Transcriber’s Note: Menu reconstructed from heavily-damaged scan discovered by Junior Health Inspector Lena Pitts in disused filing cabinet of Escrow restaurant. At time of transcription, original menus remain under Federation-mandated quarantine and are inaccessible to public viewing.


Once, sometime between the birth and screaming death of the measurable cosmos, a restaurant named Escrow orbited the planet Exen-9978.

This had been a prudent choice. Escrow’s owners—a fundamentalist conglomerate of Greys masquerading as a single fictitious human being—selected Exen-9978 as the site of the first in an eventual trio of orbital fine dining experiences, due to its hometown status for immense corporate entity Effigy and the associated affluence of its population, as well as the completely unrelated lack of on-world strip mining that had become so trendy in recent years.

For a decade, Escrow catered to a veritable who’s who of Effigy executives, godkings and various titled oligentry, and when the war came, it fed the Federation generals who deposed and replaced them. Things got a bit tricky at the beginning of the armistice—difficult to enjoy an orbital fine dining experience when the only thing separating you from an apathetic vacuum packed with armed and disenchanted radicals was a few meters of glass—but as the offending parties were brought before Federal tribunal, hundreds of lawyers and jurors and adherents and rubberneckers flooded Exen-9978 for a peek at the bureaucratic killing floor.

And they all had to eat somewhere.

As an orbital body, Escrow was unconstrained by the spatial blueprint of planetside haute cuisine. The complete satellite stretched nearly two hundred meters across, with three floors of private dining rooms held so stationary between oscillating domes that guests arriving from neighboring planets often required several minutes to acclimate to the restaurant’s superior gravity. In addition to her dining areas, Escrow housed a full-size ballroom, a spiral staircase carved from a single four-story chunk of translucent blue diamond by alleged illegitimate Sylphi prince Kani Vi, six fish tanks, twelve beautiful lavatories, and a single kitchen of record-breaking size.

Within this kitchen lived two things: a misery so thick it could coat the back of a spoon, and veteran head chef Mikal Rime. Without the other, neither could survive.

Head chef Rime—only his father, decades dead, had ever called him Mikal—began his culinary tenure as a dishwasher. “And not in a nice place like this,” he was quick to remind the current dishwashers when they got too mouthy. “At a longhaul stop on an ice moon, where the water froze before it hit the plates.”

From there, he spent his youth on a meteoric rise through the galaxy’s finest restaurants until he was headhunted specifically by Escrow’s management, where he then scrambled up the internal ladder with all four segmented arms.

In some ways, his success was deserved. Many Sylphi chefs before him tried and failed to survive the bland, brutal world of extraplanetary haute cuisine. Those with the money to burn—Greys and Hurnagatt, for the most part—consumed mainly paste and funky air, with little taste for variation, so Rime turned his attention to the vast human populace. Humanity was full of adventurous eaters—good thing there were so many of them, the degenerates—but even they balked at fungi and pellet dishes that wouldn’t faze a Sylphi child.

By the start of his time at Escrow, though, Rime could play the human tongue by ear.

The secret, of course, was texture. While a Sylphi palate could detect and appreciate a single sliver of Celloven nita mushroom in a sauce prepared for fifty, a human would be much more concerned about whether or not that sauce was crunchy. With that hurdle crossed, he could focus on flavor, and content, and the strange fascination with scarcity. The richest of his human clientele—Dr. Phoenix Vitenka of transpo-tech giant Shrike, or warhawk Tharsis Kaliphagon, his lobotomized bride, and their unctuous son—demanded exclusive ingredients of each course, and often sent lesser chefs weeping to their apartments.

Rime made regulars of them all. He doted upon them, structured his menus to awe and dazzle them, and soon Escrow’s tables filled every night with wannabes and hangers-on, desperate for a taste.

This is not to say he was without his faults. Even Rime himself admitted he was a bit obsessive, that he could get a little testy with the horde of uninspired idiots he had been tasked with managing, but only because the guests of Escrow deserved nothing but the very best. They were, after all, his dear, dear friends. Nothing could possibly matter more than their pleasure.

Nothing except the Cliffs’ bottom line.

*     *     *

Em[ulsion] [of] the Mind
A soup composed of rare organic boar brain, cream, and finely-diced Fraquillique [illegible].

*     *     *
When Kaliphagon—growing richer by the heartbeat—initially posed the idea of the party, he spoke to Rime first.

“I want Escrow for the evening of the twelfth, three weeks from now,” was how he opened, standing in the attached smoking pod with Rime, picking a string of membrane from his teeth. “I want a seven-course meal for myself, my family, and our guests.”

