A Saucer of Loneliness (6 page)

“Just like us,” he insisted. “Of course they dressed differently, lived differently! In a world like that, why not? Ah, how they built, how they built!”

“Yes,” she whispered. Those towers, the shining, swift vehicles, the thousand who moved like one … “Who were they?” she asked him.

“Don’t you know? Think—think!”

“Osser, I want to understand. I truly want to!”

She hunted frantically for the right thing to say, the right way to catch at this elusive thing which was so frighteningly important to him. All her life she had had the answers to the questions she wanted to understand. All she had ever had to do was to close her eyes and
think of the problem, and the answers soon came.

But not this problem.

“Osser,” she pleaded, “where is it, the city, the great complicated city?”

“Say, ‘Where was it?’ ” he growled.

She caught his thought and gasped. “This? These ruins, Osser?”

“Ah,” he said approvingly. “It comes slowly, doesn’t it? No, Juby. Not here. What was here was an outpost, a village, compared with the big city. North and west, I told you, didn’t I? Miles of it. So big that … so big—” He extended his arms, dropped them helplessly. Suddenly he leaned close to her, began to talk fast, feverishly. “Juby, that city—that world—was built by
people
. Why did they build and why do we not? What is the difference between those people and ours?”

“They must have had …”

“They had nothing we don’t have. They’re the same kind of people; they
used
something we haven’t been using. Juby, I’ve got that something. I can build. I can make others build.”

A mental picture of the tower glimmered before her. “You built it with hate,” she said wonderingly. “Is that what they had—cruelty, brutality, hatred?”

“Yes!”

“I don’t believe it! I don’t believe anyone could live with that much hate!”

“Perhaps not. Perhaps they didn’t. But they
built
with it. They built because some men could flog others into building for them, building higher and faster than all the good neighbors would ever do helping one another.”

“They’d hate the man who made them build like that.”

Osser’s hands crackled as he pressed them together. He laughed, and the echoes took everything that was unpleasant about that laughter and filled the far reaches of the dark room with it.

“They’d hate him,” he agreed. “But he’s strong, you see. He was strong in the first place, to make them build, and he’s stronger afterward with what they built for him. Do you know the only way they can express their hatred, once they find he’s too strong for them?”

Jubilith shook her head.

“They’d build,” he chuckled. “They’d build higher and faster than he did. They would find the strongest man among them and
ask
him to flog them into it. That’s the way a great city goes up. A strong man builds, and strong men follow, and soon the man who’s strongest of all makes all the other strong ones do his work. Do you see?”

“And the … the others, the weak?”

“What of them?” he asked scornfully. “There are more of them than strong ones—so there are more hands to do the strong man’s work. And why shouldn’t they? Don’t they get the city to live in when it’s built? Don’t they ride about in swift shining carriers and fly through the air in the bird machines?”

“Would they be—happy?” she asked.

He looked at her in genuine puzzlement. “Happy?” He smashed a heavy fist into his palm. “They’d have a
city
!” Again the words tumbled from him. “How do you live, you and the rest of the village? What do you do when you want a—well, a garden, food from the ground?”

“I dig up the soil,” she said. “I plant and water and weed.”

“Suppose you want a plow?”

“I make one. Or I do work for someone who has one.”

“Uh,” he grunted. “And there you are, hundreds of you in the village, each one planting a little, smithing a little, thatching and cutting and building a little. Everyone does everything except for how many—four, five?—the leatherworker, old Griak who makes wooden pegs for house beams, one or two others.”

“They like to do just one work. But anyone can do any of the work. Those few, we take care of. Someone has to keep the skills alive.”

He snorted. “Put a strong man in the village and give him strong men to do what he wants. Get ten villagers at once and make them all plant at once. You’ll have food then for fifty, not ten!”

“But it would go to waste!”

“It would not, because it would all belong to the head man. He would give it away as he saw fit—a lot to those who obeyed him,
nothing to those who didn’t. What was left over he could keep for himself, and barter it out to keep building. Soon he would have the biggest house and the best animals and the finest women, and the more he got, the stronger he would be. And a city would grow
—a city!
And the strong man would give everyone better things if they worked hard, and protect them.”

