The Winds of Change and Other Stories Read online

  'You've had enough of the sun, I take it,' said Elder. 'But you would go. Well, welcome back to the inner world, with light and warmth under our control locked away from the patch and blaze of sunshine. Welcome back to the womb of the people, as the saying goes.'

  'Yet I'm glad I went,' said Chawker Minor. 'Eight different worlds, you know. It gives you a view you don't have otherwise.'

  'And would be better off not having,' said Elder.

  'I'm not sure about that,' said Chawker Minor, and his right upper eyelid trembled just slightly as he looked at Major. Chawker Major's lips compressed but he said nothing.

  2

  It was a feast. Anyone would have had to admit that, and in the end it was Chawker Minor himself, who had been the greediest to begin, who was the first to push away. He had no choice; Lady would else have kept on supplying him with samples out of what seemed to be a bottomless larder.

  'Lady-mine,' he said, affectionately, 'my tongue wearies. I can no longer taste anything.'

  'You not taste?' said Lady. 'What kind of nitherling-story is that? You have the skill of the Grand-Elder himself. At the age of six, you were already a Gustator; we had endless proofs of that. There was not an additive you could not detect even when you could not pronounce them right.'

  'Taste buds blunt when not used,' said Elder Chawker, darkly, 'and jogging the Other Worlds can utterly spoil a man.'

  'Yes? Well, let us see,' said Lady. 'Minor-mine, tell your doubting Elder what you have eaten.'

  'In order?' said Chawker Minor.

  'Yes. Show him you remember.'

  Chawker Minor closed his eyes. 'It's scarcely a fair test,' he said, 'I so relished the taste I did not pause to analyse it; and it's been so long.'

  'He has excuses. See, Lady?' said Elder.

  'But I will try,' Chawker Minor said hastily. 'In the first place, the Prime base for all of them is from the fungus vats of the East Section and the thirteenth corridor within it, I believe, unless great changes have been made in my absence.'

  'No, you are right,' said Lady, with satisfaction.

  'And it was expensive,' said Elder.

  'The prodigal returns,' said Chawker Major, just a bit acidly, 'and we must have the fatted fungus, as the saying goes. - Get the additives, Minor, if you can.'

  'Well,' said Chawker Minor, 'the first dab was strongly Spring Morning with added Leaves A-Freshened, and a touch, not more than a touch of Spara-Sprig.'

  'Perfectly right,' said Lady, smiling happily.

  Chawker Minor went on with the list, his eyes still closed, his taste-memory rolling backwards and forwards luxuriously over the tang and consistency of the samplings. He skipped the eighth and came back to it.

  'That one', he said, 'puzzles me.'

  Chawker Major grinned. 'Didn't you get any of it?'

  'Of course I did. I got most of it. There was Frisking Lamb - not Leaping Lamb, either. Frisking, even though it leaned just a little towards Leaping.'

  'Come on, don't try to make it hard. That's easy,' said Chawker Major. 'What else?'

  'Green-Mint, with just a touch of Sour-Mint - both - and a dusting of Sparkle-Blood. - But there was something else I couldn't identify.'

  'Was it good?' asked Chawker Major.

  'Good? This isn't the day to ask me that. Everything is good. Everything is succulent. And what I can't identify seems very succulent. It's close to Hedge-Bloom, but better.'

  'Better?' said Chawker Major, delighted. 'It's mine!'

  'What do you mean yours?' said Chawker Minor.

  Elder said, with stiff approval, 'My stay-at-home son has done well while you were gone. He devised a computer program that has designed and produced three new life-compatible flavour molecules of considerable promise. Grand-Elder Tomasz himself has given one of Major's constructions tongue-room, the very one you just tasted, Flyaway-Minor-mine, and has given it his approval.'

  Chawker Major said, 'He didn't actually say anything, Elder-mine.'

  Lady said, 'His expression needed no words.'

  'It is good,' said Chawker Minor, rather dashed at having the play taken away from him. 'Will you be entering for the Awards?'

  'It has been in my mind,' said Chawker Major, with an attempt at indifference. 'Not with this one - I call it Purple-Light, by the way - but I believe I will have something else, more worthy of the competition.'

  Chawker Minor frowned. 'I had thought that--'

  'Yes?'

