"All is well!" she called back. "But, I pray you, do not enter, masters. The reverberation was part of a rite designed to deflect evil spirits from the food. Were a heretic to be present or interrupt the ceremonies, the spell would be voided and the food contaminated."
"Okay!" Peter returned and, in a lower tone, which he probably thought she could not overhear, "Seems you were right."
"Naturally." There was complacency in the professor's voice. "And now let us consider the validating features of the social structure as related to the mythos—and, of course, the ethos, where the two are not coincident—of the Uxenians...."
"Imagine," Zen complained in the kitchen, "accusing Me of being a mere trick of the priesthood—Supreme Me!"
"Supreme Butterfingers!" the princess snapped, irritation driving her to the point of sacrilege. "You spilled that red stuff, the ..." she bent over to read the legend on the container "... the ketchup all over the floor!"
"The floor is relatively clean," Zen murmured abstractedly. "We can scoop up the substance and incorporate it in whatever dainty dish we prepare for the Earthlings' repast. Now they'll think that I, Zen the Accessible, am difficult to have audience with," he mourned, "whereas I was particularly anxious to hold converse with them and discover what quest brings them to Uxen. That is," he added hastily, remembering he was omniscient, "just how they would justify its rationale."
"Shall we get on with our culinary activities, Almighty One?" Iximi asked coldly.
If the Most Fair and Exalted had a flaw, Zen thought, it was a one-track mind.
"What in hell did you put in this, Iximi?" Kendrick demanded, after one taste of the steaming casserole of food which she had set proudly before the two Earthmen.