Deep-Fried Black Diamonds

“What’s a truffle?”

“You don’t know what a truffle is?” Ling Wong Guoy looked at me in astonishment, then reached into his shoulderbag. He pulled out a wrinkled, prune-like object the size of a grapefruit. It was the color of an old black boot that has been worn by a nickel-iron miner in the far reaches of the Belt for twenty years or more without ever being polished. He set it gently on my desk, careful not to let it bounce in the nominal .04 gravity of Ceres. “Here, taste.”

Now it was my turn to gape. “You want me to taste that?”

Ling Wong Guoy gestured at the miserable cubicle that Hartman, Bemis & Choupette laughingly called my office. “Would I come here to poison you? Would my kinswoman Jin Tshei allow me to poison you?”

Looking down at the strange black object on my desk, I actually considered his two ridiculous questions for a fleeting moment. Jin Tshei is my girlfriend’s wife and—I thought—a close friend of mine. Could she finally have decided that she wanted Isabel all for herself, and this was her way of—

No, ridiculous! The very thought was unworthy of an Ethical Broker & Bourseman, particularly Jonathan Welbrook White! I picked up the repulsive looking thing and sniffed it tentatively. It had a pungent yet somehow elusive smell. “What do I do with it?”

“Take a bite, a big bite, just as if you were eating an apple. Let the morsel rest upon your tongue. Then chew it slowly, delicately, lovingly, savoring the flavors, letting the pieces roll around your mouth. Close your eyes. Let your entire being concentrate on nothing more than what is in your mouth.”

I shook my head dubiously, then shrugged and did what he said.

Sometime later, when I regained a semblance of my senses, I opened my eyes to stare in wonder at what I held in my hand. I’m not a poet, so I won’t try to tell you what it tasted like. All I’ll say is that it was the most wonderful, most exotic, most sensual, most overwhelming experience I had ever had in my life. “Are you sure this is legal?” I whispered, then salivated noisily. It was all I could do to keep from stuffing the remainder of the truffle into my mouth as fast as I could push it in.

Ling Wong Guoy smiled knowingly. “Entirely legal, Mr. White. I use them frequently in my restaurant. You may have already tasted them there, in somewhat less overwhelming quantities. I have, I believe, already noted your distinguished presence in my humble establishment at various times.”

Humble establishment—that was a laugh! Ling Wong Guoy was the owner and chef of the most elegant and most expensive restaurant in the entire Belt, La Voûte Céleste, an eating establishment so recherche that it actually employed human beings as waiters. Its name, it had been explained to me, was French for Heavenly Vault or Celestial Canopy. Since the restaurant was one of only seven buildings on the surface of Ceres and had an invisibly domed dining room open to the spectacle of a billion stars, its name was a meaningful one. I had eaten there twice; always, unfortunately, in the company of my unspeakable boss, J. Davis Alexander, as that worthy wined and dined super-important clients on the company expense account. I had never forgotten either meal.

“Truffles are those skinny little black things stuffed under the skin of the chicken?” I ventured, casting my mind and taste buds back to those two extraordinary feasts.

“Yes, truffle slices. And there are somewhat thicker pieces in the foie gras. On Earth the normal truffle weighs about two to three ounces at the very most. That truffle you hold in your hand would weigh about seventeen ounces, the result, I suppose, of growing it on Ceres in what is essentially zero gravity and in half the barometric pressure of Earth’s.”

I nodded slowly and took another voracious bite—after all, he hadn’t asked for it back, had he? “It certainly is delicious,” I said inadequately when I’d finished swallowing, “but why exactly have you brought this to me?”

“Do you know what a truffle costs per ounce in Paris or Perigord on Earth? Two hundred and seventy Belter buckles per ounce, Mr. White! I myself pay over 500 buckles per ounce for them to be landed on Ceres to use in my restaurant.”

Once again I stared in astonishment at the dapper, black-haired little man on the other side of my desk. “You mean this thing here in my hand is worth over 8,000 buckles? And I’ve been eating it?”

“Yes indeed. Truffles are a form of fungus that grows underground at the roots of certain trees—generally the shrub oak—in only a few places on Earth, mostly certain regions of France and Italy. They are found by dogs or pigs that have been specially trained to sniff for them. They are generated from spores and for centuries now farmers and scientists have tried to find a way of cultivating them. So far no one has succeeded, although there is an experimental station in Spain that claims to have had some success. The entire world’s production is no more than a hundred tons or so annually, which is why, Mr. White, their price is so outrageous.”

I took another look at the halfeaten piece of fungus in my hand and then another look at Mr. Ling Wong Guoy, Restaurateur Extraordinaire.

