A Year Near Proxima Centauri

by Michael Martin

  It was almost midday the following day when we finally finished the last morsel. With tears of exhaustion and gratitude in our eyes we thanked our hosts and settled the bill, I joked about the penalty clauses in their menu and the Copuli laughed heartily as they and their entire staff helped us out to our Stromba. To our horror we realized we could not fit, certainly not both of us, nor it transpired individually. “That was a damn expensive meal,” I grumbled to my wife as we waited in the flickering gloom of the restaurant’s recuperation room for a taxi to take us home and a driver to trade in our Stromba for a size 14.

  FEBRUARY

  I bustled about in the kitchen preparing a snack. Our provisions were getting low. A slice of this, a lump of that, I worked with imagination and relish until the barrow was nearly full. Then, just to finish it off, I swatted all the Hully flies buzzing round the light and placed them decoratively on top to add a little crunch and fizz. I wheeled it through to my wife and we sat eating in the dining room, watching the early mists dispel from the valley.

  We decided that the worst of the winter was past and that we had better set some plans in motion. We would visit the local plumber and Henry the builder that very day, Stromba permitting. It was an unfortunate oversight that, whilst it was possible to purchase Strombas in a range of body sizes, they all had the same size power units and hover fins. The larger sizes were therefore ridiculously underpowered and awkward to handle. We had one of the larger sizes. It was also time to retrieve our beloved Pallions from the local Marinade Stockade. We had refused to part with them when we came to Provender in spite of all our friends’ entreaties. “We’ll look after them,” they said. “They’ll only get eaten there.” But no, come with us they must. We made enquiries and discovered that, for a fee, an enterprising pair of Montalbans would marinade your pets for three months in their own patent substance, guaranteed to render even the most succulent flesh unpalatable. Their three months was up. We hoped it would be effective.

  As we mopped up the last morsels from our plates we reflected on how refreshingly guilt-free the natural process of eating is on Provender. Not for them the agonies of doubt that wracked Conima not so many years ago; the vegetable riots, the “Ban the Sauce” puritan protesters. Somehow Provender missed out on the entire interstellar debate. While the Universe agonized, Provender just ate. When the whole debate was so effectively resolved by the development of the Cognotron the people of Provender just shrugged as if to say “I told you so”.

  I can still remember what I was eating when the news came through—vegetable stew—even I was shamed off meat at that point. The Cognotron, developed to separate the minute life emanations from all creatures into a few narrow but definable groupings, had initially been harnessed to a group of common foodstuffs and also to the Project Manager’s two Pallions for controls. The results were astonishing but all repeat experiments by rival laboratories had reached the same conclusions. The principle emanations from the animals were on the lower register, falling in groupings such as “I’m hot”, “I’m cold”, but predominantly, “I’m hungry”. The Pallions just registered “Feed me” whenever they saw anybody, at which point their tendrils waggled energetically. But the plants had all the surprises, only they reached the upper registers, often with complex combinations such as “I’m cold, but I don’t blame you”, or “Eat me if you must, I forgive you”.

  These early findings led to a dramatic swing in the other direction, creatures started eating meat again, some ate their Pallions with a certain malicious deliberation, but, in time, everyone seemed to settle back to accepting that everything has feelings of one kind or another—too bad—we’ve got to eat. The creatures of Provender just shrugged with bewilderment at all the good eating time we had wasted.

  I opened the garage door and the Stromba eased itself out, chafing its offside fins on a stone outcrop, an annoying habit it persisted with, despite repeated adjustments. We set off. It was a glorious day, still a little cool, but not a foam in the sky. As we sped by, I thought I caught a glimpse of Mr Skeg’s head looking out from an upstairs window, but I could not be sure. We descended the valley to the village, Bepommel. We would visit the plumber first, George, a Razmoth recommended by Mr Dobson. I had tried to ’screen him first but, like most of Provender’s artisans, he regarded the device with suspicion and loathing. For every worthwhile job it brought him it brought ten disgusting, unprofitable, distasteful little jobs or complaints. Imagine being woken at two in the morning to unblock the cloaca of a family of Drisks, or summoned out after a swarm of Melbum had perforated someone’s entire pipework! George would, I hope, regard our visit as worthwhile.

  When we arrived outside his dwelling, a complex web of pipework over which a variety of skins were stretched, he was sitting on his front step, wire-brushing some kind of manifold. He greeted me with a broad flash of teeth and a rib-crushing embrace. He seemed to know all about me. His friend, Mr Dobson, had mentioned us, he said. I told him what we had in mind: a new heating system, a new ablution suite and, maybe, an overhaul of the drainage system, we had no idea how it worked. This seemed to fire him with enthusiasm.

  “Oh, no,” he cried, clasping my arm in a vice-like grip with his vice-like gripper, “you must not touch that.”

