The Draco Tavern

by Larry Niven

  Three years of that, and then the public was barred from the Folk hunting ground. Intra World Cable sued, citing the public’s right-to-know. They lost. Certain guest species would leave Earth, and others would kill, to protect their privacy.

  Intra World Cable would have killed to air this film.

  The sunset colors were fading from the sky ... still a Mojave desert sky, though the land was an alien meadow with patches of forest around it. Grass stood three feet tall in places, dark green verging on black. Alien trees grew bent, as if before a ferocious wind; but they bent in different directions.

  Four creatures grazed near a stream. None of the Folk were in view.

  “The Folk don’t give a damn about privacy,” B-beam said. “It’s pack thinking, maybe. They don’t mind our taking pictures. I don’t think they’d mind our broadcasting everything we’ve got, worldwide. It was all the noisy news helicopters that bothered them. Once we realized that, we negotiated. Now there’s one Xenobiology Department lifter and some cameras around the fences.”

  The creatures might have been gazelles with ambitions to become giraffes, but the mouths and eyes and horns gave them away.

  Alien. The horns were big and gaudy, intricately curved and intertwined, quite lovely and quite useless, for the tips pointed inward. The neck was long and slender. The mouth was like a shovel. The eyes, like Folk eyes, were below the jaw hinges; though they faced outward, as with most grazing beasts. The creatures couldn’t look up. Didn’t the Folk planet have birds of prey? Or heights from which something hungry might leap?

  B-beam reclined almost sleepily in a folding chair too small for him. He said, “We call it a melk, a mock elk. Don’t picture it evolving the usual way. Notice the horns? Melks were shaped by generations of planned breeding. Like a show poodle. And the grass, we call it fat grass.”

  “Why? Hey—”

  “Seen them?”

  I’d glimpsed a shadow flowing among the trees. The melks had sensed something too. Their heads were up, tilted way up to let them see. A concealed nostril splayed like a small horn.

  Three Folk stood upright from the grass, and screamed like steam whistles.

  The melks scattered in all directions. Shadows flowed in the black grass. One melk found two Folk suddenly before it, shrieking. The melk bellowed in despair, wheeled and made for the trees. Too slow. A deer could have moved much faster.

  The camera zoomed to follow it.

  Into the trees—and into contact with a black shadow. I glimpsed a forefoot/hand slashing at the creature’s vulnerable throat. Then the shadow was clinging to its back, and the melk tried to run from the forest with red blood spilling down its chest. The rest of the Folk converged on it.

  They tore it apart.

  They dragged it into the trees before they ate.

  Part of me was horrified ... but not so damn horrified as all that. Maybe I’ve been with aliens too long. Part of me watched, and noticed the strange configuration of the rib cage, the thickness and the familiar design of legs and knees, and the convenient way the skull split to expose brain when two Folk pulled the horns apart. The Folk left nothing but bone. They split the thick leg bones with their jaws and gnawed the interiors. When they were finished, they rolled the bones into a neat pile and departed at a waddle.

  B-beam said, “That’s why we don’t give these films to the news. Notice anything?”

  “Too much. The one they picked, it wasn’t just the smallest. The horns weren’t right. Like one grew faster than the other.”

  “Right.”

  “None of the Folk were carrying anything or wearing anything. No knives, no clothes, not even those sock-gloves. What do they do in winter?”

  “They still hunt naked. What else?”

  “The rest drove it toward that one hidden in the woods.

  “There’s one designated killer. Once the prey’s fate is sealed, the rest converge. There are other meat sources. Here—”

  There was a turkey-sized bird with wonderful iridescent patterns on its small wings and enormous spreading tail. It flew, but not well. The Folk ran beneath it until it ran out of steam and had to come down into their waiting hands. The rest drew back for the leader to make the kill. B-beam said, “They killed four that day. Want to watch? It all went just about the same way.”

  “Show me.”

  I thought I might see ... right. The third attempt, the bird was making for the trees with the Folk just underneath. It might make it. Could the Folk handle trees? But the Folk broke off, far short of the trees. The bird fled to safety while they converged on another that had landed too soon, and frightened it into panicky circles....

