The guard shakes his head. “You expect me to believe that was a test? That you were testing me?”
“You proved you’ve got the guts for thieving.”
His response comes late, his voice even and softer than before, “You really didn’t have enough.”
“Doesn’t matter now. You in or not?”
The guard sizes up his three friends, but none of them have a word to say. Too greedy, scared, or stupid to find a flaw in a plan that could net them such an impressive haul. Maybe they’re as desperate as Pup.
The guard looks back to Pup. “What’s the play?”
Pup studies him a moment longer. Wishes that Ghost was here.
He puts one knee to the dirt and pulls the knife from his boot. Cuts a line in the shape of Base’s perimeter. Goes back over it and marks the important bits. “Right when the sun is highest in the sky, you’ll be here.…”
The room has wood paneling that soaks up the sickly electric light, leaving the space dim and small. There’s a fold-out table in the center of the room with one metal chair. Along two of the walls are sturdy wooden shelves packed full of books, some not much more than scraps of paper bundled together.
As Nass leads Pup inside, a man old enough to have been an adult during the Before time starts and stands up straight. He’s thin, too tall, and his graying hair is cropped close to his head. He’s standing beside a long desk bolted to one of the book-free walls and stacked with electronic equipment in various stages of repair. If Pup were scavenging, he would have discarded most of it, except for the many gray and black cables that tangle and hang to the floor.
Nass hands the man Pup’s Before scavenge while four of the soldiers follow them inside and the door clicks closed. The air grows heavy with the hot breathing of too many people for the space. They’ve taken the knife Nass gave him, and they’re—every one of them—taller and heavier than Pup.
The man accepts Pup’s scavenge with long fingers that are knobby at the knuckles. Squints at the shallow metal box in his palm and then pulls a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from his uniform’s front pocket. He holds the glasses up without putting them on, inspecting the tiny metallic markings etched into the one green plastic side of the box.
Nass turns her attention back to Pup and holds out one hand toward the fold-out table and chair. A soldier claps a hand on Pup’s shoulder and urges him into the seat.
The older man shakes Pup’s scavenge next to his ear, but it doesn’t make any noise. His mouth turns down as he nods in approval.
Pup exhales.
The man connects the part to some wires, presses a button, and the pile of equipment beeps. The room fills with its clicks and tiny fans wheeze to life.
He taps at a screen that casts his features in sharp shadows and blue light. He squints at the screen a long time, tap, tap, tapping.
All the while Nass watches Pup.
Then the man’s eyes grow wide and he turns to speak too quickly to Nass. “It’s not corrupted. I can force it to mount, but the system won’t boot to it. Still as a secondary drive I think I can trick the main system into thinking we’ve met the requirements of the security protocols and—”
Nass rolls her eyes, looking from one young soldier to another before interrupting the man’s ramblings, “Speak English.”
He blinks dumbly at Nass, licks his lips. “This,” he points to the screen, “just advanced our efforts by ten years. Maybe more. If any of the other equipment is in this good of condition …” He doesn’t need to finish. Everyone in the room understands. Even Pup.
Nass turns her attention back to Pup. Her eyes narrow in a way that Pup has only seen on wolves, circling, growling. She gestures to one of her soldiers without taking her gaze from Pup. The soldier unrolls a bundle of maps, kicking dust and the smell of moldy paper into the air.
Nass stabs the stack of maps with a finger. “You will tell me where you got this.”
Pup fights against the wrenching hollowness in his stomach, swallows the tightness in his throat. “Let’s see the reward first.”
“You’ll get it—”
Pup interrupts, “I’m not telling you anything, until I see the haul.”
Nass’s nostrils flare. She flicks her hand out and a soldier thuds a backpack onto the table.
The pack by itself would be a prize find. It has two nylon straps, wide and padded, and a dozen pockets with working zippers. Pup flips open the flap and loosens the unfrayed drawstring. He takes out each item, slowly, stretching out time.
Inside is as good as out: a clip-on flashlight with working bulb and batteries. Boots with unworn soles and laces. A dozen unrusted cans of meat. Two thick blankets finely woven from some synthetic that won’t rot. Rope, pliers, sewing needles, army knife, a leather belt. All new.
It’s enough to buy him into any town twice.
Nass is pacing between the table and the old man tapping at his Before equipment, but the general’s eyes never leave Pup.
Pup packs everything back inside, it’s a challenge to get it all to fit so that he can pull the drawstring closed.
“Now,” Nass says, “the maps.”
Pup slides the heavy pack aside to get at the papers. He only knows how to read a few words, so even though he remembers how he got from there to here, it takes him a long time to get his bearings.
Nass lurks always at the edge of Pup’s vision, and Pup takes his time. He shifts through each map, looking for some way to decode the markings. Finally, he settles on one with less writing. It doesn’t highlight the old, deteriorated roadways and abandoned towns as much as some of the others. Pup focuses on riverways he recognizes, though many were only dried-up beds by the time he encountered them.
