A Saucer of Loneliness

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “Dead,” said Grunty.

  “Yeah,” said Rootes. “That’s what they want anyway.” He sent rapidly.

  In a few minutes the response clattered out of the decoder.

  STAND BY FOR TELEPATH SWEEP. WE MUST CHECK. PRISONERS MAY BE PRETENDING DEATH.

  “Oh-oh,” said the Captain. “This is where the bottom drops out.”

  “Nuh,” said Grunty, calmly.

  “But their detector will locate—oh—I see what you’re driving at. No life, no signal. Same as if they weren’t here at all.”

  “Yuh.”

  The decoder clattered.

  DIRBANU GRATEFUL. CONSIDER MISSION COMPLETE. DO NOT WANT BODIES. YOU MAY EAT THEM.

  Rootes retched. Grunty said, “Custom.”

  The decoder kept clattering.

  NOW READY FOR RECIPROCAL AGREEMENT WITH TERRA.

  “We go home in a blaze of glory,” Rootes exulted. He sent,

  TERRA ALSO READY. WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST?

  The decoder paused, then:

  TERRA STAY AWAY FROM DIRBANU AND DIRBANU WILL STAY AWAY FROM TERRA. THIS IS NOT A SUGGESTION. TAKES EFFECT IMMEDIATELY.

  “Why that bunch of bastards!”

  Rootes pounded his codewriter, and although they circled the planet at a respectful distance for nearly four days, they received no further response.

  The last thing Rootes had said before they established the first stasis on the way home was: “Well, anyway—it does me good to think of those two queens crawling away in that lifeboat. Why, they can’t even starve to death. They’ll be cooped up there for years before they get anywhere they can sit down.”

  It still rang in Grunty’s mind as he shook off the blackout. He glanced aft to the glass partition and smiled reminiscently. “For years,” he murmured. His words curled up and spun, and said,

  … Yes; love requires the focal space

  Of recollection or of hope,

  Ere it can measure its own scope.

  Too soon, too soon comes death to show

  We love more deeply than we know!

  Dutifully, then, came the words: Coventry Patmore, born 1823.

  He rose slowly and stretched, revelling in his precious privacy. He crossed to the other couch and sat down on the edge of it.

  For a time he watched the Captain’s unconscious face, reading it with great tenderness and utmost attention, like a mother with an infant.

  His words said, Why must we love where the lightning strikes, and not where we choose?

  And they said, But I’m glad it’s you, little prince. I’m glad it’s you.

  He put out his huge hand and, with a feather touch, stroked the sleeping lips.

  … And My Fear Is Great …

  HE HEFTED ONE CORNER OF THE BOX high enough for him to get his knuckle on the buzzer, then let it sag. He stood waiting, wheezing. The door opened.

  “Oh! You didn’t carry it up five flights!”

  “No, huh?” he grunted, and pushed inside. He set the groceries down on the sink top in the kitchenette and looked at her. She was sixty-something and could have walked upright under his armpit with her shoes on.

  “That old elevator …” she said. “Wait. Here’s something.”

  He wiped sweat out of his eyes and sensed her approach. He put out his hand for the coin but it wasn’t a coin. It was a glass. He looked at it, mildly startled. He wished it were beer. He tasted it, then gulped it down. Lemonade.

  “Slow-ly, slow-ly,” she said, too late. “You’ll get heat cramps. What’s your name?” Her voice seemed to come from a distance. She seemed, in an odd way, to stand at a distance as well. She was small as a tower is small on the horizon.

  “Don,” he grunted.

  “Well, Donny,” she said, “sit down and rest.”

  He had said, “Don,” not “Donny.” When he was in rompers he was “Donny.” He turned to the door. “I got to go.”

  “Wait a bit.”

  He stopped without turning.

  “That’s a beautiful watch for a boy like you.”

  “I like it.”

  “May I see it?”

  Breath whistled briefly in his nostrils. She had her fingers lightly on the heel of his hand before he could express any more annoyance than that. Grudgingly, he raised his arm and let her look.

  “Beautiful. Where did you get it?”

