Humbert went into his study, turned on the radio, and settled down to work on his toothpick models. The artistic constructions he had fashioned from the simplest materials were all around the house: boats and statues and geometric shapes made from slender wooden splinters and drops of cement.
The whir of wings made him look up. "That you, Yellow?" But it was the newcomer. "Not ready to mix yet. huh, Red?"
The bird perched upon his toothpick sculpture of Meta. "Oh... you want to know what I'm doing? Well. I make things like that bust of my wife you're sitting on. Don't worry—it's strong enough to hold a hundred of your kind. Well, fifty, maybe. But don't mess on it, if you don't mind. Personal dignity, you know."
He studied the bird more carefully. Its breast and tail feathers were lighter than the back and wings, but still red. Four dark-red dots showed up against the pink throat plumage; otherwise its coloration was nearly uniform. The cere, above the vertical parrakeet bill, was blue, the signal for the male of the species, and this was the only deviation.
"You're a strange one," he said. "Not just your color, but your manner. You aren't tame enough to be handled, yet you're more interested in what I'm doing than in others of your kind. It's almost as if you—"
He stopped as he became aware of the radio news broadcast. "...In orbit ten hours without acknowledgment of signals or any apparent effort to communicate with us. Experts are divided on whether it should be considered friendly, indifferent, or hostile. The present assumption is that its purpose is merely observational. However—"
Humbert tuned the words out of his mind. "It's so hard to trust each other, let alone an unknown quantity. We don't know what that ship is doing in our skies, and probably it doesn't know what to make of us. But I'll bet it isn't much different from any meeting between strangers. You and me, for instance: I've never seen a bird quite like you, and you could be a dangerous alien from some other system for all I know. And you can't afford to trust me, either, because my hand could crush you in a moment. But you see, we get along. In a little while we'll really get to know each other, and then mutual trust will come. Some things just can't be pushed."
He spread a group of picks on the table and heated his cement. "You know, Red, I think I'll make a ship—a spaceship like the one in the sky. There's a picture of it in the... no! Stay clear of that glue. It's hot, and it gets awfully hard when it isn't hot, and they say the fumes can make hallucinations. You dip your bill in that and I'd have to scrape it off with a file. Believe me, Red, you wouldn't like that."
He rose to fetch the newspaper, and the bird, startled, flew ahead of him into the living room. The three local residents were still inside the cage, though its door was open. Green was braced on one of the ladders, pecking industriously at its plastic rungs, while Yellow was reaching forward surreptitiously to tweak Blue's unguarded tail.
"That's another thing you'll have to learn, Red," he said, smiling. "Feather-tweaking. Keep your wings and tail out of range, or you'll wind up with a bent feather. It just isn't parrakeet nature to pass up a good tweak." He thought about that a moment. "I hope they don't try to tweak that spaceship before they get to know it well."
Red did not accompany him to the study this time. The radio had lapsed into popular music. The melody of "Sipping Cider" was on.
"Hey... I remember that one!" Humbert said, pleased. He matched the words with his own off-key accompaniment:
"So cheek by cheek and jaw by jaw.
We both sipped cider through a straw."
For a little while the years rolled back.
Later he emerged to discover Red inside the cage with the others. Yellow was friendly, but Blue still kept her distance and Green was sleeping on an upper swing, one foot tucked up and head behind a wing. According to the handbook, a sleeping bird never raised a foot and folded back the head simultaneously, but Green evidently didn't read much.
Red cocked an eye at him. "Right," Humbert said. " 'Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.' That's the way Mr. Lovelace put it. Our birds have the run of the house—but a familiar cage is more comfortable than a strange world. I only lock things up at night so nobody can get hurt in the dark."
Red had been largely accepted by the time Meta came home. Less hurried now, she admired him again. "He's just what we needed to fill out the set. Four birds, four distinctive colors. But are you sure he doesn't belong to anybody?"
Humbert admitted he'd forgotten to check the paper. It made no difference, as it turned out; there was no notice about any missing red parrakeet, that day or in the ones following. Red was theirs, as long as he chose to stay.
Weeks passed. While Humbert's elaborate spaceship model grew, Red learned every facet of parrakeet existence as locally practiced. He splashed seed industriously from both the main feeder and the treat-cups, then descended to the floor of the cage to search out the fallen morsels and swallow bits of gravel. He banged at the plastic toys and threw them about as though they were enemies. He raced up and down the ladders and took flying leaps at the dangling length of clothesline. He tweaked tail feathers, and played tug-of-war with stems of millet. When ushered from the cage during cleaning time, he flew merrily over to Meta's curtains to peck at stray threads.
There were three unusual things about him. The first was his color; the second his almost-intelligent interest in human affairs; and he was mute. Humbert never heard him chirp or warble. But since Red seemed to be perfectly healthy otherwise, it was not a matter for concern. He was one of the family.
The spaceship remained in orbit, uncommunicative. Humbert remembered that it had appeared the same day Red came, so it was easy to keep track. After a while the matter ceased to make headlines. Humbert wasn't certain why no Earth ship was sent to link with the interstellar visitor and attempt direct contact; something about a deadlocked UN session. It was easier to do nothing, in a democracy, than to agree on any positive course of action. Yet this did not explain why the spaceship made no effort to communicate, either. Surely it had not come all this way just to orbit silently?
Red became friendly with shy Blue. They groomed each other's neck feathers and shared a treat-cup. "Do you think they would mate, if we set up a nesting box for them?" Meta inquired. "If that mutation bred true—"
Humbert agreed it was worth a try. He read up on parrakeet nesting procedures, for they had never bred their birds before, and bought a suitable enclosed box. "Beak by beak, and claw by claw," he sang to the melody of "Sipping Cider."
But tragedy struck before the arrangements were complete.
The birds scrambled in normal fashion for their preferred roosts on the highest swinging perches as Humbert turned out the light. They went everywhere in the day time, but always sought the heights at night.
There was a bump. Alarmed, Humbert turned on the light—and found Blue beating her wings on the floor. Something was wrong: she was unable to fly!
Red came down solicitously, but Blue was not aware of him. She got to her feet and climbed to the lowest perch and clung there, her little body quivering.
Meta came to watch. "What's the matter with Blue?"
"I'm afraid it's a... a heart attack," he said. He knew the symptoms too well, and knew that parrakeets, along with men, were subject to such things.
Blue tried to fly back up to the swinging perch, but fell to the floor again. Humbert opened the cage and reached in to pick her up. She struggled, afraid of him, but had no strength to fight. He held her and stroked her neck with a finger, knowing he could not help her.
After a while she became quiet, and he returned her to the cage. He set her on a lower perch, afraid she might fall again, but her feet grasped it securely. He turned out the living-room light, but as an afterthought left the hall light on so that she could see enough to find the top perch, just in case. It would be better if she remained put, but—