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 chirpsithra 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.
• • •
• • •
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 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 is 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 permission 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 grabbed the attention…but tonight I could see nothing but 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 a f-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.”
Gail was back. Aliens don’t upset her, but she was badly upset. She kept her voice down. “The glig would like to try other kinds of meat broth. I don’t know if they’re kidding or not. They said they wanted—they wanted—”
“They’ll take Campbell’s,” I told her, “and like it.”
• • •
• • •
WAR MOVIE
Ten, twenty years ago my first thought would have been, Great-looking woman! Tough-looking too. If I make a pass, it had better be polite. She was in her late twenties, tall, blond, healthy-looking, with a squarish jaw. She didn’t look like the type to be fazed by anything; but she had stopped, stunned, just inside the door. Her first time here, I thought. Anyway, I’d have remembered her.
But after eighteen years tending bar in the Draco Tavern, my first thought is generally, Human. Great! I won’t have to dig out any of the exotic stuff. While she was still reacting to the sight of half a dozen oddly-shaped sapients indulging each its own peculiar vice, I moved down the bar to the far right, where I keep the alcoholic beverages. I thought she’d take one of the bar stools.
Nope. She looked about her, considering her choices—which didn’t include empty tables; there was a fair crowd in tonight—then moved to join the lone qarasht. And I was already starting to worry as I left the bar to take her order.
In the Draco it’s considered normal to strike up conversations with other customers. But the qarasht wasn’t acting like it wanted company. The bulk of thick fur, pale blue striped with black in narrow curves, had waddled in three hours ago. It was on its third quart-sized mug of Demerara Sours, and its sense cluster had been retracted for all of that time, leaving it deaf and blind, lost in its own thoughts.
It must have felt the vibration when the woman sat down. Its sense cluster and stalk rose out of the fur like a python rising from a bed of moss. A snake with no mouth: just two big wide-set black bubbles for eyes and an ear like a pink blossom set between them, and a tuft of fine hairs along the stalk to serve for smell and taste, and a brilliant ruby crest on top. Its translator box said, quite clearly, “Drink, not talk. My last day.”
She didn’t take the hint. “You’re going home? Where?”
“Home to the organ banks. I am shishishorupf—” A word the box didn’t translate.
“What’s it mean?”
“Your kind has bankruptcy laws that let you start over. My kind lets me start over as a dozen others. Organ banks.” The alien picked up its mug; the fur parted below its sense cluster stalk, to receive half a pint of Demerara Sour.
She looked around a little queasily, and found me at her shoulder. With some relief she said, “Never mind, I’ll come to the bar,” and started to stand up.
The qarasht put a hand on her wrist. The eight skeletal fingers looked like two chicken feet wired together; but a qarasht’s hand is stronger than it looks. “Sit,” said the alien. “Barmonitor, get her one of these. Human, why do you not fight wars?”
“What?”
“You used to fight wars.”
“Well,” she said, “sure.”
“We could have been fourth-level wealthy,” the qarasht said, and slammed its mug to the table. “You would still be a single isolated species had we not come. In what fashion have you repaid our generosity?”
The woman was speechless; I wasn’t. “Excuse me, but it wasn’t the qarashteel who made first contact with Earth. It was the chirpsithra.”
“We paid them.”
“What? Why?”
“Our ship Far-Stretching Sense Cluster passed through Sol system while making a documentary. It confuses some species that we can make very long entertainments, and sell them to billions of customers who will spend years watching them, and reap profits that allow us to travel hundreds of light-years and spend decades working on such a project. But we are very long-lived, you know. Partly because we are able to keep the organ banks full,” the qarasht said with some savagery, and it drank again. Its sense-cluster was weaving a little.
“We found dramatic activity on your world,” it said. “All over your world, it seemed. Machines hurled against each other. Explosives. Machines built to fly, other machines to hurl them from the sky. Humans in the machines, dying. Machines blowing great holes in populated cities. It fuddles the mind, to think what such a spectacle would have cost to make ourselves! We went into orbit, and we recorded it all as best we could. Three years of it. When we were sure it was over, we returned home and sold it.”
The woman swallowed. She said to me, “I think I need that drink. Join us?”
I made two of the giant Demerara Sours and took them back. As I pulled up a chair the qarasht was saying, “If we had stopped then we would still be moderately wealthy. Our recording instruments were not the best, of course. Worse, we could not get close enough to the surface for real detail. Our atmosphere probes shivered and shook and so did the pictures. Ours was a low-budget operation. But the ending was superb! Two cities half-destroyed by thermonuclear explosions! Our recordings sold well enough, but we would have been mad not to try for more.
“We invested all of our profits in equipment. We borrowed all we could. Do you understand that the nearest full-service spaceport to Sol system is sixteen-squared light years distant? We had to finance a chirpsithra diplomatic expedition in order to get Local Group approval and transport for what we needed…and because we needed intermediaries. Chirps are very good at negotiating, and we are not. We did not tell them what we really wanted, of course.”
The woman’s words sounded like curses. “Why negotiate? You were doing fine as Peeping Toms. Even when people saw your ships, nobody believed them. I expect they’re saucer-shaped?”
Foo fighters, I thought, while the alien said, “We needed more than the small atmospheric probes. We needed to mount hologram cameras. For that we had to travel all over the Earth, especially the cities. Such instruments are nearly invisible. We spray them across a flat surface, high up on your glass-slab-style towers, for instance. And we needed access to your libraries, to get some insight into why you do these things.”
The lady drank. I remembered that there had been qarashteel everywhere the chirpsithra envoys went, twenty-four years ago when the big interstellar ships arrived; and I took a long pull from my Sour.
“It all looked so easy,” the qarasht mourned. “We had left instruments on your moon. The recordings couldn’t be sold, of course, because your world’s rotation permits only fragmentary glimpses. But your
machines were becoming better, more destructive! We thanked our luck that you had not destroyed yourselves before we could return. We studied the recordings, to guess where the next war would occur, but there was no discernable pattern. The largest land mass, we thought—”
True enough, the chirps and their qarashteel entourage had been very visible all over Asia and Europe. Those cameras on the Moon must have picked up activity in Poland and Korea and Vietnam and Afghanistan and Iran and Israel and Cuba and, and…bastards. “So you set up your cameras in a tearing hurry,” I guessed, “and then you waited.”
“We waited and waited. We have waited for thirty years…for twenty-four of your own years, and we have nothing to show for it but a riot here, a parade there, an attack on a children’s vehicle…robbery of a bank…a thousand people smashing automobiles or an embassy building…rumors of war, of peace, some shouting in your councils…how can we sell any of this? On Earth my people need life support to the tune of six thousand dollars a day. I and my associates are shishishorupf now, and I must return home to tell them.”
The lady looked ready to start her own war. I said, to calm her down, “We make war movies too. We’ve been doing it for over a hundred years. They sell fine.”
Her answer was an intense whisper. “I never liked war movies. And that was us!”
“Sure, who else—”
The qarasht slammed its mug down. “Why have you not fought a war?”
She broke the brief pause. “We would have been ashamed.”
“Ashamed?”
“In front of you. Aliens. We’ve seen twenty alien species on Earth since that first chirp expedition, and none of them seem to fight wars. The, uh, qarasht don’t fight wars, do they?”