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

“I hate it when you roll your eyes, Sherman. It makes me think you’re having a fit. I know Sly and Frieda are hopeless, but I had to ask, didn’t I?”

“Roj and Roz.”

“Fine.”

“How much do you know about the Trojan Object?”

“More than you do and less than I’ll need to.”

Sherman tapped his pencil on his desk. “All right, I’ll send you straight to the experts.”

And a week later, Agnes and Danny and Roj and Roz were ensconced in Agnes’s skipship, sweeping down the runway at Clovis, New Mexico. The acceleration was frightful, particularly after they were vertical, but it was not long before they were in a high orbit, and not much longer than that before they were free of the Earth’s gravity, making the three-month trip to Earth’s leading trojan point, where something waited for them.

Hector said to himselves, “I’m thirsty, I’m thirsty, I’m thirsty,” and the Hectors gave themself plenty to drink, and when Hector was satisfied, for the moment, he sang a soundless song that all the Hectors heard, and they, too, sang:

And the Hectors laughed and also sang and also danced because they had come together after a long journey and they were warm and they were snug and they lay together to listen to themself tell himselves stories.

“I will tell,” Hector said to himselves, “the story of the Masses, and the story of the Masters, and the story of the Makers.”

And the Hectors cuddled together to listen.

Agnes and Danny made love the day before they reached the Trojan Object, because that made it easier for both of them to work. Roj and Roz did not, because that made it easier for them to stay alert. For a week it had been clear that the Trojan Object was far more than anyone on Earth had suspected, and far less.

“Diameter about fourteen hundred kilometers on the average,” Roz reported as soon as she had good enough data to be sure. “But gravity is about as much as a giant asteroid. Our shaddles are strong enough to get us off.”

Danny spoke the obvious conclusion first. “There’s nothing that could be as solid as that, as large as that, and as light as that. Artificial. Has to be.”

“Fourteen hundred kilometers in diameter?”

Danny shrugged. Everybody could have shrugged. That’s what they were here for. Nothing natural could have suddenly appeared in Earth’s leading trojan point, either—obviously it was artificial. But was it dangerous?

They circled the Trojan Object dozens of times, letting the computer scan with better eyes than theirs for any sign of an aperture. There was none.

“Better set down,” Roz said, and Agnes brought the skipship close to the surface. It occurred to her as she did so that she and Danny and the others changed personality completely when they worked. Fun-loving, filthy-minded, game-playing friends, until work was needed. Then the fun was over, and they became a pilot and an engineer and a doctor and a physicist, functioning smoothly, as if the computer’s integrated circuits had overcome the flesh barrier and inhabited all of them.

Agnes maneuvered her craft within three meters of the surface. “No closer,” she said. Danny agreed, and when they were all suited up, he opened the hatch and shaddled down to the surface. “Careful, Leaner,” Agnes reminded him. “Escape velocity and everything.”

“Can’t see a damn thing down here,” he answered in a perfect non sequitur. “This surface material sucks up all light. Even from my headlamp. Hard and smooth as steel, though. I have to keep shining my light on my hands to see where they are.” Silence for a few moments. “Can’t tell if I’m scratching the thing or not. Am I getting a sample?”

“Computer says no,” Roj answered. As the doctor, he had nothing better to do at the moment than monitor the computer.

“I’m not making any impact on the surface at all. I want to find out how hard this thing is.”

“Torch?” Agnes asked.

“Yeah.”

Roz protested. “Don’t do anything to make them mad.”

“Who?” Danny asked.

“Them. The people who made this.”

Danny chuckled. “If there’s anybody in there, they either know we’re out here or they’re sure enough we can’t get in that they don’t care. Either way, I’ve got to do something to attract their attention.”

The torch flared brightly, but nothing was reflected from the surface of the Trojan Object, and only the gas dissipated with the torch made it visible.

“No result. Didn’t even raise the surface temperature,” Danny finally said.

They tried laser. They tried explosives. They tried a diamond tip on a drill for repair work. Nothing had any effect on the surface at all.

“I want to come out,” Agnes said.

“Forget it,” Danny answered. “I suggest we go to the pole, north or south. Maybe something’s different there.”

“I’m coming out,” Agnes said.

Danny was angry. “What the hell do you think you can accomplish that I haven’t done?”

Agnes frankly admitted that there wasn’t anything she could possibly do. While she was admitting it she clambered out of the skipship and launched herself toward the surface.

It was a damnfool thing to do, as Danny informed her loudly over the radio, just as he turned to face Agnes and flashed his light directly in her eyes. She realized to her alarm that he was directly below her—she couldn’t turn around and shaddle down. She slipped to the right, instead, and then tried to turn around, but because of her panic at the thought of colliding with Danny (always dangerous in space) and the delay as she maneuvered to avoid him, she struck the planet surface going a good deal faster than should have been comfortable.

But as she touched the surface, it yielded. Not with the springiness of rubber, which would have forced her hand back out, but with the thick resistance of almost-hard cement, so that she found her hand completely immersed in the surface of the planet. She shone her headlamp on it—the smooth surface of the planet was unbroken, not even dented, except that her hand was in it up to the wrist.

“Danny,” she said, not sure whether to be excited or afraid.

He didn’t hear her at first because he was too busy shouting, “Agnes, are you OK?” into the radio to notice that she was already answering. But at last he calmed down, found her with his headlamp, and came over to her, shaddling gently to stay tight to the surface of the Trojan Object.

“My hand,” she said, and he followed her shoulder and her arm until he found her hand and said, “Agnes! Can you get it out?”

“I didn’t want to try until you saw this. What does it mean?”

“It means that if it was wet cement it’s hard by now and we’ll never get you off!”

“Don’t be an ass,” Agnes said. “Test around it. See if it’s different.”

Except for the torch, Danny made all the same tests. Right up to the edge of Agnes’s suit the Trojan Object’s surface was absolutely impenetrable, completely absorbent of energy, nonmagnetic—in other words, untestable. But there was no arguing the fact that Agnes’s hand was buried in it.

“Take a picture,” Agnes said.

“What will that show? It’ll look like your wrist with the hand cut off.” But Danny went ahead and laid some of his tools on the surface to give some hint in the photograph of where the surface actually was. Then he took a dozen or more photos. “Why am I taking these pictures?” he said.