“I will spare him on one condition. The lot of you will go back to your chambers and debate a question of my choosing.”
They murmured to each other.
“I require an answer now.”
“We will save the young one,” Thek said. “Ask your question.”
“If it could be decided which one of your ancestors was the first founder, will your society as a whole benefit from it, and how? This is a timed debate. I will require an answer by five p.m. tomorrow.”
“It is a worthy question,” Thek announced. “We will debate. You will have your answer.”
Like most Texans, I measured distance in hours. San Antonio was roughly three hours away. The show started taping at two, and Sean left by nine thirty. He was accompanied by two oversized combat friends, one tall, dark haired and still resembling a Polynesian, but without curly blond locks or pink eyes, and the other equally tall and heavily bearded. I warned them that small children would mistake Orro for Hagrid, which Sean found amusing.
The day proceeded with minimal emergencies. I ordered more Grand Burgers and delivered them to the Drífen. What Orro didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. As much as I didn’t want to undercut Orro’s struggle, in the end, it wasn’t about Orro or his feelings. A guest made a request, and it was within my power to grant it.
The koo-ko proceeded to debate, with the would-be assassin participating from a permanent spot in his own personal claw. I had deep scanned all of them and hadn’t found any other foreign objects.
Wilmos came and delivered a massive amount of weapons. I thought of installing them but decided to wait for Sean.
I had tea with Caldenia and we watched Tom Laurent approach Peterson’s spy. Tom knocked on the window until the man rolled it down.
“Are you vice?” Tom demanded.
“No,” the spy said.
“Are you here surveilling my wife?”
“Buddy, I don’t know who your wife is.”
Tom squinted at the spy. “I know you can deny being a cop if you’re undercover. Listen, if you are building a case against my wife, I’ve got her on film. I have all of her visitors on video. And you may want to tell your buddies in narcotics that they might be doing meth in there. It’s sex and drugs. The more charges the better.”
The spy stared at him.
“I’ll testify, I’ll wear a wire.”
“Sir, what the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m fighting for custody here. Throw me a bone.”
Officer Marais chose this moment to pull up behind the spy in his cruiser. The spy took off and Tom proceeded to tell Marais his tale of woe. Marais listened to him for about five minutes and informed him that who his wife chose to let into her home and how that affected her rights to custody was a matter for family court. If he suspected drug use, he was welcome to file a report online. Tom moved on and after a while Marais did too.
At six p.m. I served the dinner Orro had prepped and texted Sean to see if he was okay. He texted back OMW and nothing else.
I tried to read, then I tried to watch TV, then I walked back and forth through the inn, and by the time his car pulled into the driveway, I had worried myself into being a basket case.
I watched the three of them get out of the car. Everyone still had the right number of appendages. They were fine. Of course they were fine. I’d worried for nothing. I met them as they entered the front room. Sean’s face radiated controlled fury.
Uh oh.
Sean pointed down the hall. The humanizer illusion collapsed and Orro took off at an alarming speed. Qoros patted Sean’s shoulder and went to his rooms. Sean collapsed into a chair.
“So, how did it go?” I was almost afraid to ask.
Sean made a fart noise.
“Did Qoros make a scene at the Alamo?”
Sean shook his head.
“You’re killing me. What is it? What happened?”
He passed a tiny data card to me. I tossed at the nearest wall. It swallowed it and a huge screen appeared, playing a recording. Sean, Qoros, and Orro sat in chairs. The angle of the recording suggested a camera hovering high above them from the side. Sean must have launched a surveillance unit. It was about the size of a walnut and it was programed to hide, a fly on the proverbial wall.
The show started. I had no idea how they even managed to get in on such short notice.
On stage Garry Keys chopped vegetables like his life depended on it, lecturing about the benefits of organic produce and purple carrots. The show was filmed in spurts, allowing for commercial breaks. At times a stagehand stopped Garry to tell him something or to adjust something in the shot. Orro fidgeted in his seat, leaning forward, fascinated, making chopping motions with his hands. The sight of Sean bookended by two giant, somewhat freaky-looking humans was slightly comical.