Pup asks about the map. Nass explains the symbols. Gives him a red pencil, and Pup picks out his route, starting at Base and working backward. He marks the dangers he faced along the way and suggests what kind of equipment would be ideal for each leg of the journey. Nass quizzes him, trying to catch him in a lie.
Long after Pup has figured which point on the map Nass needs, he’s still asking questions, pretending to narrow down the space, and Nass is eager to supply Pup with answers.
“Okay, I have it,” Pup says when Nass is about to burst.
Pup is hunched over the table, and Nass leans in, intent on the map, her face only a couple of hand-lengths away from Pup’s. Pup clenches his jaw, tightens his stance, and waits for Nass to meet his eyes. Waits a beat after he’s locked Nass in his stare. Says, “If I give you this, you’re going to let me walk out of here.”
Nass doesn’t answer right away, which makes Pup think she might be telling the truth when she says, “Fine. Yes. Now tell me.”
Pup is trotting across the grassland at a pace he could never keep up during daylight with the heavy pack. But the air cools with the oncoming night. He’s in too big a hurry to care about the stitch in his side or the spasm in his thigh.
He can’t know if the guard and his friends were captured, if they did their part right, or if they left him behind. Not until he gets to the meeting spot.
The bottoms of his feet still tingle from when Ghost forced her way into his head. And he’s beginning to suspect it might not stop. It’s a small thing. A trade he’d make again in a heartbeat to get to stand face-to-face with her real-girl version even one more time.
He waits until Base is out of sight, far behind, before he fixes the clip-on light to the pack at his shoulder. His head is up and he’s squinting into the darkness between the edge of his bubble of light and the orange glow of the evening sun burning up the horizon. He should be about there, but he doesn’t see them. He’s a little late, but not so late that they’d have gone on without him, right?
Pup’s looking to the left when a pair of blinding headlights cut on directly in front of him. One pair. A single truck. Then they flicker back off a
nd he hustles the rest of the way.
The guard is leaning against the sand-colored military truck, his elbow crooked over its hood like it’s a pretty girl. He’s showing all his boxy teeth in a grin that stretches his spotted face too wide. “Guess I gotta take back all that shit I said about you behind your back.”
“What about all the shit you said to my face?”
The guard throws his head back and laughs, high on his success. There are vague shapes, darkened outlines, of people inside the truck. The guard’s goons. Pup doesn’t see Ghost. “How’d it go?”
The guard pretends to think about it before he nods, his smile settling into a sly grin. “It went.”
Silence stretches between them. The longest moment passes while the guard considers him. “You have any more bright ideas, you let me in, yeah? You see I’m good for my part.”
Pup shifts his weight, impatience leaking into his voice, “Haven’t seen that you’re good just yet, have I?”
“I did just what you said. Gave her a ‘choice.’”
The blood drains too quickly from Pup’s face, leaving him lightheaded. “And?”
The guard shrugs. Bangs his fist on the hood of the truck.
The rear passenger door opens and out climbs Ghost. She takes her time crossing the space to stand beside him. Smirks when she catches him staring. Pup remembers to close his mouth. To breathe. Looks back to the guard.
He winks at Pup.
“Alright,” Pup says to the guard, “I guess you are good for it.”
The guard laughs again, throwing his arms out to either side, wiggling his fingers toward himself. “You see? Remember me now. I’m your man.”
Pup doesn’t commit either way as the guard climbs into his truck and starts the engine.
Ghost leans in close, smelling of soap. “We’re not going with them to Springfield?”
“No,” Pup says, quiet so the guard won’t hear him over the even rumble of the engine, “if Nass is going to try and track us down, she’ll start by getting the truck back, and I don’t want to be anywhere near there when that happens.”
Ghost considers this as the guard turns the truck about, laughter spilling out of the cab, into the night.
Ghost asks, “Where are we going?”
Pup waits until the red glow of the truck’s taillights has faded into the expanse. When he’s sure they’ve gone, he unshoulders the heavy pack and kneels, tossing back the flap.
Ghost lets out a low whistle when she sees the supplies inside.
He says, “We can buy our way into Salem with this, easy.”
“Then?”
“We can work for room and water during the summer.”
She raises an eyebrow. “What kind of work?”
“Whatever they have. I might be able to find something that’ll get enough water for both of us. Maybe make something out of your projecting? Or if you could read a little bit—”
“I can read. And write. In English and Spanish.”
Pup laughs. Harder than he means to. Harder than he has in a long time, and it reminds him of the guard’s too broad smile.
He closes the pack and hefts it onto his back. “Know any percentages? Addition?”
She falls in next to him as he strikes out, heading south, giving him a side-eye like she can’t tell what he thinks is so funny. “We had regular school until Nass took over. I know up to college Algebra.”
“Of course you do. What’s Algebra?”
“That’s a few years after percentages.”
“In that case, you won’t have any trouble finding a job. Maybe you’ll work for both of us.”
She’s quiet for a time while they walk. Then she asks, “What happens after summer?”