“Protect them? Against what?”

“Against the other strong ones. There would be others.”

“And you—”

“I shall be the strongest of all,” he said proudly. He waved at the box. “We were a great people once. We’re ants now—less than ants, for at least the ants work together for a common purpose. I’ll make us great again.” His head sank onto his hand and he looked somberly into the shadows. “Something happened to this world. Something smashed the cities and the people and drove them down to what they are today. Something was broken within them, and they no longer dared to be great. Well, they will be. I have the extra something that was smashed out of them.”

“What smashed them, Osser?”

“Who can know? I don’t. I don’t care, either.” He tapped her with a long forefinger to emphasize. “All I care about is this: They were smashed because they were not strong enough. I shall be so strong I can’t be smashed.”

She said, “A stomach can hold only so much. A man asleep takes just so much space. So much and no more clothing makes one comfortable. Why do you want more than these things, Osser?”

She knew he was annoyed, and knew, too, that he was considering the question as honestly as he could.

“It’s because I … I want to be strong,” he said in a strained voice.

“You
are
strong.”

“Who knows that?” he raged, and the echoes giggled and whispered.

“I do. Wrenn. Sussten. The whole village.”

“The whole world will know. They will all do things for me.”

She thought, but everyone does everything for himself, all over the world. Except, she added, those who aren’t able …

With that in mind, she looked at him, his oaken shoulders, his powerful, bitter mouth. She touched the bruises his hands had left and the beginnings of the understanding she had been groping for left her completely.

She said dully, “Your tower … you’d better get back there.”

“Work goes on,” he said, smiling tightly, “whether I’m there or not, as long as they don’t know my plans. They are afraid. But—yes, we can go now.”

Rising, he flicked the stud of his torch. It flared blue-white, faded to the weak orange of Jubilith’s, then died.

“The light …”

“It’s all right,” said Jubilith. “I have mine.”

“When they get like that, so dim, you can’t tell when they’ll go out. Come—hurry! This place is full of corridors; without light, we could be lost here for days.”

She glanced around at the crowding shadows. “Make it work again,” she suggested.

He looked at the dead torch in his hand. “You,” he said flatly. He tossed it. She caught it in her free hand, put her torch on the floor, and held the broken one down so she could see it in the waning orange glow. She turned it over twice, her sensitive hands feeling with every part rather than with fingertips alone. She held it still and closed her eyes; and then it came to her, and she grasped one end with her right hand and the other with her left and twisted.

There was a faint click and the outer shell of the torch separated. She drew off the butt end of it; it was just a hollow shell. The entire mechanism was attached to the lens end and was now exposed.

She turned it over carefully, keeping her fingers away from the workings. Again she closed her eyes and thought, and at last she bent close and peered. She nodded, fumbled in her hair, and detached a copper clasp. She bent and broke off a narrow strip of it and inserted it carefully into the light mechanism. Very carefully, she pried apart two small strands of wire, dipped a little deeper, hooked onto a tiny white sphere, and drew it out.

“Poor thing,” she murmured under her breath.

“Poor what?”

“Spider’s egg,” she said ruefully. “They fight so to save them; and this one will never hatch out now. It’s been burned.”

She picked up the butt-end housing, slipped the two parts together, and twisted them until they clicked. She handed the torch to Osser.

“You’ve wasted time,” he complained, surly.

“No, I haven’t,” she said. “We’ll have light now.”

He touched the stud on the torch. The brilliant, comforting white light poured from it.

“Yes,” he admitted quietly.

Watching his face as he handled the torch, she knew that if she could read what was in his mind in that second, she would have the answer to everything about him. She could not, however, and he said nothing, but led the way across the room to the dark corridor.

He was silent all the way back to the broken steps.

They stood halfway up, letting their eyes adjust to the daylight which poured down on them, and he said, “You didn’t even try the torch to see if it would work, after you took out that egg.”

