A Saucer of Loneliness

by Theodore Sturgeon

  Shh … shh … approaching footsteps.

  Drusilla rolled over and sat up again. Her head felt simultaneously pressured and fragile, as if any sudden move would make it burst like a faulty boiler. She turned pain-blinded eyes to the footsteps. When the jagged ache receded, she saw Luellen sauntering toward her on this side of the hedge, swinging her hips, humming tunelessly.

  “Feeling better, honey?”

  Drusilla glared at her. The killer-bolt began to form again. Luellen sank gracefully to the grass, near but not too near, and chose a grass-stem to pull up.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you, hon,” she said pleasantly. “I can keep this up all day. You’re just knocking yourself out.”

  She regarded the grass stem thoughtfully from her wide vacant eyes, poked out a membrane of gum, hesitated a moment, and drew it back in without blowing a bubble. The gum clicked wetly twice as she worked it.

  “Damn you,” said Drusilla devoutly.

  Luellen giggled. Drusilla struggled upward, leaned heavily on one arm, and glared. Luellen said, without looking at her, “That’s far enough, sweetie.”

  “Who are you?” Drusilla whispered.

  “Home makuh,” said Luellen, with a trace of Bronx accent. “Leisure class type home makuh.”

  “You know what I mean,” Drusilla growled.

  “Whyn’t you look and see?”

  Drusilla curled her lip.

  “Don’t want to get your pretty probes dirty, huh? Know what you are? You’re a snob.”

  “A—a what?”

  “Snob,” said Luellen. She stretched prettily. “Just too good for anybody. Too good for him.”

  She pointed to Chan with a gesture of her head. “Or me.” She shrugged. “Anybody.”

  Drusilla glanced at Chan and probed anxiously.

  “He’s all right,” said Luellen. “Just unplugged.”

  Drusilla swung her attention back to the other girl. Reluctantly she dropped her automatic shield and reached out with her mind. What are you?

  Luellen put her hands out, palms forward. “Not that way. I don’t do that any more. Look if you want to, but if you want to talk to me, talk out loud.”

  Drusilla probed. “A criminal!” she said finally, in profound disgust.

  “Sisters under the skin,” said Luellen. She popped her gum. Drusilla shuddered. Luellen said, “Tell you what I did.”

  “I’m not interested.”

  “Tell you, anyway. Listen,” Luellen said suddenly, “you know if you try to do anything to me, you’ll go flat on your bustle. Well, the same thing applies if you don’t listen to me. Hear?”

  Drusilla dropped her eyes and was furiously silent. Reluctantly she realized that this creature could do exactly as she said.

  “I’m not asking you to like it,” Luellen said more gently. “Just listen, that’s all.”

  She waited a moment, and when Drusilla offered nothing, she said, “What I did, I climbed over the wall at school.”

  Drusilla gasped. “You went outside?”

  Luellen rolled over onto her stomach and propped herself on her elbows. She pulled another blade of grass and broke it. “Something funny happened to me. You know the feeling-picture about jumping?”

  Drusilla recognized it instantly, the sweet, strong, breathless sensation of being strong and leaping from soft grass, floating? landing lithely.

  “You do,” said Luellen, glancing at Drusilla’s face. “Well, I was having that picture one fine morning when it—stuck. I mean like one of the phonograph records here when it gets stuck. There I was feeling a jump. Just off the ground, and it all froze.”

  She laughed a little. “I was real scared. After a while, it started again. I went and asked my tutor about it. She got all upset and went to the Preceptor. He called me in and there was no end of hassle about it.” Again she laughed. “I’d have forgotten the whole thing if he hadn’t made such a fuss. He wanted me to forget it in the worst way. Tried to make me think it happened because there was something wrong with me.

  “So I got to thinking about it. When you do that, you start looking pretty carefully at all the pictures. And you know, they’re full of scratches and flaws, if you look.

  “But all the time they were teaching us that this was the world over the Wall—perfect green grass, beautiful men, the fountain and the falls and all the rest of it, that we were supposed to graduate to when the time came. I wondered so much that I wouldn’t wait any more. So I went over the wall. They caught me and sent me here.”

