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

He walked out to the middle of the routing room, where the overhead train schedules flashed on large screens. A huge crowd was milling around. Reuben stopped and set Maynard down. (He always carried Maynard on the overhead because the vibrations made Maynard nervous and he would go to the bathroom on the floor.)

“Crowd’s a little bigger than usual,” Reuben said to Maynard. Maynard coughed.

Crowds were always big, Reuben thought. He wondered what it had been like back when it was legal to own your own car and people used to drive all over. How would the overhead stay in business then? It gave lousy service. There was always gum on the seats. Nobody would use the overhead unless they had to.

But they had to.

Reuben closed his eyes and counted to two hundred. People stared, but then they noticed the purple card in his hand and looked away. It was illegal to stare at disturbed persons.

Then Reuben opened his eyes. The first person he saw was a tall man in a business suit. The man was walking away, and Reuben stepped out to follow him. Then he realized that the man looked like his father, and he stopped dead. No, it wasn’t his father. But Reuben decided not to follow him anyway.

Reuben remembered the last time he had seen his father. It was his birthday, and his father had—his birthday. Father would be coming to visit him again today. Reuben felt very dark and somehow vaguely afraid.

Father would visit him and Mother would stay home. Reuben spat on the ground. The people around him did not look disgusted. It was illegal to look disgusted at the antisocial acts of disturbed persons.

Reuben closed his eyes and counted again. This time when he looked up he saw a short dumpy man in an expensive suit. He seemed uncomfortably hot, even in the air-conditioned station, and Reuben thought this one might be fun. So he put his purple card in his pocket and walked out of the station right behind the man.

Following was easy for the first few blocks, because the man was walking through crowds, and Reuben could stay ten feet behind without the man ever seeing him. Because Reuben was shorter than the adults in the crowd, staying out of sight was simple. It was one of the few times Reuben was glad he was not yet grown up.

But then the man left the crowds and went down a long alley. The only people were a few workmen unloading a truck. The man walked by and waved. The workmen waved back.

Reuben took a rubber ball out of his pocket and threw it down the alley, not far enough to reach the man, but well over halfway. “Okay, Maynard,” Reuben said, “Go earn your dog biscuits.”

Maynard took off down the alley after the ball. When he reached it he didn’t pick it up and bring it back. Instead, he pushed it farther along.

“Fetch!” yelled Reuben. The dog ignored him and pushed the ball even farther.

“Come back with that ball, you stupid mongrel!” Reuben yelled. Then he took off trotting down the alley.

The men stopped work and watched Reuben. Suspiciously, he thought. One of the workmen glanced up the alley, where the man Reuben was following was just turning the corner. Then the workman turned back and looked at Reuben.

“How come you ain in school, boy?” the man challenged.

Reuben pulled the purple card from his pocket.

“Oh, hey, boy,” the man said, embarrassed. “Hey, sorry, okay, kid?”

“Sure, fine,” Reuben answered. Maynard had the ball at the end of the alley.

“Dog doesn’t fetch too good, huh, kid?” the workman asked, trying to joke. A lot of people tried to be friendly to disturbed persons. Reuben felt nothing but contempt. He ran on after Maynard.

But when he got to the end of the alley and took the ball back from Maynard, he noticed that the workmen were still watching him. Suspiciously, Reuben thought again. What are they suspicious of? And they had seemed to know the man Reuben was following.

It didn’t matter. The man was nowhere to be seen on the busy street the alley opened into. Lost him, Reuben thought as he gave a biscuit to Maynard. “Not fast enough this time,” Reuben said. Maynard ignored him and gobbled the biscuit. “You’re not a dog,” Reuben said. “You’re a pig.”

Maynard stopped eating and glared at him.

“Okay, sorry,” Reuben said. “Geez, what a sensitive dog.”

Maynard swallowed the last of the biscuit and trotted on down the street.

“What is this,” Reuben said. “Trying to play hero and smell him out?” But Maynard went on until he had stopped in front of Auerbach’s department store. “Okay, Ugluk, Dog of the North, let’s go find somebody else.”

But Maynard wouldn’t budge. And then the man came out of the department store carrying a small sack. The chase was on again. Maynard strutted out ahead of Reuben. “Let’s not have any of that I-told-you-so crap,” Reuben said to Maynard. Maynard ignored him and went on strutting.

The man stopped one more time before they got to Liberty Park, and that was to buy a newspaper. When he got to the park he strolled to a bench under some trees where there were some guys throwing a frisbee, and a family having a picnic. He started reading the paper.

Reuben and Maynard watched for about five minutes. The man turned a page. “Whoopee,” Reuben said. “What a winner. Let’s go follow somebody else.” But just then the man looked at his watch, folded the paper, and left. Reuben almost got up to follow him, but the grass was too comfortable and the guy was dull anyway. He watched the frisbee game.

Then he glanced at the bench. The man had left the sack he had bought at Auerbach’s. What a dunce.

“Hey, Maynard,” Reuben said softly, stroking the dog’s neck. “We’ve been following a dunce. Left his bag on the bench.”

And then a woman with a poodle walked over to the bench and sat down to rest.

The poodle was in heat. Maynard was feeling frisky. He got up and trotted over to the poodle. The poodle seemed to sneer at the shambling sheepdog. Maynard didn’t mind. It didn’t seem to occur to him that a fellow dog could be snobbish.

But snobbish the poodle was, and she began to bark, running behind the woman for safety. Cheerfully persistent, Maynard followed. The poodle tried to go farther, but the leash stopped her. Maynard kept coming. So the poodle lunged away, snapping the leash out of the woman’s hand.

“Gertrude!” the woman shouted.

Gertrude took off at a brisk run. Maynard shuffled after her, gaining on her in his ramshackle way. The poodle dodged and headed back for the bench. Maynard turned faster than anyone would have thought he could, and began to head her off.

“Gertrude, come back here!” the woman yelled. “Whose dog is that? Leave Gertrude alone, you mangy mongrel!”

Reuben had been enjoying the show. But when the woman called his dog a mangy mongrel he got mad. “Who you calling mangy?” he called out.

“Is that your animal?” the woman asked.

“I feed him,” Reuben said.

“Get him away from my dog!” the woman demanded.

Reuben called to Maynard.

“Hey, Maynard, get back here,” he said. Maynard didn’t even glance back. “Come on, Maynard. You’ll probably get a disease anyway.”

The woman gasped in anger. At that moment Maynard got tired of chasing—he wasn’t used to having to ask twice—and came back. Gertrude, utterly exhausted, came back to the woman, who reached down and picked up the leash. “Gertrude, you poor thing,” the woman crooned. “Was that big nasty dog making you fraidsy? Was he, sweety?”

“Oh, Maynard, you poor poopsy-woopsy,” Reuben crooned in imitation. “Did that little warthog run away from you?” Maynard moved away in disgust, but Reuben got what he wanted: the woman had heard him.

“What do you mean, anyway,” the woman snapped, “letting your dog run around in a public park without a leash? I should have you arrested.”