Convergent Series

by Larry Niven

  "A language problem," she said. "I have said that the planetary system clusters close around a red dwarf star. There are usually asteroids of assorted sizes. Do your scientists know of the results of a cubic mile of asteroid being dropped into a planetary ocean?"

  I'd read an article on the subject once. "They think it could cause another ice age."

  "Yes. Megatons of water evaporated, falling elsewhere. Storms of a force foreign to your quiet world.

  Glaciers in unstable configurations, causing more weather. The effects last for a thousand years. We did this to every couplet world we could locate. The ilawn took some two dozen worlds from us, and tried to live on them. Then they took steps to arrange a further conference."

  "You were lucky," I said. By the odds, the ilawn should have evolved on the more common one-face worlds. Or should they? The couplets sounded more hospitable to life.

  "We were lucky," the chirpsithtra. agreed, "that time. We were lucky in our language. Suppose we had used the same word for my head, my credit cards, my sister? Chirpsithtra might have been unable to evacuate their homes, as a human may die defending his home—" she used the intrinsic possessive "—his home from a burglar."

  Closing time. Half a dozen chirpsithtra wobbled out, drunk on current and looking unstable by reason of their height. The last few humans waved and left. As I moved to lock the door I found myself smiling all across my face.

  Now what was I so flippin' happy about?

  It took me an hour to figure it out.

  I like the chirpsithtra. I trust them. But, considering the power they control, I don't mind finding another reason why they will never want to conquer the Earth.

  The Subject Is Closed

  We get astronauts in the Draco Tavern. We get workers from Mount Forel Spaceport, and some administrators, and some newsmen. We get chirpsithtra; I keep sparkers to get them drunk and chairs to fit their tall, spindly frames. Once in a while we get other aliens.

  But we don't get many priests.

  So I noticed him when he came in. He was young and round and harmless looking. His expression was a model of its kind: open, willing to be friendly, not nervous, but very alert. He stared a bit at two bulbous aliens in space suits who had come in with a chirpsithtra guide.

  I watched him invite himself to join a trio of chirpsithtra. They seemed willing to have him. They like human company. He even had the foresight to snag one of the high chairs I spread around, high enough to bring a human face to chirpsithtra level.

  Someone must have briefed him, I decided. He'd know better than to do anything gauche. So I forgot him for a while.

  An hour later he was at the bar, alone. He ordered a beer and waited until I'd brought it. He said,

  "You're Rick Schumann, aren't you? The owner?"

  "That's right. And you?"

  "Father David Hopkins." He hesitated, then blurted, "Do you trust the chirpsithtra?" He had trouble with the word.

  I said, "Depends on what you mean. They don't steal the salt shakers. And they've got half a dozen reasons for not wanting to conquer the Earth."

  He waved that aside. Larger things occupied his mind. "Do you believe the stories they tell? That they rule the galaxy? That they're aeons old?"

  "I've never decided. At least they tell entertaining stories. At most— you didn't call a chirpsithtra a liar, did you?"

  "No, of course not." He drank deeply of his beer. I was turning away when he said, "They said they know all about life after death."

  "Ye Gods. I've been talking to chirpsithtra for twenty years, but that's a new one. Who raised the subject?"

  "Oh, one of them asked me about the, uh, uniform. It just came up naturally." When I didn't say anything, he added, "Most religious leaders seem to be just ignoring the chirpsithtra. And the other intelligent beings too. I want to know. Do they have souls?"

  "Do they?"

  "He didn't say."

  "She," I told him. "All chirpsithtra are female."

  He nodded, not as if he cared much. "I started to tell her about my order. But when I started talking about Jesus, and about salvation, she told me rather firmly that the chirpsithtra know all they want to know on the subject of life after death."

  "So then you asked—"

  "No, sir, I did not. I came over here to decide whether I'm afraid to ask."

  I gave him points for that. "And are you?" When he didn't answer I said, "It's like this. I can stop her at any time you like. I know how to apologize gracefully."

