The Draco Tavern

by Larry Niven

  “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 Chirpsithra.

  “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 Chirpsithra. “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 than 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 Chirpsithra. 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 Chirpsithra souls?”

  “Yeah. But they spin a good yarn, don’t they?”

  GRAMMAR LESSON

  It was the most casual of remarks. It happened because one of my Chirpsithra customers shifted her chair as I was setting the sparker on her table. When I tried to walk away something tugged at my pants leg.

  “The leg of your chair has pinned my pants,” I told her in Lottl.

  She and her two companions chittered at each other. Chirpsithra laughter. She moved the chair. I walked away, somewhat miffed, wondering what had made her laugh at me.

  She stopped me when next I had occasion to pass her table. “Your pardon for my rudeness. You used intrinsic ‘you’ and ‘my,’ instead of extrinsic. As if your pants are part of you and my chair a part of me. I was taken by surprise.”

  “I’ve been studying Lottl for almost thirty years,” I answered, “but I don’t claim I’ve mastered it yet. After all, it is an alien language. There are peculiar variations even between human languages.”

  “We have noticed. ‘Pravda’ means ‘official truth.’ ‘Pueblo’ means ‘village, considered as a population.’ And all of your languages seem to use one possessive for all purposes. My arm, my husband, my mother,” she said, using the intrinsic “my” for her arm, the “my” of property for her husband, and the “my” of relationship for her mother.

  “I always get those mixed up,” I admitted. “Why, for instance, the possessive for your husband? Never mind,” I said hastily, before she could get angry. There was some big secret about the Chirpsithra males. You learned not to ask. “I don’t see the difference as being that important.”

  “It was important once,” she said. “There is a tale we teach every immature Chirpsithra....”

  By human standards, and by the Chirpsithra standards of the time, it was a mighty empire. Today the Chirpsithra rule the habitable worlds of every red dwarf star in the galaxy—or so they claim. Then, their empire was a short segment of one curving arm of the galactic whirlpool. But it had never been larger.

  The Chirpsithra homeworld had circled a red dwarf sun. Such stars are as numerous as all other stars put together. The Chirpsithra worlds numbered in the tens of thousands, yet they were not enough. The empire expanded outward and inward. Finally—it was inevitable—it met another empire.

  “The knowledge that thinking beings come in many shapes, this knowledge was new to us,” said my customer. Her face was immobile; built like a voodoo mask scaled down. No hope of reading expression there. But she spoke depreciatingly. “The Ilwan were short and broad, with lumpy gray skins. Their hands were clumsy, their noses long and mobile and dexterous. We found them unpleasantly homely. Perhaps they thought the same of us.”

  So there was war from the start, a war in which six worlds and many fleets of spacecraft died before ever the Ilwan and the Chirpsithra tried to talk to each other.

  Communication was the work of computer programmers of both species. The diplomats got into it later. The problem was simple and basic.

  The Ilwan wanted to keep expanding. The Chirpsithra were in the way.

  Both species had evolved for red dwarf sunlight. They used worlds of about one terrestrial mass, a little colder, with oxygen atmospheres.

  “A war of extermination seemed likely,” said the Chirpsithra. She brushed her thumbs along the contacts of the sparker, once and again. Her speech slowed, became more precise. “We made offers, of course. A vacant region to be established between the two empires; each could expand along the opposite border. This would have favored the Ilwan, as they were nearer the star-crowded galactic core. They would not agree. When they were sure that we would not vacate their worlds ...” She used the intrinsic possessive, and paused to be sure I’d seen the point.

  “They broke off communication. They resumed their attacks.

  “It became our task to learn more of the Ilwan. It was difficult. We could hardly send disguised spies!” Her companions chittered at that. She said, “We learned Ilwan physiology from captured warriors. We learned depressing things. The Ilwan bred faster than we did; their empire included thrice the volume of ours. Beyond that the prisoners would not give information. We did our best to make them comfortable, in the hope that some day there would be a prisoner exchange. That was how we learned the Ilwan secret.

  “Rick Schumann, do you know that we evolved on a one-face world?”

  “I don’t know the term,” I said.

  “And you have spoken Lottl for thirty years!” Her companions chittered. “But you will appreciate that the worlds we need huddle close to their small, cool suns. Else they would not be warm enough to hold liquid water. So close are they that tidal forces generally stop their rotation, so that they always turn one face to the sun, as your moon faces Earth.”

