believe I’ve been in here before, Barry.”
Barry Ten Eyck said, “The chef just finished it a couple of months ago. It was his pride and joy.”
“Was?”
Barry said, “He’s leaving me. Fed up with automated cooking.”
“How long have you had him?”
“Oh, he’s been here a couple of years. Almost as long as I have.”
“Let him go, my boy.”
Barry looked at him. “He’s the best chef in Phoenecia.”
The mayor nodded. “And if he’s been here two years, he’s already set up the plant so that he’s redundant. I assume you have a restaurant staff of some twenty persons. I’ll wager that at least half of them could take over your Head Chef’s job and would, besides, take only half the pay he receives. You know that much about deme management, Barry. Once a kitchen is set up there’s precious little to change.”
“That was Pete’s complaint,” Barry said. “He isn’t able to practice his trade—his art, as he sees it. The kitchen is programmed for the dishes our residents want and he can’t introduce anything … Say, that reminds me. Pardon me for a moment.”
He brought his pocket phone out, activated it and said, “Chef Daunou, please.”
When Pierre Daunou’s petulant face faded in, Barry said, “Pete, I’m here with Mayor Levy in Le Chalut for lunch. What was that dish you were telling me about? The special one you created.”
It was all but pathetic to see the beam come over the roly-poly man’s face. “Perhaps the Rognon de veau flambé?”
“Yeah, thanks, Pete, that was it. Is it on the menu, today?”
“Monsieur Ten Eyck, it is always on the menu, and always perfect. That is one thing for which admittedly one must give the automated kitchen credit. Once a perfect dish is created, it never fails to produce it, over and over again, in perfection. Ah, Monsieur Ten Eyck …”
“Yes?”
“With my compliments, will the mayor and you have a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape to accompany the veal?”
“With greatest pleasure, Pete.”
Still beaming, the chef’s face faded.
“Poor bastard,” Barry muttered.
The mayor took up where he had left off. “Larry Brooks, over at the Victory-deme, had the same difficulty. That is, overly temperamental personnel in the Restaurant Division. The Head Chef was a Hungarian, his second a Bavarian. While they were setting up the operation they didn’t do so badly, kept themselves busy, but once the basic programming was accomplished it was one headache after another. Continual bickering. One wanted to cook everything with paprika, the other sauerkraut, or some such. Larry eventually let them both go just this week. No trouble at all. Everything as smooth as butter. No, I tell you, Ten Eyck, let this chef of yours go. You’ll never miss him.”
Shortly, the center of the table sank, to return with their dishes. The bottle of wine was there, and a single rose in a vase. Barry suspected that Pierre had given his personal attention to their order, which was on the far-out side in this day of automation; one no longer expected personal attention in a restaurant.
“I say,” Levy said, after exactly one forkful of the veal.
“Ummm.” Barry poured wine. “Are you sure I ought to let this chef go?”
Emmanuel Levy laughed. “No, not sure at all.”
They ate in silence for a moment.
Finally, Phoenecia’s mayor looked up, slightly quizzical. “I hear from Abernathy, Cyril Vanderfeller’s man, that you’ve been having an inordinate number of vacancies.”
“Yeah,” Barry said. “And these burglaries and the killing aren’t going to help any. Everything seems to be happening to me. Everything. If I woke up tomorrow pregnant, I wouldn’t be overly surprised.”
Levy chuckled dutifully. He said, “It was that silly Gallagher’s fault.”
“Gallagher? The Demecrat who preceded me?”
“Ummm. Let go for incompetence. When Shyler-deme opened he wanted to fill up the apartments overnight, evidently as an indication of what a fireball he was. He gave Shyler-deme no theme. And these days, if you want to keep your people, you need a theme.”
“Theme?” Barry said. Mayor Levy was, of course, a former Demecrat himself. You didn’t become the mayor of a pseudo-city without long years of managing a deme yourself. And there were a lot of things you learned on the job that they never taught you in the colleges devoted to deme and pseudo-city management.
“Yes, of course. You decide, perhaps, to specialize on elderly, retired folk. You set up your public rooms, your parks, even your restaurants and bars, to cater to their needs. Shuffleboard, rather than tennis courts, chess tournaments, extensive card rooms, bingo rooms. Your hospital is staffed with specialists in the diseases of the older elements. You screen families with noisy children, and refuse to sell them apartments. Or, perhaps, your theme is young marrieds with children. You go in big for nurseries and playgrounds, that sort of thing. Or, particularly if your deme has a goodly percentage of mini-apartments, you go in for young singles, perhaps of the swinger variety, as we used to call them when I was a boy. Lots of dances, lots of sports, plenty of nightclubs, entertainment, entertainment, entertainment.”
“I’m afraid it’s a little too late for me to switch to one of these themes,” Barry said unhappily.
“Yes. That’s where Gallagher fell short. If you’re going to have a theme for populating your deme, you must decide upon it before selling the apartments. He let in anyone and everyone. Old, young, singles, couples, even, so I understand, a sizable number of both escapists and weirds.”
“How right can you get?” Barry growled. “I spend half my time fielding complaints about the services and public rooms. The young married people want one thing, the oldsters another, the singles still others. Today, one group sent around a petition demanding one of the public rooms be converted into a Moroccan restaurant. A Moroccan restaurant, yet. Shyler-deme needs a Moroccan restaurant like it needs a collective hole in the head.”
He finished the wine and looked at the glass in approval. “I wonder where old Pete got this?”
Levy said, “You can still get decent wine if you’re willing to pay for it. Here in the United States they’ve abolished the use of grapes and cereals for beverages but the Common Europe people haven’t. They even still make beer over there out of grain.”
“I didn’t know that,” Barry said. “How can they afford it?”
The mayor said dryly, “I suppose they figure that man doth not live by bread alone. You could no more get a Frenchman to give up his wine than you could a German his beer.”
“Well, that’s all very good. But we make our beverages synthetically and …”
“And they taste like it,” Levy grumbled finishing his own last sip of wine appreciatively.
Barry’s pocket phone buzzed and he brought it forth. He had it set for Priority Two, cutting off all calls except those of a very few persons. It must be something important. Bat Hardin’s face faded in, characteristically worried, his lower lip taking a beating from his teeth.
“What spins?” Barry said.
“Listen, could you come on down to your office?”
“I’m having lunch with the mayor,” Barry protested.
Bat said urgently, “I think I’ve got something, Barry. About you know what.”
“Oh, oh.” Barry took up his napkin and tossed it to the table. He said to Bat, “Coming,” and deactivated the