A Saucer of Loneliness (43 page)

De la Torre say, “I heard that speech of yours, you skunk. I’d clobber you myself if I didn’t think Nemo’d done it better already. You’d better keep your big flat feet the hell out of this hospital.”

Sergeant run away. De la Torre stand a time, go away. I eat.

It is night by the lake, the moon is burst and leaking yellow to me over the black alive water and Elena by me. I say, “I go soonly.”

She breathe, I hear.

I say, “Tree finish, tree die. Sickness finish, sickness gone. House finish, workmens leave. Is right.”

“Don’t go. Don’t go yet, Nemo.”

“Seed sprout, child grow, bird fly. Something finish, something change. I finish.”

She say, “Not so soon.”

“Bury plant? Tie boy to cradle? Nail wings to nest?”

She say, “All right.” We sit.

I say, “I promised.”

She say, “You kept your promise, Nemo. Thank you.” She cry. I watch leaking moon float free, lost light flattening and flattening at the black lake. Light tried, light tried, water would not mix.

Elena say, “What world do you live in, Nemo?”

I say, “My world.”

She say, “Yes … yes, that’s the right answer. You live in your world, I live in my world, a hundred people, a hundred worlds. Nobody lives with me, nobody. Nemo, you can travel from one world to another.”

I do the head, yes.

“But just one at a time. I’m talking crazy, but you don’t mind. I
had a world I don’t remember, soft and safe, and then a world that hurt me because I was too stupid to duck when I saw hurt coming. And a world that was better than real where I couldn’t stay, but I had to go there … and I couldn’t stay … and I had to go … and then I had a world where I thought, just for a little while—
such
a little while—I thought it was a world for me and …”

I say, “—and George.”

She say,
“You can read my mind
!”

“No!” I say, big; loud. Hurt. I say, “Truly no, not do that, I can’t do that.”

She touch on my face, say, “It doesn’t matter. But George, then, about George … I was going to be lost again, and this time forever, and I saw George and spoke right up like a—a—” She shake. “You wouldn’t know what I was like. And instead, George was gentle and sweet and he made me feel as if I was … well and whole. In all my life nobody ever treated me gently, Nemo, except Dr. de la Torre, and he did it because I was sick. George treated me as if I was healthy and fine, and he … admired me for it. Me. And he came to love me like those lights, those lights I showed you, all the colors, slipping among the dancers under the sky. He came to love me so much he wanted to stay with me for ever and ever, and then he went away sometime between a morning and a snowstorm.”

The moon is gone up, finished and full, the light, left on the water frightened and yearning to it, thinning, breaking and fusing, pointing at the moon, the moon not caring, it finished now.

She say, “I was dead for a long time.”

She passes through a think and lets her face be dead until she say, “Dr. de la Torre was so kind, he used to tell me I was a special princess, and I could go anywhere. I went in all the places in the hospital, and I found out a thing I had not known; that I had these hands, these legs, eyes, this body, voice, brains. It isn’t much and nobody wants it … now … but I had it all. And some of those people in there, without all of it, they were happier than I was, brave and good. There’s a place with people who have their voices taken out of their throats, Nemo, you know that? And they learn to speak there. You know how they do it? I tell some people this, they laugh, but you
won’t laugh. You won’t laugh, Nemo?”

I am not laugh.

She say, “You know that noise you made when you drank the beer so fast? That’s what they do. On purpose. They do it and they practice and practice and work hard, work together. And bit by bit they make a voice that sounds like a voice. It’s rough and it’s all on one note, but it’s a real voice. They talk together and laugh, and have a debating society …

“There’s a place in there where a man goes in without legs, and comes out dancing, yes twirling and swirling a girl around, her ballgown a butterfly and he smiling and swift and sure. There’s a place for the deaf people, and they must make voices out of nothing too, and ears. They do it, Nemo! And together they understand each other. Outside, people don’t understand the deaf. People don’t mean to be unkind, but they are. But the deaf understand the deaf, and they understand the hearing as well, better than the hearing understand themselves.