Garry Keys finished sautéing his vegetables, placed the duck in the oven, and a commercial break was called. An assistant blotted Garry’s forehead. Another assistant took the raw duck out of the oven and replaced it with a perfectly roasted bird. Garry waived at him. The assistant brought the cooked duck over. Garry examined it critically and made a comment. The assistant produced a bottle of soy sauce and a brush. He strategically painted the bird, darkening the skin. Garry examined it again, gave it two thumbs up, and it went back into the oven. Meanwhile, another assistant replaced the pot with vegetables.
Orro stared at the stage. The humanizer did its best to mimic emotions, but I couldn’t tell what Orro was feeling. He looked like a deer in headlights.
The break ended and taping resumed. Garry made a great show of pulling the duck out of the oven. “And here we are. Would you look at that? Fire and lightning!”
A stagehand held up a cue card with “Applause” on it. The studio audience oohed and clapped enthusiastically.
Orro surged to his feet and roared, “You are a fraud!”
Oh my God.
Sean grabbed him, trying to pull him back into his seat, but Orro threw him off.
“You are no chef! That poultry is a lie!”
Garry spun around, looking for the offender, saw an outraged giant, and started backing up.
“You dare!” Orro sputtered, jabbing his shovel hand in Garry’s direction.
Security converged on the row, moving in.
“You’re not fit to cook dog food, you vile pretender!” Orro roared.
Sean smashed his hand against Orro’s temple, too high to do any real damage if Orro was a human, but right where a Quillonian’s left ear would be. Orro crumpled. Qoros heaved him over his shoulder like Orro weighed nothing. Sean took off, the Medamoth right behind him. Sean and the security team collided at the end of the row. There was a scuffle, legs and arms flew as bodies were knocked to the ground, and Sean and Qoros fled the studio, carrying Orro like a sack of potatoes. The camera streaked after them and the feed ended.
I rubbed my face. “Did they call the cops?”
“No,” Sean said. “I was very careful. I just tripped a couple of them. Nobody was hurt.”
Except Orro.
“Did you talk to him?”
“We tried. He won’t respond. He didn’t say a word on the ride back.”
“I’ll go talk to him.”
Sean nodded. “You were right. It was a bad idea.”
“You did the best you could. And … it might be for the best. I keep telling him not to trust everything on TV and he never listens. Did Qoros get what he wanted, at least?”
Sean nodded. “He wanted to know how to prevent a war with the Hope-Crushing Horde.”
“What did you tell him?”
Sean sighed. “The truth. They will fight their enemy to the bitter end, but they will give the shirt off their back to their friend. The only way to avoid a war with the Otrokars is to earn their friendship.”
I walked down the hallway, past the atrium filled with Orro’s prized herbs, to a green door. I knocked. “Can I come in?”
“Yes,” a dull voice answered.
I opened the door and entered the room. Orro’s suite was made by him. He showed me what he wanted, and I reproduced it as faithfully as I could. It was the room of a sentient creature, but it felt like the cozy den of some small animal. The rooms had no sharp angles. The soft eggshell walls met the floor and the ceiling with a curve, as if the space had been hollowed out of a log or dug out of forest soil. The doorways were arched, the large window slightly misshapen, neither a circle nor a square. African violets in cute pots lived on the windowsill. The furniture was large, plush, and curved. A huge TV took up most of one wall, and bookshelves filled with books, scrolls, tablets, and other media in a dozen galactic languages, lined the other.
In the middle of all of this Orro curled on the blue rug, a sagging heap of quills. I couldn’t even see his head.
I sat next to him and patted his back.
“He was a fraud,” Orro whispered.
“I’m so sorry.”
“He lied.”
“Maybe. He probably is a good chef, and his recipes are sound. But it’s a TV show. It’s made to entertain. It would have taken him at least two and a half hours to roast that duck.”
“He should have done it. Instead he brought a duck he didn’t cook and tried to pass it off as his own. He painted it with soy sauce.”
“I’m so sorry. Why do you think he did that?”
Orro bit off his words. “So it would look better.”
“Exactly. It’s TV. It can’t convey to you how things smell or how they taste. It can only show you how good they look. It has to be entertaining. Not many people would sit there and watch him roast a duck for two hours.”
“I would.”
He was heartbroken and I didn’t know what to do.
“You didn’t go there to be entertained. You went there for the food, because you are a great chef, Orro.”
“Do you want me to pack?” he asked softly.
“Why would you have to pack?”
“I broke my word. I dishonored my combat friends. I made a scene.”