Free Ellie Quin - 04 - Ellie Quin in WonderLand by Alex Scarrow Page B

juicy blood-red slabs of meat.
    'That's…that's right. Their poo smells awful though. Ughh. Everywhere you go, that horrible, horrible smell.'
    Gray laughed at that. 'Well, beats eating that synthetic gloop they serve up everywhere else in this system.'
    'Indeed,' added Shelby. 'We have
real
food here. Real food, grown naturally in properly maintained and ph-balanced soil. No FoodSmarts, no protein paste.'
    Jez perked up. 'Real food? Like what?'
    'We have…oh, look, actually you'll see.'
    Frasier had emerged from beneath an awning, pushing a serving trolley before him.
    'Yo! Fraze,' called out Gray. 'How's it goin', monkeyman?'
    The chimp nodded courteously at him. 'It's going perfectly fine, Graham.' He put out plates and covered serving bowls that leaked tendrils of steam into the air.
    'Wow, looks like you really went out of your way for us,' said Ellie.
    'We have our first ever guests,' shrugged Shelby as if it was no big deal. 'It's the appropriate thing to do, even if you aren't
paying
guests.'
    'Well, anyway…it's really very kind of you.'
    Gray leant forward over the table and inhaled the fragrant steam deeply. He slapped his stomach and made a yummy sound. 'Thing is, me an' Shelbs don't really ever eat together much. I don't know why I don't eat here. The food over in this biome is doublestar-A.'
    'Of course we don't eat together.' Shelby lifted the lids off the serving bowls one after the other. 'I find your table manners truly appalling and I suspect you find me a trifle boring.'
    'Ooh,' Jez's eyes lit up at the steaming food. 'What have we got?'
    Shelby reached for a serving spoon and pointed in turn to each dish. 'This is poached fungymen in a white wine sauce.'
    Ellie had heard of fungymen; although she'd never eaten one. An expensive and difficult to grow fibrous, meaty, mushroom that she'd heard a connoisseur say tasted like pork. They were grown underground, was all she knew about them. That, and they grew in the shape of fat bellied little men with wrinkled and concerned-looking 'faces' that made them appear as though they had the weight of the world on their shoulders. Little worried fungus men. Hence the name.
    'We have crisp bimmel sprouts, from our water garden. Mashed nartihokes garnished with nuts, berries and spices. All of those grown here too by the way. And finally, thinly sliced and lightly fried meat bulbs in a dark chilli goyball sauce.'
    Savoury flavours drifted into range of Ellie's nose and she found herself salivating at the rich aromas. Gray didn't wait on their guests. He grabbed a serving spoon and started hefting heaped spoons of fungymen onto his plate. 'To be honest I mostly eat the crud that comes out of the FoodSmart in my biome. I'll give you this Shelbs, man, you eat like a king over here.'
    'I really don't understand why you don't live in this biome.' Shelby turned to the girls. 'He insists on spending all of his time in World 2.'
    'That's because I've got it just how I like it over there. Plus I don't have to listen to you waffling on like an old woman all the time.'
    Ellie served herself some of the fungymen and some of the mashed nartichoke and now speared one of the worried looking little fungi with her fork and tucked it into her mouth. First impression - chewy, a bit like rubber, but then after the slightest elastic resistance the meaty flesh gave way and spurted a rich rare, meaty, bloody flavour across her tongue.
    'S'is really nice,' she mumbled and chomped at the same time.
    'Of course it is. This facility was designed to cater for the richest people in the system.'
    'What I want to know is…' said Jez, chewing with her mouth wide open, both elbows planted firmly on the table, mirroring Gray's crass table manners, (Ellienoticed Shelby shake his head disapprovingly). '…why there were all those dead things piled up in that world. You said something about a
game
?'
    Gray laughed. 'Oh, yeah, Shelbs, fap-it, man. I forgot. It was my turn to clean up after and reprogram,