“I knew it would work.” She looked at him, amazed. “You’re angry.”

“Yes,” he said.

He took her torch and his and put them away in a niche in the ruined stairwell, and they climbed up into the noon light. It was all but intolerable, as the two suns were all but in syzygy, the blue-white midget shining through the great pale gaseous mass of the giant, so that together they cast only a single shadow.

“It will be hot this afternoon,” she said, but he was silent, steeped in some bitterness of his own, so she followed him quietly without attempting conversation.

Old Oyva stirred sleepily in her basking chair, and suddenly sat upright.

Jubilith approached her, pale and straight. “Is it Oyva?”

“It is, Jubilith,” said the old woman. “I knew you would be back, my dear. I’m sore in my heart with you.”

“Is he here?”

“He is. He has been on a journey. You’ll find him tired.”

“He should have been here, with all that has happened,” said Jubilith.

“He should have done exactly as he has done,” Oyva stated bluntly.

Jubilith recognized the enormity of her rudeness, and the taste of it was bad in her mouth. One did not criticize Wrenn’s comings and goings.

She faced Oyva and closed her eyes humbly.

Oyva touched her. “It’s all right, child. You are distressed. Wrenn!” she called. “She is here!”

“Come, Jubilith,” Wrenn’s voice called from the house.

“He knows?
No
one knew I was coming here!”

“He knows,” said Oyva. “Go to him, child.”

Jubilith entered the house. Wrenn sat in his corner. The musical instrument was nowhere in sight. Aside from his cushions, there was nothing in the room.

Wrenn gave her his wise, sweet smile. “Jubilith,” he said. “Come close.” He looked drawn and pale, but quite untroubled. He put a cushion by him and she crossed slowly and sank down on it.

He was quiet, and when she was sure it was because he waited for her to speak, she said, “Some things may not be understood.”

“True,” he agreed.

She kneaded her hands. “Is there never a change?”

“Always,” he said, “when it’s time.”

“Osser—”

“Everyone will understand Osser very soon now.”

She screwed up her courage. “Soon is not soon enough. I must know him now.”

“Before anyone else?” he inquired mildly.

“Let everyone know now,” she suggested.

He shook his head and there was no appeal in it.

“Then let me. I shall be a part of you and speak of it only to you.”

“Why must you understand?”

She shuddered. It was not cold, or fear, but simply the surgings of a great emotion.

“I love him,” she said. “And to love is to guard and protect. He needs me.”

“Go to him then.” But she sat where she was, her long eyes cast down, weeping. Wrenn said, “There is more, then?”

“I love …” She threw out an arm in a gesture which enfolded Wrenn, the house, the village. “I love the people, too, the gardens, the little houses; the way we go and come, and sing, and make music, and make our own tools and clothes. To love is to guard and protect … and I love these things, and I love Osser. I can destroy Osser, because he would not expect it of me; and, if I did, I would protect all of you. But if I protect him, he will destroy you. There is no answer to such a problem, Wrenn; it is a road,” she cried, “with a precipice at each end, and no standing still!”

“And understanding him would be an answer?”

“There’s no other!” She turned her face up to him, imploring. “Osser is strong, Wrenn, with a—new thing about him, a thing none of the rest of us have. He has told me of it. It is a thing that can change us, make us part of him. He will build cities with our hands, on our broken bodies if we resist him. He wants us to be a great people again—he says we were, once, and have lost it all.”

“And do you regard that as greatness, Jubilith—the towers, the bird-machines?”

“How did you know of them?… Greatness? I don’t know, I don’t know,” she said, and wept. “I love him, and he wants to build a city with a wanting greater than anything I have ever known or heard of before. Could he do it, Wrenn? Could he?”

“He might,” said Wrenn calmly.

“He is in the village now. He has about him the ones who built his tower for him. They cringe around him, hating to be near and afraid to leave. He sent them one by one to tell all the people to come out to the foothills tomorrow, to begin work on his city. He wants enough building done in one hundred days to shelter everyone, because then, he says, he is going to burn this village to the ground. Why, Wrenn—why?”