A Saucer of Loneliness

by Theodore Sturgeon

  Wrenn continued, “You—all of us—live in this way. We build no cities because we don’t need cities. We stay in groups because some things need more than two hands, more than one head, or voice, or mood. We eat exactly what we require, we use only what we need.

  “And that is the end of the truism, wherein I so meticulously describe to you what you know about how you live. The turning: Whence this familiar phenomenon, this closing of the eyes and mysterious appearance of the answer? There have been many engrossing theories about it, but the truth is the most fascinating of all.

  “We have all spoken of telepathy, and many of us have experienced it. We cannot explain it, as yet. But most of us insist on a limited consideration of it; that is, we judge its success or failure by the amount of detail sent and received. We expect facts to be transmitted, words, idea sequences—or perhaps pictures; the clearer the picture, the better the telepathy.

  “Perhaps one day we will learn to do this; it would be diverting. But what we actually do is infinitely more useful.

  “You see, we are telepathic, not in the way of conveying details, but in the much more useful way of conveying a manner of thinking.

  “Let us try to envisage a man who lacks this quality. Faced with your broken machine, he would be utterly at a loss, unless he had been specially trained in this particular field. Do not overlook the fact that he lacks the conditioning of a whole life of the kind of sequence thinking which is possible to us. He would probably bumble through the whole chore in an interminable time, trying one thing and then another and going forward from whatever seems to work. You can see the tragic series of pitfalls possible for him in a situation in which an alternate three or four or five consecutive steps are possible, forcing step six, which is wrong in terms of the problem.

  “Now, take the same man and train him in this one job. Add a talent, so that he learns quickly and well. Add years of experience—terrible, drudging thought!—to his skill. Face him with the repair problem and it is obvious that he will repair it with a minimum of motion.

  “Finally, take this skilled man and equip him with a device which constantly sends out the habit-patterns of his thinking. Long practice has made him efficient in the matter; in terms of machine function he knows better than to question whether a part turns this way or that, whether a rod or tube larger than x diameter is to be considered. Furthermore, imagine a receiving device which absorbs these sendings whenever the receiver is faced with an identical problem. The skilled sender controls the unskilled receiver as long as the receiver is engaged in the problem. Anything the receiver does which is counter to the basic patterns of the sender is automatically rejected as illogical.

  “And now I have described our species. We have an unmatchable unitary existence. Each of us with a natural bent—the poets, the musicians, the mechanics, the philosophers—each gives of his basic thinking method every time anyone has an application for it. The expert is unaware of being tapped—which is why it has taken hundreds of centuries to recognize the method. Yet, in spite of what amounts to a veritable race intellect, we are all very much individuals. Because each field has many experts, and each of those experts has his individual approach, only that which is closest both to the receiver and his problem comes in. The ones without special talents live fully and richly with all the skills of the gifted. The creative ones share with others in their field as soon as it occurs to any expert to review what he knows; the one step forward then instantly presents itself.

  “So much for the bulk of our kind. There remain a few specializing non-specialists. When you are faced with a problem to which no logical solution presents itself, you come to one of these few for help. The reason no solution presents itself is that this is a new line of thinking, or (which is very likely) the last expert in it has died. The non-specialist hears your problem and applies simple logic to it. Immediately, others of his kind do the same. But, since they come from widely divergent backgrounds and use a vast variety of methods, one of them is almost certain to find the logical solution. This is your answer—and through you, it is available to anyone who ever faces this particular problem.

  “In exceptional cases, the non-specializing specialist encounters a problem which, for good reason, is better left out of the racial ‘pool’—as, for example, a physical or psychological experiment within the culture, of long duration, which general knowledge might alter. In such cases, a highly specialized hypnotic technique is used on the investigators, which has the effect of cloaking thought on this particular matter.

  “And if you began to fear that I was never coming to Osser’s unhappy history, you must understand, my dear, I have just given it to you. Osser was just such an experiment.

  “It became desirable to study the probable habit patterns of a species like us in every respect except for our unique attribute. The problem was attacked from many angles, but I must confess that using a live specimen was my idea.

  “By deep hypnosis, the telepathic receptors in Osser were severed from the rest of his mind. He was then allowed to grow up among us in real and complete freedom.

  “You saw the result. Since few people recognize the nature of this unique talent, and even fewer regard it as worth discussion, this strong, proud, highly intelligent boy grew up feeling a hopeless inferior, and never knowing exactly why. Others did things, made things, solved problems, as easily as thinking about them, while Osser had to study and sweat and piece and try out. He had to assert his superiority in some way. He did, but in as slipshod a fashion as he did everything else.

  “So he was led to the pictures you saw. He was permitted to make what conclusions he wished—they were that we are a backward people, incapable of building a city. He suddenly saw in the dreams of a mechanized, star-reaching species a justification of himself. He could not understand our lack of desire for possessions, not knowing that our whole cultural existence is based on sharing—that it is not only undesirable, but impossible for us to hoard an advanced idea, a new comfort. He would master us through strength.