Rime sipped placidly on his cigarillo, though beneath both his clean chef’s jacket and armored exoskeleton, his heart began to race. “That sounds wonderful,” he said. “I’m happy to develop a menu for a private event, but I’m almost certain we’re booked up that day.” And for the next eighteen months, he thought, but knew better than to say aloud. “I can meet with the owner on your behalf, see if we can free up a room.”

Gazing out at the expanse beyond the pod’s dome, Kaliphagon tapped cigar ash onto the tile. “I don’t want a room,” he said. “I’m booking all of it.”

“Mm.” Rime’s multi-chambered lungs spasmed when an inhale burnt the back of his throat. “With all due respect, Mr. Kaliphagon, I’m not sure—”

Kaliphagon turned his head. He was a thickly-built thing, with thin lips and eyes like the cool black maws of unfired pistols. “The twelfth is my wife’s birthday,” he said. “Speak to your owner. If he says no, send him to me.”

“Of course, sir,” said Rime. “But … surely there’s room for compromise?”

“Are you going to give me what I asked for?” This, aside from “Do you think you’re funny?” was the only question Tharsis Kaliphagon had asked in twenty-three years.

“Yes.” Rime set his eyes straight ahead. “Yes, of course.”

The next morning, he brought it to the Cliffs. There were four of them—siblings, budded and raised with a hundred others in the same pod—and if they had other names, they had never used them in front of him.

“Absolutely not,” said the eldest from their place at the rightmost point of the oblong office table. “Part of the restaurant, perhaps. But that’s an entire evening of revenue, gone.”

Rime said: “He didn’t mention a price. We could charge him per plate, plus whatever last year’s sales gross was.”

“He couldn’t afford it,” said the second to their sibling’s left. 

“He’s just absorbed a manufacturing empire so large its ends don’t see the same constellations,” said Rime. “He’s fine.”

The third steepled their long-fingered hands. “He’ll back out,” they said.

Rime wrung two of his hands. “We’ll make him sign a contract and pay part up front. This is a tremendous opportunity. We’d be fools to turn him down.”

Three sets of pupilless eyes shifted all the way to the last chair, where the youngest sat in silence.

“Cliff,” said Rime. “Be reasonable. Give him the restaurant for the night and we will never see a single empty table again.”

The fourth paused, then cocked their head. “What’s in it for you?” they asked.

Rime came up short. His mouth opened and closed convulsively. Finally, he said: “He wants me to plan the menu.”

“And,” said the fourth, “am I to understand he’s put parameters to curb your—”

“My vision?” Rime’s hackles rose.

“Your unorthodoxy,” said the eldest.

“Your compulsion,” said the second.

The third: “Your penchant for the obscene?”

The fourth sat in silence again, waiting.

“No,” Rime said with a note of vicious pride. “He hasn’t.”

Escrow was infrequently quiet. Even now, squeaky cart wheels in the hallway cut through the permanent hum of the air filtration system.

Finally, the fourth said: “Oh, all right. Let him do it.” And, waving away the protestations at their side: “He’s right about the money. The twin gods know we’re due for a transfusion, and we will not deny them.”

This shut the others up. Mention of the Greys’ twin gods usually did.

“Thank you.” Rime’s body hummed. “It will be a truly singular orbital dining experience that will change the way we eat permanently.”

“I don’t care,” said Cliff the fourth. “Make us some money, Chef. And keep the staff turnover to a minimum.”

*     *     *

[illegible] S[o]uff[le] in Divine S[auc]e
Souffle of duck and fetal tiger in white shallot sauce

*     *     *
Eighteen months into their tenure, Susan—Rime’s sous chef, a squat and unusually dexterous Grey—had outlasted the previous five sous several times over. The common consensus amongst the revolving door of juniors, pâtissiers, waiters, dishwashers, sauciers, and pantry supervisors was that Susan was in love with him, corroborated by a single eyewitness account of the pair emerging breathless from the walk-in freezer after a particularly harrowing dinner service.

Susan did nothing to dispel these rumors. They didn’t even acknowledge them, and would change the subject abruptly when their attachment to Rime came up in post-service smoking pod conversations. This was because the perception of an illicit frot in the freezer, while repulsive, was far less extreme than what Susan had actually done, which was attempt to bury a chipped meat cleaver in Rime’s armored back.

It hadn’t worked, obviously. He hadn’t even bled, though Susan did a little when the blade glanced off Rime’s exoskeleton and scraped their cheek on the rebound. The following scuffle lasted fewer than ten seconds, after which Rime—holding the cleaver aloft, panting hard through his phalanx of needle-thin teeth—said, “You’ve got balls, kid. I’ll give you that” and then never brought it up again.

Susan could have left, and probably should have, but they did not. In part because they would be the first in line to replace him as head chef when his heart finally gave out, but also because at Escrow, Susan was somebody, and anywhere else they’d be nobody.