  It seemed the previous owner of our house, many years earlier when he had first bought it, had flown in an Ordure Consultant from Sprool, for many centuries the leading planet for waste management. This Consultant had weighed his client, made copious notes on his diet, secured a stool sample and core samples from the back garden to a depth of two hundred metres. Two months later, by which time the matter was pressing, a two-hundred-page report arrived, including aerial photographs and a recommendation to use the Silax B biodisintegrator with various optional extras, such as an auto-rodding facility, variable ingestor controls to handle the by-products of unusual guests and a maxi-boost unit for short duration heavy-duty purposes, such as dinner parties.

  “Good heavens,” I exclaimed, “I had no idea such sophisticated technology lurked beneath our feet. It must have cost a fortune.”

  “That was the trouble,” said George. “By the time he had paid for the Consultant’s report he could only afford to dig a big hole like the rest of us, and get in twelve Drools with shovels every autumn to clear it. Don’t touch it, works perfectly.”

  We arranged that he should visit us the following day and give us an estimate for our requirements and, nursing my aching ribs, we bade him goodbye. Next, Henry the builder, another who avoided the ’screen.

  Henry lived in a structure of such uncompromising solidity that one really could not fathom out how it had ever been built, unless the services of some subplanetary clearance plant had been secured at crippling expense. One enormous rock—the size of two normal houses—had been balanced on top of two smaller rocks—each the size of a normal house—and the front and back filled in with normal Henry-style stonework and windows. Whenever I later pressed Henry on the manner of its construction he would shrug and tap the side of his nose and say, “Trade secret.” I learned later from one of Henry’s labourers that a cousin of Henry’s had stolen an MXK from the Sprool Plant Services bay, sprinkled the countryside with megaliths for family and friends on easy terms, painted it purple and sold it on to their main competition, Starflick, with forged documentation.

  I hammered on the door with the specially shaped door rock they had left for the purpose, I had almost given up when Henry’s wife appeared. I enquired generally about Henry’s health and whereabouts. She seemed evasive. When I said that I had a job for him, quite a large job, and that I did not require any money from him, I heard a noise from behind her. Henry miraculously appeared, sleeves rolled up his enormous arms and a smile from ear to ear. When I introduced ourselves Henry nodded and said he had heard all about us from Mr Dobson and he was happy to be of service to us. We arranged for him to visit us the next day, after George had finished.

  “Ah, yes, George,” he said, “an old
friend. We often work together. Co-operation on such jobs is of paramount importance.”

  We agreed—our project seemed to be shaping up well, and we were feeling peckish. We asked Henry if he could recommend anywhere to eat.

  “Ah, yes,” he said, “for sure, just around the corner, just the place for you.”

  We followed his directions. A gaudy and poorly drawn sign hung outside a rather small, unprepossessing house. The atmosphere inside was smoky but we received a cordial greeting from a little brown creature almost completely covered in feathers. It directed us to a table near an enormous oven which seemed to take up half the room. There were twelve tables and only one was empty when we took our seats. A mixture of creatures, mostly male I noted, sat at the other tables, dressed in grimy apparel which one took to be their work clothes. They took no notice of us as they chatted and laughed loudly amongst themselves. They all seemed to know one another. Each table had a great jug of what I presumed to be Halmatrope with chunks floating in it and from time to time the creatures topped up their glasses. Some of them would pause now and again to roll dried Fust leaves up tightly, set fire to them on a small plate and inhale until they blacked out and their friends caught them. One so likes to see traditional habits continue unchanged in these remote areas. It is all part of the charm of Provender.

  The feathered creature approached us and handed us a menu, I had noticed that none of the other tables had been given one. Furthermore, it was in Coniman, our language. My wife and I looked at each other. It was very enterprising and thoughtful of the creature to provide this service but we had made our choice to live on Provender, Provender was our home, we wanted no privileges. We could communicate adequately in Drool, Spheraglese—the language of most of the artisans—and a smattering of Sprock—the language of the intellectual elite. None of the latter actually lived in the vicinity, but they frequently descended on the area in droves in August from their crystal eyries in the Provender capital of Palissandria. We felt, therefore, a trifle insulted at our Coniman menu with all the delicious, mysterious Provender names for dishes reduced to stark lists of ingredients and technique.

  “Thank you so much,” I said to the creature in the best Spheraglese I could muster, “but what are these good people eating? We will eat the same.”

  I knew I had connected. There was a roar of approval from all the other customers. Two actually came over and shook our hands. The feathered creature smiled and bowed and said, “How kind,” as it left for a back room. My wife glared at me.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “It’s what we want, isn’t it? Good traditional fare, the way the locals like it?”

  “Yes,” she hissed through clenched teeth, “but we don’t want to pay for their good traditional fare too.”

  “Eh?” I blinked.

  “You confused your nouns and your verb and one word was completely wrong. You offered to feed the whole room with whatever they wanted.”

  “Ah,” I gulped.

  The serving creature emerged from the back room with four Drools stripped down to their shorts. As two flung logs in the oven, the other two dragged in carcass after carcass of all manner of meats and hacked them into manageable lumps with weighty cleavers. When the fire had heated the metal plates to a blue heat, these lumps were flung on and they leapt and sizzled and bubbled, filling the room with smoke and a delicious vapour which you could almost cut with a knife and eat. Our fellow customers looked at us with wide-open, grinning, dripping mouths—how could we begrudge them their meal?

