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

Martha [Hector said] was administrator of Tests and Assignments in the sector where Cyril had been sentenced to death. Martha was hardworking and conscientious, and prone to double-check things which had already been checked and double-checked and triple-checked by others. This was why Martha discovered the mistake.

“Cyril,” she said when the guard let her into the clean white plastic cell where the coal miner waited.

“Just stick the needle in quick,” Cyril answered, wanting to get it over with quickly.

“I’m here to bring you the apologies of the state.”

The words were so strange, so never-before-heard that Cyril did not understand at first. “Please. Let me die and get it over with.”

“No,” said Martha. “I’ve done some checking. I checked into your case, Cyril, and I discovered that fifty years ago, just after all your tests were taken, your number was punched incorrectly by a moron of a clerk.”

Cyril was shocked. “A clerk made a mistake?”

“They do it all the time. It’s just easier, usually, to let the mistake go than to fix it. But in this case, it was a gross miscarriage of justice. You were given the number of a retarded man with a criminal bent, which is why you were not allowed to live in a civilized town and why you were not regarded as being capable of carpentry and why you were not allowed to marry Lika.”

“Just punched in the number wrong,” Cyril said, unable to grasp the minitude of the error that had such an enormous, disastrous effect on his own life.

“Therefore, Cyril, the Office of Assignments hereby rescinds the execution order and grants you a pardon. Furthermore, we are undoing the damage we did. You can now live in the town where you wanted to live, among the friends you wanted to keep, dancing to the music you enjoyed. You do indeed, as you used to believe, have an aptitude and a desire to be a carpenter—you will be instructed in the trade and given your own shop. And Lika is entirely compatible with you. Therefore you and she will now be married, and in fact she is already on her way to the cottage where you will live together in wedded bliss.”

Cyril was overwhelmed. “I can’t believe it,” he said.

“The Office of Assignments loves you and every citizen, Cyril, and we do everything we can to make you happy,” said Martha, glowing with pride at the great kindness she was able to do. Ah, she thought, it is moments like this that make my job the best one in the world.

And then Martha went away to her office and forgot about Cyril most of the time for several months, though occasionally she did remember him and smiled to think of how happy she had made him.

After several months, however, a message crossed her desk: “Serious complaint Cyril 113-49-55576-338-bBR-3a.”

Cyril? Her Cyril? Complaining? Had the man no sense of propriety? He already had enough complaints and resistance on his record to justify terminating him twice, and now he had added enough more that if it were possible, the office would have to kill him three times. Why? Hadn’t she done her best for him? Hadn’t she given him everything his early (and now correctly recorded) tests indicated he wanted and needed? What could be wrong now?

Her pride was involved. Cyril was not just being ungrateful to the state—he was being ungrateful to her. So she went to his cottage in his village, and opened his door.

Cyril sat in the main room, struggling to get past a gnarl in a fine old piece of walnut. The adz kept slipping to the side. And finally Cyril struck with enough force that when the adz slipped it gouged a deep rut in the good, ungnarled part of the wood.

“What a botch,” Martha said without thinking, and then covered her mouth, because it was not proper for a person of her high position to criticize anyone of low station if it could be avoided.

But Cyril was not offended. “Damn right it’s a botch. I haven’t the skill for this close, ticky work. My muscles are all for heavy equipment, for grand strokes with stone-eating power tools. This is beyond me, at my age.”

Martha pursed her lips. He was indeed complaining. “But isn’t everything else well with you?”

Cyril’s eyes grew sad, and he shook his head. “Indeed not. Much as I hate to admit it, I miss the old music from the mines. Terrible stuff, but I had good times with it, dancing away with those poor bastards who hadn’t a thought worth having. But they were good people and I liked them well enough, and here no one’s willing to be my friend. They don’t talk the way I’m used to talking. And the food—it’s too refined. I want a haunch of good, well-cooked beef, not this namby-pamby stuff that passes for food here.”

His diatribe of complaint was so outrageous that Martha could not conceal her emotion. Cyril noticed it, and became alarmed.

“Not that it’s unendurable, mind you, and I don’t go complaining to other people. Heaven knows, there’s no one who’d care to listen to me anyway.”

But Martha had already heard enough. Her heart sank within her. No matter what you do for them, they’re still ungrateful. The masses are worthless, she realized. Unless you lead them by the hand.…

“You realize that this complaint,” she said, “can have dire consequences.”

Cyril got a very weary expression on his face. “So we do it again?”

“Do what?”

“Punish me.”

“Indeed, no, Cyril. We remove you from circulation. Apparently you are going to complain and resist no matter what happens. What about your wife?”

Cyril got a bitter smile on his face. “Lika? Oh, she’s content. She’s happy enough.” And he glanced toward the door into the cottage’s other room.

Martha went to the door and opened it. (Officers of the Office of Assignments did not need to knock.) Inside the room Lika sat in a clumsily built rocking chair, rocking back and forth, an old woman with a blank stare on her face.

Martha heard breathing over her shoulder, and turned, startled, to see Cyril leaning over her. For a moment Martha was afraid of violence. Quickly she realized, however, that Cyril was merely looking sadly at his wife.

“She’s raised a family, you know. And now to be cut off from her husband and her children and her grandchildren—it’s hard. She’s been like this since the first week. Never lets me near her. She hates me, you know.” The sadness in his voice was contagious. And Martha was not without pity.

“It’s a shame,” she said. “A damned shame. And so I’ll use my discretionary powers, Cyril, and not kill you. As long as you promise not to complain to anyone ever again, I’ll let you live. It wouldn’t be fair, when things really are bad in your life, to kill you for noticing it.”

Martha was an exceptionally kind administrator.

But Cyril did not smother her with gratitude. “Not kill me?” he asked. “Oh, but Administrator, can’t we have things back the way they were? Let me go back to the coal mines. Let Lika go back to her family. This was what I wanted when I was twenty. But I’m near sixty, and this is all wrong.”

Ingratitude again. What I have to put up with! Martha’s eyes went small and her face flushed with rage (an emotion she did remarkably well, and so she reserved it for special occasions) and she shouted, “I will forgive that one remark, but only that one remark!”

Cyril bowed his head. “I’m sorry.”

“The tests that sent you to the coal mines were in error! But the tests that sent you here are absolutely, completely, totally correct, and by heaven you’re going to stay here! There isn’t a law on earth that will let you change now!”

And that was that.

Or almost. Because in the silence ringing after Martha spoke and before she left, a voice came from the rickety rocker in the bedroom.