The Draco Tavern - Larry Niven [1]
Smut Talk. Copyright © 2000, 2006 by Larry Niven
Ssoroghod’s People. Copyright © 2001, 2006 by Larry Niven
The Missing Mass. Copyright © 2000, 2006 by Larry Niven
The Convergence of the Old Mind. Copyright © 2002, 2006 by Larry Niven
Chrysalis. Copyright © 2002, 2006 by Larry Niven
The Death Addict. Copyright © 2003, 2006 by Larry Niven
Storm Front. Copyright © 2004, 2006 by Larry Niven
The Slow Ones. Copyright © 2006 by Larry Niven
Cruel and Unusual. Copyright © 1977, 1979 by Larry Niven
The Ones Who Stay Home. Copyright © 2003, 2006 by Larry Niven
Breeding Maze. Copyright © 2006 by Larry Niven
Playhouse. Copyright © 2006 by Larry Niven
Lost. Copyright © 2006 by Larry Niven
Losing Mars. Copyright © 2006 by Larry Niven
Playground Earth. Copyright © 2006 by Larry Niven
I have been writing these stories
nearly as long as we have been married.
This book is for Marilyn.
INTRODUCTION
When I dreamed up the Draco Tavern, my intent was to deal with questions of a certain type.
I’m a science fiction writer, after all. I’m supposed to be able to deal with questions of huge import. In addition, I’m good at vignettes and I wanted to get better. I wanted a format in which to deal with the simplest, most universal questions. God. Intelligent predators and prey. Sex, gender, reproduction. War. Human destiny. Species survival. Immortality. Ultimate computers. The destiny of the universe. Interspecies commerce. How alien minds think and how to cope with that and them.
The interspecies gathering place is not a new concept, but a hoary old tradition, much older than the Mos Eisley Spaceport bar. I decided I could make it fit.
DRACO TAVERN HISTORY
For most of the stories, assume that the Tavern is roughly thirty years old, and the date is in the 2030s.
At some near-future date—say two years from whenever you’re reading any given story—a tremendous spacecraft arrived and took up orbit around Earth’s Moon. Smaller boats, landers, came down along the lines of Earth’s magnetic field, near the North Pole. It’s something about how the motors work. (Maybe they looked Antarctica over too, but nobody came there to talk.) They set up their permanent spaceport at Mount Forel in Siberia.
Negotiations with the United Nations got them certain concessions. A few people grew conspicuously rich from the secrets they learned from talking to aliens. Siberia and the UN had to restrict access to Mount Forel and create subsystems to support both alien and human visitors. A town grew up around Mount Forel.
Rick Schumann grew rich from a Chirpsithra secret. He then established a tavern able to serve various species of visiting alien. Over the years and decades since, the Tavern expanded its size and its capabilities.
The Tavern features huge storage facilities; foodstuffs and drinkstuffs for a growing number of species, kept carefully categorized; floating tables, when needed; high chairs if a short species wants face-to-face with a Chirp; privacy shields (to throttle sounds leaking across the border around any table); universal translators (which will turn out to be intelligent minds themselves, if I ever get around to writing the story); a variety of toilets (never yet described); universal plugs for computers and other human and alien machinery; and whatever else I think of. In stories set earlier, the Tavern is smaller and more primitive.
The only face always to be seen at the Draco Tavern is Rick Schumann’s.
Rick’s service staff are usually scientists of various kinds, often anthropologists. (There’s no better way to learn what a human being is than by studying what we are not.) When they’ve learned enough, they go off and publish, or they found a business based on what they’ve learned. Mount Forel isn’t a center of culture, after all, not a place to stay forever. Except to Rick.
Human visitors may be scientists of great variety, astronauts (whose ships are Chirpsithra-designed), media (under heavy restriction), workers from Mount Forel Spaceport, or anyone who