The Light-Years Beneath My Feet

by Alan Dean Foster

  Preferring not to ponder that awful possibility, he headed for the nearest internal transport. His hopes were boosted by the admiring comments of several Sessrimathe and one Ouralia who glimpsed the khirach-tel in passing.

  The floating bonfire that hovered in the center of the common room during the night was replaced during the day, by mutual agreement, with a mist fountain in the shape of some local flowers. The spray filled the air of the room with a cheerful mix of sound and moisture before folding back in upon itself. In response to Walker’s question one day, the room had tried to explain to him the mechanism whereby water could be brought forth out of empty air, its shape and direction controlled, kept from falling to the ground, and recycled with no loss to evaporation. He quickly gave up on any thought of understanding what was being explained to him. He did not have the physics for it.

  But he did have the physics, and the chemistry, for cooking. So as the transport made its way through the interior of the residential complex, he insisted to his friends that they join him in the common room.

  Once there, Braouk eyed the edible fantasy admiringly. “Prepared with skill, the offering awaits eating, brightly dancing.” Bulbous eyes extended on the ends of stalks protruding from the upper flanks of his blocky torso, greenish blonde quills quivering, the Tuuqalian reached out toward the tray with the tip of one massive manipulating tentacle.

  Walker had to pull it away. “Sorry, Braouk. I have the details of everyone’s individual metabolism on file, and while you and I can share many foods, this khirach isn’t one of them. I’m afraid you’ll have to give it a pass.”

  Both eyestalks curved forward, bringing the oculars at their tips closer to the human and his tempting creation. “I am not afraid of a small upset to my stomachs. What could happen, if daintily I taste, one lick?”

  “You could go blind,” Walker told him somberly. “I’ve subdued most of the alkaloids in the dish, but your system couldn’t break down them all. Your body is particularly sensitive to at least two. It’s too much of a risk.”

  The tentacle withdrew. Vertically aligned jaws parted and closed regretfully, serrated teeth interlocking with one another. “Next time please, you will make, something for me?”

  Walker smiled. It was a sign of the progress he had made since starting on his training that someone as sensitive as Braouk might actually look forward to the results of the amateur chef’s efforts. Walker turned to George.

  “You, on the other hand . . .”

  “Oh no, not me.” The dog backed away slowly. “Remember the last offering you insisted I try? Ended up giving me a touch of the mange.”

  Walker remembered clearly. “That was a mistake. I should have left out the craadlin seeds. They were oiled on mostly for visual appeal, anyway.”

  “Yeah, well, mange doesn’t have much visual appeal, either.” Muttering, the dog gestured with his snout. “If it’s so tasty, let her try it first.”

  Standing half in, half out of the aqueous floral display, a comfortably moistened Sque squinted through silvery eyes as Walker came toward her. Kneeling, he held out the tray. It was very light, as was the dish itself.

  “I hope you like it, Sque,” he offered encouragingly. “It’s suitable for your digestive system, I promise. I know that if you like it, it will have passed the acid test.” As tentacles coiled reflexively and she flinched back, he added hastily, “I didn’t mean that literally. There’s no acid in it.”

  Droplets of water glistened on bits of the K’eremu’s outrageous personal ornamentation: the strands of iridescent metal, elegant beads, and other flashy accoutrements that decorated her person. Drawing all ten limbs beneath her brought her up to her maximum height of four feet. Horizontal slits of black pupils regarded him from within deep-set eyes the color of polished steel. Her tone was typically condescending.

  “Why should I subject my educated internal constitution to the misguided flailings of a gastronomic ignoramus such as yourself?”

  By now, Walker was so used to the K’eremu’s casually insulting manner of speech that he hardly noticed it. “Because I’ve been working at this for many months now. Because I’ve gotten damn good at it. Because like it or not, you’re my friend.” When she did not stir he sighed and added, “And because only your sophisticated palate, or the physiological equivalent thereof, is mature enough to render a fitting opinion on the result.”

