by Larry Niven
The Boojum said nothing.
“Terrorist is not for us a useful term. You must understand,” one of the Chirpsithra said, “that no entity would achieve interstellar flight if extreme forms of vandalism were a problem. The energies involved are too great. The power in Wandering Signal would shatter most habitats. Planets, for instance.”
“What do you do about vandals?” I asked.
“Many things. Our greatest threat is from the dead universe, from kinetic energy, from impacts large or tiny. Most tool users cannot match the fury of a meteor impact or a blast of cosmic rays. We make the ship self-repairing. We blast small intersecting masses and steer around large ones. These same defenses would repel many potential enemies.”
“Design flaws,” the other Chirp said. “Things go wrong with any machine or system. We build to resist accidental damage. Thus the ship will also resist imposed damage, sabotage.”
“We don’t land the mother ship,” Chirp One said. “Wandering Signal now orbits the Earth’s Moon. Wherever entities probe the universe more deeply than you have, we still leave Wandering Signal out of easy reach.”
Chirp Two leaned toward me. “Rick, your people say ‘terrorist’ and ‘freedom fighter’ and ‘soldier,’ ‘espionage’ and ‘murder’ and ‘homicide,’ as if you must know an enemy’s motive. You deal with only one species. It must be easy to predict what people of your own kind will do. But we deal with a myriad kinds of intelligence.
“More than that, there are deviants. Few species evolve toward the conditions of interstellar travel, therefore it is deviants who board our ships. We must be very wary of our own passengers. Even ourselves, even crew may go mad.
“So, our concern is not with who might try to damage us, or why. Some of you use another term, ‘threat estimate.’ For every creature or hive or plausible grouping, there is a threat estimate. How much damage could it do to us? How shall we protect against it?”
“That sounds insanely complicated,” I said.
“Intrusive,” said the Blue Bubble. “We were probed down to our atomic structure before we were allowed to board. We entered Wandering Signal naked, and found life support inside. All are so treated. What the crew learns is useful for medical treatment, so we are told.”
“That sounds likely,” I said.
“Objection!” Blue Bubble said. “Medical repairs interfere with our ongoing evolution! What if we refuse the probes?”
“Stay home,” one Chirp said.
“To stay home is easy,” the other said. “Stay within the bounds of one’s evolution. Stay where dangers are known. Most sapient species can’t travel. They would need life support so extensive that they could not perceive the universe beyond. Information flow is so easy. Why do we go?”
I asked, “Why did you?”
She didn’t answer. I looked to the Boojum, who said, “I was made, an elaborate multisensual camera. I was to carry sensations home to my makers, who were not able to leave their swamp. The swamps dried despite all efforts. To stay home is only relatively safe. May I show you some of the wonders I have collected?”
I said, “My systems are down.”
“But the danger to Wandering Signal suggests its own solution,” the Blue Bubble said. “Why not bar everybody? Why not explore as the Boojum’s people do ... did?”
I thought: why doesn’t Congress shut down all airports?
The Chirp said, “Knowledge. All this mingling of near-infinite varying viewpoints is certain to produce new tools, ideas, techniques, philosophies, art. Whether these things are worth the risks is a judgment call. A tiny few of us choose to travel. Ten-to-the-fourteenth Chirpsithra stay home, those who see risks as greater than rewards.”
Blue Bubble said, “Yet you claim all red dwarf stars.”
“Only travelers settle other worlds, mate and breed. Most Chirpsithra descend from travelers. Most of every species worth talking to descends from travelers.”
I said, “Robert Heinlein once wrote that you do not truly own anything that you can’t carry in both arms at a dead run.”
“Yet you stay home, Rick Schumann,” said one of the Chirps.
“And look what that got me.”
“You will rebuild. Somewhere among your population are the vandals who attacked the Draco Tavern. They will be brought to our justice. We have set Folk in charge of finding them. Half our passenger complement is playing the detective game, enjoying themselves greatly, building or borrowing forensic techniques—”
Like a role-playing game, I thought. Wait, now—“The Folk?”