  Enough of that. I said, “B-beam, the Folk sent some stuff to the Draco Tavern by courier. Your gate Security has it now. I think I’d better get it back. A microwave beamer and a hunting knife and canteen, and it all looks like it came from Abercrombie and Fitch.”

  He stared at me, considering. “Did they? What do you think?”

  “I think they’re making allowances because I’m human.”

  He shook his head. “They make things easy for themselves. They cull the herds, but they kill the most difficult ones too. Anything that injures a Folk, dies. So okay, they’ve made things easy for us too. I doubt they’re out to humiliate us. They didn’t leave extra gear for your companion?”

  . “No.”

  An instructor led us in stretching exercises, isometrics, duck waddles, sprints, and an hour of just running, for two hours each day. There was a spa and a masseur, and I needed them. I was blind with exhaustion after every session ... yet I sensed that they were being careful of me. The game was over if I injured myself.

  B-beam put us on a starvation diet. “I want us thinking hungry, thinking like Folk. Besides, we can both stand to lose a few pounds.”

  I studied Folk physiology more closely than I would have stared at a customer. The pointed mouths show two down-pointing daggers in front, then a gap, then teeth that look like two conical canines fused together. They look vicious. The eyes face forward in deep sockets below the hinges of the jaw: white with brown irises, oddly human. Their fingers are short and thick, tipped with thick claws, three to a forefoot, with the forward edge of the pad to serve as a thumb. Human hands are better, I think. But if the eyes had been placed like a wolf’s, they couldn’t have seen their hands while standing up, and they wouldn’t be tool users.

  My gear was delivered. I strung the canteen and the beamer and the sheath knife on a loop of line. I filled the canteen with water, changed my mind and replaced it with Gatorade, and left it all in a refrigerator.

  I watched three more hunts. Once they hunted melk again. Once it was pigs. That wasn’t very interesting. B-beam said, “Those were a gift. We mated pigs to wild boars, raised them in bottles and turned them loose. The Folk were polite, but I don’t think they like them much. They’re too easy.”

  The last film must have been taken at night, light-amplified, for the moon was blazing like the sun. The prey had two enormous legs with too many joints, a smallish torso slung horizontally between the shoulders, and tiny fingers around a strange mouth. Again, it looked well fed. It was in the forest, eating into a hanging melon-sized fruit without bothering to pick it. I said, “That doesn’t look right.”

  B-beam said, “No, it didn’t evolve alongside the Folk. Different planet. Gligstith(click)tcharf, maybe. We call them stilts.”

  It was faster than hell and could jump too, but the Folk were spread out and they were always in front of it. They kept it running in a circle until it stepped wrong and lost its balance.

  One Folk zipped toward it. The stilt tumbled with its legs folded and stood up immediately, but it still took too long. The designated killer wrapped itself around one leg; its jaws closed on the ankle. The stilt kicked at its assailant, a dozen kicks in a dozen seconds. Then the bone snapped and the rest of the Folk moved in.

  “Do you suppose they’ll wear translators when they hunt with us?”r />
  “I’d guess they won’t. I know some Folk words and I’ve been boning up. And I’ve got a horde of students looking for anything on Folk eating habits. I’ve got a suspicion.... Rick, why are we doing this?”

  “We ought to get to know them.”

  “Why? What have we seen that makes them worth knowing?”

  I was hungry and I ached everywhere. I had to think before I answered. “Oh ... enough. Eating habits aside, the Folk aren’t totally asocial. They’re here, and they aren’t xenophobes.... B-beam, suppose they don’t have anything to teach us? They’re still part of a galactic civilization, and we want to be out there with them. I just want humanity to look good.”

  “Look good ... yeah. I did wonder why you didn’t even hesitate. Have you ever been hunting?”

  “No. You?” “Yeah, my uncles used to take me deer hunting. Have you ever killed anything? Hired out as a butcher, for instance?”

  “... No.”

  And I waited to say, Sure, I can kill an animal, no sweat. Hell, I promised! But he didn’t ask; he only looked.

  I never did mention my other fear. For all I know, it never occurred to anyone else that B-beam and I might be the prey.

