Closing Sale

  Larry Niven

  The Draco Tavern series

  First published in Galaxy's Edge, issue 14, ISBN 978-1-61242-269-5, edited May 2015 by Mike Resnick.

  This copy derived from the above source.

  It started in February with a tight knot of brilliant stars in a patch of southern sky, almost between the two Magellanic Clouds, ten of them blooming over a span of less than three weeks. Astronomers said they were all Type 1A supernovae.

  The world speculated. In the past this might have seemed urgent, but not now, not since the first Chirpshithra spacecraft arrived half a century ago. We’d get an explanation eventually, when the next ship came.

  Remember when we used to do our own research?

  In July a sizeable near-sphere made orbit around the Moon: Wildflower Flavors, with a small crew and a score of passengers of varied species. A lander settled near the Draco Tavern and the place filled up with visitors. Then another ship arrived, Guns Set Aside. Two ships orbiting the Moon have been a rare thing these past fifty years.

  Then seven more over the course of a week, a sudden pileup of interstellar vessels around the Moon.

  The Draco Tavern wasn’t nearly big enough to hold the traffic. Landers settled all over the ice around us, and then pressure tents sprang up in various sizes and shapes, and caverns and castles carved from the ice itself. The Tavern was still jammed. Our translation systems don’t usually show any sign of self-awareness, but now they were complaining about the overcrowding. I kept notes regarding these dozens of new species, but I knew that I was falling behind.

  Mashisthet, one of the Chirpsithra officers aboard Wildflower Flavors, tried to explain what we were seeing. “Of course they do look like a certain common variety of supernova, but to the right eyes it’s clear. Rick, they’re not really supernovae, they’re beacons. We’re sorry for the confusion. You thought what? Dark energy? What in any cosmos is dark energy? Are you addicted to comic books?”

  I asked, “But why do they all clump up?”

  “Of course they couldn’t all have lit up at once. They’re not in one region, they’re strung halfway across the galaxy. We’re looking at a nearly straight line of lights, foreshortened because it’s running toward Sol system. We believe some radicals at Sagittarius Transit Control are interfering with the interstellar traffic system, in furtherance of a union strike.”

  “How dangerous could that get?”

  Mashisthet touched her fingers to a sparker. “Sss…Merely awkward, we hope. The Centrists won’t seek a high death rate. They only seek disruption. I think you’ll be seeing more ships.”

  * * *

  I needed a bigger staff while the ships were in, but hiring was easy: I always have volunteers. The Draco Tavern is a wonderful place to do business, not least because of the privacy shields. I could watch interactions among groups standing shoulder to thorax to eyegrid yet completely ignoring each other, and I could speculate what it was all about. I heard snatches as I moved about with sparkers and drinks and chemical mash. Something was being bought, something sold. I caught the phrase, “To a good home,” from one of the Chirpsithra, and I asked her.

  “I’ve sold a translator,” Tarashishpiff said. And one of the translators broke in to add, “I go to California Institute of Technology. We’ll have so much to learn from each other.”

  “You never sold translation devices before,” I said.

  Tarashishpiff said, “They’re smarter than human and they’re doing their own negotiating. Rick, we didn’t want to share our technology, but with so many ships, we need to buy many resources.”

  * * *

  Visitors came: Dr. Cheri Kaylor and Carlos Magliocco, from the United Nations, with a few staff. I’d thought we’d just talk, but they set up a pressure tent on the ice. “We’re here to observe,” Cheri said. “Our bosses are afraid what happened with those fish might happen again.” She meant the virtual takeover of the equatorial Pacific by Sea People.

  I asked, “How would you stop it?” The UN has grown more powerful over the decades, particularly since the interstellar ships came, but they’re no match for any aliens.

  Carlos Magliocco said, “We have no idea. Fill us in, will you? What’s going on?”

  I said, “We’ve got lots more toilets. It’s a double arc now. Installing those went fast. I didn’t get involved. A couple more airlocks too, but that wasn’t much of a problem. There must be limits to how big or how contorted sapient beings can get and still travel.”

  “There’s marketing. Suddenly a lot of marketing,” Carlos said. “Our pressure tent, it came out of a department store, but it’s Chirpsithra technology. That’s nothing. There are little cold fusion plants being sold—”

  Cherie jumped in. “Very hard to control. Easy power in everybody’s hands. Terrorists too. Every nation on Earth is going to have to deal with that.”

  “But there’s not a lot of power flow,” said Carlos. “You can’t run the cold fusion plants hot. Good for a household, but not a good weapon, praise the Lord. Then there are medical—”

  “Right. Rick, the Gligstith(click)optok are selling immortality—”

  “Longevity,” I corrected her.

  “Yeah, okay, you can still die, but yeah. It’s like a logjam came loose somewhere. What’s happening?”

