“How many aliens have you got in right now?”
“Ten. Six are in Argentina, hunting.”
“But you have to feed the rest?”
“I meant on Earth. There’s nobody actually in the Tavern.”
Taper’s eyes defocused: he was consulting notes. “You got a lot more with the first liner, with Thrill Seeker. Five species, twenty individuals. That first landing must have been a thrill a minute.”
I waved it off. “Oh, you can find anything you want about the first one. Let me tell you about the second landing.
“Weren’t there records of that too?”
“But nobody looks at them....”
That long ago, we didn’t have much telescope coverage of the Moon. What we had was Spaceguard. Spaceguard was an effort by NASA and other political entities to track Near Earth Objects: that is, asteroid threats above one kilometer across. Map those and you might stand a chance of protecting the planet from a giant meteoroid impact. They’d already found 90 percent of the candidates, they said.
An object was found approaching the Moon’s dark limb. It blinked out as it entered the shadow.
Another skywatcher caught the flare of what might have been its drive, but turned out to be riding lights. The skywatching community began talking to each other. Hundreds had it in view when the Chirpsithra liner settled into orbit around the Moon, and they didn’t tell a single disaster control office or newsman for nearly ten hours.
They’d done this once before, with an incoming asteroid that turned out to be a false alarm. Skywatchers talked to each other, and the public remained in blissful ignorance. Lines of communication just hadn’t been established.
But now the world was watching, and everything happened too slowly. The mile-wide soap bubble drifted in orbit around the Moon. A smaller boat budded loose and drifted toward Earth. Eased down through the atmosphere, taking more hours, following force field lines down to Earth’s magnetic pole. It settled at Mount Forel in Siberia, where the first ship’s boat had touched down last year.
Everything we saw came via orbital cameras; it was hours before camera crews could get on site. We saw aliens eleven feet tall and very slender, plated with dull red armor: the same Chirpsithra species who had crewed the first ship. They emerged from the lander and began landscaping.
Taper asked, “Was the Draco Tavern in place yet?”
“No, I had backers and a site, but there was nothing on it but posts and string.”
“Pity. So what do you mean, landscaping?”
“That’s what it looked like, even up close. They sprayed water and dirt and alien fertilizer. I was one of the first on site, and I could smell that chemical reek.
“Cameras showed up, and newspersons, and UN officials. The Chirpsithra went about their business. They planted some weird alien trees in the soil they’d made, and then some structures that they brought out on big float plates. Like Japanese landscaping, we thought.”
“I’ll run those records after I get home.” Taper waved around us. “Is this what you’re talking about? This whole three or four square miles looks like alien gardening.”
“Yeah. Those bigger trees were planted as saplings. Most of this layered mosslike stuff grew up over the next few years. The slow ones were already in place. There was plenty for the herbivores by the time they got hungry.
“The Chirps talked to me about the interspecies tavem I wanted to build. We settled on where to put it, right at the edge of the cultivated stretch. They left me the jelly lock and a lock for themselves, and those were the first pieces of the Draco Tavern. They played diplomat and gave some interviews, and then they left.”
Taper was having trouble catching up. “Slow ones?”
“Originally there were a dozen,” I said. “Six little half-eggs must have been food animals. They didn’t move fast enough, and the Type One, Speedy, rolled over them and ate them during the first six or seven years. Two of the others went home on the next ship after snuffling around Siberia on tractors. They were the fastest.
“After they left, Speedy was making visible progress toward the airlocks. It’s taken him twenty-six years to get into the jelly lock. He’ll be inside before Christmas. These others—do you see that tree stump with an indented top? And water in the top, a little pond of his own, but you can’t see that. He’s the slowest. These boat-shaped—”
“Yeek!” He rolled off.
I stayed where I was. “Ahab doesn’t mind. I know them all pretty well. You can talk to them with electronic mail—”
“They can use computers?”
