A Saucer of Loneliness Read Online Free

enemies.”
    Osser laughed bitterly. “I’ll have enemies.”
    “Why?”
    Osser came to him. “Because I’m going to pick up this village and shake it until it wakes up. And if it won’t wake up, I’ll keep shaking until I break its back and it dies. Dig.”
    “I don’t see why,” said the man doggedly.
    Osser looked at the golden backs of his hands, turned them over, watched them closing. He raised his eyes to the other.
    “This is why,” he said.
    His right fist tore the man’s cheek. His left turned the man’s breath to a bullet which exploded as it left him. He huddled on the ground, unable to exhale, inhaling in small, heavy, tearing sobs. His eyes opened and he looked up at Osser. He could not speak, but his eyes did; and through shock and pain all they said was “Why?”
    “You want reasons,” Osser said, when he felt the man could hear him. “You want reasons—all of you. You see both sides of every question and you weigh and balance and cancel yourselves out. I want an end to reason. I want things done.”
    He bent to lift the bearded man to his feet. Osser stood half a head taller and his shoulders were as full and smooth as the bottoms of bowls. Golden hairs shifted and glinted on his forearms as he moved his fingers and the great cords tensed and valleyed. He lifted the man clear of the ground and set him easily on his feet andheld him until he was sure of his balance.
    “You don’t understand me, do you?”
    The man shook his head weakly.
    “Don’t try. You’ll dig more if you don’t try.” He clapped the handle of the shovel into the man’s hand and picked up a mattock. “Dig,” he said, and the man began to dig.
    Osser smiled when the man turned to work, arched his nostrils and drew the warm clean air into his lungs. He liked the sunlight now, the morning smell of the turned soil, the work he had to do and the idea itself of working.
    Standing so, with his head raised, he saw a flash of bright yellow, the turn of a tanned face. Just a glimpse, and she was gone.
    For a moment he tensed, frowning. If she had seen him she would be off to clatter the story of it to the whole village. Then he smiled. Let her. Let them all know. They must, sooner or later. Let them try to stop him.
    He laughed, gripped his mattock, and the sod flew. So Jubilith saw fit to watch him, did she?
    He laughed again. Work now, Juby later. In time he would have everything.
    Everything.
    The village street wound and wandered and from time to time divided and rejoined itself, for each house was built on a man’s whim—near, far, high, small, separate, turned to or away. What did not harmonize contrasted well, and over all it was a pleasing place to walk.
    Before a shop a wood-cobbler sat, gouging out sabots; and he was next door to the old leatherworker who cunningly wove immortal belts of-square-knotted rawhide. Then a house, and another, and a cabin; a space of green where children played; and the skeleton of a new building where a man, his apron pockets full of hardwood pegs, worked knowledgeably with a heavy mallet.
    The cobbler, the leatherworker, the children and the builder all stopped to watch Jubilith because she was beautiful and because she ran. When she was by, they each saw the others watching, and each smiled and waved and laughed a little, though nothing was said.
    A puppy lolloped along after her, three legs deft, the fourth in the way. Had it been frightened, it would not have run, and had Jubilith spoken to it, it would have followed wherever she went. But she ignored it, even when it barked its small soprano bark, so it curved away from her, pretending it had been going somewhere else anyway, and then it sat and puffed and looked after her sadly.
    Past the smithy with its shadowed, glowing heart she ran; past the gristmill with its wonderful wheel, taking and yielding with its heavy cupped hands. A boy struck his hoop and it rolled across her path. Without breaking stride, she leaped high over