  “He was just starting when you came to me about him. You could get no key to his problem because we know nothing about sick minds, and there was no expert you could tap. I couldn’t help you—you, of all people—because you loved him, and because we dared not risk having him know what he was, especially when he was just about to take action.

  “Why he chose this particular site for his tower I do not know. And why he chose the method of the tower I don’t know either, though I can deduce an excellent reason. First, he had to use his strength once he became convinced that in it lay his superiority. Second, he had to try out this build-with-hate idea—the bugaboo of all other man-species, the trial-and-error, the inability to know what will work and what will not.

  “And so we learned through Osser precisely what we had learned in other approaches—that a man without our particular ability must not live among us, for, if he does, he will destroy us.

  “It is a small step from that to a conclusion about a whole race of them coexisting with us. And now you know what happened here this afternoon.”

  Jubilith raised her head slowly. “A whole ship full of … of what Osser was?”

  “Yes. We did the only thing we could. Quick, quite painless. We have been watching them for a long time—years. We saw them start. We computed their orbit—even to the deceleration spiral. We chose a spot to launch our interceptor.” He glanced at Osser, who was almost quiet, quite exhausted. “What sheer hell he must have gone through, to see us build like that. How could he know that not one of us needed training, explanation, or any but the simplest orders? How could he rationalize to himself our possession of machines and devices surpassing the wildest dreams of the godlike men he admired so? How could he understand that, having such things, we use them only when we must, and that otherwise we live in ways which will not violate the walking, working animal we are?”

  She turned to him a mask so cold, so beautiful, he forgot for a moment to breathe.
“Why did you do it? You had other logics, other approaches. Did you have to do that to him?”

  He studiously avoided a glance at Osser. “I said you might hate me,” he murmured. “Jubilith, the men in that ship were so like Osser that the experiment could not be passed by. We had astronomical data, historical, cultural—as far as our observations could go—and ethnological. But only by analogy could we get such a psychological study. And it checked too well. As for having him see this thing, today … building, Jubilith, is sometimes begun by tearing down.”

  He looked at her with deep compassion. “This was not the site chosen for the launching of the interceptor. We uprooted the whole installation, brought it here, rebuilt it, just for Osser; just so that he could stand on his tower and see it happen. He had to be broken, leveled to the earth. Ah-h-h …” he breathed painfully, “Osser has earned what he will have from now on.”

  “He can be—well again?”

  “With your help.”

  “So very right, you are,” she snarled suddenly. “So sure that this or that species is fit to associate with superiors like us.” She leaned toward him and shook a finger in his startled face. The courtly awe habitual to all when speaking to such as Wrenn had completely left her.

  “So fine we are, so mighty. And didn’t we build cities? Didn’t we have giant bird-machines and shiny carts on our streets? Didn’t we let our cities be smashed—haven’t you seen the ruins in the west? Tell me,” she sparked, “did we ruin them ourselves, because one superior city insisted on proving its superiority over another superior city?”

  She stopped abruptly to keep herself from growling like an animal, for he was smiling blandly, and his smile got wider as she spoke. She turned furiously, half away from him, cursing the broken knee that held her so helpless.

  “Jubilith.”

  His voice was so warm, so kind and so startling in these surroundings, held such a bubbling overtone of laughter that she couldn’t resist it. She turned grudgingly.

  In his hand he held a pebble. When her eye fell to it he rolled it, held it between thumb and forefinger, and let it go.

  It stayed motionless in mid-air. “Another factor, Jubilith.”

  She almost smiled. She looked down at his other hand, and saw it aiming the disc-shaped force-field projector at low power.

  He lifted it and, with the field, tossed the pebble into the air and batted it away. “We have no written history, Jubilith. We don’t need one, but once in a while it would be useful.

  “Jubilith, our culture is one of the oldest in the Galaxy. If we ever had such cities, there are not even legends about it.”

  “But I saw—”

  “A ship came here once. We had never seen a humanoid race. We welcomed them and helped them. We gave them land and seeds. Then they called a flotilla, and the ships came by the hundreds.

  “They built cities and, at that, we moved away and left them alone, because we don’t need cities. Then they began to hate us. They couldn’t hate us until they had tall buildings to do it in. They hated our quiet; they hated our understanding. They sent missionaries to change our ways. We welcomed the missionaries, fed them and laughed with them, but when they left us glittering tools and humble machines to amuse us, we let them lie where they were until they rotted.

  “In time they sent no more missionaries. They joked about us and forgot us. And then they built a city on land we had not given them, and another, and another. They bred well, and their cities became infernally big. And finally they began to build that one city too many, and we turned a river and drowned it. They were pleased. They could now rid themselves of the backward natives.”

  Jubilith closed her eyes, and saw the tumbled agony of the mounds, radiating outward from a lake with its shores too bare. “All of them?” she asked.

  Wrenn nodded. “Even one might be enough to destroy us.” He nodded toward Osser, who had begun to cry again.

  “They seemed … good,” she said, reflectively. “Too fast, too big … and it must have been noisy, but—”

  “Wait,” he said. “You mean the people in the picture Osser showed you?”

