Not to puff myself up too much, but as a person of fame -- I’ve always considered the possibility I might be kidnapped and held against my will. During my captivity in the Martian villa of the Duke of New Caledonia, I sometimes found myself saying, “well, I guess this is only fair.”
Listener, as a professional. A professional food critic to be specific, I’m not yet a professional kidnapping victim, but let me say that being kidnapped sucks. You don’t need me to tell you that, but for the sake of completeness, just know that you should avoid being kidnapped as much as possible.
Things can always be worse, I suppose. In the words of Journalist Laura S. Wagner, “I’d rather be jailed with a lark than free with a leopard.”
As the Duke of New Caledonia apprehended me and escorted me to one of his villa’s many, many guest rooms. I frequently considered the words of Ms. Wagner. As he rambled on about the expense and quality of my accommodations, it was that phrase that lent me some amount of comfort.
However, when the Duke and his entourage departed, when he gave me a short bow and wished me a good evening, when he produced a small fob from inside his pocket and electronically locked me inside my room…
Then the words of Ms. Wagner were as much comfort as a life jacket in the vacuum of space.
I’m Oscar Yasui, formerly a professional food critic, currently an independent food journalist, and you’re listening to Gastronaut.
If you don’t have options, or if you have been robbed of choice by salaried thugs, then there are absolutely worse fates than being imprisoned by the Duke. His rooms have an old world design ethos: blood red walls and gleaming silver light fixtures. Chandeliers dangling from the ceiling, alchemical chrysalis, transmuting electricity and wealth into light and ostentatiousness. But I’m not here to compliment my captor, so for this segment, I ask my listeners to join me as I evaluate my prison not as a hotel, but as a dungeon. Function should dictate form, right?
Within this line of thinking, the Duke’s Guest Room makes a number of curious decisions of design. I mean, it’s spacious for one, any occupant is deprived of the experience of claustrophobia or suffocation. The bed is too large and plush, allowing a captive the comfort of sleep or the ability to lounge on memory foam if standing grows too tiresome. But if the bed and floor doesn’t appeal, they may rest in an easy chair or seated at a writing desk. The air is clear of stink or mold or flies, and is well ventilated by an internal HVAC system that frees occupants from the threat of lung infection: which uh, I might add is impressive, since many martians struggle with the toxic dust that covers every inch of this planet. Oh, and I also have a bathroom! A bathroom larger than some apartments I have paid money to live in. How is a prisoner intended to live in filth with easy access to a shower? How can a prisoner be expected to wallow in their excrement with a flush toilet, complete with temperature adjustable bidet? I can’t understand. And in the entire suite, no instruments of torture! How is a prisoner to have any dread without some chains, thumbscrews, or a good ol’ stretching rack?
And last, but certainly not least, I’m not an interior decorator by trade, but silver fixtures and blood red vinyl interior paneling? Was my captor a vampire count? Was I the leading lady of the black and white throwbacks of the 2040s? Or were the chrome and crimson guest rooms intended to evoke the feel of a retro futuristic roadside diner. From an age where pancakes were served sugared and burnt to hungry customers that only witnessed flying cars in dreams and fifty-cent pulp novels? Perhaps I spoke too soon before! Perhaps the true torture intended was a suffocating atmosphere of tackiness!
You’ll have to forgive me, listeners. I’m working through some… pretty strong memories. Sorry about the stream of consciousness style.
The evening passed in fitful bursts of sleep and wakefulness. I woke to check the locks on the door, to pull at the frames on the window, to peer behind shelves and under furniture. At the time I think trying to escape gave me more comfort than gazing listlessly at a ceiling I did not recognize. When I did dream, I dreamed of drowning in dust, of the whirring of ventilation systems. Of soaring into the sky.
The worst nightmare I’ve ever had, listener. Well, the worst nightmare I’ve ever had so far. But… It did give me an idea. I just didn’t know it yet.
The next morning the Duke’s staff unlocked my guestroom door and led me through hallways and stairwells, our passage observed from all directions by portraits of the Duke, of his extended family members, of lovers past and present. Swirling oil paints, gilded wooden frames. I witnessed men and women smoking cigars, standing astride the corpses of animals long extinct. I saw the Duke posed with a chest of medals, though I couldn’t identify what military or campaign he had served in. I watched the Duke age from a young boy with a permanent expression of surprise, into a young man with an unfortunate mustache and look of abject hormonal misery. Finally, I saw him age into his current middle-aged, aggressive dignity. Around the guards and I, furniture crowded the halls, enough end tables and lounge chairs of inexplicable placement to provide for a hotel’s worth of elbows and asses. All well-dusted, well-kept, and nigh-unused. I could smell how new they were. All varnish and polish and fresh, natural wood.
