The Draco Tavern - Larry Niven [10]
“I haven’t forgotten any of your questions. There is no need to repeat them,” Baby told us petulantly.
“These questions regarding human sociology are the most difficult of all, but I’m gathering huge amounts of data. Soon I will know everything there is to know about the behavior of the universe. Insufficient data. Wait.”
We waited.
One day Baby stopped talking.
We found nothing wrong with the voice link or with Baby’s brain itself; though her mental activity had dropped drastically. We got desperate enough to try cutting off some of her senses. Then all of them. Nothing.
We sent them scrambled data. Nothing.
We talked into the microphone, telling Baby that we were near bankruptcy, telling her that she would almost certainly be broken up for spare parts. We threatened. We begged. Baby wouldn’t answer. It was as if she had gone away.
I went back to the Draco Tavern. I had to fire one of the bartenders and take his place; I couldn’t afford to pay his salary.
One night I told the story to a group of Chirpsithra.
They chittered at each other. One said, “I know this Sthochtil. She is a great practical joker. A pity you were the victim.”
“I still don’t get the punch line,” I said bitterly.
“Long, long ago we build many intelligent computers, some mechanical, some partly biological. Our ancestors must have thought they were doing something wrong. Ultimately they realized that they had made no mistakes. A sufficiently intelligent being will look about her, solve all questions, then cease activity.”
“Why? Boredom?”
“We may speculate. A computer thinks fast. It may live a thousand years in what we consider a day, yet a day holds only just so many events. There must be sensory deprivation and nearly total reliance on internal resources. An intelligent being would not fear death or non-being, which are inevitable. Once your computer has solved all questions, why should it not turn itself off?” She rubbed her thumbs across metal contacts. Sparks leapt. “Ssss ... We may speculate, but to what purpose? If we knew why they turn themselves off, we might do the same.”
THE GREEN MARAUDER
I was tending bar alone that night. The Chirpsithra interstellar liner had left Earth four days earlier, taking most of my customers. The Draco Tavern was nearly empty.
The man at the bar was drinking gin and tonic. Two Glig—gray and compact beings, wearing furs in three tones of green—were at a table with a Chirpsithra guide. They drank vodka and consommé, no ice, no flavorings. Four farsilshree had their bulky, heavy environment tanks crowded around a bigger table. They smoked smoldering yellow paste through tubes. Every so often I got them another jar of paste.
The man was talkative. I got the idea he was trying to interview the bartender and owner of Earth’s foremost multispecies tavern.
“Hey, not me,” he protested. “I’m not a reporter. I’m Greg Noyes, with the Scientific American television show.”
“Didn’t I see you trying to interview the Glig, earlier tonight?”
“Guilty. We’re doing a show on the formation of life on Earth. I thought maybe I could check a few things. The Gligstith(click)optok—” He said that slowly, but got it right. “—have their own little empire out there, don’t they? Earthlike worlds, a couple of hundred. They must know quite a lot about how a world forms an oxygenating atmosphere.” He was careful with those pollysyllabic words. Not quite sober, then.
“That doesn’t mean they want to waste an evening lecturing the natives.”
He nodded. “They didn’t know anyway. Architects on vacation. They got me talking about my home life. I don’t know how they managed that.” He pushed his drink away. “I’d better switch to espresso. Why would a thing that shape be interested in my sex life? And they kept asking me about territorial imperatives—” He stopped, then turned to see what I was staring at.
Three Chirpsithra were just coming in. One was in a floating couch with life-support equipment attached.