"Where you go?"

The idea and the act were one. I looked furtively to left and right, as Lee had done, then took half a step toward her. "Secret," I whispered confidentially.

Shenka's eyes got wide and her mouth dropped open. "Tell me?" she pleaded.

But I shook my head. "Na, can't. Secret." I went a few steps farther, then stopped, slyly. "But you can come."

I hated myself for saying it, hated myself for doing to Shenka what the Bookali had done to me. But that was how life was in the projects: getting your friend into the same trouble you were in, so you didn't have to be there alone. And Shenka, poor, unwitting Shenka, followed me out the door and across the street.

I heard her gasp when she saw where I was headed, but I grabbed her hand and held on tight, dragging her along. Committed now, I marched right up to the Bookali guard, bold as bra.s.s, and looked him square in the eye.

It was a different guard from before. "I 'Ba.s.sador Trabina," I told him with authority. "This my friend Shenka." He nodded courteously, and I could feel Shenka trembling at my side.

Indeed, my own fear was not gone; but I was ruled now by a desire stronger than the desire to flee. I squeezed Shenka's hand and spoke again.

"We come to learn secrets."

What can I say about Larry Niven except, "Wow!" He's virtually defined much of science fiction, especially the hard kind, since his first appearances in the mid-sixties, and especially since the appearance of Ringworld in 1970.

He's got boxes of Hugos and Nebulas; it's the sheer inventiveness and technological brilliance of his stories, especially those of his future history sequence Tales of Known s.p.a.ce, that have solidified his place alongside such innovators as Heinlein and Asimov.

He also owns a Questar telescope that I much envy.

For Redshift, to my complete delight, he has produced a Draco Tavern story with empathic bite.

Ssoroghod's People.

Larry Niven.

A week after the first chirpsithra liner arrived, a second ship winkled out of interstellar s.p.a.ce. It paused to exchange courtesies with the ship now hovering alongside the moon, then pulled up next to it.

It was as big as the liner whose pa.s.sengers had filled the Draco Tavern for seven nights now. We'd never had two of these in dock. The media were going nuts, of course. I worried about all these extra aliens. How was I going to fit them in?

The Draco Tavern's ceilings are high enough for bird a.n.a.logues to fly. I could set some tables floating. . . .

When a handful of chirpsithra crew came in, I took the opportunity to ask, "How many more tables am I going to need?"

"One," said a ship's officer. "One occupant."

"How big?" the chirpsithra deal with ent.i.ties bigger than a blue whale.

"Ssoroghod is one of us, a chirpsithra. Sss," as she touched the sparker with her fingertips.

"She flies a long-term habitat and environment-shaping system. Much cargo s.p.a.ce," she said.

Next day a ship's boat drifted down the magnetic lines to Mount Forel. Presently an inflated sphere rolled across the hard November tundra, attached itself to one of the tavern's airlocks, and deflated to let in a chirpsithra.

The newcomer made for the bar, pa.s.sing six crew from the first ship. They all look alike, or pretty close, but I noticed differences. The newcomer's decorative crest (and news and entertainment set) was in a very different style. Her salmon armor differed just a bit, graying at the edges of the plates. She was old.

One spoke to her. She chose not to hear, walked regally past, and was at the bar. To me she said, "Dispenser, a sparker." I had one ready. The chirps only have, or only show, this one sin.

She put her thumbs on the sparker and kept them there. I'd never seen a chirp do that. Her antennae were trembling. She was getting too much of a charge.

She let go. Her posture shifted, lolling. She said, "Dispenser, sparkers for my companions at table zith-mm. Tell them to remember-" She rattled off numbers in her own language.

I took sparkers to the chirps table. Props. They already had theirs. I said, "A gift from the citizen at the bar. She sent you a message." My translator also records. I ran it back to the right time and played it for them.

One said, "A location."

"That was her station," another said. "Whee-Nisht variants one through four. Ssoroghod had them in her charge. She sent us sparkers?"

"Memorial," said a third. "They must be extinct."

"She will not talk to us. Ssoroghod was always unsocial."

I asked, "Can you tell me what's wrong with her?"

They looked at each other. I thought they wouldn't answer, but one said, "She may choose suicide."

"How would I stop that?"

"Why would you?"Death has happened in the Draco Tavern. Once it was a memorial service with the main guest alive until halfway through. Both times, the individuals kept it neat. I still don't like it.

One said, "She spoke to you, Rick Schumann, let her talk. She may persuade herself to live."

Humans use the bar chairs when they need to talk to the bartender. Most of the chirps'

clients need a tailored environment; they go to the tables, which can be enclosed. The bar doesn't get much action from aliens. Chirps themselves can breathe Earth's air; it's the lighting that gets to them.

