Another flier passed over the clearing and a gleaming, eight-armed shape parachuted from it.

Koen glanced up, then went back to plating the water caltrops and taro.

He hadn't eaten an actual serving of anything all night, but had instead subsisted on ladle-, saucer-, and spoon-fulls of whatever needed to be tasted. He knew the water caltrops would feel in the mouth almost the same as chestnuts, but with a slightly cheesy flavor.

Wondering whether the Promise the Metruian would enjoy that, Koen remembered his dangerous experiment of his previous meal. "Proprietress?"

She was suddenly behind him. "Yes, chef?"

"Reassure me. People's translators will tell them if anything I'm serving is toxic to them, right?"

"Of course."

Another server glided up, saying, "Monumental Digeridoo asks if he can have a second helping of vegetables."

"Give him this instead." Proprietress handed her assistant a bowl of plesiosaur with chestnuts and water caltrops.

"Someone clear away the bowls of shrimp shells," Proprietress said, and a pair of mannequins hurried to obey.

Koen was surprised. "Is that how you always talk to each other? Through your puppets?"

Proprietress cocked her head, projecting curiosity and some small amount of aggression. "You wear clothes, don't you? You don't press your naked flesh against a colleague and start nibbling, do you?"

Koen admitted that he did not. He glanced up at the sparkle of lenses in the webwork above him. When Proprietress changed venues, how much of her old self did she leave behind, embodied as patterns of connection in her home web? How much of a new self had she made here, for this one night?

When he looked back down, the Neurospastics were bowing, apparently in shame.

"We've broken the illusion. Please forgive us, Human Koen."

Don't look up, Koen told himself. "I'm the one who should apologize." He clapped his hands. "Let's get that pork out! Uh. Plesiosaur."

He turned to a stack of plastic containers. They weren't quite the shape humans would make them, their handles made for larger, clumsier hands. Inside the containers were the roast geese.

Something like geese. The waterfowl Koen had gotten from the Greaves had plump bodies, long necks, and short beaks. Koen believed they might be sheldgeese. The Greaves sold their birds already roasted, which meant all Koen had to do was chop them up.

The table and cutting board were from the Embassy, and Koen's knives were his own. He selected the cleaver.

Koen was no longer afraid of this thing. He just deepened his breathing when his fingers grasped the handle. His movements slowed. He never forgot where that edge was, or where it was headed.

He'd placed the first goose breast-side up, its neck stretched to the left. He held it a little above where the cervical vertebrae met the thoracic. A mammal's flexibility was in its lumbar vertebrae, between the hips and the ribs, but bird spines were fused into a single stiff cage all the way from the hips to the shoulders. Their freedom of movement was all in the neck.

Koen gave his goose a small wiggle to see where the flexibility stopped and found the joint. Barely a crunch, and he set the head and neck on the serving platter.

The feet took a bit more thought. "Proprietess," he said, and looked over his shoulder to find her there. "I have an, um, cultural question. How will the Parturians react if I serve them goose feet?"

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"I don't know," came the response. "There isn't much information available yet about the Parturians."

"Okay, but what's the etiquette here? If I served little monkey paws to humans, they might not like it."

"You aren't a restaurant," said Proprietress. "You're an embassy. It's your responsibility to authentically showcase your culinary traditions. If your guests don't like the food, that's their problem."

"Even if I serve roast birds that look almost exactly like small Parturians?"

"They're a junior species, so nobody has told them to mind their own business. In the Convention, it is considered polite to bond emotionally with your fellow sophonts, not with their food or draft animals."

Koen winced. If Proprietress had told him that a month ago, but never mind. He couldn't change the past. He could chop up this bird.

The blade of Koen's cleaver slid through the skin and muscle over the goose's sternum. Then, stop, place the heel of the left hand on top of the cleaver, and shove sharply downward. Next, to each side of the back bone.

Koen bore down, and the goose carcass fell into two halves and a separated chunk of thoracic spine. He could use that for soup tomorrow…don't think that. Separate the thighs and drumsticks. Wings. Chop, chop the breast.

He arranged the slices on the serving platter in more or less the form they'd had in life. Head at one end, feet at the other, drumsticks and wings at the sides, sliced thighs and breast piled in the center. Send it off and do the next one. Faster.1

"Are the snails ready?" Koen asked, and a server told him they were. "Then get them out there!"

***

"I hope I'm not too late."

Nelly Steiner turned and looked up. And up. The creature's shoulders rose above her head. It settled onto its muscular tail, like a reptilian kangaroo in a military uniform. A reptilian face angled down to look at her.

"Ensign Barker," he said, "of the Starship Adventure."

Nelly didn't know about the Adventurians. And she didn't know what to say. So many bad things could happen.

"I hope I didn't scare you. What's that you're eating?"

"Snails," said Nelly. "Careful, they're —"

Ambassador Li, who had been listening and drinking, leaned across the table. "Don't worry. The saying 'They eat everything with four legs except tables and everything that flies except airplanes' is an exaggeration."

"I was going to say they're spicy."

"An authentic Cantonese chef's goal is to preserve the food's original flavor. Unlike other Chinese styles of cooking such as Sichuan style where the cook buries the food in spices and oil, a Cantonese chef aims to bring out or highlight the original flavor of the vegetable, meat, or fruit."

Koen would have been touched to hear that, but Nelly was too timid to disagree with the Ambassador. She thought the snails were too spicy.

"Clarify?" said Ensign Barker. "Spicy?"

"Hot-tasting," she said.

"How can something taste hot?" Not bothering with chopsticks, the Adventurian reached out with a huge, three-clawed talon, and picked up a curl of snail meat. He brought it to his snout, where lips pulled back to reveal huge, flat teeth. These met around the middle of the meat and delicately snipped it in half. Scale-ringed eyes narrowed, then widened. "I taste it!"

Nelly looked to Ambassador Li for help, but he had looked away, distracted by something the Tensor had said. Nobody would ask the question for her, and she wanted to know. But was it worth the risk?

Ensign Barker ate the other half of the snail and reached out for more. So, that answered her question. She could ask now without fear of offending him and starting an inter-species war. "Do you like it?"

"No," said the Adventurian around another snail. "I don't like it at all. My mouth feels like its burning."

"So why did you take more of the snails?" The question escaped before Nelly could stop herself.

"To make sure I wasn't wrong the first time. Now, how can I stop this feeling?"

She pushed a bowl toward him. "Have some rice. I'm so sorry."

"Don't apologize. This is exploration. The rice is difficult to pick up."

"I'll try to find a spoon."

Fling, who had been listening and watching all this time shouted, "Eat another snail!"

1https://thewoksoflife.com/how-to-cut-whole-chicken-chinese/