“As you wish,” the robot attendant said. It pushed a button on the wall beside it. At once a panel opened and the robot pulled out four metal rods, about a meter long each.
Iyanna was just wondering if he was going to use the rods to assemble a chair for her, when he pressed the end of one rod and it suddenly began to grow—but not in length. As she watched, the rod suddenly widened until it became a square of metal. After that, four legs sprouted from it—one from each corner. At the same time, four more rods grew in a row from the other end and formed the back of the chair. Lastly, the seat split open and sprouted a puffy red cushion.
The whole thing had taken less than thirty seconds.
“Oh, that’s amazing!” Iyanna exclaimed, as the attendant courteously placed the chair for her and then set about turning the other three rods into chairs as well.
“Oh, have you never seen an insta-seat before, my dear?” Lm-lm asked, sitting on her own chair as the attendant placed it for her, across from Iyanna.
“No, I haven’t,” Iyanna confessed. “We don’t have things like that on Earth—the planet I’m from,” she added.
“We are from Flb-blf,” Tk’tk’tk said, as he took his own seat, beside his wife. “We are here on a sight-seeing tour of Lix’dor Prime. I just wish the Lix’dorians weren’t quite so amorous,” he added, wincing.
“Yes, always on with the breeding parties and trying to make brood after brood of children!” Lm-lm widened her beady black eyes dramatically. “I mean, I don’t know why they want to have so many! On our planet, one hatches a single egg—sometimes two—and that’s it! You’ve done your duty to society and once your fledgling flies the nest, you’re free to enjoy your marriage again!” She leaned forward and looked at Iyanna. “How many eggs do your people lay?”
“Oh, um, we don’t exactly lay eggs,” Iyanna started to explain when the robot attendant interrupted in his mechanical voice.
“Pardon me, ladies and gentlemen, but may I offer you scoofla tea and an assortment of tasty tidbits to lighten the tedium of your journey?”
His offer made Iyanna’s stomach growl and she realized she hadn’t eaten in hours.
“Yes, please,” she said gratefully.
“I’d like some, as well,” Lm-lm said quickly. “I don’t care much for the Lix’dorians mating and breeding habits but they do make lovely tea,” she added to Iyanna.
Once more the attendant pressed a button and once more a wall panel slid open. This time there was no unfolding—a mechanical arm simply pushed a small round table forward to sit in the center of the chairs they were all seated on. On it was a tall pot—almost two feet tall, in fact, Iyanna estimated—with a long, curving, silver spout. Fragrant steam was rising from the end of the spout that smelled like honey and exotic flowers.
There was also a large silver platter covered by a silver dome and four small plates and cups, one for each of them.
“May I pour all of you tea?” the robot attendant asked.
“Please do,” Tk’tk’tk told it.
Nodding mechanically, the attendant lifted the tall, steaming teapot and began expertly filling their small, ceramic cups with the fragrant tea without spilling a drop.
“Oh, goody!” Lm-lm clapped her feathered hands together in excitement as the robot attendant raised the silver dome, revealing what looked like an assortment of tiny cakes and pies. “They have toongas—my favorite! Do try one, my dear,” she added to Iyanna, as she picked up a confection that looked like a miniature pie with purple crust and deep green filling. “They’re simply fabulous!”
Iyanna wasn’t sure what to expect, but she found the crust of the pie to be flaky and buttery. The filling was, surprisingly, savory instead of sweet. It had a meaty chew that she enjoyed though she couldn’t tell what kind of meat it was.
Probably better not to ask, she thought and took a sip of the tea, enjoying its faintly sweet, floral and honey notes.
Iyanna really enjoyed the elevator tea party, despite the odd way the two bird-people ate. Because they had beaks instead of lips, they had to sort of throw whatever they were eating or drinking to the back of their mouths and guzzle it down that way. But once she got used to this, she had a lot of fun tasting all the different Lix’dorian food creations and listening to Tk’tk’tk and Lm-lm talk about their adventures exploring the galaxy.
“We’ve been mated for thirty standard years now, you know,” Lm-lm told her proudly. “Had our fledgling early and got it out of the way—that left us free to travel, which we agreed was how we wanted to spend our life together.”
“What was your child’s, er, your fledgling’s name?” Iyanna asked politely. She knew that people usually liked to talk about their kids.