The Draco Tavern - Larry Niven [56]
I stepped outside the privacy shield around the big table, so he could hear me, and shouted, “Bazin!”
Bazin swerved toward us. The turtle-analogue’s own voice was a series of eructations from under his flexible shell. His translator cried, “Rick! What is the topic?”
I said, “The topic is cosmology.”
He joined them at the big table. But more customers had come in, so I missed the rest of that conversation.
Most of Earth has to put up with television sets, but the Chirpsithra had long since set up a huge holo wall in the Draco Tavern. Generally we let it jump randomly between news channels. Bazin was with us a few days later, while we watched the Today interview.
“I haven’t decided what I’ll do on Earth,” Bazin’s image told Wade Hannofer, Today’s talking head. “I don’t know what Earth has to offer yet, and of course local governments have territorial rights. I welcome suggestions.”
Hannofer asked, “Have you seen the Grand Canyon?”
Bazin brushed it off. “I have viewed Valles Marinaris on Mars. When I am done with Earth, I will sail it in a balloon.”
“Mons Olympus?”
“Too shallow. A climb would be a mere walk. Maybe I’ll climb Everest.” In close-up I saw the gleam of his shell, polished to a mirror. The Bazin beside me had lost some polish. A webbing of old cracks showed deep in his shell. I remembered an actor, Jackie Chan, who had a scar for every movie he’d made.
The image of Wade Hannofer waved around at the image of the Draco Tavern. “Some of the visitors here know when they’ll die. Some are immortal. What are you?”
“I have longevity,” Bazin said. “Nanosurgery has turned off the death wish in my genetics. I may be killed, but I will not die naturally.”
Afterward Bazin asked me, “Did you enjoy the interview?”
“They cut too much,” I said.
“I was only talking. They’ll pay more attention when I test the Earth for its potential.”
We watched Bazin as he went about the Earth. My customers came less often, though Fly By Wire continued to orbit the Moon.
In Disneyland Bazin took the “Star Tours” ride three times straight.
In a movie theater, the only viewer, he watched Nightmare on Elm Street, The Thing, and Die Hard.
He made news by riding roller coasters: the tallest, the steepest, the fastest. At all three parks they had to alter a car for him.
The commentators were getting disgusted when Bazin moved into Phase Two. He strung a wire across the Grand Canyon and crawled across it—with a groove stapled to his belly plate, and a small pack added to the gear on his back. We learned later that that was a pop-out hang glider.
He went hang gliding, using his own aerodynamic shape and modified Swim-Fins on his flattened hands and feet to steer toward a target, popping his parachute at the last possible moment.
He jumped from the Brooklyn Bridge with a bungee cord, after elaborate testing.
He went white-water rafting on the Colorado River. The humans wore life vests; he wore artificial gills. When the raft tumbled, his shell bumped rocks until he could recover.
I began to see elements of Bazin’s style. He did every dangerous thing in the safest possible fashion.
He must have studied Earth’s history of flamboyant stunts. Most of what we had to offer didn’t apply to him. On Earth he needed life support, but where did life support end and protection begin? With his shell and his low center of gravity and an oxygen source, he could plod up Mount Everest with no danger. With sufficient padding he could go over Niagara Falls, and so what? What is skydiving if you have antigravity?
In his absence the Draco Tavern’s clientele discussed his adventures. They told of his testing new forms of armor, ballooning through a superJovian free floater, skating across a lake of molten sulfur.