A Saucer of Loneliness

by Theodore Sturgeon

  He hated the loverbirds, and there was no joy in him. He pressed the button, the ship slid into a new stasis, and he blacked out.

  The time passed.

  “Grunty!”

  “?”

  “You feed them this shift?”

  “Nuh.”

  “Last shift?”

  “Nuh.”

  “What the hell’s matter with you, y’big dumb bastich? What you expect them to live on?”

  Grunty sent a look of roiling hatred aft. “Love,” he said.

  “Feed ’em,” snapped Rootes.

  Wordlessly Grunty went about preparing a meal for the prisoners. Rootes stood in the middle of the cabin, his hard small fists on his hips, his gleaming auburn head tilted to one side, and watched every move. “I didn’t used to have to tell you anything,” he growled, half pugnaciously, half worriedly. “You sick?”

  Grunty shook his head. He twisted the tops of two cans and set them aside to heat themselves, and took down the water suckers.

  “You got it in for those honeymooners or something?”

  Grunty averted his face.

  “We get them to Dirbanu alive and healthy, hear me? They get sick, you get sick, by God. I’ll see to that. Don’t give me trouble, Grunty. I’ll take it out on you. I never whipped you yet, but I will.”

  Grunty carried the tray aft. “You hear me?” Rootes yelled.

  Grunty nodded without looking at him. He touched the control and a small communication window slid open in the glass wall. He slid the tray through. The taller loverbird stepped forward and took it eagerly, gracefully, and gave him a dazzling smile of thanks. Grunty growled low in his throat like a carnivore. The loverbird carried the food back to the couch and they began to eat, feeding each other little morsels.

  A new stasis, and Grunty came fighting up out of blackness. He sat up abruptly, glanced around the ship. The Captain was sprawled out across the cushions, his compact body and outflung arm forming the poured-out, spring-steel laxness usually seen only in sleeping cats. The loverbirds, even in deep unconsciousness, lay like hardly separate parts of something whole, the small one on the couch, the tall one on the deck, prone, reaching, supplicating.

  Grunty snorted and hove to his feet. He crossed the cabin and stood looking down on Rootes.

  The hummingbird is a yellowjacket, said his words, Buzz and dart, hiss and flash away. Swift and hurtful, hurtful …

  He stood for a moment, his great shoulder muscles working one against the other, and his mouth trembled.

  He looked at the loverbirds, who were still motionless. His eyes slowly narrowed.

  His words tumbled and climbed, and ordered themselves:

  I through love have learned three things,

  Sorrow, sin and death it brings.

  Yet day by day my heart within

  Dares shame and sorrow, death and sin.…

  And dutifully he added Samuel Ferguson, born 1810. He glared at the loverbirds and brought his fist into his palm with a sound like a club on an anthill. They had heard him again, and this time they did not smile, but looked into each other’s eyes and then turned together to regard him, nodding gravely.

  Rootes went through Grunty’s books, leafing and casting aside. He had never touched them before. “Buncha crap,” he jeered. “Garden of the Plynck. Wind in the Willows. Worm Ouroborous. Kid stuff.”

  Grunty lumbered across and patiently gathered up the books the Captain had flung aside, putting them one by one back into their places, stroking them as if they had been bruised.

  “Isn’t there nothing in here with pictures?”

  Grunty regarded him silently for a moment and then took down a tall volume. The Captain snatched it, leafed through it. “Mountains,” he growled. “Old houses.” He leafed. “Damn boats.” He smashed the book to the deck. “Haven’t you got any of what I want?”

  Grunty waited attentively.

  “Do I have to draw a diagram?” the Captain roared. “Got that ol’ itch, Grunty. You wouldn’t know. I feel like looking at pictures, get what I mean?”

  Grunty stared at him, utterly without expression, but deep within him a panic squirmed. The Captain never, never behaved like this in mid-voyage. It was going to get worse, he realized. Much worse. And quickly.

  He shot the loverbirds a vicious, hate-filled glance. If they weren’t aboard …

  There could be no waiting. Not now. Something had to be done. Something …

  “Come on, come on,” said Rootes. “Goddlemighty Godfrey, even a deadbutt like you must have something for kicks.”