Pup’s stomach flip flops unpleasantly. He’s never had to think about more than surviving the next summer, but Ghost has been playing a long game their whole lives. She wants a real plan, and he’s not sure he has one good enough for her.
“When winter rolls around, I’ll head out. Find a good scavenge and go from there.”
“Are you going to bring me with you?” Her voice is high, tight.
He grips the strap on his shoulder so that it bites into his palm, but doesn’t dare to look over. “I can bring you, if you like.”
“What if I decide I’m happy with the work in Salem?”
“Then I guess you’ll stay.”
Ghost slows to standing and Pup stops. He turns to face her, but keeps his head down.
She asks, “Will you stay with me?”
It’s a moment before he works up the nerve to meet her gaze. The Ghost he knew was a sad shadow of the person before him. Her brown eyes bloom green at the center, like the plains at the start of winter. Her glossy hair is too thick for the military braids to contain. She is tall, educated, soft-skinned, and discerning.
Her brow unfurls, and whatever she sees on his face forces her across the space between them. She reaches for him and when she takes his hand, Pup’s fingers tremble.
Pup answers, “I can stay. If you like.”
Fiction without Paper
BY ORSON SCOTT CARD
Orson Scott Card is the author of the novels Ender’s Game, Ender’s Shadow, and Speaker for the Dead, which are widely read by adults and younger readers, and are increasingly used in schools. His most recent series, the young adult Pathfinder series (Pathfinder, Ruins, Visitors) and the fantasy Mithermages series (Lost Gate, Gate Thief) are taking readers in new directions.
Besides these and other science fiction novels, Card writes contemporary fantasy (Magic Street, Enchantment, Lost Boys), biblical novels (Stone Tables, Rachel and Leah), the American frontier fantasy series The Tales of Alvin Maker (beginning with Seventh Son), poetry (An Open Book), and many plays and scripts, including his “freshened” Shakespeare scripts for Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Merchant of Venice.
Card was born in Washington and grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s.
Besides his writing, he teaches occasional classes and workshops and directs plays. He frequently teaches writing and literature courses at Southern Virginia University.
Card currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card, where his primary activities are writing a review column for the local Rhinoceros Times and feeding birds, squirrels, chipmunks, possums, and raccoons on the patio.
Fiction without Paper
It was a hard mental transition, when I first started writing on a computer back in 1979. The first time I lost twenty pages of writing, I began rigorously printing out my work every few minutes. If it wasn’t on paper, it didn’t really exist.
Gradually, my mindset changed. Instead of printing everything out, I saved it on multiple eight-inch disks. I no longer looked at stacks of typed-on paper with satisfaction, unless the same text was also saved on disk. Otherwise, typed manuscripts represented writing I couldn’t do anything with.
My writing didn’t become “real” until I could manipulate it with my word processing software. Therefore, printed paper was pretty useless. Only when I had keyed a manuscript into the computer did it exist in any useful way. There were new pleasures, though. When the story or novel was complete, ready to send to the editor, I would issue the print command, and the NEC Spinwriter would start to type away at a lovely speed, as if I had a fantastic typist preparing my manuscript for submission. I would eat dinner, play with my kids, or watch a TV show while hearing that untiring worker typing away in my office upstairs.
When it stopped, I would tear off the last sheet, then separate the fanfold pages of the manuscript on the perforations, until at last I had a tall stack of pages, which I boxed up, wrapped, addressed, and shipped off to the publisher. But I already thought of that pile of pages as a copy—the
original, the true document, was the series of bits and bytes electronically and redundantly stored on multiple disks.
Now, more than thirty-five years later, I can’t remember the last manuscript I submitted in a box. Now I attach an .rtf file to an email and poof, it’s submitted. It never touches paper between my computer and the editor’s machine.
And while books printed on paper are still selling well, there are alternatives now. Books are written on a computer, prepared for publication, and issued as ebooks without paper ever being involved, between the writer and the reader. You can find a book that looks interesting on a website, buy it, and download it immediately. Either in print or as an audiobook, you start reading or listening only moments after making the decision to buy.
Yet all these hastenings do not make the act of telling the story one whit easier or faster.
You still have to invent the characters and the things they do and the reasons they do them. You still have to create the milieu of the story. You still have to spawn the language that will help readers create the story in their own minds.
And we still have to find people willing to put forth the work to read. I do mean “work.” Watching a story unfold on a screen is not a mindless process—when the camera skips around in time and space, we have to do the work of organizing the events in some kind of order in our minds.
But that is nothing compared to the work that readers do. Their brains decode the symbols on paper and transform them into words, which enter the brain through the aural centers of the brain, so that they process the text as spoken language.
Then they use those verbal cues to create their own visual and audible sequences. Some people visualize more than others, but they create in their minds the same level of visual reality that they use for their memories of real events.
Just as with the memories of eyewitnesses, the story that they hold in memory is not “what actually happened.” Instead, they remember the story as edited by their perceptions, their world view, the way that these events fit into their previous understanding of the causal universe.