A Saucer of Loneliness (33 page)

“You can’t get away with it. Humans will catch up with you,” I blurted. “Humans are learning to think in new ways. Did you ever hear of non-Euclidean geometry? Do you know anything about non-Aristotelian systems?”

She laughed. “We know about them. But by the time they are generally accepted, we’ll no longer be parasites. We’ll be symbiotes. Some of us already are. I am.”

“Symbiotes? You mean you depend on another life-form?”

“And it depends on me.”

“What does?”

She indicated the incongruous room. “Your silly friend Beck, of course. Some of the people who are attracted to the feeding-grounds here are operators—very shrewd. The last thing in the world they would ever do is to pass on investment secrets to anyone. I see to it that they tell Beck. And oh,
how
they regret it! How
foolish
they feel! And how I feed! In exchange, Beck brings them here.”

“I
knew
he couldn’t do it by himself!” I said. “Now tell me—why does he have me hanging around here all the time?

“My doing.” She looked at me coolly. “One day I’m going to eat you. One day I’ll find that can-opener. I’ll learn how to slam a door on you, or pound you with a flatiron, and I’ll eat you like candy.”

I laughed at her. “You’ll have to find something I’ll regret doing first.”

“There has to be something.” She yawned. “I have to work up a new edge to my appetite,” she said lazily. “Go away.”

“She’s wrong,” Hank said, when I’d finished telling him the story. He’d galloped over to my place when I called and just let me talk.

“Wrong how?”

“She said it was impossible for a human to believe this. Well, by God I do.”

“I think I do myself,” I said. Then, “Why?”

“Why?” Hank repeated. He gave a thoughtful pull to his lower lip. “Maybe it’s just because I want to believe in any theory that keeps Opie clean—that makes what she did really out of character.”

“Opie,” I said. “Yes.”

He gave me a swift look. “Something I’ve been thinking about, Tom. That night it happened—with Opie, I mean.…”

“Spill it if it bothers you,” I said, recognizing the expression.

“Thanks, Tom. Well … no matter what Opie was suffering from, no matter how … uh … willing she might have been—these things take time. You can see them happening.”

“So?”

“Where were you when that guy started making passes at her?”

I thought. I started to smile, cut it off. Then I got mad. “I don’t remember.”

“Yes you do. Where were you, Tom?”

“Around.”

“You weren’t even in the room.”

“I wasn’t?”

“No.”

“Who told you?”

“You did,” he said. He began to get that sleepy look. “You’re a lousy liar, Tom. When you duck a question, you’re saying yes. Who was the babe, Tom?”

“I don’t know.”

“What?”

“I said I don’t know,” I said sullenly. “Just a babe.”

“Oh. You didn’t ask her her name.”

“Guess not.”

“And you raised all that fuss about Opie.”

“You leave Opie out of this!” I blazed. “There’s a big difference.”

“You ought to be hung by your thumbs,” he said pityingly. “But I guess it isn’t your fault.” He snorted. “No wonder that parasite of Beck’s can’t reach you. You don’t do anything you regret because
you never regret anything you do. Not one thing!”

“Well, why not?” I jumped to my feet. “Listen, Hank, I’m alive, see. I’m alive all over. Everybody I know is killing off this part of themselves, that part of themselves—parts that get hungry get starved, they die. Don’t drink this, don’t look at that, don’t eat the other, when all the time something in you is hungry for these things. It’s easily fed—and once it’s fed it’s quiet. I’m alive, damn it, and I mean to stay alive!”

Hank went to the door. “I’m getting out of here,” he said in a shaking voice. “I got to think of my sister. I don’t want you to get hurt. She might not forgive me.”

He slammed the door. I kicked the end-table and busted a leg off it. The door opened again. Hank said, “I’m going with you to Beck’s Saturday night. I’ll pick you up here. Don’t leave until I get here.”

The front door at Beck’s stood wide, as it always did on Saturdays. There was nothing to stop Hank or any other “graduate” from walking right in. Unless the something was inside those people. Hank sure felt it; I could tell by the way he jammed his hands in his pockets and sauntered through the door. He looked so relaxed, but he radiated tension.

It was the usual unusual type of party. Beck self-effacingly rode herd on about nineteen of the goofiest assortment of people ever collected—since last week. A famous lady economist. An alderman. A pimply Leftist. A brace of German tourists, binoculars and all. A dazed-looking farmer in store clothes. Somebody playing piano. Somebody looking adoringly at the piano player—she obviously didn’t play. Somebody else looking disgustedly at the piano player. He obviously did play.