My escorts didn’t offer much in the way of a tour, or conversation of any sort for that matter. We were silent in our roles, guard and prisoner. Even the sound of our footsteps were silenced by inch thick carpeting. Murmured conversation struck my ears as we approached a great door, the Duke was chiding someone, too muffled to make out. Then the scent of freshly prepared food brought my mouth to water. I hadn’t had a chance to eat dinner the night before. The men at my side approached either door and dug the heels of their designer shoes into the carpet, before giving a great straining push.
The door opened to reveal the Duke in a robe of silver threads, so voluptuous as to add three inches in all directions to his frame. He wallowed in that robe, swinging a hand to dismiss his guards and welcome me in. To my eyes it looked like a man attempting to be nonchalant while lost at sea.
“Oscar! Welcome! I’ve put together your breakfast for the morning, do have a seat and avail yourself of these fine victuals!”
My guards grunted as they dragged the massive oak door behind us closed, leaving me alone with only the Duke, no less than four of his personal guards, and a neat row of aloof servants in dresses and suits. I motioned to them with a look of confusion. The Duke laughed in response, beaming.
“One should never eat in their own home without an audience! Now come, sit, sit.”
The concept of mandatory performative breakfast almost caused me to choke, but I recovered my composure with just enough grace to drag myself into one of the Duke’s ornate chairs. Its upholstery squeaked unpleasantly as I settled in, the cushions having never been broken in.
Arrayed before us was a meal of inordinate showmanship, stretched across a table built to serve twenty, with dishes packed at a density similar to the scales of a fish. Crepes in the Russian style, piled high with red caviar that smelled beautifully of the sea, combined artfully with sour cream, gold leaf, and chives. Chocolate bundt cakes, rich and sweet, lay crowned with fairy dustings of powdered sugar. Their chocolate glaze was still at the consistency of molten fudge, running to pool on the plate. There were lengths of savory sausage, their flanks seared black and brown by the griddle, fat still snapping in an iron pan besides scrambled eggs, formed with low heat, goat cheese, and tender attention. Apparently there was some sort of established mandatory minimum on gold leaf, someone had morosely sprinkled the scrambled eggs with the stuff. There were waffles in the Liège style, dense and sweet, chewy and covered in caramelized pearl sugar. Their divots heaped with sweet whipped cream and fragrant with the summer sweetness of fresh strawberries.
I contemplated throwing the food onto the ground, grinding it into the carpeting with the heel of my boot, but the judgment of my stomach won over my pride. And hey, I know what you are thinking. Well, get off your high horse, listener! If you, as a person, ever find a Liege waffle of even passing quality placed before you, by all means, eat that waffle. Unless, it… unless it is poison! Or if you have some sort of food allergy! I’ll denounce the Duke at any opportunity but a solid waffle is a solid waffle.
As I tucked in, the Duke’s fork wove and wended its way around his many meals with a banal disinterest. He spoke of his great mansion, the cost of putting it together, rambled a bit about the odd power social media carries against the nobility. I’ll admit I wasn’t… I didn’t really pay attention to what the Duke was saying. Well uh… that isn’t entirely true. He also spoke at length about his Carpaccio.
"That is the beauty of the carpaccio, Oscar! Every individual element can be a thing of extravagance! You make your value, your generosity known with every element. No sawdust or horsemeat or mealy bread here! A dish is only as good as it's finest ingredients, after all!"
When the word “carpaccio” struck my ears, spoken by the voice of the Duke, I slowed my meal and placed my fork down beside my half eaten meal. My stomach roiled around my breakfast. I craned my head to see the Duke amongst the platters and trays. I believe he noticed my pallid complexion, because then he continued.
"I know you're sickened by this plate, but have no fear. In a week, or perhaps two, I'm sure you will come to adore carpaccio again. I'm doing you a great favor, son!"
I asked him what his obsession with carpaccio was, trying to buy my innards time to settle. He nodded in response, sending the ends of his mustache bouncing.
