The Draco Tavern - Larry Niven [61]
Taper was having trouble catching up. “Slow ones?”
“Originally there were a dozen,” I said. “Six little half-eggs must have been food animals. They didn’t move fast enough, and the Type One, Speedy, rolled over them and ate them during the first six or seven years. Two of the others went home on the next ship after snuffling around Siberia on tractors. They were the fastest.
“After they left, Speedy was making visible progress toward the airlocks. It’s taken him twenty-six years to get into the jelly lock. He’ll be inside before Christmas. These others—do you see that tree stump with an indented top? And water in the top, a little pond of his own, but you can’t see that. He’s the slowest. These boat-shaped—”
“Yeek!” He rolled off.
I stayed where I was. “Ahab doesn’t mind. I know them all pretty well. You can talk to them with electronic mail—”
“They can use computers?”
“Sure, all of these slow ones are intelligent tool users. The computers they build work as fast as ours. To the slow ones they’re instantaneous. To talk to them you just trade letters. It doesn’t matter how slow they write.”
I watched him working out how useless that would be to a newsman. I said, “Of course they need terrific protection against spam. Otherwise—”
“Yeah. What do they talk like?”
“Here.” I fished out my translator and whispered a few instructions. It projected a screen, watery looking in the horizontal sunlight.
Hello! I seek a companion.
I am Rick Schumann, human, hoping to become a bartender.
Call me Quizzical.
Hi, Quizzical.
Is that your structure being erected on the tundra?
Yes, that’s the Draco Tavern.
Most impressive. I wondered if winds would damage it, but it has stood for some time.
There was some damage two years back. We fixed it.
I hope to see the inside soon. It mutates like dreams.
Be welcome. The jelly lock is for slow ones—
I see it. Speedy is almost there. I see a fluttering that must be your kind’s traffic.
Do you know the Chirpsithra?
They live too fast to be truly known, but they don’t die too soon. At least we may converse. One, Ktath
Taper scowled. “Is that all?”
“Yeah. Quizzical is the Type Three, the one like a tree stump.”
“Twenty-six years?”
“Understand, Mr. Taper, most of my visitors use oxidizing chemistry. Some are even faster than Chirps and Humans. One type bums like a fire. She was born in the Tavern, and I only got to know her for a few hours. But that’s not the only way to live.
“Reducing chemistry is very slow compared to oxidizing. These slow ones are exploring the Earth. They watched the Draco Tavern grow up in front of them. They’ll see it turn to dust. They’ll be here a long time.”
Taper rapped what I was sitting on. “This shell—”
“They’re in pressure suits. So’s Speedy. They have to be protected from oxygen.”
“They’re all streamlined,” he noted. “Even that tree stump has a teardrop silhouette,” turning his camera on Quizzical.
I said, “Just being a slow one wouldn’t slow down weather. Comes a hurricane, or a flood, they’d just have to wait it out.”
Taper asked, “May I talk to Speedy?”
“I’ll give you his e-mail address. Have you got a story now? Or is it all too slow?”
“May I have the other e-mail addresses?”
“I’ll ask first.”
Taper came back in January. This time he hurried through Siberia’s endless freezing night to reach the Tavern. The airlock for humans is there because Siberia in winter isn’t a habitable planet.
The Tavern was crowded; a liner was in. He stood there taking it in for a few minutes, recording with the camera on his forehead. Then he hung up some of his gear and wove his way through the crowd and the divergent environments.
Speedy was past the jelly lock and ten centimeters inside. Taper smiled down at the smoothed-out turtle shape. He ran a hand over Speedy’s head. Then he fished out a keyboard and began typing.
I was at his elbow. “How’s it going, Mr. Taper? Got a story yet?”
He laughed. “Not today. If I made a lifetime project of this, I might have something to show the execs. Mr. Schumann,