Ling Wong Guoy was, I knew, an immigrant who’d come from Earth to Clarkeville, the fourth largest city on Ceres and the eighth largest in the Belt, about fifteen years ago. He’d started small, with a fast-food joint, and had worked his way up to La Voûte Céleste. I also knew that he was a kinsman of some sort of Jin Tshei, Isabel’s wife, since Jin Tshei had told me so after I’d lunched at his restaurant for the first time.

Finally, I knew—like almost everyone else in Clarkeville—that Ling Wong Guoy was the owner of his own private asteroid, a tiny hunk of worthless rock that not even the most optimistic virophage miner had thought worthy of trying to extract anything from. Ling Wong Guoy had bubbled the entire asteroid—it was only a couple of hundred meters long—and turned it into a farm to supply his restaurant. Now the asteroid was famous throughout Ceres, and probably the entire Belt, for it was certainly the only one that raised pigs and chickens in order to supply a high-class French restaurant.

“You said that truffles only grow in a few choice places on Earth,” I prompted the restaurateur. “You also said that this particular one—” now a bare smidgen of a memory of its formerly robust seventeen-ounce self “—was grown on Ceres. Does that mean—”

“Yes,” said Ling Wong Guoy, “that means that I have succeeded where four centuries of Terran experts have failed. I have succeeded in growing truffles with no more difficulty than I have in cultivating mushrooms.”

“How—?”

Ling Wong Guoy laid a finger alongside his nose. “Ahhh, that, Mr. White, is what I think I must call a proprietary secret. I will say this, however. A year ago I brought my cousin Hernandez Wong Ling to Ceres from Earth in order to supervise my farm. Purely by happenstance, of course, my cousin just happened to have worked for several years on that experimental truffle farm in Spain I mentioned earlier. It may be—and I stress that this is only a possibility—that he may have inadvertently carried with him some of the spores necessary for their propagation. After that—” Ling Wong Guoy shrugged “—a rare combination of elements unique to that particular asteroid’s soil, plus secret fertilizers and additives of our own, have enabled Hernandez Wong Ling to grow this fabulous truffle which I guarantee you will grow nowhere else in the Belt. Or in the entire Solar System.”

“ ‘A proprietary secret,’ ” I murmured, nodding slowly.

“Is that not the term used by certain companies, such as Coca-Cola, for products which they do not wish to register with the patent office? If there is no patent, as I understand it, then there is no need to ever reveal the exact composition of the product.”

“Absolutely correct. But there’s always the chance that someone else might use chemical analysis or reverse engineering to duplicate—”

“A chance that we shall have to take, Mr. White.” Ling Wong Guoy’s voice was firm.

“We? A chance in doing what?”

The outer Solar System’s greatest chef leaned forward. “With enough capital for certain improvements on my little farm, Mr. White, we could soon be harvesting 2,000 truffles per month. Eventually, within three or four years at the most, we could increase that to 10,000 per month.” He smiled blandly. “I will leave it to you to make the resulting calculations.” My ethical stockbroker’s brain had already made them.

Truffles were selling for 270 buckles an ounce in Paris. And Ling Wong Guoy could produce seventeen-ounce ones, up to 10,000 a month of them! Even if he only netted 50 buckles an ounce after subtracting all of his costs and overhead, that would still be in the neighborhood of 20.4 to 102 million buckles net profit per year!

I didn’t believe my brain. So I whispered the figures into my computer—and got the same results.

I stared at Ling Wong Guoy with ever-increasing awe. “That is a lot of money, Mr. Ling Wong Guoy.”

“Yes. I have come to you to help me raise the necessary capital in order to begin generating it. Jin Tshei tells me that you, Mr. White, are without equal on Ceres when it comes to raising capital.”

I gulped softly and apologized silently to Jin Tshei for ever having doubted her, even momentarily. “I do indeed have some ideas, sir. Why don’t we just step over to the Café des Mondes to discuss them?”

That evening I met Isabel for drinks at the same table of the Café des Mondes at which I had sat with Ling Wong Guoy. I was hardly able to keep from bouncing up and down with excitement. Bouncing is something to be avoided in the low Cerean gravity: any bouncing here would have lifted me up against the café’s green and white striped awning—and maybe on through it to interface violently with the ten meters of carbonaceous chondrite rock that separate Clarkeville from the surface. But even as a native-born Cerean with a lifetime’s use of Velcro sandals, there are still plenty of bumps on my head to prove where I’ve given in to incautious impulses. So now I forced myself to sit quietly, impatiently watching the ducks in their pond in Westlake Park.

Isabel floated into the café with her usual grace, her feet hardly seeming to touch the pavement. She pecked at my cheek, then shook her glossy black bangs as she told the hovering waiter—a robot, of course—to bring her usual Pernod. I started to tell her about the incredible good fortune that was about to accrue to us, then stopped cold. Isabel’s face was pale and drawn, and she looked as unhappy as I had ever seen her. She has a high-powered job in the assessor’s office of City Hall, so naturally I assumed that something bad must have happened at work. But no.

