by E. M. Foner
Eight
“I had Chance take my samples around to the upscale Horten shops and they ordered more than I can possibly make while going to school,” Dorothy explained to her business mentor. “Libby even said I can sew them at the lost-and-found in my free time since it’s sort of like doing schoolwork, but I’m not going to be able to keep up.”
“The shopkeepers really didn’t recognize that you were bringing them Horten designs that went out of fashion over three thousand years ago?” Blythe asked.
“Chance said that they didn’t, and I doubt it would make a difference if they did. I’m afraid I underpriced the first batch, though. And I should have given her an order limit to stop at, but it never occurred to me that the hats would be so popular.”
“Where is Chance?” Blythe asked. She looked around and shook her head at the haphazard heaps of Horten millinery material filling one of the spare rooms in the ice harvester that the McAllisters called home.
“She won’t sew hats,” Dorothy replied. “She made some nonsensical excuse about pricking her finger with a needle and damaging her free will, so it was clear that nothing I could say would change her mind. Chance is more of a wearer than a maker. Samuel can help me some on the weekends, not that he’s very productive. But he brought Banger last time, and that little Stryx is a born hat-maker.”
“Did you talk to Shaina or Brinda? I’m sure they have contacts in the Shuk who could hook you up with professionals.”
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” Dorothy admitted. “I always looked up to you and Chastity, but now that I have an opportunity to follow in your footsteps, I realize that I’m not ready to drop everything and become a business tycoon. I want to finish the program at the Open University and then maybe get a job designing clothes for a famous brand. I’m just not ready to start making contracts or telling employees what to do. I wish Metoo was here. He’d help me finish these orders and then I’d have time to think.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Blythe said. “I’ll ask Tinka to scare you up some InstaSitters who like to sew and she’ll handle the payroll for you, but it’s just for this one batch.”
“Thank you,” Dorothy said in relief. She had been hoping Blythe would propose the InstaSitter solution, but she hated to ask. “Do you have any interest in starting a fashion business? I can be your designer.”
“That’s more of Chastity’s thing, especially shoes, but she’s too busy with the newspaper these days.”
“Shoes are complicated, and if you get the heel wrong somebody can break an ankle. With hats, the worst thing that can happen is it messes up your hair.”
“I know some Frunge girls who would consider that worse than a broken ankle,” Blythe said.
“My friend Flazint is one of them. You know, even growing up as the ambassador’s daughter and watching Samuel when he was on ‘Let’s Make Friends,’ I still feel like I know so little about the other species, and they know even less about us. It’s a shame the aliens won’t send their children to Libby’s school. I think Mist is the only non-human or non-Stryx who ever attended.”
“Are you forgetting that most of the humans on the station have their children attend education circles rather than sending them to the Stryx school? It’s only the parents that are completely comfortable with AI who are willing to let their five-year-olds play with indestructible robots. I’m on Libby’s alumni board, you know, and I’ve tried doing outreach to the other species on the station, but they always say that children are too precious to risk in experiments.”
“Then why are there so many aliens in the Open University? Lots of them aren’t even from the station, they come from all over.”
“We get plenty of Open University students working for InstaSitter to earn pocket money, and most of them are older than you’d think,” Blythe replied. “Keep in mind that Vergallian women aren’t considered grown-ups until they’re old enough to have children, and that doesn’t happen until they’re in their fifties or sixties, at least in human years. The Drazens, Frunge and Hortens may mature a little quicker than that, but the Verlocks and the Grenouthians are considered children into their hundreds. It just depends on the life-spans for the species.”
“Then maybe it’s good we didn’t go to school with alien children since we all grow up at different rates,” Dorothy concluded. “I just wish I could design clothes for them and not have to deal with the business side, especially marketing and manufacturing.”
“Why don’t you ask Shaina and Brinda? Since Shaina had the baby, SBJ is down to just a couple of auctions a year, and last time I saw Brinda, she seemed to be glowing a bit as well, if you know what I mean. They grew up dealing with marketing and importers and they have contacts throughout the tunnel network.”
“Do you think they would?” Dorothy weighed the idea of going into business with the Hadad sisters, whom she’d known all of her life. “Do you think I should ask Jeeves too? I wouldn’t want him to blame me for breaking up SBJ if they stop doing auctions altogether.”
“If you want credit for the idea, the trick will be to ask Jeeves before he invites himself,” Blythe predicted. “Now where is everybody? I actually came over because your mother wanted me to meet with the EarthCent public relations woman, but you’re the only one home.”
“Paul took them all to check out the medieval castle he’s been building for Libbyland and to discuss the final arrangements for the EarthCent president’s reception. I was too busy with my hat orders to go along, but I visited a few times while they were building it. Have you seen the castle yet?”
“I’m waiting for the reception myself.”
“Don’t get tricked into thinking that it’s real stone. They used a Dollnick contractor for the castle, so it’s Dolly foam construction with a stone façade.” Dorothy put the final stitch in the brim of the hat, and offered it to Blythe. “What do you think?”
“I like the feel of the material. What is it made from?”
