The Draco Tavern - Larry Niven [26]
I dropped on my back. I got in one grazing blow across the neck as it was turning away, and then it was running and I rolled to my feet and chased it again. There was a feathery feel to my run. My lungs and legs thought I was dying. But the melk shook its head as it ran, and I caught up far enough to swing at its hooves.
This time it didn’t turn to attack. Running with something whacking at its feet, it just gradually lost ground. I delivered a two-handed blow to the base of its neck. Swung again and lost my balance and tumbled, caught the roll on my shoulder, had to go back for the skull. Then I ran, floating, recovering lost ground, and suddenly realized that the grass was stirring all around me. I was surrounded by the black shadows of the Folk.
I caught up.
A swing at the head only got the horns. I hammered at the neck, just behind the head. It tumbled, and tried to get to its feet, and I beat it until it fell over. I used the skull like an ax ... murdering it ... and suddenly black bodies flowed out of the fat grass and tore at the melk. B-beam got a good grip on the horns and snapped the neck.
I sat down.
He handed me the line: knife, beamer, canteen. He was almost as winded as I was. He whispered, “Damn fool, you weren’t—”
“Wrong.” I didn’t have breath for more. I drank from my canteen, paused to gasp, drank again. Then I turned the beamer on a meaty thigh. The Folk must have been waiting for me to make my choice. They now attacked the forequarters.
I crouched, panting, holding the beamer on the meat until it sizzled, until it smoked, until the smell of it told my belly it was ready.
The heaving of my chest had eased. I handed the knife to B-beam. “Carve us some of that. Eat as much as you can. Courtesy to our hosts.”
He did. He gave me a chunk that I needed both hands to hold. It was too hot; I had to juggle it. B-beam said, “You used a weapon.”
“I used a club,” I said. I bit into the meat. Ecstasy! The famine was over. I hadn’t cooked it enough, and so what? I choked down enough to clear my mouth and said, “Humans don’t use teeth and claws. The Folk know that. They wanted to see us in action. My evolution includes a club.”
ONE NIGHT AT THE DRACO TAVERN
This was the script used for Kathy Sanders’s group presentation at the WorldCon Masquerade, Los Angeles, 1984. Steven Barnes played “Rick Schumann.” I played “Larry.”
Drew and Kathy Sanders generally win major awards in the Masquerades. In 1984 Drew was running the Masquerade. Kathy was on her own.
She began making costumes more than a year early. By the time she finished she had duplicated a dozen of the most alien characters from my stories.
I wrote the script. Steven and I recorded the sound background.
The kzin and thrint costumes were hot. I had to fan the occupants through their open mouths. The puppeteer must have been worse yet, though it was designed so that Kathy was half out of it until we were called.
I’d seen previous attempts at a Pierson’s puppeteer costume. A puppeteer has three legs and two heads. Kathy in her costume had one leg bound up against her chest; heads empty and propped up (they flopped over the first time she tried it); and her arms for the forelegs, on short stilts because human arms aren’t long enough. Muscle structure was quilted in, following the Bonnie Dalzell illustration for Ballantine Books, and it looked amazingly lifelike.
She wasn’t exactly agile, though.
We won the Master’s Award for “Funniest.”
ONSTAGE:
RICK SCHUMANN behind bar. The bar is vertical to the audience.
YELLOW BUGS around a table.
WUNDERLANDER and GROG at the bar.
QARASHT seated alone, sense cluster retracted.
ACTION, simultaneously—
RICK finishes preparing the BUGS’ order, circles bar and takes them a tray with enough liqueur glasses.
LARRY: Here you are, gentlemen.
RICK: Here you are, gentlemen.
BUGS: Queepee? [sound done with whistle or some such]
LARRY enters, pulling down zipper or opening buttons and shaking off the cold or the heat (to signal his entry from outside) while he looks around. He