“It’s Valérie-France,” she said grimly. “It’s even worse than we imagined.”

My heart sank, and I gripped my own glass of Campari and soda. Valérie-France was our four-year-old. “You mean—”

“Yes.”

Four or five years ago Isabel and I had planned to get married and have a couple of children but Psych Service had turned us down. Isabel’s latent attraction to other women, they said in their dogmatic way, made the chances of the two of us having a successful 23-year marriage something less than 25 percent. That assessment had come as a vast surprise to Isabel, who had always considered herself as straight as a mathematician’s line, but who could argue with Psych Service?

If you want to have children on Ceres you have to be able to guarantee that there’ll be a stable family environment until the child reaches his or her 22nd birthday. So, of course, once Psych Service had spoken there were no wedding bells for Jonathan and Isabel. We could have emigrated to some other world such as Pallas where the requirements aren’t so strict, but we both had roots in Ceres. So Isabel married a lovely girl named Jin Tshei and they lived more or less happily ever after.

A little while alter the marriage, I was invited to contribute the necessary genetic material for the creation of a little girl—the adorable Valérie-France, in fact. Now I dropped by for pleasant weekends with Isabel and Jin Tshei and my daughter two or three times a month.

Isabel forced a smile when her drink came and clinked her glass against mine. “You first,” she said. “Bad news can always wait. Just why are you looking so incredibly radiant?”

I sighed. “I was looking forward to telling you that the moment had come when we’re finally going to make our fortunes—legitimately. We’re going to float Ling Wong Guoy a stock issue for a company specializing in truffles. Then we’ll—”

“That’s good, because we’re going to need a fortune,” interrupted Isabel. “Valérie-France is going to have to spend at least fourteen years on Earth! And she’s going to need special medical care while she’s there. We’re not going to need a fortune, we’re going to need three fortunes!”

“It’s that bad?”

“Kesler’s Syndrome. As bad a case as they’ve ever seen.”

“But that’s impossible,” I protested. “Either you get it as soon as you’re away from Maternity Rock—”

“—Or you don’t get it at all.” Isabel gulped a quarter of her glass of Pernod. “Except for the one person in 10,000 who doesn’t develop it as an infant—and does later on.”

“Oh,” I said glumly. There were 9,781,549 people on Ceres as of that date, September 23, 2279, which meant that somewhere there were at least 978 others like Valérie-France around—not, of course, that that was any consolation.

In their fourth month of pregnancy, all the Belt’s mothers-to-be remove to Maternity Rock, a 1.0-gravity facility in permanent orbit next to Pallas. If they don’t, they’re not allowed to bring the fetus to term. Every now and then you hear about a woman who manages to slip the medical surveillance network long enough to give birth outside the Rock. The consequences are not pretty for either mother or child and I don’t like to think about them.

But even the perfectly normal children born on the Rock have to begin taking their gravity pills as soon as they leave at the age of one month. Otherwise they end up looking like my boss at Hartman, Bemis & Choupette—short, round, and rather fully covered with hair. His parents, who were religious fanatics of some sort or other, had stopped giving little J. Davis Alexander his pills as soon as he’d been taken home. His subsequent looks had not improved his disposition as an adult, as I knew from ample first-hand experience.

Not wanting Valérie-France to look like my esteemed boss, we had faithfully given her the daily doses. All, apparently, for naught. According to Isabel, Kesler’s Syndrome manifested itself, if at all, between the ages of three and five. For reasons unknown, the pills simply stopped working. We—Isabel, Jin Tshei, and I—now had a choice.

If we wanted Valérie-France to grow up short, round, and as hairy as a wolverine, with disposition to match, we could do nothing at all.

If we wanted her to grow up long and lean as a young man’s dream —like most Belters are—we could send her to Earth and keep her there until her normal growth had stabilized, an age that was generally defined as being eighteen to nineteen.

Fourteen years on Earth. With fulltime medical supervision. As Isabel said, it was going to cost a fortune. And if any of us wanted to visit her, as we surely would, it was going to cost three fortunes.

Fortunately, though, fortunes were right up my alley.

I lilted my glass to clink it against Isabel’s. “Why should we pick an arbitrary figure like three fortunes? Why not say that I’m going to make us enough for ten fortunes?”

“Black diamonds,” said Ling Wong Guoy, lovingly caressing a dirt-covered truffle he had just pulled up from his own home-brewed dirt. “That’s what Brillat-Savarin called them, beautiful, beautiful black diamonds.”

“Who’s that guy?” demanded J. Davis Alexander with his usual suavity of manner.

