The Draco Tavern - Larry Niven [77]
Spaghetti arrived. I began to eat, but slowly. It was a good choice, but I wasn’t used to it.
She asked, “How did it happen? Nobody else has ever been offered this privilege.”
I shrugged. I’m the proprietor of Earth’s only interspecies bar. Odd opportunities do come my way. “Vanayn said, ‘Let’s go for a ride.’ ”
“And you went?”
“Well, I didn’t just—” Of course I’d been an idiot. “—didn’t just jump up and run out to the ship. I asked, ‘Can you bring me back here before the evening crowd?’ And Vanayn said, ‘Not a problem.’ ”
She looked behind her at Vanayn, a great gray-striped mass of muscle, big eyes and iron teeth under a bubble helmet. “Vanayn, now. He’s a new species, isn’t he?”
“Yeah. Predator, likes lots of room and not much company. Slow metabolism. Oxygen is a poison to him. He has his own ship. He came in behind the liner, Quark Mapping, following the neutrino trail.
“We were all at the big table, seven or eight species, when he came in. He steered a floating cargo bin around to the bar. I store foodstuffs for my alien customers, but the supplies have to get to me somehow. I stowed the tank and ran him up a drink. A bunch of the other aliens gathered around his table. I served them, and then we sat around talking for a while.”
“About what?”
Familiar food was clearing my head. I still had to concentrate to remember. It was so long ago.
“Me,” I said. “And the Tavern. My customers ... the aliens, they’re all temporary. Most of them are gone when the landers lift. A few stick around for a year or two. The humans who come in here, they’re usually collecting data for a doctorate or a newsburst. So are my staff, all doctors and grad students, all here to learn something and then go write it up. The only permanent feature of the Draco Tavern is me.”
She waited.
“Which makes sense,” I said. “I’m at the heart of the information flow. I was asked to go flying once before, and I turned that down.” She started to interrupt, but I pushed on. “It was light-years away. Whatever they learn, it’ll come back to the Draco Tavern. And I still couldn’t make them see why I ... don’t ... go anywhere.”
“Drink,” she said, and poured tea. “Shall I order something stronger?”
“Maybe an aquavit. Thank you.”
“Does it satisfy you, this answer? The reason you don’t travel?”
“Sure. Usually. I’d had a couple of Irish coffees, though. Then Vanayn said, ‘Let me take you for a ride!’ and I said, ‘Can you get me back before the evening crowd?’ And he said ... damn.”
“What?”
“He said, ‘This is not a problem. I’ll put us in a loop.’ And all I had to do was ask him why.”
“But you went.”
“The way I saw it—well. Look around you.”
We had tall and slender exoskeletal Chirpsithra. We had Gligstith(click)optok built like little gray tanks draped in green fur pelts. Bebebebeque arrayed around the rim of the table like big golden bugs. Finny entities drifted within a fishbowl on wheels. Funny featherless birds, Warblers, nested overhead.
Cheri Kaylor grinned. “I can identify most of these species.”
I said, “Whatever they look like, whatever their shape, whatever they breath or drink or need for life support, I knew I was surrounded by folk who want me to continue in existence. If I was making a hideous mistake, one or another would point it out. If I had an accident, one or another would come rescue me.”
“So you went.”
“And they were all watching me. All these travelers who never turned down a dare. I took a moment to think it through, but how could I back down? Yeah, I went.”
“Was it that same ship?” Kaylor asked. She was almost bouncing in her chair. “The one you landed in? It’s not your standard lander.”
“Looks something like a Taurus station wagon, doesn’t it?”
“But big. How far can it go?”
“It’s just a lander, Doctor. Lifeboat, Captain’s gig, not the main ship.”
“So it goes as far as the Moon?”
“At least. We were there in three hours. The gig kind of molded itself against the hull and Vanayn took me aboard.”
Kaylor was starting to look puzzled.
“I watched him extrude a transparent bubble onto the hull,