“Sure, all of these slow ones are intelligent tool users. The computers they build work as fast as ours. To the slow ones they’re instantaneous. To talk to them you just trade letters. It doesn’t matter how slow they write.”
I watched him working out how useless that would be to a newsman. I said, “Of course they need terrific protection against spam. Otherwise—”
“Yeah. What do they talk like?”
“Here.” I fished out my translator and whispered a few instructions. It projected a screen, watery looking in the horizontal sunlight.
Hello! I seek a companion.
I am Rick Schumann, human, hoping to become a bartender.
Call me Quizzical.
Hi, Quizzical.
Is that your structure being erected on the tundra?
Yes, that’s the Draco Tavern.
Most impressive. I wondered if winds would damage it, but it has stood for some time.
There was some damage two years back. We fixed it.
I hope to see the inside soon. It mutates like dreams.
Be welcome. The jelly lock is for slow ones—
I see it. Speedy is almost there. I see a fluttering that must be your kind’s traffic.
Do you know the Chirpsithra?
They live too fast to be truly known, but they don’t die too soon. At least we may converse. One, Ktath
Taper scowled. “Is that all?”
“Yeah. Quizzical is the Type Three, the one like a tree stump.”
“Twenty-six years?”
“Understand, Mr. Taper, most of my visitors use oxidizing chemistry. Some are even faster than Chirps and Humans. One type bums like a fire. She was born in the Tavern, and I only got to know her for a few hours. But that’s not the only way to live.
“Reducing chemistry is very slow compared to oxidizing. These slow ones are exploring the Earth. They watched the Draco Tavern grow up in front of them. They’ll see it turn to dust. They’ll be here a long time.”
Taper rapped what I was sitting on. “This shell—”
“They’re in pressure suits. So’s Speedy. They have to be protected from oxygen.”
“They’re all streamlined,” he noted. “Even that tree stump has a teardrop silhouette,” turning his camera on Quizzical.
I said, “Just being a slow one wouldn’t slow down weather. Comes a hurricane, or a flood, they’d just have to wait it out.”
Taper asked, “May I talk to Speedy?”
“I’ll give you his e-mail address. Have you got a story now? Or is it all too slow?”
“May I have the other e-mail addresses?”
“I’ll ask first.”
Taper came back in January. This time he hurried through Siberia’s endless freezing night to reach the Tavern. The airlock for humans is there because Siberia in winter isn’t a habitable planet.
The Tavern was crowded; a liner was in. He stood there taking it in for a few minutes, recording with the camera on his forehead. Then he hung up some of his gear and wove his way through the crowd and the divergent environments.
Speedy was past the jelly lock and ten centimeters inside. Taper smiled down at the smoothed-out turtle shape. He ran a hand over Speedy’s head. Then he fished out a keyboard and began typing.
I was at his elbow. “How’s it going, Mr. Taper? Got a story yet?”
He laughed. “Not today. If I made a lifetime proje
ct of this, I might have something to show the execs. Mr. Schumann, this doesn’t take every minute of my time. I’ve kept four interviews going for seven months without ever skipping lunch. When I’m an old man, these guys could save my reputation.”
“This last ship,” I said, “brought three more.”
“Addresses?”
“They haven’t logged in yet. Come back in the summer and I’ll introduce you.”
Welcome to Earth!
Thank you. We are Bricks, a multiple mind.
Taper, a human.
Can you tell us what of Earth is worth seeing?
Lots! You could watch Niagara Falls eat its way west. Watch redwoods grow. Ride a glacier.
CRUEL AND UNUSUAL
Chirpsithra do not vary among themselves. They stand eleven feet tall and weigh one hundred and twenty pounds. Their skins are salmon pink, with exoskeletal plates over vital areas. They look alike even to me, and I’ve known more Chirpsithra than most astronauts. I’d have thought that all humans would look alike to them.
But a Chirpsithra astronaut recognized me across two hundred yards of the landing field at Mount Forel Spaceport. She called with the volume on her translator turned high. “Rick Schumann! Why have you closed the Draco Tavern?”