  “I don’t wonder,” said Drusilla primly.

  Luellen put pink fingers to her lips, hauled the gum out almost to arm’s length, and chewed it back in as she talked. “And all you did was knock off the Preceptor!”

  Drusilla winced and said nothing.

  Luellen said, “You been here about two years, right? How many of us prisoners have you run into?”

  “None!” said Drusilla, with something like indignation. “I wouldn’t have anything to do with—” She clamped her lips tight and snorted through her nostrils. “Will you stop that giggling?”

  “I can’t help it,” said Luellen. “It’s part of the pattern for home makuhs. All home makuhs giggle.”

  “… And that voice!”

  “That’s part of the pattern too, hon,” said Luellen. “How do you think I’d go over at the canasta table if I weren’t a-flutter and a-twitter, all coos and sighs and gentle breathings? My God, the girls’d be scared right out of their home permanents!” She tittered violently.

  “Again!” Drusilla winced.

  “You might as well get used to it, hon. I had to. You’ll be doing something equally atrocious yourself, pretty soon. It goes under the head of camouflage … Look, I’ll stop fooling around. There’s a couple of hard truths you have to get next to. I know what you did. You set up a reflex to blank out any ex-Citizen you might meet. Right?”

  “One must keep oneself decent,” insisted Drusilla.

  Luellen shook her head wonderingly. “You’re just dumb, girl. I don’t like you, but I have to be sorry for you.”

  “I don’t need your pity!”

  “Yes, you do. You’ve been asleep for a whole lot of years and you just have to snap out of it.” Luellen knelt and sat back on her heels. “Tell me—up to the time they shipped you here, where did you go?”

  “You know perfectly well. The Great Hall. My garden. My dormitory. That’s all.”

  “Um-hmm. That’s all. And every minute since you were born, you’ve been conditioned: a Citizen is the finest flower of creation. Be a good obedient girl and you’ll gambol on the green for the rest of your life. Meanwhile there are criminals who get sent to prison, and the prison is the lowest cesspool in the Universe where you live out your life being reminded of the glory of the world you lost.”

  “Of course, but you make it sound—”

  “Did you ever see any of those big muscular beautiful men the pictures told you about? Did you ever see that old-granite and new-grass landscape, or get warm under that nice big sun?”

  “No, I was sent here before I had—”

  Luellen demonstrated her ties to Earth by uttering a syllable which was, above all else, Earthy. “You’re the dumbest blind kitten I ever saw. And tell me, when they took you to the ship, did you get a chance to look around?”

  “I wasn’t … worthy,” said Drusilla miserably. “If a—a criminal was privileged to see outside the Wall—”

  “They blindfolded you. Yes, and you never got a chance to look out of the ship when it left, either. Look, Citizen,” she said scornfully, “if you hadn’t had the good sense to get yourself sent here, you never would have gotten over the Wall!”

  “I had only six more years before I—”

  “Before you’d be quietly moved to another Walled Place with your age group. And maybe you’d have been bred, and maybe not, and by the time you realized there was no release for you, you’d be so old you wouldn’t care any more. And they call that a
world and this a prison!”

  Drusilla suddenly put her hands over her ears. “I won’t listen to this! I won’t!”

  Luellen grasped her wrist in a remarkably powerful little hand. “Yes, by God, you will,” she said between her perfect teeth. “Our race is old and dying, rotten to the core. Know why you never saw any men? Because there are only a few hundred of them left. They lie in their cubicles and get fat and breed. And most of their children are girls, because that’s the way it was arranged so long ago that we’ve forgotten how it was done or how to change it. You know what’s over the Wall? Nothing! It’s an ice world, with a dying sun and thinning air, and a little cluster of Walled Places to breed women for the men to breed with, and a few old, old, worn transmitters for music and pictures to condition the blindworms who live and die there!”

  Drusilla began to cry. Luellen sat back and watched her, a great softness coming into her eyes.