  '--That I am ready to stretch out and think of nothing. Come, half a dab more of Major's construction, Lady-mine, and let's see what I can deduce concerning the chemical structure of his Purple-Light.'

  For a week, the holiday atmosphere in the Chawker household continued. Elder Chawker was well-known in Gammer and it seemed that half the inhabitants of the world must have passed through his Section before all had had their curiosity sated and could see with their own eyes that Chawker Minor had returned unscathed. Most remarked on his complexion, and more than one young woman asked if she might touched his cheek, as though the light tan were a layer that could be felt.

  Chawker Minor allowed the touch with lordly complacence, though Lady disapproved of these forward requests and said so.

  Grand-Elder Tomasz himself came down from his aerie, as plump as a Gammerman ever permits himself to be and with no sign that age or white hair had blunted his talents. He was a Master Gustator such as Gammer might never have seen before despite the tales of Grand-Elder Faron of half a century ago. There was nothing that Tomasz tongued that did not open itself in detail to him.

  Chawker Minor, who had no great tendency to underrate his own talent, felt no shame in admitting that what he himself had innately could not yet come anywhere near the old man's weight of experience.

  The Grand-Elder, who for nearly twenty years now had governed the annual Awards festival by the force of his skill, asked closely after the Other Worlds which, of course, he himself had never visited.

  He was indulgent, though, and smiled at Lady Chawker. 'No need to fret, Lady,' he said. 'Young people these days are curious. In my time we were content to attend to our own cylinder of worth, as the saying goes, but these are new times and many are making what they call the Grand Tour. Good, perhaps. To see the Other Worlds - frivolous, Sundrenched, browsive, nongustational, without a taste bud to content themselves with - makes one appreciate the eldest brother, as the saying goes.'

  Grand-Elder Tomasz was the only Gammerman whom Chawker Minor had ever heard actually speak of Gammer as 'the eldest brother' although you could find it often enough in the videocassettes. It had been the third colony to be founded in the Moon's orbit back in the pioneering years of the twenty-first century, but the first two, Alfer and Bayter, had never become ecologically viable. Gammer had.

  Chawker Minor said, with tactful caution, 'The Other World people never tired of telling me how much the experience of Gammer meant to all the worlds that were founded afterwards. All had learned, they said, from Gammer.'

  Tomasz beamed. 'Certainly. Certainly. Well said.'

  Chawker Minor said, with even greater caution, 'And yet such is self-love, you understand, Grand-Elder, that a few thought they had improved on Gammer.'

  Grand-Elder Tomasz puffed his breath out through his nose (never breathe through your mouth any more than you can help, he would say over and over again, for that blunts the Gustator's tongue) and fixed Chawker with his deep blue eyes that looked the bluer for the snow-white eyebrows that curved above them.

  'Improved in what way? Did they suggest a specific improvement?'

  Chawker Minor, skating over thin ice and aware of Elder Chawker's awful frown, said softly, 'In matters that they value, I gather I am not a proper judge of such things, perhaps.'

  'In matters that they value. Did you find a world that knows more about food chemistry than we do?'

  'No! Certainly not, Grand-Elder. None concern themselves with that, as far as I could see. They all rely on our findings. They admit it openly
.'

  Grand-Elder Tomasz grunted. 'They can rely on us to know the effects and side effects of a hundred thousand molecules, and each year to study, define and analyse the effects of a thousand more. They rely on us to work out the dietary needs of elements and vitamins to the last syllable. Most of all, they rely on us to work out the art of taste to the final, most subtly convoluted touch. They do so, do they not?'

  'They admit all this, without hesitation.'

  'And where do you find computers more reliable and more complex than ours?'

  'As far as our field is concerned, nowhere.'

  'And what Prime did they serve?' With heavy humour, he added, 'Or did they expect a young Gammeran to browse?'

  'No, Grand-Elder, they had Prime. On all the worlds I visited they had Prime; and on all those I did not visit, I was told, there was also Prime. Even on the world where Prime was considered fit chiefly for the lower classes--'

  Tomasz reddened. 'Idiots!' he muttered.