  “Of course. They were the city-builders you—we—destroyed, weren’t they?”

  “They were not! The ones who built here were thin, hairy, with backward-slanting faces and webs between their fingers. Beautiful, but they hated us … The pictures, Jubilith, were made on the third planet of a pale star out near the Rim; a world with one Moon; a world of humans like Osser … the world where that golden ship came from.”

  “How?” she gasped.

  “If logic is good enough,” Wrenn said, “it need not be checked. Once we were so treated by humanoids, we built the investigators. They are not manned. They draw their power from anything that radiates, and they home on any planet which could conceivably rear humans. They are, as far as we know, indetectible. We’ve never lost one. They launch tiny flyers to make close searches—one of them made the pictures you saw. The pictures and other data are coded and sent out into space and, where distances warrant it, other investigators catch the signal and add power and send them on.

  “Whenever a human or humanoid species builds a ship, we watch it. When they send their ships to this sector, we watch their planet and their ship. Unless we are sure that those people have the ability we have, to share all expertness and all creative thinking with all who want it—they don’t land here. And no such species ever will land here.”

  “You’re so sure.”

  “We explore no planets, Jubilith. We like it here. If others like us exist—why should they visit us?”

  She thought about it, and slowly she nodded. “I like it here,” she breathed.

  Wrenn knelt and looked out across the rolling ground. It was late, and most of the villagers had gone home. A few picked at the mound of splinters at the implosion center. Their limbs were straight and their faces clear. They owned little and they shared their souls.

  He rose and went to Osser, and sat down beside him, facing him, his back to Jubilith. “M-m-mum, mum, mum, mum, mum-mum-mum,” he intoned.

  Osser blinked at him. Wrenn lifted his hand and his ring, green and gold and a shimmering oval of purple, caught the late light. Osser looked at the ring. He reached for it. Wrenn moved it slightly. Osser’s hand passed it and hit the ground and lay there neglected. Osser gaped at the ring, his jaws working, his teeth not meeting.

  “Mum, mum, mummy, where’s your mummy, Osser?”

  “In the house,” said Osser, looking at the ring.

  Wrenn said, “You’re a good little boy. When we say the word, you won’t be able to do anything but what you can do. When we say the key, you’ll be able to do anything anybody can do.”

  “All right,” Osser said.

  “Before I give the word, tell me the key. You must remember the key.”

  “That ring. And ‘last ’n’ lost.’ ”

  “Good, Osser. Now listen to me. Can you hear me?”

  “Sure.” He grabbed at the ring.

  “I’m going to change the key. It isn’t ‘last ’n’ lost’ any more. ‘Last ’n’ lost’ is no good now. Forget it.”

  “No good?”

  “Forget it. What’s the key?”

  “I—forgot.”

  “The key,” said Wrenn patiently, “is this.” He leaned close and whispered rapidly.

  Jubilith was peering out past the implosion center to the townward path. Someone was coming, a tiny figure.

  “Jubilith,” Wrenn said. She looked up at him. “You must understand something.” His voice was grave. His hair reached for an awed little twist of wind, come miles to see this place. The wind escaped and ran away down the hill.

  Wrenn said, “He’s very happy now. He was a happy child when first I heard of him, and how like a space-bound human he could be. Well, he’s that child again. He always will be, until the day he dies. I’ll see he’s cared for. He’ll chase the sunbeams, a velvet red one and a needle of blue-white; he’ll eat
and he’ll love and be loved just as is right for him.”

  They looked at Osser. There was a blue insect on his wrist. He raised it slowly, slowly, close to his eyes, and through its gauze wings he saw the flame-and-silver sunset. He laughed.

  “All his life?”

  “All his life,” said Wrenn. “With the bitterness and the trouble wiped away, and no chance to mature again into the unfinished thing that fought the world with the conviction it had something extra.”

  Then he dropped the ring into Jubilith’s hand. “But if you care to, he said, watching her face, the responsive motion of her sensitive nostrils, the most delicate index of her lower lip, “if you care to, you can give him back everything I took away. In a moment, you can give him more than he has now; but how long would it take you to make him as happy?”

  She made no attempt to answer him. He was Wrenn, he was old and wise; he was a member of a unique species whose resources were incalculable; and yet he was asking her to do something he could not do himself. Perhaps he was asking her to correct a wrong. She would never know that.

  “Just the ring,” he said, “and the touch of your hand.”

  He went away, straight and tall, quickening his pace as, far away, the patient figure she had been watching earlier rose and came to meet him. It was Oyva.

  Jubilith thought, “He needs her.”

  Jubilith had never been needed by anyone.

  She looked at her hand and in it she saw all she was, all she could ever be in her own right; and with it, the music of ages; never the words, but all of the pressures of poetry. And she saw the extraordinary privacy of love in a world which looked out through her eyes, placed all of its skills in her hands, to do with as she alone wished.

  With a touch of her hand … what a flood of sensation, what a bursting in of voices and knowledge, for a child!