  He looked at her, surlily. “In a store.”

  Blandly she asked, “Did you buy it?”

  He snatched his hand away. He swiped nervously, twice, with a hooked index finger at his upper lip. His eyes were slits. “What’s it to you?”

  “Well, did you?”

  “Look, lady. I brought your groceries and I got my lemonade. It’s all right about the watch, see? Don’t worry about the watch. I got to go now.”

  “You stole it.”

  “Whaddaya—crazy? I didn’t steal no watch.”

  “You stole that one.”

  “I’m gettin’ outa here.” He reached for the knob.

  “Not until you tell me about the watch.”

  He uttered a syllable and turned the knob. The door stayed closed. He twisted, pulled, pushed, twisted again. Then he whirled, his back thudding against the door. His gangly limbs seemed to compact. His elbows came out, his head down. His teeth bared like an animal’s. “Hey, what is this?”

  She stood, small and chunky and straight, and said in her far-away voice, “Are you going to tell me?” Her eyes were a milky blue, slightly protruding, and unreadable.

  “You lemme out, hear?”

  She shook her head.

  “You better lemme out,” he growled. He took two steps toward her. “Open that door.”

  “You needn’t be frightened. I won’t hurt you.”

  “Somebuddy’s goin’ to get hurt,” he said.

  “Not—another—step,” she said without raising her voice.

  He released an ugly bark of nervous laughter and took the other step. His feet came forward and upward and his back slammed down on the floor. For a moment he lay still, then his eyelids moved slowly, up and down and up again while for a moment he gave himself over to the purest astonishment. He moved his head forward so that he could see the woman. She had not moved.

  He sat up, clenching his jaw against pain, and scuttled backward to the door. He helped himself rise with the doorpost, never taking his eyes off her. “Jesus, I slipped.”

  “Don’t curse in this house,” she said—just as mild, just as firm.

  “I’ll say what I damn please!”

  Wham! His shoulders hit the floor again. His eyes were closed, his lips drawn back. He lifted one shoulder and arched his spine. One long agonized wheeze escaped through his teeth like an extrusion.

  “You see, you didn’t slip,” said the woman. “Poor child. Let me help you.”

  She put her strong, small hand on his left biceps and another between his shoulder blades. She would have led him to a chair but he pulled away. “I’m awright,” he said. He said it again, as if unconvinced, and, “What’d you … do?”

  “Sit down,” she said solicitously. He cowered where he was. “Sit down,” she said again, no more sharply, but there was a difference.

  He went to the chair. He sidled along the wall, watching her, and he did not go very fast, but he went. He sank down into it. It was a very low chair. His long legs doubled and his knees thrust up sharply. He looked like a squashed grasshopper. He panted.

  “About the watch,” she prompted him.

  He panted twice as fast for three breaths and whimpered, “I don’t want no trouble, lady, just lemme go, huh?”

  She pointed at his wrist.

  “Awright, you want the watch?” Hysterically he stripped it off and dangled it toward her. “Okay? Take it.” His eyes were round and frightened and wary. When she made no move he put the watch on her ancient gateleg table. He put his palms on the seat of the chair and his feet walked two paces doorward, though he did not rise, but swiveled around,
keeping his face to her, eager, terrified.

  “Where did you get it?”

  He whimpered, wordless. He cast one quick, hungry look at the door, tensed his muscles, met her gaze again, and slumped. “You gonna turn me in?”

  “Of course not!” she said with more force than she had used so far.

  “You’re goin’ to, all the same.”

  She simply shook her head, and waited.

  He turned, finally, picked up the watch, snapped the flexible gold band. “I swiped it—off Eckhart,” he whispered.

  “Who?”

  “Eckhart on Summit Av-noo. He lives behind the store. It was just laying there, on the counter. I put a box of groceries on it and snagged it out from under. You gonna tell?”

  “Well, Donny! Don’t you feel better, now you’ve confessed?”

  He looked up at her through his eyebrows, hesitated. “Yeah.”

  “Is that the truth, Donny?”

