Tales From the Spaceport Bar

by George H. Scithers

  Three chirpsithtra were just coming in. One was in a floating couch with life-support equipment attached.

  "I thought they all looked alike,” he said.

  I said, "I’ve had chirpsithtra in here for close to thirty years, but I can’t tell them apart. They’re all perfect physical specimens, after all, by their own standards. I never saw one like that.”

  I gave him his espresso, then put three sparkers on a tray and went to the chirpsithtra table.

  Two were exactly like any other chirpsithtra: eleven feet tall, dressed in pouched belts and their own salmon-colored exoskeletons, and very much at their ease. The chirps claim to have settled the entire Galaxy long ago-meaning the useful planets, the tidally locked oxygen worlds that happen to circle close around cool red-dwarf suns—and they act like the reigning queens of wherever they happen to be. But the two seemed to defer to the third. She was a foot shorter than they were. Her exoskeleton was as clearly artificial as dentures: alloplastic bone worn on the outside. Tubes ran under the edges from the equipment in her floating couch. Her skin between the plates was more gray than red. Her head turned slowly as I came up. She studied me, bright-eyed with interest.

  I asked, "Sparkers?” as if chirpsithtra ever ordered anything else.

  One of the others said, "Yes. Serve the ethanol mix of your choice to yourself and the other native. Will you join us?”

  I waved Noyes over, and he came at the jump. He pulled up one of the high chairs I keep around to put a human face on a level with a chirpsithtra’s. I went for another espresso and a Scotch-and-Soda and (catching a soft imperative hoot from the far-silshree) ajar of yellow paste. When I returned they were deep in conversation.

  "Rick Shumann,” Noyes cried, "meet Ftaxanthir and Hrofilliss and Chorrikst. Chorrikst tells me she’s nearly two billion years old!”

  I heard the doubt beneath his delight. The chirpsithtra could be the greatest liars in the universe, and how would we ever know? Earth didn’t even have interstellar probes when the chirps came.

  Chorrikst spoke slowly, in a throaty whisper, but her translator box was standard: voice a little flat, pronunciation perfect. "I have circled the Galaxy numberless times, and taped the tales of my travels for funds to feed my wanderlust. Much of my life has been Spent at the edge of lightspeed, under relativistic time-compression. So you see, I am not nearly so old as all that.”

  I pulled up another high chair. "You must have seen wonders beyond counting,” I said. Thinking: My God, a short chirpsithtra! Maybe ifs true. She’s a different color, too, and her fingers are shorter. Maybe the species has actually changed since she was born!

  She nodded slowly. "Life never bores. Always there is change. In the time I have been gone, Saturn’s ring has been pulled into separate rings, making it even more magnificent. What can have done that? Tides from the moons? And Earth has changed beyond recognition.”

  Noyes spilled a little of his coffee. "You were here? When?”

  "Earth’s air was methane and ammonia and oxides of nitrogen and carbon. The natives had sent messages across interstellar space... directing them toward yellow suns, of course, but one of our ships passed through a beam, and so we established contact. We had to wear life support,” she rattled on, while Noyes and I sat with our jaws hanging, "and the gear was less comfortable then. Our spaceport was a floating platform, because quakes were frequent and violent. But it was worth it. Their cities—”

  Noyes said, "Just a minute. Cities? We’ve never dug up any trace of nonhuman cities!”

  Chorrikst looked at him. "After seven hundred and eighty million years, I should think not. Besides, they lived in the offshore shallows in an ocean that was already mildly salty. If the quakes spared them, their tools and their cities still deteriorated rapidly. Their lives were short too, but their memories were inherited. Death and change were accepted facts for them, more than for most intelligent species. Their works of philosophy gained great currency among my people, and spread to other species too.”

  Noyes wrestled with his instinct for tact and good manners, and won. "How? How could anything have evolved that far? The Earth didn’t even have an oxygen atmosphere! Life was just getting started, there weren’t even trilobites!”

