Limits (38 page)

“We waited and waited. We have waited for thirty years…for twe
n
ty-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?”

The alien’s sense cluster snapped down into its fur,
then
slowly emerged again. “Certainly we do not!”

“Well, think how it would look!”

“But for you it is natural!”

“Not really,” I said. “People have real trouble learning to kill. It’s not built into us. Anyway, we don’t have quite so much to fight over these days. The whole world’s getting rich on the widgetry the chirps and the thtopar have been selling us.
Long-lived, too, on glig medicines.
We’ve all got more to lose.” I flinched, because the alien’s sense cluster was stretched across the table, staring at us in horror.

“A lot of our restless types are out mining the asteroids,” the woman said.

“And, hey,” I said, “remember when Egypt and Saudi Arabia were talking war in the UN? And all the aliens moved out of both countries, even the glig doctors with their geriatrics consulting office. The sheiks didn’t like that one damn bit. And when the Soviets—”

“Our doing, all our own doing,” the alien mourned. Its sense cluster
pulled itself down and disappeared into the fur, leaving just the ruby crest showing. The alien lifted its mug and drank, blind.

The woman took my wrist and pulled me over to the bar. “What do we do
now
?” she hissed in my ear.

I shrugged. “Sounds like the emergency’s over.”

“But we can’t just let it go, can we? You don’t really think we’ve given up war, do you? But if we knew these damn aliens were waiting to make
movies
of us, maybe we would! Shouldn’t we call the newspapers, or at least the Secret Service?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Somebody has to know!”

“Think it through,” I said. “One particular qarasht company may be defunct, but those cameras are still there, all over the world, and so are the mobile units. Some alien receiving company is going to own them. What if they offer…say Iran, or the Soviet Union, one-tenth of one percent of the gross profits on a war movie?”

She paled. I pushed my mug into her hands and she gulped hard at it. Shakily she asked, “Why didn’t the qarasht think of that?”

“Maybe they don’t think enough like men. Maybe if we just leave it alone, they never will. But we sure don’t want any human entrepreneurs making suggestions. Let it drop, lady. Let it drop.”

If the IRS could see me now! Flying a light-sail craft, single-handed, two million miles out from a bluish-white dwarf star.
Fiddling frantically with the shrouds, guided less by the instruments than by the thrust against my web hammock and the ripples in the tremendous, near-weightless mirror sail.
Glancing into the sun without blinking, then at the stars without being night-blind, dipping near the sun without being fried; all due to the quick-adjusting goggles and temp-controlled skin-tight pressure suit the chirpsithra had given me.

This entire trip was deductible, of course. The Draco Tavern had made me a good deal of money over the years, but I never could have paid for an
interstellar voyage otherwise. As the owner of the Draco Tavern, Earth’s only multi-species
bar,
I was quite legitimately touring the stars to find new products for my alien customers.

Would Internal Revenue object to my actually enjoying
myself
?

I couldn’t make myself care. The trip out on the chirpsithra liner: that alone was something I’d remember the rest of my life.
This too, if I lived.
Best not to distract myself with memories.

Hroyd System was clustered tightly around its small, hot sun. Space was thick with asteroids and planets and other sailing ships. Every so often some massive piece of space junk bombed the sun, or a storm would bubble up from beneath the photosphere, and my boat would surge under the pressure of the flare. I had to fiddle constantly with the shrouds.

The pointer was aimed at black space. Where
was
that damned spac
e
port? Huge and massive it had seemed, too big to lose, when I spun out my frail silver sail and launched…how long ago? The clock told me: twenty hours, though it didn’t feel that long.

The spaceport was coin-shaped, spun for varying gravities. Maybe I was trying to see it edge-on? I tilted the sail to lose some velocity. The fat sun expanded. My mind felt the heat.
If my suit failed, it would fail all at once, and I wouldn’t have long to curse my recklessness.
Or—
Even
chirpsithra-supplied equipment wouldn’t help me if I fell into the sun.

I looked outward in time to see a silver coin pass over me. Good enough. Tilt the sail forward, pick up some speed…pull my orbit outward, slow down,
don’t move the sail too fast or it’ll fold up
! Wait a bit, then tilt the sail to spill the light; drop a bit, wait again…watch a black coin slide across the sun. Tilt to slow, tilt again to catch up. It was another two hours before I could pull into the spaceport’s shadow, fold the sail and let a tractor beam pull me in.

My legs were shaky as I descended the escalator to Level 6.

There was Earth gravity on 6, minus a few percent, and also a mu
l
ti-species restaurant bar. I was too tired to wonder about the domed boxes I saw on some of the tables. I wobbled over to a table, turned on the privacy bubble and tapped
tee tee hatch
nex
ool
, carefully. That code was my life. A wrong character could broil me, freeze me, flatten me, or have me drinking liquid methane or breathing prussic acid.

An Earthlike environment formed around me. I peeled off my equipment
and sank into a web, sighing with relief. I still ached everywhere. What I really needed was sleep. But it had been glorious!

