A Saucer of Loneliness Read Online Free PDF Page A

suddenly, overtook a man, lifted him and threw him flat on the ground.
    “I told you to be out there yesterday,” he growled, and strode away.
    Friends came and picked the man up, held him softly while he coughed, took him away to be healed.
    No one went to Wrenn about it; the word had gone around that Osser and his affairs were not to be understood by anyone. Wrenn’s function was to explain those few things which could not be understood. But certain of these few were not to be understood at all. So Osser was left alone to do as he wished—which was a liberty, after all, that was enjoyed by everyone else.
    There came a twilight when Jubilith waited past her usual time. She waited until by ones and twos the workers left the tower, until Osser himself had climbed the hill, until he had paused to look back and be proud and think of tomorrow’s work, until he, too, had turned his face to the town. Then she slipped down to the tower and around it, and carefully climbed the scaffolding on the far side. She looked about her.
    The tower was now four stories high and seemed to be shaping toward a roof. Circular in cross-section, the tower had two rooms on each floor, an east-west wall between them on the ground floor,a north-south wall on the next, and so on up.
    There was a central well into which was built a spiral staircase—a double spiral, as if one helix had been screwed into the other. This made possible two exits to stairs on each floor at the same level, though they were walled off one from the other. Each of the two rooms on every floor had one connecting doorway. Each room had three windows in it, wide on the inside, tapering through the thick stone wall to form the barest slit outside.
    A portion of the castellated roof was already built. It overhung the entrance, and had slots in the overhang through which the whole entrance face of the tower could be covered by one man lying unseen on the roof, looking straight down.
    Stones lay in a trough ready for placing, and there was some leftover mortar in the box. Jubilith picked up a trowel and worked it experimentally in the stuff, then lifted some out and tipped it down on the unfinished top of the wall, just as she had seen Osser do so many times. She put down the trowel and chose a stone. It was heavy—much heavier than she had expected—but she made it move, made it lift, made it seat itself to suit her on the fresh mortar. She ticked off the excess from the join and stepped back to admire it in the fading light.
    Two great clamps, hard as teeth, strong as a hurricane, caught her right thigh and her left armpit. She was swung into the air and held helpless over the unfinished parapet.
    She was utterly silent, shocked past the ability even to gasp.
    “I told you you were not to work here,” said Osser between his teeth. So tall he was, so long were his arms as he held her high over his head, that it seemed almost as far to the parapet as it was to the ground below.
    He leaned close to the edge and shook her. “I’ll throw you off. This tower is mine to build, you hear?”
    If she had been able to breathe, she might have screamed or pleaded with him. If she had screamed or pleaded, he might have dropped her. But her silence apparently surprised him. He grunted and set her roughly on her feet. She caught at his shoulder to keep her balance, then quickly transferred her hold to the edge of theparapet. She dropped her head between her upper arms. Her long soft hair fell forward over her face, and she moaned.
    “I told you,” he said, really seeing her at last. His voice shook. He stepped toward her and put out his hand. She screamed. “Be
quiet
!” he roared. A moan shut off in mid-breath. “Ah, I told you, Juby. You shouldn’t have tried to build here.”
    He ran his great hands over the edge of the stonework, found the one she had laid, the one that had cost her such effort to lift. With one hand, he plucked it up and threw it far out into the shadows