“A nineteenth-century Frenchman who wrote a book called The Physiology of Taste. You might call him a philosopher of food.”

“A philosopher. Huh!” J. Davis Alexander rolled his beady little eyes to show what he thought of philosophers. As I’ve already hinted, the branch manager of Hartman, Bemis & Choupette was short, globuloid, and hirsute. His disposition might charitably compared to that of a famished grizzly, except, of course, while toadying to his betters—anyone who had more buckles in their portfolios than he himself. His favorite sport was firing yours truly, Jonathan Welbrook White. It was a never-ending source of wonder to me—and to much of Clarkeville—that so unprepossessing a specimen of the human race could be happily married to Miss Grain Harvest of 2273, the tallest, slimmest, blondest, and flat-out most gorgeous female creature in the entire Belt. I guess it all goes to show that beauty really is only skin deep—or entirely in the eye of the beholder. Or something. Maybe it would take a French philosopher of taste to understand it.

Now J. Davis Alexander turned his baleful eye from the truffle in Ling Wong Guoy’s hand to the man responsible for this horticultural miracle, Señor Hernandez Wong Ling. The truffle expert was—compared to me, for instance—short, exceptionally broad in the shoulders, with a wizened brown face and soulful brown eyes. “You say that all of this can be turned into a truffle field.” J. Davis Alexander gestured at the hundred yards or so of nondescript rock that was all that separated us from the horizon and—literally—the edge of the world. “But can you guarantee it?” Hernandez Wong Ling shrugged mournfully. “Nothing in life, Señor, is certain except—”

“Yes, yes, spare me,” muttered J. Davis Alexander, “death, taxes, and entropy. And a miserable death indeed if the bubble around this world ever broke. Has that ever happened?” he demanded harshly of Ling Wong Guoy, who was floating upside down just over his own hairy head.

“Never,” said the restaurateur flatly. “Not even the smallest puncture or leak. Besides which, I have several emergency shelters and ample autonomous repair machinery. We would have to be blasted almost to dust by a full-scale meteorite in order to sustain life-threatening damage.”

What he said made sense. Some of the new bubble materials are practically indestructible: light, flexible, shape-sustaining, and almost totally puncture-proof. There was serious talk that it was now feasible to bubble the entire world of Ceres itself and fill it with an atmosphere, a pleasant prospect for those of us who preferred not to live their entire lives underground.

“Hrmph,” growled J. Davis Alexander, who seemed perversely determined to find some way of keeping me from making millions of Belter buckles. “All this capital you want us to raise for you—what are you going to do with it? Buy machinery to break up the rock and—”

Ling Wong Guoy looked at J. Davis Alexander as if he were crazy. “Certainly not! We’ll use a standard agricultural virophage to convert the top two meters of rock into all-purpose soil, then start seeding it with our own special compounds.” Here he laid a finger alongside his nose in a gesture that was becoming familiar to me and cocked his head slyly. “One thing we are going to have to do, Mr. Alexander, is to import and surreptitiously dispose of many hundreds of tons of completely worthless fertilizers, additives, manures, conditioners, and toners.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“Why, to keep anyone else from figuring out exactly how we grow our truffles. Let them waste their time and money investigating a thousand dead ends and wrong turnings.”

“Ahhh.” J. Davis Alexander blinked respectfully—this was the kind of double-dealing he understood. “Ha! Yes! Very good!” He rubbed his chubby hands together. “But what about the trees? How are you going to bring them in, and how long will they take to grow?”

“What trees?” asked Ling Wong Guoy innocently. “This is a farm, not a forestry station.”

“The shrub oaks. I’ve been reading up about truffles. They’re only found in conjunction with the roots of shrub oaks.”

Ling Wong Guoy smiled broadly. “So it has always been assumed—but never proven. I will say only this, Mr. Alexander: shrub oaks and their roots are not needed—though perhaps we should plant some just in order to further confuse the issue.”

“Ha!” More thinking along J. Davis Alexander-approved lines. “Well, then, Mr. Ling Wong Guoy, I think we shall have no trouble in floating your little issue. First we’ll incorporate as Black Diamond Farm, issuing ourselves, shall we say, a million shares of stock at a nominal price of one-tenth of a centavo per share. Then we’ll—”

“A moment,” interrupted Ling Wong Guoy. “These million shares —just how will they be distributed?”

J. Davis Alexander beamed. “Normally on a highly speculative offering such as this, in which the good name of the underwriters, that is to say, Hartman, Bemis & Choupette, is all that matters for a successful offering, the underwriters would take 75 percent. In this particular case, however, in order to assist one of our most distinguished local citizens, Mr. Choupette has instructed me to tell you that we will be content with a mere 51 percent.”

