The natives made a variety of noises. Collectively it sounded like a growl, but those who were still standing scrambled to places at the mat; none of those seated got to their feet.
The Captain nodded to the painted man standing—now squatting—beside the corpse. He hopped to his feet and squeaked, “My father bids the feast begin!”
The natives set in with a will. The preferred technique seemed to be to stick the left hand into the porridge tubs and use two fingers of the right to guide any overflow back into the corners of the mouth. Fish up to the size of the diner’s palm were swallowed whole; larger chunks were devoured in mouth-sized increments.
Layton dipped a standard ten-ounce mess mug into his bucket of slash and handed it to the gleeful Captain, while the dead man’s son got a similar amount in a bowl fashioned from a seed pod. Adele didn’t see any pottery, even low-fired earthenware; the tubs were waterproofed with pitch on the inside and painted on the outer surfaces with geometric designs in several colors.
Hogg edged close to Daniel and Adele. “Reminds me of my old man’s wake,” he said, chuckling. He grinned at Adele and added, “Of course, these folk’re neater about the way they chow down than we was back at Bantry, eh, young master?”
“Perhaps a trifle,” Daniel said judiciously, watching food flying in all directions. “Of course, they haven’t been drinking all afternoon the way everybody was at Old Guzzler’s wake.”
The native Bosun, a grizzled man with feathers stuck through holes in both earlobes, tossed off his slash with thoughtless haste. He choked, spewed the clear liquid out his nose, and fell over on his back retching. After a moment he rolled upright again and dipped a bowl of the local brew.
The Klimovna squeezed down between the dead man’s son and the Captain, seated to his right. The natives made room cheerfully, talking to her and to one another as they ate.
The Count stood behind his wife, looking awkward and out of place. When he happened to catch Adele looking at him, he flashed her an embarrassed smile; they both quickly looked away.
Adele thought about the Klimovs’ relationship. Obviously it worked for them. . . . She realized, not for the first time, that one of the reasons she liked dealing with information that had already been compiled was that it was much simpler than understanding people in the raw.
Spacers carrying buckets of slash bustled about behind the facing rows of natives. They were working from several points around the mat, taking the bowls and dipping them full before handing them back.
Adele looked at Daniel with pursed lips. He shrugged and said, “Since I wasn’t able to carry out my original plan, I’m proceeding on the second option: getting them all falling-down drunk before they have time to go berserk.”
“Ah,” Adele said, nodding. She pursed her lips again. “But the children?” she said.
“All the boys old enough to wear a nappy,” said Tovera, standing behind her, “have flint knives as well. For myself, I don’t assume the girls of similar age are harmless either. I wasn’t.”
Adele cleared her throat. “Yes,” she said. “There’s that.”
Better that she watch the children drink themselves comatose than that she see what happened when one of them did something Tovera thought was threatening. Having a servant like Tovera was in some ways like walking around with a live grenade.
Sometimes, of course, you need a live grenade. Signals Officer Adele Mundy did, at any rate.
A native turned and vomited over the ground behind her. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and resumed eating. Halfway through another bowl of porridge, her eyes rolled up and she toppled onto her face in the tub. The man sitting next to her lifted her out, apparently because she was in the way of him getting porridge.
Daniel was no more an ethnologist than Count Klimov was, so instead he kept up a breezy discussion of the animals that were coming to light. Most of them appeared by crawling over or into the food. Adele noted with wry amusement that bugs which looked like black rice-grains had a particular affinity for the native beer in which they spun like tiny boats; those which landed in cups of slash quickly sank.