The Galactic Gourmet

CHAPTER 32

The litter bearing Creethar had its sun canopy fully deployed so that the patient was hidden from sight. When Prilicla had said that it was only fitting that Gurronsevas and no one else should accompany it to the mine entrance, the only objection had come from Naydrad who was worried by the thought of an inexperienced driver being in charge of an anti-gravity vehicle.

Tawsar, the returned hunters, and all of the teachers with the exception of Remrath had been joined by the young working parties, so that the slope outside the mine entrance was covered by tightly-packed Wem bodies, except for a small area at the front of the crowd that contained three small handcarts. Slowly and silently Gurronsevas guided the litter to within a few yards of the carts, then reduced power to the anti-gravity grids. While the litter was settling to the ground he opened the canopy to reveal Creethar.

The assembled Wem were hushed and respectful as befitted the occasion, their feelings towards the off-worlders remaining hidden. Even the youngest of the children were silent as the crowd stared at the still figure of their former First Hunter whose body was clean and undamaged except for its right hind-limb, which was encased in a transparent cast. But when Creethar raised its head suddenly and stepped onto the ground the reaction, the sudden outburst of shouting and screaming, and the milling about of Wem bodies, was beyond anything in Gurronsevas’ experience. He wondered how this storm of emotional radiation was affecting Prilicla on Rhabwar.

But the empath had been gently insistent that, following their lengthy pre-discharge conversation with Creethar, there would be no risk. The expected emotional storm, it felt, would be comprised of shock, surprise and uncertainty, with minimum hostility. After all, it had been Creethar’s own idea to hide the facts from its own people until the last possible moment so that its homecoming would have the maximum effect.

Limping only slightly, Creethar moved close to the hand-carts and stopped to look down at them. The noise from the crowd made it difficult to think, but rather than inarticulate screaming and shouting, the sound was changing to that of many conversations that were being shouted only because everyone else was shouting. And the movements within the crowd had almost ceased, but one eye showed him a young adult who looked like Druuth disappearing into the mine entrance, hopefully on the way to fetch Remrath. The others brought him the picture of Creethar looking up from the carts and raising its arms for silence.

“My family, friends and fellow hunters,” it said slowly and clearly when silence finally came, “you have made a serious mistake regarding the intentions and the abilities of the off-worlders on the ship. It is the same mistake that I was making until a few hours ago. But now you can see for yourselves that I am not a dismembered collection of dead meat ready to be loaded onto these carts and taken to the kitchen. I am alive, and strong, and healthy. This is because our off-world friends are not and have never been preservers of meat.

“They are preservers of life.”

Creethar paused. From the crowd there came a sighing sound, like a wind blowing gently over grass, as they all seemed to inhale as one in surprise and wonder. But silence returned as it resumed talking, describing all the things that had been said and done to it by the off-worlders. Only once did it stop, when its parent and its mate appeared suddenly in the mine entrance and began pushing their way to the front of the crowd. But Remrath gestured for Creethar to go on speaking and walked past it to stand beside Gurronsevas.

In a voice that carried only to him, it said, “We grievously misjudged your friends on the ship and, after all that you have done for us, you most of all. I was thinking too much like an ignorant and backward Wem, and I am sorry. You, and your preserver friends, are again welcome in our home.”

“Thank you,” said Gurronsevas in matching voice. “I, too, am deeply sorry, for being so stupid and insensitive, and for not listening with more care to the words you were saying to me. It was a misunderstanding.”

A misunderstanding …

Gurronsevas cringed inwardly with shame and embarrassment at the memory of some of the things he had said to Remrath. At the time he had thought it strange and rather charming, but not important, that the arts of cooking and healing were practiced by the same person, and that among the Wem these individuals were also known as preservers. If he had been thinking properly he would have realized that in a society that had come to regard the eating of their increasingly scarce food animals as their only long-term hope of survival, meat from any source would not have been wasted. The clues had been plain for him to see. And when he had used the word “preservers” while referring to the medical team, believing that “healer” and “preserver” were synonymous so far as the Wem language was concerned, he had not been thinking at all.

If their positions had been reversed and Remrath had offered to tell Gurronsevas in detail what the off-world preservers — the beings who were thought to be responsible for cleaning and cutting away infected tissues and sectioning-up and preparing the edible body parts for the kitchen as would technicians in a slaughterhouse — were doing to his beloved offspring, physical violence rather than an angry silence and expulsion from the mine might have been the result.

The Wem had been forced to regress in many areas, but they still retained their intelligence and a civilized culture. That was why Prilicla had felt that it would be better for the contact to be renewed by their ex-patient and, as usual, the empath’s feeling had been accurate and Creethar was doing fine.

“… The off-worlders came here to tell us how we can live better lives on our sick but recovering world,” Creethar was saying, “but it is only knowledge and advice they bring us. They have explained how and why the sickness came to Wemar many centuries ago, and how we can cure that sickness and keep it from returning …”

Knowing that the Wem had long since lost the precise language of science, Gurronsevas and Prilicla had described the ecological catastrophe that had befallen Wemar in simple words, and Creethar was doing the same. In words that they and it understood, Creethar described Wemar’s centuries-past Time of Plenty and the terrible, continuous poisoning of the land, sea and air and the creatures who lived on or in them, and on which that short-lived Golden Age depended. It told of the vast quantities of noxious vapors that had been released into the air, to find their way high into the sky where they attacked and destroyed the vast shield that protected all of Wemar from the harmful parts of their sun’s light.

