by Opal Carew
But I couldn’t help feeling a flash of guilt when I remembered Zoe’s words. “What would your sister think of you now?” she’d asked. “What would she say if she knew what you were doing?”
I had the uncomfortable feeling that Sellah wouldn’t like it one damn bit.
Trying to shrug off the thought, I turned my attention to the task at hand—teaching Zoe how to use the food-simulator.
The little Pure One would be gone from my life soon enough, I told myself. Though she looked distractingly lovely, dressed as she was in my shirt and nothing else so that all her ample curves were on display, I was determined to ignore her. Ignore her loveliness and the guilt I was tempted to feel when I got too near her.
As soon as the diagnostic was run and the panels of the hydrogen scoop were fit to travel, I would take her straight to Giedi Prime and trade her to Tazaxx.
Before she could worm her way any further under my skin.
Chapter 6
Zoe
So here’s the deal with simulated food—if you ever get a chance to try it, don’t. Just don’t, okay?
It started out all right. Sarden seemed to have simmered down a little which was good. Being around him when he was pissed off was kind of like walking into the middle of a thunderstorm, wondering when the lightning was going to strike. But Sarden calm was not so bad—even if he did still look huge and scary.
First he showed me into the kitchen—excuse me, the food prep area—and proceeded to explain how the food-simulator worked. The food-sim, as he called it, was the big gold stock pot looking thing I’d seen earlier when Al took me on my short tour. The one with all the wires coming out of it.
As it turned out, the wires all had sticky pads attached to them and they were supposed to be placed at just the right spot on your temples so the food-sim could read your thoughts and know what to make you.
“Why can’t I just tell it what to make?” I asked as Sarden pressed one of the sticky pads to his left temple.
“You are telling it—with your mind. You can provide a much more complete idea of whatever it is you’re telling the sim to make, including taste, texture, and smell, by sending direct thought messages to its processing unit,” he explained.
“So once you think what you want it appears in the pot?” Without waiting for an answer, I took the lid off the big gold pot and recoiled. “Ewww!” It was about two thirds full of green slime that looked an awful lot like snot.
I’m sorry—I know that’s gross, but I have to be honest. That’s what it looked like.
“You’re not supposed to remove the lid until the food-sim is finished,” Sarden snapped, snatching the lid back from me. “Are you paying attention? You’d better be because I don’t have time to make food for you and even if I did, I doubt you’d like the cuisine from my home world.”
“I doubt I’d like any cuisine that’s snot-based,” I said, fighting not to gag. “What’s in that pot, anyway?”
“Nutrient slime—the raw material from which all foods are simulated, of course,” he said impatiently, as though it should be obvious.
“So…the food-sim uses this stuff…” I pointed at the green slime. “To make things to eat? And then you actually eat them?”
“I’m beginning to wonder if the transport process from your planet affected your mind after all,” he growled. “Of course you eat them. What else would you do with food?”
“Throw it away if it was made of green slime,” I remarked. Not that I’m a super picky eater—one look at my hips and you’d know that. But a girl has to have some limits.
“The finished food product doesn’t retain any of the texture or flavor of the nutrient slime,” he said, frowning. “Watch.”
Putting the lid back on the pot, he closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to the pad at his temple. He looked like he was thinking really hard about a difficult math problem. I was beginning to wonder how long this whole process took when the food-sim made a small, discrete chime that sounded like someone ringing a fancy door bell.
“There.” Opening his eyes, Sarden took the lid off again and a puff of fragrant smelling steam escaped the pot.
I looked in. It was still filled two-thirds full with green slime but a small platform, which was completely slime free, had risen up from the center of the pot. On it sat a clear plate that might have been plastic or glass—I couldn’t tell. On the plate was something that looked like a blue spaghetti sandwich. By which I mean that the bread-like stuff it was wrapped in was blue. The spaghetti itself was red and yellow with black specs I took to be some kind of pepper.