  I said, “Too many ships. They all want resources, and some of those resources have to be bought. They’re rigorous about that. All these aliens are willing to pay in knowledge. Eager. The Tavern is a great place for brokering deals.”

  * * *

  The UN folk hung around, living in their mansion of a tent, using the Tavern’s communications and buying drinks and some meals. Trade continued. I brokered some of the deals. One day Cheri asked me, “Sand?”

  “Yeah. They’re getting silica from the Moon, but they’re paying for it because we’ve got a claim. Aluminum too. But they’re buying seawater here on Earth.“

  “Why not go to Europa?” Cherie asked.

  “Oh, they’re talking to the fingerfish, but Europa’s charging too high for water, and they own rights in the other moons too. The fingerfish have been spacegoing for a long time. And we’ve got rising seas, so why not sell some water?”

  “They’re buying produce in the markets, in Australia and Europe and the States,” Magliocco said. “There’s some secrecy. They’re trying to auction off Glig medical methods, but those techniques leak out. They’re selling easy turn-on-and-off pregnancy, and extended childhood, and regeneration. They’re buying spices with the money.”

  Some of what was being sold was irresistible. I bought some healing and reshaping products for me and Jehaneh. I bought into some Glig mental exercises. That was weird: they worked, and for humans. I asked about telekinesis and teleportation and got laughed at, but I could do amazing things with mathematics and I could remember where everything was in the vast variety of the bar—a wonderful aid to not poisoning customers. I could fix a broken toilet, sometimes.

  Rumor said that the Folk—who look like wolves with their heads on upside down, and act like that too—had started hunting expeditions in South America, with drug running gangs as targets. I tried to find out more about that, and couldn’t. I waited with some uneasiness for Carlos or Cherie to bring it up, but they never did. Maybe nobody was complaining to the UN.

  A Quarasht sold a computer system to make instant movies, with any background and any deceased actors you like. As with books and publishers, suddenly the problem isn’t making a movie, it’s getting publicity for it, and doing it better than the next ten thousand film makers.

  News from the outer world filtered back to the Draco Tavern, but sporadically. Walter Dass, one of my staff, was keeping better track than I was. “It feels like we can do anything,” he told me. “There’s a Mith-hakak team selling weather control. The drought’s over in California, and they’re gearing up to flood the Sahara. There’s a new species that came aboard Special Haven, construction artists like evolved beavers? They’re selling buildings that grow themselves out of ice or ocean water. They still need a crew to keep them growing right. Boss, it’s as if we’re turning godlike. By the way, I’m getting rich off all of this.”

  * * *

  So was I, but I barely had time to notice. Twelve ships now. Too many staff; no time to train them. I was constantly needed to point them toward or away from iffy chemicals. Airlocks running hot, day and night. Noise overflow from the overloaded translators. I barely noticed when it started to ease off.

  Yes, the ships were leaving.

  It didn’t happen all at once. One day a few pressure tents were gone. The Tavern crowds thinned until I had moments to myself, to think, and the noise dwindled some too. The glowing dots around the Moon were fewer.

  “Wildflower Flavors is going too, but some of the crews will stay,” Mashisthet told me. She was sitting with me and four UN staff and a silent Qarasht. “One or two ships, for awhile. The buildings, weather control, the Sea People all need tending, for awhile. Glig sometimes make mistakes, and that will need watching. But this is all the traffic you’re likely to get for twenty or thirty years.”

  “No more ships?” I wondered.

  “No, Rick.”

  “Good grief! What does that do to the Tavern?”

  The Chirp didn’t answer. I kept thinking…and decided. “I’ll keep the Tavern going. You’ve given us a lot to absorb in just the past year. It’ll take us decades. I should add a library.”

  “We can build our own ships now,” Carlos Ma

gliocco said. “You finally sold us the techniques we need. The radiation shield was what we needed most.”

  Sheri Kaylor said, “With that…maybe now we can take back Mars.”

  I didn’t laugh. “Hold up, Dr. Kaylor. Let’s not get above ourselves. The legal decision went against us. Besides, the Chirpsithra ships have been trading with Europa too, haven’t you, Mashisthet?”

  “Yes. Our decision was final. Europa will keep Mars. But you own a plot of land on Mars, Rick. You could open an embassy.”

  * * *

  The departing ships have left humanity weirdly changed. We’re ready to expand into the solar system.

  Europa and Mars and some moons of Jupiter and Saturn are claimed by the fingerfish. We might try to claim the rest. If we were looking for habitable worlds, we’d have to go interstellar. I think that is beyond us, for now.

  We certainly would want to steer clear of red dwarf stars. Those planets belong to the Chirpsithra.

 

 

  Larry Niven, Closing Sale

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