  We finished our jug of Halmatrope with its sweet tender chunks. I popped the last bobbing chunk in my mouth, savoured it and chewed it until it melted down my throat. I leaned over to our nearest table and asked the fellow what it was. Was it Water Grudge, I ventured, a well-known delicacy?

  He looked at his friends and guffawed, then he looked at me again and said, “Nah, it’s Bladderat,” in crude Spheraglese.

  “Surely not!” I protested, aghast.

  “Sure as oi’m sitting here. The place is crawling with ’em out the back. Had you fooled too, tastes just loike Water Grudge so why pay fancy prices, just because it’s got a few bad habits?”

  I nodded. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. We resolved never to enquire what anything was in future—if it tasted good that would suffice. It is possible that the Bladderat does not deserve the opprobrium heaped upon it. As is generally the case, it is the male of the species that lets the side down. In the mating season lone males challenge each other for the dominance of the docile herds of warm, responsive females. At this time of the year the males drink heavily, causing a normally unobtrusive bladder to distend and swell horribly. If one such male encounters another each will attempt to direct a high-pressure stream of urine up the other’s nostrils to deprive them of air for sufficiently long to cause unconsciousness. The winner, generally the possessor of the fullest bladder and deadliest aim, then has the pick of the herd. The losers, when they recover, spend the rest of the year at the back of cafés, eating leftovers and practising their aim.

  At last every table received steaming plates bulging with a mixture of meats and vegetables. We followed our new resolution, if it tasted good we would enquire no further, and it all tasted good. I had assumed that these creatures would have a reasonable meal and then go back about their business, but no, as soon as one plate was finished another was set in front of them and us too, of course. After several hours my wife suggested that perhaps, out of common courtesy as we were apparently the hosts, they might think it rude to refuse a dish while we were still eating. So, in a vain attempt to contain the escalating final tally, we reluctantly indicated that the plate we were eating would be our last. It did the trick. When we finished so did they. Before they left, each one staggered up to shake my palm and thank me and kiss my wife’s feeler. We rounded off our meal with an Algarglanon and then came the moment of truth, the bill. Of all the days to leave our Credit Ratings at home this was ill-chosen; we seldom carry much cash, in the end they would only let us leave if we left them the Stromba as security. Yet again we travelled home by taxi. The Pallions would have to wait.

  The next day George turned up promptly. Today would be good practice for my Spheraglese, I told my wife. She said nothing. We showed George round the house and he made notes, pausing at times to “tut” and shake his head. When he had finished we sat him down with a Halmatrope and pressed him for his opinion. He gripped the glass tightly with his gripper.

  “Melbum everywhere,” he sighed. “They haven’t penetrated the pipework yet but it’s pocked all over. All have to come out.”

  “All of it?” I gasped. We knew the heating system would have to be installed from scratch but we had assumed that the simple reconnection of a new ablution suite was all that was required elsewhere, apart from the extension.

  “For sure. Now is the time to do it. And your ablution suite, I can do you a lovely triple pan set in Molarite,”

  “You mean reconstituted Molar?”

  “Well, yes, but they look lovely and they only need resurfacing every two hundred tonnes.”

  “But the shaping?”

  “I think you will find that the styling allows for yourselves and any species you are likely to entertain.”

  “We do have a broad range of acquaintances,” I warned, “but to tell you the truth, we cannot stand Molarite, but it might do for the guest bathroom in the gratification suite.”

  “Ah,” he said, winking. “I can supply a broad range of gratification appliances myself.”

  “Really?” I was surprised. “They are not plumbing items, surely?”

  “Some of them are.” He winked again, or twitched involuntarily. I changed the subject as quickly as I could.

  “Well, anyway, we have ordered all that from Conima, and also our personal ablution suite, individually tooled in genuine Molar.”

  “Ooh, the real thing, eh? Expensive, And the import duty too.”

  My wife and I looked at each other.
We had not considered that. We began to imagine the interminable delays through customs as Drools examined everything in detail and asked embarrassing questions.

  “And the heating?” I steeled myself for the worst.

  “No problem.”

  “Oh,” I beamed.

  “Probably take most of the year.”

  “Ah,” I blanched.

  “Now. As far as the fuel goes, have you decided?”

  “Well, there isn’t much choice here, is there? On any other planet we would opt for Solar power every time, but with the Provender Solar surcharge, a vicious, punitive tax as far as I can see, I refuse to.”

  “Ah, well, the Sun is our Sun, so it is only fair to surcharge outsiders for its use.”

  “But it’s pumping out power the whole time, whether or not we use it.”

  “True, true. Anyway, it’s nothing to do with me. We can either fit the sleek, dean, efficient, practically invisible Solar roof unit and the tiny storage units, admittedly at great expense or we can supply and fit a Noxule gas tank, the size of a house with sound-proofed burner manifolds the size of a room and heat emitters the size of a wall in each room, at a reasonable price. If you take that option you will need the waste gas disposal units and a visit every week from the gas tanker. Another half mile down the valley and we could have plugged you into the mains, but never mind.”