The Draco Tavern - Larry Niven [39]
One spoke to her. She chose not to hear, walked regally past, and was at the bar. To me she said, “Dispenser, a sparker.”
I had one ready. The chirps only have, or only show, this one sin.
She put her thumbs on the sparker and kept them there. I’d never seen a Chirp do that. Her antennae were trembling. She was getting too much of a charge.
She let go. Her posture shifted, lolling. She said, “Dispenser, sparkers for my companions at table zith-mm. Tell them to remember—” She rattled off numbers in her own language.
I took sparkers to the chirps’ table. Props. They already had theirs. I said, “A gift from the citizen at the bar. She sent you a message.” My translator also records. I ran it back to the right time and played it for them.
One said, “A location.”
“That was her station,” another said. “Whee-Nisht variants one through four. Ssoroghod had them in her charge. She sent us sparkers?”
“Memorial,” said a third. “They must be extinct.”
“She will not talk to us. Ssoroghod was always unsocial.”
I asked, “Can you tell me what’s wrong with her?”
They looked at each other. I thought they wouldn’t answer, but one said, “She may choose suicide.”
“How would I stop that?”
“Why would you?”
Death has happened in the Draco Tavern. Once it was a memorial service with the main guest alive until halfway through. Both times, the individuals kept it neat. I still don’t like it.
One said, “She spoke to you. Rick Schumann, let her talk. She may persuade herself to live.”
Humans use the bar chairs when they need to talk to the bartender. Most of the chirps’ clients need a tailored environment; they go to the tables, which can be enclosed. The bar doesn’t get much action from aliens. Chirps themselves can breath Earth’s air; it’s the lighting that gets to them.
At the bar tonight there was only Ssoroghod, eleven feet tall though she weighed no more than I did, armored in red exoskeletal plates fading to gray at the edges, and some prosthetic gear. I told her, “The tables might have lighting more to your taste.”
“I do not want the company of my kind. This bluer light, I endured it for—” She gave a number. My translator said, “—One million thirty thousand years.”
Mistranslation? I said, “That’s a long time.”
Nothing.
“What were you doing?”
“Watching.”
I guessed: “Watching the Whee-Nisht? Variants one through four?”
She said, “Variants two and three made pact, inter-mated, merged, crowded out the others. They were competing for too limited an environment. Variants one and four died out.”
“Why were you watching them?”
For a minute I thought she wouldn’t answer. Should I leave her alone, or risk driving her away? Then she said, “We found a species on the verge of sapience.
“‘The Whee-Nisht held a limited environment, a sandy coastline along the eastern shore of the megacontinent. Their metabolism was based on silicon dioxide. They adapted too well to the local diet, gravity, lighting, salinity of water, local symbiotes. They would never conquer any large part of their own world, let alone go among the stars. I could study them and still stay out of their way. This was the basis on which I was given permission to watch them evolve.
“I watched them grow along the Fertile Band. I was pleased when they tamed other life-forms and bred them for desired traits. Though sworn not to interfere with their development, I did divert a meteoroid impact that would have altered local coastlines. They might have gone extinct.” She touched the sparker, just brushed it. “But they might have evolved flexibility. I cannot know. Mistake or no, I shifted the killer rock.
“Their numbers then grew overgreat. I wondered if I must act again, but they adapted, developed a yeast for contraception. It was their first clear act to change themselves.”
“What went wrong?”
She focused on me. I had the impression that she was only now seeing me.
“Dispenser ... Rick Schumann ... do you use something like sparkers? A jolt to change your viewpoint?”
I said my kind used alcohol. At her invitation I made myself an Irish coffee.