I pulled up another high chair. “You must have seen wonders beyond counting,” I said. Thinking: My God, a short chirpsithra! Maybe it’s true. She’s a different color, too, and her fingers are shorter. Maybe the species has actually changed since she was born!
She nodded slowly. “Life never bores. Always there is change. In the time I have been gone, Saturn’s ring has been pulled into separate rings, making it even more magnificent. What can have done that? Tides from the moons? And Earth has changed beyond recognition.”
Noyes spilled a little of his coffee. “You were here? When?”
“Earth’s air was methane and ammonia and oxides of nitrogen and carbon. The natives had sent messages across interstellar space…directing them toward yellow suns, of course, but one of our ships passed through a beam, and so we established contact. We had to wear life support,” she rattled on, while Noyes and I sat with our jaws hanging, “and the gear was less comfortable then. Our spaceport was a floating platform, because quakes were frequent and violent. But it was worth it. Their cities—”
Noyes said, “Just a minute. Cities? We’ve never dug up any trace of, of nonhuman cities!”
Chorrikst looked at him. “After seven hundred and eighty million years, I should think not. Besides, they lived in the offshore shallows in an ocean that was already mildly salty. If the quakes spared them, their tools and their cities still deteriorated rapidly. Their lives were short too, but their memories were inherited. Death and change were accepted facts for them, more than for most intelligent species. Their works of philosophy gained great currency among my people, and spread to other species too.”
Noyes wrestled with his instinct for tact and good manners, and won. “How? How could anything have evolved that far? The Earth didn’t even have an oxygen atmosphere! Life was just getting started, there weren’t even trilobites!”
“They had evolved for as long as you have,” Chorrikst said with composure. “Life began on Earth one and a half billion years ago. There were organic chemicals in abundance, from passage of lightning through the reducing atmosphere. Intelligence evolved, and presently built an impressive civilization. They lived slowly, of course. Their biochemistry was less energetic. Communication was difficult. They were not stupid, only slow. I visited Earth three times, and each time they had made more progress.”
Almost against his will, Noyes asked, “What did they look like?”
“Small and soft and fragile, much more so than yourselves. I cannot say they were pretty, but I grew to like them. I would toast them according to your customs,” she said. “They wrought beauty in their cities and beauty in their philosophies, and their works are in our libraries still. They will not be forgotten.”
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.
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.
