Chapter 362: The Taste Of A New Era
As a vampire cultivator, Camilla isn’t affected by the sun as one would think...
Anyways, the officer’s professional instincts registered it immediately and correctly. His posture straightened by a fraction. His gaze fixed, respectfully and firmly, on Stan.
Stan noted it but said nothing.
"I’ll be leaving the aircraft here for a while," he told the officer. "Extended stay. Full-service hangar, standard security package, monthly maintenance rotation. Two months to start."
"Of course, Sir. If you’ll follow me to the main terminal, we can process the paperwork."
They walked. The tarmac shimmered gently in the afternoon light. The sea breeze off the coast carried the small clean smell of salt and jet fuel. Camilla walked at Stan’s shoulder with the fluid, unhurried grace of a woman who was, for the first time in her long life, walking across a modern airfield and finding it interesting.
The terminal was small, elegant, and quiet, the private aviation building of a coastal island that catered exclusively to the kind of client who required doors to open before they arrived at them. A receptionist behind a polished counter smiled as they entered. The officer led them past her and into a small conference room off the main lobby.
He set the tablet on the table and Stan sat.
Camilla remained standing behind him, one long pale hand resting lightly on the back of his chair, her red eyes tracking the small unfamiliar objects around the room with the quiet cataloguing attention she seemed to apply to everything in the modern world.
The paperwork rolled through in a series of small, efficient screens.
Aircraft parking fee. Hangar fee. Ground handling. Security detail. Scheduled maintenance rotation. Fuel reservation.
The itemized total scrolled to the bottom of the tablet and settled at a figure north of two hundred thousand dollars for the two-month arrangement.
Stan did not blink, instead he signed casually... At this point of his life money is nothing to him..
The officer processed the payment with the small unobtrusive grace of a man who had watched larger sums move across his tablet on quieter afternoons than this one. The screen chimed. The confirmation appeared. The officer stood.
"Everything is in order, Sir. Your aircraft will be moved to Hangar Six within the hour. If you require anything further during your stay, or if you would like us to prepare the aircraft for departure on short notice, please contact this line directly." He slid a small embossed card across the table. "I’ll personally handle any coordination."
Stan pocketed the card. "Appreciated."
He stood.
Two months was enough. Long enough to find a suitable stretch of coastal land somewhere quiet, long enough to build a private hangar and a modest strip of his own, long enough to arrange the small ordinary infrastructure that a man in his particular position now required. The Bombardier could sit here in the meantime and cost him nothing he would notice.
He turned to Camilla. "Ready?"
She inclined her head, the small, precise gesture of a Royal Blood granting assent.
"Lead on, Stan."
They left the conference room together. The receptionist smiled again as they crossed the lobby. The automatic doors slid open ahead of them with the soft mechanical whisper of a building that had been designed to remove every small friction from the lives of the people who walked through it.
The afternoon sun was warm on the pavement outside.
The sea breeze was gentle.
Stan stepped out into it, Camilla at his shoulder, and, for the first time in what felt like a very long several days, allowed himself the small, private thought that he was, finally, almost home.
....
The sea breeze off the coast was warm and salt-heavy. Stan stood on the pavement outside the terminal for a moment, letting it move over him, letting the small quiet fact of being back in the ordinary world settle in his bones.
Then his stomach reminded him, with the small unignorable insistence of a body that had finally noticed itself, that he had not eaten a proper meal in what was, by any honest measure, days.
"Before we do anything else," he said, "I need to eat."
Camilla glanced sideways at him.
"Cultivators do not require food."
"I know."
"Then why?"
"Humans generally prefer not to starve when they have the option."
She considered that. "A reasonable preference."
Her red eyes lingered on him a beat longer than they needed to. It was the small, weighing look of a Royal Blood who had asked a question not to receive an answer but to see whether the answer would slip. She had watched him move mountains of engineered metal through the sky by pulling on a small stick. She had watched him hand over two hundred thousand dollars without a flicker. She had been waiting, quietly and patiently, for the seam in the disguise to show itself.
It had not shown itself.
He remained, for all outward appearances, a young man who was tired and hungry and wanted lunch.
She was, privately, becoming very entertained.
’Soon,’ she thought. ’Sooner or later he will let it slip.
"I packed food, actually," Stan added. "Before the whole Antarctica situation. Had it with me the whole time. But my head was too full to eat any of it."
"Understandable, given the circumstances."
"So. Somewhere with a table. And a chair. And a menu."
"Lead on."
They walked toward the small line of private cars idling at the terminal curb.
"Tell me, cultivator." Camilla’s voice was casual. Idly interested. The tone of a person making small conversation about the weather. "Is your era’s food truly so different from the food of mine?"
Stan considered the question as he opened the rear door of the waiting car for her.
"In your era, cultivators probably had spirit fruits. Qi rich mutant beast meat. Delicacies from spiritual regions. Ingredients that carried Qi and could nourish the body in ways that had nothing to do with taste."
"Yes."
"Almost none of that exists anymore. The spiritual beasts got teleported out too. With the lack of Qi, the spirit fruits stopped bearing. The regions that produced them lost their density. Whatever ordinary humans had access to in your time was probably very simple. Grains. Vegetables. Cooked meat. Salt if you were lucky."