  Grunty turned away from him, squeezed his eyes closed for a tortured second, then pulled himself together. He ran his hand over the books, hesitated, and finally brought out a large, heavy one. He handed it to the Captain and went forward to the console. He slumped down there over the file of computer tapes, pretending to be busy.

  The Captain sprawled onto Grunty’s couch and opened the book. “Michelangelo, what the hell,” he growled. He grunted, almost like his shipmate. “Statues,” he half-whispered, in withering scorn. But he ogled and leafed at last, and was quiet.

  The loverbirds looked at him with a sad tenderness, and then together sent beseeching glances at Grunty’s angry back.

  The matrix-pattern for Terra slipped through Grunty’s fingers, and he suddenly tore the tape across, and across again. A filthy place, Terra. There is nothing, he thought, like the conservatism of license. Given a culture of sybaritics, with an endless choice of mechanical titillations, and you have a people of unbreakable and hidebound formality, a people with few but massive taboos, a shockable, narrow, prissy people obeying the rules—even the rules of their calculated depravities—and protecting their treasured, specialized pruderies. In such a group there are words one may not use for fear of their fanged laughter, colors one may not wear, gestures and intonations one must forego, on pain of being torn to pieces. The rules are complex and absolute, and in such a place one’s heart may not sing lest, through its warm free joyousness, it betray one.

  And if you must have joy of such a nature, if you must be free to be your pressured self, then off to space … off to the glittering black loneliness. And let the days go by, and let the time pass, and huddle beneath your impenetrable integument, and wait, and wait, and every once in a long while you will have that moment of lonely consciousness when there is no one around to see; and then it may burst from you and you may dance, or cry, or twist the hair on your head till your eyeballs blaze, or do any of the other things your so unfashionable nature thirstily demands.

  It took Grunty half a lifetime to find this freedom: No price would be too great to keep it. Not lives, nor interplanetary diplomacy, nor Earth itself were worth such a frightful loss.

  He would lose it if anyone knew, and the loverbirds knew.

  He pressed his heavy hands together until the knuckles crackled. Dirbanu, reading it all from the ardent minds of the loverbirds; Dirbanu flashing the news across the stars; the roar of reaction, and then Rootes, Rootes, when the huge and ugly impact washed over him …

  So let Dirbanu be offended. Let Terra accuse this ship of fumbling, even of treachery—anything but the withering news the loverbirds had stolen.

  Another new stasis, and Grunty’s first thought as he came alive in the silent ship was It has to be soon.

  He rolled off the couch and glared at the unconscious loverbirds. The helpless loverbirds.

  Smash their heads in.

  Then Rootes … what to tell Rootes?

  The loverbirds attacked him, tried to seize the ship?

  He shook his head like a bear in a beehive. Rootes would never believe that. Even if the loverbirds could open the door, which they could not, it was more than ridiculous to imagine those two bright and slender things attacking anyone—especially so rugged and massive an opponent.

  Poison? No—there was nothing in the efficient, unfailingly beneficial food stores that might help.

  His glance strayed t
o the Captain, and he stopped breathing.

  Of course!

  He ran to the Captain’s personal lockers. He should have known that such a cocky little hound as Rootes could not live, could not strut and prance as he did, unless he had a weapon. And if it was the kind of weapon that such a man would characteristically choose—

  A movement caught his eye as he searched.

  The loverbirds were awake.

  That wouldn’t matter.

  He laughed at them, a flashing, ugly laugh. They cowered close together and their eyes grew very bright.

  They knew.

  He was aware that they were suddenly very busy, as busy as he. And then he found the gun.

  It was a snug little thing, smooth and intimate in his hand. It was exactly what he had guessed, what he had hoped for—just what he needed. It was silent. It would leave no mark. It need not even be aimed carefully. Just a touch of its feral radiation and throughout the body the axones suddenly refuse to propagate nerve impulses. No thought leaves the brain, no slightest contraction of heart or lung occurs again, ever. And afterward, no sign remains that a weapon has been used.