  She relented. “I must admit that from sharing my company you have become marginally more adept at recognizing blatant truths.” Eyes inclined toward the tray as one tendril rose from beneath her. Brushing the tip through the delicate khirach, she swept up a dash of pseudo-souffl, a thimbleful of geljees, just a spark of lavender flame, and brought the blend back to her small mouth. A regretful Braouk and hopeful George joined the anxious Walker in awaiting the K’eremu’s verdict.

  After an interminable pause she blinked both eyes, inflated slightly, and emitted a pair of bubbles to punctuate her response. “While your effort founders on the edge of the barely edible and would see you thrown out of any marginally legal eating establishment on K’erem, it cannot be denied that the result is tolerable to my system.” Knowing Sque’s penchant for giving voice to understatement on a cosmic scale, Walker was delighted. When she added, “I believe that, in the interests of fairness to the diligent efforts of a representative of an inferior species, I should extend myself to the degree of partaking of a second sampling,” and took another bite, his heart leaped.

  With the object of his friend’s exertions more than validated by the K’eremu, George promptly dug into the khirach-tel with all the enthusiasm of a cat in a tuna cannery. By the time dog and K’eremu had finished with it, there was barely a flicker of lavender fire and a few desultory geljees left to garnish the scattered remnants of the souffl itself.

  Lying on his right side, belly pooched out from dogged overstuffing, George looked up lazily at where his friend sat supported by a nexus of black and gold wire that passed for a chair.

  “I’ve got to admit, Marc, that you’ve come a long way since you tried coagulating that jibartle.”

  Braouk gestured with two of his four upper tentacles. “Remember it well, something hard to forget, that meal.”

  “It chased us around the room.” George belched softly. “It tried to eat Sque.” From the vicinity of the fountain, a number of the K’eremu’s tendrils gestured by way of punctuation. “Braouk had to kill it.”

  Walker looked up from his chair. “That was my fault. At that stage I wasn’t adequately prepared to tackle such an advanced project. I’d been doing really well, and I got cocky.” He shook his head at the memory of it. “Who knew there were dishes that had to be counseled psychologically before they could be served?”

  The dog showed his teeth. “That khirach-tel makes up for it. Delicious! What are you going to do now?”

  Walker blinked at him. “I don’t follow you, George. ‘Do’?”

  With an effort, the dog heaved himself back onto his feet. Tail wagging, he approached his friend and placed his chin on the man’s left knee. The dog’s gaze was profound.

  “With your new skill. You’ve put enough effort into it. You should do something with it.”

  “Actually,” Walker admitted, “I hadn’t thought about it in that way. Learning local methods of artistic, natural food preparation was just a means to pass the time—and to prove that I could do something more than just exist on Sessrimathe charity.”

  “Then give back.” Sque ambled out from beneath the water blossoms. “Do some demonstrations for our hosts. They will be as amazed as I am. Though we survive nicely thanks to a reservoir of goodwill among our hosts, even a well-fashioned reservoir can leak. Show them that you are more than the underlimbed, ignorant primitive you appear to be.”

  “Maybe I’ll do that,” he told her dryly. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to prepare some demonstration dishes for anyone who might be interested. It would be an easy, and enjoyable, way to show our thanks to
our hosts for what they’ve done for us.”

  As he slid his head back off Walker’s knee, George nodded agreeably. “Just try not to make anyone sick, okay? And no more dinner that tries to eat the diner.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Walker assured him. “I know what I’m doing now.” He was not simply boasting. The impossible-to-please Sque’s grudging validation of the khirach-tel had been the final approval he had been seeking. He fully expected his subsequent culinary efforts to be even more spectacular. Both George and the K’eremu had the right idea: Whenever possible, he should use his newly won skills to ingratiate themselves even further to their hosts. He felt confident he could do that.

  What he did not expect was that his exhibition preparations of aesthetic galactic cuisine would lead to a possible way home.