“Perfect.” Sarden nodded with satisfaction and lifted the plate out of the pot. Picking up the sandwich, he took a large bite. “Delicious,” he declared after swallowing.
“It doesn’t look too bad,” I conceded. “I mean the coloring is a little weird and having a bread and pasta combo like that is a lot of carbs, but it smells good.”
“What is pasta?” he asked before taking another bite.
“That stuff—the long skinny noodles you’re eating. On Earth we make it from wheat. What do your people make it from?”
“We don’t make it at all—this is churn. We catch them in the Great Depths.”
“The what now?” I frowned, not sure I understood him.
“I said we catch them,” he repeated. “Churn. They’re a kind of water snake that comes from my home planet of Eloim. Would you like a bite?”
He pushed the sandwich near my face and I suddenly saw what I hadn’t before—the “noodles” all had little black eyes—that was what I had mistaken for pepper. Some even had tiny forked tongues hanging out of their itty-bitty mouths.
I think I made a sound like, “Urrgh,” because Sarden withdrew his snake sandwich quickly.
“See? I told you that you wouldn’t like the cuisine of my home world—either one of my home worlds. If you think the churn are disgusting, I can imagine what you’d think of Vornish yigba stew.”
“I didn’t say it was disgusting,” I protested weakly. “I’m just not used to, uh, eating snake sandwiches. That’s all. But…” I cleared my throat. “You said you have two home worlds?”
He looked suddenly guarded. “I should not have mentioned that. But yes, I am half Vorn and half Eloim.”
“I, uh, noticed that your sister doesn’t have horns like you do,” I said, busying myself with securing a sticky thought patch to my left temple and hoping I wasn’t overstepping my boundaries. “Is that because she’s a girl and only the men, er, males of your people have them, or…?”
I left the question hanging, wondering if he would get mad again.
“The horns are from my Vorn heritage,” he growled. “Sellah doesn’t have them because she’s pureblooded Eloim. Not that it’s any of your Gods’ damned business.”
“Sorry!” I protested. “I didn’t know it was such a touchy subject.”
“Well it is. You might not know much about the universe—how could you, living on that uninformed ball of rock you call a planet—but the Vorn are hated and feared throughout our galaxy. They are considered violent, dangerous, and most of all, unpredictable.” He glared at me, as though daring me to say something.
Okay, I wasn’t touching that one with a ten foot pole.
“And what are the Eloim known for?” I asked instead, glossing over the whole violent and dangerous thing.
Sarden took another bite of his sandwich and swallowed before answering.
“Eloim are highly civilized with an elaborate set of social customs for every occasion. They value art, beauty, and learning above all else.”
“Wow.” I frowned. “So the Vorn and Eloim are kind of polar opposites, huh?”
“Something like that,” he agreed guardedly.
“So how did your parents meet and fall in love, if they’re from such different cultures?” I asked, genuinely interested.
“They didn’t,” he said briefly.
“But then how—”
&n
bsp; “Why are you so interested in my heritage, anyway?” he interrupted, frowning at me.
“I’m just trying to get to know you,” I said. “I’ve never met an alien before. Hell, I didn’t even know there were aliens outside of scifi books and movies until you had Bambi and his minions drag me through that bathroom mirror.”
“Who is Bambi?” he wanted to know.
“Oh—that’s what I was calling the head wormy guy—the main Commercian, I mean. He had a voice like a character from a children’s story back on Earth so I sort of started calling him by that character’s name.”
“That was actually Char’noth and despite his voice and appearance, he’s not a male you want to make angry with you,” Sarden said dryly. “You really seem to enjoy re-naming things and people.”
“Oh, you mean Al?” I asked. The artificial life-form had gone back to the control area, presumably to run the diagnostic test Sarden had talked about so he wasn’t there to hear us talking about him. “I just thought he needed a name. He seems to like it, don’t you think?”
