The Draco Tavern

by Larry Niven

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  Tor Books by Larry Niven

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Introduction

  THE SUBJECT IS CLOSED

  GRAMMAR LESSON

  ASSIMILATING OUR CULTURE, THAT’S WHAT THEY’RE DOING!

  THE SCHUMANN COMPUTER

  THE GREEN MARAUDER

  THE REAL THING

  WAR MOVIE

  LIMITS

  TABLE MANNERS*

  ONE NIGHT AT THE DRACO TAVERN

  THE HEIGTS

  THE WISDOM OF DEMONS

  SMUT TALK

  SSOROGHOD’S PEOPLE

  THE MISSING MASS

  THE CONVERGENCE OF THE OLD MIMD

  CHRYSALIS

  THE DEATH ADDICT

  STORM FRONT

  THE SLOW ONES

  CRUEL AND UNUSUAL

  THE ONES WHO STAY HOME

  BREEDING MAZE

  PLAYHOUSE

  DAY ZERO

  DAY ONE

  DAY TWO

  DAY THREE

  DAY FIVE

  DAY NINE

  DAY TEN

  DAY THIRTY-ONE

  LOST

  LOSING MARS

  PLAYGROUND EARTH

  Praise for The Draco Tavern

  “There are wise elder races and there are scamsters and folks who raise interesting questions. In some ways, the object-lesson stories remind one of pundits’ political columns.... Thought provoking.”

  —San Diego Union-Tribune

  “Brilliant ... These stories are best taken a few at a time to savor their inventiveness.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Reads more like an episodic novel ... There’s joy and sadness and everything in between in these stories—which seem to have been devised as vehicles for Niven to explore a wide variety of ideas and also happen to be about what it means to be human. One of the ways in which we learn about who we are is to see what we are not, and in this book there are many examples of what humans are not.”

  —Romantic Times BookReviews

  Praise for Ringworld’s Children

  “An involving and engrossing addition to one of science fiction’s grand sagas.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Niven’s world has an inner logic grounded in science.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “It’s a pleasure to be back on the largest structure in known space. How can you not be excited about a book like this?”

  —SFRevu.com

  “A sense of wonder in a fantastic landscape.”

  —Amazing Stories

  Tor Books by Larry Niven

  N-Space

  Playgrounds of the Mind

  Rainbow Mars

  Scatterbrain

  The Draco Tavern

  Ringworld’s Children

  WITH STEVEN BARNES

  Achilles’ Choice

  The Descent of Anansi

  Saturn’s Race

  WITH JERRY POURNELLE AND STEVEN BARNES

  Destiny’s Road

  Beowulf’s Children

  WITH BRENDA COOPER

  Building Harlequin’s Moon

  WITH EDWARD M. LERNER

  Fleet of Worlds*

  *Forthcoming

  NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE DRACO TAVERN

  Copyright © 2006 by Larry Niven

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN- 13: 978-0-7653-4771-8 ISBN- 10: 0-7653-4771-7

  First Edition: January 2006

  First Mass Market Edition: December 2006

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Introduction. Copyright © 2006 by Larry Niven

  The Subject Is Closed. Copyright © 1977, 1979 by Larry Niven

  Grammar Lesson. Copyright © 1977, 1979 by Larry Niven Assimilating Our Culture, That’s What They’re Doing! Copyright © 1979 by Larry Niven

  The Schumann Computer. Copyright © 1979 by Larry Niven

  The Green Marauder. Copyright © 1979, 1980 by Larry Niven

  The Real Thing. Copyright © 1981 in German; copyright © 1982, 1990 in English by Larry Niven

  War Movie. Copyright © 1981, 1984 by Larry Niven

  Limits. Copyright 1981, 1984 by Larry Niven

  Table Manners (originally published as “Folk Tale”). Copyright © 1984, 1985 by Larry Niven

  One Night at the Draco Tavern. Copyright © 1991 by Larry Niven

  The Heights. Copyright © 2001, 2006 by Larry Niven

  The Wisdom of Demons. Copyright © 2000, 2006 by Larry Niven

  Smut Talk. Copyright © 2000, 2006 by Larry Niven

  Ssoroghod’s People. Copyright © 2001, 2006 by Larry Niven

  The Missing Mass. Copyright © 2000, 2006 by Larry Niven

  The Convergence of the Old Mind. Copyright © 2002, 2006 by Larry Niven

  Chrysalis. Copyright © 2002, 2006 by Larry Niven

  The Death Addict. Copyright © 2003, 2006 by Larry Niven

  Storm Front. Copyright © 2004, 2006 by Larry Niven

  The Slow Ones. Copyright © 2006 by Larry Niven

  Cruel and Unusual. Copyright © 1977, 1979 by Larry Niven

  The Ones Who Stay Home. Copyright © 2003, 2006 by Larry Niven

  Breeding Maze. Copyright © 2006 by Larry Niven

  Playhouse. Copyright © 2006 by Larry Niven

  Lost. Copyright © 2006 by Larry Niven

  Losing Mars. Copyright © 2006 by Larry Niven

  Playground Earth. Copyright © 2006 by Larry Niven

  I have been writing these stories

  nearly as long as we have been married.