  2

  Walker spun slowly in the center of the demonstration sphere, the ingredients for the sifdd alternately hovering and zipping around him. Beyond the boundaries of the sphere’s restraining field he could see the invited guests. The majority were tripodal, three-eyed, triple-armed, beige-tinted Sessrimathe, elegantly and colorfully clad, but here and there other, even more outrageous shapes could be discerned. While his efforts at culinary artistry had not made him famous, they had at least gained him a certain notoriety. If nothing else, he was certainly the best human chef on Seremathenn. He was also the only human on Seremathenn.

  This unsought exclusivity did not diminish the satisfaction he felt at what he had accomplished over the course of the preceding months. His unsophisticated species notwithstanding, he knew what he could do. In the space of a couple of years he had grown more than competent: he had become good.

  At his command he was enveloped by a dust storm of different spices and seasonings. A few onlookers voiced astonishment in the gentle, muted tones of the Sessrimathe while a single loud, sharp whistle was emitted by an unseen representative of the curious Kyalrand who were paying their first visit to Seremathenn. His vision momentarily obscured by the aromatic whirlwind he had called forth, Walker was not able to identify the individual whistler.

  No matter. He was busy enough, trying to control the active components of the incipient sifdd. With dexterous strokes of his cooking wand and concomitant verbal commands to the ever-alert processing instrumentation, ingredients were combed, combined, conflated, and cooked. A ring of ground flowers not unlike flour coalesced around him. Eddies of puff pastry began to take shape, rising and expanding in carefully controlled suspension. Spice flares burst in and through the emerging ring like sharks attacking a strung-out school of bait fish.

  When the perfectly crisped pastry had absorbed the last of the flavorings, Walker brought forth miniature waterspouts of liqueur and fruit juice. Under his guidance, these began to twist and coil about one another, serpentine shapes already subtle of flavor that he further imbued with essence of t’mag and surrun. When all was combined, he shattered the ring of pastry into a hundred individual shapes, each slightly different from the next, so that they orbited his waist like so many miniature moons while a constrained ring of pale pink liquid swirled lazily about his vertical axis.

  He paused there for effect, letting the impressed audience savor the last moments before final processing. Then, with a flourish of commands and wand, he made the final adjustments to temperature and individual constraining fields.

  The arc of pink fluid splintered, prompting murmurs of appreciation from several in the audience. Attracted to the fields being generated by the individual pastries, independent drifting globules of the customized liqueur that Walker had lovingly hand-tailored to his own specifications proceeded to englobe each and every puff. When the last portion of pastry had been encased, an appropriate collection server rose from the assemblage of instrumentation behind him. Following a rising spiral course, the device proceeded to swallow each of his flaky creations one by one. Once gathering had been completed, the server returned to its charging base, the demonstration sphere powered down, and Walker settled gently to the floor. The alien equivalent of applause that ensued was notable for its enthusiasm.

  In the course of the reception that followed, he readily elaborated in some detail on the intricacies of his newly honed talent to visiting Sessrimathe who had traveled from many parts of Seremathenn. In between knowledgeable questions and casual conversation, the visitors who filled the greeting chamber in the human’s home edifice were treated to samples of the very gastronomic concert they had just seen performed.

  Having mastered a modest familiarity with the basics of Sessrimathen conversation, Walker participated in these discussions with verve and ease. By now he was as comfortable around the three-legged Sessrimathe as he had been with fellow boaters out for a Sunday afternoon cruise on Lake Michigan. As was often the case at such moments, he fought hard not to think of home. They were, perhaps permanently he had reluctantly come to realize, a part of his past. Of a different time on a different world—one out of sight, mind, and reach of his present location and lifestyle.

  “Not bad.” The mild praise arose from somewhere near his ankles. Glancing down, he saw George noshing unashamedly on a sifdd. The dog was lying on his belly, rear legs splayed out behind him, the still-warm pastry balanced between his forelegs. “I can guess how you make the booze ball hold its form instead of turning into an instant puddle, but how do you keep it from soaking into the dough?”