“Who better?”
The Folk are hunters. They don’t eat unless there is prey to track down.
The thought gave me a moment’s vicious pleasure. Then I asked, “What if there are a lot of terrorists involved?”
“The law is already established. One of us died in the explosion. They belong to our justice. Why would numbers matter?”
Whole nations had backed the killers who brought down the World Trade Center. The bomber who attacked the Draco Tavern might represent a political party, a nation, a religious movement, or—it was not beyond possibility that a whole world could be held responsible.
I said, “A sense of proportion can be a valuable thing.”
Trucks were pulling up outside. These must be the repair crews I’d asked for, though of course they’d have to get through our security. “I’d best deal with this,” I said.
One of the Chirps said, “Vandals of a species now deceased once destroyed a planet housing four times ten-to-the-ninth of our kind. What sense of proportion should we have shown then? Would it matter that most of us escaped?”
But men in hard hats were waving at me, and I went to answer them.
BREEDING MAZE
The Draco Tavern can be hot and cold, wet and dry, the air compressed or rarefied and of varying composition. Booth-sized temperature zones inside the dome must serve an eerie variety of alien visitors. But outside the Tavern, the Mount Forel environment is thin and frozen, the vegetation sparse and hardy.
We use the cold in various ways. Storage for an unearthly variety of perishables is behind the Tavern, along with a wide range of toilet facilities.
But we use the Tavern’s facilities too. Housing for me and my staff is a wing of the Tavern, and the climate control is the best on Earth. We don’t get colds or allergies. Working the Draco Tavern isn’t for everyone—it can freak you out, and some of my staff have stayed only hours—but it has its compensations.
One of last night’s animals came in loose. I looked around for its owner and didn’t see him.
As it stalked toward the bar from one of the small airlocks, I watched uneasily. Who might help with this? There hadn’t been any Chirpsithra in the Draco Tavern last night, and there weren’t any now. Rory was watching too, but he was across the room serving customers. The customers didn’t seem disturbed, but it’s not easy reading alien body language.
The beast would mass around a hundred and thirty pounds. It was hairy and musky. It walked as a biped: two short hind legs, four short, powerful-looking arms, and a mouth not quite like any marrunal’s, but not insectoid. I’d looked for teeth last night, but seen none. I couldn’t guess what it might eat.
It moved up against the bar, close enough that I could smell doggy breath, and suddenly reached over. I shied back. It snatched up a loose translator and snarled at it. The translator spoke.
I reached for my stun, and then the sense of the words reached me. “Was I stupid last night?”
I said, “Stupid? You were—” and stopped, feeling very foolish. “Yeah.”
“Did anything bad happen?”
“Two of you came in with one of the spindly aliens, a Joker. He had you both on a leash, a tether. We don’t allow pets in the Draco Tavern, but I wasn’t quite ready to raise the point, because none of the crew were in.” The crews of the interstellar liners are all Chirpsithra, and they’re more or less in charge. “I thought it was their busine
ss, not mine, long as you stayed leashed. Also, I wondered which of you was the pet. In here you can’t always tell.”
“I comprehend.”
“The Joker brought you up to the bar and started talking. Talking fast.” It was starting to dawn on me that I’d been played for a fool. “And one of you voided something smelly against the bar.”
“Sorry.”
“The automatics got it. The Joker told me the two of you had been thawed by accident. Pets and children travel frozen, right? That’s if the liners will have them at all. But you were pets and you’d been thawed, and you had to be kept exercised until ... it sounded like legal problems.”
“Jokers are well known as practical jokers,” the beast said.
Given the species name, you wouldn’t think I’d need to be told that. But the Joker was a tall, spindly creature with dead-white skin partly covered with green hair or moss, and a triangular, somewhat manlike face with a jutting jaw and a permanent grin. I’d thought, Batman reference, and my brain stopped working. No alien would have thought to warn me of that.