  "They had evolved for as long as you have,” Chorrikst said with composure. "Life began on Earth one and a half billion years ago. There were organic chemicals in abundance, from passage of lightning, through the reducing atmosphere. Intelligence evolved, and presently built an impressive civilization. They lived slowly, of course. Their biochemistry was less energetic. Communication was difficult. They were not stupid, only slow. I visited Earth three times, and each time they had made more progress.”

  Almost against his will, Noyes asked, "What did they look like?”

  "Small and soft and fragile, much more so than yourselves. I cannot say they were pretty, but I grew to like them. I would toast them according to your customs,” she said. "They wrought beauty in their cities and beauty in their philosophies, and their works are in our libraries still. They will not be forgotten.”

  She touched her sparker, and so did her younger companions. Current flowed between her two claws, through her nervous system. She said, "Sssss...”

  ' I raised my glass, and nudged Noyes with my elbow. We drank to our predecessors. Noyes lowered his cup and asked, "What happened to them?”

  "They sensed worldwide disaster coming,” Chorrikst said, "and they prepared; but they thought it would be quakes. They built cities to float on the ocean surface, and lived in the undersides. They never noticed the green scum growing in certain tidal pools. By the time they knew the danger, the green scum was everywhere. It used photosynthesis to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen, and the raw oxygen killed whatever it touched, leaving fertilizer to feed the green scum.

  "The world was dying when we learned of the problem. What could we do against a photosynthesis-using scum growing beneath a yellow-white star? There was nothing in chirpsithtra libraries that would help. We tried, of course, but we were unable to stop it. The sky had turned an admittedly lovely transparent blue, and the tide pools were green, and the offshore cities were crumbling before we gave up the fight. There was an attempt to transplant some of the natives to a suitable world;

  but biorhythm upset ruined their mating habits. I have not been back since, until now.”

  The depressing silence was broken by Chorrikst herself. "Well, the Earth is greatly changed, and of course your own evolution began with the green plague. I have heard tales of humanity from my companions. Would you tell me something of your lives?”

  And we spoke of humankind, but I couldn’t seem to find much enthusiasm for it. The anaerobic life that survived the advent of photosynthesis includes gangrene and botulism and not much else. I wondered what Chorrikst would find when next she came, and whether she would have reason to toast our memory.

  About the Draco Tavern series, Niven remarks: "I wanted a vehicle for dealing with basic, easily described philosophical questions. I like writing vignettes. And I like multispecies bar stories: the ambiance, the decor, the funny chemicals....

  "I found it all in the Draco Tavern. The chirpsithtra in particular claim to own the Galaxy and to have been civilized for billions of years. On that basis they will have solved any general philosophical puzzle long ago.

  "With 'The Green Marauder,’ I tried to give an intuitive sense of the drastic manner in which photosynthetic life changed the world. I think I succeeded. I’m proud of this story.

  "Was there intelligent life on Earth before the green marauder came? The way to bet is that there wasn’t, but you can’t prove it.”

  DON’T LOOK NOW

  by Henry Kuttner

  "—but he did stop writing science fiction rather

  suddenly, didn’t he?”

  The man in the brown suit was looking at himself in the mirror behind the bar. The reflection seemed to interest him even more deeply than the drink between his hands. He was pa
ying only perfunctory attention to Lyman’s attempts at conversation. This had been going on for perhaps fifteen minutes before he finally lifted his glass and took a deep swallow.

  "Don’t look now,” Lyman said.

  The brown-suited man slid his eyes sidewise toward Lyman, tilted his glass higher, and took another swig. Ice cubes slipped down toward his mouth. He put the glass back on the red-brown wood and signaled for a refill. Finally he took a deep breath and looked at Lyman.

  "Don’t look at what?” he asked.

  "There was one sitting right beside you,” Lyman said, blinking rather glazed eyes. "He just went out. You mean you couldn’t see him?”

  The brown-suited man finished paying for his fresh drink before he answered. "See who?” he asked, with a fine mixture of boredom, distaste, and reluctant interest. "Who went out?”

  "What have I been telling you for the last ten minutes? Weren’t you listening?”

