“Any progress?” it said, in the voice of one who already knew and did not like the answer.
“Yes and no,” he replied, moving an eye towards Lioren. “I am fairly sure that the suspect meal has been identified, and of the number of times it was served, but the …”
“You can be absolutely sure,” said Lioren. “I know the total ward admission figure for the outbreak. It agrees exactly with yours. This does not look good for you, Gurronsevas.”
“I know, I know,” he said, pointing angrily at the display. “But look at that. The meal ingredients are innocent, uncomplicated and completely innocuous, and prepared according to my instructions. After processing and shaping in the synthesizer only three non-synthetic ingredients were added. These were trace quantities of the Orligian and Earth herbs chrysse and Merne Lake salt in the sauce and a light, overall dusting of nutmeg. None of them could have caused food poisoning. Could toxic material have been introduced externally, perhaps by a seepage of waste contaminants from adjoining piping …? I must speak directly and at once to my first assistant.”
“You must not call anyone within the hospital …” Lioren began, but Gurronsevas ignored it.
“Main Synthesizer, Senior Food Technician Sarnyagh,” said the Nidian whose features appeared on-screen. If its expression was surprised, irritated, or worried at seeing him, Gurronsevas was unable to tell under the facial fur. Inevitably it said, “Sir, I thought you had left the hospital.”
“I have,” said Gurronsevas impatiently. “Please be quiet, and listen …”
As soon as he had finished speaking, Sarnyagh said impatiently, “Sir, that was the first question asked after the trouble developed. We called in our entire staff and spent the next two shifts answering it, even though Maintenance assured us that the layout and design of the associated plumbing made such cross-contamination impossible. We also checked the food synthesizer banks and enhancer storage, all of which tested pure. Have you any other ideas, sir?”
“No,” said Gurronsevas, breaking contact. His earlier anxiety was fast approaching desperation, but there was a vague idea stirring at the back of his mind that was refusing to come out into the light, a tiny itch left by something the food technician might have said. To Lioren he went on, “If the fault isn’t in the delivery system then it must be in the meal, which it isn’t. Maybe I should make a closer study of the ingredients, even though they have been in use for centuries on and off their planets of origin. I will need the non-medical reference library.”
There was a bewildering mass of information available on food herbs even in the comparatively small general library possessed by Sector General, and finding the three he wanted required a careful search through background material which, even with computer assistance, was very slow. He learned much interesting but useless information about the part played in the Kelgian local economy by their exports of Merne Lake salt, but the only associated fatalities had occurred during the dawn of their history when warring natives had drowned in it while it was still a body of water. It was the same with the Orligian chrysse polyps, and the references to Earth nutmeg were many but lacking in useful detail, until he came on one very old entry that might have been included as an afterthought.
Suddenly the itch at the back of his mind came out to a place where he could scratch it. His kitchen staff had been under pressure from the medical hierarchy. In the middle of a sudden emergency, a small change might be made, forgotten, or be considered too minor to be mentioned to a superior. Suddenly Gurronsevas stamped all of his feet, heavily and one at a time.
When the loose equipment on the casualty deck had stopped rattling, Lioren said, “Gurronsevas, what is happening? What is wrong with you?”
“What is happening,” he replied, tapping the communicator keys as if each one was a mortal enemy, “is that I am trying to recall that miscenegenated apology for a food technician, Sarnyagh. What is wrong with me is that I want to commit violent bloody murder on another supposedly sapient being!”
“Surely not!” said Lioren in a shocked voice. “Please calm yourself. I feel, and I am sure that you will agree, that you may be overreacting verbally to a situation that in all likelihood might not require physical violence to resolve …”
It broke off as Sarnyagh’s image reappeared. In a voice that was composed of equal parts of deference and impatience, the food technician said, “Sir. Was there something you had forgotten to ask me?”
Gurronsevas sought for inner calm, then said, “I refer you to my original instructions regarding the composition and presentation of Menu Item Eleven Twenty-one, Earth-human DBDG species, and additionally suitable for use by and available on request to physiological classifications DBLF, DCNF, DBPK, EGCL, ELNT, FGLI and GLNO. Compare the original composition with that of the meals actually served following taste enhancement and display both. Explain why an unauthorized change was made.”
And if no change had been made, Gurronsevas was about to be very seriously embarrassed. But he felt sure that he would not be.
Sarnyagh looked down at its console and tapped briefly. Two short columns of data appeared as a bright overlay across its furry chest, with two of the quantity figures highlighted.
“Ah, yes, now I remember,” said Sarnyagh. “It was a small change, or rather a correction of an error which it seemed that you yourself had made. If you can remember, sir, your menu instructions for this ingredient specified point zero eight five of the dish’s total food mass which was, with respect, a ridiculously small quantity for something that is listed as an edible vegetation, so I assumed that the amount that you had intended was eight point five. Was I mistaken? Too cautious, perhaps?”
“You were mistaken,” said Gurronsevas, striving not to scream abuse at it and to keep his voice at a conversational level, “and not cautious enough. Couldn’t you tell by the taste that something was wrong?”
Sarnyagh hesitated, obviously suspecting that it might be in trouble and trying in advance to talk its way out of it, then said quickly, “I regret, sir, that I have neither your vast culinary experience nor your unrivalled ability to taste and evaluate a wide variety of other-species dishes. My preference is for the simple home cooking of Nidia and an occasional venture onto the Kelgian cold menu. The few times I tried it, I found Earth food to be lumpy, with too many color contrasts and aesthetically repugnant, so I would not have known whether it tasted right or wrong. Even though the change was minor and I would have asked your permission before making it had you been available, it was not made without careful consideration.
“Before making the change,” Sarnyagh went on, “I checked with the medical computer to make sure that the item was not listed as toxic, which it was not. Also, the kitchen supply which you had brought with you from the Cromingan-Shesk had been running low. When I ordered a top-up I discovered that Stores had recently received several tons of the stuff. At the rate of use you had specified there was enough to keep us supplied for centuries. That was when I decided that you had made a mistake and corrected it. Have you any further instructions, sir?”
The reason for the overstocking had been purely administrative and of questionable legality, Gurronsevas remembered. It had been a means of ordering in bulk so that the material would be covered by the virtually inexhaustible supply funding of the Monitor Corps rather than his own department’s relatively low budget. But he could not mention that without word of the transgression reaching Skempton through official channels; he did not want that to happen even if, as seemed likely, the Colonel already knew of it unofficially. No blame should attach itself to the Head of Procurement, Creon-Emesh, who had been most helpful to him. And Sarnyagh had done a neat job of passing most of the responsibility for its mistake back to Gurronsevas, and the food technician was going to get away with it.