The Draco Tavern - Larry Niven [41]
“I knew nothing of it. It was not my decision,” Ssoroghod said.
“We went to the Moon, and came back, and stopped. We were fiddling with DNA, but we weren’t doing it in any lunar dome. I was just old enough to see how stupid that was, and I couldn’t do anything about it,” I said. “You saved us. Why?”
“Merchants,” said Ssoroghod. “They follow their own rules. You might have something of interest to entities with other forms of wealth to trade. So they interfere.”
“I owe them,” I said. I drank an unspoken toast to the Whee-Nisht.
“Dispenser, it may be you would have come to your senses. Experiments done in your own living space are lethal. You might have explored your Moon under pressure of fear, built your domed city and your nearby protected laboratories, and saved yourselves. You can never know.”
I knew.
Ssoroghod said, “And the Whee-Nisht might have accepted my island despite the cost. I could not rob them of the chance! They chose convenience over adventure, short term over long. I gave them most of my lifespan, and they threw it away. I will beg a ride home and make another life for myself.” She strode over to a tableful of Chirpsithra crew and began to talk.
And I made myself another Irish coffee, but it was my own species I toasted.
THE MISSING MASS
Midmorning Saturday, the fourth day after the landings, the Draco Tavern was frantic.
You never can tell how the biorhythms of a score of alien species will interact after the landers come down. None of them cycle through exactly twenty-four hours unless they medicate themselves. The first two days I’d been swamped in the mornings. The evenings had been half dead.
Gail, Jehaneh, and Herman were all on duty. Nearing noon, they seemed to have it under control. I could almost relax.
The Draco Tavern is all one room. During the remodeling the bar became a ring in the middle set higher than the main floor, to give me a chance to look around. This many disparate life-forms don’t always get along. I’ve learned diplomacy. I’ve got stun gear too.
Four Low Jumbos huddled close around a table, almost hiding it. Low Jumbos like crowds. They only show up when there’s no room for them. Their bodies shook; the roar of their laughter leaked through the privacy shields as a synchronized bass huf huf huf. Their combined bulk nearly hid an entity their own size, the Terminator Beaver working with his computer against the west wall.
Ten Bebebebeque, sixteen-inch-tall golden bugs, perched around the rim of a table conversing with a Chirpsithra and a gray-and-pink jellyfish in a big glass tank of foamy water ... big enough to crush my table, it looked like, so it must be sitting on a magnetic float. The jellyfish was new to me. Harsh blue light shone down from the top of the tank, illuminating an intricate internal structure and five dark, wiry tentacles knotted at the center. Evolution beneath a hot, fast-buming sun would explain why they hadn’t adapted to the land ... if there was land where they evolved. Water worlds seem to be common.
Jehaneh set a tray on their table. The water creature used skeletal waldo arms to move a pink canapé through its little airlock. I watched the canapé slide into its translucent interior.
Jehaneh came back to the bar, looking pleasantly bemused. “Carpaccio flavored with sea salt,” she said. “Do all the seagoing forms want red meat?”
“Mammal meat is higher energy than they’re used to. They all have to try it, but it makes them hyper. Sometimes they get sick.”
“I need four more sparkers,” she said, “and four bull shots.”
There were Chirpsithra at most of the tables. They’re the ones who use the sparkers, and they make and run the interstellar ships. They look like attenuated crustaceans, three meters tall and higher, and are red like a boiled lobster.
Four humans in Arab robes settled around a table. Iraqi seem to have rediscovered the pursuit of wisdom. Aliens made overtures, and they broke into pairs. Two joined the Low Jumbos. Two took high chairs to talk to a Chirpsithra.
A man stopped in