James White - The Galactic Gourmet

Feeling confused, Gurronsevas said, “I do not know the entity, Peter. Is it important?”

“You do,” said Prilicla, wings beating slowly as it rose to hover above the patient. “Peter is the name used by family and friends for Pathologist Murchison’s life-mate, Diagnostician Conway, a being who in the past has been no stranger to unusual medical practices. But the matter is not important to our present situation. What is important is that you speak with Remrath as quickly as possible. Ask it for supplies of its herbal medications, with information regarding their application and use. That is important, friend Gurronsevas, and very, very urgent.”

Before replying, Gurronsevas turned one eye towards the direct vision port. The valley was still in darkness but the slopes of the mountains were outlined by the grey light of early dawn.

He said, “My memory for colors and shapes and smells, as well as for words of explanation, is excellent. If the matter is urgent there will be no need to talk again with Remrath. I shall leave shortly to begin gathering the necessary herbs and mosses. They are at their most effective when gathered early in the morning.”

Over the next four days Gurronsevas kept the ambulance ship supplied with fresh herbal vegetation when required, together with the Wem cook-healer’s instructions for using it, but he continued to spend as much time as possible in the mine kitchen. His reasons for doing so were both positive and negative.

Whenever he was present on the casualty deck, Murchison, Danalta and Naydrad were always worrying aloud about the ethical implications of a lay person dictating a patient’s course of medical treatment, and where the responsibility for treating Creethar really lay. Nothing was said to him directly, but he did not know how to answer the unspoken criticism and felt very disturbed by it, even though he normally considered the opinions of other people toward him to be of no importance. Since he had left the kitchens of the Cromingan-Shesk, where his authority had been absolute, his self-confidence had been under constant and successful attack. It was not a nice feeling.

Prilicla, who could not help but know of Gurronsevas’s feelings, waited until the others were either off-watch or too busy to listen before drawing him aside so that they could speak privately.

“I understand and sympathize with your feeling of irritation and uncertainty, Chief Dietitian,” said the empath, the quiet, musical trilling and clicking of its native speech barely audible above the translated voice in Gurronsevas’ earpiece, “as you must try to understand those of the medical team. In spite of the things you have heard them say, they are not being critical of you so much as displaying self-irritation at their own professional inadequacy over the fact that a mere cook — my apologies, friend Gurronsevas, when they take time to think about it they will realize that you are much more than a mere cook — is able to help their patient in ways that they cannot. They can no more help their feelings than you can your own, but I shall suggest gently that they refrain from showing them to you. Until the problem of Creethar is resolved, please make allowances for them. I could not have asked this of the Chief Dietitian who joined the hospital a few months ago. You have changed, friend Gurronsevas. It is for the better.”

His confused feelings were clear for the other to read, Gurronsevas knew, so he said nothing.

“For the present,” Prilicla went on, “it will be more comfortable for you if you spend as much time as possible with friend Remrath in the mine.”

That was not to be as easy as it first appeared. For some reason, Remrath, and to a lesser extent the rest of the kitchen staff and teachers, were acting in an increasingly unfriendly manner toward him. And Prilicla was too far away to read the subtle changes in their emotional radiation that would give him some indication of what he was saying or doing wrong.

Fortunately, the young Wem did not share the feelings of their elders and remained respectful, obedient, curious, and continually excited by speculations regarding the strange culinary marvels their off-world cook would suggest next. Even the returned hunters were sampling his offerings with decreasing reluctance, although, as staunch traditionalists, they still insisted that meat was the only proper food for an adult and that they would continue to eat it.

Considering the pitifully small amount they had brought back from their hunt — with careful rationing there would be barely enough to add a meat flavor to the standard Wem vegetable stew for a few more weeks — their personal shame must have been as great as their hunger. Gurronsevas did not openly disagree with them. He was educating ignorant palates and enticing them into trying new sensations, and generally winning their hearts and minds by a flanking attack through their stomachs. The pretense of losing the occasional battle was of no importance when he knew that he was winning the war.

But the hunters, too, were showing signs of turning against him for no reason that he could see. Unlike Remrath and the other teachers, they had never been friendly or relaxed in his presence, but they had adapted surprisingly well to having an off-worlder in their midst. Over the past few days, however, their behavior towards him had verged on the hostile. In his presence the silences of the Wem adults were lengthening to the point where an attempt to open a conversation with a simple question brought only the briefest and most reluctant of responses, delivered in a tone that should have turned the running water in the kitchen to ice. He could think of no reason for their change of behavior and it was beginning to irritate him. In the circumstances, he decided, it would be better to forget the polite niceties of a first contact situation and ask a simple, direct question.

“Remrath,” he said, “why are you angry with me?” After several minutes without a response, Gurronsevas decided that the question was being ignored. He returned his attention to the preparation of the day’s alternative main meal which, in spite of being nicknamed by the Wem ‘the off-world option’, was one of several dishes he had devised that used only local root and leaf vegetables with an added sauce containing the barest touch of the native herb shuslish which had the effect of lighting a gentle fire on the tongue while stirring the olfactory senses with a warm expectancy. From experience he knew that his dish would be chosen by the majority of the adults and all of the young, and it would be only a few die-hard hunters who would eat the native vegetable stew with its extremely light flavoring of meat. But that was fine, Remrath had told him when they were still talking, because the remains of the hunters’ kill preserved in the cold running mountain water weighed less than two pounds, and the less the demand, the longer it would last.

The dish complete, Gurronsevas stepped back to make room for the four young apprentice cooks on this shift, who moved quickly forward to begin spooning out and duplicating his presentation before moving the completed dishes to his newly introduced hot shelves to await serving. One of them — a youth called Evemth, he thought, although he still had difficulty telling near-pubescent Wem apart — had made a small rearrangement to the presentation by adding a few tiny sprigs of driss to the surface of the shuslish sauce, which would not do anything catastrophic to the overall taste but did add a certain visual attraction. The change had been made on only one platter, presumably Evemth’s own.

There had been a time when he would have verbally stripped the tegument from an underling who had dared to do such a thing without permission, if only to show the miscreant that The Master was alert and quick to see the smallest of unauthorized changes. But this young Wem was displaying culinary initiative and imagination and was beginning to think and experiment for itself. Evemth, if it was Evemth, showed promise.