  Only one of the three spoke English, though the others listened as if they understood it.

  "I don't know," she said.

  That was clearly the answer Hopkins wanted.

  "I must have misunderstood," he said, and he started to slip down from his high chair.

  "I told you that we know as much as we want to know on the subject," said the alien. "Once there were those who knew more. They tried to teach us. Now we try to discourage religious experiments."

  Hopkins slid back into his chair. "What were they? Chirpsithtra saints?"

  "No. The Sheegupt were carbon-water-oxygen life, like you and me, but they developed around the hot F-type suns in the galactic core. When our own empire had expanded near enough to the core, they came to us as missionaries. We rejected their pantheistic religion. They went away angry. It was some thousands of years before we met again.

  "By then our settled regions were in contact, and had even interpenetrated to some extent. Why not?

  We could not use the same planets. We learned that their erstwhile religion had broken into variant sects and was now stagnant, giving way to what you would call agnosticism. I believe the implication is that the agnostic does not know the nature of God, and does not believe you do either?"

  I looked at Hopkins, who said, "Close enough."

  "We established a trade in knowledge and in other things. Their skill at educational toys exceeded ours.

  Some of our foods were dietetic to them; they had taste but could not be metabolized. We mixed well. If my tale seems sketchy or superficial, it is because I never learned it in great detail. Some details were deliberately lost.

  "Over a thousand years of contact, the Sheegupt took the next step beyond agnosticism. They experimented. Some of their research was no different from your own psychological research, though of course they reached different conclusions. Some involved advanced philosophies: attempts to extrapolate God from Her artwork, so to speak. There were attempts to extrapolate other universes from altered laws of physics, and to contact the extrapolated universes. There were attempts to contact the dead. The Sheegupt kept us informed of the progress of their work. They were born missionaries, even when their religion was temporarily in abeyance."

  Hopkins was fascinated. He would hardly be shocked at attempts to investigate God. After all, it's an old game.

  "We heard, from the Sheegupt outpost worlds, that the scientifically advanced worlds in the galactic core had made some kind of breakthrough. Then we started losing contact with the Sheegupt," said the chirpsithtra. "Trade ships found no shuttles to meet them. We sent investigating teams. They found Sheegupt worlds entirely depopulated. The inhabitants had made machinery for the purpose of suicide, generally a combination of electrocution terminals and conveyor belts. Some Sheegupt had used knives on themselves, or walked off buildings, but most had queued up at the suicide machines, as if in no particular hurry."

  I said, "Sounds like they learned something, all right. But what?"

  "Their latest approach, according to our records, was to extrapolate rational models of a life after death, then attempt contact. But they may have gone on to something else. We do not know."

  Hopkins shook his head. "They could have found out there wasn't a life after death. No, they couldn't, could they? If they didn't find anything, it might be they were only using the wrong model."

  I said, "Try it the other way around. There is a Heaven, and it's wonderful, and everyone goes there. Or there is a
Hell, and it gets more unpleasant the older you are when you die."

  "Be cautious in your guesses. You may find the right answer," said the chirpsithtra. "The Sheegupt made no attempt to hide their secret. It must have been an easy answer, capable of reaching even simple minds, and capable of proof. We know this because many of our investigating teams sought death in groups.

  Even millennia later, there was suicide among those who probed through old records, expecting no more then a fascinating puzzle in ancient history. The records were finally destroyed."

  After I closed up for the night, I found Hopkins waiting for me outside.

  "I've decided you were right," he said earnestly. "They must have found out there's a Heaven and it's easy to get in. That's the only thing that could make that many people want to be dead. Isn't it?"

  But I saw that he was wringing his hands without knowing it. He wasn't sure. He wasn't sure of anything.

  I told him, "I think you tried to preach at the chirpsithtra. I don't doubt you were polite about it, but that's what I think happened. And they closed the subject on you."

  He thought it over, then nodded jerkily. "I guess they made their point. What would I know about chirpsithtra souls?"

  "Yeah. But they spin a good yarn, don't they?"

