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

They won’t suspect a thing, Reuben thought.

When he and Maynard got home that night, Reuben wrote down the address that had been on the envelope:

Bill

14 N 7 W

Enterprise, Utah 840033

Mr. Hyrum Wainscott

1408 S 2200 E

Salt Lake City, Utah 841236

And that was all. An address and a return address.

Reuben decided it was a code. He sat down and copied out the alphabet and tried to link up all the letters in ways that might make an intelligent pattern. He tried assigning number values to the letters, and letter values to the numbers. But no matter what he did, it made no sense. He fell asleep at the table.

When he woke up he looked at his work of the night before and decided it had all been stupid. The letter meant nothing. The man just had some weird habits. He dropped letters a lot. He always left Auerbach’s sacks behind when he went to the park. He left briefcases in airport lockers just for fun. And he liked dirty movies. It meant nothing.

Then Reuben looked at the address again and realized how simple it really was. The address was real. It told where the real message was. The return address was just for show.

Reuben gathered up Maynard, who grumbled about leaving the house so early, and took the overhead to thirteenth south and twenty-first east. He walked from there to the corner of fourteenth and twenty-second.

There was no 1408.

Another theory down the drain. Discouraged, Reuben got back on the overhead and headed into town.

And just as he stepped off the overhead he realized what the address meant. He headed straight for the library and got the Forest Service map of Utah. He found Enterprise near the southwest corner of the state.

Fourteen miles north and seven miles west of the town of Enterprise, Utah, there was absolutely nothing but desert mountains. It was miles off the road, and there wasn’t a town or even a settlement close enough to matter.

So if on the fourteenth day of the eighth month, which was in three days, at 2200 hours—ten p.m., just after dark—something were to happen fourteen miles north and seven miles west of Enterprise, Utah, not a soul would see it.

What would it be? A meeting? A parachute drop? An important message? It didn’t matter. The short dumpy man had delivered the message, but it had not been received. Would the meeting or the message or the parachute drop take place anyway? They must have a backup system. It would undoubtedly happen right on schedule. And I have to do something about it, Reuben thought. It didn’t occur to him that it was none of his business. He might feel contempt for everyone he knew, but the enemy was the enemy.

Reuben went straight to the doctor’s office. It wasn’t time for his appointment, but the doctor was willing to see him anyway. Reuben explained about everything he had done in the last few weeks, about the short dumpy man and the messages, and finally about the address and what he had finally realized that it meant.

The doctor leaned forward across the desk.

“I think this is a very important day,” the doctor said.

“Of course it is,” Reuben answered. “We’ve got to tell the authorities. You’ve got to, I mean, because they’d never believe me.”

“And why do you think they’d never believe you, Reuben?” the doctor asked.

“Because I’m a disturbed person. They’d just send you a memo about what crazy thing I did this time.”

“And why do you think they’d do that?” the doctor asked.

“Because,” Reuben said, “this is just the sort of thing a paranoid schizophrenic would cook up. You know I’m not a paranoid schizophrenic. They don’t.”

The doctor looked very pleased with himself. “So you feel that you’re helpless without relying on an outside authority figure, is that it?”

Reuben cocked his head and looked at the doctor. “Yeah, Doc,” Reuben said. “That’s it.”

“You’ve had these feelings of personal helplessness for a long time, haven’t you? Or have they just started?”

Reuben got up. “Come on, Maynard. The doctor’s busy.”

“Not at all,” the doctor said, rising from his chair. “I have plenty of time to talk to you.”

“I’ve got things to do,” Reuben said. The doctor sighed. But this time Reuben felt no pleasure in it. He should have known that the doctor would only see this whole thing as another symptom.

So Reuben went to the only other person he could think of. His father’s office was in the old Kennecott Copper Building, right at the dead center of downtown.

Reuben’s hands were cold when he punched the buttons on the elevator. And when the elevator stopped abruptly on the sixteenth floor, Reuben’s knees were shaky and he was breathing hard. He had only been to his father’s office once before. And that was five years ago, before the—before. The secretary told him his father was not in.

“Don’t give me that,” Reuben said impatiently. “He’s always in. Tell him his little boy is here to see him.”

The secretary glared at him and left her desk, motioning to a security man standing nearby. The security man came and sat at the desk. The secretary came back in a few minutes and whispered in the security man’s ear.

“All right, sonny,” the security man said. “Come with me.”

They went down a thickly carpeted hall with real wood walls and several doors. At the end of the hall they turned right and went down another corridor. At last they came to Reuben’s father’s office. The security man opened the door and let Reuben in.

“Hello, Reuben,” his father said, looking at him strangely.

“Hello, Father,” Reuben said, wondering why in the world he had come to this man for help.

“What can I do for you?” his father asked.

“I need your help,” Reuben answered. Maynard scratched his paws on the front of Reuben’s father’s real wood desk. He reached down and picked Maynard up. “Sorry.”

“That’s all right,” his father said. “Sit down and tell me.”

So Reuben told him about the short dumpy man and the messages and the envelope and the desert northwest of Enterprise. And his father nodded all the way through.

“Have you told the police?” his father asked quizzically.

“No, Father. I’m a disturbed person, remember? I need you to tell them.”

His father nodded, and Reuben felt relieved. Until his father said, “Do you have any other evidence?”

“Isn’t that enough?” Reuben asked.

“Well, it seems a little farfetched. Why couldn’t it just be a wrong address that somebody put on the envelope?”

“But it all fits,” Reuben said, with a sinking feeling. “And what about the things this guy does?”

“Lots of people do lots of things,” his father said. “Have you talked to the doctor about this?”

Reuben looked at his father and realized how carefully he was thinking of his words before he spoke and how he was playing nervously with his telephone receiver. And he knew that his father didn’t believe him, that he was afraid of him, that he wanted the doctor to be there.

“The doctor?” Reuben asked. “Yes, Father. Go ahead and call him. I’m sure he’ll make you feel better about your little boy. He’ll call this a sign of incipient social interest, and tell you that you should be encouraged that my emotional dysfunction should now be bringing me to seek contact with my father and to try to win favor from society for my heroic but imagined deeds.” Reuben got up and went to the door. “Come on, Maynard. Don’t shed on the rug.” Maynard followed him out the door.

Back on the street Reuben felt angry and bitter. Why had he bothered? They had never believed him, never seen things his way. They all tried to cope with him, as if he were an epidemic or a forest fire that they had to keep under control. Even his mother, back in the early years—in all his memories of her, Reuben could see her trying to talk to him, trying to answer his questions, but afraid, like his father, like his doctor, like the people on the street.