“I was saying, Oscar, that you had dealt me a great injustice in your article on my cooking. I was a gracious host! And I found my graciousness rewarded only with scorn and public ridicule. You wounded me, Oscar. You wounded me greatly. People were asking me, me! If I knew the slightest thing about hygiene! When I bested them in the intellectual field of debate, they only intensified their jabs and jibes. They accused me of being incapable of boiling water! A task so simple, so entirely beneath me, I leave it to my servants!”
I asked him why he did not simply block his harassers online. He responded by spluttering and toppling a nearby glass.
“Block? What, cower behind the little hand holding mechanisms of the media? Shut my eyes and ears like a child? That would be the same as admitting defeat!”
His face turned stony, drained of the blood fury had forced into his cheeks.
“And besides, once you got that ball rolling, the tabloids jumped aboard. Guests canceled their reservations at my manor. Servants and assistants would hover at my side with ‘helpful’ advice. Your Grace, are you certain that temperature is safe for the roast? Your Grace, have you remembered that tree nuts are lethal to the Lady of New Canterbury? You made a buffoon of me, Oscar.”
There was a period of silence. The Duke stared at me for a full fifteen seconds. A servant coughed, and I met her eyes. She jabbed her chin at the Duke a few times and cleared her throat. For a moment my mouth opened and closed like a fish. I turned back to the Duke and apologized, almost genuinely after nearly forty-five seconds of pantomime. He grunted in return, and returned to his meal, rolling his words around a wet mouthful of crepe.
“And sorry you should be. It is no concern at this point, Oscar. I believe I have devised a way you can pay me back for the violence your careless writings have done to my reputation.”
I pushed the side of my hand against my lips, the violence my writings had done him? He had kidnapped me!
The Duke finally swallowed his mouthful, and a servant rushed over to dab at his mustache with a cloth, before returning to his position on the wall. The Duke cleared his throat and continued.
“Tell me, boy. I’m certain a man of your culinary calibur has heard of the position of court Maître d'hôtel?”
I was stunned into silence for a moment. I asked what he meant. His knife worked furiously against the creamy skin of a crepe, bursting a clump of caviar and squirting their oils across the plate.
“What I mean to say, Oscar. Is that the two of us will be working hard to repair your slander. Tonight, I’ll be serving you more of my apparently infamous carpaccio, which you will be sampling and then reviewing. A review you will only post once I fully approve the contents.”
I felt the roiling in my stomach rise, a blort of bile creeping up my throat to nip and burn at my uvula. carpaccio and I had not been on speaking terms for years since my meeting with the Duke in Fremont. I chose instead to explain, slowly and steadily, that my flight would be leaving in a few days, that I had already purchased a ticket to Le Straud on the Singular Devotion, that I couldn’t refund it if I missed the flight. I became… animatedly earnest describing the price of rush tickets. The Duke brought his fist against the table, bouncing his silverware and causing a tray to topple in an avalanche of greens. A servant rushed forward to attend.
“Good heavens man, compose yourself!” the Duke said. “Whatever trip Palladium has you on is no longer your concern. You are my guest, you will remain my guest, and you will do as I say or you will sulk in your lavishly appointed room!”
He leaned back in his chair and took a great sip of bloody mary, peering at me from around the feathered fringes of a celery stalk, eyes dark with the smug anger of a man born with power and wealth in either hand.
Clearly the Duke had not realized that my former employer, Palladium, and I were no longer on good terms. And what's more, and I really feel the need to highlight this, he thought to warmly poison me. The thought of the Duke’s carpaccio tugged at my guts like a ghostly hand of putrescence. He observed my malaise with dissatisfaction.
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic, Oscar. I’ve refined the dish since you’ve last eaten it, your previous sickness was just a fluke of ill luck. And besides! You are merely queasy! I’d gladly suffer green gills rather than endure the humiliation you’ve put me through all over again, so consider your current state a mercy compared to what I’ve suffered!”
My temper flared then, and I shot up from my chair like a rocket, leaving nausea behind and putting only fury ahead. I leapt up with such force from the table that the servants whispered and the guards exchanged a single glance amongst themselves. The Duke held out a hand to them, but I took it as a gesture meant for me. Looking back, I’m lucky I wasn’t bludgeoned, or electrified, or sprayed with riot gas and bound in zip-ties.
