Managing the comings and goings of their various paramours to each other’s satisfaction was a long standing point of contention between Pavel Chekov and Noel DelMonde during the years of their forced cohabitation. As he frowned at the presumably naked woman under the sheets of his cabinmate’s bunk, Del reflected on how odious it was to be the one transgressed against in such a way and how unfairly more pleasant it was to be the one doing the transgressing.
“Daffy!” the Cajun growled. “Daf – You need to wake th' hell up.”
The sleeping form rolled over and mumbled. “Five more minutes, bubee…”
“I not your bubee, girl,” the engineer corrected as he turned the cabin lights up to full. “You done 'five more minutes' his ass out th' door an hour ago. Now you’d best get your ass up 'fore I take a mind to smack it.”
Gollub took the covers from over her head only far enough to squint at him. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“No, sugar.” He tapped the chronometer on his desk firmly. “It after 0900. You the one not s'posed to be here. Now get the hell out 'fore I have to get mean 'bout it.”
“You getting mean?” she grumbled, pulling the cover back over her eyes. “Can I possibly imagine that?”
“I gonna give you some audio-visual aid on the subject here in a minute,” the Cajun promised grimly.
Gollub tended to take full advantage of the leeway her job in the Chem Lab gave her to blame a delayed entrance on reports she was supposedly completing or test results she was “checking” on. “Okay, okay. I’m going.” The chemist sat up, wrapping the blanket around her self-consciously. She turned and pointed a warning finger at him. “And don’t think of making some crack about me not having anything you haven’t seen before.”
“I not know 'bout that.” DelMonde sat down on the edge of his bunk and began to pull off this boots. “Them tits hadn’t come in so good yet last time I saw ‘em.”
Daffy paused in her search for her discarded clothing to give him a frown she obviously thought would distract attention from how hard she was blushing. “So I was a late bloomer. So what?”
The engineer gave her a half-smile as he tossed her the pantyhose that had somehow landed on the shelf behind his headboard. “I remember them blossoms.”
“Oh, shut up,” she retorted, trying hard to not smile at the memory his comment prompted… and failing miserably.
As it always had when they were teenagers at the Clave, a familiar warmth began to glow between them. Del felt himself relaxing into the invitingly sensual heat of their old mutual lust.
“We can’t do this,” Gollub abruptly announced and headed for the bathroom.
“You sure?” the engineer asked, turning to the replicator to start entering the complex chain of commands it would take to trick the machine into delivering a portion of his monthly nutritional allotment in a form that would with any luck closely resemble whiskey. “You hangin' 'round all the time like this makin' me t'ink you considerin' startin' up our old arrangement.”
“No,” she replied, leaning back into the room emphasize her seriousness with direct eye contact. “Not at all.”
The engineer lifted a dubious eyebrow as he tossed her a blue undergarment that had wound up on the floor beside his bed. “'Cause you that happy wit' this sad dumb fuck you stuck with?”
She caught it one-handedly. “Delirious with joy.”
“Somehow, sugar,” the engineer said, turning back to the replicator. “I get th' feelin' you not tell him what bosom buddies we used to be…. Though, admittedly, there used to be considerably less bosom involved…”
A noise of exasperation issued from the bathroom. “Jeez! It’s not like I was exactly flat-chested when you met me.”
“Not exactly,” the Cajun conceded. “Close, but not exactly.”
The chemist, now clothed in a fresh uniform, gave a haughty sniff as she brushed past him to retrieve her earrings and hair fastener from one of his shot glasses. “I think I remember you being more excited about that particular 'growth spurt' than I was.”
“You were pretty proud o' yourself, darlin’,” the engineer countered, using both thumbs to hold down a button while he continued punch commands in with his index fingers. “I seem to remember a series o' incidents where someone who had never had a moment’s trouble wit' bein' able t' hold her liquor suddenly started gettin' so drunk she took her shirt off.”