  “Cry, that’s good, sweetie,” she said huskily. “Ah, you poor brat. You could’ve gotten straightened out the day you arrived. But no. Criminals were the lowest of the low, and you wouldn’t associate with them. Earth and humans were insects and savages, because that’s what you were taught. To be a Citizen was to be a god among gods, and to hear the music was your torture, for what you’d lost.”

  “What about the torture?”

  “Transmitters in the guardian ships. You know about that.”

  “But the Citizens on board them—”

  “What? Oh, for Pete’s sake, hon! They’re machines, that’s all.”

  “They’re not! The killer-boats are—”

  “The killer-boats home on any human mind that begins to operate near the music bands. You had a close call, kitten.”

  “I wish one had come,” Drusilla said miserably. “That’s what I wanted.”

  “One did come, silly. But I don’t get you. What did you want?”

  “I wanted it to kill me. That’s why I taught Chan to—”

  Luellen clapped her hands to her face. “I thought that, but I couldn’t really believe it! Sweetie, I got news for you. That boat wouldn’t have killed you. It was after your boy-friend there.”

  Drusilla’s face went almost as white as her teeth. She put her fist to her mouth and bit it, her eyes round, full of horror.

  “It’s all right,” Luellen murmured. “It’s gone. It was homing on him, and when he stopped radiating, it stopped coming. It’s just a machine.”

  “You stopped it,” Drusilla breathed. Slowly she sat up straight, staring at the little blonde as if she had never seen her before.

  “Pity if one of us couldn’t out-think a machine,” said Luellen deprecatingly. Then, “What is it, Dru? What’s the matter?”

  “He might have been … killed.”

  “You only just thought of that. Really thought of it.”

  Drusilla nodded.

  “I’ll bet this is the first time you ever thought of someone else. See what snobbery can do?”

  “I feel awful.”

  Luellen laughed at her. “You feel fine. Or you will. What you’ve got is an attack of something called humility. It rushes in to fill the hole when the snobbery is snatched out. You’ll be all right now.”

  “Will I?” She licked her lips. She tried to speak and could not. She pointed a wavering finger at the unconscious man.

  “Him?” Luellen answered the unspoken question. “Just you keep him asleep for a while. Give him more music, but keep him away from that.” She pointed to the sky. “He won’t know the difference.”

  “Humility,” said Drusilla, thoughtfully. “That’s when you feel … not good enough. Is that it?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Then I don’t … I don’t think I understand. Lu, do you know why I killed the Preceptor?”

  Luellen shook her head. “It was a good idea, whatever.”

  Drusilla said with difficulty, “My group went to be chosen for breeding. There’s a—custom that the … ugliest girl must be sent back to her garden. He pointed me out. I was the ugliest one there. He said I was the ugliest woman in the world. I went … kind of … crazy, I guess. I killed him.”

  Suddenly she was in Luellen’s strong small arms. “Oh, for God’s sake,” said Luellen with a roughness that made Drusilla cry again. “You’re the sorriest most mixed-up little chicken ever. Don’t you know that a perfect necklace has to have an ugliest diamond in it somewhere?” She thumped Drusilla’s heaving shoulder. “We’ve been bred for beauty for more generations than this Earth has years, Dru. On Earth you’re one of the most beautiful women alive.”

  “He told me that once, and I could have … killed him,” Drusilla squeaked. She swallowed hard, moved back to peer piteously into Luellen’s face. “Is that humility? To feel you’re not good enough?”

  “That’s humiliation,” said Luellen. She paused thoughtfully. “And here’s the difference: Humility is knowing something is finer and better than you can ever be, so it’s worth putting everything you have behind that something. Everything! Like …”

  She laughed. “Like me and that ham novelist of mine. Bit by bit, year by year, he gets better. I give him exactly what he needs, in his own time. Right now what he wants is an irresponsible little piece of candy he can pick up or put down, and meantime get envied all over the neighborhood for. He’s got it in him to do some really important work some day, and when he does he’ll need something else from me, and I’ll be here to give it to him. If, fifty years from now, he comes doddering up to me and tells me I’ve grown with him through the years, I’ll know I did the thing right.”