At the bar tonight there was only Ssoroghod, eleven feet tall though she weighed no more than I did, armored in red exoskeletal plates fading to gray at the edges, and some prosthetic gear. I told her, "The tables might have lighting more to your taste."

"I do not want the company of my kind. This bluer light, I endured it for-" She gave a number. My translator said, "-One million thirty thousand years."

Mistranslation? I said, "That's a long time."

Nothing.

"What were you doing?"

"Watching."

I guessed: "Watching the Whee-Nisht? Variants one through four?"

She said, "Variants two and three made pact, intermated, merged, crowded out the others.

They were competing for too limited an environment. Variants one and four died out."

"Why were you watching them?"

For a minute I thought she wouldn't answer. Should I leave her alone, or risk driving her away? Then she said, "We found a species on the verge of sapience.

"The Whee-Nisht held a limited environment, a sandy coastline along the eastern sh.o.r.e of the megacontinent. Their metabolism was based on silicon dioxide. They adapted too well to the local diet, gravity, lighting, salinity of water, local symbiotes. They would never conquer any large part of their own world, let alone go among the stars. I could study them and still stay out of their way. This was the basis on which I was given permission to watch them evolve.

"I watched them grow along the Fertile Band. I was pleased when they tamed other life-forms and bred them for desired traits. Though sworn not to interfere with their development, I did divert a meteoroid impact that would have altered local coastlines. They might have gone extinct." She touched the sparker, just brushed it. "But they might have evolved flexibility. I cannot know. Mistake or no, I shifted the killer rock.

"Their numbers then grew overgreat. I wondered if I must act again, but they adapted, developed a yeast for contraception. It was their first clear act to change themselves."

"What went wrong?"

She focused on me. I had the impression that she was only now seeing me.

"Dispenser . . . Rick Schumann ... Do you use something like sparkers? A jolt to change your viewpoint?"

I said my kind used alcohol. At her invitation I made myself an Irish coffee. I sipped meagerly. Being drunk might be bad.

She said, "Whee-Nisht have completed a cycle, a pattern. They are extinct. Does that always mean something has gone wrong?"It would to me," I said.

Her head nodded above me. Thumbs brushed the sparker. Then, "I saw no reason to interfere when they altered other life-forms. They made and shaped and reshaped foodstuffs, beasts of burden, guard beasts. Yeast a.n.a.logues became flavoring for food, medicines, perception-altering substances. Plants were bred taller and stronger, to improve structure for their housing, then water-going vessels to explore beyond their domain. When they began using similar techniques to shape themselves, I saw startling implications.

"I acted at once," she said. "I set a terraforming project in motion on a large island just beyond their horizon. My intent was to build an environment the match for their own, without affecting theirs. Guiding weather patterns required exquisite care. When I finished, there was an island that might house the Whee-Nisht, and a sandy peninsula pointing straight at it. "Now I-".

I asked, "Why?"

She focused on me. "They had shaped the contraceptive yeast. Now they began to breed their offspring and siblings and dependents to make patterns, to conserve wealth and power relations and to shape offspring more to their liking. Crimes were defined and criminals were subject to mental reshaping. How would they otherwise tamper with their selves? "One mistake would drive them extinct. It has happened to other species, over and over. Dispenser, what is it your kind uses for reproductive code?"

"Deoxyribonucleic acid," I said.

"The Whee-Nisht used a different code, being silicon oxide based, but no matter. I was in a race for their lives. When they learned how to manipulate their own genetics, I was done. The ocean currents were bringing them bubble plants, telling them of a second habitat beyond the water. They built exploring vehicles, and they found it."

"Ships?"

"Great translucent tubes, grown as plants, that rolled along sand or waves. They reached my second land and named it Antihome. I watched them build a base and explore from there. I waited for them to enlarge it. My intent was that they would build a city. Nearby they could do their biological experiments, where any mistake could be confined." She touched the sparkers again, held too long. I waited. She asked, "Do you understand why this self-tampering kills so many species? It is so easy, so cheap. Knowledge of deoxyribonucleic acid is not needed.

What you like, breeds. What you don't like is uprooted. Planned breeding may take generations, but not wealth. It is exploration that eats wealth. Your kind could tamper with yourselves for a million years for the cost of putting a city on your moon, using your own primitive techniques.

"But you, you have the option! Most species could not travel between worlds. It would kill them. The Whee-Nisht could barely cross a channel, half dead of motion sickness and running like thieves along their rolling ship, and reach an island prepared for them."

And they threw it away.