She gave him another red-cheeked, don’t-you-dare-make-me-smile frown. “Only a couple times and only in private.”
“Mostly in private,” he corrected, as the replicator gave out a screech of protest.
Gollub blew out a contemptuous breath as she turned to the mirror and began to brush her hair with determinedly business-like strokes. “I’ve always heard that too much sapphire affects the memory.”
“Give up on that hope, girl,” Del advised, taking the glass of rose-amber liquid the computer reluctantly produced for him. “I might not remember it all, but I sure as hell remember enough.”
“Ancient history,” the chemist pronounced with a firm shake of her head.
“If that the way you want it.” The Cajun plumped his pillow into a comfortable lump, then settled back to enjoy his faux-bourbon. “Next time T-Paul piss you off, though, don’t come to me wantin' to reopen that book.”
“Don’t worry,” Gollub replied cheerily as she brushed her hair back into a severe I’m-a-properly-professional-chemist-who-wasn’t-screwing-like-a-crazed-weasel-half-the-night bun. “I won’t.”
Del tilted his head to one side as he examined her reflection in the mirror. “It not the dumb fuck you worried 'bout offendin' with a li'l fling wit' me, is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“It her,” he concluded, surprised.
“Her who?” Gollub asked, then guessed, “Ruth?” as if she didn’t know that just hearing that name was like having a dagger pressed into his heart.
“Since when you care what she t'ink o' you?” he asked crossly, his pain roughening his voice.
Daffy rolled her eyes and gave an exasperated sigh before answering, “Since the Fates decided it would be a hilarious joke to make Dave Maxwell’s bratty, pest of a know-it-all little cousin who always used to tag along behind me into my bratty, pest of a know-it-all boss who can now legally order me to tag along behind her into the snapping jaws of Alien Hell.”
The Cajun snorted contemptuously. “What can that girl do t' anybody?”
“I don’t know,” Gollub replied, giving a little shudder at the thought as she turned back to the mirror. “And I don’t want to find out.”
“Aw, fuck that,” Del growled at his ersatz bourbon, dismissing this concern.
“Del….” Gollub turned, put her hands on her hips, and gave him a look of annoyance mitigated with a generous sprinkle of sympathy and flavored a splash of leftover lust. “Have you got any idea how awkward it is for you to be here?”
The Cajun sighed and took another soothing sip of his bland but potent whiskey substitute. “Darlin’, I have an incredibly accurate idea exactly how excruciatin'ly inconvenient my arrival on the scene was fo' ever'one – myself most of all.”
“So?” she prompted.
“So when am I leavin'?” he filled in incredulously. “Sweet Mary, girl. I jus' 'bout forgot what a galaxy-class ball-breaker you are.”
Gollub shrugged as she attached a dangly earring to her left ear. “If you did, then that’s either amnesia or wishful thinking on your part --because I’ve always been this way.”
“Tru dat,” the Cajun affirmed.
“So?” she repeated pitilessly.
The engineer gave another deep sigh and fortified himself with a large swallow of whiskey. “Mais, now that I here, I can’t just turn 'round an' say that ever't'ing I put on my transfer application were really a lie. I jus' wanted to hook up wit' an old girlfriend who it turns out had failed to mention to me that she was already pretty firmly shacked up wit' a horse-faced old Vulcan know-it-all jackass…”
“That doesn’t sound at all bitter,” she chided him as she attached her other earring.
“I would say screw you,” the Cajun retorted. “But apparently you busy tryin' to convince yourself that not an option.”
“So,” she said, pausing to stick her tongue out at him before turning back to the mirror and picking up a lipstick. “Six months?”
“Don’t rush me, girlie,” he warned. “I worked my way here. Wasn’t jus' the luck o' the draw like it was fo' some folks. I gonna stay fo' the next ten years if I take a mind to. Y'all not like it, y'all can leave. I run the ship myself.”
Daffy turned and gave him the sort of penetrating stare Del was accustomed to sending instead of receiving. “You think you can get her back,” she concluded.