Ling Wong Guoy’s black eyes grew opaque. “Ah! Fifty-one percent!” He scratched his chin. “Interesting, interesting. I believe that I should best consult again with Bleine, Blinder & Miesen on Pallas. I believe that one of their officers mentioned to me in passing that they would be happy to lead such an underwriting for 7.5 percent.”

“What!” J. Davis Alexander’s eyes grew round and apoplectic. Bleine, Blinder & Misen—the infamous Three Blind Mice of the stockbroking world—were our most bitter rivals. “Never would my conscience allow you to sully yourself by dealing with such disreputable....”

Twenty minutes later the two purring cutthroats had agreed upon a split of two-thirds, one-third, the two-thirds going to Ling Wong Guoy. J. Davis Alexander was thoroughly vexed, of course, but what could he do? It was Ling Wong Guoy’s truffles and nobody else’s. If Hartman, Bemis & Choupette wanted to climb aboard the gravy train, they were going to have to do it on his terms.

“Well, then,” said Ling Wong Guoy enthusiastically, rubbing his hands together in much the same manner that J. Davis Alexander had done earlier, “I think I’m going to enjoy this. We’ll have public tastings all through the Belt. We’ll give away a thousand kilograms of free truffles, along with recipes. I’ll go on television to show how to cook them, how to savor them, how to—”

“Ahem,” I interrupted. “I, too, have been reading up on the history of truffles. Some authorities have claimed that they’re also aphrodisiacs.”

“Is that true?” demanded J. Davis Alexander, his eyes glittering.

“Who knows? Unless you’re Mr. Ling Wong Guoy here, who could possibly afford to eat enough of them to find out? Not that I need any for myself,” I added modestly, “but I don’t think it would hurt to mention the possibility when we float the issue...”

“How much are we worth today?” asked Jin Tshei seven months later.

“On computer? The three of us? About four and a half million buckles.”

Jin Tshei shook her head wonderingly. She is taller than Isabel, and not quite as rounded in the places that I myself find particularly interesting. She has golden skin the color of honey and glossy black hair that falls nearly to her waist. If J. Davis Alexander’s wife, Miss Grain Harvest of 2273, is the most flat-out gorgeous creature in the Belt, then Jin Tshei is a close runner-up. Sometimes I envied Isabel the fact that she was married to this beautiful woman and I wasn’t, but mostly I managed to suppress the thought. Jin Tshei is the assistant curator at the Clarkeville Museum of Art and Human Achievement and normally displays little interest in monetary matters except as how they relate to acquisitions for her rapidly expanding museum. “Four and a half million buckles,” she repeated softly. “I just can’t believe it. Are you sure you’re right?”

I nodded smugly and broadened my smile to encompass Isabel, who was sitting between us at the diningroom table. The three of us were finishing up a pleasant Sunday afternoon spent together at their apartment just on the outer edge of Silverspur, Clarkeville’s most desirable residential area, and I was about to leave for an early night in preparation for another arduous day in the life of an ethical stockbroker. “I know it seems unbelievable,” I said, “but it really is true. There’s never been an issue in the entire Belt that’s been snapped up so fast. It doubled as soon as it hit the market, and then doubled again—all in the first day. Since then it’s doubled and split seven times. It’s now the company with the highest market capitalization in the entire Belt.”

Isabel pursed her lips thoughtfully. “You mean that if you sold all the outstanding shares, they would be worth more money than Magnus Mining or Solar Transport Systems? But that’s insane!”

I shrugged. “Insane but true. J. Davis Alexander thinks that at least some of the money is coming from governments on Earth, France, Italy, and Spain, that are trying to protect their truffle farmers by buying up as much stock as they can—and then eventually trying to suppress the company.”

“Do you think that’s true?” asked Jin Tshei.

“I don’t know—but we’ve advised Ling Wong Guoy to put a permanent fleet of gunboats around Black Diamond Farm. That’s now the single most valuable piece of real estate in the entire Belt.”

“All without a single truffle being produced except for the ones he already had growing,” marveled Isabel. She turned her eyes to mine and they were far from being uncritically admiring. “I remember some of the other financial escapades you’ve involved us in that were going to make our fortunes. It’s my understanding that all of this enormous fortune you’ve accumulated for us on computer is actually based on us having bought stock on margin?”

“Of course,” I said. “How else could we possibly accumulate enough to be worth this much, no matter how often it doubled? I got a little bit of the original one million shares that was privately issued and split it between us, then when the ten million public shares came out I bought as many as I could on margin.” Margin is money that a stock-broking firm such as Hartman, Bemis & Choupette will lend its customers to buy stock on credit, the loan being secured by keeping physical possession of the stock itself. It’s an easy way to make money—as long as the price of your stock keeps going up. If the price goes down—well, that’s another story.

