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

Why the cross, after all? The intersection of two utterly opposite lines, perpendiculars that can only touch at one point. The epitome of the life of man, passing through eternity without a backward glance at those encountered along the way, each in his own, endlessly divergent direction. The cross. But not at all the symbol of today, Hiram decided. Today we are in spheres. Today we are curves, not lines, bending back on ourselves, touching everybody again and again, wrapped up inside little balls, none of us daring to be at the outside. Pull me in, we cry, pull me and keep me safe, don’t let me fall out, don’t let me fall off the edge of the world.

But the world has an edge now, and we can all see it, Hiram decided. We know where it is, and we can’t bear to let anyone find his own way of staying on top.

Or do I want to stay on top?

The age of crosses is over. Now the age of spheres. Balls.

“We are your friends,” said the old man on the screen. “We can help you.”

There is a grandeur, Hiram answered silently, about muddling through alone.

“Why be alone when Jesus can take your burden?” said the man on the screen.

If I were alone, Hiram answered, there would be no burden to bear.

“Pick up your cross, fight the good fight,” said the man on the screen.

If only, Hiram answered, I could find my cross to pick it up.

Then Hiram realized that he still could not hear the voice from the television. Instead he had been supplying his own sermon, out loud. Three people near him in the back of the church were watching him. He smiled sheepishly, ducked his head in apology, and left. He walked home whistling.

Sarah Wynn’s voice greeted him. “Teddy. Teddy! What have we done? Look what we’ve done.”

“It was beautiful,” Teddy said. “I’m glad of it.”

“Oh, Teddy! How can I ever forgive myself?” And Sarah wept.

Hiram stood transfixed, watching the screen. Penelope had given in. Penelope had left her flax and fornicated with a suitor! This is wrong, he thought.

“This is wrong,” he said.

“I love you, Sarah,” Teddy said.

“I can’t bear it, Teddy,” she answered. “I feel that in my heart I have murdered George! I have betrayed him!”

Penelope, is there no virtue in the world? Is there no Artemis, hunting? Just Aphrodite, bedding down every hour on the hour with every man, god, or sheep that promised forever and delivered a moment. The bargains are never fulfilled, never, Hiram thought.

At that moment on the screen, George walked in. “My dear,” he exclaimed. “My dear Sarah! I’ve been wandering with amnesia for days! It was a hitchhiker who was burned to death in my car! I’m home!”

And Hiram screamed and screamed and screamed.

The Aryan found out about it quickly, at the same time that he got an alarming report from the research teams analyzing the soaps. He shook his head, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Poor Mr. Cloward. Ah, what agony we do in the name of protecting people, the Aryan thought.

“I’m sorry,” he said to Hiram. But Hiram paid him no attention. He just sat on the floor, watching the television set. As soon as the report had come in, of course, all the soaps—especially Sarah Wynn’s—had gone off the air. Now the game shows were on, a temporary replacement until errors could be corrected.

“I’m so sorry,” the Aryan said, but Hiram tried to shrug him away. A black woman had just traded the box for the money in the envelope. It was what Hiram would have done, and it paid off. Five thousand dollars instead of a donkey pulling a cart with a monkey in it. She had just avoided being zonked.

“Mr. Cloward, I thought the problem was with you. But it wasn’t at all. I mean, you were marginal, all right. But we didn’t realize what Sarah Wynn was doing to people.”

Sarah schmarah, Hiram said silently, watching the screen. The black woman was bounding up and down in delight.

“It was entirely our fault. There are thousands of marginals just like you who were seriously damaged by Sarah Wynn. We had no idea how powerful the identification was. We had no idea.”

Of course not, thought Hiram. You didn’t read enough. You didn’t know what the myths do to people. But now was the Big Deal of the Day, and Hiram shook his head to make the Aryan go away.

“Of course the Consumer Protection Agency will pay you a lifetime compensation. Three times your present salary and whatever treatment is possible.”

At last Hiram’s patience ended. “Go away!” he said. “I have to see if the black woman there is going to get the car!”

“I just can’t decide,” the black woman said.

“Door number three!” Hiram shouted. “Please, God, door number three!”

The Aryan watched Hiram silently.

“Door number two!” the black woman finally decided. Hiram groaned. The announcer smiled.

“Well,” said the announcer. “Is the car behind door number two? Let’s just see!”

The curtain opened, and behind it was a man in a hillbilly costume strumming a beat-up looking banjo. The audience moaned. The man with the banjo sang “Home on the Range.” The black woman sighed.

They opened the curtains, and there was the car behind door number three. “I knew it,” Hiram said, bitterly. “They never listen to me. Door number three, I say, and they never do it.”

The Aryan turned to leave.

“I told you, didn’t I?” Hiram asked, weeping.

“Yes,” the Aryan said.

“I knew it. I knew it all along. I was right.” Hiram sobbed into his hands.

“Yeah,” the Aryan answered, and then he left to sign all the necessary papers for the commitment. Now Cloward fit into a category. No one can exist outside one for long, the Aryan realized. We are creating a new man. Homo categoricus. The classified man.

But the papers didn’t have to be signed after all. Instead Hiram went into the bathroom, filled the tub, and joined the largest category of all.

“Damn,” the Aryan said, when he heard about it.

It had taken three weeks to get there—longer than any man in living memory had been in space, and there were four of us crammed into the little Hunter III skipship. It gave us a hearty appreciation for the pioneers, who had had to crawl across space at a tenth of the speed of light. No wonder only three colonies ever got founded. Everybody else must have eaten each other alive after the first month in space.

Harold had taken a swing at Amauri the last day, and if we hadn’t hit the homing signal I would have ordered the ship turned around to go home to Nuncamais, which was mother and apple pie to everybody but me—I’m from Pennsylvania. But we got the homing signal and set the computer to scanning the old maps, and after a few hours found ourselves in stationary orbit over Prescott, Arizona.

At least that’s what the geologer said, and computers can’t lie. It didn’t look like what the old books said Arizona should look like.

But there was the homing signal, broadcasting in Old English: “God bless America, come in, safe landing guaranteed.” The computer assured us that in Old English the word guarantee was not obscene, but rather had something to do with a statement being particularly trustworthy—we had a chuckle over that one.

But we were excited, too. When great-great-great-great to the umpteenth power grandpa and grandma upped their balloons from old Terra Firma eight hundred years ago, it had been to escape the ravages of microbiological warfare that was just beginning (a few germs in a sneak attack on Madagascar, quickly spreading to epidemic proportions, and South Africa holding the world ransom for the antidote; quick retaliation with virulent cancer; you guess the rest). And even from a couple of miles out in space, it was pretty obvious that the war hadn’t stopped there. And yet there was this homing signal.