I’d got to talking to the Joker. He sounded like someone dancing on a bagful of walnuts, a rattling sound, but his translator took care of that. He seemed intelligent, interested. I told him about running the Tavern. He talked freely, it seemed, about his own background and species. A hotter star than Sol, a planet with a longer year, cultivated land losing fertility.... His pets were a little whiny and not quite housebroken—
I asked, “Were you drugged?”
“No, not drugged. We are Pazensh. We grow intelligence when we come into heat.”
“Really?”
“Yes, we need intelligence to seek and find and test a mate. At other times we survive on reflexes and paranoia. You—?”
“With us it’s pretty much the other way around,” I said. I had no mate right now; Jehaneh was visiting family in Iraq. “And you chewed up a stool. The Joker paid for that, but the Bebebebeque on the stool had to leap for its life. I never knew it could do that.” The big yellow bug had jumped about four meters.
The Pazensh said, “I remember not quite enough about last night, but it ended with a whiff of female scent, and a door that closed and locked. It took me some time to gather my wits, and more to solve the lock and get out of the lander. Then I followed her scent here. Here I find my own scent, and scents of many species, and now I must ask how badly I’ve embarrassed myself.”
“Nothing we can’t handle,” I said. “I’ve done this dance before. Let’s see, you didn’t use the restrooms, but that happens with other species too. They can be complicated. The little bug’s okay—” and it wouldn’t matter much if the Bebebebeque had been eaten; they’re a hive species. “All’s clear.”
“Good. Now I must find my mate.” The Pazensh started to climb over the bar.
“Hold up.” I showed him the stun. “What are you doing?”
He stopped. “Following a scent trail.”
“One of your females is back behind my bar?”
“Is or was.” The Pazensh settled onto a stool. His many-toed feet dangled; the long toes thrummed with his eagerness. “Name me Hass. My companion, my will-be-darling, she is Tenshir. You?”
“Rick.”
“If we were more than one female and one male, I would smell it. Tenshir is using your establishment as a—” The translator hiccoughed, then said, “breeding maze.”
I said, “Hass, we have laws to block your mating against your partner’s will.”
“When I have found Tenshir, you may ask her wishes. For now, she must test my intelligence.”
“You’re following a scent trail of pheromones. That’s intelligence?”
His toes stopped moving. “That doesn’t make sense, does it? Following her scent will hardly engage my mind. But she has marked the domain, the perimeter of the breeding maze. She is here and I must find her.” Hass surged over the counter and down the stairs into the storerooms, running on all sixes. I followed his path with the point of the stun, but didn’t fire.
If I’d seen a Chirp I’d have asked for help. There were ten varied aliens in the bar, all staring at me, most of them unfamiliar species. And Rory was at the service window. “Boss? Three silvers for the Wids, unless you’re—”
“Rory, take over.” I didn’t like doing that. The Tavern can run a crew of up to six residents plus day help, but this year’s interstellar liner was a small one with less than a dozen passengers. Miranda, on duty last night, was sleeping it off. Only Rory was on duty.
But Hass wasn’t the only one getting an intelligence test here. I donned an air filter and kept the stun. I walked down the stairs slowly, giving myself time to think.
I couldn’t just let Hass run loose here. My staff wears air filters when they come to the basement for drinks and edibles. It was a maze even to me, but a maze of stocks for more than fifty alien varieties who had visited the tavern at various times. Most of what feeds one life-form would be poison to a score of others. Chemicals were in the air.
It was cold down here. Siberian temperatures are good for storing a lot of my stocks; others have to be chilled, heated, pressurized, or irradiated. I caught a whiff of Hass’s scent, but not enough to guide me. I followed a scuffling.
“Hass,” I called, “how long is this likely to take?”
“A breeding maze? There is no telling. Hours or days, perhaps.”
“Are you allowed to get help with this?”