“And as our net worth goes up, that’s enabled you to make more and more purchases on margin?”

That’s right. Why? Do you think I haven’t been buying enough?”

Isabel and Jin Tshei scowled at me simultaneously. It was like watching a simultaneous eclipse of a double sun. “That is not at all what Isabel means, Jonathan White,” said Jin Tshei testily. “What she means is that in all these wonderful months of making millions of buckles for us, you seem to have forgotten that the whole point of the exercise was to make enough money to pay for Valérie-France’s stay on Earth and for an annual trip by each of us to go visit her.”

“Well,” I said, somewhat irritated, “isn’t that exactly what I’ve done? In another month or so, when the stock has doubled again, we can all go to Earth and live in a castle for the rest of our lives.”

Isabel shook her head. “We’ve heard your prognostications of the stock market before—and none of us are millionaires as a result. The essential thing here is Valérie-France’s health. According to my own figures, we’re going to need two and a quarter million buckles to pay for her stay and our visits over the next fourteen years. That’s if we buy a guaranteed annuity.”

I groaned in disbelief. “Throw away millions of buckles by investing them in annuities? When we can easily make—”

“Jonathan,” said Jin Tshei, “you’re outvoted. Put through the sell order for two and a quarter million first thing in the morning. According to you, that still leaves another two and a quarter million. A third of that is yours. You can do whatever you want with it. Isabel and I are going to take ours and buy two more annuities with it—fourteen years pass pretty quickly, you know. One of these days Valérie-France is going to be ready for college and then graduate work. How did you think we were going to pay for that?”

I shook my head in despair at the sheer folly of the words that issued from the mouths of these two beautiful women. “Madness,” I muttered, “utter madness.”

Jin Tshei stood by my side as we watched Ling Wong Guoy supervise the final loading of a full ton of carefully selected truffles onto the Solar Transport Systems ship that would take them to Earth. A billion stars or so, even more than were visible in the dining room of La Voûte Céleste, stretched from one end of the Cerean horizon to the other. It was a sight that always took my breath away. One of those distant lights, I supposed, could easily be Earth.

The master chef and restaurateur turned away from the cargo hatch. His face brightened at the sight of his beautiful kinswoman. “So kind of you to come to say goodbye,” he said, taking her hands in his and showing no great hurry to release them.

“This is your moment of triumph,” said Jin Tshei, nodding at the video cameras that surrounded us. “We wanted to see it in person. And to tell you to give Isabel a big kiss from both of us. You’re sure you’ll be seeing her?”

“Of course. She has already agreed to come from Switzerland to attend our little soiree. I will naturally be too busy during the dinner itself to entertain her, but I shall see her before and after. And I shall arrange that she sit between two of the most interesting people there, perhaps the King and Queen of the Netherlands.”

While gracious of Ling Wong Guoy to make the offer, I thought that this was rather unlikely. His so-called “little soiree” was a nine-course, black-tie dinner for the 250 greatest gastronomic figures in the Solar System: chefs, restaurant owners, food critics, media types, and a scattering of royalty. Most of them were French, of course, but because of the bitterness evinced by the local truffle growers, it had proven impossible to organize the dinner in either France or Italy. The neighboring Kingdom of Bohemia, however, also turned out to be a gastronomic powerhouse—and had no angry out-of-work truffle seekers to throw rocks at innocent diners. So it was to a princeling’s palace in Prague that Ling Wong Guoy was delivering his ton of truffles for what promised to be the most celebrated—and best—dinner in culinary annals.

And even if she wasn’t seated between a king and queen, at least Isabel would be there. This was the Second trip she had made to Earth this year—the first had been to establish Valérie-France in her general-purpose school-home-medical center in the Swiss Alps—and she would stay another two weeks before returning to Ceres. So it was easy enough for her to slip across a couple of borders to attend a dinner that thousands of the rich and beautiful and socially connected had already been turned away from.

“It’s awfully kind of you to have invited her at all,” I said.

“It was the least I could do, after all that you have done for me and Black Diamond Farm. After this dinner, our BDF truffles will be famous throughout the Solar System. And when I return, I promise that I will cook exactly the same dinner for you and that delightful partner of yours, Mr. Alexander.”

Tyrannical boss was a far more apt description, but I merely smiled. “At least we’ll be able to watch the vid-cast of the dinner,” I said. That was true. The dinner was going to be telecast in real time all over the Earth; Jin Tshei and I would be able to watch it a few hours later after the tight-beamed transmission had made its way across the 3.8 AUs that presently separated Earth from the far side of the Asteroid Belt.

