"The menu will no doubt be ecstatic you did," Mira muttered. "The whole thing seems a little… unsatisfying."
His eyes focused on her. "Because I don't stick it down my throat?"
Mira laughed. His Diplomatique was awfully good; blunt statements didn't come easily in the language. "Exactly."
"What I'm doing is the same as what you do when you eat. You simply use nose and eyes (both remote sensors) and tongue (a thick but highly complex contact strand) to accomplish the task."
"But the swallowing—!" she said, but didn't know quite what words should follow.
"Ah, yes," he supplied. "The changes in body chemistry that result from ingestion. A rise in blood sugar, the stimulation of bodily processes, the psychotropics of capsicum, caffeine, alcohol. All very intense sources of experience."
"And the point of eating, actually," she said. "Consumption."
He smiled indulgently at her biocentrism. "Is sex without procreation uninteresting? Adrenalin without actual danger unstim-ulating?"
Mira shook her head. "No. Of course, not. Sorry. I was being provocative."
"I enjoyed it. But allow me a provocation in return. May I observe as you take a bite?"
She must have looked dumbfounded.
"By observe, I mean monitor closely. Your reaction would intrigue me. Perhaps enlighten me."
"Sure," was all Mira could think to say.
A few of the sensory strands withdrew their attentions from the pie and snaked toward her. One wrapped around each wrist, oddly cool and dry, taking positions that would register minute finger movements, heart rate, any sweat from her palms. Another brushed her neck. She felt it radiate into multiple fingers. Feather-soft but assertive, they took up positions at her throat, her temples, in contact with the tiny network of muscles that make the eyes so expressive.
"Thorough, aren't you," she muttered. He shrugged his stony shoulders, but didn't offer to remove the strands. She turned her head a little, and found that they moved easily with her; in moments, they had matched her body temperature, and all but disappeared from her awareness, no more tactile than a pattern of light and shadow reaching the skin through the leaves of a tree.
He reached for the untouched cutlery next to his plate, carefully acquired a forkful of the pie. His clumsiness made him momentarily childlike: a great statue recently woken and struggling with everyday actions, a strange directness in his speech and wants. His muscles sparkled a little as he moved: a heroic affectation that brought another smile to her face. He was suited for great battles and coronations; not eating pie.
He leaned forward to offer her the fork and its steaming cargo. She opened her mouth…
… to an explosion. The burning mouthful mercilessly seared her tongue and palate, poured bright veins of boiling sugars down the back of her throat. Its pungent fumes rilled her sinuses as she fought for breath: the rich, choking scents of rotten apples and smoked meat, of saffron gasses bursting from an opened oven. As she leaned back, finally swallowing, the first hot poker of pain was replaced with the steady burn of habenaras chiles, hastily bitten cloves, citrus acid cruelly flaying the raw flesh of her mouth.
"You bastard!" she said when she could talk again. Tears streamed from her eyes. His prismed face smiled at her.
"Ingestion has its disadvantages, I see."
"Fuck you," she responded, blowing her nose into her silk napkin. She tried to muster more wrath, but was too surprised by the internal changes the bite had wrought. Her head felt magically clear, her senses more sharply focused than they had been since boarding the cosseting womb of the Queen Favor.
"Do humans actually eat that?" she asked.
"A small minority of an obscure tribe on the Vaxus colony. Admittedly, the menu recommends it only for artificials."
She laughed a throaty laugh, which rippled with fire-loosened phlegm in her chest. "Hence your interest in having me eat some."
"My interest," he confirmed, "and my extreme pleasure."
She felt a sudden absence, a subtle psychic pressure gone missing. He had removed his sensory strands from her face, arms, throat. Mira coughed a few times into a fist.
"But you haven't turned me against swallowing, I assure you," she said. "In some strange way, that was very enjoyable."
"Oh, I know it was," he agreed. "My intimate connection allowed me to witness that first hand. Thank you for the ride."
Her food arrived just then. She inspected its careful proportions, its measured ribbons of sauces, garnishes of herbs. "Now this" she muttered, "is just so much horseshit."
Darling looked quizzical at the term. Referring to the Earth-specific species in Diplomatique had required a hasty loan-word. She translated loosely: "I'm not hungry." Pushed the plate away.
"I admire humans, really, for their intense reactions. Their capacity for intoxication, for imbalance."
She knuckled sweat and tears from her cheeks. "For sheer pain?"
There was a pause in his response, as if something had briefly broken inside. Then his face animated again. "Physical pain, at least."
She narrowed her eyes, a Diplomatique gesture to request elaboration.
"Thank you for letting me make use of your sensory abilities, Mira Santiarre Hidalgo. Perhaps you can make use of mine."
He raised one flickering arm toward the small stage in one corner of the restaurant. Two guitarists were preparing to play. They shifted like cats finding comfort in their seats, hunched to hear the soft glissandi of their tuning, indulged in ritual stretches of neck and hands.
Mira looked questioningly at Darling. What would his next ambush be?
A signal leapt between the guitarists' eyes, and they began to play.
Two holographic cylinders suddenly materialized on either side of the stage. The towering columns were banded at equal intervals, the bands tinted in repeating spectra of twelve colors. Sparks traveled the cylinders, igniting the bands in glittering sequences like trails of gunpowder set alight. She blinked and looked at Darling; his eyes glinted with the ruby of eyescreen lasers. He was making the cylinders appear, mapping them directly onto her visual field. She looked back at the stage.
As the piece slowed for a momentary cadence, she realized that the flickering sparks were notes, travelling the columnar staves from low to high. The twelve-parted rainbow spectra were octaves. Shared hues revealed harmonic consonance: a tonic, perfect fifth, and fourth all related shades of blue and green; the minor second, tritone, and minor sixth offset in clashing red-yellows.
Perfect fifth? Minor sixth? Mira realized that Darling was using direct interface, supplying her mind with the requisite music theory to understand the technical aspects of his display. An amusing trick. With pedagogical software like that, he must be a teacher. But the theory paled compared to the dance of light on the two columns. One guitarist strummed brisk chords, sending showers of sparks up his associated cylinder. On the other guitar, the melody rambled up and down, massaging the column with its scurrying, sparkling avatar. As the tempo increased, the correspondence of single notes to individual flashes became harder to follow, but her mind had begun to understand the shimmering scalar grammar like a new language, words blending into sentences.
When the piece finished, she joined in the sudden applause, even yelling along with the rowdy team of uniformed boys. The white noise of applause glimmered in a non-specific band along the columns.