Grey Poupon, a short story. Louis Shalako.

"Would you have a little Grey Poupon, my good fellow...???

Louis Shalako

Derek Kane watched the view plate as the unidentified ship made a quick corkscrew turn to port/x-negative pitch/y-zero yaw and headed his way.

The ship’s alarm had alerted him to its presence, but there weren’t too many people out there and the maneuver was immediately suspicious.

There was a signal coming in, fairly strong but the machine language didn’t match. The computer was looking for software to decode it and he would have to wait.

The voice didn’t seem strident or unfriendly. The tonal register was similar to human, and his impression was of polite inquiry—but assumptions about alien mores and cultural norms, courtesies and polite forms of address varied considerably from region to region.

For no good reason he did up the lap belt but left the others. Now a picture came up. A being sat in a flight chair, with no helmet on, so that was good. He waved in what Derek interpreted as a cheerful fashion.

The fellow had two slits where his nose should have been, and the slightly orange tint to his skin revealed him to be from a white-dwarf planetary system. Two eyes and a mouth, that was helpful. The real eebie-jeebies were harder to talk to. He looked lightly built as well, and that was one of the hallmarks of inhabitants who had evolved on the small, lower-mass planets that were often found there. If he wanted to come aboard, that would be a bit of a giveaway.

There was a beep from the console.

“Got it.”

“Take your time.”

“Running translation. One moment please.”

“Put his voice up on real time when you crack it.”

“Roger.”

He might as well give the other ship’s computer a little lead time on their own translation, assuming they needed one. He keyed the microphone.

“Hello. I’m Derek Kane, skipper of the Hornet. Over.”

Let them work on that for a while, as the other skipper’s face lit up and he leaned forward to make some kind of an input.

His own bridge speakers crackled and then it came in.

“Excuse me, my good fellow. Do you speak English?”

“Yes. Go ahead.”

“I do so hate to trouble you.”

“No, you’re quite welcome, go ahead.” He was getting curious.

The being held up what looked like a half-metre long hoagie, or perhaps a Ruben sandwich made out of something like the cultural equivalent of a baguette, with slices of pinkish mottled reel-meet and green leafy stuff hanging out all along it…maybe even what looked like some kind of alien cheese.

“Do you have any Grey Poupon?”

So that’s what it was all about. The idiot just wanted some mustard.

END

This story is included in Engines of Creation, a collection of stories long and short by Louis Shalako. You can find theaudiobook here on Google Play.

See his works on ArtPal.

Check out this story here.

 

Thank you for reading.