  "Certainly I was listening. That is—certainly. You were talking about—bathtubs. Radios. Orson—”

  "Not Orson. H. G. Herbert George. With Orson it was just a gag. H. G. knew—or suspected. I wonder if it was simply intuition with him? He couldn’t have had any proof—but he did stop writing science fiction rather suddenly, didn’t he? I’ll bet he knew once, though.”

  "Knew what?”

  "About the Martians. All this won’t do us a bit of good if you don’t listen. It may not anyway. The trick is to jump the gun—with proof. Convincing evidence. Nobody’s ever been allowed to produce the evidence before. You are a reporter, aren’t you?” Holding his glass, the man in the brown suit nodded reluctantly.

  "Then you ought to be taking it all down on a piece of folded paper. I want everybody to know. The whole world. It’s important. Terribly important. It explains everything. My life won’t be safe unless I can pass along the information and make people believe it.”

  "Why won’t your life be safe?”

  "Because of the Martians, you fool. They own the world.”

  The man in brown sighed. "Then they own my newspaper, too,” he objected, "so I can’t print anything they don’t like.”

  "I never thought of that,” Lyman said, considering the bottom of his glass, where two ice cubes had fused into a cold, immutable union. 'They’re not omnipotent, though. I’m sure they’re vulnerable, or why have they always kept under cover? They’re afraid of being found out. If the world had convincing evidence—look, people always believe what they read in the newspapers. Couldn’t you—”

  "Ha,” said the man in brown with deep significance.

  Lyman drummed sadly on the bar and murmured, "There must be some way. Perhaps if I had another drink..... ”

  The brown-suited man tasted his Collins, which seemed to stimulate him. "Just what is all this about Martians?” he asked Lyman. "Suppose you start at the beginning and tell me again. Or can’t you remember?”

  "Of course I can remember. I’ve got practically total recall. It’s something new. Very new. I never could do it before. I can even remember my last conversation with the Martians.” Lyman favored the man in brown with a glance of triumph.

  "When was that?”

  "This morning.”

  "I can even remember conversations I had last week,” the brown-suited man said mildly. "So what?”

  "You don’t understand. They make us forget, you see. They tell us what to do and we forget about the conversation—it’s post-hypnotic suggestion, I expect—but we follow their orders just the same. There’s the compulsion, though we think we’re making our own decisions. Oh, they own the world, all right, but nobody knows it except me.”

  "And how did you find out?”

  "Well, I got my brain scrambled, in a way. I’ve been fooling around with supersonic detergents, trying to work out something marketable, you know. The gadget went wrong—from some standpoints. High-frequency waves, it was. They went through and through me. Should have been inaudible, but I could hear them, or rather—well, actually I could see them. That’s what I mean about my brain being scrambled. And after that, I could see and hear the Martians. They’ve geared themselves so they work efficiently on ordinary brains, and mine isn’t ordinary anymore. They can’t hypnotize me, either. They can command me, but I needn’t obey—now. I hope they don’t suspect. Maybe they do. Yes, I guess they do.”

  "How can you tell?”

  "The way they look at me.”

  "How do they look at you?” asked the man in brown, as he began to reach for a pencil and then changed his mind. He took a drink instead. "Well? What are they like?”

  "I’m not sure. I can see them, all right, hut only when they’re dressed up.”

  "Okay, okay,” the brown-suited man said patiently. "How do they look, dressed up?”

  "Just like anybody, almost. They dress up in—in human skins. Oh, not real ones, imitations. Like the Katzenjammer Kids zipped into crocodile suits. Undressed—I don’t know. I’ve never seen one. Maybe they’re invisible even to me, then, or maybe they’re just camouflaged. Ants or owls or rats or bats or—”

  "Or anything,” the man in brown said hastily. "Thanks. Or anything, of course. But when they’re dressed up like humans—like that one who was sitting next to you a while ago, when I told you not to look—”

  'That one was invisible, I gather?”

  "Most of the time they are,.to everybody. But once in a while, for some reason, they—”

  "Wait,” the man in brown objected. "Make sense, will you? They dress up in human skins and then sit around invisible?”

