“Are those . . . rocks?” Jodi asked tentatively.
The High Spirit gave us a deliberate nod. “Properly prepared by the finest chefs, of course.”
“How do you cook a rock?”
“Not using the trivial methods shown in your media, if I understand them correctly. Your people lost, in some ways, far more than we in the Makurada Demagon.”
“So,” I said, studying his plate, “What are those? The reds . . . garnets, maybe. The stuff that looked like cake slices at first must be layered limestone—the main rock around here.”
“You have an excellent eye for one of your people,” Rokhaset said. “Though I am not sure of your first identification, your second is quite correct.”
Suddenly Jodi began laughing almost hysterically.
“What’s so durn funny?”
She finally got a grip on herself. “You . . . you Slades! And the Nomes! All this time, you big, strong frontiersmen have been sneaking in and robbing the Nomes’ pantries! You’re nothing but overgrown mice with iron bars!” She went off into another fit of laughter.
I blinked. Now there was a completely humiliating thought. “Is she right, sir? Have we been stealing your caviar—special food or something?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. I admit to having a fondness for H’adamant when I can afford to have some prepared. But I would hardly have sent out a legion of warriors to Tennatu just for my stomach!”
“So why did you send your warriors after the diamonds?”
“Not diamonds—H’adamant.”
“Same thing.”
He shook his head, emphasizing his disagreement by using our own gesture. “Ridiculous. I have seen these ‘diamonds’ in your television advertisements. They are nothing like H’adamant.”
“We weren’t anything like what y’all got out of those broadcasts either,” I pointed out. “There, Jodi’s got herself a big diamond on her hand, you tell me that ain’t the same thing.”
Jodi held out her engagement ring. Rokhaset studied it for a few minutes, then slowly raised his head and gazed at us with those weird crystal eyes for a long time in silence. Finally he reached out and placed one of the stones we’d returned to the Nomes on the table between us. “I return your question, Clinton Slade. You tell me that these two things are the same.”
“Shoot, I know they are. I’ve studied geology for years, and hell, it ain’t hard to tell a diamond. Jodi’s ring was cut from one of the ones we got down here.”
He stood bolt upright and shrieked out something that I couldn’t make out because the transducer’s volume cutoff killed it. Jodi and I jumped back, fumbling for the iron bars, sure that we were about to get mobbed.
But no one else moved in a way that seemed hostile. If anything, they huddled together a bit more. Finally Rokhaset got himself under control. He sat down slowly and selected another morsel off the plate. I could see now that the mouth was located under the sound-tube he used for speaking—sort of where the chin-neck juncture would be in a human. He didn’t seem to eat this with enthusiasm, but more like a man doing something while thinking.
Finally he looked back at us. “I must beg your pardon. It is hard for someone such as myself to suddenly realize how alien your people are. I had foolishly permitted myself to think that because your words are translated to ones I understand by the makatdireskovi that we are really essentially the same, aside from a few minor differences.” I got the impression of a long, shaky breath being drawn, though all I could see was a faint movement of the stony skin on the rounded torso. “To give you something you might understand, telling me that the . . . stone in the ring that Ms. Goldman is wearing is the same as this H’adamant would be the same as my holding out one of your skeletons and telling you, in all seriousness, that I could not tell the difference between the skeleton and the living, breathing Tennathada before me.”
He shuddered, a movement rather similar to our own. “Your people have lost more than I had ever imagined. This”—he indicated the natural diamond—”is a living stone, Clinton Slade, Jodi Goldman. The H’adamant is precious because of that living essence within it. Now that I know your people cannot see the difference, and that you call both by the name ‘diamond’ . . .” He shook his head again. “What a terrible waste. You cannot even see what it is that you destroy by cutting the stone in the way you do. We had foolishly thought that you needed the . . . diamonds for the same reasons we did, for their special properties.”