Still unseen, Hass answered. “Any may help. This is a mating maze, not—” The translator hiccoughed. “—an entertainment. The stakes are the highest. If I can trust a companion, it speaks for my intelligence. If I choose one who will mock me, or a fool who will lead me astray, that speaks too.”
“Okay.”
“Rick, is the Draco Tavern a successful concern?”
I chuckled. “Yes.” My intelligence test.
“Good. I trace your scent and hers, and several other human and Chirpsithra. Does that match—”
“Chirpsithra come down here, sure. All my staff are human.”
“And a Joker was here.”
I’d been thinking about the Joker. Given what I knew now, he’d learned more last night than I was comfortable with. Time I found out something about him. I used my translator to call Shock Layer, the Chirpsithra liner currently hovering near the Earth’s Moon.
I got an answering device. “I’ll talk to any member of the crew,” I told it.
“Hi, Rick. The crew are dealing with internal matters. You have not clearance.”
“Search the passenger lists for Jokers.” I spelled it in the Chirp language, as best I could.
“Joker. One passenger, Hsenshesist Brill, adult male, restricted to ship.”
“Hsenshesist is on Earth,” I said.
“That information is restricted.” Pause. “I have upgraded your clearance. Hsenshesist Brill has gone missing. Where is he now and what is he doing?”
“He’s in the vicinity of the Draco Tavern. He’s running a scheme of some kind. What are his capabilities?”
“It was not expected that he could board the lander. He is barred from Earth. We must upgrade his capability estimates. Keep me informed,” the mechanism said.
I disconnected. I whispered to my translator to get a hologram map of the cellar. A skittering told me Hass was running above me along the stacks of boxes, left, down, left again and up and back toward me. I broke into a jog, the hologram glowing ahead of me like a complex flashlight beam.
“Your help has been of little use,” Hass said. He was over my head.
“Slow down.”
“Tenshir will not slow!”
“She’ll be faster than you. You have to stop to sniff. You’ll never catch up unless you guess where she’ll be. How would she break a scent trail? Can she fly?”
“No, not without an aircraft or lift belt. We do not use mechanical aids for this, barring what our hands can make. You see me naked, yes? She will be too.”
&
nbsp; “Can she jump long gaps?”
“She might make four meters. I would still scent her.”
“Will she have help?”
“Hsenshesist Brill must have thawed us at the same time. The med system that held us was in the lander, and the scent led here. Snowfall might have disturbed the scent trail. Who would we meet on the path to the Draco Tavern? You,” he answered himself: the obvious suspect. “And a female human server. Has Tenshir approached you?”
“No. And it’s Jennifer’s sleep cycle, and you didn’t come near her last night.”
A long, low, modulated snarl. The translator said, “Did Tenshir speak to you of a stalker with rape in mind? And beg help?”
I repeated, “No.”
“Last night, who else did we approach?”
“Things have been pretty dead this trip. There were only seven or eight customers last night, all at one table. Brill and his pets tried to join them, but they got yelled at.”
“Do you think she’s alone, then? Rick!” His voice dropped as if she might be in earshot. “The toilets!”
“Right. Here, these steps lead out.”
I store some stocks outside in the Siberian cold. Animals won’t come near the weirder chemicals, and the temperature stays low enough. Housing for human staff forms an arc partway around the dome. The toilets are outside too, completing more of the arc.
Hass dashed ahead of me.
“Humans have a poor sense of smell,” I said.
“How I envy you.” But Hass’s spongy tip of a nose was in the air. “Like a chemistry lab. These two booths are for Chirpsithra. This for several types; a Joker has used it. This one I could use, or Tenshir.” He sniffed. “Tenshir has not used it. Some Tiktik have.”
“How long can she hold her wastes?”
Hass spoke; the translator said, “Two days or longer.” A sudden yip. “Rick! The ceiling!”
In the booth that a Pazensh might use, I looked up at an alien pictograph: a hundred tiny symbols arrayed in a near-ellipse. I said, “She didn’t use this booth except as a drop.”