She sat next to me, uninvited, all the while chirping away like a happy bird about other people I did not know and wrong addresses and missed deliveries. I didn’t even try to keep up with it all. I thought I could smell her perfume. This was hallucination or fantasy, of course. Seared people lose all sense of smell. Then I realized how close to me she was sitting. I wore no mastic, and my suite’s air exchange was turned off. Yet, she wasn’t gagging.
I interrupted her and said, “You can’t smell me!”
“No, I can’t. And you can’t smell me either, can you, Myr Harger?”
I stared at her, speechless. We were two of a kind.
“Well,” she said into the silence that had settled in the room, “will you be so kind as to do that for me?”
I didn’t hear her. I was too busy detecting the subtle appliances of the seared that she wore. From the barely detectable sheen of her skin mastic to the fire-retardant inner lining of her clothing.
She laughed then and said with mock authority, “Myr Harger, either lead me to your larder, or show me the door. If I don’t have my fish in fifteen minutes, my goose is cooked. And you of all people, Myr Harger, should understand that in my case, that’s no metaphor.”
Commanded, I led her to the kitchens. Or rather, I let Skippy lead us, since I couldn’t recall the way. We sat in the long-abandoned chef’s station while Skippy showed us life-size frames of the saltwater fish I still had in stasis. There were marlin, flounder, albacore, shark, halibut, salmon, octopus, and more.
Skippy said, “We also have a selection of saltwater mollusks and crustaceans and marine mammals.”
“No, thank you, Skippy,” she said. “It’s fish he likes, but I’ve forgotten what kind he said. What other kinds of fish are there in the sea?”
“Haddie, herring, eel, sole, barracuda, fluke, dab, mackerel—” Skippy spouted a long list in no discernible order, none of which rang a bell for her—“orange roughy, rattails, skates, black oreos, spiny dogfish,” and endlessly more.
Trying to be helpful, I interrupted Skippy’s recitation and asked, “How many people does it need to serve?”
She frowned, realizing that I’d not heard any part of her story. “Two,” she said, then added under her breath, “or one.”
“Hmmm,” I said, undeterred, “then one of those small flounders should do the trick, or perhaps a hoki.”
“I see,” she said. “I suppose choosing by size is a practical manner of making a selection. But my choice is more a matter of the heart.”
“You’re absolutely right,” I said. “The heart is no bean counter.” She smiled then for the first time, and I saw that she was pretty.
“Since I can’t recall his favorite fish, I’ll take your advice, Myr Harger, and choose one by size. That shark should do.” She pointed to the largest brute in the pack of sharks that I had.
“The big guy it is,” I said, and all the other fish disappeared. The shark she’d picked was over four meters long. It was a giant mako, farm-raised and put into stasis in 2061, a few years before the Outrage. She’d have a hard time finding one to replace it.
“Oh, and—I almost forgot.” She flashed a “silly me” look and said, “I’ll need it cooked and in my flat in”—she consulted some timekeeper—“ohmigod, in eleven minutes! Is that possible?”
“Most things are,” I said. “Skippy, please cook and deliver the shark to Myr Post’s apartment.”
“At once,” Skippy said.
Kitchen arbeitors wheeled the shark on a cart from the stasis locker. Its stiff flesh quickened moment by moment, and by the time the arbeitors had lifted it to the cooker, it was flapping its powerful tail and snapping its toothy jaws in long-interrupted terror. Before it could do any damage to the kitchen, the cooker brained it and slit it open.
I backed up a little to avoid the splashing blood.
Skippy said, “The cooker asks what recipe it should use.”
Myr Post puffed out her cheeks and pursed her lips. “I don’t think my cooker has a recipe for shark. I’m sorry to be such a pest, but could your cooker use one of its own?”
My contracts with visiting chefs during my banquet days allowed me to record and reuse the recipes they fed into my cooker (after making a handsome royalty payment). The cooker displayed frames of six different shark dishes it had prepared in the past. Myr Post picked the Mako Remoulade in which the shark was baked whole, stuffed with Arabic rice and pine nuts, and served on a swimming-pool-sized platter that mimicked a pebbly beach littered with baby red potatoes, cashews, giant prawns, sea urchins, and kelp. Around it were tidal pools of pungent and tart cocktail sauces and giant cockle shells of shark fin soup. It fed 800.
Arbeitors started hauling ingredients from the lockers.
“And, Skippy,” Myr Post said, “tell your cooker to tell my cooker what starters, soup, wines, et cetera to prepare.”
“Done,” said my efficient valet.
“And your arbeitors can manage bringing it over?” she asked me. “Or should I send mine up to help?”
“Mine are adequate,” I said.
“Splendid,” she said. “You are a marvelous neighbor. I will replace the shark and other ingredients, and I hope someday to have the opportunity to return the favor.” She began to retrace her steps to my front door, and I saw to my horror that she intended to leave, just like that. It had taken some effort for me to get used to her presence, and I thought the least she could do was stay a while longer.
I tried to think of something to hold her, and I said the first thing that came to mind, “I used to throw dinners once.”
“I know. I attended one,” she said, leading me to the foyer.
I was dumbfounded. Out of the thousands of guests at my banquet table, I was sure I’d remember another stinker, especially one so lovely.
Melina and Darwin Post attended March 3, 2097, Skippy informed me. That would have been one of my first banquets.
Perhaps guessing my thoughts, she said, “You may not have noticed us. It was before our accident.”
Accident? I thought. Were we all seared by accident, then?
We reached the foyer, she shook my hand and thanked me again, and the door opened for her.
“Tell me about your accident,” I blurted out, never good at small talk.
She stopped in the hall and looked at me carefully through my open doorway. “Even if I had the time right now, I doubt that I’d want to relive that nightmare, even in memory.” She must have decided to take pity on me then, for she continued. “But I have five minutes, and you have been extraordinarily generous to me, so I’ll give you the thumbnail version of why my dinner tonight, which you are so graciously catering, is so important.”
And she did. I stood in my doorway, and she stood in the hall, and this is what she told me. But first, do you happen to have an Alert!? I could sure use another. The kiosk? Thank you, Victor. I’ll wait until you return.
2.26
Fred and Costa analyzed the house from a restricted holding pattern one kilometer overhead. Fred had changed into the HomCom blacksuit in the aft compartment of Costa’s GOV as he briefed his new partner, a recent-batched jerry by the name of Michaelmas. Fred’s new skullcap wasn’t fully initialized yet, and his blacksuit balked at its attempts to synch up.
When Fred joined Costa in the cab, he made no comment about the fact that she, too, wore a full, regulation blacksuit. The evening must be too chilly for culottes.