I’d closed the place a month ago, for lack of customers. Police didn’t want Chirpsithra wandering their streets, for fear of riots, and my human customers had stopped coming because the Draco was a Chirpsithra place. A month ago I’d thought I would never want to see a Chirpsithra again. Twenty-two years of knowing the fragile-looking aliens hadn’t prepared me for three days of watching television.
But the bad taste had died, and my days had turned dull, and my skill at the Lottl speech was growing rusty. I veered toward the alien, and called ahead of me in Lottl: “This is a temporary measure, until the death of Ktashisnif may grow small in many memories.”
We met on the wide, flat expanse of the blast pit.
“Come, join me in my ship,” said the Chirpsithra. “My meals-maker has a program for whiskey. What is this matter of Ktashisnif? I thought that was over and done with.”
She had programmed her ship’s kitchen for whiskey. I was bemused. The Chirpsithra claim to have ruled the galaxy for untold generations. If they extended such a courtesy to every thinking organism they knew of, they’d need ... how many programs? Hundreds of millions?
Of course, it wasn’t very good whiskey. And the air in the cabin was cold. And the walls and floor and ceiling were covered with green goo. And ... what the hell. The alien brought me a dry pillow to ward my ass from the slimy green air plant, and I drank bad whiskey and felt pretty good.
“What is the matter of Ktashisnif?” she asked me. “A decision was rendered. Sentence was executed. What more need to be done?”
“A lot of very vocal people think it was the wrong decision,” I told her. “They also think the United Nations shouldn’t have turned the kidnappers over to the Chirpsithra.”
“How could they not? The crime was committed against a Chirpsithra, Diplomat-by-Choice Ktashisnif. Three humans named Shrenk and one named Jackson did menace Ktashisnif here at Mount Forel Spaceport, did show her missile-firing weapons, and did threaten to punch holes in her if she did not come with them. The humans did take her by airplane to New York City, where they concealed her while demanding money of the Port Authority for her return. None of this was denied by their lawyer nor by the criminals themselves.”
“I remember.” The week following the kidnapping had been hairy enough. Nobody knew the Chirpsithra well enough to be quite sure what they might do to Earth in reprisal. “I don’t think the first Chirpsithra landing itself made bigger news,” I said.
“That seems unreasonable. I think humans may lack a sense of proportion.”
“Could be. We wondered if you’d pay off the ransom.”
“In honor, we could not. Nor could we have allowed the United Nations to pay that price, if such had been possible, which it was not. Where would the United Nations find a million svith in Chirpsithra trade markers?” The alien caressed two metal contacts with the long thumb of each hand. Sparks leapt, and she made a hissing sound. “Ssss ... We wander from the subject. What quarrel could any sentient being have with our decision? It is not denied that Diplomat-by-Choice Ktashisnif died in the hands of the”—she used the human word—“kidnappers.”
“No.”
“Three days in agony, then death, a direct result of the actions of Jackson and the three Shrenks. They sought to hide in the swarming humanity of New York City. Ktashisnif was allergic to human beings, and the kidnappers had no allergy serum for her. These things are true.”
“True enough. But our courts wouldn’t have charged them with murder by slow torture.” In fact, a good lawyer might have gotten them off by arguing that a Chirpsithra wasn’t human before the law. I didn’t say so. I said, “Jackson and the Shrenk brothers probably didn’t know about Chirpsithra allergies.”
“There are no accidents during the commission of a crime. Be reasonable. Next you will say that one who kills the wrong victim during an attempt at murder may claim that the death was an accident, that she should be set free to try again.”
“I am reasonable. All I want is for all this to blow over so that I can open the Draco Tavern again.” I sipped at the whiskey. “But there’s no point in that until I can get some customers again. I wish you had let the bastards plead guilty to a lesser sentence. For that matter, I wish you hadn’t invited reporters in to witness the executions.”