  "Only now and then. The human skins are perfectly good imitations. Nobody can tell the difference. It’s that third eye that gives them away. When they keep it closed, you’d never guess it was there. When they want to open it, they go invisible—like that. Fast. When I see somebody with a third eye, right in the middle of his forehead, I know he’s a

  Martian and invisible, and I pretend not to notice him.”

  "Uh-huh,” the brown-suited man said. "Then for all you know, I’m one of your visible Martians.”

  "Oh, I hope not!” Lyman regarded him anxiously. "Drunk as I am, I don’t think so. I’ve been trailing you all day, making sure. It’s a risk I have to take, of course. They’ll go to any length—any length at all—to make a man give himself away. I realize that. I can’t really trust anybody. But I had to find someone to talk to, and I—” He paused. There was a brief silence. "I could be wrong,” Lyman said presently. "When the third eye’s closed, I can’t tell if it’s there. Would you mind opening your third eye for me?” He fixed a dim gaze on the brown-suited man’s forehead.

  "Sorry,” the reporter said. "Some other time. Besides, I don’t know you. So you want me to splash this across the front page, I gather? Why didn’t you go to see the managing editor? My stories have to get past the desk and rewrite.”

  "I want to give my secret to the world,” Lyman said stubbornly. "The question is, how far will I get? You’d expect they’d have killed me the minute I opened my mouth to you—except that I didn’t say anything while they were here'. I don’t believe they take us very seriously, you know. This must have been going on since the dawn of history, and by now they’ve had time to get careless. They let Fort go pretty far before they cracked down on him. But you notice they were careful never to let Fort get hold of genuine proof that would convince people.”

  The man in brown said something under his breath about a human-interest story in a box. He asked, "What do the Martians do, besides hang around bars all dressed up?”

  "I’m still working on that,” Lyman said. "It isn’t easy to understand. They run the world, of Course, but why?” He wrinkled his brow and stared appealingly at the brown-suited man. "Why?”

  "If they do run it, they’ve got a lot to explain.”

  "That’s what I mean. From our viewpoint, there’s no sense to it. We do things illogically, but only because they tell us to. Everything we do, almost, is pure illogic. Poe’s Imp of the Perverse—y
ou could give it another name beginning with M. Martian, I mean. It’s all very well for psychologists to explain why a murderer wants to confess, but it’s still an illogical reaction. Unless a Martian commands him to.”

  "You can’t be hypnotized into doing anything that violates your moral sense,” the man in brown said triumphantly.

  Lyman frowned. "Not by another human, but you can by a Martian. I expect they got the upper hand when we didn’t have more than ape-brains, and they’ve kept it ever since. They evolved as we did, and kept a step ahead. Like the sparrow on the eagle’s back who hitchhiked till the eagle reached his ceiling, and then took off and broke the altitude record. They conquered the world, but nobody ever knew it. And they’ve been ruling ever since.”

  "But—”

  "Take houses, for example. Uncomfortable things. Ugly, inconvenient, dirty, everything wrong with them. But when men like Frank Lloyd Wright slip out from under the Martians’ thumb long enough to suggest something better, look how the people react. They hate the thought.' That’s their Martians, giving them orders.”

  "Look. Why should the Martians care what kind of houses we live in? Tell me that.”

  Lyman frowned. "I don’t like the note of skepticism I detect creeping into this conversation,” he announced. "They care, all right. No doubt about it. They live in our houses. We don’t build for our convenience, we build, under order, for the Martians, the way they want it. They’re very much concerned with everything we do. And the more senseless, the more concern.

  "Take wars. Wars don’t make sense from any human viewpoint. Nobody really wants wars. But

  we go right on having them. From the Martian viewpoint, they’re useful. They give us a spurt in technology, and they reduce the excess population. And there are lots of other results, too. Colonization, for one thing. But mainly technology. In peacetime, if a guy invents jet propulsion, it’s too expensive to develop commercially. In wartime, though, it’s got to be developed. Then the Martians can use it whenever they want. They use us the way they’d use tools or—or limbs. And nobody ever really wins a war—except the Martians.”