A warbling whistle caused me to look up. My translator said, “Sir or madam, what can I bring you?”

The bartender was a small, spindly Hroydan, and his environment suit glowed at dull red heat. I said, “Something alcoholic.”

“Alcohol?
What is your physiological type?”

“Tee tee hatch nex ool.”

“Ah. May I recommend something?
A liqueur, Opal Fire.”

Considering the probable distance to the nearest gin-and-tonic…“Fine.
What proof is it?” I heard his translator skip a word, and amplified: “What percent ethyl alcohol?”

“Thirty-four, with no other metabolic poisons.”

About seventy proof? “Over water ice, please.”

He brought a clear glass bottle. The fluid within did indeed glitter like an opal. Its beauty was the first thing I noticed.
Then, the taste, slightly tart, with an overtone that can’t be described in any human language.
A crackling
aftertaste,
and a fire spreading through my nervous system. I said, “That’s
wonderful
! What about side effects?”

“There are additives to compensate: thiamin and the like. You will feel no ugly aftereffects,” the Hroydan assured me.

“They’d love it on Earth. Mmm…what’s it cost?”

“Quite cheap.
Twenty-nine chirp notes per flagon. Transport costs would be up to the chirpsithra. But I’m sure Chignthil Interstellar would sell specs for manufacture.”

“This could pay for my whole trip.” I jotted the names: chirp characters for
Opal Fire
and
Chignthil Interstellar
.
The stuff was still dancing through my nervous system. I drank again, so it could dance on my taste buds too.

To hell with sleep; I was ready for another new experience. “These boxes—I see them on all the tables. What are they?”

“Full-sensory entertainment devices.
Cost is six chirp notes for use.” He tapped keys and a list appeared: titles, I assumed, in alien script. “If you can’t read this, there is voice translation.”

I dithered.
Tempting; dangerous.
But a couple of these might be worth taking back. Some of my customers can’t use anything I stock; they pay only cover charges. “How versatile is it? Your customers seem to have a lot of
different sense organs. Hey, would this thing actually give me alien senses?”

The bartender signalled negative. “The device acts on your central nervous system; I assume you have one? There at the top? Ah, good. It feeds you a story skeleton, but your own imagination puts you in context and fills in the background details. You live a programmed story, but largely in terms familiar to you. Mental damage is almost unheard of.”

“Will I know it’s only an entertainment?”

“You might know from the advertisements. Shall I show you?” The Hroydan raised the metal dome on a many-jointed arm and poised it over my head. I felt the heat emanating from him. “Perhaps you would like to walk through an active volcano?” He tapped two buttons with a black metal claw, and everything changed.

The Vollek merchant pulled the helmet away from my head. He had small, delicate-looking arms, and a stance like a tyrannosaur: torso hor
i
zontal, swung from the hips. A feathery down covered him, signalling his origin as a flightless bird. “How did you like it?”

“Give me a minute.” I looked about me. Afternoon sunlight spilled across the tables, illuminating alien shapes. The Draco Tavern was filling up. It was time I got back to tending bar. It had been nearly empty (I reme
m
bered) when I agreed to try this stunt.

I said, “That business at the end—?”

“We end all of the programs that way when we sell to Level Four civ
i
lizations. It prevents disorientation.”

“Good idea.” Whatever the reason, I didn’t feel at all confused. Still, it was a hell of an experience. “I couldn’t tell it from the real thing.”

“The advertisement would have alerted an experienced user.”

“You’re actually manufacturing these things on Earth?”

“Guatemala has agreed to license us. The climate is so nice there. And so I can lower the price per unit to three thousand dollars each.”

“Sell me two,” I said. It’d be a few years before they paid for themselves. Maybe someday I really would have enough money to ride the chirpsithra liners…if I didn’t get hooked myself on these full-sensory machines.
“Now, about Opal Fire.
I can’t believe it’s really that good—”

“I travel for Chignthil Interstellar too. I have sample bottles.”

“Let’s try it.”

I never would have heard
them
if the sound system hadn’t gone on the fritz. And if it hadn’t been one of those frantically busy nights, maybe I could have done something about it…

But one of the big chirpsithra passenger ships was due to leave Mount Forel Spaceport in two days. The chirpsithra trading empire occupies most of the galaxy, and Sol system is nowhere near its heart. A horde of passengers had come early in fear of being marooned. The Draco Tavern was jammed.

I was fishing under the counter when the noises started. I jumped. Two voices alternated: a monotonal twittering, and a bone-vibrating sound like a tremendous door endlessly opening on rusty hinges.

The Draco Tavern used to make the Tower of Babel sound like a monolog, in the years before I got this sound system worked out. Picture it: thirty or forty creatures of a dozen species including human, all talking at once at every pitch and volume, and all of their translating widgets bellowing too! Some species, like the srivinthish, don’t talk with sound, but they also don’t notice the continual
skreek
ing from their spiracles. Others sing. They
call
it singing, and they say it’s a religious rite, so how can I stop them?