  He went to the serving window with the gun in his hand. When he wakes, you will be dead, he thought. Couldn’t recover from stasis blackout. Too bad. But no one’s to blame, hm? We never had Dirbanu passengers before. So how could we know?

  The loverbirds, instead of flinching, were crowding close to the window, their faces beseeching, their delicate hands signing and signaling, frantically trying to convey something.

  He touched the control, and the panel slid back.

  The taller loverbird held up something as if it would shield him. The other pointed at it, nodded urgently, and gave him one of those accursed, hauntingly sweet smiles.

  Grunty put up his hand to sweep the thing aside, and then checked himself.

  It was only a piece of paper.

  All of the cruelty of humanity rose up in Grunty. A species that can’t protect itself doesn’t deserve to live. He raised the gun.

  And then he saw the pictures.

  Economical and accurate, and for all their subject, done with the ineffable grace of the loverbirds themselves, the pictures showed three figures:

  Grunty himself, hulking, impassive, the eyes glowing, the tree-trunk legs and hunched shoulders.

  Rootes, in a pose so characteristic and so cleverly done that Grunty gasped. Crisp and clean, Rootes’ image had one foot up on a chair, both elbows on the high knee, the head half turned. The eyes fairly sparkled from the paper.

  And a girl.

  She was beautiful. She stood with her arms behind her, her feet slightly apart, her face down a little. She was deep-eyed, pensive, and to see her was to be silent, to wait for those downcast lids to lift and break the spell.

  Grunty frowned and faltered. He lifted a puzzled gaze from these exquisite renderings to the loverbirds, and met the appeal, the earnest, eager, hopeful faces.

  The loverbird put a second paper against the glass.

  There were the same three figures, identical in every respect to the previous ones, except for one detail: they were all naked.

  He wondered how they knew human anatomy so meticulously.

  Before he could react, still another sheet went up.

  The loverbirds, this time—the tall one, the shorter one, hand in hand. And next to them a third figure, somewhat similar, but tiny, very round, and with grotesquely short arms.

  Grunty stared at the three sheets, one after the other. There was something … something …

  And then the loverbird put up the fourth sketch, and slowly, slowly, Grunty began to understand. In the last picture, the loverbirds were shown exactly as before, except that they were naked, and so was the small creature beside them. He had never seen loverbirds naked before. Possibly no one had.

  Slowly he lowered the gun. He began to laugh. He reached through the window and took both the loverbirds’ hands in one of his, and they laughed with him.

  Rootes stretched easily with his eyes closed, pressed his face down into the couch, and rolled over. He dropped his feet to the deck, held his head in his hands and yawned. Only then did he realize Grunty was standing just before him.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  He followed Grunty’s grim gaze.

  The glass door stood open.

  Rootes bounced to his feet as if the couch had turned white-hot. “Where—what—”

  Grunty’s crag of a face was turned to the starboard bulkhead. Rootes spun to it, balanced on the balls of his feet as if he were boxing. His smooth face gleamed in the red glow of the light over the airlock.

  “The lifeboat … you mean they took the lifeboat? They got away?”

  Grunty nodded.

  Rootes held his head. “Oh, fine,” he moaned. He whipped around to Grunty. “And where the hell were you when this happened?”

  “Here.”

  “Well, what in God’s name happened?” Rootes was on the trembling edge of foaming hysteria.

  Grunty thumped his chest.

  “You’re not trying to tell me you let them go?”

  Grunty nodded, and waited—not for very long.

  “I’m going to burn you down,” Rootes raged. “I’m going to break you so low you’ll have to climb for twelve years before you get a barracks to sweep. And after I get done with you I’ll turn you over to the Service. What do you think they’ll do to you? What do you think they’re going to do to me?”

  He leapt at Grunty and struck him a hard, cutting blow to the cheek. Grunty kept his hands down and made no attempt to avoid the fist. He stood immovable, and waited.

  “Maybe those were criminals, but they were Dirbanu nationals,” Rootes roared when he could get his breath. “How are we going to explain this to Dirbanu? Do you realize this could mean war?”

  Grunty shook his head.

