Flux Tales Of Human Futures

by Card, Orson Scott

  "If you'll let me," the Aryan answered.

  "I'll let you," Hiram said. Then he got up and left the office.

  On the way home he passed a church. He had often seen the church before. He had

  little interest in religion-- it had been too thoroughly dissected for him in the

  novels. What Twain had left alive, Dostoevski had withered and Pasternak had

  killed. But his mother was a passionate Presbyterian. He went into the church.

  At the front of the building was a huge television screen. On it a very

  charismatic young man was speaking. The tones were subdued-- only those in the

  front could hear it. Those in the back seemed to be meditating. Cloward knelt at a

  bench to meditate, too.

  But he couldn't take his eyes off the screen. The young man stepped aside, and an

  older man took his place, intoning something about Christ. Hiram could hear the

  word Christ, but no others.

  The walls were decorated with crosses. Row on row of crosses. This was a

  Protestant church-- none of the crosses contained a figure of Jesus bleeding. But

  Hiram's imagination supplied him nonetheless. Jesus, his hands and wrists nailed to

  the cross, his feet pegged to the cross, his throat at the intersection of the

  beams.

  Why the cross, after all? The intersection of two utterly opposite lines,

  perpendicular that can only touch at one point. The epitome of the life of a 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

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  lines, bending back on ourselves, touching everybody again and again, wrapped up

  inside little balls, none of us daring to be on 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.

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  "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."

  "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.

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  "Damn," the Aryan said, when he heard about it.

  I PUT MY BLUE GENES ON

  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 N£ncamais, 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.

  "Obviamente autom tica," Amauri observed.

  "Que m quina, que nƒo pofa em tantos anos, bichinha! Nƒo acredito!" retorted

  Harold, and I was afraid I might have a rerun of the day before.

  "English," I said. "Might as well get used to it. We'll have to speak it for a few

  days, at least."

  Vladimir sighed. "Merda."

  I laughed. "All right, you can keep your scatological comments in lingua deporto."

  "Are you so sure there's anybody alive down there?" Vladimir asked.

  What could I say? That I felt it in my bones? So I just threw a sponge at him,

  which scattered drinking water all over the cabin, and for a few minutes we had a

  waterfight. I know, discipline, discipline. But we're not a land army up here, and

  what the hell. I'd rather have my crew acting like crazy children than like crazy

  grown-ups.

  Actually, I didn't believe that at the level of technology our ancestors had

  reached in 1992 they could build a machine that would keep running until 2810.

  Somebody had to be alive down there-- or else they'd gotten smart. Again, the

  surface of old Terra didn't give many signs that anybody had gotten smart.

  So somebody was alive down there. And that was exactly what we had been sent to

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  find out.

  They complained when I ordered monkeysuits.

  "That's old Mother Earth down there!" Harold argued. For a halibut with an ike of

  150 he sure could act like a baiano sometimes.

  "Show me the cities," I answered. "Show me the millions of people running around

  taking the sun in their rawhide summer outfits."

  "And there may be germs," Amauri added, in his snottiest voice, and immediately I

  had another argument going between two men brown enough to know better.

  "We will follow," I said in my nasty captain's voice, "standard planetary

  procedure, whether it's Mother Earth or mother--"

  And at that moment the monotonous homing signal changed.

  "Please respond, please identify, please respond, or we'll blast your asses out of

  the sky."

  We responded. And soon afterward found ourselves in monkeysuits wandering around

  in thick pea soup up to our navels (if we could have located our navels without a

  map, surrounded as they were with lifesaving devices) waiting for somebody to open a

  door.

  A door opened and we picked ourselves up off a very hard floor. Some of the pea

  soup had fallen down the hatch with us. A gas came into the sterile chamber where we

  waited, and pretty soon the pea soup settled down and turned into mud.

  "Mariajoseijesus!" Amauri muttered. "Aquela merda vivia!"

  "English," I muttered into the monkey mouth, "and clean up your language."

  "That crap was alive," Amauri said, rephrasing and cleaning up his language.