“You best mind your own business, sugar,” he growled as reflexively as a bear with one paw in a trap. “You fixin' to step out on some thin ice here.”
“And you’re headed straight into an Antari-shaped buzz saw,” she warned.
He snorted bitterly. “Like I not ever been there before.”
“Not when she was backed up by her pointy-eared, computer-brained, occasionally lirpa-wielding, unreasonable-deadline-setting, and -- when necessary -- very scary Vulcan husband,” the chemist cautioned. “Who, if I may remind you, is not only my boss, but also your boss and the boss of everyone on board – except for his Most High Captain-ness, Great Bird bless His Name and keep Our Collective Asses safe from Sudden Space-death of All Descriptions.” The chemist finished her pronouncement with an elaborately dramatic gesture to ward off such evil.
“He not tellin' me what to do,” Del snarled into his whiskey.
“He has that option,” the chemist reminded him. “He’s the boss. That’s why his nickname is 'Boss.' Pretty straightforward, that.”
“On the job maybe,” the Cajun conceded reluctantly. “But he not got shit to say 'bout my personal life.”
“I think he does if you’re thinking about schtuping his wife,” Gollub advised firmly.
The engineer made a dismissive noise. “Furthest t'ing from my damn mind.”
“Really?” The chemist turned back to applying her makeup. “Polishing the handrails down in Engineering keeping you that busy these days?”
“Girlie, you not even got any idea what all I in charge of,” he countered, ordering himself a second drink.
Daffy lifted an eyebrow at him in the mirror. “Really?”
“I got my own crew callin' me the boss,” DelMonde assured her, making the replicator squeal for mercy once again.
“You’re King of Third Watch,” she granted easily.
“I jus' gettin' started,” he promised as his second drink materialized. “On top o' all that, I got this cookin' contest to win…”
That fact hit the chemist like a bolt from the blue. “Wait, what?” she stammered. “You… what?”
The Cajun raised his glass in a toast to himself. “I gonna win the cookin' contest.”
“Wait, no.” The chemist sputtered. “You… you.. you can’t…”
“Hell, yes I can,” Del assured his ex-lover as he settled back on his bunk. “An' you know it.”
“Yes…” Gollub blinked rapidly as she tore through her copious files on his behavior to explain this anomaly. “But I mean…you…you don’t do things like that.”
“Like what? Enter some lame contest jus' to prove to a bunch o' pricks who look down their nose at me that I can whip their ass anytime I want?” Del gave her a devilishly amiable shrug, happy to spoil her usually too-accurate-for-comfort prognostications of his behavior. “When you t'ink about it a certain way, cher, your prior acquaintance wit' me was based in large part on my fondness fo' exactly that sort o' shit.”
“But, you..” The chemist and part-time bookie protested as he could almost see all her projected calculations fall into disarray. “I had all the… you can’t…”
The engineer smiled. “I can an' I am.”
“Aaaaaargh!” Gollub shrieked in exasperation, then stalked to the cabin’s door. “Cajun,” she accused furiously as she exited. “You’re going to ruin everything!”
DelMonde sighed as the door swooshed closed behind her. “That what they keep tellin' me, cher.”
Sulu settled into the captain's seat on the bridge. Leave time for the stop at the J12 outpost had thrown the regular schedule into disarray. As a consequence, he found himself taking over the con at a time when he would normally be in the middle of a shift at the helm. Looking around him, he noticed something unusual. "Why's everybody so quiet?"
Chekov turned around and scanned the bridge as if to make sure who was and was not present before explaining, “The captain threatened to court-martial the next person who said anything about cooking.”
Sulu grinned. The contest had been a source of very animated conversation throughout the ship. “I'm sure he was joking.”
“No,” the navigator replied seriously.
“Not at all,” Ramon Ordona confirmed from the Science Station.
“No,” other crewmembers chimed in. “Definitely not.”
“I do not think his morale is being boosted,” Chekov concluded gravely.
