The Compleat Boucher

by Anthony Boucher; Editor: James A. Mann

  An urgent spacegram had persuaded the Port Luna Chief to stay on Terra with his presumptive prisoner until the public eye arrived.

  “Of course,” that prisoner was remarking once again, “I shall refuse to disclose the reason for my presence on Luna, the name under which I traveled thither, or the motive for my invasion of the picture-peddler’s room. I shall merely plead guilty and serve my sentence on Luna, while you, my dear Captain Wark, continue to prosecute here on Earth the search for the abominable murderer of my beloved brother.”

  The Lunar Chief gave his old friend a yes-but-what-can-I-do? look.

  “Nothing.” Captain Wark answered his unspoken query. “You’ve got your evidence; you have to prosecute. But Brin’s spacegram hinted—”

  “The public eye,” Dolf Mase stated, “is a vastly overrated character. The romantic appeal of the unconventional—”

  At this point the nascent lecture was interrupted by the entrance of a public eye and a Lunar sneak-thief.

  And in another five minutes there occurred one of the historical moments in the annals of criminalistics: the comparison of two identical prints made by two different men.

  Wark and the Chief were still poring over the prints, vainly striving to find the faintest classifiable difference, when Fers addressed the lawyer.

  “War’s over,” he said. “And I think it’s unconditional surrender for Mase. You try to bring up this Lunar ‘alibi’ in court and we’ll have Smit shuttled down here and produced as a prosecution exhibit. Unless you force us to that, we’ll just forget the whole thing; no use announcing this identity-problem until we’ve adjusted our systems to it. But either way we’ve got you cold.”

  “I still,” said Dolf Mase smugly, “reserve my defense.”

  Hours later, Fers Brin was delivering his opinion over a beer.

  “Only this time,” Fers said, “we know it’s a bluff. This fingerprint gimmick was a gift from his own strange gods—he never could have counted on it. All he has left now is some kind of legalistic fireworks and much damned good it’ll do him.”

  “You’ve done a good job, Brin,” Captain Wark said glumly. “We’ve got Mase nailed down—only . . .”

  “Only you can’t really rejoice because you’ve lost faith in the science of identification? Brighten up, Captain. It’s OK. Look: it’s all because we forgot one little thing. Fingerprint identification worked so beautifully for so many centuries in so many million cases that we came to believe in it as a certainty. We took it as an axiom: There are no identical fingerprints. And we missed the whole point. There never was any such certainty. There were only infinitely long odds.”

  Captain Wark sat up slowly and a light began to gleam in his eyes.

  But the Chief said, “Odds?”

  “Galton,” Fers went on, “is the guy who started it all on a serious criminalistic level. Sir Francis Galton, English anthropologist. It’s all in your office; I looked it up again while you were disposing of our print-twins. Quite a character, this Galton; practically founded meteorology and eugenics too. And he figured that the odds on any two fingerprints coinciding on all the points we used in classification was one in sixty-four billion. For his time this was fine; it was just about the same, for practical police work, as saying one in infinity. But what’s the population of the system now?”

  “The whole system?” The Chief’s eyes were boggling. “Damned near—seventy billion!”

  “So by now,” the Captain exclaimed, “it just about had to happen sooner or later!”

  “Exactly,” said Fers. “From now on a single print is not identification. It’s strong presumptive evidence, but that’s all. And it’ll usually be enough. Just remember never to feed the defense ammunition by trying to claim that an odds-on chance is an unshakable fact. And you’ve still got the best possible personal identification in two or more prints. You noticed that all the other fingers on those two men were completely different. Chances on two prints coinciding are about one in forty quadrillion, which is good enough for us. For a while. And we don’t have words for the chances on all ten matching up. That works out to the sixtieth power of two times the eightieth power of ten—if you want to see what it looks like, put down a one and write ninety-eight zeroes after it.”

  Captain Wark looked like himself again. Happily he raised his beer mug in a toast. “I propose we drink to the identification man of the future Inter-Galactic Empire,” he proclaimed, “who first discovers two sets of ten matching prints!”

  Secret of the House

  Of course no one realized in advance what would be, ounce for ounce, the most valuable return cargo of the Earth-Venus spaceships, even though the answer should have been obvious to anyone with the faintest knowledge of historical patterns.

  Rare metals? With the cost of fuel to lift them out of Venus’ almost-Earth gravity making them even costlier than on Earth itself? No, the answer was the obvious but overlooked one: What did Marco Polo bring back from China and Vasco da Gama from India? Why was Columbus seeking a new route to the Indies?

  In one word: spices.

  Man’s palate needs occasional rejuvenation. One of the main purposes of exploration, intercontinental or interplanetary, is the restimulation of jaded taste buds. And in addition to the new spices there were new methods of cooking, such as that wonderful native Venusian quick passing through live steam, which gave the startling effect of sizzling hot crisp rawness; or balj, that strange native dish which was a little like a curry and a little like a bouillabaisse, but richer and more subtle than either. There was sokalj, or Venusian swamphog, the most delicately delicious meat on three planets—not that anything Martian would ever be considered by the true gourmet . . .

  This was the speech that Kathy listened to regularly once a week for the first year of her marriage. For she had married not only a prominent and successful man, she soon realized, but one who had been bitten at a susceptible age by the word gourmet.