“Yes, he does.” Sarden didn’t sound completely happy about it. “I don’t understand you—I’ve owned The Celesta for ten solar cycles and A.L.—Al—has been nothing but a control system for the ship. Then you’re on board for less than a solar hour and suddenly he wants a name.”
“Maybe it’s because I treated him like a person—not just a thing,” I said pointedly.
Sarden looked grumpy again. “Are you going to sim yourself some food or not?” he asked, pointedly changing the subject.
“Yes, I am.” I still didn’t like the idea of eating something made out of green slime but it seemed like the best offer I was going to get. And besides, it was better to keep the big alien talking—asking for help with the whole food-sim process might take another step towards making him think of me as a person, not just a commodity to be traded. Reverse Stockholm, I reminded myself. I had to keep it up.
I closed my eyes just as I had seen Sarden do and pictured a single piece of sushi. Nothing too fancy or complicated—just a California roll with crab and avocado and cucumber like they make at Origami, my favorite sushi restaurant in Tampa. Leah and Charlotte and I always go there for girl’s night out and then we head up to Ivarones, a little Italian place, and split a piece of their decadent chocolate cherry cheesecake for dessert.
Just thinking of my two best friends made me want to cry. I wonder if they had gone to the police yet. Probably not—I still hadn’t been gone from Earth for a whole day, even though it felt like years. They wouldn’t be allowed to file a missing persons report until at least twenty-four hours had elapsed. And even then it wouldn’t do them any good. I was gone, on my way to a galaxy far, far away…
Suddenly I realized I was dangerously close to tears.
Get a grip on yourself, Zoe! I took a deep breath and redirected my thoughts back to the piece of sushi. I thought about it as hard as I could until I heard the soft chime from the food-sim.
“All right.” Sarden opened the lid for me and peered inside. “Is that what it’s supposed to look like?”
I peeped in myself and was surprised to see a perfectly delicious-looking piece of sushi sitting on another one of those clear plates.
“Oh, look! Just like I imagined!” I clapped my hands in surprised pleasure.
“So glad we could meet your expectations,” Sarden said dryly, but I thought I saw the ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He lifted the plate out and handed it to me, waiting to see me eat the results.
Picking the piece of sushi up, I sniffed it carefully. Well, it certainly smelled like sushi and there was no green slime anywhere on it or near it. Deciding to give it a chance, I popped it into my mouth and began to chew.
After a moment I was looking for a napkin to spit it into. There wasn’t anything available though, so I had to swallow.
Sarden must have seen the look on my face.
“What happened? Did the food-sim get it wrong?”
“You could say that.” I grimaced. “It looked like sushi but it tasted like something else.”
“Like what?”
I frowned. It was hard to place the wrong taste because the sushi the food-sim had made for me had the right shape and color and texture and smell. But the taste…the taste had been completely off. Finally I had it.
“Chocolate cherry cheesecake!” I exclaimed. “That’s what it tasted like!” Maybe the food-sim had made it taste like that because I was thinking about how I used to share it with Leah and Charlotte after we had sushi.
“What’s that?” Sarden wanted to know.
“It’s this kind of cake only not a cake—it’s made from soft cheese flavored with chocolate—”
“Cheese?” he interrupted me. “Chocolate?”
At that moment I felt truly sorry for him. He might be a big, tough alien with a super fast spaceship but he was living on snake sandwiches and he’d never had cheese or chocolate which are like, two of the holy trinity of foods as far as I’m concerned. (Wine is the third, in case you’re interested.)
“Cheese is an Earth food made from milk, which is this white liquid we get from domesticated animals called cows,” I explained.
“Ah.” He nodded. “We make a similar concoction on Vorn 6 from the bile of the sprag.”
“Remind me never to go out to eat with you on Vorn 6 then,” I said. “Anyway, there are lots of varieties of cheeses—we use a soft, sweet one to make cheese cake.”
“And you said it was flavored by shauckolat?”
