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

And as he rounded a curve, his lights sweeping the trees on the far side of the road, he thought he glimpsed a flash of white to the right, in the middle of the road.

The lights caught her just before the truck did, a beautiful girl, naked and voluptuous and eager. Madly eager, standing there, legs broadly apart, arms wide. She dipped, then jumped up as the truck caught her, even as Rod smashed his foot into the brake, swerved the truck to the side. Because he swerved she ended up, not centered, but caught on the left side, directly in front of Rod, one of her arms flapping crazily around the edge of the cab, the hand rapping on the glass of the side window. She, too, splashed.

Rod whimpered as the truck again came to a halt. The hand had dropped loosely down to the woman’s side, so it no longer blocked the door. Rod got out quickly, swung himself around the open door, and touched her.

Body warm. Hand real. He touched the buttock nearest him. It gave softly, sweetly, but under it Rod could feel that the pelvis was shattered. And then the body slopped free of the front of the truck, slid to the oil-and-gravel surface of the road and disappeared.

Rod took it calmly for a moment. She fell from the front of the truck, and then there was nothing there. Except a faint (and new, definitely new!) crack in the windshield, there was no sign of her.

Rodney screamed.

The sound echoed from the cliff on the other side of the chasm. The trees seemed to swell the sound, making it louder among the trunks. An owl hooted back.

And finally, Rod got back into the truck and drove again, slowly, but erratically, wondering what, please God tell me what the hell’s the matter with my mind.

Harmony rolled off the couch, panting and shuddering violently.

“Is it better than sex?” one of the men asked her. One who had doubtless tried, but failed, to get into her bed.

“It is sex,” she answered. “But it’s better than sex with you.”

Everyone laughed. What a wonderful party. Who could top this? The would-be hosts and hostesses despaired, even as they clamored for a chance at the timelid.

But the crambox opened then, buzzing with the police override. “We’re busted!” somebody shrieked gaily, and everyone laughed and clapped.

The policeman was young, and she seemed unused to the forceshield, walking awkwardly as she stepped into the middle of the happy room.

“Orion Overweed?” she asked, looking around.

“I,” answered Orion, from where he sat at the controls, looking wary, Gemini beside him.

“Officer Mercy Manwool, Los Angeles Timesquad.”

“Oh no,” somebody muttered.

“You have no jurisdiction here,” Orion said.

“We have a reciprocal enforcement agreement with the Canadian Chronospot Corporation. And we have reason to believe you are interfering with timetracks in the eighth decade of the twentieth century.” She smiled curtly. “We have witnessed two suicides, and by making a careful check of your recent use of your private timelid, we have found several others. Apparently you have a new way to pass the time, Mr. Overweed.”

Orion shrugged. “It’s merely a passing fancy. But I am not interfering with time-tracks.”

She walked over to the controls and reached unerringly for the coldswitch. Orion immediately snagged her wrist with his hand. Gemini was surprised to see how the muscles of his forearm bulged with strength. Had he been playing some kind of sport? It would be just like Orion, of course, behaving like one of the lower orders—

“A warrant,” Orion said.

She withdrew her arm. “I have an official complaint from the Timesquad’s observation team. That is sufficient. I must interrupt your activity.”

“According to law,” Orion said, “you must show cause. Nothing we have done tonight will in any way change history.”

“That truck is not robot-driven,” she said, her voice growing strident. “There’s a man in there. You are changing his life.”

Orion only laughed. “Your observers haven’t done their homework. I have. Look.”

He turned to the control and played a speeded-up sequence, focused always on the shadow image of a truck speeding down a mountain road. The truck made turn after turn, and since the hologram was centered perpetually on the truck, it made the surrounding scenery dance past in a jerky rush, swinging left and right, up and down as the truck banked for turns or struck bumps.

And then, near the bottom of the chasm, between mountains, the truck got on a long, slow curve that led across the river on a slender bridge.

But the bridge wasn’t there.

And the truck, unable to stop, skidded and swerved off the end of the truncated road, hung in the air over the chasm, then toppled, tumbled, banging against first this side, then that side of the ravine. It wedged between two outcroppings of rock more than ten meters above the water. The cab of the truck was crushed completely.

“He dies,” Orion said. “Which means that anything we do with him before his death and after his last possible contact with another human being is legal. According to the code.”

The policeman turned red with anger.

“I saw your little games with airplanes and sinking ships. But this is cruelty, Mr. Overweed.”

“Cruelty to a dead man is, by definition, not cruelty. I don’t change history. And Mr. Rodney Bingley is dead, has been for more than four centuries. I am doing no harm to any living man. And you owe me an apology.”

Officer Mercy Manwool shook her head. “I think you’re as bad as the Romans, who threw people into circuses to be torn by lions—”

“I know about the Romans,” Orion said coldly, “and I know whom they threw. In this case, however, I am throwing my friends. And retrieving them very safely through the full retrieval and reassembly feature of the Hamburger Safety Device built inextricably into every timelid. And you owe me an apology.”

She drew herself erect. “The Los Angeles Timesquad officially apologizes for making improper allegations about the activities of Orion Overweed.”

Orion grinned. “Not exactly heartfelt, but I accept it. And while you’re here, may I offer you a drink?”

“Nonalcoholic,” she said instantly, and then looked away from him at Gemini, who was watching her with sad but intent eyes. Orion went for glasses and to try to find something nonalcoholic in the house.

“You performed superbly,” Gemini said.

“And you, Gemini,” she said softly (voicelessly), “were the first subject to travel.”

Gemini shrugged. “Nobody said anything about my not taking part.”

She turned her back on him. Orion came back with the drink. He laughed. “Coca-Cola,” he said. “I had to import it all the way from Brazil. They still drink it there, you know. Original recipe.” She took it and drank.

Orion sat back at the controls.

“Next!” he shouted, and a man and woman jumped on the couch together, laughing as the others slid the box over their heads.

Rod had lost count. At first he had tried to count the curves. Then the white lines in the road, until a new asphalt surface covered them. Then stars. But the only number that stuck in his head was nine.

9

NINE

Oh God, he prayed silently, what is happening to me, what is happening to me, change this night, let me wake up, whatever is happening to me make it stop.

A gray-haired man was standing beside the road, urinating. Rod slowed to a crawl. Slowed until he was barely moving. Crept past the man so slowly that if he had even twitched Rod could have stopped the truck. But the gray-haired man only finished, dropped his robe, and waved gaily to Rod. At that moment Rod heaved a sigh of relief and sped up.