“That is true,” agreed Ling Wong Guoy. He glanced up at the nearest video cameras, moved Jin Tshei into a slightly more photogenic angle, and stood on tiptoe to kiss her gallantly on both cheeks. My own cheeks received the same treatment in a far more perfunctory manner, and then the celebrated restaurateur was marching as if to martial music to the entrance of the ship that would take him to Earth and his glorious destiny.

“I wish we were going too,” sighed Jin Tshei. “I do miss Isabel. And Valérie-France.”

“Me too,” I said. “I also wish the two of you had listened to me.” I gestured at the media people that were still gathered around the entrance to the ship. “The publicity for this dinner is already enormous—and has only gotten started. The price of BDF was up another 27 percent this morning. By the time those 250 greedy guts in Prague actually take their first bite of poached truffle, it figures to have doubled again. If you and Isabel hadn’t put all your money into those damned annuities, you’d each be worth another two million buckles.”

“Just like you are.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “just like I am.”

“Turn on your television to the Earth news!” shrieked J. Davis Alexander’s hysterical voice from his corner office overlooking the duck pond in Westlake Park. “Go back four minutes!”

Heart pounding with sudden apprehension, I switched on the screen. All I saw was a milling mass of people in archaic clothing. “Back four minutes!” I snapped.

The image broadened to become a panoramic view of an opulent ballroom. Thousands of candles in crystal chandeliers glittered upon gold and silver fittings. Long white tables stretched across the room. The tables were packed by men in black suits and women in colorful gowns. Somberly dressed waiters swept silently through the aisles. My heart pounded even faster as I recognized the scene: it could only be Ling Wong Guoy’s Diner des Diamants Noirs.

But what the devil was it doing on the headline news channel instead of on Arts and Graces III, where it was scheduled to be shown in its entirety about six hours from now?

“Sound,” I told the set, “give me medium sound.”

“—About ready to serve the second course,” came an unctuous whisper as ripe and plummy as an entire orchard of damsons. What now appeared on the screen was a medium close-up of a distinguished old gentleman with a flowing white beard and a chestful of colorful decorations. His eyes glittered and the tip of a pink tongue moved back and forth across his lips as he impatiently awaited the next course.

An arm appeared and placed before the old gentleman an elaborately wrought golden soup dish. In the dish sat a shiny black truffle.

“This,” said the plummy whisper, “may well be the highlight of the entire feast, a dish that has utterly vanished from the menus of the world’s restaurants for more than a century now: Son Majesté le Diamant Noir Mijoté à Ma Façon dans le Roederer Cristal 2258. That is to say, an entire truffle for each guest, simmered in Mr. Ling Wong Guoy’s manner, first in butter and shallots, then poached and briefly baked in a champagne whose very name and vintage move connoisseurs to tears. As you can see, the waiter is now ladling a generous portion of demi-glace sauce over the truffle. And now, as a further and final embellishment, he is sprinkling it with a few glittering petals of crystallized violets.”

The commentator sighed rapturously. “Let us watch now as Commander von Brutenberg, Chevalier des Tâte-Vins de Bordeaux, takes his first bite of this almost ethereal truffle. The Commander savors the extraordinary aroma and bouquet; with trembling hands he slices an initial morsel; eyes closed in reverential awe, he lifts it toward his mouth. His mouth opens, he—”

The grapefruit-sized truffle sitting in the solid gold soup dish exploded.

For a long, long moment it was impossible to tell what had happened. When the jumbled images on the screen cleared, it was to reveal Commander von Brutenberg thrown back in his chair, his face and torso covered with a thick black paste that dripped slowly to the floor as he attempted to wipe the hideous goo from his eyes.

Now there came a sharp rattle of popping sounds as one after another the other truffles began to explode. The last I saw before my horrified eyes refused to look any longer was hundreds of screaming guests leaping and thrashing in a lemming-like panic to escape the culinary bombs.

I was still immobilized with shock when the face of J. Davis Alexander appeared around the corner of my door. I had an instant premonition of at least a portion of the monologue to come.

“The price of BDF has just dropped 98 percent! Trading has been suspended on every exchange in the Solar System! Ling Wong Guoy is in the hospital after trying to kill himself by slashing his throat with a truffle parer! He’ll be all right, curse his incompetence!—it seems you can’t do much damage with a paring knife—but there was lots of blood all over everything, just perfect for the iV cameras!”

J. Davis Alexander’s voice sank to a barely audible growl. “Old man Choupette himself called to say that any imbecile in the firm dumb enough to have bought any of this stock on margin has to cover it at once! That’s me, White, me! Thanks to you and your lunatic ideas, I’m a ruined man!” J. Davis Alexander’s eyes bulged with rage. “White,” he screamed, “you’re fired!”

That was the premonition I’d had.

It’s no fun being a prophet in your own country.