When we came in, Beck hurried over, chortling greetings, which dried up completely when he recognized Hank. “Hank,” he gasped. “Really, old man, I think—”

“Hiya, Beck,” Hank said. “Been quite a while.” He walked out into the room and to the bar in the far corner. Beck gawped like a beached haddock. “Tom,” Beck said, “you shouldn’t have taken a chance like—”

“I’m just as thirsty as he is,” I told him, and followed Hank.

I got a rye. “Hank.”

“What?” His eyes were on the crowd.

“When are you going to quit the silent treatment and tell me what you have in mind?”

He looked at me, and the strain he was under must have been painful. “Hey,” I said, “take it easy. Nothing’s going to happen to you. Our hungry little friend here is an epicure. I don’t think she’s interested in anything but the first rush of anguish she kicks up. You’re old stuff.”

“I know,” he muttered. “I know … I guess.” He wiped his forehead. “Do you see her?”

“No,” I said. “But then, how would I know her if I did see her? Maybe she’s not in the room.”

“I think she is,” he said. “I think she’s stuck here.”

“That’s a thought. Hey! Her specialty is the incongruous—right? The out-of-character. Well, that’s what this room is all about.”

He nodded. “That’s what I mean. And that’s what I’m going to check on, but for sure. Here.”

He moved close to the bar and to me, and quickly and secretly passed me something chunky and flat. “Hank!” I whispered. “A gun! What—”

“Take it. I have one too. Follow my cue when the time comes.”

I don’t like guns. But it was in my pocket before I could make any more talk. I wondered if Hank had gone off his rocker. “Bullets wouldn’t make no nevermind to her.”

“They aren’t for her,” he said, watching the crowd again.

“But—”

“Shut up. Tom,” he asked abruptly, “does somebody always do something crazy at these shindigs? Every time?”

I remembered about the “investment” tips, the number of quiet, unnoticed times people must have done things in this room that caused them humiliation, regret. “Maybe so, Hank.”

“Early or late in the proceedings?”

“That I don’t know, Hank. I really don’t.”

“I can’t wait,” he muttered. “I can’t risk it. Maybe it only feeds
once. Here I go,” he said clearly.

I called to him, but he put his chin down between his collarbones and went to the piano. I flashed a look around. I remember Beck’s face watching Hank was white and strained.

Hank climbed right up on the piano, one foot on the bench, one foot on the keys, both big feet on the exquisite finish of the top. The pianist faltered and stopped. The ardent girl watching him squeaked. People looked. People rushed to finish a sentence while they turned. Others didn’t even notice. After all—those parties of Beck’s.…

“Parasite!” Hank bellowed. And do you know, four-fifths of that crowd practically snapped to attention.

“He’s not immune,” Hank said. He was talking, apparently, to the place where the wall met the ceiling. “Here’s your can-opener, parasite. Listen to me.”

He paused, and in the sudden embarrassed silence Beck’s voice came shakingly, stretched and gasping. “Get off there, you hear? Get—”

Hank pulled out his gun. “Shut up, Beck.” Beck sat right down on the floor. Hank lifted his big head. “All he wants to do is live. He’d hate to die. But how do you suppose he’d feel if he killed himself?”

There shouldn’t be silences like that. But it didn’t last long. Somebody whimpered. Somebody shuffled. And then, in that voice I had heard here before, on the crazy day I saw the spider and the cat with hands, I heard a single syllable.

Starve a man for a day and a half, then put a piece of charcoal-crusted, juicy-pink steak in his mouth. Set out glasses of a rough red wine, and secretly substitute a vintage burgundy in one man’s glass. Drop a silky mink over the shoulders of a shabby girl as she stands in front of a mirror. Do any of these things and you’ll hear that sound, starting suddenly, falling in pitch, turning to a sigh, then a breath.

“M-m-m-m-m …!”

“You won’t have long to take it, but it doesn’t take long, does it?” asked Hank.

I thought, what the hell is he talking about? Who?

And then I pulled the gun out of my pocket.

Now I’ve got to talk about how much can run through a man’s mind, how fast. In the time it took to raise the gun and aim it and pull the trigger, I thought:

It’s Tom Conway he’s been talking about to the parasite.

Hank wants the parasite to take me.

It’s the parasite, not Hank, not I, who is raising this gun, aiming it.

