The Inheritors - A. Bertram Chandler [18]
"Tea, Maya?" asked Grimes. "Coffee?"
"What's tea?" she asked him. "What's coffee?"
"What do you drink usually?" he asked.
"Water, of course," she told him.
"And on special occasions?"
"Water."
"Mphm." He got up, opened his liquor cabinet. The light inside it was reflected brightly from the labels of bottles, from polished glasses.
Maya said, "How pretty!"
"Perhaps you would like to try . . . What would you like to try?"
"Angels' Tears," she said.
So she could read as well as speak Anglic. Grimes set out five liqueur glasses on the counter, uncorked the tall, beautifully proportioned bottle and filled them. He handed one to Maya, then served Maggie, then the two men. He lifted the remaining glass, said, "Here's mud in your eye!" and sipped. Maya sipped. The two men sipped. Maya spat like an angry cat. The men looked as though they would have liked to do the same, but they were too overawed by their unfamiliar surroundings.
"Firewater!" ejaculated the Morrowvian woman at last.
Grimes wondered what the distillers on Altairia would think if they could hear their most prized product so denigrated. This liqueur was almost pure alcohol—but it was smooth, smooth, and the cunning blend of spices used for flavoring could never be duplicated off the planet of its origin. Then he remembered a girl he had known on Dunsinane. He had not minded buying her expensive drinks, but he had been shocked by the way in which she misused them. The ending of what promised to be a beautiful friendship had come when she had poured Angels' Tears over a dish of ice cream . . . .
He said, "Perhaps this drink is a little strong to those who are not accustomed to it. But there is a way of making it less . . . fiery." He pressed the button, and in seconds a stewardess was in the cabin. The girl blushed furiously when she saw the nudity of the two Morrowvian men, but she tried hard to ignore their presence.
"Jennifer," said Grimes, "bring three dishes of ice cream."
"What flavor, sir?"
What flavor ice cream had that girl used for her appalling concoction? "Chocolate," said Grimes. "Very good, sir."
She was not gone long. Grimes took the tray from her when she returned; he was afraid that she might drop it when attempting to serve the naked bodyguards . He set it down on the table, then took Maya's glass from her. He poured the contents over one of the dishes of ice cream, handed it to her. "Now try it," he said.
She ignored the spoon. She raised the dish in her two hands to mouth level. Her pink tongue flickered out. There was a very delicate slurping sound. Then she said to her bodyguards, "Thomas, William—this is good!"
"I'm glad you like it," said Grimes, handing their portions to the two men. Then—"The same again?"
"If I may," replied Maya politely.
Alcohol, even when mixed with ice cream, is a good lubricant of the vocal cords. Maya, after her second helping, became talkative. More than merely talkative . . . she became affectionate. She tended to rub up against Grimes whenever he gave her the opportunity. He would have found her advances far more welcome if Maggie had not been watching amusedly, if the two bodyguards had not been present. Not that the bodyguards seemed to mind what their mistress was doing; were it not for her inhibiting presence they would have behaved toward Maggie Lazenby as she, Maya, was behaving toward Grimes . . . .
"Such a long time . . ." gushed Maya. "Such a long, long time . . . . We knew we came from the stars, in a big ship . . . . Not us, of course, but our first fathers and mothers . . . . We hoped that some time some other ship would come from the stars . . . . But it's been a long, long time . . . .
"And then, after the ship called Corgi came, we thought that the next ships would land at Melbourne, and that it'd be years before we saw one . . . . The Queen of Melbourne, they say, now has a cold box to keep her meat and her water in, and she has books, new books, about all sorts of marvelous things . . . . And