“I can’t pronounce the name. I just borrowed one of the old hats it’s styled after from the lost-and-found and took it to a Horten supplier. All I can say is that it comes in three grades and I took the middle one.” She accepted the hat back and added it to the small stack of finished merchandise.
Beowulf barked once from the living room.
“That’s his David bark,” Dorothy said, her eyes lighting up. “I told David I couldn’t go out tonight because I had to make hats. I’ll bet he’s coming to offer his help even though he worked all day.”
“Anybody home?” the young man’s voice called from the living room.
“We’re in here,” Dorothy shouted back.
“I’ve got food.”
“Alright. We’ll come out.” Dorothy turned to Blythe and added, “No food allowed in the production area.”
David was busily unloading the contents of a Pub Haggis catering floater under the watchful eyes of Beowulf when Dorothy and Blythe entered. “I hope you’re hungry,” he said, without looking up. “None of this stuff comes out right in small batches so I had to make a lot.”
“What is it, exactly?” Blythe asked.
“Hi, Mrs. Oxford. It’s my job interview, sort of. I’m trying out for a cook position at the new Libbyland attraction. Paul pinged me and said that everybody is on their way back here, so I changed course midway.”
“These look a little like the flatbread Aisha makes,” Dorothy commented, picking up a plate-sized loaf from the pile. “Wow, it’s heavy, though, and it feels pretty hard. Is this a bad one?”
“It’s a trencher,” David explained. “It’s bread, but you use it as a plate, and after the meal, you can either eat it or you can put it out for the poor or the pigs. They used to bake it in the ashes of a wood fire but I used the oven. Almost all of the medieval cooking was done over an open fire or in the embers, but the closest I could come was cooking with gas. Maybe they’ll get wood in for the castle.”
“Not a chance,” Dorothy told him. She b
egan setting out the trenchers around the table like regular plates. “The Stryx don’t allow wood burning on the stations, and if they did, the Frunge would leave the tunnel network in protest.”
“What else did people eat back then?” Blythe asked.
“I got Libby to find me some recipes from Earth history books in her library, and she said that almost everything was some sort of stew or porridge, since they conserve all the liquids that way,” David replied. “It’s really not all that different from the regular menu at Pub Haggis. I also made some pies with meat and vegetables since a castle kitchen would have ovens and livestock. I don’t think people visiting Libbyland on vacation want to experience what it was like to be a starving peasant.”
Beowulf trotted over to the door of the ice harvester, listened for a moment, and then headed down the ramp.
“They must be back,” Dorothy said. She moved quickly around the table, adding silverware to either side of the bread trenchers. “Is there anything else I can do?”
“Not unless you have an ox hidden somewhere that I can roast.”
“Does this mean you’ve decided you want the job?”
“I guess I need to find out if they want me first,” David replied.
Samuel was the first one in the door, followed by Kelly and Hildy. The eleven-year-old boy immediately spotted David and assumed that some of his favorites from Pub Haggis were on the menu. The president was still talking with Paul and Joe as the three men entered.
“What I’m really looking for is time to pitch the less sympathetic air-breathers,” the president reiterated. “The Drazens, Verlocks and Frunge will talk to me with or without the reception. It’s the Hortens, the Grenouthians and the Dollnicks I’m worried about.”
“We could drop the portico and block the other exits,” Paul suggested. “Castles are at least as good at keeping people in as they are at keeping them out.”
“That’s an interesting idea,” the president mused.
“Enough,” Hildy said, eyeing the men with disgust. “Haven’t you ever heard that the way to an alien’s heart is through his stomach?”
“You think we’ll win them over with medieval food?” the president asked in surprise.
“While you men were having a good time arguing the merits of primitive weapons systems, Kelly has been filling me in on alien delicacies,” Hildy replied. “Every species, no matter how wealthy, ends up with some specialty food items they can’t get enough of, even if they have to create the shortage themselves. Didn’t you tell me that when you were ambassador, the Grenouthians on your station threw a party that cost more than EarthCent’s budget, all to celebrate some perfect piece of fruit?”
“That’s right,” the president acknowledged. “They wanted to show it off to everybody, and then in order to give a piece to each of the guests it wouldn’t poison, they sliced it so thinly that the individual servings were barely a damp spot on the plate. Yet they all carried on about how it was the best thing they’d ever tasted.”
“The promise of a battle reenactment will get them to show up, but it’s the food that will make them take you seriously,” Kelly said. “Just make sure they understand that there’s more to come, or they’ll be gone before you can get a commitment for an individual meeting. We have friends in the merchant community who can get a hold of whatever you need in a hurry if you have a budget for it.”
“Don’t you have some rich friends who could help out?” the president suggested.
“That would be me,” Blythe said, stepping forward. “The ambassador invited me to stop by and meet with Ms. Greuen. I don’t have a problem with financing some culinary bribes for alien diplomats as long you have specific goals. If it’s just to make a good impression, don’t bother.”
“Sit here next to me and we can discuss it while eating,” the president suggested, pulling out a chair for Blythe. “By the way, you look much younger than your hologram.” Hildy winked and gave the president a thumbs-up before taking a seat across the table. Everybody else pulled out chairs, and David began to circulate the serving plates.