This is Hank’s way to avenge himself on me. And why vengeance? Only because I think differently from him. Doesn’t Hank know that to me my thinking is right and needs no excuse?

And it’s a stupid vengeance, because it’s on Opie’s behalf, and surely Opie wouldn’t want it; certainly it can’t benefit her.

The gun was aimed at my temple and I pulled the trigger.

I’m alive, I’m alive all over. Everybody has to die sometime, but oh, the stupid, stupid, sick realization that you did it to yourself! That you let yourself be killed, that you let your own finger tighten on the trigger.

A gunshot is staccato, sharp, short. This was different. This was a sound that started with a gunshot but sustained itself; it was a roar, it filled the world. It roared and roared while the room hazed over, spun, turned on its side as my cheek thumped the carpet. The roar went on and on while the light faded, and through it I could hear their screams, and Hank’s voice, distant but clear. “Everybody out! This place is going to blow sky-high.” “Fire!” he shouted a second later “Fire!” And,
“Beck, damn you, help me with Tom.”

Nothing then but a sense of time passing, then cool air, darkness, and a moment of lucidity I saw too clearly, heard too well. Everything hurt. The roar was still going on as a background, I heard the gunshot, tasted it bitterly, saw it as a flickering aurora in and of everything around me, smelled it acrid and sharp and felt it. I was on the gravel path, and frightened people poured out of the house.

“Stay with him!” Hank roared, and my head was cradled on Beck’s trembling knees.

“But there is no fire—no fire,” Beck quavered.

And Hank was a black bulk in blackness, and his voice was distant as he raced to the bushes. “Wait,” he said. “Wait.” He stooped
back there, and there was a dull explosion inside the house, and another, and white light showed in the downstairs windows, turned to yellow, flickered and grew.

Hank came back. “There’s a fire,” he said.

Beck screamed. “You’ll kill it!” He tried to rise. Hank caught his shirt and held him down.

“Yes, I’ll kill it, you Judas!”

“You don’t understand,” Beck cried, “I can’t live without it.”

“Go back to your insurance company job. Make your own way, and don’t harvest better people than yourself to feed monsters.” Flames shot from the second-story windows. “But if you really can’t live without it—die,” said Hank, and then he shouted, “Is everybody out?”

“All accounted for,” called a voice. I remember thinking then that if they had counted heads and all were safe—who was that screaming in the fire?

After that even the roar stopped.

First pain, and then enough light to filter through my closed lids. I tried to move my right hand and failed. I opened my eyes and saw the cast on my right forearm. I turned my head.

“Tom?”

I looked up at the speaking blur. Then it wasn’t a blur, it was Hank.

“You’re all right now, Tom. You’re home. My house.”

I turned from him and looked at the ceiling, the window, then back to him. “You tried to kill me,” I said.

He shook his head. “I used you for bait. I had to know if it was in that room. I had to know if it would feed. I had to know what it could do, what it would do. I tried to shoot the gun out of your hand. I missed, and hit your forearm. It’s broken. Your bullet creased your scalp. It was awful close, Tom.”

“Suppose I’d killed myself?”

He said, “Bait is expendable.”

“You booby-trapped the house, didn’t you?”

“After your blow-by-blow instruction in burglary, it was no trouble.”

“You tried to kill me,” I said.

“I didn’t,” he said with finality.

I wondered—I really wondered—why what I had done was that important. And it was as if Hank read my mind. “It’s because of the difference between you and Opie,” he said. “Superficially, you and Opie did exactly the same thing that night.

“But Opie’s own feelings about it will cost her something for the rest of her life. And you didn’t even remember who you were with.”

I lay there like a block of wood. Hank went away. Maybe I slept. Next thing I knew, Opie was there, kneeling by the bed.

“Tom,” she said brokenly. “Oh, Tom. I wish I were dead. Tom,” she said, “I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you.…”

I thought, I wish that thing, whatever it was, hadn’t died in the fire. I know what I am now, I thought. I’m immune. And knowing that gives me enough anguish to feed the likes of you for a thousand years.

M
RS
. B
RENT AND
P
RECIOUS WERE SITTING
on the farmhouse porch when little Jokey sidled out from behind the barn and came cat-footing up to them. Precious, who had ringlets and was seven years old and very clean, stopped swinging on the glider and watched him. Mrs. Brent was reading a magazine. Jokey stopped at the foot of the steps.