Unfortunately, to be somebody in Rime’s kitchen meant bending to his will. With little time to prepare each element of Kaliphagon’s seven course meal himself, he set aside the first two hours of morning prep and an additional hour after service as mandatory menu planning, often keeping the heads of each station until just before the nightly shuttle down to Exen-9978. Those too slow packing up slept in cots on the kitchen floor, surrounded by vacuous silence.

 He never fired anybody. But if a sauce split or a foam deflated or the smear of congealed oxblood on the rim of the plate failed to mimic exactly the parabolic curve of the nearest star, the offending party would be sent weeping in the hallway moments later.

Morale, already low, took a nosedive. “I don’t understand what’s so fucking important about all this,” moaned the juniors and the waiters and the dishwashers too blistered to flick their lighters. “It’s one dinner, for one rich freak. Is it really so serious as all that?”

No. Of course it wasn’t. Tharsis Kaliphagon burnt his taste buds off years ago and his guests would be more concerned with the words on the menu than the palatability of the food they described. Above a certain tax bracket, taste became conceptual, pleasure an animal’s pursuit. But a failure at this scale would humiliate even Rime, and he would trash a thousand dishes before he subjected himself to dissatisfaction.

The waste was incredible. He blew through the initial test budget in a matter of days, and requested three increases in the weeks before the party, the last of which he earned only after an extended grovel before Cliff the fourth. 

Further stymieing the menu development was the rarity of the ingredients. Due to the piddling bureaucracy’s new off-world poaching crackdown, a single jar of fetal tigers took nearly five days to reach Escrow’s back door, and a duck nearly twice that long. Susan thought of this each time a steaming plate was swept, barely tasted, into the bin overflowing with feathers and sweaty plastic gloves.

And then there was dessert. Susan could count on every digit twice over the number of times they’d asked about the plan for dessert, but each time Rime issued a brusque “I’m taking care of it. Don’t ask me again” and waved two plus arms in their general direction. Susan would have been curious, if they had the energy to feel anything at all.

When he wasn’t lurching through the kitchen or begging for money, Rime was with his suppliers. Some reputable, to be met during daylight hours. Some—longhaul shippers and mercenaries turned part-time poachers—to be met after close. From the former, Rime bought his staples, but with the latter was where he spent real money.

Susan was not invited to these after-hours meetings. This did not stop them from lingering occasionally in the dark back staircase, long after the final shuttle’s departure, and creeping into the stocked pantry to marvel at his acquisitions. Spiny crawlers, transported in jugs full of water from the bottoms of artificial moon lakes. Blind fish and huge opalescent mollusks cultivated in rooms starved of light. Birds and primates and a thousand tailed furry things crammed to immobility with fatty organs. The most luxurious of future trash.

Rime caught them more than once, peering through the velvet covering into the tiered cage housing the juvenile Lanifyn Silences. “Leave them alone,” he snapped. “Once the drugs wear off, they’ll never shut up.”

Susan, who heard him clicking down the hall, didn’t even turn around. “Until we drown them in honey, of course.” Then: “Is it true they live seventy years apiece, and each sings a song that is completely unique?”

“Go home, Susan.”

Susan trudged toward the door, but paused in the threshold when Rime inhaled.

“Something else, Chef?”

Rime rubbed the back of his neck, working one side of his shoulders. The web of muscles beneath his carapace was stretched taut as bowstrings. Almost as an afterthought, he said: “That’s a myth. They always sound the same to me.”

*     *     *

Braised Limb
[illegible]

*     *     *
One night, a scant week before the party, Rime entered the kitchen just after close and told everyone to take the night off.

Nobody argued. Nobody cited remaining closing tasks, or leftover prep, or even asked why. Exhausted, they all fled, even Susan, and left head chef Rime alone in his kingdom.

He liked it here, after close, in the quiet. Here, amidst the stainless steel, he could stand before the three-deep sink, roll up his sleeves, and prepare himself for his most skittish of suppliers.

Disciple Q—Fraquillique citizen, fresh cultist—was actually a rather pleasant young man, if you could stand to look at him long enough to let him speak. They’d overlapped briefly at Escrow, several years before: Rime as a junior, Q as a busboy, and never exchanged more than a few words. At some point, Q departed for his home planet to care for his ailing mother, after which Rime promptly forgot about him.

Until Q—much changed—left his beloved brotherhood and, with the last of his money, returned to ask for his job back.

In the end, it was Rime who took him aside, away from the whispering kitchen, and suggested he work instead as a remote supplier, sending Fraquillique produce and wildlife in cryogenic boxes to feed Escrow’s illustrious clientele.