She was disturbed now. “But such was your right, by ancient custom! Rick Schumann, are you not reassured to know that we did not inflict more pain on the criminals than they inflicted on Ktashisnif?”
For three days the world had watched while Chirpsithra executioners smothered four men slowly to death. In some nations it had even been televised.
“It was terrible publicity. Don’t you see, we don’t do things like that. We’ve got laws against cruel and unusual punishment.”
“How do you deal with cruel and unusual crimes?”
I shrugged.
“Cruel and unusual crimes require cruel and unusual punishment. You humans lack a sense of proportion, Rick Schumann. Drink more whiskey?”
She brushed her thumbs across the contacts and made a hissing sound. I drank more whiskey. Maybe it would improve my sense of proportion. It was going to be a long time before I opened the Draco Tavern again.
THE ONES WHO STAY HOME
Passengers from Wandering Signal had come to the Draco Tavern in my hour of need. I thanked them for that, and I set about serving them.
Somewhere in the wreckage of the bar was a bag that looked like bird kibble. Blue Bubble would eat that, but there wasn’t any point in looking. In this disorder I couldn’t identify it. Too much of what I keep for my alien clientele looks like bags of kibble.
The Boojum would take salt water, a careful balance that didn’t match Earth’s oceans. I keep a jar of salts, and for a wonder, I found it. I mixed it with water—the tap was still running—and got the Boojum to test it for proportions.
The Chirpsithra need sparkers. Those I found. My wall sockets weren’t delivering power. I was relieved to see the Chirps had brought a power pack.
Sissy didn’t need anything.
I needed painkillers and an alcohol-free beer. We took it all to one of the intact booths. I had to let the Boojum do the carrying. None of my staff was present—Tony was still in the hospital—and I was still healing.
The bar, the Tavern’s central pit, had taken most of the damage. Various force fields damped some of the blast. Most of the booths were intact, and a few still had float chairs and privacy fields. I picked a float chair to put me at conversation level with the Chirps.
“Yes, we fight,” I said, continuing a discussion. “In most mammal species the males duel for mating privileges or property rights. We humans still do a little of that. Hey, even caterpillars fight for territory
. It’s universal.”
“That gives no mapping for what happened here,” Blue Bubble grumbled, “this lethal vandalism.” Blue Bubble was as big as our large airlock, and I couldn’t tell what was inside it.
Sissy was an energy pattern who lived in a bell jar of thin ionized plasma. Her native habitat was at the rarefied edge of a gas giant planet’s atmosphere. Her life processes gave out a thin, wavering hiss. She spoke through a standard translator. “In the archaic state of nature,” she said, “we might wrestle to overwhelm each other’s magnetic patterns. We do this to gain dominance within a vortex. Victor superimposes its memory on the loser. It is not normal to die in battle, but it can happen, patterns merge and conflict, a flare, both gone.”
“Then you don’t have a problem with terrorists?”
“A tale out of history,” Sissy said to me. “Wesshenss Bondbreaker’s family vortex built an iron kite and ran it into a stratospheric storm. The tail he guided into a meeting of the Guidance Vortex. Half the Guidance was blown out. Wesshenss disrupted too. Would you call Wesshenss a terror maker?”
I said, “Not unless he was trying to frighten someone. Wesshenss was trying to kill the Guidance, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. I don’t understand this term, ‘terror.’ ”
“Extreme fear,” I said. “It isn’t what one can do to an enemy, it’s what one can make an enemy do to itself. If one can put an enemy country—political entity, culture, whatever—in a state of terror, the enemy may do crazy things.”
“It’s not a useful term,” one of the Chirpsithra said. The two looked identical—slender lobsters eleven feet tall—and I didn’t try to tell them apart.
Blue Bubble said, “When we fear an enemy, we fight him. Why would any entity want us to fear him?”
“Among us there is doubt as to what is a person,” Sissy said. “Attacker and defender may merge or trade packets of information. One may become the other. Your Golden Rule is mere common sense to us.”