  'Different worlds, different ways,' said Chawker Minor rather hurriedly. 'But even then, Grand-Elder, Prime was popular when something was needed that was convenient, inexpensive and nourishing. And they got their Prime from us. All of them had a fungal strain brought originally from Gammer.'

  'Which strain?'

  'Strain A-5,' said Chawker Minor, apologetically. 'It's the sturdiest, they said, and the most energy-sparing.'

  'And the coarsest,' said Tomasz, with satisfaction. 'And what flavour additives?'

  'Very few,' said Chawker Minor. He thought a moment, then said, 'There was, on Kapper, a place where they had an additive that was popular with the Kapperpeople and that had - possibilities. Those were not properly developed, however, and when I distributed tastes of what Lady-mine had sent me they were forced to admit that it was to theirs as Gammer is to a space-pebble.'

  'You had not told me that,' said Lady Chawker who, till then, had not ventured to interpose comments in a conversation that had the Grand-Elder as one of its participants. 'The Other Worlders liked my preparation, did they?'

  'I didn't often hand it out,' said Chawker Minor. 'I was too selfish to do it, but when I did, they liked it a great deal, Lady-mine.'

  4

  It was several days before the two brothers managed to find a way of being alone together.

  Major said, 'Weren't you on Kee at all?'

  Chawker Minor lowered his voice. 'I was. Just a couple of days. It was too expensive to stay long.'

  'I have no doubt Elder would not have liked even the two days.'

  'I don't intend telling him. Do you?'

  'A witless remark. Tell me about it.'

  Chawker Minor did, in semi-embarrassed detail, and said, finally, 'The point is, Major, it doesn't seem wrong to them. They don't think anything of it. It made me think that perhaps there is no real right and wrong. What you're used to, that's right. What you're not used to, that's wrong.'

  'Try telling that to Elder.'

  'What he thinks is right, and what he is used to, are precisely the same. You'll have to admit that.'

  'What difference does it make what I admit? Elder thinks that all rights and wrongs were written down by the makers of Gammer and that it's all in a book of which there is only one copy and we have it, so that all the Other Worlds are wrong forever. - I'm speaking metaphorically, of course.'

  'I believed that, too, Major - metaphorically. But it shook me up to see how calmly those Other World people took it. I could - watch them browse.'

  A spasm of distaste crossed Major's face. 'Animals, you mean?'

  'It doesn't look like animals when they browse on it. That's the point.'

  'You watched them kill, and dissect that - that--'

  'No,' hastily. 'I just saw it when it was all finished. What they ate looked like some kinds of Prime and it smelled like some kinds of Prime. I imagine it tasted--'

  Chawker Major twisted his expression into one of extreme revulsion, and Chawker Minor said, defensively, 'But browsing came first, you know. On Earth, I mean. And it could be that when Prime was first developed on Gammer it was designed to imitate the taste of browse-food.'

  'I prefer not to believe that,' said Chawker Major.

  'What you prefer doesn't matter.'

  'Listen,' said Chawker Major. 'I don't care what they browse. If they ever got the chance to eat real Prime - not Strain A-5, but the fatted fungus, as the saying goes - and if they had the sophisticated additives and not whatever primitive trash they use, they would eat forever and never dream of browsing. If they could eat what I have constructed, and will yet construct--'

  Chawker Minor said, wistfully. 'Are you really going to try for the Award, Major?'

  Chawker Major thought for a moment, then said, 'I think I will, Minor. I really will. Even if I don't win, I eventually will. This program I've got is different.' He grew excited. 'It's not like any computer program I've ever seen or heard of; and it works. It's all in the--' But he pulled himself up sharply and said uneasily, 'I hope, Minor, you don't mind if I don't tell you about it? I haven't told anyone.'

  Chawker Minor shrugged. 'It would be foolish to tell anyone. If you really have a good program, you can make your fortune; you know that. Look at Grand-Elder Tomasz. It must be thirty-five years since he developed Corridor-Song and he still hasn't published his path.'

  Chawker Major said, 'Yes, but there's a pretty good guess as to how he got to it. And it's not really, in my opinion -' He shook his head doubtfully, in preference to saying anything that might smack of lese-majeste.

  Chawker Minor said, 'The reason I asked if you were going to try for the Award--'

  'Well?'

  'Is that I was rather thinking of entering myself.'