  “I’d think that all the water would freeze across the night side. The air too.”

  “No, there is circulation. Hot winds rise on the day side and blow to the night side, and cool, and sink, and the cold winds blow across the surface back to the day side. On the surface a hurricane blows always toward the noon pole.”

  “I think I get the picture. You wouldn’t need a compass on a one-face world. The wind always points in the same direction.”

  “Half true. There are local variations. But there are couplet worlds too. Around a red dwarf sun the planetary system tends to cluster close. Often enough, world-sized bodies orbit one another. For tidal reasons they face each other; they do not face the sun. Five percent of habitable worlds are found in couplets.”

  “The Ilwan came from one of those?”

/>   “You are alert. Yes. Our Ilwan prisoners were most uncomfortable until we shut their air-conditioning almost off. They wanted darkness to sleep, and the same temperatures all the time. The conclusion was clear. We found that the worlds they had attacked in the earlier stages of the war were couplet worlds.”

  “That seems simple enough.”

  “One would think so. The couplet worlds are not that desirable to us. We find their weather dull, insipid. There is a way to make the weather more interesting on a couplet world, but we were willing to give them freely.

  “But the Ilwan fought on. They would not communicate. We could not tolerate their attacks on our ships and on our other worlds.” She took another jolt of current. “Ssss ... We needed a way to bring them to the conference arena.”

  “What did you do?”

  “We began a program of evacuating couplet worlds wherever the Ilwan ships came near.”

  I leaned back in my chair: a high chair, built to bring my face to the height of a Chirpsithra face. “I must be confused. That sounds like a total surrender.”

  “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 Ilwan 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 Ilwan should have evolved on the more common one-face worlds. Or should they? The couplets sounded more hospitable to life.

  “We were lucky,” the Chirpsithra agreed, “that time. We were lucky in our language. Suppose we had used the same word for my head, my credit cards, my sister? Chirpsithra 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 Chirpsithra 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 Chirpsithra. 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.

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

  I was putting glasses in the dishwasher when some chirps walked in with three Glig in tow. You didn’t see many Glig in the Draco Tavern. They were gray and compact beings, proportioned like a human linebacker, much shorter than the Chirpsithra. They wore furs against Earth’s cold, fur patterned in three tones of green, quite pretty.

  It was the first time I’d seen the Silent Stranger react to anything.

  He was sitting alone at the bar, as usual. He was forty or so, burly and fit, with thick black hair on his head and his arms. He’d been coming in once or twice a week for at least a year. He never talked to anyone, except me, and then only to order; he’d drink alone, and leave at the end of the night in a precarious rolling walk. Normal enough for the average bar, but not for the Draco.

  I have to keep facilities for a score of aliens. Liquors for humans; sparkers for chirps; flavored absolute alcohol for Thtopar; spongecake soaked in a cyanide solution, and I keep a damn close watch on that; lumps of what I’ve been calling green kryptonite, and there’s never been a Rosyfin in here to call for it. My customers don’t tend to be loud, but the sound of half a dozen species in conversation is beyond imagination, doubled or tripled because they’re all using translating widgets. I need some pretty esoteric soundproofing.

  All of which makes the Draco expensive to run. I charge twenty bucks a drink, and ten for sparkers, and so forth. Why would anyone come in here to drink in privacy? I’d wondered about the Silent Stranger.

  Then three Glig came in, and the Silent Stranger turned his chair away from the bar, but not before I saw his face.

  Gail was already on her way to the big table where the Glig and the chirps were taking seats, so that was okay. I left the dishwasher half filled. I leaned across the bar and spoke close to the Silent Stranger’s ear.

  “It’s almost surprising, how few fights we get in here.”

  He didn’t seem to know I was there.

  I said, “I’ve only seen six in thirty-two years. Even then, nobody got badly hurt. Except once. Some nut, human, tried to shoot a Chirp, and a Thtopar had to crack his skull. Of course the Thtopar didn’t know how hard to hit him. I sometimes wish I’d gotten there faster.”

  He turned just enough to look me in the eye. I said, “I saw your face. I don’t know what you’ve got against the Glig, but if you think you’re ready to kill them, I think I’m ready to stop you. Have a drink on the house instead.”

  He said, “The correct name is Gligstith(click)optok.”

  “That’s pretty good. I never get the click right.”