  It was fun while they were courting. It was fun, anyway, for a video network receptionist to be taken to good restaurants by the top interplanetary commentator. It was especially fun to watch him go through the masculine production number of conferring with the headwaiter, sending his compliments (and instructions) to the chef, and exchanging views with the sommelier, as Kathy quickly learned to call the-man-with-the-wine. Wine did not ship well interplanetarily; acceleration over one g, in the term of the cognoscenti, “bruised” it. In this domain, the French still reigned supreme, and stressed their superiority to mask their natural jealousy of the upstart Venusian colonists.

  In every American city—with a few exceptions in New Orleans and San Francisco—former “French” restaurants had become “Venusian” and even in Paris cuisine venerienne marked some of the most highly esteemed establishments.

  But the entertainment value of a gourmet exhibitionist decreased as courtship progressed logically into marriage, and being wined and dined gave place to the daily problem of feeding the man. Quick freezing had, of course, made the bride’s problems simple compared to those of earlier centuries. But George, completely in character, insisted on a high percentage of personally prepared meals—and was shrewd enough to spot any substitute makeshifts via the deep freeze and the electronic oven.

  Not even the apartment on the very top level of Manhattan, where you could still see the Hudson, not even the charge accounts at shops she’d never dared enter, not even the wondrous fact that she loved George with an intensity which she had always considered just an unlikely convention of the women’s minimags—none of these could quite reconcile Kathy to life with a man who could down three bowls of your best hand-made oyster stew without interrupting his speech on the glories of authentic balj a la Venusberg, who could devour enough of a prime rib roast to throw the whole week’s budget out of joint while expatiating on the absurdity of the legend that Earth cooks in general, and the Anglo-Saxons in particular, did at least understand beef.

  Kathy toyed with the idea of hiri
ng a cook, not so much to satisfy George as to divert his inevitable reproaches to someone else. But aside from the fact that a cook’s salary would turn her charge accounts anemic, Kathy knew that her mother, both her grandmothers, and undoubtedly all four of her greatand all eight of her great-great-grandmothers had fed their men and kept them happy. This was a matter of family pride.

  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 for George.

  “Oh, Kathy!” Linda burbled. “I’ve got one of those nice let’s-see-what-happens dates with him tonight and could you possibly ask us both to dinner? Because he likes you and he’s really just about almost there and if we were . . . you know, all in the family and everything, I think it might just—”

  “Jose?” Kathy asked, knowing the answer. She grinned and doubled the quantities on the list.

  The worst of the preparations for dinner were over when Linda arrived, carrying, to Kathy’s surprise, a weekend case. The girl devoted only the necessary minimum of time to admiring George’s knitted leg, then dragged her sister into the bedroom.

  “Kathy. I’ve got such a problem. He’s known so many women . . . all over two planets and at embassies and maybe even spies. I told you tonight I think he will; only I don’t know what lipstick to use, what perfume, anything. I’ve got to make myself interesting; but I don’t want to overdo it. So I just brought everything I have. You tell me.”

  Kathy looked at the array. She thought of her dinner and The Plan and she began giving Linda her advice.

  It was the same cast that had attended the awful dinner which inspired The Plan, but they were different people. Jose, no longer the visiting colonial, was a gentleman at home among friends; Linda was radiant in the glow of simplicity and a well-scrubbed face; and George was praising the food.

  He praised the green peas. He praised the mashed potatoes. And above all he praised the fried chicken.

  “I can’t quite analyze it,” he kept saying. “There’s a touch there I can’t quite get. You’ve brought out the flavor miraculously. It wouldn’t,” he demanded suspiciously, “be that new powder Koenigsberg claims he found among the natives at the tip of the southern continent? I thought they hadn’t shipped any of that in yet.”

  “They haven’t, darling,” said Kathy.

  “Perhaps the tiniest pinch of b
alj with a little freshly ground celery seed?”

  “No.”

  “Then what in two planets—”

  “A woman must have some secrets, George. Let’s just say this is . . . a secret of the house.”

  At this point Kathy happened to catch Jose’s eye and hastily looked away. It was impossible that a Venusian diplomat would be winking at his hostess!

  George was still pursuing his questions over brandy in the living room. Jose, also possibly (Kathy prayed) in a question-asking mood, had led Linda out onto what the architect called the sun-area, though Kathy persisted in thinking of it, more romantically, as the balcony. As she saw the two turn to come back in, Kathy headed for the kitchen, an immemorial spot for sisterly confidences.

  But it was not Linda who followed her in. It was Jose. He leaned casually against the door jamb and told her, “Know secret of house.”

  “Yes?” said Kathy casually. “Oh, I mean—you do? Sometimes I have to stop and reread you, like a telegram. Well?”

  “Bought food of highest quality, cooked it extremely well, relied on nothing but natural flavor, probably little salt. Good old George always wanted so much seasoning, this strikes him as new and revolutionary taste sensation. Right?”

  Kathy grinned. “I’ll go quietly,” she said. “I thought it would work and I was sure of it when I ate at his regular lunch place. That’s just what they do; but because it’s a chop house with a reputation, he thinks it’s magic. Except I’ve learned things his way, too. From now on, George gets variety at home—and I think he’ll like all of it without ever knowing why he likes which.”

  “Simplicity also magic,” Jose observed. “Your idea—clean, fresh simplicity of Linda that accounts for fact am going to be your brother-in-law. Correct?”