Sulu shrugged and shook his head, knowing how hard it was to quiet chitchat among the bridge personnel at times. “He just had something else on his mind.”
“I don’t think so,” Ordona replied ruefully.
“The captain said that the next time Dr. Han wanted the crew to participate in a group activity, he was going to suggest she organize a mutiny,” Chekov informed him, “because then we might avoid talking about it in front of him.”
“Oh?” Sulu frowned, having trouble imagining that idle chatter had gotten that out of hand.
“It was Ruth's fault,” Dawson Walking Bear concluded.
Sulu had to give this accusation some weight since Walking Bear had a reputation for being extraordinarily even-tempered and non-judgmental. “She was talking about cooking?
“Not exactly.” Jon Holden at Communications replied with a snort. “She spent the first three hours bringing up legal objections to the exclusion of women from the contest.”
“Then she went on to health and safety,” Brian Richards, the crewman manning the Damage Control station added.
Sulu raised an eyebrow, wondering what sort of health and safety hazards the contest could possibly pose. “Really?”
“I do not believe her objections were sincere,” Chekov asserted.
“Why not?”
“One thing that she was strongly advocating was that the contest be purely for vegetarian dishes.”
“Oh...” Although vegetarian dishes made no sense for Ruth’s personal consumption, the idea did work as a ploy to level the playing field for Spock to enter as her surrogate.
“And then she went on to her religious objections,” Walking Bear reported wearily.
“Religious?”
“I did not follow all the particulars,” Chekov admitted. “However, her argument essentially was that she was entitled to serve as an officiant for some religious organization...”
Sulu nodded. “Playing the Moon Priestess card, eh?”
“...And that she objected.”
“Oh.” The helmsman was beginning to see where their commander’s patience would have begun to run a little thin.
“That's when the captain started to talk about court-martial and mutiny,” Holden said, confirming his suspicions.
“What did Ruth say then?”
“She did a good deal of talking to herself in a low voice that was still clearly audible throughout the bridge,” Chekov informed him.
Sulu suppressed a smile at the crystal clear picture this description drew in his head.
“At that point, Captain Kirk announced that he had decided that the probes we picked up at Starbase 12 for our mission to the Galactic Core need to be manually inventoried...”
“The probes in Cargo Bay 23?” The helmsman’s mouth fell open. “There are over two thousand of them...”
“Yes,” the navigator confirmed. “The Captain felt that their location should be visually verified and that the diagnostic system for each should be activated to make sure they are ready to be deployed...”
“Oh, my...” Sulu said, taking note of the Antari’s now-conspicuous absence.
“... and that the next person who even sneezed in a manner that was outside requirements for maintaining his or her station was offering themselves as a volunteer for that assignment.”
“And what did Ruth do?” Sulu asked, although he had a good idea of what the answer was going to be.
“For several moments she made unpleasant noises in her throat as if something was strangling her...”
The helmsman covered his eyes with one hand. “Oh, no...”
“And then finally she stood up, stomped her foot and shouted, 'Cooking contest! Cooking contest! Cooking contest!'"
Sulu sighed. “And now she's inventorying probes in Cargo Bay 23?”
“And will be for some time,” the navigator confirmed.
“And the Captain still didn't let you talk after that?”
“He did not forbid speaking, but he did make it clear that anyone uttering the words 'cooking,' 'contest,' or any terms associated with them would be assigned as Miss Valley's assistant for the inventory.”
Being stuck in a musty cargo bay deep in the bowels of the ship doing a redundant inventory on probes was a fairly unpleasant prospect. However the thought of being assigned as Ruth’s assistant for the task when one had announced his participation in the contest she was being punished for railing against was certainly a fate worthy of being bestowed only on Klingons, war criminals, and Tellurite insurance salesmen...
Mild-mannered Geoff Redford at the Engineering Station shuddered at the thought. “It didn't seem worth it.”