“Chocolate,” I corrected him. “It’s made by taking the beans out of these big pods that grow in the jungle and roasting them and grinding them—then mixing them with sugar and more milk—”
“You certainly eat a lot of this ‘milk’ you’re talking about,” Sarden remarked. “If we ate that much sprag bile we’d be sick.”
In my personal opinion, any amount of bile would be too much, but I didn’t say so. See? I can be tactful.
“There’s no such thing as too much cheese or too much chocolate,” I told Sarden fervently. “Look, I don’t think I’m explaining about the chocolate cherry cheesecake the right way. Let me try to make a piece for you—or let the food-sim try, anyway.”
“Very well.” He nodded and crossed his muscular arms over his still bare chest which made his pecs dance around in a yummy and distracting way. “I’d like to see this Earth delicacy.”
“All right.” Closing my eyes to shut out the sight of his muscles, I took a deep breath and concentrated hard on making cheesecake. I thought about the dense, creamy texture…the rich, chocolately taste…the sweet, slightly tart cherries…
The food-sim dinged again. I opened the lid eagerly to see a perfect piece of cherry chocolate cheesecake sitting there on the clear plate. It looked just like it did when we ordered it from Ivarones.
“Perfect!” I exclaimed, picking it up. I was certain that this time I had gotten it right. It looked amazing and smelled so sweet and creamy and delicious. I couldn’t wait to taste it—but I wanted Sarden to try some too. He, however, was looking at it with an uncertain expression on his face.
“It looks like a triangular wedge of soil with blood clots on top,” he pointed out.
“What? Eww! Don’t say that about my cheesecake!” I protested. “Look, just try it and you’ll see how delicious it is. Just try.”
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I don’t see why I should try your cuisine when you refused a bite of my perfectly good churn wrap, but all right. I’ll try.”
“You need something to eat it with—do you have any forks or spoons—any kind of utensils?” I asked when he raised his eyebrows at me in confusion.
“Oh. Of course.” He tapped the long bar the food-sim was located on twice with his fingertips. A portion of it flipped over, revealing a tray which held the most bewildering array of cutlery I’d ever seen, all made of some shiny black metal.
There were several knives of var
ying lengths, some things that looked like really sharp chopsticks only they had curly ends like corkscrews, a ladle-like spoon that would have held almost an entire bowl of soup—if his people ate soup—and some things that looked like weird 3-D forks with tines sticking out in all directions.
“What in the world?” I said, staring down at the bizarre instruments.
“Sorry.” Sarden looked slightly embarrassed. “It’s inherited from my mother. Eloim have elaborate customs for everything, including dining.”
“And they use all this for every meal?” Carefully, I chose a spork-looking thing with a very long handle—it looked like the best bet for eating the cheesecake the food-sim had made.
“Mmm-hmm.” Sarden nodded. “I don’t usually use it myself. Or at least, only when Sellah comes on board. She—” He stopped abruptly and for a moment I thought I saw his features twist into an expression of deep pain and regret. Then his face went blank and he shrugged. “Anyway, do you want to try this cakecheese first or should I?”
“Cheesecake,” I corrected him. “And you try it.”
“Very well.” He took the long handled spork from me. “And this is the correct utensil to use?”
“Uh, sure. It’s fine.”
“All right.” He dug gamely into the chocolate cherry cheesecake despite his earlier opinion that it looked like dirt and blood. He popped the bite in his mouth and I watched anxiously, wondering if this taste of Earth cuisine would make him think differently about me.
“Well?” I asked anxious after he had chewed and swallowed.
Sarden frowned. “It tastes good enough. Only…did you say it was supposed to be sweet?”
“Yes—so sweet it makes your teeth ache. Why—isn’t it?” I asked anxiously. “Here, let me try it.” I reached for the spork-thing but he held it out of arm’s length.
“Don’t you want me to wash it first?”
“Why?” I asked impatiently. “Do you have a cold? I mean, are you sick?” I asked, seeing the look of incomprehension on his face.
