The Draco Tavern - Larry Niven [72]
We put her in a shirt and jeans. She didn’t object.
Djil explored the Draco Tavern and watched Queeblishiz impose childproofing changes. I watched it all carefully. Fragile stuff out of reach or locked away. Stairs blocked with a repel field keyed to the bar codes. Odd chemicals kept out of sight and touch, and that included everything behind and beneath my bar. Most of what I serve is lethal to something.
When a party of anthropologists showed up, Djil served their drinks, then got into an intense discussion of experimental methods.
“Her parents are too big to travel,” Queeblishiz said. “They can arrest the development of children for a time. Djil is nearly seventy years old by your counting. She can babysit, but she must be watched.”
“Why? She sounds like an adult to all intents and purposes.”
“Watch her. Tend her. Djil’s brain has not reached full weight, and she is as self-centered as any child.”
DAY TWO
We barred humans from the Tavern. Protests came from various directions. Sooner or later ... but first we’d better see just how much of a problem the children were.
“There’s no need to think of me as a child,” Djil told me. “I’m older than you. My parents are excessively protective. They tried to stop me from leaving. We reached a compromise. I’m listed as a child, with fewer rights than a passenger.”
“That’s a pity,” I said. “But why were you chosen to guard the younger children?”
“I’m an available sitter, and barred from roaming at will through Long View. The Chirpsithra are economical.”
I’d still keep a watch on her. She was too big to be taken lightly.
DAY THREE
After two days of work, Matriarch Queeblishiz brought down the children.
The Rainbow Wyrms were snakes, six of them. They were caged when Queeblishiz brought them in on a heavy lift platform. When the field was switched off, they were gone too fast to be visible. For an hour they buzzed around the Tavern, bouncing off the lock fields whenever they got near the bar. They couldn’t fly, but they could jump like coiled springs. They buzzed into corners and under booths, chasing down the mice.
A few minutes wore them out, and they slowed down. They were glittering orange and green, each half a man’s weight, each about three meters long. You could see a fringe of little limbs growing down the ventral line. They slept a lot, usually wrapped in knots around each other. They were friendly to visitors; I could wear one wrapped around my shoulders and neck. They ate small mammals taken from another failing freezer. Visitors would have to be marked with bar codes; any rats and mice in the Tavern were on their own.
Mit, Hel, and Sesch, the Red Demons, were a meter long, exoskeletal, with spiky red armor. “They’ll attack anything their own size including each other,” Queeblishiz said. “I’ll give them police cuffs. They won’t be able to come near each other. We can give them a confined space in the Tavern.”
I suggested, “Outside. You can fence out wolves.”
The Chirp Matriarch accessed some beamed-in source of data. “Wolves? I think our three charges can handle such creatures. Bigger predators might be a problem. We’ll confine them to a patch of tundra and watch them for as long as this warm weather lasts. We can put the Wayward Child outside too.”
The Wayward Child was a filter feeder armed with gauzy wings and a tremendous vented cavern of a mouth. She needed a lift pack to fly; her world was less massive than Earth. Siberian summer wasn’t exactly warm, but it was warm enough to generate immense clouds of mosquitoes. I was going to like having the Wayward Child around. As for the rest, we’d see.
DAY FIVE
Another freezer failed.
We were lucky. It held Folk puppies. Folk from previous