centuries. The rumors I’d heard back in Human Space spoke of a smoky elixir that put the best single malt scotch to shame, but I’d never been able to verify them. The government of Bwill refused to allow even so much as a single drop of their precious liqueur offworld. A visiting diplomat from the Gilman colonies had tried to export a flask in a diplomatic pouch and the ruckus had cost them their embassy. She’d also been relieved of the flask.