The Draco Tavern - Larry Niven [32]
“They’ll never buy it,” said Bennett.
“Shall I put out offers?”
“Try it,” said Bennett, and “One may ask,” said Silverback, and “Scraww!” said Silver Tongue. So I put in calls to Disney, Knott’s, Six Flags....
Music from the sky.
We all looked up. The birds were there, black against the sun, singing their hearts out. They wheeled and sang for at least ten minutes above the endless line for the Beanstalk Fall, then glided behind the tower in a roar of applause.
I faced forward again. The kids were tired of waiting.
Screams. I looked around.
The birds had circled behind the tower, already diving, picking up serious speed. They fell straight toward us. Silverback pulled up and rolled, showing her silver-and-scarlet design, but Silver Tongue swerved and swooped and dropped on an eight-year-old girl.
For an instant I wished fiercely that Disney World had bid. All that empty land for the birds! And they could have been wearing yellow Mickey Mouse hands! But Disney hadn’t even got in a bid; their lawyers were too timid. Silver Tongue’s claw tips were sheathed in blue, the color of his belly, and the girl never saw them until they closed on her. We heard her scree-hee-hee-heeming, fear and laughter as she rose.
THE WISDOM OF DEMONS
With the midnight sun behind him, he entered the Draco Tavern as a fire-edged black silhouette. Even so, I knew him.
I watched him approach the bar. His walk was wobbly and he was being careful of his balance, like a karate master just out of the hospital. He’d been drinking last night... wait, now, it wasn’t him at all.
Then he wrestled himself onto a stool and adjusted the height, and I knew him again. “Webber, wasn’t it? Last night.”
A goofy, twisted grin. It wasn’t Webber. “Yes! Alan Webber, anthropologist. Give me water. Flavored water.”
“I’ve got some carbonated fruit Savors—”
“Good!”
I ducked back into storage.
The Draco Tavern serves every species that travels with the Chirpsithra interstellar liners. Our storage space has to be huge, but stuff for human consumption is stacked along one short wall. I picked him a cranberry soda, then took a moment to get my nerve back.
Last night he’d called himself a xenosociologist. His speech, his walk, his look were all different. There weren’t many aliens in the bar last night, and two or three times as many humans. Webber had started talking to a Gligstith(click)optok.
What I know about the Glig is privileged. I’d given Webber no more warning than what we tell everybody. Nobody gets near Mount Forel, Siberia, without hearing it a dozen times: These are ETIs, interstellar travelers. Gangrene is your ferst cousin compared to these entities. They don’t think like you do....
They’d gone to a table and turned on a privacy shield.
The Glig showed him wonders. I’ve seen their toys, technology beyond anything we’ve been able to borrow or copy, and weird little plants and animals. They talked half the night. At two in the morning, with the low July sun coming around from behind Mount Forel, Webber and the Glig went off toward the lander.
And here he was again, but changed.
I’ve run the Draco Tavern for years. From time to time I see the usual strangeness edging over into horror or madness. I deal with it Whatever was wrong here, if I complained to any Chirpsithra she would relay it to the captain. And I had the stun.
So what was I afraid of?
I showed him the bottle. “This is cranberry. Ice?”
“Good idea!”
“Splash of dark nun on top?”
“Try it.”
He’d ordered scotch and soda last night. Maybe he’d get loquacious. I served him and watched him taste. He twitched, startled at the bite of the rum.
“You were with a Glig last night. With,” I remembered, “Preez Thporshkil.”
“Yes. Thporshkil offered ... Ow.”
“Ow?”
“I bit my lip,” he said. Some customers wear a slack and gaping grin the whole time they’re in here, like everything they see is new and different. He wore that grin as if sketched in by a drunken artist with a shaky hand. “Offered me a wish.”
I asked, “A wish? Like a genie or