  “Uh-huh.” Then, meeting those calm, imponderable eyes, he said, “Well, no. I dunno, lady. I dunno. You got me all mixed up. Can I go now?”

  “What about the watch?”

  “I don’t want it no more.”

  “I want you to take it back where you got it.”

  “What?” He recoiled, primarily because in shock he had raised his voice and the sound of it frightened him. “Je—shucks, lady, you want him to put me in the can?”

  “My name is Miss Phoebe, not ‘lady.’ No, Donny, I think you’ll do it. Just a moment.”

  She sat at a shaky escritoire and wrote for a moment, while he watched. Presently, “Here,” she said. She handed him the sheet. He looked at her and then at the paper.

  Dear Mr. Eckhart,

  Inside the clasp of this watch your name and address is stamped.

  Would you be good enough to see that it gets to its rightful owner?

  Yours very truly,

  (Miss) Phoebe Watkins

  She took it out of his hand, folded it. She put the watch in an envelope, folded that neatly into a square, dropped it in a second envelope with the note, sealed it and handed it to Don.

  “You—you’re givin’ it right back to me!”

  “Am I?”

  He lowered his eyes, pinched the top edge of the envelope, pulled it through his fingers to crease the top edge sharply. “I know. You’re gonna phone him. You’re gonna get me picked up.”

  “You would be no good to me in the reformatory, Donny.”

  He looked quickly at her eyes, one, then the other. “I’m gonna be some good to you?”

  “Tomorrow at four, I want you to come to tea,” she said abruptly.

  “To what?”

  “To tea. That means wash your face and hands and put on a tie and don’t be late.”

  Wash your face and hands. Nobody had dared to order him around like that for years. And yet, instead of resentment, something sharp and choking rose up in his throat. It was not anger. It was something which, when swallowed, made his eyes wet. He frowned and blinked hard.

  “You’d better go,” she said, before he could accept or refuse, “before the stores close.” She didn’t even say which stores.

  He rose. He pulled his shoulder blades together and his back cracked audibly. He winced, and shambled to the door. He stood waiting, not touching it, head down, patient, like a farm horse before a closed gate.

  “What is it, Donny?”

  “Ain’tcha gonna unlock it?”

  “It was never locked.”

  For a long moment he stood frozen, his back to her, his eyes down. Then he put a slow hand to the knob, turned it. The door opened. He went out, almost but not quite pausing at the threshold, almost but not quite turning to look back. He closed the door quietly and was gone.

  Miss Phoebe began to put her groceries away.

  He did not come at four o’clock.

  He came at four minutes before the hour, and he was breathing hard.

  “Come in, Donny!” She held the door for him. He looked over his shoulder, down the corridor, at the elevator gates and the big window where feathery trees and wide sky showed, and then he came into the room. He stood just inside, watching her as she moved to the kitchenette. He looked around the room, looking for policemen, perhaps, for bars on the windows.

  There was nothing in the room but its old-not-antique furniture, the bow-legged occasional chair with the new upholstery which surely looked as old as it had before it was redone; there was the gateleg table, now bearing a silver tea-service with a bit of brass showing at the shoulder of the hot water pot, and a sugar bowl with delicate tongs which did not match the rest of the set. There was the thin rug with its nap quite swept off, and the dustless books; there was the low chair where he had sat before with its tasseled antimacassars on back and arms.

  “Make yourself at home,” said her quiet voice, barely competing but competing easily with the susurrus of steam that rose from the kettle.

  He moved a little further in and stopped awkwardly. His Adam’s apple loomed mightily over the straining button of his collar. His tie was blue and red, and he wore a horrendous sports jacket, much too small, with a violent yellow-and-gray tweed weave. His trousers were the color of baked earth, and had as much crease as his shoes had shine, and their soles had more polish than the uppers. But he’d scrubbed his face till his pimples bled, and his hair was raked back so hard that his forehead gleamed like scoured porcelain.

  When she faced him he stood his ground and said abruptly, before she could tell him to sit down, “I din’ wanna come.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Well, I did, but I wasn’t gonna.”