“Well,” Sulu said, settling back into his seat. “Since Ruth's not here -- and is not going to be here for some time in the future -- and there's no regulation that I know of that specifically forbids saying the word 'cooking' or the word 'contest' you guys can talk if you want to.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant Commander,” several crew members responded gratefully.
The helmsman grinned and folded his hands. “I'm happy to listen to all your secrets and use them against you later.”
The navigator shook his head. “I was amazed at how much those scientists were charging for foodstuff,” he said, probably continuing a complaint he’d started making three or four hours before.
“Chekov,” Holden warned, gesturing to Sulu. “He's not joking about listening and using things you say against you to win, you know.”
The navigator shrugged. “I do not have any secrets.”
“That's true,” Sulu confirmed. “Pavel has no cooking secrets. He can't even make mixed drinks.”
“Why gain skills to make items that are completely unnecessary?” the Russian asked.
“What time did you go down to the outpost?” Walking Bear asked his Helm partner.
“Around eleven hundred hours.”
“You were in the third or fourth wave to go down,” Sulu calculated. “They were onto us by then.”
“And people like Holden had ruined it for everyone,” Ordona accused.
“Me?” the Communications Officer protested. “I wasn't the one yelling and waving my hands. Man, were those guys ever rude…”
“You were standing in a bio-germination bed.”
Holden shrugged. “It looked like mud and weeds to me.”
“When did you go down, Sulu?” Walking Bear asked.
“First wave,” the helmsman replied casually.
There were general groans in appreciation of the skill he had deployed to wrangle such a prime spot as his fellow competitors cursed themselves for not being able to have done the same.
“It also made a difference where you went, I think,” Walking Bear commented.
“Where did you go?”
“The eastern post. There weren't very many people stationed there. They loaned us environmental gear and let us gather what we wanted.”
This information elicited some grunts of acknowledgement from the would-be chefs. Walking Bear’s calm and confident manner encouraged people – even complete strangers – to trust him. It was no surprise he’d connected so successfully with the smaller, less frazzled group of researchers at the Eastern station.
“When did you go down, Redford?”
“I was in the last group,” the timid engineer answered almost apologetically.
The competitors greeted this news with sympathetic snorts affirming that they all had anticipated that this was the way Redford’s luck would run.
“The people at the outpost shoved bags at us and yelled, ‘Just take it and get out!’” he reported.
“Oh, so you didn't have to pay?” Sulu asked, surprised that the engineer would have one piece of good luck mixed in with the bad.
“No…” Redford made a face. “But I'm not quite sure what I got... It smells a little funny.”
There was another round of noises acknowledging that only Redford could manage to have even an instance of seeming good luck go bad.
“What were you planning on making?”
The engineer’s pale features flushed red. “Pink antler cakes,” he replied bashfully, then quickly explained, “There's going to be a special prize for desserts. And I didn't think many people would be competing in that category….”
Every man on the bridge made a silent note to himself to make an entry in the possibly weak dessert category.
“I might as well be making cupcakes since the Captain is determined to put on so many restrictions,” Ordona grumbled.
“Ramon, there are ways to make a good shish kabob that don't involve cooking over a fire pit with swords,” Chekov replied reasonably.
“Yes.” Ordona gave a narrow glance to the person sitting in the captain’s seat who he apparently identified as his main source of competition. “If you don't want to win.”
Sulu replied with an evil smile. “There is that.”
“I hope you are making your famous stew, Dawson,” Chekov said pleasantly to his helm partner.
“I was going to, but I'm not too sure of these ingredients. I may just make Martian rice puffs. Everyone likes those.”
“Oh, I certainly do,” the navigator replied enthusiastically.