  “What do you mean? You know something. You better talk while you can. Come on, bright boy—what are we going to tell Dirbanu?”

  Grunty pointed at the empty cell. “Dead,” he said.

  “What good will it do us to say they’re dead? They’re not. They’ll show up again some day, and—”

  Grunty shook his head. He pointed to the star chart. Dirbanu showed as the nearest body. There was no livable planet within thousands of parsecs.

  “They didn’t go to Dirbanu!”

  “Nuh.”

  “Damn it, it’s like pulling rivets to get anything out of you. In that lifeboat they go to Dirbanu—which they won’t—or they head out, maybe for years, to the Rim stars. That’s all they can do!”

  Grunty nodded.

  “And you think Dirbanu won’t track them, won’t bring ’em down?”

  “No ships.”

  “They have ships!”

  “Nuh.”

  “The loverbirds told you?”

  Grunty agreed.

  “You mean their own ship that they destroyed and the one the ambassador used were all they had?”

  “Yuh.”

  Rootes strode up and back. “I don’t get it. I don’t begin to get it. What did you do it for, Grunty?”

  Grunty stood for a moment, watching Rootes’ face. Then he went to the computing desk. Rootes had no choice but to follow. Grunty spread out the four drawings.

  “What’s this? Who drew these? Them? What do you know. Damn! Who is the chick?”

  Grunty patiently indicated all of the pictures in one sweep. Rootes looked at him, puzzled, looked at one of Grunty’s eyes, then the other, shook his head, and applied himself to the pictures again. “This is more like it,” he murmured. “Wish I’d a’ known they could draw like this.” Again Grunty drew his attention to all the pictures and away from the single drawing that fascinated him.

  “There’s you, there’s me. Right? Then this chick. Now, here we are again, all buff naked. Damn, what a carcass. All right, all right, I’m going on. Now, this is the prisoners, right? And who’s the little fat one?”<
br />
  Grunty pushed the fourth sheet over. “Oh,” said Rootes. “Here everybody’s naked too. Hm.”

  He yelped suddenly and bent close. Then he rapidly eyed all four sheets in sequence. His face began to get red. He gave the fourth picture a long, close scrutiny. Finally he put his finger on the sketch of the round little alien. “This is … a … a Dirbanu—”

  Grunty nodded. “Female.”

  “Then those two—they were—”

  Grunty nodded.

  “So that’s it!” Rootes fairly shrieked in fury. “You mean we been shipped out all this time with a coupla God damned fairies? Why, if I’d a’ known that I’d a’ killed ’em!”

  “Yuh.”

  Rootes looked up at him with a growing respect and considerable amusement. “So you got rid of ’em so’s I wouldn’t kill ’em, and mess everything up?” He scratched his head. “Well, I’ll be billy-be-damned. You got a think-tank on you after all. Anything I can’t stand, it’s a fruit.”

  Grunty nodded.

  “God,” said Rootes, “it figures. It really figures. Their females don’t look anything like the males. Compared with them, our females are practically identical to us. So the ambassador comes, and sees what looks like a planet full of queers. He knows better but he can’t stand the sight. So back he goes to Dirbanu, and Earth gets brushed off.”

  Grunty nodded.

  “Then these pansies here run off to Earth, figuring they’ll be at home. They damn near made it, too. But Dirbanu calls ’em back, not wanting the likes of them representing their planet. I don’t blame ’em a bit. How would you feel if the only Terran on Dirbanu was a fluff? Wouldn’t you want him out of there, but quick?”

  Grunty said nothing.

  “And now,” said Rootes, “we better give Dirbanu the good news.”

  He went forward to the communicator.

  It took a surprisingly short time to contact the shrouded planet. Dirbanu acknowledged and coded out a greeting. The decoder over the console printed the message for them:

  GREETINGS STARMITE 439. ESYABLISH ORBIT. CAN YOU DROP PRISONERS TO DIRBANU? NEVER MIND PARACHUTE.

  “Whew,” said Rootes. “Nice people. Hey, you notice they don’t say come on in. They never expected to let us land. Well, what’ll we tell ’em about their lavender lads?”