I believe my listeners would not be surprised to hear that my fulminations skipped the subject of my imprisonment completely. But consider like… even if I had lost my shit about being kidnapped, imprisoned, and threatened with a role that read as chattel slavery, what would it really have accomplished? A quick trip to my room? Getting my face completely nova’d by the Duke’s guards?
At the risk of sounding like a guitar with one string, and look I AM a guitar with one string… Still.
I ran his ass over on his culinary choices.
I began with his crepes. Nothing was wrong with red caviar on sour cream in a crepe, but his choice to pair the meal with a bloody mary showed a total lack of understanding for flavor pairings. I asked him how he enjoyed the delicate flavor of red caviar once it had been completely annihilated by astringent tomato juice and vodka. And, also, the gold leaf? Gold leaf? Was living in a mansion not a suitably obvious display of wealth? The silver fixtures and inch thick carpets were too subtle a flex, might as well ram cash directly down his guest’s throats, literally. Only, well not really, because gold leaf’s actual value is about a dollar per sheet.
The food, oh the food was great! Fresh and vibrant, and utterly alien to his lands, to his own fiefdom’s agriculture. Everything here was shipped in from hiberostasis, a perfectly suitable technology, but one woefully inferior to fresh grown produce! And so much! Food in such great quantities as to shock and awe a guest into wonder at their magnitude, at the host’s generosity. With such a commitment to freshness, I wondered aloud what would become of the leftovers! Into the bin, perhaps? Would we hurl them out the windows at approaching guests? Maybe smear it on our hands and paint the walls? Y’know, follow in the footsteps of his interior decorator.
Out of breath, red faced and panting, my hair disheveled from my impassioned ranting, I went to return to my chair, and found it toppled onto its side. A few servants worked to set it upright, and I sank back into it, thanking them with the sheepishness of a rager presented with an innocent witness to their explosion. There were a few snickers from the wall, and I delivered a mock bow in response.
The Duke’s face was shaking, his bloody mary splashing from its goblet, staining the sleeve of his coat. He saw his beverage, seemingly with fresh eyes, and commanded a servant to take it from his presence, as if he had been poured a glass of shit instead of an okay cocktail. I brought my point in to dock.
He lived like a king, but ate like a courtier. That his sense of taste in food only revealed his lack of taste. I asked him what on Earth or Mars or whatever, what was he trying to prove?
There was a moment of silence. He cleared his throat.
“Gold leaf is a dollar per sheet, you said?”
I told him that, yes, it was in fact, a dollar a sheet.
He clicked his tongue, and appeared to make a mental note of something. I never did find out what while I was in his company.
“Guards, take Mr. Yasui to his room while I figure out what to do with him. And please do not be rough with him.”
In a few moments either guard had me by my opposite arms, and were hauling me out of the dining room. Despite my protests that I could walk perfectly fine, they carried me at such a pace that my heels left little wakes in the fibers of the carpeting. As I was pulled from the room, I shouted over my shoulder that I could make twice the dish the Duke’s carpaccio ever could be, without a single overpriced off world import. Well, that’s a truncated version of what I said, I said a lot of things to him as I was being removed. I can be very efficient with my words when I’m speaking face to face.
I watched the doors of the dining room close, the Duke offering a small salute just before my view of him vanished behind a foot of wood.
realized, as I was marched up the steps, that I hadn’t placed myself in a particularly favorable position to beg the Duke not to force feed me carpaccio. That, and it was possible that I was not going to leave this villa alive.
I did, by the way. I did leave the villa alive. That’s how I’m writing a script for this podcast. If I was dead, there wouldn’t be much an update, and if I was still imprisoned, this podcast would probably just be a series of breathless endorsements for the Duke’s cooking and taste. Given the choice I think I’d prefer to be killed. Sorry to ruin any suspense that you might have had, listeners.
But as the guards again led me through the winding halls of the villa, I felt a current of air tousle my hair, a chill descending on my scalp. A vent stood on the wall beside me, the dimensions of a wallet, identical in every way to the one in my own room. The air that emerged from it smelled familiar, like leather and paper. As I was hauled up the stairs, I asked whose room that was. The guard on my right replied with an easy drawl.
“The Duke’s. You’re directly above him, at his request.”
The other guard conversed to his companion, as if I wasn’t directly between them.
“You sure that’s alright to say, Fairchild?”
“I could care less.” Fairchild replied, his curt tone leaving no room for further questions.
