“Of course I’ll share. But…” Kenna looks at the pallet; there’s enough food under that wrap that the chefs could all eat until their bellies burst. “There’s no need to go waving your cask about. Even were I greedy, I’m sure Paulius would ensure you got a taste…”
“This is your food, O Prince,” Montgomery admits. “Paulius ordered it in for you, and I can’t say you don’t deserve it. But if I watch you eat balut—whatever that is—then by the time I have a piece, I’ll know what it looks like, I’ll know what it smells like, I’ll know whether it tastes fair or foul … I won’t have the encounter’s fullness, in all its glittering anticipation. And if you know us Sensates, Master Kenna, you know—well, the anticipation is all that sustains us.”
But I had anticipated the taste as well, Kenna thinks.
Kenna has never been given a gift, so he’s never had anything to give. Now that he has a wealth of options, he finds that wealth makes him sullen. That was mine, he thinks. Paulius left it for me. Even Montgomery acknowledges he has the right to take it.
He should rip it open. He won’t get this opportunity again; in six weeks, his meal will have passed and he’ll be poor again, while Montgomery will be feasting on whatever new foods Paulius orders in …
… and he will know forever that when he was rich, he was no better than the people who shat upon him when he was poor.
“You may slake your fill on this pallet,” Kenna says quickly, before he regrets it. “On one scant condition.”
“Which is?”
“You inform me what’s in the cask.”
Watching her smile is like watching ice crack. “Dinner rolls.”
Kenna would ask for further explanation—but in a way, the cask’s mystery is sweeter than knowing.
Montgomery leans her full weight on the flexing plastic wrap, head hung low, palms spread open as if the pallet is all that holds her up.
She presses her cheek to the taut wrap, slithering along it, sniffing—and then, driven wild, she reaches over with the trembling need of a woman pulling the sheets off her lover to grasp a fistful of …
… bright orange silken robes.
She tugs a long robe out from underneath the wrap, crumples it, presses it against her face as though somehow this might be food. “No,” she whispers, tossing the fluttering robe back into the crowd as if they might explain it to her, then shreds the wrap to push deeper into the pallet. She digs frantically, scooping plumes of bright fire-colored robes into the air above her, each so light and fragile they open like parachutes before drifting down onto the scuffed loading bay floor.
He should feel sorrow for Montgomery. Instead, he marvels as he plucks one from the air.
“Those are Inevitable Philosophy robes.” Kenna’s robes are puckered knots of black stitches, more thread than fabric; he would have purchased new clothes long ago if Father hadn’t forbidden it. This is our last link to our people, Kenna, Father had said. If we don’t wear the sacred robes, how will people know us?
It had always seemed like foolish pride. But as the silk flows over his knuckles like textured water, spilling down around his wrists, Kenna realizes he has never seen his Father’s robes as Father does. Father sees the tattered silk-scraps, sewn clumsily into place like butterfly wings tangled in a spider’s web, and uses memory to knit them into a recreation.
“These are what I should be clad in.” Kenna’s hushed words send the gossamer-light robes billowing away like jellyfish.
“I know that! You think I don’t know that?!” Montgomery shakes two fistfuls of robes like rainbow pom-poms. “What in the frozen void will I do with robes?”
“You will do nothing with them,” Paulius says, appearing in the far doorway. “The front of house, however, will need to be garbed appropriately for the service. Now put those back, you’ve already torn some. Don’t you realize how delicate those are?”
It is as though Paulius has broken a spell. Montgomery pushes her goggles back across her forehead, surveying the shredded robes with gold eyes that look like pools of olive oil, pinched at the edges with an epicanthic fold. Like any addict, Kenna realizes, she only recognizes the damage she’s done after she’s jarred out of her need.
Muttering frantic apologies, she begins creasing the robes back into their original shapes.
Scrimshaw stomps into the dock, her steel-toed boots sending echoing booms through the chamber. “What is this?”
Paulius is the only one who does not flinch. “Robes.”
She pinches one earpiece of her thick plastic glasses, as though she can somehow focus them to find a better explanation. “I can see it’s robes. Why do we have a pallet of robes?”