“You can’t be here,” he’d told the sobbing, black-spotted figure in his walk-in freezer. “People are eating. Go home to your … thing and send what I ask for and you’ll be paid. That’s the best I can do for you.”

This was how Rime became privy to a secondhand piece of Fraquil’s intensely private religious world, relayed piecemeal bimonthly over a bad connection by a lonely orphan.

Rime felt for the kid. He really did. He’d been a hard worker, and several of the waiters had been very sad to see him go. But he was not interested in Q’s stories of the brotherhood or his gentle disposition. What kept him in contact was Q’s proximity to the rarest of ingredients.

Fraquil’s “God,” a term still hotly contested by the bitheistic Greys, stood tall enough to be viewed from orbit. It was slick, and black, and spread Itself over the expansive desert upon which It lay in uncountable branching ribbons. For a very long time, It had been tended and fed upon by a devoted sect of Disciples, who endured a slow, unbecoming transformation in exchange for extended contact with the being that could detect an unfamiliar ship in Fraquil’s atmosphere and disarticulate its passengers into wafer-thin meat spirals long before they could land.

As such, Fraquil was closed to extraterrestrial visitors, and while its citizens often left and returned, its Disciples rarely did.

“Because of your devotion?” Rime had asked Q during one of their fuzzy calls.

The pixelated image shook its head. “Because it puts folks off,” he said, “and after a couple years, I won't fit in a shuttle anyway.”

Fortunately, Rime had a strong constitution. The night of Q’s arrival, he stood in the smoking pod, compound eyes jumping anxiously between stars until a ding from the loading dock sent him scuttling down the corridor.

“Do you have it?” he demanded before the shuttle door had even fully opened. “Show it to me.”

Disciple Q unfolded himself from the tiny seat. Since their last meeting, he’d grown almost a meter, his black-fingered hands wrapped nearly double around the straps of a canvas backpack. Sniffling, he ducked under the threshold, several inches of indigo ankle showing between his socks and the hem of his robe.

“I can’t do it,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

A faint keen rang in Rime’s head. Before he could speak, Q started down the hall toward the dark dining room bar, pawing at his face.

“I’m sorry.” He sagged horribly over the polished bartop. “I really tried.”

Rime snapped his teeth, but only once. “Tell me what happened.”

Disciple Q lifted his head. His spotted tongue was pitch black. Even the eye in the center of his forehead had begun to stalk. Unsteadily, he opened the pack on the stool beside him and pulled out a cryogenic container.

“It turned to glass as soon as I left atmo,” he said. “I don’t wanna do this anymore, Chef. I can’t. It’s wrong.”

“All right.” Rime fought to keep his voice level, one hand on the spout behind the bar. “It’s all right. Take a deep breath.” Then, once the cold water was in Q’s awful hand: “What do you mean, it turned to glass?”

In response, Q gestured to the container, which depressurized under Rime’s fingers with a hiss. “Don’t put your hand in,” Q said.

Rime put his hand in and drew out a fistful of black shards. Through gritted teeth, he said: “You told me you could bring it to me.”

Disciple Q dabbed at his swollen third eye with a bar napkin. His lips left ashy smears on the rim of his glass. “I took pieces from all over,” he said. “I cut some of It off, I took some from the desert. I even stole a piece of It from the brotherhood’s community refrigerator. They were fine in the container and then as soon as I was out of orbit, It just …” He collapsed into tears. “It’s wrong. It’s all wrong.”

Rime’s vision shrank to a pinprick. In vain, he tried breathing through his nose, but the hiss only made him angrier. “I’ve already paid you an exorbitant amount of money to bring this to me. Without this ingredient, my menu is ruined. I am ruined. Do you understand?” Then, when the tears began to slow: “I need this. You promised to bring it to me. Get back on the shuttle, go back into the desert, and bring me something I can use.”

Disciple Q lifted his face from his long hands. Thick, wet eyelashes framed each blackened sclera. “I don’t think it’s possible,” he whispered. “It’s sacrilege. It’s wrong.”

“It isn’t wrong.” That temper, his wife used to say. That horrible temper. “You and your brothers eat it, don’t you? You eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. For decades. All I have requested from you is a single piece, which you promised to bring me.” Rime stepped closer, fighting to bring himself in check. “I know,” he said, then brought his voice down to an even lull, “I know this is difficult. I know you’re in pain, and that what I’ve asked of you feels wrong. But it isn’t. Your … your God lets you do this, doesn’t it? It lets you eat?”

Blinking, Q nodded.

“It wants to be eaten. Why would it let you otherwise?” Q’s upper arm felt spongy beneath the pad of his hand. “All you have to do is figure out a way to get it off the planet. That’s all. Just this one time, and then you’ll go home with more money than you or your entire brotherhood will know what to do with. Don’t you love your brothers, Q?”