“In case you didn’t know, the flat bread things are trenchers and you eat off of them,” Dorothy announced. “After the meal you can eat the bread or give them to Beowulf.”
“Trencherman,” Kelly said. “A hearty eater. It was seven down in last week’s crossword.”
“When am I going to meet this Walter fellow who creates the puzzles?” the president asked. “I’d like to wring his—hand.”
“I don’t know what it is with diplomats and crossword puzzles,” Hildy said, poking at her trencher with a fork. “It seems that all of you are obsessed with them.”
“I’ve been thinking about that myself, especially since Kelly started waking me up in the middle of the night with clues she can’t figure out,” Joe replied. “Diplomats all have to learn to say the same thing over and over again in different ways so they can keep asking for what they want without sounding like a recorded loop. For them, word games are like practice.”
“I only wake you up because I love you,” Kelly protested.
“You love Libby too, Mom,” Samuel said. “Why not ask her?”
“That would be cheating,” his mother explained.
“Why is asking Libby cheating and asking Dad not cheating?” her son persisted. “I ask Banger questions all the time, though he’s pretty busy with his own Stryx stuff now.”
“It’s because Libby is so much smar—she has a perfect memory,” Kelly amended herself hastily. “Did you try this meat pie, Joe?”
“Banger has a perfect memory too,” Samuel said. “I had to teach him how to forget things.”
“You what?” the president asked. He looked up so suddenly that some of the stew he was ladling onto his trencher ended up on the table.
“It’s my job,” the boy said proudly. “I taught Banger how to be human.”
“Ah, you must attend the experimental school run by the station librarian that I’ve heard so much about,” the president said, with a significant look at the ambassador. “I knew that the children could pay their way by working with the young Stryx, but I didn’t know that teaching them to be human was the goal.”
“Is that how Libby explained it when you started at her school?” Kelly asked. “That’s not what Dorothy told me.”
“I don’t remember,” the boy replied. “I think she said something about Banger needing a friend to help him fit in at school. What’s the weird food?”
“Barley porridge with onions and carrots,” David said. “It’s the sort of thing the working people ate every day, especially if they couldn’t get bread.”
“It needs salt,” Samuel said, after tasting a mouthful.
“Salt was too expensive for poor people to use with every meal in lots of places,” David told him. “Their diets varied according to the season and region they lived in as well. In colder areas, they ate a lot of beets, oats and turnips, plus whatever they could manage from livestock, like milk, cheese and eggs. But they only got to eat fresh fruit and garden vegetables in season because their preservation methods were based on drying or pickling.”
“How about beans?” Hildy asked. “My mother always had beans soaking in the kitchen.”
“Beans and peas were common food for poor people,” David said. “Anything that could be dried and preserved was an important part of the diet, even fish in coastal areas. I never really thought about visiting Earth before I started learning about the food, but now I’m curious to see all the different agricultural regions. It’s not like the ag decks on the station where the farmers just set the climate controls to whatever they need.”
“No, it’s not,” the president confirmed. “Weather is one of the main topics of conversation on Earth, if you can believe that. What was in that tasty stew?”
“Salt cod,” David said. “I would have made more, but apparently the Verlocks buy up most of the imports that reach the station. Ian special-orders a crate once in a wh
ile for the restaurant, mainly to make pies. And my pies aren’t really authentic, or maybe you could say they’re late medieval, because the crust is edible. Early pie crusts were just a thick flour and water casing to allow the food to be cooked in a stone oven without drying out. The crust also preserved the food by providing an air-tight wrapper until it was broken open, but it was too hard for all but the poorest people to try eating it.”
“The aliens will never know the difference as long as it looks right,” Paul commented. “You know, I’ve been working with Jeeves on the Libbyland attractions ever since we did the Physics Ride together, but the concept for the medieval castle is completely different, more like a living museum. It’s good you did all the research on how food was cooked because that’s more important than how it comes out. We want visitors to see what life in a castle was like around a thousand years ago.”
“You mean you’re really looking for reenactors rather than cooks?”
“Well, yes. But we also need a cook to teach them how to act. They’ll have to learn to make food, but depending on who is visiting the castle that day, it might not get eaten.”
Beowulf barked to remind everybody of his availability.
“So you’re copying the model of tourist attractions on Earth,” Hildy said. “I grew up near a port where they had an old wooden warship, with actors dressed in period costumes who would explain the cannons and rigging.”
“What’s rigging?” Samuel asked.
“All of the parts that the ship used to catch the wind for sailing. You know what masts and sails are, right?”
The boy nodded.
“The ropes, or cordage, were just as important. Some of the ropes were permanent, they basically held the masts in place so they didn’t fall over or snap off in the wind. Other ropes were attached to all the other wood parts, I think they were called spars or booms, and they were used to control the sails.”
“Spars include all of the wood poles,” Joe interjected. “Masts are the vertical spars, booms are the horizontal ones, though there were a lot of special names for everything. When a new sailor came onboard a ship, the first thing they would do is teach him which ropes did what.”