  “Why did you come, then?”

  “I was scared not to.”

  She crossed the room with a large platter of little sandwiches. There were cheese and Spam and egg salad and liverwurst. They were not delicacies; they were food. She put it down next to a small store-bought chocolate cake and two bowls of olives, one ripe, one green, neither stuffed. She said, “You had nothing to be afraid of.”

  “No, huh?” He wet his lips, took a deep breath. The rehearsed antagonism blurted out. “You done something to me yesterday I don’t know what it was. How I know I ain’t gonna drop dead if I don’t show up or somep’n like that?”

  “I did nothing to you, child!”

  “Somebuddy sure as h—sure did.”

  “You did it to yourself.”

  “What?”

  She looked at him. “Angry people don’t live very long, Donny, did you know? But sometimes—” Her eyes fell to her hand on the table, and his followed. With one small age-mottled finger she traced around the table’s edge, from the far side around one end. “—sometimes it takes a long time to hurt them. But the hurt can come short and quickly, like this!” and she drew her finger straight across from side to side.

  Don looked at the table as if something were written on it in a strange language. “All right, but you made it do that.”

  “Come and sit down,” she said

  But he hadn’t finished. “I took the watch back.”

  “I knew you would.”

  “Well, okay then. Thass what I come to tell you. That’s what you wanted me for, isn’t it?”

  “I asked you to tea. I didn’t want to bully you and I didn’t want to discuss that silly watch—the matter is closed. It was closed yesterday. Now do come and sit down.”

  “Oh,” he said. “I get it. You mean sit down or else.”

  She fixed her eyes on his and looked at him without speaking and without any expression at all until his gaze dropped. “Donny, go and open the door.”

  He backed away, felt behind him for the knob. He paused there, tense. When she nodded he opened it.

  “You’re free to go whenever you like. But before you do, I want you to understand that there are a lot of people I could have tea with. I haven’t asked anyone but you. I haven’t asked the grocery boy or the thief or any of the other people you seem to be sometimes. Just you
.”

  He pulled the door to and stood yanking at his bony knuckles. “I don’t know about none of that,” he said confusedly. He glanced down between his ribs and his elbow at the doorknob. “I just din’ want you to think you hadda put on no feedbag to fin’ out did I take the watch back.”

  “I could have telephoned to Mr. Eckhart.”

  “Well, din’t you?”

  “Certainly not. There was no need. Was there?”

  He came and sat down.

  “Sugar?”

  “Huh? Yeah—yeah.”

  “Lemon, or cream?”

  “You mean I can have whichever?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then both.”

  “Both? I think perhaps the cream would curdle.”

  “In lemon ice cream it don’t.”

  She gave him cream. He drank seven cups of tea, ate all the sandwiches and most of the cake. He ate quickly, not quite glancing over his shoulder to drive away enemies who might snatch the food. He ate with a hunger that was not of hours or days, but the hunger of years. Miss Phoebe patiently passed and refilled and stoked and served until he was done. He loosened his belt, spread out his long legs, wiped his mouth with one sleeve and his brow with the other, closed his eyes and sighed.

  “Donny,” she said when his jaws had stopped moving, “have you ever had syphilis?”

  The boy literally and immediately fell out of his chair. In this atmosphere of doilies and rectitude he could not have been more jolted by a batted ball on his mountainous Adam’s apple. He floundered on the carpet, bumped the table, slopped her tea, and crawled back into his seat with his face flaming.

  “No,” he said, in a strangled voice.

  She began then to talk to him quite calmly about social ills of many kinds. She laid out the grub and smut and greed and struggle of his own neighborhood streets as neatly and as competently as she had laid the tea table. She spoke without any particular emphasis of the bawdy house she had personally closed up after three reports to the police had no effect. (She had called the desk sergeant, stated her name and intentions, and had asked to be met at the house in twenty minutes. When the police got there she had the girls lined up and two-thirds of their case histories already written.) She spoke of playgrounds and civil defense, of pool rooms, dope pushers, candy stores with beer taps in the soda fountain and the visiting nurse service.