“Of course I do.” Another sip from the glass, and his sooty mouth shone wetly in the low bar lights. “But I love God, too.”

“And God helps those who help themselves.” This was Grey talk, but Rime’s own faith had lapsed long ago. “You’re simply an enterprising young man facilitating a cultural exchange.”

Disciple Q paused. His stalking third eye swayed lazily between his eyebrows. He said: “Your clients aren’t … afraid?”

“What? No, of course not. Why would they be?”

Q gestured down the length of his evolving body. “It’s safe by itself, in small doses,” he said. “Bit of a buzz, maybe, but the idea still tends to put folks off.”

“These are not the kind of people who are put off,” said Rime. “They’re my friends, of course. But if I finished this menu with a chocolate lava cake, they’d behead me on the dining room floor.”

“Mm.” Something—not pity, or fear, or malice—passed behind Q’s eyes. “This means a lot to you,” he said.

“Not just to me,” said Rime. “So. You’ll go back and bring me what I asked for?”

“I’ll try.”

“Good boy.” He patted that boneless shoulder again, ignoring the loose fit of Q’s wrists and hips as his skeleton failed to keep pace. “I’ll get you another containment pod.”

*     *     *

Seasoned Paste
A [Grey] delicacy: paste, lightly charred and salted

*     *     *
Two days before the party, right in the middle of prep, a quarter of the back of house staff walked out.

They did it without fanfare. Rime—holding two fistfuls of raw boar brain and screaming so hard his teeth were wet—had barely paused for breath before one of the juniors wordlessly removed her apron, set down her cleaver, and strode purposefully through the back door. Then another, and another: a stream of curved spines, blisters, shiny burn scars coloring forearms and fingers. Just a handful altogether, but enough to ruin things. Enough to remind the rest that the door opened both ways.

“Go on!” Rime shouted after them. “Go on, go smoke your fucking cigarettes!”

Not one of them looked back. 

“We’re in orbit! There’s nowhere to go!” Rime shrieked. “Animals! Degenerates!” Then, to Susan who stood frozen a pace away: “What are you fucking staring at? Take over!” And before they could respond, he was stalking into the hallway and out of sight.

A murmur went around. “Shit-eater,” spat a dishwasher under his breath. Toward the back, somebody sniffed purposefully.

“Hey.” Susan didn’t raise their voice. “We all know he’s a shit-eater. But he also pioneered mainstream culinary coprophagia.”

“Whoop-dee-doo,” said the saucier without looking up from her pan.

“Listen,” said Susan, “I know everybody’s exhausted. I’m exhausted. But we’ve just got to get through this and then we can all go back to riding his coattails and brutally murdering him in the vast landscapes of our minds. Okay? Okay, Joel?”

Joel was the remaining junior—a nephew of the Cliffs. Their smooth gray expression didn’t shift, but Susan could see the gears turning in their head.

“Okay,” Joel said. “Whatever you say.”

After an hour, the missing quarter returned to their stations. Wordlessly, they slotted back in, picked up their knives and towels, wet their hands in the dish sinks.

Rime did not enter with them. “Where’s Chef?” Susan asked one of the prep cooks beside the walk-in.

The cook said: “In his office,” then stepped past them, dry-eyed over a hotel of fresh onions.

Rime’s office—more upright coffin than room—barely contained him. He sat with his back to the wall, his carapace curled forward within his starched white coat. In two of his hands, he held a stack of finely printed menus. The other two lay faceup in his lap, like dead roaches.

Susan shut the door. “Chef?” they asked.

Rime stroked the creamy paper with two thumbs. Almost too quietly for Susan to hear, he said: “These came out nicely, didn’t they?”

“I … haven’t seen them.” Against their better judgment, Susan moved closer. The menus, printed in some disused human language, flexed gently beneath Rime’s fingers. “They aren’t in Standard?”

Rime shook his head. “I had to run them through a translator,” he said. “Half the guests won’t be able to read them either, but it doesn’t matter. They’ll eat whatever Kaliphagon eats, however he eats it.”

“Mm.” Susan had no hair, but the clean flesh on the back of their neck prickled. “What did you say to the staff, Chef? Outside, in the pod. What did you say to make them come back in?”

“Oh,” said Rime absently. “The Cliffs didn’t tell you? I’m leaving Escrow. After the party.”

Susan felt instantly, powerfully sick. “What?”

This drew his attention up from the menus. Susan’s reflection swam over his black eyes.

“Leaving … who’s going to—” They could barely speak, moving their hands only in emphatic little jerks. “Who’s going to do all this?”

Rime said: “You are. If you want to, which I know you do. You’ll be good at it, too.”

