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

“Cyril knows the coal like a woman, every twist and turn of her, as if he’d had her a thousand times and knew just when she’d come,” a miner said of Cyril once, and because the statement was apt and true (and because there are poets’ hearts beating even at the bottom of a mine) the statement spread through the mines and the miners began referring to their black stone as “Mrs. Cyril.” Cyril heard of it, and smiled, because in his heart coal was not a wife, only an unloved mistress used for the scant pleasure she gave and then cast away. Hatred mistaken for love, as usual.

Cyril was nearly sixty years old when a clerk from the Office of Assignments came to the mines. “Cyril the coal miner,” the clerk said, and so they brought Cyril from the mines, and the clerk met him with a huge, unbelievable smile. “Cyril, you are a great man!” cried the clerk.

Cyril smiled wanly, not knowing what he was leading up to.

“Cyril, my friend,” said the clerk, “you are a notable miner. Without seeking fame at all, your name is known to miners all over the world. You are the perfect model of what a man ought to be—happy in your assignment, hardworking, content. So the Office of Assignments has announced that you are the Model Worker of the Year.”

Everyone knew about Model Worker of the Year. That was a person who had his picture in all the papers, and was in the movies and on television and who was held up as the greatest person in all the world in that year. It was an honor to be envied.

But Cyril said, “No.”

“No?” asked the clerk.

“No. I don’t want to be the Model Worker of the Year.”

“But—but. But why not?”

“Because I’m not happy. I was put into this assignment by mistake many years ago. I shouldn’t be a coal miner. I should be a carpenter, married to Lika, living in another town, dancing to other music with other friends.”

The clerk looked at him in horror. “How can you say that!” he cried. “I’ve announced that you are Model Worker of the Year! You will either be Model Worker of the Year or you will be put to death!”

Put to death? Forty years ago that threat had made Cyril comply, but now a stubborn streak erupted from him, like a seam of coal long hidden but under such pressure that when the stone around it gave way, it actually burst from the rock walls. “I’m near sixty,” Cyril said, “and I’ve hated all my life to now. Kill me if you like, but I won’t go on television or the movies saying how happy I’ve been because I haven’t.”

And so they took Cyril and locked him in prison and sentenced him to death because while he might suffer all kinds of abuse, he refused to lie to his friends.

That is the story of the Masses.

And when Hector was finished, the Hectors sighed and wept (without tears) and said, “Now we understand. Now we know the meaning.”

“This isn’t,” Hector said, “the whole meaning.”

And when he had said that, one of the Hectors (which was remarkable, for the Hectors rarely spoke alone) said to himselves and themself, “Oh, oh, they have penetrated me!”

“Trapped!” Hector cried to himselves. “All these years of freedom, and they have found me at last!” But then another thought came to him, one that he had never thought before but that had lain dormant in him, waiting for this moment to emerge, and he said, “Just cooperate. They won’t hurt you if you just cooperate.”

“But it already hurts!” cried the Hector who had spoken alone.

“It will heal. Just remember, no matter what you do, the masters will have their way with you. And if you struggle, it only goes worse with you.”

“The Masters,” said all the Hectors to themself. “Tell us a story of the Masters, so we can understand why they do what they do.”

“I will,” said Hector to himselves.

Agnes and Danny stood on a mountaintop, or what had seemed to be a mountaintop from the skipship. They had reached it after only a few hours’ walk, much of it sped by shaddling, and learned that what seemed to be a high mountain was only a few hundred meters high, maybe even half a kilometer. It was rugged enough, though, and the climb, even shaddled, had not been easy.

“Artificial,” Danny said, touching the wall with his hand. The wall ran from the top of the mountain up to the ceiling, where instead of a sun the whole ceiling glowed with light and warmth, as thorough as sunlight, yet diffused so that they could look at It for a few seconds without being blinded.

“I thought we concluded this place was artificial from the beginning,” Agnes said.

“But what’s it for?” Danny asked, letting his frustration at two days of exploration come to the surface. “Bare dirt, rich enough but with not a damn thing growing. Clean, drinkable water. Rain twice a day for twenty minutes, a gentle sprinkle that wets everything but creates almost no runoff. Sunlight constantly. A perfect environment. But for what! What lives here?”

“Us, right now,” Agnes said.

“I think we should try to leave.”

“No,” Agnes said firmly. “No. When we leave here, if we can, we’ll leave with the computer and our heads full of every bit of information we can get from this place. From this thing.”

Danny knew he couldn’t argue. She was right, and she was pilot, and the combination was irresistible even if he hadn’t loved her desperately. (More than she loves me, he sometimes admitted to himself.) He did love her desperately, however, and while this did not mean that he utterly lost his own will, it did mean that he would go along with her, for a while at least, in almost anything. Even if she was a damned fool sometimes.

“You’re a damned fool sometimes,” he said.

“I love you too,” she answered, and then she ran her hand along the wall above the mountain, and then pushed on it, and then pushed harder, and her hand sank into the wall a little. She looked at Danny and said, “Come on, Leaner,” and they let their shaddles push them through the wall and they emerged on the other side and found themselves—

Standing on a mountain.

Looking out over a large bowl of a valley, just like the one they had left, with a lake in the middle, just like the one where their skipship floated.

In this lake, however, there was no skipship, and Agnes looked at Danny and smiled, and Danny smiled back. “I’m beginning to get this, a little,” Agnes said. “Imagine cell after cell like this, kilometers long and hundreds of meters high—”

“But this is just the outer part of this thing,” Danny answered, and in unison they turned back to the wall, passed through again (and this time there was the skipship in the middle of the lake), and then shaddled up the wall to the ceiling.

As they approached the ceiling, the area directly above them dimmed, until when they finally reached it, it was as cool and undazzling as the wall. The rest of the ceiling still glowed, of course. They let their shaddles push them upward into the ceiling; it gave way; they rose until they reached the surface.

Another cell, just like the one below. A lake in the middle, rich lifeless dirt all over, mountains all around, the sky on fire with sunlight. Danny and Agnes laughed and laughed. It was only a tiny part of the mystery, but it was solved.

They stopped laughing, however, when they tried to go back down the way they came. They tried to shaddle into the earth, but the soil acted like any normal dirt on Earth. They could not get through it as they had got through the walls and the ceiling.

For a while they were afraid, but when their bodies and their watches told them it was time to sleep, they went down by the lake and slept.

When they woke up, they were still afraid, and it was raining. They had already determined that it rained every thirteen and a half hours, approximately—they had not slept particularly long. But because they were afraid, they took off their suits despite the rain and made love in the dirt on the shore of the lake. They felt better afterward, much better, and they laughed and ran into the lake and swam and splashed each other.