  'You? You're scarcely old enough.'

  'I'm twenty-two. But would you mind?'

  'You don't know enough, Minor. When have you ever handled a computer?'

  'What's the difference? A computer isn't the answer.' . 'No? What is?'

  'The taste buds.'

  'Hit-and-miss-and-taste-buds-all-the-way. We all know that song and I will jump through the zero axis in a bound, too, as the saying goes.'

  'But I'm serious, Major. A computer is only the starting point, isn't it? It all ends with the tongue no matter where you start.'

  'And, of course, a Master Gustator like Minor-lad-here can do it.'

  Chawker Minor was not too tanned to flush. 'Maybe not a Master Gustator, but a Gustator anyway, and you know it. The point is that being away from home for a year, I've got to appreciate good Prime and what might be done with it. I've learned enough - look, Major, my tongue is all I've got, and I'd like to make back the money that Elder and Lady spent on me. Do you object to my entering? Do you fear the competition?'

  Chawker Major stiffened. He was taller and heavier than Chawker Minor and he didn't look friendly. 'There is no competition to fear. If you want to enter, do so, Minor-child. But don't come whimpering to me when you're shamed. And I tell you, Elder won't like your making a no-taste-batch of yourself, as the saying goes.'

  'Nobody has to win right away. Even if I don't win, I eventually will, as your saying goes,' and Chawker Minor turned and left. He was feeling a little huffy himself.

  Matters trailed off eventually. Everyone seemed to have enough of the tales of the Other Worlds. Chawker Minor had described the living animals he had seen for the fiftieth time and denied he had seen any of them killed for the hundredth. He had painted word pictures of the grainfields and tried to explain what sunshine looked like when it glinted off men and women and buildings and fields, through air that turned a little blue and hazy in the distance. He explained for the two-hundredth time that no, it was not at all like the sunshine effect in the outer viewing rooms of Gammer (which hardly anyone visited anyway).

  And now that it was all over, he rather missed not being stopped in the corridors. He no longer disliked being a celebrity. He felt a little at a loss as he spun the book film he had grown tired of viewing and tri
ed not to be annoyed with Lady.

  He said, 'What's the matter, Lady-mine? You haven't smiled all day.'

  His mother looked up at him, thoughtfully. 'It's distressing to see dissension between Major and Minor.'

  'Oh, come.' Chawker Minor rose irritably and walked over to the air vent. It was jasmine-day and he loved the odour and, as always, automatically wondered how he could make it better. It was very faint, of course, since everyone knew that strong floral odours blunted the tongue.

  'There's nothing wrong, Lady,' he said, 'with my trying for the Award. It's the free right of every Gammerperson over twenty-one.'

  'But it isn't good taste to be competing with your brother.'

  'Good taste! Why not? I'm competing with everyone. So's he. It's just a detail that we're competing with each other. Why don't you take the attitude that he's competing with me?'

  'He's three years older than you, Minor-mine.'

  'And perhaps he'll win, Lady-mine. He's got the computer. Has Major asked you to get me to drop out?'

  'No, he did not. Don't think that of your brother.' Lady spoke earnestly, but she avoided his eyes.

  Chawker Minor said, 'Well, then, he's going moping after you and you've learned to tell what he wants without his having to say it. And all because I qualified in the opening round and he didn't think I would.'

  'Anyone can qualify,' came Chawker Major's voice from the doorway.

  Chawker Minor whirled. 'Is that the way it is? Then why does it upset you? And why did a hundred people fail to qualify?'

  Chawker Major said, 'What some small-taste-nitherlings decide means very little, Minor. Wait till it comes to the board.'

  'Since you qualified too, Major, there's no need to tell me how little importance there is to some small-tasting-nitherlings--'

  'Young-mine,' said Lady, rather sharply. 'Stop it! Perhaps we can remember that it is very unusual for both Major and Minor of a single unit to qualify.'

  Neither ventured to break silence in Lady's presence for a while thereafter - but their scowls remained eloquent.

  As the days passed, Chawker Minor found himself more and more involved in preparing the ultimate sample of flavoured Prime that, his own taste buds and olfactory area would tell him, was to be nothing like anything that had ever rolled across a Gammer tongue before.