Paulius’s disdainful head-shake causes his braid to twitch. “For the front-of-house. This is a dinner for the Kings of an Inevitable Philosophy, Scrimshaw. Rèpondelle will tell you: we cannot scrimp on proper outfits for such a gala.”
“Fine. But we employ twenty servicemen who’ll need regalia.”
“And Kenna! And his parents.”
“So: twenty-three outfits. Whereas laying there, taking up precious space in my dock, are at least five hundred silken robes.”
“I didn’t have time to bargain, Scrimshaw. What, do you think I’d bring the tailor out here to suit up everyone personally in your absurd six-week deadline? No, I had no choice! I had to buy every outfit she had!”
She snaps her fingers before holding out her palm expectantly. “The bill of lading, please.”
Paulius plucks a receipt from his suit pocket and drops it from an inch above her palm, so as not to make contact with Scrimshaw’s flesh.
Scrimshaw glares at the bill with malice enough to burn a hole through it. “This is a massive expenditure for an excess of useless material. What do you expect me to do with it?”
Paulius flicks his fingers toward her as though trying to get snot off his nails. “Make it into money, my dear manacle. It is what you do, after all.”
She scowls. Then her plucked eyebrows rise. She cruises to a stop before the pallet, gazing off into space, rubbing fabric between her fingers contemplatively.
“And you lot.” The chefs mouth silent explanations as Paulius turns to face them, practicing apologies. Paulius uses his cane to push them aside as he makes his way to the loading dock’s far door. “Did you think I would smuggle in appallingly rare foods and then leave them in a corner for you to stumble across like yesterday’s laundry? Is that the second-rate entertainment I gift to the finest chefs in the known stars?”
Each chef clasps their palms against each other in an isometric pressure, not quite daring to applaud, not yet. Montgomery hugs her cask to her chest, whispering reassurances into the barrel. Yet as Paulius leans down to unlatch the loading dock door, he pauses, lapping up their suspense. He grants them a single bemused smile as he hears them groan in anticipation.
“Honestly.” Paulius rolls his eyes. “You’d think you worked at Belle du Balle, not The Sol Majestic.”
Paulius flings the door upward.
The front-of-house staff charges into the loading dock like a parade, golden robes flowing around their bodies.
Effervescent delight pops out of Kenna, an unprincely laugh that Kenna’s mother would silence. The other chefs whoop in approval, a thunderous adulation as the waiters step through the door in choreographed precision—the first wave snapping open tables with rich red tablecloths and arranging them on the ground, just as the second wave, carrying covered copper bowls perched atop tented fingers, swoop in to drop the sample bowls into place.
Kenna’s eardrums flex as taiko drums boom into the room—speakers, it must be speakers, there’s no room for the barrel-sized drums to be played, but the speakers Paulius has placed are so fine that Kenna can practically taste the sweat of half-naked men pounding drums.
The servers whirl to face the chefs—the same waiters from last night’s service, transformed. Last night, they carried dishes stiffly, immersed in service. These robed waiters m
arch around the tables wreathed in wildness, like bright-scaled fish gliding through water—or perhaps red dragons swooping through the air. They roll their hips to send the diaphanous fabric soaring. They smile with bold fierceness, so positive they have brought Kenna joy.
This is what it was like for them, Kenna thinks. This is the glory of the Inevitable Philosophies.
For the first time in his life, Kenna can understand why Mother and Father might tow a bedraggled son on rusted starships, sacrificing everything to limp from hopeless situation to even more hopeless situation. If they could bring this majesty back to life …
Mother and Father had shown him videos. Yet those videos were tiny, caged in smartphones scarcely bigger than Mother’s palm. To be surrounded by such glory …
The waiters thrust a hand backwards, fingers seizing the grip on the cloches that hide the dishes’ contents. The chefs lean forward, with Montgomery pushing her way to the front.
A waiter—Kenna thinks it may be the red-tuxedoed woman from last night, but he cannot be sure, her face vanishes from memory like a dream whenever he’s not gazing directly upon her—looks to Paulius.
Paulius leans back like an emperor, waves a lazy approval.
