The Draco Tavern - Larry Niven [48]
The Beaver demanded, “But what drives your ships?”
“Our ships use a lesser effect. The Firstborn hold the key to vast wealth. If we have not learned it, we, in our billions of years ... well. Some younger race might. Teng, Beaver, Rick, it is not in our interest that you should give up striving.”
Scylla’s magnetic floatplate floated out from under the table, and she drifted out onto the tundra. The rest followed. I watched them go, thinking that we must be a common thing to the Chirpsithra. A civilization is only beginning to learn the structure of the universe, when interstellar liners appear and alien intelligences blurt out all the undiscovered secrets.
Primitive peoples die when powerful intruders mock their lifestyles. Whole worlds might be saved, if Chirp diplomats can be trained to imply that vast secrets remain untapped, awaiting the touch of young and ambitious minds.
“Paid you too much,” the Beaver told me. “Did you see animals the size of a galaxy? I did not. I saw blobs and colors.” He ambled out.
Teng caught up with him. I heard him say, “Let’s think about expanding that ‘Helmuthdip’ Web site. Get some of my colleagues involved. Maybe some passengers too.” Teng was bouncing, his spirits restored. In a young universe there were still wonders to achieve, secrets for a young species to learn.
THE CONVERGENCE OF THE OLD MIMD
Among the aliens who travel with the Chirpsithra are some who like it cold. Over the years a succession of ice-blooded species have imposed their aesthetic views on the Siberian tundra that surrounds the Draco Tavern. What we can see through the glass wall includes winding paths and a vastness of wonderful statuary carved from ice. Some of the sculpture houses alien storehouses and offices.
Through that barren, desolate, weird landscape I watched two ten-limbed spiders cloaked and hooded against the cold, picking their way through the winding paths.
Those would be Gray Mourners: Sfillirrath and one of her husbands. Sfillirrath, the larger, seemed in haste: she was taking short cuts through the sculpture, leaving her mate behind. She stopped by the biggest airlock and slowly folded herself and all those long legs into it.
The airlock revolved and she was in. Here and there, sensory clusters turned. Sfillirrath spoke a complicated phrase.
She hadn’t spoken loudly, but she can’t. My translator decided she’d shouted: “The Old Mind is gathering!”
Most of the tables in the Draco Tavern had privacy bubbles enabled. Most of the patrons heard nothing. But nine Bebebebeque, lined along the rim of the bar in front of me, tumbled off and streamed toward her.
Chittering questions, the six-inch-tall golden bugs followed her to a table full of Chirpsithra. She spoke, they spoke, all in the silence of a privacy bubble. Four tall and spindly chirps got up, leaving one behind, and made for an airlock. The bugs stayed.
The Gray Mourner male reached the big airlock and folded himself through it.
Sfillirrath and her husbands had been hanging around Earth for two years now. Chimes In Harmony was newly arrived, currently hovering near the Moon. Sfillirrath had been aboard last night. What she carried would be the latest news, whatever it meant.
It seemed to mean a lot. Patrons watched her approach, listened, then ... something changed. A few left. But—it took me a while to get it—nobody was talking to each other any more. In Sfillirrath’s wake, they were talking to tiny or embedded communication devices.
I stayed at the bar as Sfillirrath circulated among the tables. This might not be any of my business. Then again, would I ever have come here if I weren’t curious? I considered speaking to the sole remaining Chirp. As part of Chimes’s crew she’d know—
But she too was talking to an entity not present.
Sfillirrath was talking to two Folk—and Gail was on her way to offer food or drink or service. Good girl.