Gradually the smallest and most delicate sea-dwellers, those on which the larger fish and in turn the Wem depended for food, perished from the polar and temperate oceans. On land the unshielded sunlight blighted or killed the vegetation that fed the small and large grazers who fed the predators and the Wem themselves. Under the two-pronged attack of starvation and the sickness of a daylight that blinded the eyes and caused uncovered parts of the body to dry and rot away, all forms of animal life were dying in their millions. Their planet was withering and its depleted population shrinking with every weak and sickly generation that was born.

But the Wem who had brought down this catastrophe upon themselves were tough and adaptable, and so, although they had no way of knowing it at the time, was their world. The entire planetary population sickened and the technology that had housed them and harvested their food and processed their meat collapsed in ruins all around them. But a tiny proportion of them did not die, because they learned to protect themselves and their children from the deadly, invisible part of their once friendly and health-giving sunlight, and the few that remained relearned how to live in caves like their earliest ancestors. They grew crops in tiny areas of sheltered valleys, and traveled, hunted, and fished by night. The growing of vegetables and edible grains out of the direct sunlight was not a popular activity because, until the coming of the off-worlder master of cooks, Gurronsevas, it was believed implicitly that the diet of a healthy and virile adult Wem had to consist predominantly of fish or meat.

Holding stubbornly to the belief in meat-eating had been causing the remaining Wem to die, either from starvation or unnecessarily in the hunt. For the docile food animals were long gone and the few species that had adapted to become nocturnal, cave-dwelling predators had lost their docility. A similar adaptation had occurred in the sea depths where large fish attacked and ate each other or Wem fish hunters.“… But the monstrous reduction of population,” Creethar was saying in a declamatory voice, “and the death of all transport and manufacturing technology had one beneficial effect: it enabled the ailing Wemar to begin its recovery. Over the centuries the great living creature that is our home world has dispersed and dispelled the poisons from the land and sea and partially renewed the invisible shield above us, which allows only heat and light to reach the surface. As a result, the plants are beginning to grow again and the animals and sea creatures forsake their caves and burrows and ocean depths and thrive; but for many generations we must husband our food resources by breeding animals, not hunting and eating them to extinction because of our unnecessary hunger for meat, until we have completed the work of replenishing our planet.

“But the off-worlders advise caution,” Creethar continued. “Prolonged exposure to sunlight will still harm us, but not to the extent that it did in the past, and our children’s children it will not harm at all. Other problems face the Wem when the surviving families and tribes join together again; we must persuade the Fat Ones at the equator to give up their simple but very dirty technology. We must do this peacefully, the off-worlders say, by using our minds rather than our spears, because there are too few Wem remaining on Wemar for violent solutions. And when we begin to redevelop our technology, they will advise us on methods of keeping it clean so that we will not poison our world again …”

“Your offspring,” said Gurronsevas softly, “is speaking very well. I am impressed.”

Remrath dismissed the compliment with an untranslatable sound, but it sounded pleased as it said, “As a youth Creethar was a teacher and a debater long before he became an adult hunter, and he will not allow anyone to forget the new wisdom you have given us. Of that you and your off-worlder friends can be sure.”

“When I was telling Creethar about these matters,” Gurronsevas went on, “my intention was only to take its mind off some deep worry that was troubling it. It was only early this morning that I discovered that it was worried about what it thought was its imminent death. Now it seems to understand the true meaning of what it heard better than I did. But then, I am only a cook.”

“A First Cook who will change the eating habits of a world,” said Remrath. It allowed time for Gurronsevas to make his own untranslatable Tralthan reaction to a compliment before going on. “Everyone assembled here, from the youngest to the oldest, came to mourn and celebrate Creethar’s return to us, and to share and eat the meat of his body. Instead they are digesting the words of the off-worlders and Creethar the Hunter and Teacher.”

Prilicla’s voice sounded in his earpiece. It said, “This is going very well, friend Gurronsevas, as I felt it would. Even the contactors on Tremaar are pleased with you. Captain Williamson sends its compliments and says that it was a stroke of genius on the hospital’s part to send its Chief Dietitian on the Wemar mission, and the report that it is sending to Sector General on what must be the first known instance of culinary first contact will make them very pleased with you as well. I felt I should give you the news without delay, since you may still be feeling uneasy about Colonel Skempton’s reaction to your return. There is no need to worry. The Wemar success will ensure that your past misdemeanors will be forgiven and forgotten. Good, I feel your pleasure and relief.”“… Very soon Gurronsevas and the preservers of the ship must leave,” Creethar was saying. “They are fearsome beings, especially their master of cooks, who is a creature out of the most terrifying dreams of children. But even the youngest have met it and come to call it friend. The off-worlders cannot stay long with us because there will be much work awaiting them on other worlds or amid the wreckage of the great ships which travel the dark spaces between the stars, where they will be needed to heal and repair sick or damaged beings so that their lives will be preserved as was mine. They told me that the other off-worlders who follow them will not stay long among us either, because they know that the Wem are a proud and able species. They will help us gladly, but they will not allow us to become too dependent upon that help, for that could give us a sickness of the mind that would be permanently crippling. Instead they will help us to help ourselves.

“If we do this, they say, then the time taken for us to replenish our planet, rebuild our civilization and technology, and finally to visit our off-world friends among the stars, will be short indeed …”

“My friend,” said Remrath very seriously, “we will not eat meat tonight, and I and Druuth and all of us are glad. Thank you.”

Gurronsevas was uncomfortable with displays of emotion, especially his own. He looked around at the cheering crowd, and finally said, “A last-minute change of menu like that can be a real problem for the kitchen staff. Can you use another cook?”