  Drusilla worried at the statement, turning it over, shaking it. She parted her lips, closed them again.

  Luellen said, “Go ahead. Ask me.”

  Drusilla looked to her timidly, dropped her eyes. “Is he really finer and better?”

  “Snob!” said Luellen, and this time it was all kindliness. “Of course! He’s an Earthman, Dru. Earth is young and crude and raw, but it’s strong and it’s good. Do you call an infant stupid because it can’t talk, or is a child bad because it hasn’t learned reason? We have nothing but decadence to bring to Earth. So instead we help Earth with the best it has. You keep your eyes open from now on, Dru. Nine women out of ten who truly help their men to realize themselves are what you’ve been calling criminals.

  “You’ll find them all over, up and down the social scale, through and through the history of this culture. Put up your shields again—for fun—and watch the women you meet. See how some seem to understand one another on sight—how they pass a glance that seems to be full of secrets. They’re the hope of the world, Dru darling, and this world is the hope of the Galaxy.” She followed Drusilla’s gaze and smiled. “Now that you come to think of it, you love him, don’t you?”

  “Now that I come to think of it …”

  She raised her head and looked at the sky. Gradually a smile was born on her trembling lips. She shook herself and took a deep breath of the warm evening air.

  “Listen,” she said. She laughed unevenly. “It is sort of scratchy, isn’t it?”

  Story Notes

  by Paul Williams

  “A Saucer of Loneliness”: first published in Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1953. Probably written early autumn 1952.

  “A Saucer of Loneliness” was adapted as a radio drama for the “X Minus One” program (aired Sept. 1, 1957). It was adapted as a television drama in France in 1982, under the title “La Soucoupe de Solitude.” An American TV adaptation (starring Shelley Duvall, Richard Libertini and Nan Martin) was aired Sept. 27, 1986 in the (revived) Twilight Zone series. In 1975, Sturgeon wrote to the French production company that had purchased “Saucer”: I would be most pleased if the film carried the following dedication, to precede my own credits: THIS FILM IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF “MAMA” CASS ELLIOTT, WHO LOVED THE STORY, AND WHO WAS VERY MUCH LOVED BY ALL THE WORLD. It happens that I received the first word of your interest in this story on the very
day of Cass’s tragic death [July 29, 1974]. Had I not heard the sad news, I would have called her immediately and asked her to get in touch with you. Indeed she loved SAUCER; it had special meanings for her. As an actress of increasing accomplishment, she had desired for years to play the heroine of SAUCER, and for years I have been trying to make it possible. She was a warm and lovely person and a dear friend, and much beloved around the world as she was by all who knew her, and it would please me beyond measure to have this dedication made in this way.

  A note from TS to Galaxy editor H. L. Gold after this story was accepted indicates that Gold wanted to delete the “A” in the title and requested a new closing paragraph. Sturgeon replied: Title: I still like A Saucer of Loneliness, because of its connotation of quantity, which is lost by dropping the article. What it means to me is “measure” or “portion.” Closing: This is squeezed out of me like toothpaste out of a tube with the cap on tight: because of too much pressure, emerging unexpectedly from the wrong place, and rather damaging to the source; but for all that, containing precisely the right material: [This is followed by the story’s present closing paragraph. The original manuscript ended, “You’re beautiful.”]

  In one of Sturgeon’s 1955 or ’56 “maunderings” (in which he talked to himself on paper in an effort to come up with story ideas or further develop an idea that hasn’t jelled), he speaks longingly of the ease (and speed) with which certain powerful stories flowed out of him: BIANCA’S HANDS and SAUCER OF LONELINESS were so easy … and IT, though I recall a certain amount of trouble doing the most inferior part of it, the crap about the will … WORLD WELL LOST was good but really took forever to set itself up … it’s all very well to say all right, just write, but dammit you need just something to go on, a setting, something … On another “maundering” page from the same era, TS reinforces this by saying: I’m still haunted by SAUCER OF LONELINESS, and somehow am sure I’m right in sticking to this chore until I can bust loose with such a thing.