The waiters lift the cloches off the plates in a smooth ripple, revealing tiny piles of ingredients, each identified by a stiff parchment placard: Rehmannia. Haw jam. Artocarpus. Fermented seahorse milk. Balut. Sailwhale flank. And more …
The ingredients glisten enticingly under the lights, piles of raw meat-red and lambent purple jelly and lumpy milk-white: Kenna glances upward, noting Paulius has attached lights to the loading bay’s ceiling.
Montgomery charges in toward the ingredients, head down, clutching her cask between bicep and chest like a football. She stammers to a halt, transfixed, tracing tiny circles around the edge of the plate. She falls to her knees, subsumed by the tiny gray eggs, sniffing and smelling. The chefs stand back, respecting her ritual.
She slides an egg into her mouth, feeling its bumps with her tongue, blissed out as she sucks upon it, purring as she strains the egg white through the pebbled shell …
“All right,” Paulius says. “Give her some alone time. That’s why she stays here.”
“When do we get our taste?” asks a green-striper.
“You know we don’t do sweets before savory in this kitchen, my poppet. You are aware the Escargone needs preparation, yes? That the rest of you must sous chef your own supplies for the contest? So haul, my lovelies, haul, to stock the Escargone high with all these new ingredients. After our time-ship is prepared? Then you may nibble. Now work quickly, before these samples die under the lights … or before Montgomery loses control.”
Montgomery now chews a shell experimentally, the hard flecks leaving gashes in her gums. The chefs gaze at her longingly—Kenna knows that for all the shortcomings of the Sensate lifestyle, he will never taste anything as intensely as Montgomery relishes these eggs—and then trot off to help load the Escargone.
Kenna follows, curious to what the Escargone is. The chefs shoulder the heavy crates scattered through The Sol Majestic’s kitchen—again, no RFID tags—and, with audible grunts, haul them to the back of the kitchen where through a heavy airlock lies …
… another, smaller kitchen.
Whereas The Sol Majestic’s kitchen is spacious enough to allow Kenna to move, the smaller kitchen’s packed as tight as a military ship. The chefs crowd around the entryway, having to enter one at a time, shouldering past each other as two men crouch inside to strap supplies to the walls. Their hips bump against a tiny dishwasher as they drop the perishables into old-style bucket freezers. The stoves fold up, boards fold down to create chopping boards, and in the back there are two hammocks tied to the wall and a cramped toilet seated directly underneath a showerhead.
Kenna’s shoulders creep together, anticipating the cramped workflow lurking in the Escargone. There, The Sol Majestic’s airy aesthetics have withered into brute functionality. Once that door latches shut, Kenna knows, the stoves will broil both chefs and food. By the time the chefs finish packing the supplies away, only two narrow corridors remain. Kenna has taken cheap flights like this before. Their cooking will become a jigsaw puzzle; removing a pot from storage will require something else to be stowed.
He’s lived on transport ships his whole life.
This kitchen was made for him.
Except his brains would boil in there—locked in a cramped space with workers, all he’d focus on would be tawdry techniques, and his grand thoughts would evaporate.
He’s meant to lead nations. He’s already wasted too many years daydreaming. He can’t give up his Inevitable Philosophy; Mother and Father have told him the universe is counting on him to speak truth to power …
“This is Stage One,” Paulius tells him.
Paulius’s thigh-high black boots and ruffled vest have vanished, replaced by blue Kevlar janitorial footie-scrubs. It’s the outfit only desperate travelers buy; they’re durable and completely inabsorbent. Sweat dews on the inside of those outfits, dribbles down to collect into stink-puddles that must be shaken out at the day’s end.
Seeing Paulius stripped of his grand outfits is horrifying. Kenna finds The Sol Majestic’s kitchen-stripes comforting—knowing which chefs have achieved mastery to guide the other chefs. Yet in this cornflower-blue peasant’s outfit, Paulius could be any transport ship traveler.
Doesn’t Paulius fear losing his authority? Wasn’t that the reason for his gaudy outfits—to broadcast his imagination’s superiority? Does Kenna understand Paulius at all?