“When were you going to tell me? When were the Cliffs … when was this discussed?”

“About two weeks ago,” Rime said dispassionately.

Susan’s voice cracked. “Are they making you go?”

“Nobody’s ever made me do anything,” said Rime, instead of “yes.” “I thought you’d be happy.”

“Of course I’m happy!” The blood was returning to Susan’s face. “I’m thrilled. I can’t—” They stopped. “This is horrible. How could they do this to you?”

In lieu of an answer, Rime said nothing. It was probably the money, Susan thought, or the turnover. The reeking trash bins full of sour milk and headless birds. The thick, rank misery clinging to Escrow’s interior.

“I wasn’t supposed to say anything to the staff yet,” said Rime as if Susan hadn’t spoken, “but we couldn’t rehire that quickly. Word should get around soon enough and then you’ll start with a full staff.”

“I’m sorry,” Susan said. “I’m really, really sorry.”

“Don’t be.” His face’s rigid structures remained in place. “Cover service for me tonight, will you? I’ve got some work to finish.”

In the absence of fluorescent light and silver, Susan realized he was tiny. Taller than them, but only just, and old around the eyes. With a nod, they stepped backwards from the room and closed the door.

*     *     *

Detoxified Quail and Hemlock Pate
Warm pate of hemlock-stuffed quail, washed in eucalyptus and mint

*     *     *
Despite Rime’s frequent messages, Disciple Q did not send word to Escrow until nearly the end of service on the night before Kaliphagon’s party. His message came through the reservation phone, and was relayed to Rime via a scribble on a wet cocktail napkin.

Supplier coming late

By then, everybody knew Rime was on his way out, and so they bore his fury with a kind of pleasure, like adults cooing over a serious child. Only when Susan came through the kitchen, half a pace behind him, did they turn back to their burners and sweat.

The shift was coming—already his grip had loosened. So, when Susan asked to stay and wait for his supplier, Rime refused.

“I should meet him, though, shouldn’t I?” they asked.

“I don’t see why,” said Rime. “I won’t be buying from him again.”

“Why not?” Their large eyes glittered, clean as plates. “Poor quality? Poor communication?”

“He’s late.” Rime checked his watch. “You’ll be too, if you don’t catch this shuttle. Go on,” he added. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Escrow expanded in the dark. Sitting at the bar, beneath the low backup lights, Rime sipped mineral water between his teeth and stared out at the empty tables. Absently, he realized that, though his domain sat only a few meters away, he had never taken a meal in Escrow’s dining room. About this, he felt nothing.

The large hours reached their peak and became small again. An anxious kernel tightened in Rime’s gut. Without Q, the endeavor would be pointless. He might as well leave now and let the Cliffs clean up his mess, leave Susan to the trash bags heaped with broken crockery. Make himself worthwhile somewhere else.

Distantly, a shuttle whirred at the loading dock, and Rime ran full tilt for the door.

Disciple Q was alone. Standing within the pod that brought him into orbit, his canvas bag slung over one shoulder, he could have been a kid returning home from school.

Rime took the front of his robes in all four fists. “You,” he hissed, craning his neck up at the shadow of Q’s face, “where have you been?”

The robes spasmed beneath his fingers. When Rime's fists sprang open involuntarily, his palms were tacky.

“Q?”

Disciple Q took a shallow breath. His lips were frosted with dry skin. “I have It,” he droned. “May I please come in?”

Rime led him down the hall, into the bright and empty kitchen. Beneath the lights, he turned to look at the young man.

Then, abruptly, he turned away.

“I’m sorry I’m so late,” Q was saying. Each breath whistled through his nose, his voice soft but recognizable as it fought its way past the tongue. His bag hit the stainless-steel prep table with a soft thump. “Transit. You know.”

Rime made a sound. The room felt suddenly hot. “Are you … are you all right?”

“Me?” When he lay his hand flat on the edge of the table, the tip of his middle finger—was it a finger, still?—bent over the opposite side. “I’m wonderful. Got the pod all to myself.” Then, thickly: “You’re afraid.”

“No,” said Rime to the table. “No, of course I’m not.”

“You don’t need to be afraid.” He enunciated each word with great care, the edges of his mouth spreading to give his voice some space. “I have what you want. I didn’t know what to do, at first.” Occluded by the tongue, the consonants dropped, or turned soft and phlegmy. Each vowel stretched to fill the absence. “Pieces all turned … to glass. But then! God told me!”

The shadow of Q’s three stalked eyeballs waved over the counter. The fingers pulled back, and his robes rustled. In Rime’s peripheral vision, he could just make out the skinny indigo chest, the phalanx of ribs. His head turned of its own free will.