With a few more turns and a quick shove in the small of my back, I was returned to my quarters. When the footsteps outside my door became echoes, and then became silence, I crept up to the filtration system in my room, to stare at the ventilation duct, just above a bookshelf filled with untouched encyclopedias and travel glossaries. Leather and paper.
At its size I could hardly manage to slip my wrist inside, and even if I could it would do me little good. Brass screws held the grill in place. Foolishly, I inserted a fingernail into the indentation of a screw, and despite my best efforts, my only reward was a split in the nail and a blood blister beneath. I stepped away from the panel, my injured thumb bit between my teeth.
I needed tools. I needed time. I… I needed to be approximately two inches high and as skilled in free climbing as a colonial pathfinder.
A knock sounded against my door, and I pocketed my injured finger. A short time later, the Duke entered, his fingers pulling at the corners of his mustache in what I believed was thought, but I realize now was deep anxiety.
“Oscar, while you were making a fool of yourself during breakfast, you said something. Something that caught my interest.”
I asked him what he wanted.
“Mhm. To the point then. You claimed you could make a dish that would be superior to my carpaccio without… as you put it, any off world ingredients.” His fingers shifted from his stache to point at my chest.
“I wanted to ask about your intentions. Were you merely saying that to get a rise out of me? To vent your frustrations with the consequences of your actions?”
I explained that given time and a tour of his grounds, I absolutely could make that dish.
The Duke held his point at me, nodding, before slipping the fob he used to lock me in from his pocket. He twirled it, and as he did, an easy satisfaction slid over his features.
“Well you’ll have to show me after tonight’s dinner. Perhaps a few days from now? Once you’ve settled in and gotten comfortable with your new role here.” He turned to leave, I having apparently settled some internal debate within him.
As he exited I asked him if he wanted to learn to cook. He turned around, his eyes gleaming.
“Learn to cook?” he said “You utterly disagreeable man, I know more of cooking than anyone else in my circle, in my entire bracket! Clearly more than you. My servants prepare my meals from my recipes.”
I reminded him that even if that was true, then his choices at breakfast were certainly an inconsistency. That he’d be an excellent chef, but he was missing a fundamental feature.
“Then what, oh Food Critic Extraordinaire, do you believe I am missing?”
He was missing his fundamentals. I wasn’t entirely lying when I said that, or… At least I didn’t mean to lie at the time.
It was a bet. I tried to hide my relief when the glint in the Duke’s eyes faded away. When his fingers gently brushed against one another. He swirled his tongue round his mouth, then met my eyes again.
“What use are fundamentals when I have the best ingredients in the solar system?”
I said that I’d show him, if he was willing to withstand another wound to his puffed up ego.
“Then we’ll make it a wager,” he said. “Make a dish that can beat my carpaccio with whatever fodder you can scrape together on my estate, with the entirety of my luxury kitchen closed to you. Manage that before your shuttle departs, and I’ll even let you go free.”
I asked how I could possibly gather ingredients locked in my room. He snorted air through his nose.
“I’ll assign you a guard detail, they’ll watch you like a hawk: any funny business and the whole wager’s off. But hear this: if I win, you’ll remain my guest until every injury you’ve paid me has been reimbursed with interest. I’ll have that blog of yours working triple shifts in my honor, no less than six seasons, perhaps even a few holiday specials. Agree to that term, and we’ll have this little competition.”
I agreed. And he nodded, a smile creeping across his face.
“Then it’s settled, once and for all. You’re a fool to test yourself against me, Oscar. But at least this will put to rest these bizarre notions of superiority and victimhood you stubbornly refuse to discard. Enjoy your evening, then.”
When he departed, the bravado, the only thing that set my jaw, departed my body. I collapsed onto my too soft bed and crushed my hands against my face.
But I did not despair. Whatever happened, I would not end my career as some glorified cup bearer in a barony of one. I set Ernest’s micro-climate pod on the writing desk, pulled an untouched journal from the Duke’s shelf, nabbed a… shockingly high quality pen from a nearby stand. It’s a Williamson Tai-Chi. False ivory framing with these beautiful black striations, the body is this burgundy stone that refracts and reflects ambient light. Just enough to be noticed, but not enough to distract, you have to really look for it. I swear the stone is lab grown, but it just might be extraterrestrial. The pen’s tip puts ink on the page like a Confuscian legalist, professional yet with an artful fluidity of motion.
