He happened to be at the Pier, checking the plans for the consulate’s accommodations on board Fang, when the world came unglued. Needless to say, he was eager to go home. He was not enjoying his little adventure, and was attempting to share his unhappiness as he sat at his first dinner in the wardroom.
“I know all about your precious, low-tech worlds! Every citizen of Earth is taught, from the earliest ages, how you people live. Yes, we know all about how you live. You usually get married in June because you take your yearly bath in May and still smell pretty good by June. But your brides still stink, so they carry a bouquet of flowers to hide their body odor.”
The members of the wardroom were enjoying his diatribe. It was the best entertainment they’d had since their marine lieutenant bounced the first officer off the bulkhead.
“Your annual bath consists of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house gets to bathe first, in the fresh, clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children.”
” ‘Ere now!” said Hans in mock indignation. ” ‘Ave you been looking through our windows again?”
Undetered, Asquith continued. “Last of all is the babies. By then the water is so dirty you people can actually lose someone in it. That’s where the saying, ‘Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water,’ comes from.”
The mess members’ faces were aching from their efforts to avoid open laughter. This was a guest, and it wouldn’t be polite to laugh at him, even if he was a total prat.
“Aye,” said Hans, leaning back in his chair and shaking his head with a look of mock consternation as he sat at dinner. “‘Tis true. We lose more babies ‘at way.”
“Yes!” said Asquith, oblivious to the derision all around him. “And your houses have thatched roofs, nothing but thick straw piled high, with no wood underneath. That’s the only place for animals to get warm in the winter, so all the dogs, and the cats and the mice and bugs live in the roof. When it rains, your roofs get slippery and sometimes the animals slip and fall off the roof. Thus the saying, ‘It’s raining cats and dogs.’ ”
“Yeah, it’s true,” drawled Westminster. “Once, back home when ah was a kid, a big old yeller dawg came skittering off the roof in a hard rain and killed mah little brother. So sad.”
Their corporate spirits were high. The blockading Guldur fleet hadn’t offered battle. Perhaps in part because of the relieving Sylvan fleet that hung just over the horizon, ready to join in. And in part it was probably the sight of Fang closing in on them, with all her vast array of “laundry” hanging out, that convinced them to exercise the better part of valor. The enemy now owned Ambergris, why worry over a few refugees?
With the boundless boorishness and bad manners of the truly well bred, Asquith continued. “Since there is nothing but straw to stop things from falling into the house, this means that bugs and other droppings can fall through. This is especially a problem in the bedroom, so you use a big, four-poster bed with a sheet hung over the top to keep the bugs off. That’s how canopy beds came about.”
Petreckski nodded his head, poured himself some wine, and said, “Aye, I hate it when all those bugs fall on you while you’re sleeping.” The purser was in a contented, cheerful mood. He’d sold the cargo of saltpeter from Pearl at a very good price on Ambergris. Then he had bought a huge assortment of trade goods at fire sale prices from fleeing Stolsh merchants before leaving Ambergris. These would be the last trade goods to come from that world, or any Stolsh world, for a very long time, and they should bring good prices on Osgil. Truly, war had been profitable for him.
“Aye,” added young Lieutenant Archer, getting into the spirit. “Once a cat came right through the roof, tore plumb through the canopy netting over their bed, and onto my ma and pa. You should’a heard the howling and shouting that night.”
Asquith used a pencil to take a note on the pad that he always had with him, and then continued. “And your floors are bare dirt. Only the wealthy have anything besides dirt on the floor, that’s where we get the saying, ‘dirt poor.’ ”
“That’s where that came from?” said Tibbits, the carpenter, as he finished off his dessert. “I always thought it was because, during real hard times, when we didn’t ‘ave any food, sometimes momma used to make us eat dirt.”
” ‘Eat dirt,’ mumbled Asquith in fascinated horror as he jotted down more notes, then he continued. “The wealthy have slate floors that get slippery when they’re wet, especially in the winter, so you scatter leftover stems of grain, called ‘thresh,’ on the floor to help keep your footing. As the winter goes on, you keep adding more thresh until when you open the door it can all start slipping outside. So a piece of wood is placed in the entranceway, hence, a ‘thresh hold.’ ”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” said Barlet, their gunnery officer. “We was all too poor to have any of that fancy stuff. How about you, Mr. Fielder, did you have one of them fancy-pants ‘threshold’ jobbies when you was a kid?”
Fielder wasn’t participating in their game. Lamenting the loss of his .45 auto and keeping a careful eye on Broadax was preoccupying him at the moment. The .45s and BARs were brought on board (couldn’t leave them to the enemy!) where they’d quickly become pieces of junk. He found comfort in the double-barreled two-space pistol tucked into his sash, and never went anywhere without it. In response to the gunner’s question Fielder just waved his hand deprecatingly and said, “the bottle stands by you, Mr. Crater,” as Asquith continued in his fatuous deconstruction of Westerness civilization.
“I suppose it’s also true, as reported by many observers, that you cook in the kitchen with a big kettle that is always hung over the fire. Every day you light the fire and add things to the pot, mostly vegetables and not much meat. Usually you eat stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that’s been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, ‘peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.’ ”
“Aye, you’ve got us on that one,” said Tibbits. “Matter o’ fact, we do that on board ship here. No telling how long the chow you just et’s been cookin’.”
Asquith actually shuddered in horror as he looked at his empty plate and continued. “Sometimes you get pork, which makes you feel special. When visitors come over, you hang up the bacon to show off. It’s a sign of wealth that a man can ‘bring home the bacon.’ You cut off a little to share with guests and all sit around and ‘chew the fat.’ ”
“Yep,” said old Hans, “Many’s the evening we sat around chewing the fat with friends. ‘Course, when ya ain’t got no fat, we could always chew bark.”
“Those with money have plates made of pewter. Did you know that food with a high acid content can cause some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning and death? This happens most often with tomatoes, so I bet you still consider tomatoes to be poisonous.”
They looked at each other in mock wonder and horror, sipping their after-dinner wine as they listened.
“Most people don’t have pewter plates, but instead they use trenchers, a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Often trenchers are made from stale bread which is so old and hard that it can be used for quite some time. Trenchers are never washed and a lot of times worms and mold get into the wood and old bread. After eating off wormy, moldy trenchers, one would get ‘trench mouth.’ ”
“Damn,” said Tibbits, “that explains it. I’m glad we have high-tech friends like you to enlighten us, Mr. Asquith.”
He nodded condescendingly and continued. “Your bread is divided according to status. Workers get the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family get the middle, and guests get the top, or ‘upper crust.’
“You see,” he continued, “we know all about your ‘retroculture’ and where it leads. Often lead cups are used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination can sometimes knock people unconscious for days. It’s common to mistake such an individual for dead and prepare them for burial. They’re laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family gathers around and eats and drinks and waits to see if they’ll wake up. Hence the custom of holding a ‘wake.’ “