In case of an emergency shutdown of the replicators, Starships generally carried a supply of K-rations -- compressed blocks of nutrients with a long shelf life -- in sufficient quantities to sustain the crew for several weeks. While still an ensign, the captain of the Enterprise had found himself in just such a circumstance and along with his crewmates had been forced to live on nothing but K-rations for three weeks while their battle-damaged ship limped back to base. In hopes of avoiding being placed in such dire dietary straits again, Kirk always kept a small bay pod filled with resilient edibles such as rice, beans, nori, Indiian maunai, and dried milk to add a little much-needed variety to the emergency rations.
Sulu knew about these emergency stores because they'd been allowed to dip into them before for a long-ago 'I Hate Replicators' party. He'd forgotten about them completely until Walking Bear had mentioned his rice puffs which had been the hit of that party. He made a mental note to see what the quartermaster would let him beg, borrow, or steal from those stores. When he looked around the bridge, he immediately knew every other man present was probably making the same calculation.
"Don't you have to have Kahipuri salt to make rice puffs?” he asked to hopefully put them off the scent.
“I always keep a shaker of that,” Walking Bear confirmed. “I can't eat replicator eggs without a little Kahipuri.”
“My cabinmate is the same way,” Chekov said. “He has tiny shelf full of...”
“Damnit!” Sulu exclaimed upon realizing who Chekov roomed with and what this meant.
“What is it?”
“I forgot about fucking Del's fucking spice rack,” he fumed. “Does he really still drag that thing around with him after all these years?”
“He claims that he would starve without it,” the Russian confirmed. “He was bragging this morning about the qualities of a particular substance he called 'filling' that is supposedly made from some sort of saucy root.”
“Filé made from sassafras,” Sulu translated.
“I suppose.”
“That means he can make Filé Gumbo…. Damnit!”
“Yes, that was what he was talking about.” The navigator nodded. “He claims it is very good.”
“It's delicious,” Sulu replied glumly. “It's an all-expense-paid Mardi Gras vacation in the luxury suite at the Hotel Monteleone for your mouth. It's one of the best things he makes. Damnit!”
Chekov shrugged. “It didn't sound very good to me.”
“That's because you like Russian food.”
The navigator raised a warning finger. “There is nothing wrong with Russian food.”
“Other than the taste,” Ramon Ordona put in.
“And the smell,” Jon Holden contributed.
“You will all be eating your words,” Chekov vowed.
“I hope they can kill the taste of the borsht,” Crewman Richards opined.
“Do you keep Russian spices, Pavel?” Walking Bear asked to avert the situation from deterioration.
“If you mean vodka – yes,” Sulu was unable to stop himself from teasing.
“Vodka is not a spice,” the Russian corrected sternly.
“So just salt, pepper, and pickled cabbage?”
“I do need something to substitute for dill and bay leaves,” Chekov replied to Walking Bear, pointedly ignoring him. “However, Dafshka has assured me that she can fabricate anything I might need.”
Ordona frowned. “Isn't it cheating to get her to do your cooking for you?”
“I had not thought of it that way,” Chekov replied, concerned. “Do you think having her work out formulas to convert my organic bases is cheating?”
“Yes,” Sulu replied automatically, in one voice with almost all the other competitors.
“Not if you do the actual work yourself,” Walking Bear replied more reasonably.
As the chefs-to-be thought the matter over and considered how this ruling might work to their advantage, there were general grunts of agreement.
Sulu sat back in his seat. His thoughts filled with his old dear friend Daffy and all her Haven-grade chemist's brain could do to supercharge the taste of his dishes...
“Lieutenant…” Crewman Richards rose. “I've got to inspect the bulkhead lifts on deck four.”
“Oh?” Sulu asked, immediately struck by the fact that the chemistry labs were also located on deck four.
“Just routine inspection,” the Damage Control officer assured him as he quickly made his way to the turbo lift. “Won't take but about ten minutes.”
“Where are you going?” Sulu asked when he turned to find Ordona also making is way to the ‘lift.
“Mr. Spock said he needed these reports before the end of this watch,” Ramon replied in a very business-like manner that was somewhat spoiled by the way he had to make a quick trip back to his station to pick up the tapes he was referring to.
