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

“In case we got back and people don’t believe I could stick my hand into something harder than steel,” Agnes answered.

“I could have told them that.”

“You’re my Leaner.”

Leaners were very good for some things, but you’d never want to be the prosecutor whose case against a defendant rested entirely on his Leaner’s testimony. Leaners were loyal first, honest second. Had to be.

“So we’ve got the pictures.”

“So now I get out.”

“Can you?” Danny asked. He had only postponed his concern for her; now it was back in full force.

“My knees and my other hand were both sunk in just as deep. The reason this one is still in is because I clenched my fist and I’m still holding on.”

“Holding on to what?”

“To whatever this damn thing is made of. My other hand and my knees floated to the surface after a few seconds.”

“Floated!”

“That’s what it felt like. I’m letting go now.” And as Agnes unclenched her fist her hand slowly rose to the surface and was gently ejected. There wasn’t a ripple on the surface material, however. Where her hand was, it behaved like a liquid. Where her hand wasn’t, it was as solid as ever.

“What is this made of?”

“Silly Putty,” Agnes said.

“Unfunny,” Danny answered.

“I’m serious. Remember how Silly Putty was flexible, but if you formed it into a ball and threw it on the ground, it broke like clay?”

“Mine never worked like that.”

“But this stuff does, in reverse. When something sharp hits it, or something hot, or something too slow or too weak, it sits there. But when I ran into it going at shaddle speed, I sank in it for a few inches.”

“In other words,” Roj said from the skipship, “you’ve found the door.”

They were back in the skipship inside ten minutes, and after only a few more minutes of checking everything to make sure it was in good condition, Agnes pulled the skipship a few dozen meters away from the surface of the Trojan Object. “Everybody ready?” Agnes asked.

“Are we doing what I think we’re doing?” Roz asked.

“Yep,” Danny answered. “We shore is.”

“Then we’re idiots,” Roz said, her voice sounding nervous. No one argued with her.

Agnes fired the vernier rockets on the outboard side and they plunged toward the Trojan Object. Not terribly fast, by the standard of speed they were used to. But to those aboard, who knew that they were heading directly into a surface so hard a diamond drill and a laser had had no effect at all, it was disconcertingly fast.

“What if you’re wrong?” Roz asked, pretending she was joking.

No one could answer before they hit. But in the moment when there should have come a violent crunch and a rush of atmosphere escaping from the ship, the skipship merely slowed sickeningly and kept moving inward. The black flowed quickly past the viewports, and they were buried in the surface of the Trojan Object.

“Are we still moving?” Roj asked, his voice trembling.

“You’ve got the computer,” Agnes answered, flattering herself that she, at least, did not sound scared. She was wrong, but no one told her.

“Yeah,” Roj finally said. “We’re still moving. Computer says so.”

And then they sat in silence for an interminable minute. Agnes was just about to say “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. I’ve changed my mind” when the blackness turned to a reflective brown through the window, and then, just when they’d had time to notice it, the brown turned into a bright, transparent blue—“Water!” Danny said in surprise—and then the water broke and they bobbed on the surface of a lake, the sun dazzlingly bright on the surface.

“First I will tell you the story of the Masses,” Hector said to himselves. Actually, the telling of the stories was not necessary. As Hector drank, all that he had been through, all that he had known through the years of his life was being transferred subliminally to himselves. But there was the matter of focus. The matter of meaning. Hector had no imagination at all. But he did have understanding, and that understanding had to be passed to himselves, or in ages to come the Hectors would curse themself for having left himselves crippled.

This is the story, therefore, that he told, because it focused and it meant:

Cyril [said Hector] wanted to be a carpenter. He wanted to cut living wood and dry it and cure it and shape it into objects of beauty and utility. He thought he had an eye for it. As a child he had experimented with it. But when he applied at the Office of Assignments, he was told no.

“Why not?” he asked, astonished that the Office of Assignments could make such an obvious mistake.

“Because,” said the clerk, who was unflaggingly nice (she had tested nice and therefore held her job), “your aptitude and preference tests show that not only do you not have any aptitude along those lines at all, but also you do not even want to be a carpenter.”

“I want to be a carpenter,” Cyril insisted, because he was young enough not to know that one does not insist.

“You want to be a carpenter because you have a false impression of what carpentry is. In actual fact, your preference tests show that you would absolutely hate life as a carpenter. Therefore you cannot be a carpenter.”

And something in her manner told Cyril that there was no point in arguing any further. Besides, he was not so young as not to know that resistance was futile—and continued resistance was fatal.

So Cyril was placed where his tests showed he had the most aptitude: He was trained as a miner. Fortunately, he was not untalented or utterly unbright, so he was trained as a lead miner, the one who follows the vein and finds it when it jogs or turns or jumps. It was a demanding job. Cyril hated it. But he learned to do it because his preference tests showed that he really wanted this line of work.

Cyril wanted to marry a girl named Lika, and she wanted to marry him. “I’m sorry,” said the clerk at the Office of Assignments, “you are genetically, temperamentally, and socially unsuited for each other. You would be miserable. Therefore we cannot permit you to marry.”

They didn’t marry, and Lika married someone else, and Cyril asked if it was all right if he remained unmarried. “If you wish. That’s one of your options for optimum happiness, according to the tests,” the clerk informed him.

Cyril wanted to live in a certain area, but he was forbidden; food was served for him that he didn’t like; he had to go dancing with friends he didn’t like, doing dances to music he loathed, singing songs whose words were silly to him. Surely, surely there’s been a mistake, he said, pleading with the clerk.

The clerk fixed a cold stare on him (he tried in vain to scrub the stare off, but still it hung on him like slime in his dreams) and said, “My dear Cyril, you have now protested as often as a citizen may protest and remain alive.”

In just such a case many another member of the masses might have rebelled, joining the secret underground organizations that sprang up from time to time and were crushed at regular intervals by the state. In just such a case many another member of the masses, knowing he was consigned to a lifetime of undeserved misery, would kill himself and thereby eliminate the misery.

However, Cyril belonged to the largest group within the masses, and so he chose neither route. Instead he went to the town he was assigned to, worked in the coal mine where he was assigned, remained lonely as he pined for Lika, and danced idiotic dances to idiotic music with his idiotic friends.

Years passed, and Cyril began to be well known among coal miners. He handled his rockcutter as if it were a delicate tool, and with it he left beautiful shapes in the rock behind, so that any miner could tell when he walked down a tunnel cut by Cyril, for it would be beautiful, and as he walked the miner would feel exalted and proud and, oddly, loved. And Cyril also had a knack for anticipating the coal, following where it led no matter how narrow the seam, how twisting its path, how interrupted its progress.