LEAVING COMPORELLON

26.

Luncheon consisted of a heap of soft, crusty balls that came in different shades and that contained a variety of fillings.

Deniador picked up a small object which unfolded into a pair of thin, transparent gloves, and put them on. His guests followed suit.

Bliss said, “What is inside these objects, please?”

Deniador said, “The pink ones are filled with spicy chopped fish, a great Comporellian delicacy. These yellow ones contain a cheese filling that is very mild. The green ones contain a vegetable mixture. Do eat them while they are quite warm. Later we will have hot almond pie and the usual beverages. I might recommend the hot cider. In a cold climate, we have a tendency to heat our foods, even desserts.”

“You do yourself well,” said Pelorat.

“Not really,” said Deniador. “I’m being hospitable to guests. For myself, I get along on very little. I don’t have much body mass to support, as you have probably noticed.”

Trevize bit into one of the pink ones and found it very fishy indeed, with an overlay of spices that was pleasant to the taste but which, he thought, along with the fish itself, would remain with him for the rest of the day and, perhaps, into the night.

When he withdrew the object with the bite taken out of it, he found that the crust had closed in over the contents. There was no squirt, no leakage, and, for a moment, he wondered at the purpose of the gloves. There seemed no chance of getting his hands moist and sticky if he didn’t use them, so he decided it was a matter of hygiene. The gloves substituted for a washing of the hands if that were inconvenient and custom, probably, now dictated their use even if the hands were washed. (Lizalor hadn’t used gloves when he had eaten with her the day before. —Perhaps that was because she was a mountain woman.)

He said, “Would it be unmannerly to talk business over lunch?”

“By Comporellian standards, Councilman, it would be, but you are my guests, and we will go by your standards. If you wish to speak seriously, and do not think—or care—that that might diminish your pleasure in the food, please do so, and I will join you.”

Trevize said, “Thank you. Minister Lizalor implied—no, she stated quite bluntly—that Skeptics were unpopular on this world. Is that so?”

Deniador’s good humor seemed to intensify. “Certainly. How hurt we’d be if we weren’t. Comporellon, you see, is a frustrated world. Without any knowledge of the details, there is the general mythic belief, that once, many millennia ago, when the inhabited Galaxy was small, Comporellon was the leading world. We never forget that, and the fact that in known history we have not been leaders irks us, fills us—the population in general, that is—with a feeling of injustice.

“Yet what can we do? The government was forced to be a loyal vassal of the Emperor once, and