Sulu crossed his arms. “Really?”
Ordona gave him a winning smile. “Of course.”
“Do you think he might be on Deck four?” Sulu asked suspiciously.
“I'll check!” the Science Officer replied as the lift doors closed on him.
Sulu frowned and drummed his fingers on the arm of the captain’s chair in frustration. It then occurred to him that being the officer of the deck meant that he wasn't tied to the helm like he usually was. “Chekov, take the con,” he ordered, rising. “I'm going to check on those bulkheads.”
“Sulu...”
“Be right back!” he called, waving a cheerful goodbye.
The Russian dutifully assumed the captain’s seat and signaled for a crewman to replace him at the helm. “Why do you think they all left?” he asked the helmsman.
“To go harass chemists into helping them.”
“Oh, no,” the navigator exclaimed, immediately perceiving the truth in this supposition. “Daphne is going to kill me.”
“Or be very, very grateful for you throwing so much potential blackmail business her way,” Holden pointed out.
The Russian considered for a moment. “Killing me seems more likely.”
“I think Captain Kirk might be right about this contest,” Walking Bear said, making a minor adjustment to the course. “It's not exactly bringing out our best sides.”
“Perhaps, as he suggested, mutiny would be a superior morale booster,” the Russian concluded. “We might all go to a penal colony…”
“…but at least we’d be working together,” his helmpartner agreed.
“I had to see this to believe it,” Ruth Valley announced as she approached her friend Daphne Gollub’s table in the Officer’s Mess.
“See what?” the chemist asked without looking up from the stat boards she was scribbling on.
“You, off duty, working on your quarterly report before the last possible moment you can turn it in,” the Antari replied, taking a seat opposite her.
Gollub raised an eyebrow. “And when would that last moment be?”
Ruth did a quick computation. “Approximately forty-two hours, twenty-seven minutes, and an odd number of seconds from now.”
“So stop rushing me, Herbert,” the chemist replied impudently.
“I knew it was too good to be true.” Valley took a long, reviving sip of coffee. “What are you working on, then?”
Gollub made a face at the stat board. “A poem about how much I hate Del.”
“Lot of that going around lately,” Ruth affirmed with a scowl. “Why does it look like all numbers?”
“All the best hate poems are numerical.”
Valley lifted an eyebrow. “Because of the greater specificity possible in arithmetic representation?”
“And the way negative binomial distributions make your head hurt, yes,” the chemist confirmed with another frown at her stat board.
Ruth took another sip of coffee and leaned forward. A closer look at what her friend was laboring over made the columns of figures easily identifiable. “Setting up a betting pool doesn’t usually make your head hurt.”
“This is why I hate Del,” Daffy complained brandishing a stat board full of blinking error notifications, then amended, “At least why I hate him today. I had the handicapping all laid out for everyone I thought was going to enter that stupid cooking contest…”
The Antari blinked. “Wait, what? The cooking contest…?”
“Yes, he…”
Ruth shook her head in firm disbelief. “No.”
“He is,” the chemist asserted.
“He wouldn’t..”
“But he is…”
“He doesn’t…”
“But he’s going to…”
“He never…”
“But, he’s going to.”
“How do you…?”
“Told me himself.”
“Damn,” the Antari swore.
“Wow.” Daffy grinned. “That was a nice little 'Vallub' moment there. How come we never do that?”
“When I realize I’m thinking like you, I get really scared,” Ruth explained flatly, "and someone might call it 'Golley' and then I'd have to vomit." She paused. “Del doesn’t do…”
“Here we go again…” The chemist rolled her eyes. “Unless someone dares him to…”
“Who would…?”
“From what I’ve managed to piece together, your friend, Le-Mr.-Busybody-Roi, in one of his making-a-decision-that-effects-everybody-without-consulting-anybody moments, decided he needed to work the Cajun up into a mine’s-bigger-than-yours lather which, somewhat bizarrely, could be settled in the form of a cooking contest,” Gollub explained.