“So one day I met a soldier there, with the deaf. He was very sad at first. Many of the people there are born deaf, but he had a world of hearing behind him. And there was a girl there and they fell in love. Everyone was happy, and one day he went away.

“She cried, she cried so, and when she stopped, it was even worse.

“And Dr. de la Torre went and found the soldier, and very gently and carefully he dug out why he had run away. It was because he was handicapped. It was because he had lost a precious thing. And he wouldn’t marry the girl, though he loved her, because she was as she had been born and he felt she was perfect. She was perfect and he was damaged. She was perfect and he was unfit. And that is why he ran away.

“Dr. de la Torre brought him back and they were married right there in the hospital with such fine banquet and dance; and they got jobs there and went to school and now they are helping the others, together …

“So then I went into another world, and this is my world; and if I should
know
that it is not a real world I would die.

“My world is here, and somewhere else there are people like us
but different. One of the ways they are different is that they need not speak; not words anyway. And something happens to them sometimes, just as it does to us: through sickness, through accident, they lose forever their way of communicating, like our total deaf. But they can learn to speak, just as you and I can learn Braille, or make a voice without a larynx, and then at least they may talk among themselves. And if you are to learn Braille, you should go among the blind. If you are to learn lip-reading you do it best among the deaf. If you have something better than speech and lose it, you must go among a speaking people.

“And that is what I believe, because I must or die. I think George was such a one, who came here to learn to speak so he could rejoin others who also had to learn. And I think that anyone who has no memory of this Earth or anything on it, and who must be taught to speak, might be another. They pretend to be amnesiacs so that they will be taught
all
of a language. I think that when they have learned, they understand themselves and those like them, and also the normal ones of their sort, better than anyone, just as the deaf can understand the hearing ones better.

“I think George was such a one, and that he left me because he thought of himself as crippled and of me as whole. He left me for love. He was humble with it.

“This is what I believe and I can’t …”

She whisper.

“… I can’t believe it … very much … longer …”

She listen to grief altogether until it tired, and when she can listen to me I say, “You want me to be George, and stay.”

She sit close, she put she wet face on my face and say, “Nemo, Nemo, I wish you could, I do
so
wish you could. But you can’t be my George, because I love him, don’t you see? You can be my de la Torre, though, who went out and found a man and explained why and brought him back. All he has to know is that when love is too humble it can kill the lovers.… Just tell him that, Nemo. When you … when you go back.”

She look past me at the moon, cold now, and down and out to the water and sky, and she here altogether out of memory and hope-thinks.
She say with strong daytime voice, “I talk crazy sometimes, thanks, Nemo, you didn’t laugh. Let’s have a beer some time.”

I wish almost the Sergeant knows where I keep anger. It would please him I have so much. Here in the bare rocks, here in the night, I twist on anger, curl and bite me like eel on spear.

It is night and with anger, I alone in cold hills, town and hospital a far fog of light behind. I stand to watch it the ship and around it, those silents who watch me, eight of them, nine, all silent.

This is my anger: that they are silent. They share all thinks in one thinking instant, each with one other, each with all others. All I do now is talk. But the silents, there stand by ship, share and share all thinks, none talks. They wait, I come. They have pity.

They have manymuch pity, so I angry.

Then I see my angry is envy, and envy never teach to dance a one-legged man. Envy never teach the lip-reading.

I see that and laugh at me, laugh but it sting my eyes.

“Hello
!”

One comes to me, not silent, but have conversation! Surprise. I say, “Good evening.”

He shake hand of me, say, “We thought you were not going to come.” His speak slow, very strong, steadily.

I say, “I ready. I surprise you have talk.”

He say, “Oh, I spent some time here. I studied very carefully. I have come back to live here.”

I say, “You conversation goodly. I have learn talk idea, good enough. You have word and word and word, like Earth peoples. Good. Why you come returning?”

