He points at Luca. The bread was his fault.

Thank you, I sign.

Jupiter picks up my napkin and puts it in my lap. Because, like most higher primates, he knows more about dining etiquette than I do.

The smell of the lasagna makes my mouth water. Cheese and tomato sauce bubble between golden sheets of pasta.

I turn to Luca. “I don’t want to insult Jupiter’s cooking, but this doesn’t have any beef, does it? You know, Hindu.”

Luca chuckles good-naturedly. “No beef. In the early days of the Nautilus, Nemo and his crew hunted sea animals for meat, but as he got older, Nemo became what we would call a vegan. He realized that was better for the ocean. He cultivated his own hybrid crops in subaquatic gardens down in…” A momentary shadow passes over his face, as if he realizes he’s said something he shouldn’t. “In the water nearby. Many of those crops went wild. They’re still flourishing today. Everything on your plate is from those gardens.”

On his other side, Ester sniffs a piece of her garlic bread. “Even this?”

“Well, not the garlic itself,” Luca concedes. “I keep my own aboveground garden on the atoll for herbs and spices that are difficult to simulate. But everything else, yes. White seaweed flour, sodium bicarbonate and acid for the yeast—”

“What about butter and cheese?” I ask.

“Specially processed macroalgae and carrageen-moss extract.”

“Yum?” Nelinha says from across the table.

Ophelia nudges her arm. “Give it a try.”

Nelinha nibbles the bread. Her eyes widen. “Actually, yum! It’s a little burnt, but—”

“Okay, enough of that!” Luca says.

Ophelia grins, which makes her look less steely, more…I don’t know, silvery. “Anything Jupiter sees on The Great British Bake Off, or any of his other cooking shows, we can simulate with sea-plant products. The orangutan keeps us on our toes.”

I try the lasagna. It tastes even better than it smells. “You could feed the world with those crops.”

Ophelia raises an index finger in warning. “Or we could feed the bottom line of multinational corporations who would want to exploit the food sources—or more likely strangle them—to keep their monopolies.”

Suddenly, my dinner tastes a bit more like macroalgae.

Top sits patiently at Ester’s feet. He doesn’t beg—he’s too clever for that. He just looks cute and sad, staring into the distance as if thinking, Alas, my poor stomach! Whenever someone slips him a scrap, which happens frequently, he looks surprised. For me? Well, if you insist.

He is part emotional-support animal, part con artist.

Meanwhile, Jupiter circulates among the Dolphins, chatting with them in sign language. He describes the culinary wonders they are enjoying. Some of his cooking lingo is hard to follow. I have never learned the ASL terms for sauté or carrageen moss. Still, the Dolphins know how to say delicious and thank you. That seems to please him.