Callahan's Secret by Spider Robinson Read Free Book Online Page B

“Txffu,” she said, “weren’t you just as lonely, or lonelier, when you worked for the Roaches? It must be a long time between star systems.”
    Finn blinked at hearing his name on another’s lips for the first time in-how long? -but was distracted by her question. “For one thing, there was always the tiny but measurable possibility that the… the Roaches might have reactivated others of my race to become scouts, that I might, if I lived long enough, chance to meet such a one eventually, that wemight-” He broke off and did more damage to his fifth. “There was hope. Microscopic hope, perhaps, but hope. But now I must stay here, and no other of my race will ever come, and there is no hope.”
    He looked at the bottle. It was almost empty. Perhaps he sympathized with it; he put it down unfinished. “And when I worked for the Mas-for the Cockroaches, I had a job. A function. A purpose. A less than totally desirable one, admittedly. But I was part of something greater than myself, and I had a role to play. What is my role here on Eaith? I have tiied to anchor myself to this planet, to ‘put down roots’-! have pursued farming and fishing and hunting and several other most basic trades. I can imitate a terrestrial organism in general and a human in particular.
    “But I am alien. I have no purpose here, no job which needs me to do it. This makes my loneliness all the sharper. Perhaps I could stand loneliness if I were not useless; perhaps I could stand uselessness if I were not lonely.” His voice was eerily calm and flat as he finished, “The two together are more than I can bear.”
     
    The silence that ensued then was a familiar one. Someone names a problem-an act similar in many ways to giving birth-and then the rest of us sit around a while in respectful, sympathetic, contemplative silence, admiring-the newborn little monster and meditating ways to kill it. Although it’s difficult to read a man who has facial and vocal expressions and body language only when he remembers to, I felt that Finn had completed his birthing, and I put my mind on solutions for his problems. This was going to be one of the longer silences.
    I’ve triad my hand at matchmaking a few times, and learned that you should approach it like walking into a chemistry lab and mixing two unidentified-beakers of chemicals: you might luck into a stable compound, or you might blow your hands off. I’m willing to take the risk for a good ~enough Mend, and Finn qualified-but where do you find a mate for someone as uniquely alien as him? Andin today’s job market, how much demand was there for a fellow whose principal prior job experience involved locating and sterilizing planetary systems? I came up with a few dozen trial
    solutions, rejected theni all, realized how little chance I had of finding one that Finn had not considered and rejected months or years ago.
    But I was being premature. “Txffu,” Mary said, “that isn’t all of it, is it?”
    He spun his head to look at her. Those eyes of his seemed to smolder..
    “Mary,” Callahan said reproachfully, “That’s all he chose to tell us. We don’t pry in here, you know that.”
    “He’s asking us to fix two legs of a three-legged stool, Mike. I don’t do work like that.”
    “Then sit this one out. But no pryin’ questions in my joint. It’s up to him whether to show you his legs or not.”
    She turned back to Finn. “As a card-carrying Sophist, I will now proceed to make some prying statements, and if you choose to react to ~any of them it won’t be my place to stop you.
    “The third leg of your stool, you stool, is called fear. I don’t mean your fear of the Cockroaches, you’ve learned to live with that. Something else has you scared, and for some reason you don’t want to talk about it. Not because you’re afraid to admit you’re afraid, like human males; it’s something else. I for one would certainly like to hear about it.”
    Finn tilted his head slightly to one