Dinner with Sylvia

(c) Jonathan Pinnock, 2004

"I thought you were a vegetarian," I said. My companion didn't say anything at first, but gave me one of her enigmatic smiles. She continued to say nothing as she sliced off another chunk of her steak and put it into her delicate mouth.

"Mmmm," she murmured.

"So I take it that you're not ..." I began, but she forestalled me by raising a hand. She was still savouring her mouthful. After a moment, she dabbed gently at her lips with her serviette and smiled at me again.

"But I am, my dear, I am!" she exclaimed. She cut off another chunk, and gestured to me with her knife. "Go on," she urged, "Isn't this just heavenly?"

I had to agree. It was, by a considerable margin, the best steak that I had ever eaten in my life. But that didn't really answer my question. I finished my mouthful and looked at her quizzically.

"OK, Sylvia, I give in," I said eventually, "I agree that this may well be the best steak on the planet, but ..."

"But nothing," she interrupted. She paused for a moment, then lowered her voice. "All right. Get out your cub reporter's notepad - you can start taking notes now. But be warned, everything - and I mean everything - I say is completely unattributable. Not a sentence, not a word, not a single consonant. And if I find anything that looks remotely like a wire on your person, I shall have no compunction in strangling you with it. Understood?"

I gulped. "Understood," I nodded.

She took a deep breath, and then continued in more measured tones, "Sorry, darling, but I have to be unbelievably careful. Now, where were we?"

"I was about to ask how you squared vegetarianism with eating this steak."

"Of course you were ... of course you were." Her eyes flickered upwards for a moment. "What if I was to tell you that it wasn't technically meat?"

"Sorry? You mean it's some kind of substitute?" I shook my head. "Well, if it is, it's a damn sight more realistic than some of the soya shit I've eaten in the past. Or - what was the stuff called? Quark? Quirk?"

"Quorn, my dear. Uh - uh. You're jumping to conclusions, and you're jumping in all the wrong directions. Do you really imagine that I would have asked you to pay a hundred smackers a portion for some fungal meat substitute?"

She'd ordered off-menu, with plenty of surreptitious nods and winks, so the price came as something of a shock. I wondered how I'd get that past accounts.

"No, please be assured. This steak did come from a cow. But one of a very special herd."

"Must be very special indeed," I remarked. (A hundred smackers a portion, I thought. Jesus.)

"Very special indeed," she continued. "Back in the late eighties, a dairy farmer somewhere in the south of England - and I'm not going to say where, so don't even ask - started noticing something strange happening to his cattle. Or to be specific, the cattle who grazed in a particular field."

"What was strange about them?" I asked.

"Some of them - the younger ones - took to gambolling about like spring lambs. The older ones, unfortunately, didn't fare so well. In fact, several of them keeled over and died. Naturally, the vet was called in, and what he found was so bizarre that at first he refused to believe the evidence of his eyes. So he called in a government expert, whose first act was to arrange a complete news blackout."

"Go on," I said.

"Well, it seems that when the original vet performed the initial post-mortem on the first cow to have died, its cell structure had been radically changed. Changed so that instead of being an animal, it was now technically a plant."

"Excuse me?" I interjected. Her eyes flashed a warning to me, and put a finger to her lips.

"Not so loud," she cautioned. "Please. It's not just my job I stand to lose if anyone finds out I've been talking to you. Anyway, it's not quite so strange as you might think. Bear in mind that we share half our DNA with the banana."

"Yes, but hold on, Sylvia ..."

"Cool it. Just think about the panic that must have gone around MAFF. Of course, there was only one thing to be done - destroy the lot, including the ones who were still bouncing blissfully around in their field."

"I think I can guess what happened next," I remarked.

"Yup. Farmer Giles didn't like the look of the compensation deal, and snuck a few of his prize herd off to the slaughterhouse before anyone noticed. Then it all got a bit strange, because reports started coming in from the butchers in town that some of their steak was - different. Tastier. More tender. In fact ..." She glanced meaningfully down at my now almost empty plate, "... in fact, probably the most wonderful steak their customers had ever tasted. Don't you agree?"

"Holy shit," I remarked. "Is it safe?"

She ignored me. "Aren't you interested to know why it's so good?" she asked.

I nodded. My knife was limp in my hand.

"Turns out that in super-herd's field, there were clumps of little mushrooms. Ones that no-one had ever come across before. Mildly psychotropic, but never mind. The point is that they had the ability to disrupt the cows' genetic makeup, so that they absorbed into their DNA whatever they happen to be eating, softening the edges of all that gristle and fat." She paused.

"Of course, every scientist in the country descended onto the field, looking for those mushrooms. The idea was that their essence could be distilled into a single additive, to be applied to every cow in the country. Naturally, it didn't go entirely smoothly ..."

"Hold on ... when was this exactly?"

"You're quick. But, no, I don't think that BSE was a cover story. Although rule number one of cover stories is if you're going to make one ..."

"Make it bloody enormous," I finished.

"Either way, in the end, the whole scheme was abandoned. Except for Farmer Giles, who quietly re-populated his herd and continued to graze them on his special pasture."

"But is it safe?" I repeated.

"Well, I've certainly eaten plenty," she replied, briskly. "Now, I have a room upstairs, and since you've been a good boy and bought me dinner, here's the other key. See you upstairs in ten?"

I watched her go, and signalled to the waiter to settle the horrendous bill. I had a vague feeling that I'd been conned. Not only that, but I was wondering what I'd invited into my stomach.

In the middle of the night, I dreamt I was being smothered by a strange mutant plant that was probing my every orifice with its tendrils. I woke up in a cold sweat, my heart thumping away insanely. Sylvia's arms and legs were wrapped around me, clinging to my clammy body.

Next morning, she was gone. All that was left on the pillow next to me was a single blade of grass.

(1200 words)

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