Y’know, before I started this podcast, I always thought that four hundred dollar pens were the height of an extravagant knickknack in this deeply digital age. After my involuntary stay with the Duke… Well, I still think that. And yet. Look, I have one of the Duke’s pens right here with me as I write. I’m not using it to write, I’m using my all-black Twinnon Peregrine for the script.
What I mean to say is, in that room I took that impossibly well-made pen, and I started sketching out what I thought the ventilation system might look like. Ernest kept my morale up as I worked. We were both far from home, trapped under little domes. Ernest, my little blob of friendship and volatile chemicals. He was an inspiration, listeners.
I needed a way to get that fob, the digital key to my rather ornate cell. I considered a series of ropes and pulleys? Then I realized that was stupid and would never work. For a wide variety of reasons.
What I needed were tools to remove the grate. I needed something to hook the loop of his fob’s keychain. I needed a way to see what I was doing. I needed to know where the fob would be.
I held the book away from me, examining my poorly sketched and angrily scribbled over doodles with exasperation. There were too many factors. Eventually, I went to bed, having eaten a meal of roasted and herbed potatoes and fried sweetbread. My dreams were serpentine and claustrophobic.
The next morning, maybe forty minutes after I woke, there came a knock on my door. I answered it to find one of the Duke’s guards, dressed in that same crimson and ivory suit, though I observed the man liked his suit a bit more rumpled and wrinkled than his companions had. He spoke before I did.
“The Duke has assigned me as your personal security detail. You can go anywhere on the grounds, with the exception of the Duke’s private quarters, the kitchen, and the dining room, unless the Duke invites you to dine with him.” He gave a yawn, and fiddled with the controls at the side of his headset and visor.
“There are a few other places, but those are the obvious ones. Don’t cause any problems, alright, sir? This is a privilege, yada yada… and it can be easily revoked.”
I asked him what his name was.
“Fairchild,” he said blandly. “Where do you want to go?”
I told him we should begin immediately in the agricultural regions around the estate.
“Yeah, whatever.” he responded. And we were off.
The twin suns of Mars shone on our necks as we exited the Villa. Sol was faint and cool, its light twice weakened, once by the dome that kept civilization alive, and again by sheer distance. But Remus, the orbital reflector array that provided for kilometers of inhabited land, the Duke’s included, glared bright and hot. Fairchild passed me a rebreather to buckle across my face and eyes: it’s economically viable to install electrostatic repulsion arrays in city centers, but towards the dome’s outskirts, no such comfort exists. Despite the incredible efforts undertaken by the Martian people, there are some things as yet that human ingenuity cannot change.
For my listeners who aren’t aware, the cancer rates on Mars are many times that on Earth. The soil is filled with hexavalent chromium and calcium perchlorate, as martian as the color red. As Fairchild brusquely assisted my strapping on of the rebreather, I asked him if life around the soil made him nervous.
“What, Hexie and Perky? Don’t go whining about that shit to me. We manage just fine.”
He ended his statement with a chuckle, perhaps at the thought of a shuttle hopper like me hacking a lung on the Martian atmosphere, but he was interrupted by a moist rib rattler of a cough, that left his back shaking, and his fingers digging into his knees. I reached a hand out to hit his back, but he waved me off.
“Don’t say nothing. Now that your bib’s buckled, we can get on with it.”
And say nothing I did.
The dunes, and the fields atop them, spread out before us. I wrote previously of the vegetables and wheat on display, and all of that was still present, but on closer inspection I began to notice the infrastructure, the clockwork beneath the watch’s face. All the vegetation was beneath a diaphanous layer of plastic sheeting, puffed up, with a long rectangular shape like ghostly loaves of bread. These greenhouses, that's what they were, they were greenhouses, stretched out in all directions, tended to by dust caked rovers that trundled from structure to structure. As we approached, trudging through the clinging, ever present dust of this world, I saw the rovers were built like something between a crab and a stunted giraffe. They would rear up on four legs to spray and snip, scan and sift each example of vegetation. The designers had given them round eyes on stalks, which… I mean they were cute. I don’t have any fancy way of saying this, they were just really cute robots, alright? Great big… puppy dog eyed giraffe crabs.
I turned to Fairchild and asked him what I could and could not take.
“Anything from the farms. Anything edible. But don’t take any tools or fertilizer or whatever. The Duke was pretty clear on that.”
I nodded in reply, and stepped inside the greenhouse. Or tried to. A speaker on the exterior gave a jolting whoop, and the door refused to slide aside to give me entry. All I accomplished was clacking my rebreather against its exterior.