“That cramped scullery is meant for long transport,” Kenna observes, changing the subject. “I’m failing to see why we would use such a cramped space when we could rise early to use this kitchen…”
Kenna threads that “we” in subtly, fearful Paulius has used his magic to create a place Kenna would feel comfortable cooking—
Paulius takes the “we” with a skill of an athlete catching a ball. “This is how we cheat Scrimshaw.”
It’s never occurred to Kenna that Paulius cooked. He thought a man like Paulius had people cook for him. Yet Paulius does not seem diminished by his labor; he’s excited to teach.
Kenna is excited. He could learn to cook, couldn’t he? Everyone had to cook, once upon a time. Boiling noodles, surely the greats had to do that …
“How can we…” Kenna glances at the Escargone’s watch-piece mechanics, notes the thick circuitry-bands looping around the outside, a tangle of chips and glowing wires that reminds Kenna of ancient sigils.
“… I remain uncertain how we’d cheat Scrimshaw with a tiny pantry,” he admits, braced for Paulius’s disappointment, yet proud he has kept himself pure enough to be unknowing of logistics.
Paulius grabs Kenna’s wrist, pulls him over to the Escargone with the excitement of a boy showing off his greatest toy, presses Kenna’s palm against the circuitry. Though Kenna’s hand goes numb, he loves the way Paulius reacts to his ignorance; Paulius isn’t disappointed, as Mother and Father always are. He is honored by the opportunity to show Kenna something.
“You feel that?” Paulius asks.
Kenna feels secure enough with Paulius to say no.
Paulius rubs his cheek against the Escargone. “It’s what you don’t feel. You don’t feel the thrum of the ship rotating. You don’t feel the force fields’ vibration. You don’t feel anything, because these circuits sever the inside of this pod from time itself.”
“So your capsule is akin to … a stasis field?”
“Brilliant, Kenna! But the opposite. Stasis fields create pocket dimensions that slow the time within to a crawl. This”—he pats the ship once, twice, three times, as though he can’t believe his luck in getting it—“speeds time up behind that door. Much trickier. When you slow things down, so what if a few extra seconds pass during months of stasis? But speeding up—ah, one misplaced decimal and you’d open that Escargone an hour from now to find my dusty skeleton entombe
d like a Pharoah. It’s terribly dangerous, locking yourself inside hyperaccelerated time fields. But all the fun stuff is.”
“So how long will you…”
“Once that door slams shut, great engines will speed time up inside. Scrimshaw won’t see me for hours—but I won’t see that desiccated warden for weeks.”
“I’m afraid I still don’t fathom how that assists you…”
Paulius steps inside the Escargone, tapping the ingredients strapped to the walls like a game show host displaying fabulous prizes. “That old oubliette gave me just six weeks to prepare your meal. Six weeks! That’s not long enough to learn how to cook the Inevitable Philosophies properly, let alone transform them.”
“I’ve never seen such a transformation.” Kenna cannot believe his luck. He’s dreaded talking to Mother and Father, weathering their disappointment at his occupying his time with such trivial things such as food—and now Paulius has created a magical portal for him to shed his Philosophies in, emerging as a common cook …
Why does that idea keep bobbing to the surface?
“Yet you will witness the transformation! That’s the point, Kenna. I’ll show you how this works. But Stage One is reviving the simple dishes so we can make them with the skill of old.” Paulius twirls a knife on his finger. “There’s no sense in trying to improve a dish if we can’t experience it at the summit of its glory. So we make the same dishes over and over, trusting our palates to lead the way.”
Kenna does not know how to cook, or to eat. This will be a master class in cuisine: the easiest dishes, starting from square one. He tells himself this is not a trade; it is an education.
“I pray…” Kenna swallows back drool. “I pray you shan’t find such repeated efforts tedious.”
“It is terribly tedious! Yet it’s not. Cooking isn’t one skill, Kenna—it’s a hundred different skills we mash into one word. It’s knowing how to crush an herb to impart the perfect flavor-perfume. It’s knowing how flavor interacts with the goose’s skin. It’s knowing how the roast’s heat will change its scent. You may cook the same goose a hundred times, but that’s a hundred skills you improve with each dedicated dish, until one day you fire on a hundred cylinders and eat the face of God.”
The Sol Majestic Page 5
