They went back to the entrance to examine a list of prices. Clave memorized the numbers he was interested in. “Why so much for strawberries and bananas?”
“Strawberries keep dying. I don’t have bananas. Can’t grow them here at all. They need tide. The Navy buys them off some tree dwellers east of here, when they get the chance. Clave, you haven’t established credit yet—”
“Credit?”
Zakry Bowles spoke slowly, enunciating. “You haven’t shown that you can pay. But you can pick out what you want now, then come back later, pay me and collect it.”
“What we want is stuff we can grow in a tree.”
They discussed that at length. Rather joined in; there were things he would not go home without. Debby eased over to Carlot. “What’s got you upset?”
“He won’t give me credit. We came in with a pod for our cabin and the Belmy log already in dock. Well, Dave Kon owes me money. I’ll go see him. Excuse me.”
Zakry was urging something else on them: a greenishyellow fruit with an obscene shape. He showed Debby how to remove the peel. Clave laughed when Debby bit into it, but it was good. Carlot was talking to the Lockheeds, and they were nodding.
She came back. “I have to talk to Dave Kon. You’d be bored—”
“You’re leaving us?”
“Stet. Stay with the Lockheeds. I’ll meet you at Half Hand’s Steak House.”
Half Hand’s was across the Market.
They flew through rain. Droplets flew from the edges of their wings. Rather breathed through his nose; from time to time he snorted out water. Debby and Clave were doing the same. The locals had donned masks of gauzy fabric, except for Raym, who breathed in the rain as if he cared not at all.
Half Hand’s was a faceted dome adjoining a smaller, less symmetrical structure. You could see through some of the facets on the big dome: they were starstuff fabric. The rest was gray concrete. One six-sided facet had been cut away, and a wooden door hinged into the opening.
Grag Maglicco, the Navy man, suddenly asked, “Have we all got sticks?” He assessed the blank looks correctly. “Go on in. I’ll join you, couple of breaths.” He swerved aside, headed for an angular hut twenty meters along the wheel.
The inside was concrete too: concrete troweled over a structure of starstuff, outside and in. The concrete bore paintings of intriguing complexity and a variety of styles, but Rather caught only glimpses of these through a wall of citizens.
Half Hand’s was full. Men, women, and children made a hemispherical shell around the newcomers, their toes clinging to two-meter poles protruding from the concrete. There were no foothold poles in the windows, so those stayed clear.
From an open hexagon on the far side drifted smoke and cooking odors. Nurse Lockheed led them that way. She called through the opening. “Half Hand?”
A man came out of the crowd behind her. “Hi, Nurse. You got money?”
“No. Put it on the Serjents’ tab. I have a party of eight.”
There was nothing wrong with Half Hand’s hands.
He was a jungle giant, mostly bald, and his arms and legs were corded with muscle. He said, “Serjents? I heard—” Pull stop. “Sure, I’ll give the Serjents credit. What do you want?”
“Let’s see the kitchen.”
“Nobody sees the kitchen.” Half Hand was peering past Nurse Lockheed. “Shorts?”
“Tree dwellers. They’ve never seen anything like your kitchen.”
“Nobody sees the kitchen.”
“I did,” Nurse said.
Debby pushed her way forward. “Half Hand? I’m Debby Citizen—”
“Pleasure,” he said gravely.
“I wonder if you’d be interested in a description of a kitchen in a tuft.”
Half Hand studied her; nodded. “Just you. Nurse, the special’s moby.”
“How old?”
“Eight days ago, shipful of Dark divers took a moby. Special is moby till we run out. Sausage cost you three times as much. No turkey today.”
“We want vegetables, lots, all kinds. Couple of kigrams of moby too, not too rare.”
“Moby’s ready now. Vegetables soon. You, Debby, you cooked in that tree?”
“Some.”
Half Hand beckoned her in.
Rather could feel the eyes. With a conscious effort he looked. Of the forty or so diners, only a dozen or so were watching what was happening at the kitchen entrance. Even those concentrated more on eating; their right hands kept pale wooden sticks in constant motion. The eye-pressure still made him flinch.
Grag Maglicco rejoined them. He passed out pairs of sticks of pale wood, no bigger than the branchlets a tree dweller was used to.
A woman brought them a two-kigram slab of meat, black on one side, pink on the other. John Lockheed took it on his knife. He flapped toward the wall, pushing the meat ahead of him. Diners edged aside to give him room or to avoid getting grease on their clothing.
Nurse had to urge them. “Come on.”
There were too many people.
But Clave followed Nurse, and Rather followed him.
There was room. Nurse talked to some of the locals around them. John carved chunks from the meat and passed them, knife to sticks. Moby meat was good. Tenderer than swordbird, richer than turkey.
Grag’s own sticks — like every Clump citizen’s — were ornately carved. Some were wood, more were bone. Grag caught Rather looking. He showed Rather his own bone sticks. “You carve them yourself. Circle would mean I’m married. Spiral means I’m looking. A bird would say who I work for. Outline around the bird would mean I own the company. What I’ve got is the rocket, ’cause I’m Navy. You’d want a honey hornet, for Serjent Logging. Change life style, start new sticks.”
John Lockheed pointed out a clump of customers to Clave. Tall men and women, a dozen or so, and a few infants; isolated, clustered close as if for protection. Peculiar footgear, thick-heeled sandals with toes protruding.
“They’re happyfeet. Half Hand should make them check those shoes at the door,” John said. “They’re for fighting, for kicking.”
“Lupoffs?”
“Yes. Why?”
“No reason,” Clave said.
Gourds of red liquid passed among the diners. One came within reach, and John took it. He drank, then passed it to Clave. “Fringe tea. Don’t take too much.”
It went from Clave to Rather. Its taste was bitter and sweet, not unpleasant. John stopped Rather from passing the gourd to Raym. “Too much in his blood already.”
Raym grinned and nodded.
Debby and Half Hand joined them; they made room.
Debby said, “He’s got four citizens doing the cooking, all women. There’’s a major fire against the back wall, held in by sikenwire. The kitchen’s got maybe twenty windows in it, and Half Hand closes some of them to get the breeze he wants, keep the fire going and the smoke out. He’s.roasting a slab of moby the size of two men. It’s black on one side and raw on the other, and he slices off the charred side.
“There’s also…” She waved a hand and a foot as if trying to describe without words. “I thought it was a ball of hard stuff like the Vivarium. Inside, a froth of water and live steam, and cut-up plants.”
“It’s a bag,” Half Hand said. “Keep it turning, the vegetables cook even. Draining the water is the tricky part.”
“I saw them do that. They open the bag and throw the whole glob of cookwater at the lee windows and catch the vegetables in a net.”
“Ho! Vegetables are ready then.” In fact three junglegiant women were already flying around the dome’s curvature, passing out what they carried.
“We use an open pot,” Debby told Half Hand. “Tide keeps it in, whatever you’re cooking. We cook meat and vegetables together. If you don’t keep stirring it, it all bubbles out.”