Fairchild shook his head. “That isn’t gonna work.” he said, pointing to the robots. Each agricultural drone would pause before entering, running its manipulators over every inch of its body, while vibrating with a violence that left their bodies a blur. When their ritual was complete, only then would they enter.
“The dust, Oscar. The Hexie and Perky, even a little is bad for the plants. You can’t just go in. You’ll need to find a tech to get you the crops you want.”
We wandered between the plots for some time before I encountered a man and a woman, kneeling down beside a toppled drone, which emitted a rhythmic blerp and stirred the sand with its legs. The woman was wiry and young, and held one eye closed as she reached inside the torso of the fallen drone.
“Transmission, I’d reckon.” she said, muffled by her rebreather.
“Mmmm, narp. It’s a pathing issue. We need to diag att/alt.” The man squatted beside the robot, resting a hand on its side. Even squatting he was imposing, tall, and built heavy.
“Hell it is-” the woman began, before her body was wracked with a fit of coughing. The man gave her a couple of firm blows to the upper back.
“Filters?” he drawled.
“Filters.” she replied then noticed our arrival.
The two technicians jumped up, a small device clattering off the body of the agridrone. It lay there in the dust, a slim trapezoid with a pair of hand grips, an elastic tube emerging from its leading edge. To my surprise, the tube wiggled in the sand, before retracting back into a compartment in the device.
“Mr. Fairchild,” the man said, wiping some machine oil from his dusty visor. “How can we help you today?” The woman’s hands twitched at her sides, and she looked between Fairchild and me.
“This is a guest of the Duke.” The two technicians straightened their backs, and bowed in near unison. Fairchild ground the toe of his boot into the dust with exasperation.
“Aw, cut it out, he’s a food critic, not someone important.” Listeners, that one turned my face red, let me tell you. “Just give him access to some of the vegetables we’re growing, let him take a few, shouldn’t hurt the harvest any.”
And with that, Fairchild, my appointed guard, whirled around and began walking away. He called over his shoulder, shouting to be heard through his mask and the growing distance.
“Give me a call if he does anything suspicious or causes you any trouble, but do as he says otherwise, alright?”
The man and woman, clearly realizing that there was no cause for alarm, shouted back to Fairchild as he left.
“Say hi to Maggie for me!” the woman crowed at his back. With minimal exertion, Fairchild flashed a rude expression over his shoulder, and disappeared behind a greenhouse of fast growing dandelions.
The technicians and I toured the fields, or at least wove between the greenhouses, treading paths of footprints, both that of humans and agridrones. The Martians, they never got wind right beneath the domes, despite their best efforts, and it never, ever rains. I’ve heard a footprint can remain for years, undisturbed, baking in the light of Sol and Remus.
I peered through the plastic siding of a greenhouse, at rows of garlic, emerald stalks wet with condensation, bursting up from rich, black soil. I brushed my finger across the side of the greenhouse. My finger came away coated with red dust. For a moment, I was lost in thought. The effort this must have taken, turning this small plot of land, maybe 20 feet at its longest side, from poison to anything of value.
No wonder they didn’t want me entering. I consider myself lucky Fairchild didn’t tackle me to the ground. And then, my foot kicked against a small oblong device, half buried in the dust. I stooped a bit to give it a better look, nudging it to better expose it. A toolbelt power drill! I swallowed, trying to work spit back into a suddenly dry mouth.
I decided to ask the man and woman what was grown here.
“Garlic?” the man said, somewhat perplexed. He exchanged a look with the woman.
“Uh, feller,” the woman said, scratching the back of her head, “Fairchild said you were some kind of food critic, right? Haven’t you ever seen garlic?”
I suppressed the urge to tear off my mask and pack cancer dust into my mouth. I asked what other products were growing. The woman idly picked at a worn sticker on her dust mask. The sticker read “New Caledonia Fireflies” over crossed baseball bats.
“Well,” she began, “we have Dandelions for greens and pharma, mmm, we’ve got chickens, though I don’t know if the Duke will let you take any. Wheat for bourbon, sweet potatoes because they’re great.”
“I could go for some sweet potato french fries,” The man said, plumes of dust rising off his belly as he patted it with a gloved hand. “Could destroy a plate.”