  "And now it isn't, but we are." It was hard to be patient.

  For all we knew, what passed for humanity here liked eating spacemen. Or

  sacrificing them to some local deity. We passed a nervous four hours in that

  cubicle. And I had already laid about five hopeless escape plans when a door opened,

  and a person appeared.

  He was dressed in a white farmersuit, or at least close to it. He was very short,

  but smiled pleasantly and beckoned. Proof positive. Living human beings. Mission

  successful. Now we know there was no cause for rejoicing, but at that moment we

  rejoiced. Backslapping, embracing our little host (afraid of crushing him for a

  moment), and then into the labyrinth of U.S. MB Warfare Post 004.

  They were all very small-- not more than 140 centimeters tall-- and the first

  thought that struck me was how much humanity had grown since then. The stars must

  agree with us, I thought.

  Till quiet, methodical Vladimir, looking as always, white as a ghost, pointedly

  turned a doorknob and touched a lightswitch (it actually was mechanical). They were

  both above eye level for our little friends. So it wasn't us colonists who had

  grown-- it was our cousins from old Gaea who had shrunk.

  We tried to catch them up on history, but all they cared about was their own

  politics. "Are you American?" they kept asking.

  "I'm from Pennsylvania," I said, "but these humble-butts are from N£ncamais.

  They didn't understand.

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  "N£ncamais. It means 'never again.' In lingua deporto."

  Again puzzled. But they asked another question.

  "Where did your colony come from?" One-track minds.

  "Pennsylvania was settled by Americans from Hawaii. We lay no bets as to why they

  named the damned planet Pennsylvania--"

  One of the little people piped up, "That's obvious. Cradle of liberty. And them?"

  "From Brazil," I said.

  They conferred quietly on that one, and then apparently decided that while

  Brazilian ancestry wasn't a capital offense, it didn't exactly confer human status.

  From then on, they made no attempt to talk to my crew, just watched them carefully,

  and talked to me.

  Me they loved
.

  "God bless America," they said.

  I felt agreeable. "God bless America," I answered.

  Then, again in unison, they made an obscene suggestion as to what I should do with

  the Russians. I glanced at my compatriots and fellow travelers and shrugged. I

  repeated the little folks' wish for the Russian's sexual bliss.

  Fact time. I won't bore by repeating all the clever questioning and probing that

  elicited the following information. Partly because it didn't take any questioning.

  They seemed to have been rehearsing for years what they would say to any visitors

  from outer space, particularly the descendants of the long-lost colonists. It went

  this way:

  Germ warfare had began in earnest about three years after we left. Three very

  cleverly designed cancer viruses had been loosed on the world, apparently by no one

  at all, since both the Russians and the Americans denied it and the Chinese were all

  dead. That was when the scientists knuckled down and set to work.

  Recombinant DNA had been a rough enough science when my ancestors took off for the

  stars-- and we hadn't developed it much since then. When you're developing raw

  planets you have better things to do with your time. But under the pressure of

  warfare, the science of do-it-yourself genetics had a field day on planet Earth.

  "We are constantly developing new strains of viruses and bacteria," they said.

  "And constantly we are bombarded by the Russians' latest weapons." They were

  hard-pressed. There weren't many of them in that particular MB Warfare Post, and the

  enemy's assaults were clever.

  And finally the picture became clear. To all of us at once. It was Harold who

  said, "Fossa-me, mƒe! You mean for eight hundred years you bunnies've been down

  here?"

  They didn't answer until I asked the question-- more politely, too, since I had

  noticed a certain set to those inscrutable jaws when Harold called them bunnies.

  Well, they were bunnies, white as white could be, but it was tasteless for Harold to

  call them that, particularly in front of Vladimir, who had more than a slight

  tendency toward white skin himself.

  "Have you Americans been trapped down here ever since the war began?" I asked,

  trying to put awe into my voice, and succeeding. Horror isn't that far removed from

  awe, anyway.

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  They beamed with what I took for pride. And I was beginning to be able to