"They explored, and came home, and stopped. They abandoned their bases, their tools, everything.

"Their laboratories shaped a cure for a genetic disorder out of a yeast variant. They did not guess that it would prevent the next generation from breeding. They did not guess that it would spread through their spiracle-a.n.a.logues and infect all. I watched them grow old and die, andthis time I did not interfere."

I asked, "Did you ask advice from other . . . xenoanthropologists? Others of your profession?" Amateur G.o.dlings? But a million years of practice does not leave an amateur.

"No."

Was she a jealous G.o.d? Or-"Ssoroghod, were you exiled?"

"No and yes. There was a professional quarrel, my view against the galaxy's. I could not return until I knew answers I could show. So, here I am returned, and the answer is that I was wrong. What else must you know, intrusive creature?"

As an invitation to go away, that was hardly subtle. I asked instead, "Why did you chirpsithra contact Earth?"

"I knew nothing of it. It was not my decision," Ssoroghod said.

"We'd gone to the moon, and come back, and stopped. We were fiddling with DNA, but we weren't doing it in any lunar dome. I was just old enough to see how stupid that was, and I couldn't do anything about it," I said. "You saved us. Why?"

"Merchants," said Ssoroghod. "They follow their own rules. You might have something of interest to ent.i.ties with other forms of wealth to trade. So they interfere."

"I owe them," I said. I drank an unspoken toast to the Whee-Nisht.

"Dispenser, it may be you would have come to your senses. Experiments done in your own living s.p.a.ce are lethal. You might have explored your moon under pressure of fear, built your domed city and your nearby protected laboratories, and saved yourselves. You can never know."

I knew.

"And the Whee-Nisht might have accepted my island despite the cost. I could not rob them of the chance! They chose convenience over adventure, short term over long. I gave them most of my life span, and they threw it away. I will beg a ride home and make another life for myself." She strode over to a tableful of chirpsithra crew and began to talk. And I made myself another Irish coffee, but it was my own species I toasted.

Michael Marshall Smith lives in London with his wife and two cats; two of his novels, Spares and One of Us, are under option in Hollywood, which means he's either doomed or saved. A three-time winner of the British Fantasy Award for his short stories, he recently produced a collection t.i.tled What You Make It. At the moment he's working as a screenwriter and completing his fourth novel, The Straw Man.

His story for Redshift was the fastest acceptance he's ever had, and the fastest I've ever made-when it arrived in my e-mail box, I was online, read it, and bought it immediately.

Technology can't be all bad, can it?

Two Shot.

Michael Marshall Smith.

The weird thing was that he didn't feel especially enthusiastic. Usually the prospect pepped him right up. He'd spend the last half hour pacing around the apartment, making sure everything was just so, building the scene. This afternoon he was a little excited, of course, but this was mingled with other emotions that made less sense. A feeling of distance, dislocation, and a kindof deep-down lethargy underneath it all-adding up to a kind of queasy antic.i.p.ation that was unlike him. Probably it was at least partly due to the hangover. The memories of exactly how he'd come by it were vague, but it was sure as h.e.l.l there. In force. He'd spent the morning drinking large quant.i.ties of expensive mineral water, in the hope this would mitigate it in some way. In fact it had just made him feel both hungover and full of water.

He rubbed his face hard with his hands and felt a little better. The clock panel on the wall of his living room told him there were still twenty-five minutes before she arrived. Plenty of time.

He'd be fine. He knew the way she'd look when she turned up at the door. Nervous, a little flushed, feeling naughty as h.e.l.l and not admitting to herself that she liked the sensation. Silly b.i.t.c.h.

He smiled suddenly, and all at once felt better still. The differential had kicked in. The differential between what they thought was going on and what was really happening. Between their a.s.sumption that they were caught up in a s.e.xy, private little affair with someone who just couldn't keep their hands off them, and the way he really viewed the liaisons. The excitement he felt when they were in the apartment was nothing to what he knew when they were gone, That was the real business.

Feeling well-nigh pepped at last, he shoved himself up off the couch and quickly moved through the two stages of readying the apartment. The first didn't take a lot of doing. He lived tidily. Fan the magazines (carefully chosen to reinforce the impression that he was intelligent, sensitive, and yet sensuously physical-and why the h.e.l.l not? He was, G.o.ddammit); plump the pillows on the couch (Lord, women did like fancy pillows); make sure there were too very clean winegla.s.ses waiting ready on the counter, and that the bottle in the fridge was cool but not too cold. Anne liked a sip before they got to it, whether to relax herself, blur her conscience, or to gild the event with some half-a.s.sed romantic veneer, he neither knew nor cared.