The dark side of the sun - By Terry Pratchett Page 0,23

on, broke into a low buzz for several minutes, and extruded a table from a base slot. Another, larger slot opened and the meal slid out.

They stared at it for several seconds. Dom reached out and picked up a crystallized fruit, gingerly.

Hrsh-Hgn coughed. ‘The intricate bird with the honey glaze I recognize,’ he murmured. ‘It’s a Croupier swan. I think the blobss are cream.’

Dom took the lid off a silver dish.

‘Some class of a shellfish baked in— Well, it tastes of eggs.’

Isaac picked up a cut-glass goblet and downed the contents in one swallow.

‘Old Overcoat,’ he said. ‘The genuine stuff. Two glasses and you lift off on a pillar of flame.’

They stared at him. He put down the glass.

‘Haven’t you seen a robot drink before?’ he asked.

‘We were wondering …’ Dom stopped, embarrassed.

‘… where it goesss?’

‘We new model Class Fives can derive power from the calorific content of organic substances.’ He reached for his chest panel. ‘If you like I can—’

‘We believe you,’ said Dom. He looked down at the table again. ‘Did I say something about the virtues of simplicity? I think it may be against Sadhimist laws to eat this.’

‘ “You will not waste”,’ quoted Hrsh-Hgn. ‘There are timess when it iss a pleassure as well ass a duty to follow the One Commandment.’

Ten minutes later, Dom said: ‘Hrsh-Hgn, this damn black jam tastes of fish.’

‘It’s caviar.’

‘Caviar? I’d always wondered. On Widdershins only poor people are allowed to eat it. I suppose they get used to it.’

Twenty minutes later the autochef digested the remains of the meal. Ig drifted towards the matrix room, chewing a fish head. A small, burned-out wreck of a star passed crosswise through the cabin and disappeared. Dom watched it go.

‘If the First Sirian Bank is the galaxy’s leading Joker expert, why hasn’t he found Jokers World?’ he asked.

‘I assume you don’t mean that he should have roved across the universe, Roche limits being what they are. A thing the ssize of the Bank would upset the balance of the average solar system, probably. As to exploration via the available data, he may well have disscovered Jokerss World. Why not? Why, then, sshould he tell uss, mere upstart civilissationss?’

‘We’d pay well.’

‘We? We? Phnobic We? Human We? Let uss assume the race who findss Jokerss World gains immeasurably. Why should he want that?’

Dom frowned. ‘But he runs himself as a Bank. He charges for his services, too.’

‘He choosess to. A creature musst do something to relieve the boredom of three billion years. He likes people around.’

‘You mean he wouldn’t like to see anyone get hold of the World because they might put the Bank in jeopardy?’

‘Maybe. It iss all conjecture.’

He started to talk about Jokers World.

Three races walked like men. One of them was Man. Taller than men, but generally lighter, were the phnobes. Much smaller than men, but built more on cuboid lines so that they looked like heavy-gravity chimpanzees on a steroid diet, were drosks.

Phnobes came in three sexes. They had a secondary, vestigial brain. They evolved on a world with no readily available metal. In cerebral matters they were supreme. A world where most of the higher animals were adapted to a tri-sexual system needed a race with brains.

Drosks came in two sexes, eventually. It made sense on a harsh, bitter world. The young males evolved into mature, strong-minded females after about the first third of their life. Their social system was intricate but was surpassed in complexity by their religion, a fiery edifice involving the double star and three large moons in their system. Drosks were cannibals, it was part of the religion. Drosks found it difficult to conceive of a number greater than seven. Drosks periodically built up a machine-age civilization then, for no well-understood reason, carefully dismantled it and reverted to barbarism.

Compared to all the other fifty-two races known, drosks, phnobes and men were like brothers. To some races, like the Spooners who lived on little icy worlds, they were merely identical. Many others would be incapable of thinking of them as life at all – like say, the Tarquins, who lived in the upper layers of some protostars.

A few races had a large conception of life. The Creapii lived on small, hot worlds, in the deep layers of the larger gas giants and occasionally on the surface of very cool suns, but could discourse on philosophy with men as easily as they could discuss the untranslatable with Tarquins. Then there were the sundogs, who were merely raw life