“Mmhmm,” The woman said. They turned their backs to regard the rest of the greenhouses. I sank to my knee and slipped the compact power drill into my pocket. Then as quick as I could, I untied a shoelace from its knot and tried to look busy retying it. When they turned back to me, they didn’t seem any the wiser.
“Oh, yeah onions.” the man said, nodding. “Can’t forget about those. And oilweed, but that stuff isn’t really for cooking.
I asked him what oilweed was.
“Oh, uh, it’s a kind of grass I guess, has these channels that run through it, occasionally these bulges filled with slick. Oil.”
“Like nasty blisters,” the woman chimed in, “Pretty gross looking plant, but it exports well, and it can actually grow here.
My face lit up. I told them they had olivegrass. The name “oilweed” didn’t do that miracle plant justice.
“That’s what they call it on Earth? Ech. Wouldn’t make anything to eat out of it, tastes too strong. If you’re cooking for the Duke, he’d throw a fit knowing you were serving him oilweed or oil grass or whatever.”
I shook my head, and told him that I’d be able to work around it. He and the woman shared another of their looks, and the two let it pass. They did this a lot, these wordless looks used to reach a consensus.
I told them that I never did ask their names.
“She’s Kali,” the man said.
“He’s Rufus,” the woman responded.
I shook their hands. Their grips were knuckle burstingly firm. Fairchild returned, a bit more red around his ears, and wiping his neck with a handkerchief that he plunged into his pocket once he got close enough.
“Don’t.” He said simply to Kali. She bounced on her heels and hummed to herself, eyes turned up at the dome above us.
“You done here, critic man?” Fairchild pushed his chin in my direction. I nodded in reply.
“Great. Let’s get back in the HVAC.”
That evening was another dinner with the Duke. Small-talk about Le Straud, how much he despised their cuisine, he felt that what they cooked was as much of a sign of that planet’s degradation as the war that was burning up one of its continents. He asked why Palladium would send a food critic out to a conflict zone, even going so far as to say it was fortunate he was keeping me from my flight. I mostly grunted amicably to keep the conversation moving. My shuttle to the Singular Devotion, however? That would be leaving in two days.
The moment I reached my room, I turned on the television and flipped channels until I hit an action flick. I found Neighborhood Warrior. You’ve seen people giving it the business on Savage. I’m not going to summarize the film for you. It’s dumb, it’s trashy, and it’s impossibly loud. I watch Neighborhood Warrior once a year. At least.
While Brett Kingstangyer rode a skateboard on screen, firing automatic pistols at every ninja in view, I set to work dismantling the grate that covered the ventilation network. The power tool made short work of the screws, and soon I was gently lifting the metal away.
My heart fluttered in my chest. The same way it fluttered when I posted my first food blog fourteen years ago. The same way it fluttered when a handful of likes trickled in over the next three weeks.
My hand didn’t fit inside. That was still a big problem. But even if I couldn’t remove the largest barrier in my way, I could always remove another.
What I needed was more time. What I needed was more tools. I needed a recipe to serve the Duke the night after next.
So I brought my stolen pen out of my pocket, opened the back of my erstwhile journal, and flipped through my escape plans until I found blank pages staring back at me.
As Brett Kingstangyer began his climactic sword fight against his lost twin brother, who was also played by Brett Kingstangyer, I started composing flavor profiles.
I considered what I had to work with. Dandelion was edible, even tasty, but tricky to prepare. It was a plant that loathed being eaten, deeply bitter. Wheat on the other hand had incredible flexibility in its use, assuming you could mill the crop into something practical, like flour. Garlic and onion would be my staunch allies here, and sweet potato certainly had its uses. I was uncertain about where the chicken would fit, but eggs… the Duke clearly used them at his own dinner table.
The olive grass would be invaluable. Processing it would be a headache, but without any strong source of fat, my dish would be limp and lifeless on the tongue.
And that was all. No imports, no purchases, nothing from the pantry. Where would I get the salt from? Who would prepare the wheat and the olive grass?
For a moment I was paralyzed by my options, or lack thereof. But not for the whole evening.
As Brett Kingstangyer rode his stolen yacht from the burning ruin of Castle Lasierr Drahgohn, his heart belonging to no man, woman, or nation, his long blonde locks tousled by the sea air, I had my recipe.
I’m Oscar Yasui, former licensed food critic for Palladium, current food journalist, impromptu chef, and unarmed fugitive. Thank you very much for listening to my podcast.