James White - The Galactic Gourmet

As Prilicla turned to fly after them, it said reassuringly, “The emotional radiation from the hunters indicates general confusion, anger, resentment, but not, I think, of sufficient intensity to result in physical violence, and accompanied by very strong feelings of loss. There is little risk of them attacking you, friend Gurronsevas, unless you provide additional provocation. Ask Remrath if it wishes to remain with its friends or return on the ship with Creethar, and extricate yourselves as quickly as possible.”

Gurronsevas spent the most unnerving fifteen minutes of his life trying to do just that. The hunters had no objection to Remrath returning to the ship, since the First Cook was too old and infirm to return on foot, but not so Gurronsevas. The off-worlder, they insisted loudly as they gathered around him to cut off his escape, must remain and travel back with them to the mine. He must do this because the creatures in the ship had taken their leader, Creethar, and Gurronsevas was a hostage against its return. They would not harm him unless he tried to escape, or unless Creethar was not returned to them.

Their voices became quieter and almost clinical in tone as they began discussing how best they might overcome the large, thick-skinned off-worlder. Spears and arrows might not be immediately disabling, they thought, so that the best procedure might be to strike heavily at the three legs on one flank with their tails. The creature’s legs were short but the body appeared top-heavy, and if it could be toppled onto its side it would have difficulty regaining its feet. The skin of the underbelly appeared to be much thinner than that of the back and flanks so that a spear-thrust into that area would probably be lethal.

They were quite right, Gurronsevas thought, but he was certainly not going to tell them so. He was still trying to think of something to say when Remrath rushed to his defense.

“Listen to me,” said the Wem loudly. “You had more brains when you were children. Use them. Do you want to risk an end like Creethar’s, with too many of you injured and dying to be carried home? Think of the criminal waste of meat, to yourselves and your young near-adults awaiting your return. We have never seen Gurronsevas fight, because its actions towards us have always been helpful. But this creature is totally beyond your hunting experience. It weighs twice as much as any two of you, scrawny and half-starved as you are, and I cannot imagine what it might do to you.”

Gurronsevas could not imagine what he could do to them, either, so he allowed Remrath to do the talking.

“You do not need a hostage because you already have one,” it continued quickly. “Gurronsevas spends all of our waking time in the mine, where it helps with the cooking, instructs and advises the kitchen staff and young trainees in the off-world methods of selecting and preparing edible vegetation, and is helpful in many other ways. We would not want it to be killed, or hurt, or even insulted in any way.

“Besides,” Remrath ended, “in my professional opinion as your first cook and preserver, Gurronsevas would be totally inedible.”

Surprise and pleasure at the complimentary things Remrath had just said about him kept Gurronsevas silent for a moment. The people in the mine, both young and old, had been talkative but undemonstrative, and he had thought that his presence among them was being tolerated and nothing more. He wanted to say a word of appreciation to the elderly Wem, but he was not out of trouble yet and there were other words he must speak first.

“Remrath is correct,” he said loudly. “I am inedible. And Creethar, too, is inedible so far as the off-worlders on our vessel are concerned, because we do not eat meat. Remrath knows this and has given its offspring into our charge because of our greater knowledge and experience in this area. It, and all of you, have our promise that Creethar will be returned to you at the mine as soon as possible.”

I am telling the truth, Gurronsevas told himself, but not all of it. Rhabwar’s crew and half the medical team were meat eaters, but the meals they consumed on board ship and at Sector General were a product of the food synthesizers, perfect in color, texture, and taste though they were, rather than parts from some hapless food animal — and they would certainly not eat any portion of an intelligent being. Neither did he say whether Creethar would be alive or dead when he was returned to them. He thought he knew which it would be, but the communication of that kind of bad news was better left to medics.

It suddenly occurred to him that the medical team did not know anything about their patient other than what they could see with their scanners, and information on how its injuries had been sustained might be helpful as well as allowing him to change to a less sensitive subject. The Wem were talking rapidly but quietly among themselves, and from the few words the translator picked up they seemed to be less hostile towards him now. He would risk a question.

“If it will not cause distress to you,” he said, “can you tell me how Creethar received its injuries?”

Plainly the question did not cause distress because one of them, a hunter called Druuth who had replaced the injured Wem as leader, began describing the event. In complete and often harrowing detail that included the incidents and conversations leading up to and following the event as well as Creethar’s own report and instructions before the First Hunter had lost consciousness, the story unfolded.

Gurronsevas formed the impression that the Wem might be talking to excuse or perhaps justify something the hunting party had or had not done.

Soon after dawn on the thirty-third day of the worst hunt that any of them could remember, they discovered the tracks left by an adult twasach and several cubs leading from the muddy edge of a river towards a nearby hillside cave. The larger prints were not deeply impressed into the soft ground, indicating that the adult was either not fully grown or badly undernourished. But it was unlikely to be as close to starvation as its hunters, Druuth thought bleakly, which meant greater danger for the one who had to trap and kill it. Inevitably that one would be First Hunter Creethar, her mate.

In the far past, the ancient, disintegrating books at the mine told of a time when the twasachs had been tree-climbers and eaters of vegetation as well as smaller animals, but since then they had learned to attack and eat anything they could find regardless of its size, which included unwary Wem hunters. This twasach would be particularly dangerous because it was both hungry and naturally protective of its young. But the glorious prospect of trapping an entire twasach family had, in spite of Creethar’s repeated warnings, made them both overeager and undercautious.

Druuth understood them well. For too long had they been catching and sharing the tiny and unsatisfying carcasses of rodents and burrowing insects, and then, to hide their shame and try to fill the noisy emptiness of their stomachs, they had left camp one by one to eat secretly the fruit and berries and roots that they had pretended not to see each other gather along the way. But suddenly they were feeling like true Hunters again, brave and proud and about to eat their fill of meat as was their right under the law.

The hillside was steep and rocky, with more sharp-edged stones carpeting the dried-up river bed at its base. There were only a few clumps of vegetation, not very securely rooted, to give a steadying grip for their hands, and the crumbling, uneven ledge leading up to the cave would bear a twasach’s weight but was barely wide enough to support one Wem at a time. She followed Creethar along the narrow ledge to the cave mouth and there, clinging precariously to the slope, and with their heavy tails hanging over the ledge and threatening to overbalance them, they deployed the weighted net.