From Q’s solar plexus hung a thick and undulating spiral. Its black skin shone beneath the fluorescence, Its pointed terminus falling nearly to the floor. Carefully, Q lifted It in his jointed hands and spread It straight over the table, where It convulsed against the cold.

“Do you have a knife?” he asked. Then, as he bent at the waist over the prep table: “Don’t worry. You won’t hurt me.”

The tower over his heart lay still. Panting, eyes down, Rime fumbled for the cleaver. When he pressed the heel of his hand against the mass to draw it tight, a tendril of warm flesh wrapped gently around his wrist.

Disciple Q did not look away when the blade came down. Nor did he bleed. Instead, he pulled his robes closed over the graying pulp of his chest and exhaled a soft hah.

“Wow,” he said. “I am so loved.”

Rime shook his arm free. His mouth watered against a wash of acid. “I’ll—” He cleared his throat. “I’ll send you the wire. Thank you, Disciple.”

Q rested one long hand on his bag. “Of course,” he said evenly around the indolent tongue. “Sorry. Could you say that again?”

“Thank you?”

“No. You called me Disciple. Is that your word for what I am?” At the corners of his mouth, a little smile fissured. “Translation’s funny. Very … euphemistic.” He tilted his head toward the cooling mass on the counter. “I’m excited for you to try It. It’s very, very good. Like a … smoky plum. Thank you for the money, Chef. I’m going to go home now.”

“Q.”

Q turned in the threshold. “Mm?”

“What … what should I have called you?”

The young man paused. “These have … trouble with Fraquilliquilum,” he said, indicating the universal translation insert nestled in his ear. “Brevity over accuracy. But a disciple of God is an adherent. A follower. That’s not what I am.”

“Then what are you?”

“A limb,” said Q.

And then he left Rime alone with the cleaver.

*     *     *

Gilded Silence on Toast
The intact [head] of the Lanifyn Silence, glazed in spiced honey.

*     *     *
God seized in Rime’s hands. This close, Its surface, ribbed like an annelid, swam with queasy opalescence. Its weight shifted between his palms, occasionally reaching for a thumb or forefinger with a fresh, budding tendril.

Rime patted It dry, washed his hands, and clicked on the gas stove.

The plan had been to grate It into a gelatin slurry—foam of the flayed God, served chilled and alone, but first, It needed to reduce. Surreal, bisecting It like a gasping fish. Even separated, the pieces moved as one: waving left, right, curled, and uncurled. They clung to his fingers as he dropped half the quantity one by one into the screaming hot pan.

The other half he sliced thin, almost transparent, until he could just see the fine, pulpy internal matrix when he held a sheet up to the light. No aroma, even as the steam rose, and Q’s altered palate could hardly be trusted.

Carefully, Rime lay a sliver on his tongue.

In thirty-five years of cooking, he had tasted so many things. Waste-filtering urchins dredged from dying rivers. Fruit bloated with decay. Shit, meat, maggots. His own molts. The flesh of the consenting and sapient.

But this he spat into the sink.

Salt. Unbearable saline, pierced by decomposition’s cloying sweetness. His teeth felt instantly furry, his gumline alight. Retching over the drain, pawing at his face, he let out a sound that began low and rose higher and higher until he couldn’t feel his shredded throat around the force of it.

What a waste. Of money, of time, of sleep and sanity. This wasn’t what he’d been promised. Q must have polluted it, that sick cultist fuck. Taken his money, his reputation, his whole life, and run laughing back to his planet of freaks.

Rime tore the pot off the stove and shoved the whole odious mess into the trash. The remaining flesh on the counter splintered between his fingers and now he could smell it. Rot, semen, burnt hair. Dirty sheets and blood.

Into the garbage with the reeking gloves and broken glass, with the unacceptable and imperfect.

He’d have to start over. Start all of it over: the prep, the menu, the table settings. Everything wrong, ruined—he grappled for the stack of printed menus on the counter and dragged his blackened fingernails over the careful script. Paper crumpled against his soft palate and pierced his aching gums. No prospects on the other side, no future in another kingdom. What a waste, a waste, a failure!

And in the midst, like a breath between screams, a headless bird flew from the garbage.

Mikal stopped. Panting, mouth full, he looked up from his place on the kitchen tile.

The juvenile Lanifyn Silence battered itself against the ceiling. Its pumping wings, green and blurred with effort, carried it again and again into the tile. Thump. Thump. Each impact drove a tiny sound from somewhere deep in its breast, pushed up from its impossible lungs through the open hole of its larynx.

It was trying to sing.

How many had he decapitated, in those thirty-five years? Thousands? The brains were so soft. Wonderfully spiced, served in honey. A single head cost a week of dishwasher’s wages.