  “Same method,” Walker told him. “But different coherent charges. One compresses and maintains the liqueur’s spherical shape; another repels the fluid away from the pastry. So when you bite into one, you get both a bit of baked dough and a swallow of cooling liqueur. Opposing temperatures, consistencies, tactility, and flavors all in one.” He allowed himself a moment of pardonable pride. “Food as physics.”

  “Not to mention the way your lips and teeth tingle from the lingering charge.” Unkempt floppy ears lying against the sides of his head, the dog winked up at his friend. “Maybe sometime you can electrify a bone or two for me.”

  “Too easy,” Walker replied. “I’ll show you how to do it yourself.” A slight frown creased his features as his companion rose abruptly to all fours. “Something wrong with the food?” He eyed the half-eaten sifdd uncertainly.

  “Nope.” The dog nodded. “I think you’ve got company.” With that, he gently picked up the remainder of the pastry in his teeth and trotted off into the crowd, exchanging occasional greetings with those Sessrimathe he recognized. A couple, Walker noted not entirely without envy, reached down with three-fingered hands to pet the dog as he ambled past.

  Expecting Sessrimathe, he was mildly startled when upon turning around he found himself confronted not by one of the ubiquitous natives of Seremathenn but by an off-worlder. One of a species he did not recognize. One that was unusually tall, unusually slender, and, it had to be admitted, unusually beautiful.

  With a sinuous, graceful gait that bordered on the sensuous, the alien approached on a pair of long legs half hidden, half revealed by a boldly patterned kilt or skirt. The upper portion of the body was equally exposed by a covering of furry straps that crisscrossed the proportionately narrower torso. Protected by smaller straps, both arms ended in dual opposing digits. The head was equally long and slim, equine more than feline but with several features that tended to the piscine. Slender ears a foot long emerged from either side of the hairless skull to extend stiffly upward. Though six foot four or so (notably taller if one included the ears), the creature weighed considerably less than he did. Not one but four tapering tails emerged from a point below the back of the creature’s waist. They wove and twisted gracefully in and about one another like a quartet of cobras engaged in animated conversation.

  Saucer-sized eyes, big and round as those of a tarsier, with massive golden pupils set against a pale yellow background, focused intently on him. Set below a slightly protruding shelf of sculpted bone that might or might not conceal nostrils, the small mouth was open as if in a perpetual “O” of surprise. He
could not discern any teeth. A circular ring of pale muscle that encircled the mouth was stained with several bright colors. The effect was not unlike looking directly down at Saturn’s north pole from above.

  The creature’s skin was smooth as silk. In the ambient light of the room it took on the hue of polished bronze. Walker could not tell if it was leathery, scalelike, or something previously unencountered. All he knew was that the effect was eye-catchingly attractive. And those eyes . . .

  Abruptly, the visitor was standing before him. Of all the aliens he and his friends had encountered in their journeying, both on the Vilenjji capture ship and subsequently on Seremathenn, this was so far indisputably the most physically striking. He found himself mesmerized by the multiple switching tails, the shimmering pupils, the achingly elegant upthrust hearing organs, and legs that were as perfectly proportioned as a fractal that had been stretched out straight as a ruler. Apparently, the creature had sought him out and intended to speak to him. He waited eagerly to see if the visitor’s appearance was echoed by its voice, and to learn its gender. Surely it claimed one. No species so stunning could possibly be ignorant of the splendor of sexual reproduction.

  “You, human! You pretty damn good cooker, you is.”

  He winced inwardly. Fingernails dragging across a blackboard. Old-fashioned dentist drills preparing to bite enamel. Metal car parts dragging across a concrete roadbed. A chill ran down his spine that had nothing to do with the moderate temperature in the room.

  The sound of the exquisite creature’s voice was excruciating to his ears.

  Eyelids like translucent lilies momentarily slid down over the spectacular oculars as the creature blinked. As it did so, an iridescent golden frill erected and flexed on the back of the alien’s head and neck. “You like cook. You no like talk?”