  Cruel and Unusual

  Chirpsithtra do not vary among themselves. They stand eleven feet tall and weigh one hundred and twenty pounds. Their skins are salmon pink, with exoskeletal plates over vital areas. They look alike even to me, and I've known more chirpsithtra, than most astronauts. I'd have thought that all humans would look alike to them.

  But a chirpsithtra astronaut recognized me across two hundred yards of the landing field at Mount Forel Spaceport. She called with the volume on her translator turned high. "Rick Schumann! Why have you closed the Draco Tavem?"

  I'd closed the place a month ago, for lack of customers. Police didn't want chirpsithtra wandering their streets, for fear of riots, and my human customers had stopped coming because the Draco was a chirpsithtra place. A month ago I'd thought I would never want to see a chirpsithtra again. Twenty-two years of knowing the fragile-looking aliens hadn't prepared me for three days of watching television.

  But the bad taste had died, and my days had turned dull, and my skill at the Lottl speech was growing rusty. I veered toward the alien, and called ahead of me in Lottl: "This is a temporary measure, until the death of Ktashisnif may grow small in many memories."

  We met on the wide, flat expanse of the blast pit. "Come, join me in my ship," said the chirpsithtra. "My meals-maker has a program for whiskey. What is this matter of Ktashisnif? I thought that was over and done with."

  She had programmed her ship's kitchen for whiskey. I was bemused. The chirpsithtra claim to have ruled the galaxy for untold generations. If they extended such a courtesy to every thinking organism they knew of, they'd need how many programs? Hundreds of millions?

  Of course it wasn't very good whiskey. And the air in the cabin was cold. And the walls and floor and ceiling were covered with green goo. And... what the hell. The alien brought me a dry pillow to ward my ass from the slimy green air-plant, and I drank bad whiskey and felt pretty good.

  "What is this matter of Ktashisnif?" she asked me. "A decision was rendered. Sentence was executed.

  What more need be, done?"

  "A lot of very vocal people think it was the wrong decision," I told her. "They also think the United Nations shouldn't have turned the kidnappers over to the chirpsithtra."

  "How could they not? The crime was committed against a chirpsithtra, Diplomat-by-Choice Ktashisnif.

  Three humans named Shrenk and one named Jackson did menace Ktashisnif here at Mount Forel Spaceport, did show her missile-firing weapons and did threaten to punch holes in her if she did not come with them. The humans did take her by airplane to New York City, where they concealed her while demanding money of the Port Authority for her return. None of this was denied by their lawyer, nor by the criminals themselves.

  "I remember." The week following the kidnapping had been hairy enough. Nobody knew the chirpsithtra well enough to be quite sure what they might do to Earth in reprisal. "I don't think the first chirpsithtra landing itself made bigger news," I said.

  "That seems unreasonable. I think humans may lack a sense of proportion."

  "Could be. We wondered if you'd pay off the ransom."

  s"In honor, we could not. Nor could we have allowed the United Nations to pay that price, if such had been possible, which it was not. Where would the United Nations find a million svith in chripsithtra trade markers?" The alien caressed two metal contacts with the long thumb of each hand. Sparks leapt, and she made a hissing sound. "Ssss... We wander from the subject. What quarrel could any sentient being have with our decision? It is not denied that Diplomat-by-Choice Ktashisnif died in the hands of the—" she used the human word "—kidnappers."

  "No."

  "Three days in agony, then death, a direct result of the actions of Jackson and the three Shrenks. They sought to hide in the swarming humanity of New York City. Ktashisnif was allergic to human beings, and the kidnappers had no allergy serum for her. These things are true."

  "True enough. But our courts wouldn't have charged them with murder by slow torture." In fact, a good lawyer might have gotten them off by arguing that a chirpsithtra wasn't human before the law. I didn't say so. I said, "Jackson and the Shrenk brothers probably didn't know about chirpsithtra allergies."

  "There are no accidents during the commission of a crime. Be reasonable. Next you will say that one who kills the wrong victim during an attempt at murder may claim that the death was an accident, that she should be set free to try again."