  This book is for Marilyn.

  INTRODUCTION

  When I dreamed up the Draco Tavern, my intent was to deal with questions of a certain type.

  I’m a science fiction writer, after all. I’m supposed to be able to deal with questions of huge import. In addition, I’m good at vignettes and I wanted to get better. I wanted a format in which to deal with the simplest, most universal questions. God. Intelligent predators and prey. Sex, gender, reproduction. War. Human destiny. Species survival. Immortality. Ultimate computers. The destiny of the universe. Interspecies commerce. How alien minds think and how to cope with that and them.

  The interspecies gathering place is not a new concept, but a hoary old tradition, much older than the Mos Eisley Spaceport bar. I decided I could make it fit.

  DRACO TAVERN HISTORY

  For most of the stories, assume that the Tavern is roughly thirty years old, and the date is in the 2030s.

  At some near-future date—say two years from whenever you’re reading any given story—a tremendous spacecraft arrived and took up orbit around Earth’s Moon. Smaller boats, landers, came down along the lines of Earth’s magnetic field, near the North Pole. It’s something about how the motors work. (Maybe they looked Antarctica over too, but nobody came there to talk.) They set up
their permanent spaceport at Mount Forel in Siberia.

  Negotiations with the United Nations got them certain concessions. A few people grew conspicuously rich from the secrets they learned from talking to aliens. Siberia and the UN had to restrict access to Mount Forel and create subsystems to support both alien and human visitors. A town grew up around Mount Forel.

  Rick Schumann grew rich from a Chirpsithra secret. He then established a tavern able to serve various species of visiting alien. Over the years and decades since, the Tavern expanded its size and its capabilities.

  The Tavern features huge storage facilities; foodstuffs and drinkstuffs for a growing number of species, kept carefully categorized; floating tables, when needed; high chairs if a short species wants face-to-face with a Chirp; privacy shields (to throttle sounds leaking across the border around any table); universal translators (which will turn out to be intelligent minds themselves, if I ever get around to writing the story); a variety of toilets (never yet described); universal plugs for computers and other human and alien machinery; and whatever else I think of. In stories set earlier, the Tavern is smaller and more primitive.

  The only face always to be seen at the Draco Tavern is Rick Schumann’s.

  Rick’s service staff are usually scientists of various kinds, often anthropologists. (There’s no better way to learn what a human being is than by studying what we are not.) When they’ve learned enough, they go off and publish, or they found a business based on what they’ve learned. Mount Forel isn’t a center of culture, after all, not a place to stay forever. Except to Rick.

  Human visitors may be scientists of great variety, astronauts (whose ships are Chirpsithra-designed), media (under heavy restriction), workers from Mount Forel Spaceport, or anyone who can talk his way in.

  The ships come and go. They move at just less than lightspeed. Probably no individual alien will be seen more than once in this century. A few species do regularly show up in the background:

  Chirpsithra or Chirps are the crew and the builders of interstellar spacecraft. Not everything is known about the Chirpsithra; they keep many secrets. They evolved on a world orbiting close to a red dwarf star. Half the stars in the galaxy are red dwarves, and most of their worlds are claimed by the Chirpsithra. When a Chirp says that the Chirpsithra own the galaxy, she means those; she doesn’t mean Earth.

  Chirpsithra claim to be billions of years civilized (that is, capable of space travel).

  The only sin they’ve exposed in public is the sparker: a device that sends current between a Chirpsithra’s digits. It makes them appear drunk. Rick keeps lots of sparkers around for them.

  Their language: Lottl.

  They all look pretty much alike, except for some very old (not so evolved) individuals. They’re salmon red, exoskeletal like lobsters; they stand eleven feet tall and weigh one hundred and twenty pounds. The elderly are shorter, with a graying shell; see “The Green Marauder.” They’re all female. Nothing is known about the males, though it seems clear they exist.

  Gligstith(click)optok are gray and compact beings skilled at biological sciences. Dealing with them is chancy: see “Assimilating Our Culture” and “The Wisdom of Demons.”

  Folk look something like wolves with their heads on upside down. (Their world never evolved predator birds.) Socially they’re hunters, and great travelers. Rick hunted with them in “Folk Tale.”

  There are others. New aliens appear in almost every story.

  Many aliens need environment gear. Some of the tables offer minimal protection, an altered atmosphere, different lighting. For some customers that’s sufficient. Some need full body armor, or rolling fishbowls, etc. Chirps don’t need anything but ruby sunglasses. Any life-form’s ideal environment (including food and drink; see “The Real Thing”) can be described by five symbols. For humans it’s “Tee tee hatch nex ool,” written as Tr#, and I don’t know what the other symbols look like.

  Beyond this, I hope the stories will speak for themselves.

  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 Chirpsithra; 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 Chirpsithra guide.

  I watched him invite himself to join a trio of Chirpsithra. 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 Chirpsithra 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 Chirpsithra?” 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 Chirpsithra 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 Chirpsithra 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 elders seem to be just ignoring the Chirpsithra. 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 Chirpsithra 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 Chirpsithra 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? Chirpsithra 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 sta
gnant, 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.