  Intelligent beings, if gullible. Armed, but with inadequate weapons. Betrayed, and thus enraged, likely to fight back. The Folk eat Earthbom meat. Surely we would make more interesting prey than the boar-pigs!

  But it was plain crazy. The Chirpsithra enforced laws against murder. If humans were to disappear within the Mojave hunting park, the Folk might be barred from the Chirp liners! They wouldn’t dare.

  The Folk came for us at dawn. We rode in the Xenobiology lifter. We left the air ducts wide open. The smell of five Folk behind us was rich and strange: not quite an animal smell, but something else, and not entirely pleasant. If the Folk noticed our scent, they didn’t seem to mind.

  B-beam seemed amazingly relaxed. At one point he told me, casually, “We’re in danger of missing a point. We’re here to have fun. The Folk don’t know we’ve been sweating and moaning, and they won’t. You’re being honored, Rick. Have fun.”

  At midmorning we landed and walked toward a fence.

  It was human-built, posted with signs in half a dozen languages. NO ENTRY. DANGER! B-beam took us through the gate. Then the Folk waited. B-beam exchanged yelps with them, then told me, “You’re expected to lead.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “Surprise. You’re the designated killer.”

  “Me?” It seemed silly ... but it was their hunt. I led off. “What are we hunting?”

  “You make that decision too.”

  Well inside the fence, we crossed what seemed a meandering dune, varying from five to eight meters high, curving out of sight to left and right. Outside the dune was desert. Inside, meadow.

  A stream poured out of the dune. Farther away and much lower, its returning loop flowed back into the dune. The dune hid pumps. It might hide defenses.

  The green-black grass wasn’t thin like grass; it was a succulent, like three-foot-tall fingers of spineless cactus, nice to the touch. Fat grass. Sawgrass would have been a real problem. We wore nothing but swim suits (we’d argued about even that) and the items strung on a line across my shoulders.

  Any of the Folk, or B-beam himself, would have made a better killer than one middle-aged bartender.

  Of course I had the beamer, and it would kill; but it wouldn’t kill fast. Anything large would be hurt and angry long before it fell over.

  All five Folk dropped silently to their bellies. I hadn’t seen anything, so I stayed upright, but I was walking carefully. Naked humans might not spook the prey anyway. They’d be alert for Folk.

  B-beam’s eyes tried to see everywhere at once. He whispered, “I got my report on Folk eating habits.”

  “Well?”

  “They drink water and milk. They’ve never been seen eating. They don’t buy food—”

  “Pets?”

  “—Or pets, or livestock. I thought of that—”

  “Missing Persons reports?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Rick! No, this is the only way they eat. It’s not a hunt so much as a formal dinner party. The rules of etiquette are likely to be rigid.”

  Rigid, hell. I’d watched them tearing live animals apart.

  Water gurgled ahead. The artificial stream ran everywhere. “I never wondered about the canteen,” I said. “Why a canteen?”

  B-beam yelped softly. A Folk squeaked back. Yelp, and squeak, and B-beam tried to suppress a laugh. “You must have talked about drinking wine with meals.”

  “I did. Is there supposed to be wine in this thing?”

  B-beam grinned. Then lost the grin. “The canteen isn’t for the hunt, it’s for afterward. What about the knife and beamer?”

  “Oh, come on, the Folk gave me ... uh.” Butterflies began breeding in my stomach. Humans cook their food. Sushi and sashimi and beef tartare are exceptions. I’d said so, that night. “The beamer’s for cooking. If I use it to kill the prey ... we’ll be disgraced?”

  “I’m not sure I want to come right out and ask. Let’s see ...”

  The high-pitched squeaking went on for some time. B-beam was trying to skirt the edges of the subject. The butterflies in my belly were turning carnivorous. Presently he whispered, “Yup. Knife too. Your teeth and nails are visibly inadequate for carving.”

  “Oh, Lord.”

  “The later you back out, the worse it’ll be. Do it now if—”

  Two melks were grazing beyond a rise of ground. I touched B-beam’s shoulder and we sank to our bellies.