  “It should be good. I was on the first embassy ship to Gligstith(click)tcharf.” Bitterly, “There won’t be any fight. I can’t even punch a Glig in the face without making the evening news. It’d all come out.”

  Gail came back with orders: sparkers for the chirps, and the Glig wanted bull shots, consommé, and vodka, with no ice and no flavorings. They were sitting in the high chairs that bring a human face to the level of a Chirp’s, and their strange hands were waving wildly. I filled the orders with half an eye on the Stranger, who watched me with a brooding look, and I got back to him as soon as I could.

  He asked, “Ever wonder why there wasn’t any second embassy to Gligstith(click)tcharf?”

  “Not especially.”

  “Why not?”

  I shrugged. For two million years there wasn’t anything in the universe but us and the gods. Then came the chirps. Then bang, a dozen others, and news of thousands more. We’re learning so much from the chirps themselves, and, of course, there’s culture shock ...

  He said, “You know what we brought back. The gligs sold us some advanced medical and agricultural techniques, including templates for the equipment. The chirps couldn’t have done that for us. They aren’t DNA-based. Why didn’t we go back for more?”

  “You tell me.”

  He seemed to brace himself. “I will, then. You serve them in here, you should know about them. Build yourself a drink, on me.”

  I built two scotch and sodas. I asked, “Did you say sold? What did we pay them? That didn’t make the news.”

  “It better not. Hell, where do I start? ... The first thing they did when we landed, they gave us a full medical checkup. Very professional. Blood samples, throat scrapings, little nicks in our ears, deep-radar for our innards. We didn’t object. Why should we? The Glig are DNA-BASED. We could have been carrying bacteria that could live off them.

  “Then we did the tourist bit. I was having the time of my life! I’d never been further than the Moon. To be in an alien star system, exploring their cities, oh, man! We were all having a ball. We made speeches. We asked about other races. The chirps may claim to own the galaxy, but they don’t know everything. There are places they can’t go except in special suits, because they grew up around red dwarf stars.”

  “I know.”

  “The Glig sun is hotter than Sol. We did most of our traveling at night. We went through museums, with cameras following us. Public conferences. We recorded the one on art forms; maybe you saw it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Months of that. Then they wanted us to record a permission for reproduction rights. For
that they would pay us a royalty, and sell us certain things on credit against the royalties.” He gulped hard at his drink. “You’ve seen all of that. The medical deep-radar, that does what an X-ray does without giving you cancer, and the cloning techniques to grow organ transplants, and the cornucopia plant, and all the rest. And of course, we were all for giving them their permission right away.

  “Except, do you remember Bill Hersey? He was a reporter and a novelist before he joined the expedition. He wanted details. Exactly what rights did the Glig want? Would they be selling permissions to other species? Were there groups like libraries or institutes for the blind, that got them free? And they told us. They didn’t have anything to hide.”

  His eyes went to the Glig, and mine followed his. They looked ready for another round. The most human thing about the Glig was their hands, and their hands were disconcerting. Their palms were very short and their fingers were long, with an extra joint. As if a torturer had cut a human palm between the finger bones, almost to the wrist. Those hands and the wide mouths and the shark’s array of teeth. Maybe I’d already guessed.

  “Clones,” said the Silent Stranger. “They took clones from our tissue samples. The Glig grow clones from almost a hundred DNA-based life forms. They wanted us for their dinner tables, not to mention their classes in exobiology. You know, they couldn’t see why we were so upset.”

  “I don’t see why you signed.”

  “Well, they weren’t growing actual human beings. They wanted to grow livers and muscle tissue and marrow without the bones ... you know, meat. Even af-f-f—” He had the shakes. A long pull at his scotch and soda stopped that, and he said, “Even a full suckling roast would be grown headless. But the bottom line was that if we didn’t give our permissions, there would be pirate editions, and we wouldn’t get any royalties. Anyway, we signed. Bill Hersey hanged himself after we came home.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I built us two more drinks, strong, on the house. Looking back on it, that was my best answer anyway. We touched glasses and drank deep, and he said, “It’s a whole new slant on the War of the Worlds. The man-eating monsters are civilized, they’re cordial, they’re perfect hosts. Nobody gets slaughtered, and think what they’re saving on transportation costs! And ten thousand Glig carved me up for dinner tonight. The UN made about half a cent per.”