He look my face, very near, say, “I did not like it at home. When you go back there, everyone will be kind. But they will have their own lives to live, and there is not much they can share with you any more. You will be blind among the seeing, deaf among those who hear. But they will be kind, oh yes: very kind.”

Then he look back at the silents, who stand watching. He say, “But here, I speak among the speaking, and it is a better sharing than even a home planet gone all silent.” He point at watchers. He laugh.
He say, “We speak together in a way they have never learned to speak, like two Earth mutes gesticulating together in a crowd. It is as if we were the telepaths and not they—see them stare and wonder!”

I laugh too. “Not need to telepath here!”

He say, “Yes, on Earth we can be blind with the blind, and we will never miss our vision. While I was here I was happy to share myself by speaking. When I went home I could share only with other … damaged … people. I had to go home to find out that I did not feel damaged when I was here, so I came back.”

I look to ship, to wondering silents. I say, “What name you have here?”

He say, “They called me George.”

I think, I have message for you: Elena dying for you. I say, “Elena waiting for you.”

He make large shout and hug on me and run. I cry, “Wait! Wait!” He wait, but not wanting. I say, “I learn talk like you, word and word, and one day find Elena for me too.”

He hit on me gladly, say, “All right. I’ll help you.”

We go down hill togetherly, most muchly homelike. Behind, ship wait, ship wait, silents watch and wonder. Then ship load up with all pity I need no more, scream away up to stars.

I have a happy now that I get sick lose telepathy come here learn talk find home,
por Dios
.

“C
OME IN
, P
URSER
. A
ND SHUT THE DOOR
.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?” The Skipper never invited anyone in—not to his quarters. His office, yes, but not here.

He made an abrupt gesture, and I came in and closed the door. It was about as luxurious as a compartment on a spaceship can get. I tried not to goggle at it as if it was the first time I had ever seen it, just because it was the first time I had ever seen it.

I sat down.

He opened his mouth, closed it, forced the tip of his tongue through his thin lips. He licked them and glared at me. I’d never seen the Iron Man like this. I decided that the best thing to say would be nothing, which is what I said.

He pulled a deck of cards out of the top-middle drawer and slid them across the desk. “Deal.”

I said, “I b—”

“And don’t say you beg my pardon!” he exploded.

Well, all right. If the skipper wanted a cozy game of gin rummy to while away the parsecs, far be it from me to … I shuffled. Six years under this cold-blooded, fish-eyed automatic computer with eyebrows, and this was the first time that he—

“Deal,” he said. I looked up at him. “Draw, five-card draw. You do play draw poker, don’t you, Purser?”

“Yes, sir.” I dealt and put down the pack. I had three threes and a couple of court cards. The skipper scowled at his hand and threw down two. He glared at me again.

I said, “I got three of a kind, sir.”

He let his cards go as if they no longer existed, slammed out of his chair and turned his back to me. He tilted his head back and stared up at the see-it-all, with its complex of speed, time, position
and distance-run coordinates. Borinquen, our destination planet, was at spitting distance—only a day or so off—and Earth was a long, long way behind. I heard a sound and dropped my eyes. The Skipper’s hands were locked behind him, squeezed together so hard that they crackled.

“Why didn’t you draw?” he grated.

“I beg your—”

“When I played poker—and I used to play a hell of a lot of poker—as I recall it, the dealer would find out how many cards each player wanted after the deal and give him as many as he discarded. Did you ever hear of that, Purser?”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“You
did
.” He turned around. I imagine he had been scowling this same way at the see-it-all, and I wondered why it was he hadn’t shattered the cover glass.

“Why, then, Purser,” he demanded, “did you show your three of a kind without discarding, without drawing—without, mister, asking me how many cards I might want?”

I thought about it. “I—we—I mean, sir, we haven’t been playing poker that way lately.”

“You’ve been playing draw poker without drawing!” He sat down again and beamed that glare at me again. “And who changed the rules?”

“I don’t know, sir. We just—that’s the way we’ve been playing.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Now tell me something, Purser. How much time did you spend in the galley during the last watch?”