“Now are you impressed?” Hokor asked.
Quentin nodded dumbly.
“By tomorrow,” Hokor said, “know every player on the rosters. We will work on stats and tendencies throughout this week. Let us commence with our position meeting. We are six days from the season opener against the Woo Wallcrawlers. It will take us four days to reach Ionath. We will practice on the Touchback until we reach Ionath, then shuttle down to the field facility for on-field practices.”
BY THE TIME the position meeting ended, Quentin felt thoroughly annoyed. He had several days of busy work lined up — rote memorization of defensive players and schemes in addition to his offensive studies. And the real annoyance was that none of it really mattered. When he took the field, that’s when all this garbage would fade away, once Hokor saw what he could do.
After the position meeting, Quentin followed Pine and Yitzhak onto the dining deck. He had an uneasy feeling he couldn’t quite explain. He’d never done ‘team functions’ with the Raiders, he’d always done his own thing. Here, he gathered, he was expected to dine with the team. The brightly lit room held over twenty tables, each surrounded by a variety of chairs designed for the different body types of Humans, Sklorno, Quyth Warrior and Quyth Leader. Unlike the corporate offices, there were none of the six-foot-long, table-like chairs made for Ki.
“We have to eat with the sub… I mean, the other races?”
Pine stared at him. “What, you can play a game with them, but you can’t eat with them?”
“You have to have the different races to win the game,” Quentin said. “But that doesn’t mean you have to eat with them, for High One’s sake.”
“It’s a league rule,” Yitzhak said. “All species must use the same dining facilities. Remember the Creterakians’ whole point of this league is to create a sense of ambassadorship amongst the races.”
“Are the Ki an exception, then?” Quentin didn’t see any of the monstrous creatures in the dining hall.
Yitzhak shuddered before he answered. “Their eating habits are a little, er, messy compared to the other races. They eat alone.”
“What do you mean, messy?”
“They butcher their food at the table,” Pine answered. “They eat it raw.”
Quentin looked at both men. “You’re kidding me, right?”
They shook their heads.
“It’s horrific,” Yitzhak said. “They kill the animal right there on the table. The table is even designed to catch all the blood so they can drink that, too.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“That’s not the worst of it,” Yitzhak said. “That’s just the ones from the Ki Empire planets. The ones that come from the Ki Rebel Establishment planets, they don’t even bother to kill the animal before they start eating.”
Quentin stared dumbly. “You mean they eat it live?”
Yitzhak nodded.
“High One,” Quentin said. “They are demons.”
“Oh take your morality and vent it, Barnes,” Pine said. “They’re not demons, they’re different from Humans, that’s all. Meals are a major ritual for the Ki. It’s part of their culture, how they bond and crap like that.”
“But to eat a live animal? Only a mongrel race could do that!”
Yitzhak laughed. “Well then I guess Pine here is a mongrel.”
Pine smiled, but Quentin just stared, dumbfounded at the evil surrounding him. “You’ve broken bread with creatures that eat their food alive?”
Pine simply nodded.
Quentin felt his stomach churning at the thought, and suddenly found Pine’s blue skin more repulsive than ever. “What are you, blue-boy, some kind of Satanist?”
“And there it is,” Pine said with a knowing nod. “See, you are just like Warburg. Just another Purist racist. I’m a leader, Barnes. Ki don’t really accept you until you eat with them, until you fight and bleed with them. I do whatever it takes to make this team play as a whole. That’s something you’ll either figure out and succeed, or won’t figure out, and you’ll be gone.”
Quentin turned to Yitzhak. “And I suppose you’ve eaten living flesh, too?”
Yitzhak shuddered. “Couldn’t quite bring myself to do that, but I managed to sit through the whole thing, and drank some blood. You’ve got to see it to believe it — it’s worse than any horror holo you’ve ever seen.”
Quentin shook his head, then turned and walked away. Position meetings were over, and he didn’t have to spend any more time with these two barbarians. He spotted Warburg, sitting alone, a huge tray of food in front of him.
“Quentin,” Warburg called out. “Come let us break bread.”
Quentin walked up to the table and stared at the food. With all the activity he hadn’t eaten, and suddenly realized that he was famished.
“Where’s the chow?”
Warburg stuffed some potatoes into his mouth as he gestured to the back wall. A glass-enclosed counter ran the entire length, all fifty feet of it. Under the glass sat every kind of food Quentin could imagine. The counter was divided into sections, each about two feet in length. Above each section glowed a holographic symbol of a planet or system. Quentin didn’t recognize half the symbols, but the Purist Nation infinity symbol glowed a warm welcome. He grabbed a tray from an overhead shelf and started loading up: the mint mashed potatoes he’d seen Warburg eating, chicken breasts smothered in curry paste, pita bread and Mason gravy, the multi-colored broccoli that grew only on the planet Stewart, and a thick piece of chocolate cake.
Just to his right was the flag of the Planetary Union. The dishes that looked somewhat familiar, but were all things he’d never before tried. One of the dishes seemed to be some kind halved shell, with a raw, glisteny, grayish mass sitting inside. Raw food — typical blasphemy of non-Nation races. Quentin didn’t exactly say his twenty Praise High Ones each night, but that didn’t mean he was so sinful he’d eat raw food.
Just to his left was the glowing Five Star Circle of the Quyth Concordia. His lip wrinkled involuntarily in disgust at the brownish selections, many of which had more spindly legs than any insect he’d ever seen.
Quentin turned away from the strange foods and walked back to the table, rejoicing in the smells that drifted up from his plate.
“Did you see that disgusting garbage the Quyth eat?” Warburg asked as Quentin sat.
“Yes, what is that crap, bugs?”
Warburg shrugged. “I don’t know and I don’t care to know. High One knows it’s something unblessed and blasphemous. We’ll see what they eat when they’re burning in Hell.”
Quentin cut a big piece of chicken breast and bit into it — his eyes closed in pleasure at the taste.
“Food’s gotten pretty good since Gredok picked you up.” Warburg said with a smile.
“It wasn’t good before?”
Warburg shrugged. “It wasn’t bad. The cooks would try to make Nation dishes out of whatever Planetary Union or League of Planets crap they had laying around. Ever since they signed you, though, they’ve been bringing in the real deal from Nation freighters or whatever. Seems like Gredok and Hokor want to make you right at home.”
Quentin shoveled in some potatoes, marveling at the succulent taste. “I’m glad they feel that way. I haven’t had decent food since I got to the Combine.”
“I hope they start you right away,” Warburg said. “I can’t stand that shucking blue-boy Pine.”