  "I am reasonable. All I want is for all of this to blow over so that I can open the Draco Tavern again." I sipped at the whiskey. "But there's no point in that until I can get some customers again. I wish you'd let the bastards plead guilty to a lesser sentence. For that matter, I wish you hadn't invited reporters in to witness the executions."

  She was disturbed now. "But such was your right, by ancient custom! Rick Schumann, are you not reassured to know that we did not inflict more pain on the criminals than they inflicted on Ktashisnif?"

  For three days the world had watched while chirpsithtra executioners smothered four men slowly to death. In some nations it had even been televised. "It was terrible publicity. Don't you, see, we don't do things like that. We've got laws against cruel and unusual punishment."

  "How do you deal with cruel and unusual crimes?"

  I shrugged.

  "Cruel and unusual crimes require cruel and unusual punishment. You humans lack a sense of proportion, Rick Schumann. Drink more whiskey?"

  She brushed her thumbs across the contacts and made a hissing sound. I drank more whiskey. Maybe it would improve my sense of proportion. It was going to be a long time before I opened the Draco Tavern again.

  Transfer of Power

  Alfred, Lord Dunsany had a seminal influence on fantasy fiction in America. More: he wrote good.

  Crime fiction devotees will remember his "Two Bottles of Relish" whether they want to or not. He was superb at writing vignettes: 1,000 to 2,000 word stories. It's difficult to fit the elements of a story into so short a length. I only recently got the hang of it myself.

  After a long night reading Dunsany stories set "at the edge of the world," I finally broke down and wrote one.

  There is a thing to keep in mind about the countries near the edge of the world. Fabulous beasts roam those places. Magic works, sometimes, which is typical of magic. A glimpse off the edge itself has been known to drive men mad. A few years in such an environment and one is ready to believe anything. The thing to remember—

  We'll get to that.

  Fifty-three men and eight women rode away from the edge of the world. They were a mixed group; that was obvious at a glance. Forty men were armed and armored; they rode on the outside. Thirteen men and eight women rode enclosed within
a moving picket fence of spears. They carried only eating-knives, and their horses were loaded with waterbags and provisions, and they were the better riders.

  Forty armored men bubbled over with good spirits. They joked among themselves, they reminisced, they told stories. They avoided the subject of a certain bloodless revolution, except that they sometimes forgot, and sometimes it was on purpose. The unarmed group said nothing, and their expressions varied between anger and despair, with one exception.

  Ex-King Sarol had lost his home and his status and his profession. He smiled gently as he rode away from the edge of the world, like a man lost in pleasant thoughts.

  At first Guppry was relieved. He'd had his transfer of power; all he wanted now was a smooth transition.

  The sooner Sarol and his hangers-on were over the border in Zarop-Opar, the better. Then he began to wonder what Sarol could have to smile at. Wondering, he pulled his horse up next to Sarol's.

  The ex-King came to himself with a slight start. Smiling, he asked, "Did you get a chance to go through the palace?"

  "Yes," Guppry said, and he stopped himself from adding, "Your Majesty." "It will serve us well enough."

  "It served five generations of us."

  "Not as a palace. It won't serve us as that," Guppry said. "Government is mainly parasitic on the people.

  Ours will be as small as possible, and we won't situate it on the heights. We'll make the palace a museum, or a storehouse, or both." He glanced sideways to see Sarol's reaction, and found none, and was annoyed. "I don't see why your great-great-grandfather built a palace right at the edge of the world," he said.

  "King Charl had his reasons," Sarol said tranquilly. "Don't you like the view?"

  The palace had been carved— by magic, or by enormous labor; that detail had been lost to time— into a granite knob that was the highest point in Halceen. it was part of the cliff that formed the world's edge.

  Bedrooms and breakfast nooks opened onto balconies at the edge, and one great open ballroom, and a door that King Sarol had had plainly labeled; but some of his predecessors had had a brutal sense of humor.