Isabel looked as beautiful as ever upon her return from Earth—no, more beautiful, for she had a glowing tan of the sort that you can only get in the expensive air of the Swiss Alps. But she was Jin Tshei’s wife, after all, so I faded discreetly away for a day or so to allow them their own homecoming celebration. Finally, when it was my turn to celebrate, I invited the two of them out to dinner.

“I’m afraid that this is all I can afford,” I said apologetically.

Isabel and Jin Tshei glanced around at the stark rock walls of the fast-food emporium. We were deep in the bowels of the southwest corridors of what is generally called Minerstown. Faded posters of the Mediterranean Sea and other Earth scenes made a half-hearted attempt to alleviate the sense of being buried hundreds of meters below the surface. “Looks OK to me,” Isabel shrugged. “Anyway, we’ve all of us been poor before.”

“Never as poor as this,” I groaned. “I’m ruined, just like J. Davis Alexander says he is, but really ruined. Everything I owned I’d put into margin on BDF. All I’ve got left is my commissions—and the reputation of being the guy responsible for the biggest stock market fiasco in seventy years.”

Isabel leaned across the table to brush her lips against my cheek. “It doesn’t matter, darling, we love you anyway, don’t we, Jin Tshei? And so does Valérie-France. Jin Tshei and I will pay for your ticket to visit her at the end of the year, just in time for Christmas in the snow—that’ll be jolly for both of you.”

“Jolly, yes.” I stared at her glumly. “But what I still don’t understand is what made those damned truffles go off like hydrogen bombs! Everyone here is talking about the barometric pressure differential and the—”

Isabel looked at me wide-eyed. “You mean you don’t know? I heard it in the strictest confidence from the first officer on the ship home. A charming fellow, very tall, very handsome, very, very French.”

“I can just imagine,” I managed from between clenched teeth. “And just what did this ever so handsome Frenchman tell you in the strictest confidence?”

Isabel’s laughter was a light tinkle. “Oh, that the French secret service sabotaged the dinner, of course, just as you were afraid that they might try to attack Ling Wong Guoy’s asteroid.”

“What! But how?”

“Remember when at the very last moment they sprinkled crystallized violet petals over the truffles?”

“How could I ever forget?”

“What country do you suppose is the only supplier of crystallized violet petals in the entire Solar System?”

“France, I suppose?”

“Exactly. And every one of those beautiful translucent petals was loaded with dozens of tiny little capsules of some chemical like sodium peroxide, only more so.”

I frankly gaped. “You mean—”

Isabel nodded. “They were perfectly harmless as long as they were dry. But as soon as the waiters poured the sauce over the truffles and then spooned the violet petals into the sauce the capsule coating began to dissolve. And then when the chemical encountered the sauce—” Isabel puffed out her cheeks “—kablooey! No more truffles—and no more truffle market!”

“And no more money for Jonathan,” I said sadly.

“I’m sure you’ll think of something to restore your fortunes, darling. At least you got your job back with that swine Alexander.” Isabel looked up with suddenly glowing eyes. “My goodness, this is certainly a delicious cheeseburger! It even tastes like real meat!”

“That’s because it is. Wait till you taste the fries.” I pushed some in her direction.

“The fries? These black things are french fries?”

“Sort of. Go ahead, have some.”

Isabel inserted a black strip of french fry into her mouth, chewed, and rolled her eyes in ecstasy. “I’ve never tasted anything so good! What on Ceres is it?”

“Deep-fried truffle, of course. What else do you think Ling Wong Guoy can do with the two tons of truffles that Hernandez Wong Ling is harvesting out on his asteroid every month? He can’t sell them on Earth, and the price has collapsed here on Ceres—they’re cheaper than potatoes.”

Isabel stared at her plate in astonishment. “French-fried truffles? And that’s Ling Wong Guoy out there in the kitchen?” She gestured at a white-hatted figure dimly visible behind a battery of stainless steel implements.

I nodded. “He says no one in the Solar System will ever think of looking for him in a hamburger joint.”

“But that’s terrible!”

“Except for the people in Clarkeville who like the vegetarian special.”

“The vegetarian special?” Isabel wadded a great handful of fries into her mouth.

“Sure.” I pointed to the sign on the wall. “Deep-Fried Black Diamonds—that’s what he calls the vegetarian special. See those two guys over there with the really idiotic expressions on their faces? The skinny one’s the head cook at the Tour d’Argent in Paris and the fat one’s the owner. They’ve been here three times a day for the last two weeks eating nothing but the vegetarian special. And they’re not the only greedy guts who have come all the way from Earth just to eat them—the town’s full of them.”

I popped a deep-fried black diamond or two into my own mouth. “Even though he’s bankrupted me, I do have to admit it: Ling Wong Guoy is one classy sort of guy.”

Illustration by William R. Warren, Jr.