Shards of wet paper fell from his mouth. The plumage. Even matted, even speckled in grease and bruised fern. Even driving itself madly into the ceiling. He had never seen anything so beautiful.

Mikal’s pulse began to slow. His palms—bleeding, pebbled with black glass—relaxed faceup in his lap. His mind cleared like an auditorium.

In the garbage, something was calling his name.

Mikal! Mikal! In here!

The yellow fat of his hands swallowed pebbles with a crunch as he crawled, drooling, to the overflowing bin.

Inside! Inside!

It had touched everything. The gloves that cradled his chef’s hands, still smelling of skin and perfumed vegetable peels. Bits of crockery—had the plates ever been as fine as they were now, broken and streaked in black? How many hands washed and held them like children before they lay upon the tables of his restaurant?

Mikal lay a shard of plate upon his tongue. It was delicious.

It all was. The mewling offal of fetal tigers, tiny lungs and hearts ground flat between his molars. Another fistful of gloves, swallowed whole. Curdled cream in its soft carton. All four hands descended within to unbury the voice, one mouthful at a time.

Can you see us? Can you see?

At the bottom, through the layer of hot black pulp, lay the mellified heads. Who had discarded them? Why, when they had such trusting eyes?

Above, the Silence peeled itself again from the wet and humming light.

Mikal, chorused the heads. Mikal, Mikal! Finally, you can hear us! Finally, we can tell you!

Mikal tried to say, “Tell me what?” but it didn’t come out right. There was too much in the way.

The beaks opened and closed in mechanical unison. You are loved! You are loved!

Kneeling there on the floor, defanged and alone, Mikal took a breath to cry.

*     *     *

Foam of the Flayed God
Culinary froth flavored in smoke and stone fruit by the flesh of the Fraquillique God.

*     *     *
The story Tharsis Kaliphagon was told, the one that left the kitchens, was that Mikal Rime died during the night in his bed. A coronary event.

But the staff knew. That morning, Susan had been the one to find him curled over the lip of the garbage can, an ocean of trash spilling from his mouth. Glass beneath his fingernails.

Susan called the Cliffs, who were already halfway up from Exen, and the five sat silently in the big office as the previous evening played in grainy miniature on the detachable screen.

“Did you know about this?” Susan asked when it was over. They felt incredibly sick.

“No,” said the eldest.

“Of course not,” said the second.

“How could we?” asked the third.

The heads turned to Cliff the fourth, whose poreless expression had puckered around the eyes and mouth. “Blasphemer,” they said. “Animal. We line his pockets and he repays us in poison and heresy.”

“I don’t think it was—” Susan paused. “I don’t think he knew what would happen. He was under so much pressure, and—”

Cliff the fourth’s black eyes shifted in their sockets. “You’re babbling,” they said placidly. “The scholarship exists. If he did not know, then incuriosity is to blame. Do not purport to pick apart the meanings of his actions after the fact.” Then: “This was for tonight, correct?”

“I … I think so.”

“Which course?”

“Dessert? I don’t—”

The youngest Cliff exhaled through their nose. “A simple replacement,” they said. “Chocolate lava cake. We will handle the menus.”

“What?” To their horror, Susan felt tears rising. “We can’t … Chef is dead! We have to cancel.”

“Cancel?” asked the eldest.

“Preposterous,” said the second.

“Think of all that waste!” cried the third.

“It simply isn’t possible.” Cliff the fourth plucked a tissue from the box in the corner of the desk and held it out in Susan’s direction. “He would want us to go forward, with you at the helm. You know he would, Susan.” A pause. “Unless you’d prefer Joel took the lead?”

Susan’s body seized. “No,” they said, “no, I can do it. I can … I’ll make it work. I will.” The hollowness within them, filled by the enormous desire to please. “Yes. This is what I want. Yes.”

“That is what I like to hear,” said Cliff the fourth. “Now, Chef. Go make us some money. And keep the staff turnover to a minimum.”

Outside the office, a handful of hallways down, Susan could hear the morning prep shift murmuring, the squeak and rattle of a mop bucket pushed bodily through the kitchen doors. With the cuff of their white jacket, they dabbed at their face. A surge of pressure built behind their eyes. 

How could he have done this to himself? To Escrow, to all of them? The intensity of it, the fevered ecstasy of Rime—diseased, perverse—in grainy miniature, sobbing himself to death over the trash. Susan took a shaky breath against their own wrist. The fabric smelled fresh, and feathery.

It was never going to end any other way. The pursuit of perfection had been meaningless, and all Susan had to do now was fill the gaping exit wound. Tailor it to fit. Maybe make it smaller, in time.

They took another breath. Then, standing a few meters of steel and glass from yawning blackness, they squared their shoulders and walked back toward the kitchen.