Orson Card - Maps in a Mirror - The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card

“Come here,” Barth said, his own voice arousing echoes of the last time, when it had been the other Barth who had said it. And just as that other had done the last time, he touched the naked young Barth, stroked the smooth and lovely skin, and finally embraced him.

And the young Barth embraced him back, for that was the way of it. No one loved Barth as much as Barth did, thin or fat, young or old. Life was a celebration of Barth; the sight of himself was his strongest nostalgia.

“What did I think of?” Barth asked.

The young Barth smiled into his eyes. “Lynette,” he said. “Naked on a cliff. The wind blowing. And the thought of her thrown to her death.”

“Will you go back to her?” Barth asked his young self eagerly.

“Perhaps. Or to someone like her.” And Barth saw with delight that the mere thought of it had aroused his young self more than a little.

“He’ll do,” Barth said, and Anderson handed him the simple papers to sign—papers that would never be seen in a court of law because they attested to Barth’s own compliance in and initiation of an act that was second only to murder in the lawbooks of every state.

“That’s it, then,” Anderson said, turning from the fat Barth to the young, thin one. “You’re Mr. Barth now, in control of his wealth and his life. Your clothing is in the next room.”

“I know where it is,” the young Barth said with a smile, and his footsteps were buoyant as he left the room. He would dress quickly and leave the Fitness Center briskly, hardly noticing the rather plain-looking receptionist, except to take note of her wistful look after him, a tall, slender, beautiful man who had, only moments before, been lying mindless in storage, waiting to be given a mind and a memory, waiting for a fat man to move out of the way so he could fill his space.

In the memory room Barth sat on the edge of the couch, looking at the door, and then realized, with surprise, that he had no idea what came next.

“My memories run out here,” Barth said to Anderson. “The agreement was—what was the agreement?”

“The agreement was tender care of you until you passed away.”

“Ah, yes.”

“The agreement isn’t worth a damn thing,” Anderson said, smiling.

Barth looked at him with surprise. “What do you mean?”

“There are two options, Barth. A needle within the next fifteen minutes. Or employment. ”

“What are you talking about?”

“You didn’t think we’d waste time and effort feeding you the ridiculous amounts of food you require, did you?”

Barth felt himself sink inside. This was not what he had expected, though he had not honestly expected anything. Barth was not the kind to anticipate trouble. Life had never given him much trouble.

“A needle?”

“Cyanide, if you insist, though we’d rather be able to vivisect you and get as many useful body parts as we can. Your body’s still fairly young. We can get incredible amounts of money for your pelvis and your glands, but they have to be taken from you alive.”

“What are you talking about? This isn’t what we agreed.”

“I agreed to nothing with you, my friend,” Anderson said, smiling. “I agreed with Barth. And Barth just left the room.”

“Call him back! I insist—”

“Barth doesn’t give a damn what happens to you.”

And he knew that it was true.

“You said something about employment.”

“Indeed.”

“What kind of employment?”

Anderson shook his head. “It all depends,” he said.

“On what?”

“On what kind of work turns up. There are several assignments every year that must be performed by a living human being, for which no volunteer can be found. No person, not even a criminal, can be compelled to do them.”

“And I?”

“Will do them. Or one of them, rather, since you rarely get a second job.”

“How can you do this? I’m a human being!”

Anderson shook his head. “The law says that there is only one possible Barth in all the world. And you aren’t it. You’re just a number. And a letter. The letter H.”

“Why H?”

“Because you’re such a disgusting glutton, my friend. Even our first customers haven’t got past C yet.”

Anderson left then, and Barth was alone in the room. Why hadn’t he anticipated this? Of course, of course, he shouted to himself now. Of course they wouldn’t keep him pleasantly alive. He wanted to get up and try to run. But walking was difficult for him; running would be impossible. He sat there, his belly pressing heavily on his thighs, which were spread wide by the fat. He stood, with great effort, and could only waddle because his legs were so far apart, so constrained in their movement.

This has happened every time, Barth thought. Every damn time I’ve walked out of this place young and thin, I’ve left behind someone like me, and they’ve had their way, haven’t they? His hands trembled badly.

He wondered what he had decided before and knew immediately that there was no decision to make at all. Some fat people might hate themselves and choose death for the sake of having a thin version of themselves live on. But not Barth. Barth could never choose to cause himself any pain. And to obliterate even an illegal, clandestine version of himself—impossible. Whatever else he might be, he was still Barth. The man who walked out of the memory room a few minutes before had not taken over Barth’s identity. He had only duplicated it. They’ve stolen my soul with mirrors, Barth told himself. I have to get it back.

“Anderson!” Barth shouted. “Anderson! I’ve made up my mind.”

It was not Anderson who entered, of course. Barth would never see Anderson again. It would have been too tempting to try to kill him.

“Get to work, H!” the old man shouted from the other side of the field.

Barth leaned on his hoe a moment more, then got back to work, scraping weeds from between the potato plants. The calluses on his hands had long since shaped themselves to fit the wooden handle, and his muscles knew how to perform the work without Barth’s having to think about it at all. Yet that made the labor no easier. When he first realized that they meant him to be a potato farmer, he had asked, “Is this my assignment? Is this all?” And they had laughed and told him no. “It’s just preparation,” they said, “to get you in shape.” So for two years he had worked in the potato fields, and now he began to doubt that they would ever come back, that the potatoes would ever end.

The old man was watching, he knew. His gaze always burned worse than the sun. The old man was watching, and if Barth rested too long or too often, the old man would come to him, whip in hand, to scar him deeply, to hurt him to the soul.

He dug into the ground, chopping at a stubborn plant whose root seemed to cling to the foundation of the world. “Come up, damn you,” he muttered. He thought his arms were too weak to strike harder, but he struck harder anyway. The root split, and the impact shattered him to the bone.

He was naked and brown to the point of blackness from the sun. The flesh hung loosely on him in great folds, a memory of the mountain he had been. Under the loose skin, however, he was tight and hard. It might have given him pleasure, for every muscle had been earned by hard labor and the pain of the lash. But there was no pleasure in it. The price was too high.

I’ll kill myself, he often thought and thought again now with his arms trembling with exhaustion. I’ll kill myself so they can’t use my body and can’t use my soul.

But he would never kill himself. Even now, Barth was incapable of ending it.

The farm he worked on was unfenced, but the time he had gotten away he had walked and walked and walked for three days and had not once seen any sign of human habitation other than an occasional jeep track in the sagebrush-and-grass desert. Then they found him and brought him back, weary and despairing, and forced him to finish a day’s work in the field before letting him rest. And even then the lash had bitten deep, the old man laying it on with a relish that spoke of sadism or a deep, personal hatred.