  The melks were really too big. They’d weigh about what I did: a hundred and eighty pounds. I’d be better off chasing a bird. Better yet, a boar-pig.

  Then again, these were meat animals, born to lose. And we’d need four or five birds for this crowd. I’d be totally winded long before we finished. B-beam’s exercise program had given me a good grasp of my limits ... not to mention a raging hunger.

  The purpose of this game was to make humans—me—look good. Wasn’t it? Anyway, there wasn’t a bird or a pig in sight.

  We crept through the fat grass until we had a clear view. That top-heavy array of horns would make a handle. If I could get hold of the horns, I could break the melk’s long, slender neck.

  The thought made me queasy.

  “The smaller one,” I whispered. B-beam nodded. He yelped softly, and got answers. The Folk flowed away through the fat grass. I crept toward the melks on hands and toes.

  Three Folk stood up and shrieked.

  The melks shrieked too, and tried to escape. Two more Folk stood up in front of the smaller one. I stayed down, scrambling through the grass stalks, trying to get ahead of it.

  It came straight at me. And now I must murder you.

  I lunged to the attack. It spun about. A hoof caught my thigh and I grunted in pain. The melk leapt away, then froze as B-beam dashed in front of it waving his arms. I threw myself at its neck. It wheeled, and the cage of horns slammed into me and knocked me on my ass. It ran over me and away.

  I was curled around my belly, trying to remember how to breathe. B-beam helped me to my feet. It was the last place I wanted to be. “Are you all right?”

  I wheezed, “Hoof. Stomach.”

  “Can you move?”

  “Nooo! Minute. Try again.”

  My breath came back. I walked around in a circle. The Folk were watching me. I straightened up. I jogged. Not good, but I could move. I took off the loop of line that held canteen and beamer and knife, and handed them to B-beam. “Hold these.”

  “I’m afraid they may be the mark of the leader.”

  “Bullshit. Folk don’t carry anything. Hold ’em so I can fight.” I wanted to be rid of the beamer. It was too tempting.

  We’d alerted the prey in this area. I took us along the edge of the forest, where the fat grass thinned out and it was easier to move. We saw nothing for almost an hour.

  I saw no birds, no stil
ts, no boar-pigs. What I finally did see was four more melks drinking from the stream. It was a situation very like the first I’d seen on film.

  I’d already proved that a melk was more than my equal. My last-second qualms had slowed me not at all. I’d been beaten because my teeth and claws were inadequate; because I was not a wolf, not a lion, not a Folk.

  I crouched below the level of the fat grass, studying them. The Folk studied me. B-beam was at my side, whispering, “We’re in no hurry. We’ve got hours yet. Do you think you can handle a boar-pig?”

  “If I could find one I might catch it. But how do I kill it? With my teeth?”

  The Folk watched. What did they expect of me?

  Suddenly I knew.

  “Tell them I’ll be in the woods.” I pointed. “Just in there. Pick a melk and run it toward me.” I turned and moved into the woods, low to the ground. When I looked back everyone was gone.

  These trees had to be from the Folk world. They bent to an invisible hurricane. They bent in various directions, because the Mojave environment wasn’t giving them the right signals. The trunks had a teardrop-shaped cross section for low wind resistance. Maybe the Folk world was tidally locked, with a wind that came always from one direction....

  I dared not go too far for what I needed. The leafy tops of the trees were just in reach, and I plunged my hands in and felt around. The trunk was straight and solid; the branches were no thicker than my big toe, and all leaves. I tried to rip a branch loose anyway. It was too strong, and I didn’t have the leverage.

  Through the bent trunks I watched melks scattering in panic. But one dashed back and forth, and found black death popping up wherever it looked.

  There was fallen stuff on the ground, but no fallen branches. To my right, a glimpse of white—

  The melk was running toward the wood.

  I ran deeper among the trees. White: bones in a neat pile. Melk bones. I swept a hand through to scatter them. Damn! The leg bones had all been split. What now?

  The skull was split too, hanging together by the intertwined horns. I stamped on the horns. They shattered. I picked up a massive half-skull with half a meter of broken horn for a handle.