The head waiter cleared his throat. “Was there something that sir wanted?”
Peace donned a look of mingled surprise and irritation. “Food, of course. You don’t get many people coming in here to buy surgical trusses, do you?” He glanced around with a critical eye.
“Or have I come to the wrong place?”
The waiter’s face stiffened. “The main dining room is on your left, sir.”
“I know that.” Peace took the plastic blue toad from his pocket and flicked it in the air. “Don’t you remember me?”
The head waiter examined Peace’s face. “No, sir,” he said, looking somewhat relieved.
“Should I?”
“Never mind.” Hiding his disappointment, Peace walked towards the restaurant. “Table for one—near the windows.”
A floor waiter, a younger man who was also wearing formal denims, showed him to a seat and provided him with a menu.
“I don’t think we need bother with a menu,” Peace said, giving the waiter a democratic nudge.
“Just bring me my usual.”
The waiter blinked several times. “Your usual what, sir?”
“You know.” Peace nudged him again, more forcibly. “My usual—what I always have when I come here.”
The waiter moved out of range of Peace’s elbow. “I know all my regulars, and sir isn’t one of them. If sir would like to consult the menu I’m sure…”
“I don’t want to consult the menu,” Peace whispered fiercely. “Look, there must be somebody out in the kitchen who knows me. Tell them I want my usual.”
The waiter gazed at Peace in perplexity for a moment, then comprehension dawned in his eyes. “I’m with sir, now,” he said.
“Good! I’m glad about that.” Peace stared hopefully at him, wondering exactly what he had achieved.
“Sir can rely on me, of course.” The waiter leaned close to Peace, opened the menu and lowered his voice to an oily conspiratorial murmur. “There’s no disgrace in not being able to read— many quite intelligent people suffer from word-blindness—but if sir will pretend to study the menu I’ll tell sir what each item means, and that way…”
“I can read it myself, you fool.” Peace snatched the heavy booklet away from him, temporarily abandoning his quest, and scanned the printed pages. His heart sank as he saw that the tariff, instead of being quoted in the common contraction of monits, was given in monetary units—the sort of traditional touch usually associated with exorbitant prices. His worst fears were confirmed when he looked at the figures themselves and found that coffee was thirty monits a cup, with a minimum cover charge of a hundred. He broke into a gentle sweat. All his hopes for the future, and for his past, were based on spending as long a time as possible in the restaurant and being seen by the maximum number of regular customers and staff. This meant that, regardless of ethics, he would have to order a sizeable meal in the full knowledge that he was unable to pay for it, and not think about the consequences until they came. The decision, though not an easy one, was influenced by the fierce gnawing in his stomach, which for a full month had known nothing but gruel and leathery strips of jerky.
Taking a deep breath, Peace ordered one of the most expensive meals possible—a seven-course affair centered around a specialty dish of Aspatrian lobster cooked in imported champagne. He eagerly swallowed three aperitifs and had downed most of a generous serving of soup when he remembered that his main objective was to prolong his stay in the establishment and be on the alert for contacts. Slowing his spoon action to a more leisurely pace, he looked around the room and gave the other people present a good chance to see his face. It was early in the afternoon and the scattering of other customers seemed too absorbed in their lunches to pay him any attention. He began to wonder if it would have been better to hide out in the city all day and visit the Blue Toad at night when it was likely to be much busier.
His deliberations were interrupted by the arrival of the waiter, who was wheeling a trolley upon which sat a small glass-sided aquarium. The tank was surrounded by a curious framework of glittering metal rods, forming a kind of cage, and in it—placidly scooting backwards and forwards in the water—was a pink crustacean about the size of Peace’s little finger. He gazed at the tiny creature in bafflement for some time, then raised his eyes to the waiter, hoping to be enlightened.
“Your lobster, sir,” the waiter announced. “Say when.” He pressed a switch which was connected to the cage by silvery wires and the entire assembly began to emit a faint humming sound.
“Hold on,” Peace said, pointing at the inhabitant of the tank. “That thing’s more like a shrimp.
A baby shrimp, at that.”
“It’s a baby Aspatrian lobster, sir.”
“But I want a grown-up one. A big one.”
The waiter smiled condescendingly. “You can have it any size you want, sir—I’m growing it for you right now—but it’s better not to let them get too old. It’s a question of flavour.”
Peace watched in astonishment as the volume of space within the gleaming cage began to flicker in a disturbing way and the movements of the lobster in the tank abruptly speeded up.
Suddenly he realized that the peripatetic shellfish was growing larger with every second. It was also becoming more complicated in shape, sprouting legs, pincers, feelers and eye-stalks in a profusion which would have shamed or terrified any Earth-type lobster.
“It’s about two years old now, sir,” the waiter said helpfully. “Some of our customers think that’s when an Aspatrian lobster is at its peak, but others prefer them at three and even four years old. Just say when.”
“What’s the…?” Peace swallowed noisily as he transferred his gaze to the cage surrounding the tank and saw that the gleaming rods of which it was built met at strange angles. They produced an odd wrenching sensation in his eyes when he tried to follow their geometries, almost as though they passed into another dimension. A bizarre idea was born in his numbed brain.
“That thing,” he said feebly. “Is it a sort of time machine?”
” Of course, sir—all part of our gourmet service. Haven’t you seen one before?”
“I don’t think so,” Peace said. “It was just that I noticed the way the rods meet at strange angles and create a wrenching sensation in my eyes when I…”
“I do beg your pardon,” the waiter said, looking concerned. He stepped back, studied the time machine with a critical eye, then grasped the framework in both hands and twisted it until it had assumed a conventional shape made up of square corners and rectangles. It continued humming away, quite unperturbed by the casual manhandling.
“The chef sat on it last week,” the waiter explained, “and it hasn’t been the same since.”
Peace wondered briefly if time machine technology was another significant area of his ignorance. “I never expected to see a gadget like that.”
“Oh, this type—the single-acting introverter— is quite legal on Aspatria. Very useful for ageing whisky, but if you’ll take my advice, sir, you won’t let the lobster get any older.” The waiter switched off the time machine and, using a pair of tongs, hoisted the now enormous lobster up out of the tank. It eyed Peace malevolently, waving feelers and snapping its pincers.