Ruth frowned. “Why would he do that?”
“I dunno,” the chemist replied somewhat facetiously. “Because for some reason he was worried about Del grounding himself into a hole and then pouring bourbon over the top, maybe?”
“Del seemed in great spirits the last time he screamed at me,” Ruth snarled defensively.
“Everyone participating did seem in fine voice for that concert,” Gollub observed.
The Antari glared purple ice. “What?”
“That is to say,” her subordinate amended. “I hate Del. Don’t you?”
“Why do you care if he’s in the contest or not?” Valley grumped unhappily.
The chemist held up her blinking stat board. “Mathematical hate poem, remember?”
“Del entering changes the odds,” Ruth concluded, comforting herself with more coffee.
Daffy looked at her computations and sighed. “Noel DelMonde, the bookmaker’s nightmare…”
Valley tilted her head suspiciously. “Since when do you know anything about making book on Del?”
“At the…” Gollub made a great show of looking both ways before stage-whispering, “C-L-A-V-E, Del always caused headaches when he raced…”
“He was a maker, not a racer.”
“He’d stopped racing by the time you started hanging around causing trouble…” Gollub replied, before putting on a fake smile and correcting, “I mean, being such a blessing for us all… “
Ruth gave her a narrow look.
“And like now, it’s hard to tell if he’s in to win, or if he’s going to get bored and walk away, or get mad and blow up…”
The Antari growled. “I know which one of those possibilities I’d bet on.”
“If he does stay in, he has some strong factors in his favor.” Gollub said, frowning at her notes. “First, there’s pure novelty. I think we’ve seen everything the rest of these one-dish wonders have to offer. There’s a limit to how excited people are going to get about variations on Ramon Ordona-style, grilled-meat-on-sharpened-phallic-symbol protein-fests… except for you, of course.”
Valley crossed her arms. “I hope you’re talking about the grilled meat part.”
“Then there’s range,” the chemist continued, moving rapidly to a different point. “Like I said, most of our guys haven’t gotten beyond the 'Fire – good. Foie gras – bad' sort of thinking. If Del is smart…”
Ruth snorted. “And what are the chances of that?”
“… He could spread out his entries and sweep into one of the top three Best Overall spots.”
“Or be a self-involved ass who flames out before the contest starts,” Valley predicted uncharitably.
“Or flame out, yes.” The chemist frowned again at her figures. “The math gets a little tricky when one of the entrants is either an odds-on favorite to win multiple categories or complete and utter long shot who’s likely to quit before the contest begins…”
Gollub sighed and dropped the stat board to the pile. Looking up at her agitated companion who was doing her best to pretend like any discussion of DelMonde was having absolutely no effect on her, the glimmer of an idea that could strengthen the Cajun’s motivation to stay in the competition as well as increase interest in betting on the outcome among the crew began to twinkle around the corners of her brain.
“At least the overall field is narrow,” Daffy began casually. “There are a lot of guys who we know who are never going to get near this competition… Our boss for one… Although I’d love to see him balance a chef’s hat on those ears…”
“Spock?” Valley’s chin came up defensively. “Who says Spock can’t cook?”
“Other than everyone who’s tasted his cooking?”
The Antari sniffed. “You don’t have any appreciation for Vulcan cuisine.”
“I’m sure that after I’d been a vegetarian living a desert for a couple thousand years, my palate might be primed just right…” Gollub conceded with a patronizing shrug.
Ruth frowned fiercely. “You just don’t know…”
“And am not likely to have the opportunity to learn…” Daffy pointed out.
“You’ll see,” Valley promised grimly as she rose. “You’ll see.”
“No, I won’t,” the chemist taunted eagerly after her friend.
“Yes, you will!” the Antari proclaimed as she exited the mess, making a beeline for her unsuspecting husband.
Gollub smiled as she picked up a stat board and began to calculate the odds on a Cajun vs. Vulcan showdown. “Am I good or am I good?”